Triceratops After Marsh
Marsh died at the age of sixty-seven on March 18, 1899, after a long, genuinely distinguished, and productive scientific career. Not surpris ingly, he left many projects unfinished, among them the projected monograph of the Ceratopsia, for which he had overseen the preparation of a large number of superb lithographic plates and illustrations, again at government expense. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Henry Fairfield Osborn enjoyed an honorary appointment as vertebrate paleontologist to...
The History Of Collecting Dinosaurs
Another thing to notice about Table 1.1 is that our knowledge of horned dinosaurs, and of course of all dinosaurs, has a history and a very colorful and interesting history it is, as we shall see. There was a time when no one knew anything about dinosaurs. Indeed, the recognition of fossils themselves as the remains of once-living plants and animals that inhabited an ancient world was a very difficult intellectual accom plishment that we too easily take for granted we too readily heap scorn...
The Fossil Record Of Horned Dinosaurs
With ceratopsians, we are rather fortunate. Horned dinosaurs have one of the best fossil records of any group of dinosaurs. There are close to four hundred specimens in museum collections around the world. Twenty-three genera and perhaps thirty species have been described to date, with more to come.11 There is an average of more than 30 specimens per genus. Even if the extremely abundant Psittacosaurus and Protoceratops were eliminated from this tally, we would still be left with a respectable...
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PETER DODSON earned his B.Sc. in geology at the University of Ottawa in 1968, his M.Sc. in geology at the University of Alberta in 1970, and his Ph.D. in geology at Yale University in 1974. Since 1974 he has been a professor of anatomy in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also a professor of geology. He has studied Late Cretaceous dinosaur faunas of Canada and the United States for many years. Recently his dinosaur research has taken him to India,...
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This exercise is not a rigorous one, but it seems to convey a reasonably consistent picture of the size of the animals in the deposit. Note that in our real animal, that is to say, NMC 2245, as in all ceratopsids, the humerus is not the same length as the femur but only about two-thirds the length of the femur. Thus the 355-mm femur of C. mariscalensis certainly comes from a smaller animal than the 352-mm humerus. Lehman concluded his work by diagnosing Chasmosaurus mariscalensis. He noted that...
Newer Developments And Modern Studies
FIG. 6.1. Reconstructed skull of Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis 176 FIG. 6.2. Avaceratops lammersi skull 187 FIG. 6.3. Avaceratops lammersi skeleton 188 FIG. 6.4. Reconstruction of Avaceratops 18 9 FIG. 6.5. New horned dinosaurs at the Museum of the Rockies 196 CHAPTER SEVEN No HORNS AND NO FRILLS FIG. 7.1. Leptoceratopsgracilis skull 204 FIG. 7.2. Leptoceratops gracilis skeleton 2 06 FIG. 7.3. Velociraptor sizes up two specimens of Protoceratops 2 10 FIG. 7.4. Protoceratops andrewsi skeleton 214...
Torosaurusa Bull Lizard
In among the steady stream of Triceratops skulls that John Bell Hatcher was sending east to Yale in 1891 were a pair of ringers two very large skulls that clearly were not the same as the others. The skulls were found less than 2 km apart in southeastern Wyoming. Marsh was on to them right away. By September 1891, he had described them as two species of Torosaurus. The name is an interesting one. It is often construed as the bull lizard El Toro in reference to the very large size of the skulls....
Wherethe Buffalo Roam
Othniel Charles Marsh 1831-1899 was Yale University's great nineteenth-century vertebrate paleontologist Fig. 3.1 . He enjoyed the benefits of a great family fortune, earned by his maternal uncle, George Peabody, a Baltimore textile merchant, who founded the Yale Peabody Museum and endowed a professorship for his nephew. No child prodigy, Marsh did not settle down at Yale to his serious scientific career until 1866, in his thirty-fifth year, although he began publishing five years earlier. He...
ARRHINOCERATOPSNo NOSE HORN
W. A. Parks 1868-1936 at the University of Toronto already had solid credentials in invertebrate paleontology, when, late in his career, he had the opportunity to study dinosaurs as well. Barnum Brown had already finished his collecting in Alberta. The Sternberg team had broken up, and C. H. Sternberg had returned to the United States. C. M. Sternberg in Ottawa had replaced Lawrence Lambe, who was now dead. Fortu- FIG. 4.12. Arrhinoceratops brachyops skull, Royal Ontario Museum. From Dod-son...
Covering The Body
Skin is the first body system that we notice in a living animal, but it is also the first part of a buried animal to disappear. Even though the skin in a large animal may form a tough shield several centimeters thick in places, it usually rots away eventually after death. For some Ice Age mammals, such as giant ground sloths, wooly mammoths, or bison, skin with its hair is, under special conditions, actually preserved, but these fossils are at most only a few tens of thousands of years old.3...
The Shortfrilled Horned Dinosaurs
WHEN horned dinosaur remains began to be discovered in what is now Montana, they were those of the short-frilled types we know today as centrosaurines. This group includes the exotic Styracosaurus, the enigmatic Pachyrhinosaurus, and the recently discovered Einiosaurus that shows an unexpected state of horn development. I confess to a special fondness for centrosaurines. My own work in Alberta and Montana has often involved centrosaurines. In fact, part of my slender claim to paleontological...
Triceratops Prorsus
Note This table is comprehensive and in historical order. Figure 3.8 shows only those species that have been figured. Note This table is comprehensive and in historical order. Figure 3.8 shows only those species that have been figured. in history to strive toward a modern understanding. Hatcher's detailed descriptions of all of the species of Triceratops are extremely valuable and generally far more informative than Marsh's original descriptions. Hatcher's writings form an excellent starting...
Lifestyles Of The Large And Famous
We have surveyed the animals themselves, their distribution, and the diverting history of their discovery. Few amateurs worry at night about whether Stegoceras is a suitable outgroup for the Ceratopsia or whether the lack of parietal fenestrae in Triceratops is a retained basal character or a character reversal. Children and adults alike really want to know what manner of beasts were the horned dinosaurs. We really yearn to know them as once-living, breathing, behaving, socializing, reproducing...