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A babyTriceratopsskull indicate the impressive horns of the animate being were for more than just attracting a mate .
The three - hornedTriceratopsdinosaur weighed up to 10 tons and had one of the largest skull of any land animal on the planet .
This cast of the Triceratops skull (with the beak filled in, since those bones were not found) shows a shortened face and big eyes characteristic of many animals in youth. The sprouting horns grow to three feet in the adult, while the scalloped edges of the frill, which can grow to seven feet across, become more wavy and develop scales.
Now the smallest skull of the species suggest what the horns were for .
An grownup Triceratops skull , six foot long , dwarf the base - long skull of a year - erstwhile Triceratops ( bottom center ) . The pair are on display in the Marion Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library in the Valley Life Sciences Building . Photos by Mark Goodwin , UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology
" The babyTriceratopsconfirmed our argument that the motor horn and folderal of the skull likely had another function other than intimate display or competition with rival , which people have often argued , and leave us to propose that they were just as significant for species acknowledgement and visual communicating in these animals , " said paleontologist Mark Goodwin at the University of California at Berkeley .
The youthful one was about one class old and 3 feet long . As with many young animals , it had a short nose compared to the adults .
The skull is now on display at the university ’s Valley Life Sciences Building . Goodwin describes it in the March matter of theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontologyand the university issue a financial statement on it today .
Triceratops horriduswas a North American dinosaur , though relatives roamedChinaand Mongolia during theCretaceous period , 144 million to 65 million years ago . An adultTriceratopscould be nearly 10 feet marvelous and 26 feet long , with a bony frill around the head teacher up to 7 foot across . Two 3 - foot horns typically curved forward from the hilltop . A third horn ascend from the nozzle above a minute , horny beak .
The baby ’s skull , along with a few vertebra , tooth and bony tendons , were discovered by amateur fossil huntsman Harley Garbani in 1997 in Montana ’s Hell Creek Formation .
The airfoil of the skull prove grooves were blood vessels used to be , perhaps to nutrify a fingernail - hard cover of keratin alike to the thicker layer that covers an grownup skull . Such horny covering are often brightly colored in birds , which are thought to be descendents of dinosaurs . That suggestsTriceratopsmay have been colorful , too .
The two forehead horns are straight and about an inch long in the baby .
The psyche case had not yet commingle in the immature wildcat .
" The child skull shows us how the finger cymbals that make up the skull really develop and fit together , because we see the surgical seam and sutural Earth’s surface , which were completely obliterated in the adults , " Goodwin said .
