#ceretopsian

[makairodonx]

Keiko Yamamoto walks down a trail that leads into dense forest with a juvenile and an adult Torosaurus latus.

[roxynychus]

Old ass doodle I did of an "accurate" Triceratops. It's kinda funny now because I'm pretty sure this isn’t very accurate, but I still like the idea of porcupine ceretopsians.

[fenmere]

Zarnagal, but look! "four gashes a meter or more long and several centimeters deep within a few seconds" Even on a very large dinosaur, that's not a minor wound. Especially if it happens over and over again. The T-rex clamps down on the prey's neck with these nice long, conical teeth made for piercing and holding, and crushing jaws. Its teeth aren't really meant to tear and slice. To make more wounds with its teeth, it'd have to let go and bite again, which means potentially losing its prey. So it adds more wounds swiftly with its claws. Now its prey is much more likely to bleed out. Smaller prey, snap, gone. Larger prey, it’s a bit of a gamble and more of a fight, but there’s more food there so it might be worth it.

Also, the claw slashes are a way of slicing up the meat, to make it easier to get a chunk of it out with those conical teeth that aren’t all that good for slicing themselves.

Imagine that you're an elephant with an armored plate covering the back of your neck (a triceratops). T-rexes preyed on ceratopsians, and were only marginally bigger than them.

If the T-rex manages to get past your head, it's most likely going to bite down on your shoulder or your flank. That's a nasty wound, but you can survive it and you may have the leverage to keep moving and drag the T-rex with you. It hurts like the dickens, but it’s what you've gotta do. It's a bit like having one of those hydraulic diggers with jaws, but with way more teeth, clamp onto you. Though a T-rex is faster and more agile than that, and wigglier, with much less surface area gripping the ground.

If you can get out of its grip, though, you have a chance.

But then, Wolverine's daughter starts burrowing into your back.

That's going to really suck. Oh, and since we’ve compared the triceratops to an elephant, let’s look at these skeletons!

Look at the difference between those hip bones! The elephant is like, "I just need enough strength to walk around and maybe lift myself up to eat some leaves. But lets conserve weight for efficiency." The triceratops was like, "I need as much leverage for my muscles as possible so that I can just walk right through a T-Rex."

“Its short, strong forelimbs and large claws would have permitted T. rex, whether mounted on a victim’s back or grasping it with its jaws, to inflict four gashes a meter or more long and several centimeters deep within a few seconds,” Stanley reported at a Geological Society of America meeting in October 2017. “And it could have repeated this multiple times in rapid succession.”

The most up to date analyses of Tyrannosaurus’s little arms suggest its strategy was to hold another dinosaur with its mouth and just rapidly swipe its little dumb arms like I guess how a hyper little dog looks when it’s digging

[gastornis]

Chasmosaurus bellis

Photo credit: ceasol via Wikipedia

[makairodonx]

Impressions top to bottom of the two main species of Protoceratops, a small basal ceratopsian hailing from the late Cretaceous of Asia 75-71 million years ago: P.andewsi from the Djadochta Formation of Mongolia and P.hellenikorhinus from the Bayan Mandahu Formation of China.

[makairodonx]

What? A dinosaurian porcupine? Paleontologists have just now announced the discovery of Nanoceratops porcuspinus, a new species of chasmosaurine Ceratopsian dinosaur hailing from the Maastrichtian deposits of Mexico and the American Southwest. In addition to the usual defensive headgear, N.porcuspinus is completely unique among ceratopsians for sporting tall bristle-like spines, similar to those of a porcupine, that could be used to ram into the face of a T.rex or Quetzalcoatlus if ever the animal rushed backwards; the spines also represent the evolutionary zenith of ceratopsian integument.

Here’s the paper regarding the description of N.porcuspinus: youtu.be/4qRZmFYdozY