Triceratops ( genus name : triceratops ) is a genus of herbivorous dinosaurs of the family " Diplodocus " , fossils found in the Late Cretaceous Late Maastricht formations of North America , about 68 million to 65 million years ago. Triceratops is one of the last dinosaurs to appear and is often used as a representative fossil of the Late Cretaceous Period. There are currently two valid species: Triceratops and Triceratops, but other genera have been named. Triceratops is also one of the most famous dinosaurs and a dinosaur that is very popular in popular culture.
Ghost Craftsman Research Original Model Photo
Triceratops was a medium-sized quadruped dinosaur that was 6–10 m long, 2.4–2.8 m tall, and weighed 5–10 tonnes. They have very large head shields, as well as three horns, reminiscent of modern rhinos. They are famous for the large number of specimens of some skeletons found from 1887 onwards. For a long time, there has been debate about their three horns and the function of the head shield. Traditionally, these structures have been thought to be weapons used against predators, but recent theories suggest that these structures may have been used for courtship and to demonstrate dominance, such as the horns of modern reindeer, goats, and unicorns.
The most notable features of Triceratops are their horns and neck shields. Their head shields can grow to more than 1.5 meters. Triceratops had a horn above the nostrils of its nostrils, and a pair of horns above the eyes, more than 80 centimeters. Behind the skull is a relatively short bony head shield.
Triceratops had short limbs , five short toes on the forefoot and four short toes on the hind paw. Although Triceratops was determined to be tetrapods, their posture has long been debated. The forelimbs of Triceratops were initially thought to extend from the chest to the sides to help bear the weight of the head. This way of standing can be seen in the paintings of Charles R. Knight and Rudolph F. Zallinger. However, fossilized footprint evidence of diplodonts, as well as today's skeleton reconstructions, show that Triceratops kept an upright posture while walking normally, but with slightly bent elbows, in the middle of both fully upright and fully extended (modern rhinoceros). However, this conclusion does not rule out that Triceratops will adopt a stretching posture when resisting or eating.
Triceratops is the most famous genus in the family " Ceratosaurus " , a group of medium-sized North American ceratopsid dinosaurs. For many years , the position of Triceratops in the lower order of Triceratops was debated. Confusion comes from the fact that the short, hard-headed shields of Triceratops resembled the subfamily Diplodocus, while the long frontal horns resembled the Plesiosauridae ( or Plesiosaur subfamily ) . In the first study of the ceratosaurs, Richard Swann lull proposed two clades, one that developed towards Triceratops including Triceratops and Diplosaurus, and the other including Ceratosaurus and Oxeratops, a hypothesis that Triceratops belonged to the subfamily Triceratops. Later studies supported this idea and officially named this short-headed shield branch the subfamily " Ceratosaurus " ( including " Triceratops " ) , and the other subfamily of The diplodocus longifoliae .
Network pictures, invasion and deletion
In 1949 , Charles Mortram Sternberg first questioned this hypothesis , and based on the characteristics of the skull and horns , he believed that Triceratops was more closely related to " Rhinoceras " and " Plesiosaurus " , resulting in the genus Triceratops subfamily ( Subfamily " Ceratosaurus " ) . However, Sternberg's classification differs from John Ostrom and David Norman's placement of Triceratops in the subfamily Of Diplodocus.
Later discoveries and studies supported Sternberg's view that Lehman defined two subfamilies in 1990 and attributed Triceratops to the Triceratops subfamily based on several morphological features. In fact, with the exception of the short-headed shield, Triceratops is quite in line with the characteristics of the subfamily Ceratopsae. Peter Dodson's 1990 study of the taxonomy of related branches and the 1993 morphological study reinforced the argument that Triceratopsae is classified as a subfamily of Ceratopsae.
In the taxonomy of phylogenesis, Triceratops is often used as a reference point in the definition of dinosaurs, the skeleton of Triceratops; dinosaurs are defined as Triceratops with neoornithic suborders (modern birds) and all descendants of the common ancestor. Ornithopods are defined as species with a common ancestor that are close to Triceratops and farther from modern birds.
For many years the origin of Triceratops was very unclear. In 1922 , the newly discovered protocerapids were considered by Henry Fairfield Osborn to be the ancestors of Triceratops. However, several species related to the ancestors of Triceratops have been found today. Found in the late 1990s , the ancestor " Ceratosaurus " was the earliest known frontal horned dinosaur in the order " Ceratosaurus " . The cryptorhosaur discovered in 2005 is the only known Jurassic horned dinosaur.
These new discoveries are important and depict the origins of the horned dinosaurs, which originated in Jurassic Asia, while the truly horned horned dinosaurs appeared at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous Period. Triceratops is increasingly considered a member of the Triceratops subfamily , and the ancestors of Triceratops may have resembled Triceratops , which lived about 5 million years earlier than Triceratops.
The first specimen to be named Triceratops was discovered near Denver, Colorado, in 1887 and consisted of the top of a skull with a pair of forehead horns attached to it. The specimen was given to Othniel Charles Marsh, who believed that the fossil was dated to the Pliocene and that the fossil belonged to a particularly large North American bison, so he named them bison alticornis. The following year, Based on some broken fossils, Marsh discovered the presence of horned dinosaurs, thus establishing the genus " Ceratosaurus " ; but he still considered the longhorn North American bison to be a mammal of the Upper Miocene. It wasn't until the third, more complete ceratosaur skull, that his mind changed. The specimen, discovered by John Bell Hatcher in 1888 in the Lance Formation of Wyoming, was initially described as another species of the genus " Ceratosaurus " , but after much deliberation , he named the specimen triceratops and reclassified the original longhorn bison as a species of ceratops ( and later a species of Triceratops ) . The strong skull of Triceratops allowed many skulls to be preserved, allowing scientists to study variation between different species and individuals. In addition to Colorado and Wyoming, fossils of Triceratops have subsequently been found in Montana and South Dakota, and in Alberta and Sacchivan in Canada.
