>As they grow older the neck shield actually thins and gains holesRetarded dinosaur
this is a toro=trike thread isn’t it…
wow it's just like humans who lose bone density with age
shut up horner
>>5147563Not even dinos were safe from the norwood reaper
>>5147563>NOOOO Torosaurus can't be Triceratops because there's holes in the frill! Literally all Ceratopsians do this with age. The only reason most people don't know this is because nobody studies fucking paleontology correctly. All anybody does is study Theropods badly. It's not even midwits. Total retards have taken over the field.>>5147615Lel
>>5147723Actually I'm going to issue a correction here. There are definitely Ceratopsians that lack parietal fenestrae, but Triceratops would be the only genus of CeratopSID in the entire fossil record that lacked them if it actually didn't have them (and Torosaurus DOES have them). AND there are other Ceratopsians also that have them as an adult but not as a juvenile, which aren't CeratopSIDS.
>>5147569it's ontogenic you asshole
I don't understand why dinosaurs had a million holes in their heads, what were they putting in them?
>>5147563Did the toro=trike people ever explain why Triceratops is the larger of the two despite supposedly being a juvenile form?
>>5148303It's literally not and I don't know why you keep saying this.
>>5148303no they always avoid the question
>>5148421It is though
>>5147563RETARDASUARUS REX
>>5147563>>5147738>>5148287Don't all cattle essentially have holes in their heads or otherwise make their horns out of a spongey material so they can keep making them longer without making them heavier? I don't see why the Ceratopsid would be any different.
>>5148287It is the single best way to make a structure larger while also not making it massively heavier. (Square cube law)>>5148465If you mean lesions, ceratopsians did have them, but no those holes are not. Lesions are injuries and the fenestrae in the ceratopsian frills were distinct. Their horns were made with vascularized bone cores that would've had keratin sheathes over them so they were not like bovid horns.Also, ceratopsian horns do not seem to have been sexually dimorphic like how bovids are.>>5148303I've honestly never really been able to see how the two in picrel are remotely similar. Combined with that we know torosaurus was extinct by the final third portion of Hell Creek, yet Triceratops still persisted. More than anything just seems like Horner trying to stir the pot for attention.Also, since triceratops was named first, taxonomically that name would always take precedent and still be used regardless.
>>5147563>>5147723>>5148465>>5148524This feels like an opportunity to ask this:Do we know enough about Ceratopsids like Triceratops, Torosaurus, etc.. To know if they were more like cattle or elephants, ecologically speaking? Or is the Cretaceous so foreign/different as to make such a question irrelevant?
>>5148524You're a retard. >>5148857Neither of those comparisons are really good, but the cattle one is particularly bad. Rhinos would be a much better comparison. All Ceratopsids were essentially low to mid-level browsers because physically they literally couldn't do anything else. Centrosaurines tend to be much smaller and herding, while Chasmosaurines were much larger and appear to have been solitary. What difference that made to their feeding ecology I don't believe is known. But we do know a lot about the environments where they lived. So the idea of Triceratops as bison grazing over prairies is complete fucking nonsense. There were no prairies and Triceratops is not a herding animal. The bite forces of Ceratopsids are extreme - literally the strongest of any herbivore that ever lived. And their teeth were extremely sharp and constantly being replaced alongside a giant alligator snapping turtle-like beak. So they would have had zero difficulty processing pretty much anything, even wood. It's unlikely they were terribly selective. And obviously I have to mention as always that the dinosaur renaissance is wrong and a disaster for paleontology. Ceratopsids were not eating meat and wild ass speculation is not science nor will it ever be. All Centrosaurines are confined to the north for some reason, while the Chasmosaurines are confined to the southern regions. I have no idea why this is and I'm not sure if anybody's ever studied it. But it's definitely noticeable. Assumedly, it's ecological in nature but I don't think anyone knows why. They lived alongside Ankylosaurs which were very low browsers mostly focusing on ferns apparently and Hadrosaurs, which are a much better analog for elephants as they were high browsers. Well high browsers in comparison to their local ecologies. When you're talking about Sauropods Hadrosaurs would be more like mid-level browsers.
are there torosaurus specimens that have a skull shape that resembles prorsus more than horridus though
>>5148868Triceratops specimens that are younger have sharper nasal horns, except for when they're babies obviously. They broaden with age. As for the frill, there are plenty of transitional skulls between Triceratops and Torosaurus, but the dinosaur renaissance cultists won't allow that so they play the creationist card where they just black and white say this is either a Triceratops or this is a Torosaurus when a lot of times it's not actually clear. The famous Triceratops at the Smithsonian is clearly a Torosauriform, but nobody questions it because they decided to restore the frill as a solid piece. They also say that any Triceratops that has fenestrae in the skull has Jurassic Park Battle Damage™.
>>5148883that didnt really answer my question
>>5148884I actually did answer the question. The major difference between T. horridus & T. prorsus is supposedly that the latter has a longer nose horn, though this actually seems to be kind of variable. Torosaurs have low, wide angular nose horns or just straight up wheel shaped bosses. Again, this is also variable.
>>5148524Truly amazing how nature does this
>>5148886i meant are there specimens currently called "torosaurus" that have a very 'prorsus' skull shape as opposed to a horridus looking one, and are there pictures? horridus seemingly also had a longer, narrower, and less aggressively hooked beak on the maxilla and a large beak on the lower mandible, while prorsus had a shorter and deeper skull. only my observations though. I just cant find many images of different torosaurus skulls personally, so the only one i can find that looks superficially similar to prorsus is this onehttps://files.catbox.moe/yaozxh.pngalthough the article i checked mentioned that the anterior half is largely a reconstruction and wouldve probably been longer. youre right theres a lot of individual variation between them but im sincerely curious if there are toro individuals that appear like an older form of prorsus
>>5148897You do realize most of those frills are reconstructed, right? >>5148904I have my own pet theory about that, but you're probably not going to like it. Younger Triceratops have sharper nasal horns, aside from the babies obviously. Sharper, cleaner beaks would also be expected for younger individuals. There really isn't that much difference in the frill or brow horns or anything like that between the two species. But the fact that you noticed that the beaks tend to be sharper also indicates that they may be indeed be younger animals. My suspicion is that Triceratops prorsus had a larger maximum size and therefore the animals that we're seeing that have more obtuse angled nose horns are actually older and that transitions into the Torosaurus type. There are Torosaurus skulls found from the same horizon as T. horridus, but again as I said there are also "T. horridus" with sharp nasal horns. You're literally looking at ontogeny. The only question is whether or not T. prorsus is neotonous or we're just looking at similar aged individuals at different sizes between the species. And I also have to reiterate there aren't that many transitional skulls between Triceratops and Torosaurus. So you're already asking for something rare, but then you're rarifying it even further by trying to confine it to species. And no Torosaurus should have a sharp horn because that's not a fully mature adult Triceratops trait. That elongate, sort of flattened mouth area that seems to lose definition is a typical Torosaurus trait due to advanced age. This is sort of a stream of consciousness post so apologies for retarded wording. I'm actually trying to do other things at the same time.
>>5148904Oh also the kind of flattened brow horns that you see in the T. horridus in that image - that's also an advanced stage trait in triceratops. Notice how the T. prorsus horns are very round in their diameter. Look at any Torosaurus skull, you'll see the same thing.
>>5148952I mean in the Torosaurus you will see the flattened horns if that wasn't clear.
>>5148950>You do realize most of those frills are reconstructed, right?That particular triceratops skull at the top is not
>>5148863>Calls one a retard>Refuses to elaborate
