Bearing a large bony frill, three horns on the skull, and a large, four-legged body, exhibiting convergent evolution with bovines and rhinoceroses, Triceratops is one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs and the best-known ceratopsian.
It was also one of the largest, up to 8–9 metres (26–30 ft) long and 5–9 metric tons (5.5–9.9 short tons) in body mass. It shared the landscape with and was most likely preyed upon by Tyrannosaurus, though it is less certain that two adults would battle in the fanciful manner often depicted in museum displays and popular media.
The functions of the frills and three distinctive facial horns on its head have inspired countless debates. Traditionally, these have been viewed as defensive weapons against predators. More recent interpretations find it probable that these features were primarily used in species identification, courtship, and dominance display, much like the antlers and horns of modern ungulates.
Again, I'm just floored (so is the person in the photo!) by this kind of thing. To think such gigantic reptiles once populated this planet, for realsies. I mean if that doesn't sound like something out of the most way out kind of science fiction. And yet we had no idea such creatures existed until fossils began turning up around the 1820s.
Can you imagine what kind of plays Shakespeare would have written about dinosaurs if he'd known about them? But even suggesting that thunder lizards once existed on earth would probably have landed you in the stocks back then.
The fossils were always turning up, paleontology just didn't really take off until then.
I'm sure that's true - I wonder how early the earliest fossil of a dinosaur was actually unearthed, and if people even had an inkling what it meant.
People had good guesses millennia ago, but they also sometimes thought they were dragons
To me the fact that they belong to dinosaurs is almost as fantastic and awesome as if they DID belong to dragons. I've always found dinosaurs to be kind of hard to accept as a reality, especially when you stand next to those gigantic bones or visit a display of animatronic ones and realize, "these things once were actually real and alive."
How is it harder to accept the closer you are to evidence?
But yeah, dinosaurs were basically dragons, just with worse luck.
Here be dragons.