Fossil Field Guide Part 4

Fossil Field Guide

Part 4

Since she was very young, Indy Anna Bones dreamed of meeting a dinosaur. She had adventured far and wide through prehistory, and only two more iconic thunder lizards remained to visit.

No one could ever mistake Triceratops for any other dinosaur with three long horns on the face, parrot-like beak, and bony frill covering the neck.

This dinosaur was first described in 1889, and 47 specimens have been recovered ranging in age from hatchling to adult, so the life cycle of the Triceratops is well-documented.

Additionally, some scientists believe Triceratops represent juvenile form, and that another dinosaur called Torosaurus is actually an adult Triceratops.

While some chewed bones suggest these horns were used for battling Tyrannosaurus, like in the movies, in all likelihood, the horns served the same courtship purposes as the antlers of a deer.

Triceratops comes from a long line of animals called ‘ceratopsians,’ quadrupedal herbivorous with broad frills over the neck, and while many had horns around their head, very few had horns that could be used offensively.

Ceratopsians were very successful in their environments with the comparatively tiny Protoceratops as one of most common fossils discovered in Mongolia, and Triceratops by far the most common large dinosaur discovered in the United States.

While often depicted as a herd animal, most likely lived only in small family groups.

Triceratops lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, and was lost in the mass extinction beside the name on Indy Anna’s list.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, the infamous, towering predator, is the final form of a line of huge, carnivorous dinosaurs that captured the imagination of the world, and became the single most iconic dinosaur of all.

All this fame is certainly owed to a head the size of a small person and a mouth full of teeth that looked like butchers knives.

There has been much debate whether Tyrannosaurus killed its prey or scavenged from carrion it found, but in truth, Tyrannosaurus probably didn’t pass up much good meat.

Tyrannosaurs come from the theropod family of dinosaurs, which are characterized by three-toed limbs hollow bones, and a protective layer of feathers in their youth.

Ironically, while the two main dinosaur groups are named for their “bird-hipped” and “lizard-hipped” body-types, modern birds are the direct descendants of these theropod dinosaurs that were lizard-hipped “Sauricians.”

We see dinosaurs every time we walk outside.

They never went away, they changed.

Many birds to day are no less the vicious predator than Deinonychus or T. Rex.

Indy Anna Bones, glad to be home after hundreds of millions of years, sat down in the park to enjoy the company of her day-to-day dinosaurs.

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