# Triceratops is a lie **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 2, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855 "2010-08-02T03:34:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/21 "2010-08-02T14:54:49Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Oh geez. Look at this quote in the article from the OP: > > > [@](#): > > > > [_Triceratops_] – perhaps first made iconic with “Cera” (pictured above) in the classic 1988 animated film The Land Before Time – > > Yeah, 1988 was really the first time anyone heard of them. How self-absorbed is that? That’s like the kid who told me that the band U2 was special _because it was the first to use rock and roll as social protest._ Yeah, everything that happened when you were a kid is the first and best example of it ever happening. :rolleyes: Iconic doesn’t really mean what you think it means. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/22 "2010-08-02T15:16:13Z")
On the [dinosaur mailing list](http://dml.cmnh.org/), the ‘\*Torosaurus \*being the mature stage of a \*Triceratops \* and therefore the same species’ hypothesis is more accepted than not. And _Triceratops_ is at least two species. It also may be that only one sex of \*Triceratops \*became _Torosaurus_. No juvenile \*Torosaurus \*has ever been found. If the theory is correct, I think it’s safe to say \*Torosaurus \*will be subsumed into Triceratops, and not the other way 'round. ---
**Author:** ![Jet\_Jaguar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jet_jaguar/32/3562_2.png) [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/23 "2010-08-02T15:17:40Z")
All I know is, I once got my ass reamed out for citing Horner as a reference in a GQ thread years ago. Apparently, within the scientific community he is to paleontology as Dr. Phil is to psychiatry (IIRC, that was the comparison made to me at the time). ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/24 "2010-08-02T15:22:36Z")
> [@Jet\_Jaguar](#): > > All I know is, I once got my ass reamed out for citing Horner as a reference in a GQ thread years ago. Apparently, within the scientific community he is to paleontology as Dr. Phil is to psychiatry (IIRC, that was the comparison made to me at the time). [One of his proteges is the woman who has discovered stuff that really looks like soft tissue inside some fossils](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Higby_Schweitzer). And another of his proteges is the guy coming out with this theory. He’s probably wrong about _T. Rex_. So what? Einstein and Hawking have been wrong about stuff too. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/25 "2010-08-02T15:24:54Z")
One of Horner’s ideas is that some of the sauropods might have had “moose” lips, instead of lizard lips, for grazing. We’ll probably never know, but it would look kinda cool, to see bronto and his buddies smacking down on vegetation. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/26 "2010-08-02T15:33:02Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > Because people asked about these all the time, we (the docents) were prepared with ready-made answers, … **and continue to believe that dinosaurs were cold-blooded** … I didn’t notice this. When were you a docent? Obviously after Sue. That’s wild that the Field Museum says dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Cross-sections of dinosaur fossil bones look much more like warm-blooded bones than cold-blooded. And in my mind, this is the most compelling - herbivorous dinosaur fossils are found at about a twenty-to-one ratio to carnivorous dinosaur fossils - consistent with a warm-blooded ecosystem. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/27 "2010-08-03T01:33:53Z")
> [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > > [@Sailboat](#): > > > > Oh geez. Look at this quote in the article from the OP: > > > > Yeah, 1988 was really the first time anyone heard of them. How self-absorbed is that? That’s like the kid who told me that the band U2 was special _because it was the first to use rock and roll as social protest._ Yeah, everything that happened when you were a kid is the first and best example of it ever happening. :rolleyes: > > Iconic doesn’t really mean what you think it means. Ok, educate me. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/28 "2010-08-03T01:41:12Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > > [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > > > Iconic doesn’t really mean what you think it means. > > Ok, educate me. I’m just saying that the article’s author never implied that it was the first time anyone had ever heard of triceratops. You seem to know a lot more about the subject than do I, and probably know more about the species’ appearances in popular culture before and after 1988. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/29 "2010-08-03T02:15:40Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@BigT](#): > > > > Like the above mentioned T-rex being a scavenger, yet unable to see anything unless it’s moving) > > I think that was in the book, right? > > People asked us about that a lot too. My stock response was along the lines of, “Rocks don’t move. Do you think T-Rexes would bump into rocks all the time because they couldn’t see them? I don’t know if that would be such a great evolutionary adaptation.” Wasn’t the implication that the T-Rex only saw moving things as potential food? And anything that doesn’t move as inedible? Am I remembering wrong? Did I read too much into that? ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/30 "2010-08-03T03:20:41Z")
