triceratops dinosaur| Discover triceratops dinosaur

About Triceratops
Triceratops is today one of the most famous of all the dinosaurs. This large ceratopsia or horned dinosaur lived up until the very end of the dinosaur age around 65 million years ago.
Like other horned dinosaurs, Triceratops had a large ridge that ran around the back of its skull. The use of this ridge is still debated today. Many believe that it may have been used to make the animal look larger and more dangerous, or that perhaps it was used to anchor powerful jaw muscles to the skull.
Triceratops probably used its powerful beak to crush food, such as vegetation.

dinosaurs for kids : Triceratops

A herbivorous dinosaur of the genus Triceratops, of the Cretaceous Period, having a bony plate covering the neck, a large horn above either eye, and a smaller horn on the nose.

genus of large, plant-eating ornithischian dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous Epoch (99 – 65 million years ago). Triceratops had a very long skull (some more than 6 ft [1.8 m] long); a large bony frill about the neck; a relatively short, pointed horn on the nose; a beaklike mouth; and two pointed horns, more than 3.3 ft (1 m) long, above the eyes. Adults weighed 4 – 5 tons (3.6 – 4.5 metric tons) and grew up to 30 ft (9 m) long. The limbs were very stout, and the hind limbs were more massive than the forelimbs.

Triceratops dinosaur|Dinosaur King Triceratops

Individual Triceratops are estimated to have reached about 7.9 to 9.0 m (26.0–29.5 ft) in length, 2.9 to 3.0 m (9.5–9.8 ft) in height, and 6.1–12.0 tonnes (13,000-26,000 lb) in weight. The most distinctive feature is their large skull, among the largest of all land animals. It could grow to be over 2 m (7 ft) in length, and could reach almost a third of the length of the entire animal.It bore a single horn on the snout, above the nostrils, and a pair of horns approximately 1 m (3 ft) long, with one above each eye. To the rear of the skull was a relatively short, bony frill. Most other frilled dinosaurs had large fenestrae in their frills, while the frills of

Classification of dinosaurs

Triceratops

Triceratops is the best known genus of the Ceratopsidae, a family of large North American horned dinosaurs. The exact location of Triceratops among the ceratopsians has been debated over the years. Confusion stemmed mainly from the combination of short, solid frills (similar to that of Centrosaurinae), and the long brow horns (more akin to Ceratopsinae, also known as Chasmosaurinae). In the first overview of horned dinosaurs, R. S. Lull hypothesized two lineages, one of Monoclonius and Centrosaurus leading to Triceratops, the other with Ceratops and Torosaurus, making Triceratops a centrosaurine as the group is understood today. Later revisions supported this view, formally describing the first, short-frilled group as Centrosaurinae (including Triceratops), and the second, long-frilled group as Chasmosaurinae.

walking with the dinosaurs|Discoveries and species

The first named specimen now attributed to Triceratops is a pair of brow horns attached to a skull roof, found near Denver, Colorado in the spring of 1887 This specimen was sent to Othniel Charles Marsh, who believed that the formation from which it came dated from the Pliocene, and that the bones belonged to a particularly large and unusual bison, which he named Bison alticornis. He realized that there were horned dinosaurs by the next year, which saw his publication of the genus Ceratops from fragmentary remains,but he still believed B. alticornis to be a Pliocene mammal. It took a third and much more complete skull to change his mind. The specimen, collected in 1888 by John Bell Hatcher from the Lance Formation of Wyoming, was initially described as another species of Ceratops.After reflection, however, Marsh changed his mind and gave it the generic name Triceratops, accepting his Bison alticornis as another species of Ceratops(it would later be added to Triceratops). The sturdy nature of the animal's skull has ensured that many examples have been preserved as fossils, allowing variations between species and individuals to be studied. Triceratops remains have subsequently been found in the American states of Montana and South Dakota (in addition to Colorado and Wyoming), and in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Number of species|my triceratops

Within the first decades after Triceratops was described, various skulls were collected, which varied to a lesser or greater degree from the original Triceratops, named T. horridus by Marsh (from the Latin horridus; "rough, rugose", suggesting the roughened texture of those bones belonging to the type specimen, later identified as an aged individual). This variation is unsurprising, given that Triceratops skulls are large three-dimensional objects, coming from individuals of different ages and both sexes, and which were subjected to different amounts and directions of pressure during fossilization. Discoverers would name these as separate species (listed below), and came up with several phylogenetic schemes for how they were related to each other.

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Tyrannosaurus rex may have been the largest carnivore ever to walk the earth, but researchers have found it seldom picked on prey its own size. Photo / Supplied

It was the biggest-ever carnivore to stalk the land and with banana-sized teeth and a set of jawbones that could swallow a kitchen table, Tyrannosaurus rex truly earned its name as king of the dinosaurs. But now scientists may have uncovered T-rex's dirty secret - it was a prolific baby killer.
A study into the predatory habits and diet of the biggest and most ferocious of the dinosaurs has concluded that T-rex and the other members of its carnivorous theropod family preferred to dine on juvenile prey, preferably small enough to eat whole.

that T-rex and the other massive meat-eating dinosaurs that hunted on two legs preferred to pick on animals far smaller than themselves.