Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here in movie Jurassic Park, Sam Neil's
Speaker 1: character Alan Grant said of the triceratops, this one was
Speaker 1: always my favorite when I was a kid. Now I
Speaker 1: see her. She's the most beautiful thing I ever saw.
Speaker 1: Even if you're dinosaur phase came and went a few
Speaker 1: decades ago, you'll probably recognize triceratops. The frilled, three horned
Speaker 1: herbivore died out sixty five and a half million years ago,
Speaker 1: but you can find its likeness pretty much anywhere, from
Speaker 1: museums to toy stores to a National League Baseball park.
Speaker 1: Our fossil record has been kind to this beast. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of tri saratop skeletons have turned up in the American West,
Speaker 1: and they're actually hard to avoid, the fossil rich Hell
Speaker 1: Creek Formation of Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas. In seven
Speaker 1: at Neil, Charles Marsh, the U. S. Geological Survey's official
Speaker 1: vertebrate paleon ptologist, received a fossilized animal brow with two
Speaker 1: large horns that a colleague had found near Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1: Unaware of the specimen's age, Marsh figured it came from
Speaker 1: a prehistoric bison, which he named Bison alta cornice. Later
Speaker 1: discoveries proved the creature was actually a dinosaur, far larger
Speaker 1: than any cow relative. One incomplete skull bearing three horns
Speaker 1: and a partial beak found its way to Marsh after
Speaker 1: some Wyoming cowboys have lastowed the thing, snapping off a
Speaker 1: horn in the process. Marsh dubbed the animal Triceratops, meaning
Speaker 1: three horned face a nine scientific paper. Note that this
Speaker 1: is a genus name. Under the system we used to
Speaker 1: classify living things, a genus is one magnitude greater than
Speaker 1: a species, so within the same genus you can have
Speaker 1: multiple closely related species. Today to Triceratops, species both named
Speaker 1: by Marsh are considered valid Triceratops hortus and Triceratops porer sous.
Speaker 1: Close tension is required to tell these animals apart. All
Speaker 1: Trisratops had three horned skulls, with two massive horns above
Speaker 1: the eye sockets and a smaller one over the dose. However,
Speaker 1: adult Triceratops porses had slightly longer nasal horns than their
Speaker 1: cousins did. Another difference, the beaks of Triceratops poruses looked
Speaker 1: proportionately shorter. We know both species changed as they aged,
Speaker 1: and not just in terms of overall body size. A
Speaker 1: bony frill protruded from the backside of every Triceratops skull,
Speaker 1: but when these animals matured, their frills grew longer, often
Speaker 1: compared to medieval shields. These frills may have served a
Speaker 1: defensive purpose, or maybe they evolved as communication tools. The
Speaker 1: structures could have been vibrantly colored, advertising the health and
Speaker 1: stanima of individual dinos. Trisaatups Hatchlings had stubby, little brow
Speaker 1: horns above their eyes. Those horns lengthened and curved backward
Speaker 1: during adolescence, but over time a dramatic reversal took place.
Speaker 1: The horns straightened out and then bent forward. In older specimens,
Speaker 1: maturity came with growth spurts. The smallest known Triceratops skull
Speaker 1: from a very young animal is just eleven point eight
Speaker 1: inches or thirty centimeters long. Other recovered skulls measuring well
Speaker 1: over six and a half feet or two meters in
Speaker 1: length clearly belonged to adults weighing and estimated six and
Speaker 1: a half thirteen tons. The biggest triceratops were twenty nine
Speaker 1: and a half feet or nine meters long. From nosed tail,
Speaker 1: the tips of their shoulders would have stood almost ten
Speaker 1: ft or three meters off the ground. Unlike alligators and
Speaker 1: monitor lizards, triceratops held their arms and legs in a
Speaker 1: more or less vertical position. Yet, as Donald are Prothero
Speaker 1: notes in his twenty nineteen book The Story of Life
Speaker 1: in twenty five Fossils, Tales of intrepid fossil hunters, and
Speaker 1: the Wonders of Evolution, most triceratops fingers didn't point dead ahead. Instead,
Speaker 1: these hand digits were angled away from the body. Think
Speaker 1: up jazz hands. On top of the u s states
Speaker 1: we've mentioned, Triceratops fossils also occur in west central Canada.
Speaker 1: The genus first appeared around sixty eight million years ago,
Speaker 1: near the tail end of the geologic period called the Cretaceous.
Speaker 1: Triceratops were still at large when a mass extinction closed
Speaker 1: out the Cretaceous sixty five and a half million years ago. Thus,
Speaker 1: Triceratops has the distinction of being one of the last
Speaker 1: non avian dinosaurs to ever evolve. It was also a
Speaker 1: late arriving Saratopsian distributed across Eurasia in North America. The
Speaker 1: Saratopsians were a group of plant eating dinosaurs that predominantly
Speaker 1: lived in the Cretaceous, known for their beaks and long,
Speaker 1: flaring cheekbones. They ranged from bipedal dog sized animals too
Speaker 1: well giant quadrupeds like Triceratops. Many had horns and or
Speaker 1: frills arranged in a spectacular array of different combinations. Triceratops
Speaker 1: belonged to the Chasmosaurinae, a major subgroup of these dinos,
Speaker 1: characterized mainly by their elongated snouts, among other features. Large
Speaker 1: eyebrow horns were another common trait among the Chasmasaurians. Triceratops
Speaker 1: included Lesions and fractures are frequently seen on trisaratops frill
Speaker 1: and cheek bones. These could indicate that the animals used
Speaker 1: their brow horns in one on one combat with each other.
Speaker 1: The jury is still out on whether or not Trisaretops
Speaker 1: moved in herds, but we have a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: of what the creatures ate. Their teeth were arranged in
Speaker 1: so called dental batteries. Every individual tooth was stacked in
Speaker 1: a vertical column of three to five teeth, and these
Speaker 1: formed rows, with thirty six to forty tooth loaded columns
Speaker 1: occurring side by side. Altogether, a single triceratops could have
Speaker 1: eight hundred teeth at its disposal. With its narrow beak,
Speaker 1: powerful jaws, and replaceable self sharpening teeth, Triceratops probably fed
Speaker 1: on tough, fibrous plants. But what eight the triceratops. Well,
Speaker 1: we know tyrannosaurs. Rex lived in the same time and place,
Speaker 1: and it occasionally made a meal of the big herbivore.
Speaker 1: Bite marks matching t Rex's distinctive teeth have been found
Speaker 1: on several triceratops skeletons, with the frills and faces getting
Speaker 1: more than their fair share of the injuries appointing to
Speaker 1: these scars. Some have argued that t Rex would methodically
Speaker 1: rip the heads off of dead triceratops by grabbing ahold
Speaker 1: of the frills and tugging, the predators could decapitate the bodies,
Speaker 1: exposing choice neck muscles below. Nothing beats a hard earned meal.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Playing for More in this and lots of other
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