This fine skull was discovered by
George M. Sternberg, and purchased for the Museum by Mr. Charles
Lanier in 1909.]
TRICERATOPS.
This is the best known of the Horned Dinosaurs, as various skulls and
partial skeletons have been found from which it has been possible to
reconstruct the entire animal. There is a mounted skeleton in the
National Museum, another will shortly be mounted in the American
Museum, and there are skulls in several American and European
museums.
_Triceratops_ exceeded the largest rhinoceroses in bulk, equalling a
fairly large elephant, but with much shorter legs. The great horns
over the eyes projected forward or partly upward; in one of our skulls
they are 33-1/2 inches long. During life they were probably covered
with horn increasing the length by six inches or perhaps a foot. The
ball-like condyle for articulation of the neck lies far underneath, at
the base of the frill, almost in the middle of the skull.
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--Skull of _Monoclonius_, a horned dinosaur
from the Cretacic (Belly River formation) of Alberta.
One-fifteenth natural size. The horns over the eyes are
rudimentary, and the nasal horn large, reversing the proportions
in _Triceratops_.]
_Monoclonius, Ceratops, etc._ The _Triceratops_ and another equally
gigantic Horned Dinosaur, _Torosaurus_, were the last survivors of
their race. In somewhat older formations of Cretacic age are found
remains of smaller kinds, some of them ancestors of these latest
survivors, others collaterally related.
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