A fascinating new study suggests that our beloved Triceratops may not be exactly what we think:
DINOSAURS were shape-shifters. Their skulls underwent extreme changes throughout their lives, growing larger, sprouting horns then reabsorbing them, and changing shape so radically that different stages look to us like different species.
This discovery comes from a study of the iconic dinosaur triceratops and its close relative torosaurus. Their skulls are markedly different but are actually from the very same species, argue John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.
Triceratops had three facial horns and a short, thick neck-frill with a saw-toothed edge. Torosaurus also had three horns, though at different angles, and a much longer, thinner, smooth-edged frill with two large holes in it. So it’s not surprising that Othniel Marsh, who discovered both in the late 1800s, considered them to be separate species.
Now Scannella and Horner say that triceratops is merely the juvenile form of torosaurus. As the animal aged, its horns changed shape and orientation and its frill became longer, thinner and less jagged. Finally it became fenestrated, producing the classic torosaurus form (see diagram, right).
This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown.
This sort of realization is so cool to me because it seems simple and intuitive, but it took us so long to figure out. We know that our contemporary organisms can make great morphological changes as they age – why didn’t we think the same thing about dinosaurs? And when you think of the magnitude of some of these changes, it makes you wonder what other dinos we have wrong. I mean, an alien looking down at our planet probably wouldn’t think a butterfly came from a caterpillar. But that’s an extreme example. Maybe an alien would label a baby and adult chicken differently.
What’s neater is that we can imply some things about the purpose of the frill just from knowing how it changes over time:
The finding has implications for the supposed defensive function of the triceratops’ frill. “If I was a triceratops I wouldn’t want anything too damaging to happen to my frill, as it had numerous large blood vessels running over the surface,” says Scannella. “I don’t imagine holding up a thin bony shield that can gush blood would be a very effective means of defence.”
Instead it is likely that the headgear was a display to signal an individual’s maturity to other members of the species. Differences between the sexes is another possibility but less likely, says Scannella.
But rest assured, Triceratops fans. Torosaurus is the species that is being abolished – our childhood memories are still in tact. Though I’m sure the Blue Ranger will be a little upset knowing he was riding a baby dinosaur this whole time.*
*Yes, I really am that geeky.
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hah! I just came back from a paleo-dig with some guys who were on a paleo-dig with people from Bozeman, and they were talking about this theory a lot; with picture demonstrations of their trip to The Museum of The Rockies and all.Makes me feel extra special to have heard about this before the article came out (if the July 28th date is correct) [/bragging]
And there’s been several different blue rangers riding several different animals anyway. I kind of stopped following when they changed robots for the second or third time.
Well, at least we get to keep the name! (R.I.P. Brontosaurus. Never forget!)
I wouldn’t jump on Jack Horner’s bandwagon just yet. He’s the guy that convinced himself that T. rex is a scavenger, although that never became the consensus of the paleontological community. He tried to make a big splash with that one, but you don’t hear anyone talking about this years later. I would treat this “study” as extremely tentative. The problem with really demonstrating something like this is that you would need many many specimens that always point you in to the same conclusion. A simpler answer that cannot be ignored at this point is that Torosaurus and Tricerotops are simply closely related species. Jack Horner has gone to great lengths to demonstrate to us that he is a maverick. This doesn’t mean that his conclusions are wrong, only that we should examine a hypothesis like this very tentatively. And our intuition won’t help us too much at this point. For a long time man thought that life was designed by God, that seemed intuitive to many very smart people for a long time. But now we know better, right?
I always liked Billy the most because he was cute and nerdy and could still take care of himself. Jason was just hot, but he didn’t have the whole package.
Blue Ranger was the best, anyway. He was the nerd. Though I think totally-racist-choice of yellow ranger may have laid the foundations for my libido.My ladyfriend totally lives in Bozeman right now, and told me she sees Jack Horner around town pretty often. I’m going to try to convince her to give him a high five and say “Blag Hag!”
There’s a stage after “Torosaurus,” where the horns are replaced with machine guns. :)
Sorry, but I’m pretty sure Horner was on SGU about this some months ago.
Good to see that you’re not likely to make stupid, uninformed posts about silly peeves about other people’s use of English.(Yes, imply and infer have always been interchangable.)
That is really awesome if it turns out to be true!