In the decade before Triceratops was first named, different skulls were found that were similar to those of marsh's originally named Triceratops ( T. Triceratops ) . Horridus) skulls are more or less different; the species name Horridus in Latin actually means "uneven", meaning the uneven surface of the prototype specimen, which was later identified as a juvenile individual. These differences in skulls can be grouped into three different sizes, and these differences come from differences in age and sex, as well as different degrees or pressure directions during fossilization. These different skulls are named individual species (see the list below) and form several phylogenetic studies.
Years later, Catherine Forster questioned osterrum and Wolfefer's research, which studied the fossil material of Triceratops more extensively and suggested that there were only two species of Triceratops: Triceratops and Diceratops Hatcheri, Miracle Dragon, Oxeratops, Bisonosaurus and other species thought to have belonged to Triceratops. The two species of folded Triceratops and Triceratops may still be the result of hermaphroditics.
Although Triceratops is often described as social animals, there is no direct evidence that they are social animals. But some horned dinosaurs are found in dozens or hundreds of individuals. Bruce Erickson, a paleontologist at the Science Museum of Minnesota, claims to have found 200 T. in the Hale River Formation in Montana. Specimen of prorsus. Barnum Brown claimed that more than 500 skulls had been found there. Because of the orchid in the west of North America
The Fossil Triceratops Group (Late Mastricht, 68 million to 65 million years ago) found abundant Triceratops teeth, horn fragments, head shield fragments, and other broken skulls of Triceratops. In 1986, Robert Bakker estimated that in the Cretaceous Period, Triceratops accounted for 5/6 of the Reims group fauna. The skulls of Triceratops are more commonly found than on the body parts, unlike most animals.
Triceratops was one of the last ceratopsids to appear before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Diplodocus, a close relative of Triceratops, lived during the same period as Oxeratopsa and distant relatives, But fossils are rarely found. Diplodocus and Oxeratops may have belonged to Triceratops.
Triceratops was a plant-eater, but they may also have used head horns, beak-shaped beaks, and bodies to knock down higher vegetation for food. Triceratops had a long, narrow beak-like mouth at the front of its jaw, which was considered more suitable for grasping and pulling than biting.
The teeth of Triceratops are arranged into tooth batteries, each of which consists of 36 to 40 tooth groups, 3 to 5 on each side of the upper and lower jaws, and the number of teeth in the tooth group varies according to the size of the animal. In total, Triceratops had 432 to 800 teeth, most of which were in use, while Triceratops' teeth were constantly growing and replacing. These teeth cut food in a vertical or nearly vertical direction. The numerous teeth of Triceratops show that they fed on large palm plants. The diet of Triceratops may have contained palms and cycads, while others believed to contain ferns from grasslands.
In 2005, BBC's television show The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs tested how Triceratops would resist attacks from large predators such as Tyrannosaurus rex. In order to find out whether Triceratops rammed into enemies like modern rhinos, the program units created an artificial Triceratops head and crashed into the skin of a simulated Tyrannosaurus rex at a speed of 24 kilometers per hour. The frontal horns of Triceratops pierced the simulated skin, but the frontal horns and beaked mouth could not be pierced, and the anterior segment of the skull was broken. The conclusion is that Triceratops cannot use the charge of the enemy to defend themselves, and if they are attacked, they should adopt a holding strategy, using their horns to stab the enemy when the enemy is approaching. But the truth is wrong – replacing bones with gum is a fatal mistake; so in addition to using the horns to fight predators, Triceratops may use the horns to collide with each other. Studies have shown that this collision behavior is reasonable and feasible, but there is no evidence that Triceratops possessed this behavior. The sores, holes, lesions, and other wounds on the skulls of Triceratops and other horned dragons are often thought to be scars caused by fighting each other with the horns of their heads. A recent study concluded that there was no evidence that the scars were left over from a fight, nor was there evidence of infection or healing. Bone loss, or unknown bone disease, is the source of these scars. The large head shield of Triceratops may be used to increase the surface area of the body to help regulate body temperature. The bone plates of stegosaurs are also hypothesized to have had similar functions, but this theory cannot explain the changes in the shape of the head shields of different members of the family Ceratopsidae. The theory that the head shield and horn are a feature of the sexual heteromorphism was first proposed by davitashvili in 1961 and gradually gained more support. Head shields and horns are regarded as important visual identifiers for courtship and other social behaviors; this theory can be confirmed by the fact that different horned dinosaurs had different ornaments. Modern animals with horns or ornaments also use them as visual identifiers. Recently, a study of the smallest Triceratops skull determined that the skull belonged to a juvenile body and showed that the head shield and horns began to develop at a very young age, before sexual development; therefore, the head shield and horn of the Triceratops may have been used as visual identifiers. The large eyes of the juvenile stone and the shorter head shield and horns also show that the parents of Triceratops also had parental parenting behavior.
Canadian Fossils, which specializes in collecting ancient animal remains, found a relatively complete dinosaur skeleton near the Milk River, south of the border between Alberta and Montana in the United States. Michael Ryan, a professor of paleontology at Carleton University in Canada, and others have studied it after years of research to distinguish this dinosaur from other members of the fierce-looking herbivorous dinosaur family. The newly discovered dinosaur is 7 meters long and weighs about 2 tons. It lived during the Cretaceous period and is thought to be the ancestor of Triceratops, the earliest member of the ceratopsid subfamily dinosaurs in North America. Strikingly, there is a huge head shield behind its skull with several hooks and horns on the edges. Ryan thinks the organ may not be used to defend against predators, but is more likely to be a show-off to attract a spouse.