In the popular imagination, Triceratops is often seen locked in an epic battle with the Tyrannosaurus rex, the two dinosaurs fighting between hunter and hunted. Seen simply as prey, these adaptations are only understood within a narrow context of survival against bigger dinosaurs. This is an incomplete picture and does a disservice to our understanding of Triceratops as its own distinct animal.
The horned dinosaur was not always fending off attack, but grazing peacefully as a herbivore and making use of its own set of unique evolutionary adaptations. Although tyrannosaurids were certainly a threat to some, the life of a Triceratops was far more just an herbivore running away from a predator.
📸 Drawing of Triceratops skull by Othniel Charles Marsh.
Consider the dinosaur's horns. For much of the century plus that Triceratops has been known to science, these horns were understood as protective weapons to fend off predation and perhaps the occasional conspecific dual among fellow Triceratops. The modern picture is more complex. Like other similar horned species, more recent studies suggest these horns doubled as ritual displays during mating or as a signal of maturation among fellow Triceratops.
It's even possible they were used to tell certain species apart from each other during large congregations. The question that remains is for which behavior these horns evolved, and which was of secondary use.
📸 TRICERATOPS TOOTH ERUPTION DEMONSTRATED. (SOURCE: Gregory Erickson)
The Triceratops’s jaws came together to form a sharp curved beak, but this feature was built not for biting in combat–rather it was for grasping and pulling at plants. Behind this beak sat the dinosaur’s teeth, which were arranged in a tight structure called a dental battery. These batteries consisted of columns of teeth that would grow and erupt, replacing the worn and broken teeth at the top of the stack.
While this was a fairly common adaptation for herbivorous dinosaurs, the Triceratops’ teeth were nestled inside one another, meaning their teeth were constantly being replaced. This gave their batteries stability and prevented gaps from appearing in their jaws.
The structure of the jaw indicates that Triceratops had an extremely powerful bite, capable of tearing tough plants. Its heavy skull kept its head held low and it likely subsisted off cycads, a plant with large, fleshy seeds full of sugar and starches. With such a large body size topping out at over 29 feet, Triceratops was able to consume a high amount of low quality food, similar to modern day browsers.
📸 A Group of Triceratops Fossil Teeth
With five teeth in a battery and nearly 40 tooth positions, Triceratops had hundreds of teeth in its jaws at one time. The shape of these teeth were highly specialized, acting exclusively as tools to cut with rather than grind or crush. This is unusual in herbivores, with shearing teeth being of only secondary importance.
The structure of the jaw indicates that Triceratops had an extremely powerful bite, capable of tearing tough plants. Its heavy skull kept its head held low and it likely subsisted off cycads, a plant with large, fleshy seeds full of sugar and starches. With such a large body size topping out at over 29 feet, Triceratops was able to consume a high amount of low quality food, similar to modern day browsers.
📸 The Triceratops in its most famous depiction, Jurassic Park.
Focusing on Triceratops merely as prey obscures these fascinating evolutionary adaptations, flattening out the genus into a more narrow context at home with the public’s understanding of the animal. Part of the problem has to do with the Triceratops’ place in the fossil record–the genus is one of the most recovered from the Late Cretaceous Period, with about 50 skulls found.
Since it was first identified in 1889, Triceratops has had an enormous impact on popular culture, cemented by Jurassic Park in 1993. This may have been a double-edged sword for Triceratops, as earlier perceptions of the genus have been accepted as fact.
📸 The Triceratops holotype, identified by Othniel Charles Marsh. (Source: Smithsonian)
We now know that Triceratops occupied a very specific place in the hierarchy of dinosaurs. While its Ceratopsian ancestors had been around since the Jurassic, Triceratops itself was one of the last dinosaur groups to evolve and was quickly wiped out in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. In 2011, a Triceratops brow horn was found just 13 cm below the K-Pg boundary, making it one of the youngest dinosaur fossils known to science. Triceratops's unique adaptations shed some light on what further evolutionary innovations may have come about had the age of dinosaurs not been halted.
Triceratops's scientific story is a cautionary tale of how earlier theories that have been accepted by the public at large can hamper new studies that contradict the old. While Triceratops fossils have shown the animal certainly battled Tyrannosaurus, this is only one avenue for understanding what is a fascinating creature. It was also a browsing herbivore, making use of complex dental batteries and its bird-like beak to sustain itself. Its horns were not only weapons, but a communication between members of its own genus. The age of dinosaurs was not all blood and guts, but individual creatures deploying unique adaptations for their specific environment.
Are you ready to study the Triceratops up close and personal? Check out our collection of Triceratops fossils from Cretaceous era fossil beds around the United States. These authentic fossils are collected straight from paleontologists in the field and available for sale here at Mini Museum!
Learn more about the specialized teeth Triceratops used, feel the weight of its iconic crest in your hand, and even get piece of fossil bone material! Check out all our Triceratops items in the collection below!
