Triceratops prorsus
Tony Three-Horn's back in the flesh!
What dinosaur has three horns on its head, a great neck frill, a parrot-like beak and the proportions of an African elephant? Oh how couldn’t anyone guess it’s Triceratops? One of the most famous dinosaurs, this household name once again doesn’t need an introduction. At 66 million years old, the younger species, Triceratops prorsus here, was one of the last dinosaurs (excluding birds) before the asteroid struck, and so its legendary battles between another famous endling, Tyrannosaurus rex, actually happened. As one of my favourite dinosaurs, I’ve restored this long-dead dinosaur from its fossils rigorously, and as always, along with that, some in-depth speculation.
The general appearance of this burly, ornate reconstruction takes inspiration from not only modern reconstructions, but also the famed vintage, lizard-like ones I so love that you might’ve seen before, but plausibly executed as what we now know the animal as. I was especially inspired by reconstructions of the now obscure and disputed "genus" Agathaumas, reconstructed as a majestically draconian form of ceratopsian by the great artist Charles R. Knight, and the 1925 silent film, The Lost World. I also decided to give the face a bit of a clownish "harlequin" chameleon vibe as I describe it. One of the Triceratops in Disney’s Fantasia also strikes that vibe so enough to be an inspiration.
Agathaumas just living the life, though he's now a dubious genus. By Charles R. Knight.
The facial integument of Triceratops remains a mystery. It is traditionally reconstructed with a scaly face, but some, like Horner and Marshall in a 2002 paper (the former isn’t the best but this isn’t where he’s infamous), suggest the face was actually covered in keratinous sheath, because of the rugose texture of the skull that would’ve correlated to that. Mark Witton pulls this off beautifully with his own reconstruction of Triceratops, one of my favourites. That being said, in December 2018, a blogpost by Alan McDonald at the Canadian Museum of Nature revealed on an examined frill, what appears to possibly be scale impressions. Nevertheless, I have reconstructed it with sheath, because of the skull’s strong epidermal correlates that hint to such. The CMN’s scales are still also yet to be properly described, and for now I think they either might’ve been at the back of the frill, were just cracked sheath all along, or may have even just been inorganic anomalies. The horns are covered in great whirling sheath too, thanks to the already long bone of the horns actually being cores, and is very much like how modern animals like bighorn sheep grow their horns. Mark Witton once again illustrates this beautifully in his sheathy reconstruction.
The growth of Triceratops's horns, demonstrated by this chart from Mark Witton. The sheath of the horns grow in a whirling direction.
A Triceratops specimen named Lane gives us even more insight into this dinosaur’s integument. It preserves a lot of skin impressions of the body, consisting of a thick hide, mainly patterned by large scales, and even larger, nipple-shaped bosses somewhat akin to osteoderms, fit for a dinosaurian tank, and not unlike the leathery skin of a rhinoceros. Here, inspired by Prehistoric Kingdom’s, I reconstructed it similarly creasy and leathery, though it’s probably not as visible as I tried drawing it as. I also speculatively reconstructed the forelimbs rather rough, like those of a tortoise, great against "ankle"-biters.
A preserved skin impression from Lane the Triceratops. These scales are something special!
The nares of Triceratops and other ceratopsians are strangely, ridiculously huge, forming a giant bony window from each anterior of the skull, and containing bony hollows and projections within. It is probable that they supported great cartilaginous structures in life, but even then their purpose remains a mystery to palaeontologists around the world. Could Triceratops’s big nose have dissipated heat, amplified calls, housed a great sense of smell, or was even inflatable and flamboyant for display? I’ve illustrated it as a bit of both.
This Triceratops also has some speculative quills on its tail, that have hardened into great spines as extra defence like a porcupine’s (though once again they might’ve failed illustration here). An extraordinarily-preserved fossil of the early ceratopsian genus Psittacosaurus shows a line of long, feather-like quills along its tail, so it’s likely that other smaller, primitive members of the group had quills like this, and even possible that their derived ceratopsid legacies had some too. I do feel a little unconfident on this though, since ceratopsids are derived compared to the likes of Psittacosaurus, and I’m not sure why they would keep them millions of years later. I was also originally going to place the quills scattered conveniently across the whole top or hind-quarter of the Triceratops, until I was told that Lane’s skin impressions may be more dorsal than I was thinking. Still though, it’s not impossible from what we currently know, and is fun to think about, plus I had a lot of creativity in mind with these quills.
The world's best preserved Psittacosaurus, SMF R 4970. You've got a lot here for a fossil, integument, skin colour, a cloaca of all things, yet even more, including these unexpected quills. The Yixian Formation isn't a Lagerstätte for nothing.
I also had in mind a unique personality for this restoration. I like to imagine Triceratops was a bit of a greedy, terrifying, "horrible" beast in nature, though I’m absolutely not to say it was a bloodthirsty Hollywood monstersaur that always attacked everything it saw (looking at you, Jurassic Park). I barely draw animals with their mouths open these days, but here with Triceratops I did so, inspired by photos of creepy, smily elephants in musth. Again related to this, ceratopsians are widely thought to be herbivores for obvious reasons, feeding on cycads and palm fronds, but they have also been theorised by some to have been part-time opportunistic omnivores, similar to modern pigs, and I certainly think so, even making a short about it two years ago. Their skulls bear a strange approach to herbivory, with their hooked, parrot-like beaks, and teeth made to shear and slice matter, rather than grind them like other herbivores would. If Triceratops and its kin were herbivores themselves, why did they evolve these weirdly "converging" adaptations, that actually would do fine chowing down meat? Snapping bones, shearing flesh, opening carcasses, it’s a list. And even if Triceratops was a "pure" herbivore, virtually all herbivores today, from cattle to hippopotamuses and even one horrifying case of a "homovorous" captive elephant (as they get), will sometimes eat animals to supplement their diet. Mark Witton yet once again has a great blogpost about this topic, so check it out if you’re interested. I don’t find it hard to imagine a Triceratops winning the opportunity to snatch a young tyrannosaur in its jaws for snack at times, and I do want to draw this one day. The sheathy parts of the mouth, including the beak, I also gave some edge.
A huge Triceratops skull, seemingly T. prorsus, at my local ThinkTank (Birmingham Science Museum), and of course I've seen it myself in person a couple of times. You can see the strangely unique dietary adaptations that would do fine with meat, and the aforementioned rugosities all over the skull. Photo by Cheung Chung Tat.
This Triceratops looks neatly dressed just in time for Halloween. Are you? Also, did you know that when Triceratops was first discovered, it was thought to be a giant bison? I do admit this may be one of my stretchier reconstructions, but at least it doesn’t monstrously have a distorted head, the legs of a dog, the skin of a hairless guinea pig, and the ungodly trumpeting of an elephant.
