Triceratops

Three horns, a great bony frill, and a face built for the late Cretaceous.

Triceratops is a genus of large horned dinosaur (a ceratopsian) that lived in western North America at the very end of the Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 66 million years ago. Its name means 'three-horned face,' and its massive skull — among the largest of any land animal — carried two long brow horns, a shorter nose horn, and a broad bony frill.

Horns and frill

The two brow horns could exceed a metre in length, set above a frill that may have served in display, species recognition, or defense against predators. As a chasmosaurine ceratopsian, Triceratops had a solid frill rather than the large openings seen in some relatives. Its beak and batteries of shearing teeth processed tough, low-growing plants.

How we know

Triceratops was named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1889 during the great era of North American dinosaur discovery. It is one of the most common large dinosaurs in latest-Cretaceous rocks, known from numerous skulls and skeletons, which is why it features so prominently in museum halls and research on ceratopsian growth.

Where it lived

Its fossils are abundant in the Hell Creek, Lance, and Scollard Formations of the United States and Canada. Triceratops lived alongside Tyrannosaurus, and the two are often found in the same deposits — a genuine predator-and-prey pairing preserved in the rock record.

Sources

Compiled by PaleoDex from open scientific data. Like the app, every fact here is sourced — primarily the Paleobiology Database and Wikipedia/Wikimedia — and where a fact isn't sourced, we leave it out rather than guess.

· Wikipedia: Triceratops
· Paleobiology Database (PBDB)