Triceratops was a SUV sized herbivore from the cretaceous, known for its remarkable skull. Sporting horns and a frill, their big heads would have provided them with a defensive advantage over therapod dinosaurs and other cretaceous predators. While from the side a triceratops looks quite imposing, looking from head on you may notice the relatively thin shape of the head. Ceratopsians had a unique bone called the rostrum, a beak on the end of the top jaw, that gave them a distinct look in comparison to other herbivorous ornithischians. That combined with the powerful interlocking dental batteries at the back of the mouth have led scientists to believe they would have eaten tough plant matter.Ceratopsians are believed to have evolved from a bipedal ancestor, explaining the proportionately longer back legs.Heavy armature used by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. I’ve been told that lots of extra support means that they’re more likely to be real fossils rather than casts, as real fossils are as heavy as the rock they were fossilized in.These panels show that the front legs were slightly more sprawled, helping point to the bipedal ancestor theory.Styracosaurus(Left)! Quite a frill. Every reconstruction I’ve seen shows the ports in the frill as having a layer of tissue stretched over them.Bigger and scarier usually means they eat more food, many animals have flashy or impressive body parts that show that the creature is eating more than enough to keep living, thus attracting mates.
