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Are These Buffalo Horns?
In 1887, before any complete ceratopian skulls had been discovered, paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh received a large package from a geologist in Colorado. It contained two fossilized horns, each about half a meter (2 feet) long. Even though the horns were buried in Cretaceous sandstone, Marsh guessed they came from an extinct bison. So, he named the species Bison alticornis ("high-horned bison"). Two years later, Marsh figured out that the horns actually belonged to a dinosaur that had three horns on its head. So he renamed this fossil Triceratops ("three-horned face").
Scientific Name: Triceratops horridus
Pronunciation: try-SER-uh-tops hoh-RID-us
Meaning: "three-horned face"
Locality Found: United States and Canada
Age: Late Cretaceous, 65 million yeas ago
Size: 6 to 8.5 meters (20 to 28 feet) long
Characteristics: Triceratops was a horned dinosaur with scissor-like rows of teeth used for chewing plants. It was one of the last non-bird dinosaurs to roam Earth!
Triceratops' strong teeth acted like shearing blades, so scientists think this dinosaur probably ate:
fruit
leafy plants
thick, tough plants
Correct!
Triceratops' teeth were well-suited for eating tough, hard-to-chew plants, such as cycads and palm fronds.
An adult Triceratops weighed more than the largest modern elephants.
Fact
OR
Fiction
?
Fact
The heaviest elephants weigh about 5450 kilograms (12,000 pounds). An adult Triceratops is believed to have weighed 5450 to 8150 kilograms (12,000 to 18,000 pounds)!
“
...during a beef roundup, the boys found a large head ...with horns as long as a hoe handle and eye holes as big as your hat.
– Charles Guernsey, cattle rancher in the 1880s
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