Triceratops are the dinosaurs known – and named – for their three prominent horns.
But newly published research from Montana State University shows that their famous form took more than 2 million years to develop, and it was not until the end of the final era of the dinosaurs that they truly looked the way we envision them today.
The evolutionary process of triceratops’ skull and horns slowly transformed the dinosaurs from having “a small nasal horn and long beak to having a long nasal horn and shorter beak” during the end of the Cretaceous Period, researchers at the university’s Museum of the Rockies found.
They based their findings on more than 15 years of research and 50 recently excavated specimens in the badlands of eastern Montana, where triceratops were the predominant dinosaur.
The findings about change over time were accomplished by recording stratigraphic (the study of the layers of rocks) in tandem with studying evolving details of the triceratops skull.
The findings are published in the June 30 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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