Clash of the titans: Artist’s reconstruction of Triceratops in horn-to-horn combat. A new study provides evidence that some Triceratops suffered injuries as a result of these fights.
Credit: Lukas Panzarin, courtesy of Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology
SYDNEY: A new study of battle wounds inflicted upon the dinosaur Triceratops is the best evidence yet that their frills and horns were used for violence as well as display.
"Palaeontologists have debated the function of the bizarre skulls of horned dinosaurs for years now," said lead author Andrew Farke from the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Palaeontology in Claremont, California.
"Some speculated that the horns were for showing off to other dinosaurs, and others thought that they horns had to have been used in combat against other horned dinosaurs."
Style of combat
As they report today in the journal PLoS One, Farke and his co-workers looked at over 400 fossil skulls of Triceratops and a related species Centrosaurus in museum collections throughout North America.
While both dinosaurs have three horns, Triceratops have two large brow horns and a smaller nasal horn. Centrosaurus has the opposite arrangement, with a large nasal horn and smaller brow horns.
In modern horned animals, the type of horn is associated with combat style, so the researchers predicted the same might have been true for these dinosaurs.
If Triceratops and Centosaurus had different types and number of battle scars, they would hint at the type of combat each were involved in. However, the experts postulated, if the horns and frills were solely for display, the rate of injury should be the same between the species.
Locking horns
The study found that part of the bone that forms their frill, called the squamosal bone, was injured up to ten times more frequently in Triceratops remains than in those of Centrosaurus, suggesting that, in Triceratops at least, the features were used for head-to-head combat.
Similar injuries are seen today in antelopes and other animals that lock horns in battle.
Fewer injuries in Centrosaurus suggest that the role of their horns was more visual, speculated Farke, or that they were involved in combat that targeted the body, rather then locking horns.
"Our findings provide some of the best evidence to date that Triceratops might have locked horns with each other, wrestling like modern antelope and deer," he said.
