JORDAN, Mont., July 1 (UPI) -- For fifteen years, paleontologists from Montana State University have returned annually to the Hell Creek Formation in the northwestern portion of the state looking for additional Triceratops specimens.
JORDAN, Mont., July 1 (UPI) -- For fifteen years, paleontologists from Montana State University have returned annually to the Hell Creek Formation in the northwestern portion of the state looking for additional Triceratops specimens. Slowly but steadily, the researchers amassed enough fossils to reveal an interesting reality -- the now famous "three-horned face" of the stout rhino-like dinosaur had not always been as we know it today.
In a new study -- published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- scientists at Montana State have demonstrated how the facial structure of Triceratops evolved over the course of a million or so years.
What study author John Scannella and his colleagues found was that "over one to two million years at the end of the Cretaceous Period, Triceratops went from having a small nasal horn and long beak to having a long nasal horn and shorter beak."
Scientists had previously realized that the facial structure of the well-armored Triceratops -- which grew up to thirty feet in length and weighed upwards of 16,000 pounds -- changed as the dino matured. But this new study, analyzing the skulls of some 50 Triceratops, reveals how the species' face evolved over many, many lifetimes.
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