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Aug. 6th, 2010 12:59 pmTriceratops never really existed?
The article posits that the triceratops was actually just a juvenile version of the torosaurus.
The researchers looked at 9 triceratops skulls and nine torosaurus skulls, which are far rarer.
They discovered that the oldest triceratops skulls showed that thinning in the neck-frill bone where the holes of the torosaurus would eventually appear.
Now I'll grant you that paleontology and evolutionary science are not my strong points, but is it also conceivable that the oldest triceratops had thinner bones because that's what tends to happens as a lot of animals get older? Their bodies break down, bones get thinner and weaker.
Not to mention, from the statistics and estimates that I can find easily by looking at a few websites, it looks like the torosaurus was smaller and lighter than the triceratops, too. Trike weighed in at about 6-12 tonnes, and toro weighed about 4-6 tonnes. Torosaurus was around 25 feet in length, compared to the triceratops's 26-29.
So apparently, according to the scientists doing the speculation, the dino in question had horns that changed in appearance as well as growth direction as it aged, has a neck frill that decreased in mass and also had holes appear in it, and also shrank? If anything, it would appear that the torosaurus may be a juvenile version of the triceratops, not the other way 'round.
Now those are just estimates, of course, and as I said, I'm not a paleontologist and I'm only getting my data here from research done by other people. But to me, it looks like the assumption that those scientists are making has a hell of a lot of holes in it, and I'm not just talking about the ones in the neck frill!
The article posits that the triceratops was actually just a juvenile version of the torosaurus.
The researchers looked at 9 triceratops skulls and nine torosaurus skulls, which are far rarer.
They discovered that the oldest triceratops skulls showed that thinning in the neck-frill bone where the holes of the torosaurus would eventually appear.
Now I'll grant you that paleontology and evolutionary science are not my strong points, but is it also conceivable that the oldest triceratops had thinner bones because that's what tends to happens as a lot of animals get older? Their bodies break down, bones get thinner and weaker.
Not to mention, from the statistics and estimates that I can find easily by looking at a few websites, it looks like the torosaurus was smaller and lighter than the triceratops, too. Trike weighed in at about 6-12 tonnes, and toro weighed about 4-6 tonnes. Torosaurus was around 25 feet in length, compared to the triceratops's 26-29.
So apparently, according to the scientists doing the speculation, the dino in question had horns that changed in appearance as well as growth direction as it aged, has a neck frill that decreased in mass and also had holes appear in it, and also shrank? If anything, it would appear that the torosaurus may be a juvenile version of the triceratops, not the other way 'round.
Now those are just estimates, of course, and as I said, I'm not a paleontologist and I'm only getting my data here from research done by other people. But to me, it looks like the assumption that those scientists are making has a hell of a lot of holes in it, and I'm not just talking about the ones in the neck frill!