Jurassic World Movies

Triceratops is really an immature Torosaurus?

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Svanya

AdminAllosaurusNov-15-2013 8:35 PM
What do you guys think of this? I never even heard of this until now, but the news is over 3 years old. O_o [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMpVZ_p_7Bc]Triceratops is really an immature Torosaurus- Video[/url] Taken from [url=http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2010/08/relax-triceratops-really-did-exist/]The Smithsonian[/url]: [i]A study by John Scanella and Jack Horner in which the paleontologists hypothesized that the dinosaur known as Torosaurus was really the adult stage of the more familiar Triceratops. “Triceratops Never Existed†said the headline from Gizmodo (as did similar ones from CBS News, the National Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Newsoxy), while another one went as far as to ask “Triceratops a Hoax?†In comment sections and on Twitter people have been, well, all a-twitter about the idea that one of their favorite dinosaurs might be taken away—some folks likened the situation to the “demotion†of Pluto via t-shirt designs and others set up Facebook campaigns to “Save the Triceratops.†All of this angst is unnecessary. As Scanella and Horner pointed out in their paper, and as multiple summaries of the study have stated, Triceratops (described in 1889) was named before Torosaurus (described in 1891). According to the rules by which scientists name organisms, this gives Triceratops priority, so the name “Triceratops†isn’t going anywhere. (TIME got it right, Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs tried to set people straight, and Geekosystem deserves some credit for amending their original post.) What is significant about the new study is that it may change our perception of what an adult Triceratops looked like, but the young-adult dinosaur we have traditionally called Triceratops is just as real as tadpoles, caterpillars, or teenage humans—they are all growth stages within a species. Given the number of Triceratops remains that have been recovered from western North America, there has never been any doubt that it was a real animal, though I am sure that many people are much happier calling it Triceratops rather than Torosaurus.
10 Replies

Lord Vader

MemberTyrannosaurus RexNov-15-2013 10:27 PM
Interesting. Not sure what to say about this. Horner is involved, eh? Think this could be anything like the Rex/scavenger thing? Interesting though.

Jack of all trades. Master of none

Rex Fan 684

MemberCompsognathusNov-15-2013 10:49 PM
Heard about this long ago and dismissed it. There seems to be enough differences that go farther than age to distinguish Triceratops and Torosaurus. Size, frill structure, etc. Trike [img]http://geology.rockbandit.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/triceratops.jpg[/img] Toro [img]http://planetdi.startlogic.com/dinosaur_list/images/torosaurus_skeleton_web.jpg[/img]
"Men like me don't start the wars. We just die in them. We've always died in them, and we always will. We don't expect any praise for it, no parades. No one knows our names." ―Alpha-98

Jhawkins1987

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 2:25 AM
I have watched the video on youtube at the TED comfrence where horner talks about cranium ontogony . (The morphality of skulls). Some of his theories make sense and he has a point, but like some one stated on here before there is a lot of differences to keep them seperate species. Look at cattle. To us its a cow whether its brown white black what ever, but their skulls are different , horns are different, you even get calfs from the same parents with different horns. If you look at nature today 90% of baby animals look like Their parents . I believe the species triceratops and torosaurus are the same family like black bear and grizzly bear for example but seperate animals. With regarding dracorex stigimoloc and pachy this theory i thought was interesting about being a juvenile , sub adult and adult. The skull of the baby was not thinck an dence at a cross section which u find in juvenile bone it has air sacks . And the pachy was solid bone No air sacks. Which in this case supported his theory, but i have seen a video of robbert Bakker and he has a skull of a draco rex the same size as a Pachy which completely disses that theory in my opinion

DinoSteve93

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 4:15 AM
Well, this article state that Torosaurus is an adult Triceratops, not that Triceratops is an young Torosaurus. :) Now, apart from joking, I agree with what said before, mostly with jhawkins. They're too different to be the same animal in various growth stages. I take it like said by jhawkins, comparing them to Black bear and Grizzley. I rwally take it like that. Anyway, thanks for the article Svanya.

Proud founder of the site Theropods Wiki! www.theropods.wikia.com

Deltadromeus

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 8:45 AM
Seen it before, dismissed it. Trike is (in my book) 30 feet while toro is only 25 feet, and toro has a bigger skull. Trike also has a solid frill, and I'm pretty sure was found in a later date than Toro (I may be wrong). Basically, there is too much difference between them.

Hi

shambs

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 3:25 PM
I know that these creatures are not closely related but those huge holes in the head of Torosaurus are similar to the holes in the skull of Chasmosaurus. [img]http://i1159.photobucket.com/albums/p636/diacono3/chasmosaurus-skeleton.jpg[/img]

DinoSteve93

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 3:31 PM
Yeah, they're similar indeed.

Proud founder of the site Theropods Wiki! www.theropods.wikia.com

Deltadromeus

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 4:26 PM
Similar, but also like Pentaceratops and Titanoceratops, they all have similar skulls.

Hi

shambs

MemberCompsognathusNov-16-2013 4:53 PM
True, and indeed these two seem more like Torosaurus, thanks for the head up.

Allosauridae

MemberCompsognathusNov-21-2013 7:27 AM

Honestly, I think Horner has a screw loose...  (Sorry, dislike him, don't mean to offend any of his fans, if there are any here.)

Wiki sums it up nicely with a rebuttle from the Nicholas Longrich & Daniel Field study.  

Nicholas Longrich and Daniel Field's study, however, disagreed with Scaneller and Horner's findings. After analyzing 35 specimens, Longrich and Field found that there were Triceratops specimens that were too old to be considered juveniles and Torosaurus specimens that were too young to be adults. Their study also found that if Torosaurus andTriceratops were indeed one species, then there should be skulls transitioning from one to another, but they suggest that Scanella's Triceratops specimen with a hole on its frill was merely diseased and not a link between Triceratops and Torosaurus.

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