> [@sitchensis](#): > > Animals don’t turn down a free meal. > As for the eagles in post #13: Down in Washington where I grew up they were mostly predators, hunting lakes for fish. Living in southeast Alaska they are mostly scavengers, hanging out at the dump like seagulls, stealing from your trash, waiting for the salmon to start spawning so they can eat carcasses and eggs. Basically they can wait for the ravens and crows to find something and then use their size to barge in on the free meal. I’ve seen this a fair bit in Washington too, though I have also seen plenty of predatory behaviour as well. Really, the two behaviours do not preclude each other. I suspect that the ratio of predation to scavenging varies depending on environmental conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/31 "2010-08-03T04:39:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m pretty sure, though, that torosaurus was named after triceratops was, which would mean that triceratops is not only still real, but it was a lot bigger than previously thought. There’s a life-size torosaurus statue in the middle of the Hall of Horns and Teeth, and man, that thing is huge. Triceratops was named in 1889, Torosaurus in 1891, which makes Torosaurus the junior synonym. If they are merged, Torosaurus becomes Triceratops. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/32 "2010-08-03T15:29:43Z")
Wikimedia commons says Torosaurus size is up to [7.5 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torosaurus-human_size.JPG), _Triceratops_ is up to [8-9 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-triceratops_size_comparison.png). If _Triceratops_ was generally larger (as I have been led to believe and as these cites seem to indicate) how could it have been the juvenile form? ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/33 "2010-08-03T15:52:01Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Wikimedia commons says Torosaurus size is up to [7.5 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torosaurus-human_size.JPG), _Triceratops_ is up to [8-9 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-triceratops_size_comparison.png). > > If _Triceratops_ was generally larger (as I have been led to believe and as these cites seem to indicate) how could it have been the juvenile form? Baby fat? ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/34 "2010-08-03T15:57:50Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Wikimedia commons says Torosaurus size is up to [7.5 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torosaurus-human_size.JPG), _Triceratops_ is up to [8-9 meters](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-triceratops_size_comparison.png). > > If _Triceratops_ was generally larger (as I have been led to believe and as these cites seem to indicate) how could it have been the juvenile form? Well, first, there are relatively few \*Torosaurus \*fossils. There may be larger ones out there. Secondly, it may well be it’s only one sex of a mature \*Triceratops \*(about half of young \*Triceratops \*have thin areas in the skull plate corresponding to where \*Torosaurus \*has holes). So, it could be the ‘smaller’ sex is the \*‘Torosaurus’ \*sex. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/35 "2010-08-03T16:02:16Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > > [@BigT](#): > > > > Like the above mentioned T-rex being a scavenger, yet unable to see anything unless it’s moving) > > I think that was in the book, right? > > People asked us about that a lot too. My stock response was along the lines of, “Rocks don’t move. Do you think T-Rexes would bump into rocks all the time because they couldn’t see them? I don’t know if that would be such a great evolutionary adaptation.” Yeah Michael Crichton made up a bunch of stuff about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (the whole thing that T-Rex’s see movement, that that one species was poisonous etc.) and used them as examples of things we could never now about Dinos until we had a live one in front of us (the book made it pretty clear these “facts” were his invention with in the story). The movie did away with that subtle distinction. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/36 "2010-08-03T17:22:09Z")
First of all, bald eagles are scavengers. True fact. You can look it up. They sit around looking for some crows or seagulls to find a dead fish, then they steal it. But all large predators are scavengers, and animals we thought were mostly scavengers (like hyaenas) turn out to do a lot of predation. Second of all, dinosaurs were warm blooded, for certain values of warm blooded. Of course, in real life all sorts of animals have all sorts of ways to regulate their body temperature, and it doesn’t break down neatly into “warm-blooded vs cold-blooded”. Sheer size is enough to keep most dinosaurs warm all the time. The evidence is pretty compelling. Triceratops is more closely related to a sparrow than it is to a crocodile after all. So it certainly is more correct to say that dinosaurs were warmblooded than to say they were coldblooded, if you don’t have time to get into a[whole lecture on exothermy and endothermy and homeothermy and poikilothermy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation). But wow, in 2005 you were told to tell people that dinosaurs were cold-blooded? Seriously? Because you should have at least been told to tell people “it’s complicated”. And yeah, Michael Crichton made up a bunch of stuff about dinosaurs, because it’s a guarantee that if we had living dinosaurs we’d discover all sorts of things that are impossible to discover from fossils. T ---
**Author:** ![MN\_Maenad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e95f7d/32.png) [@MN\_Maenad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MN_Maenad)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/37 "2010-08-03T17:33:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > … the Hall of Horns and Teeth… That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever read. 😃 I thought the most recent consensus was that dinos were “lukewarm-blooded”, having some characteristics of modern warm-blooded critters and some of modern cold-blooded. I’d actually be a little stunned if animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago had exactly the same “bloodedness” characteristics of animals today. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855/38 "2010-08-03T17:53:35Z")
Not even creatures that live today have the exact same “bloodednes” characteristics you imagine. Yes, birds and mammals tend to pump a lot of energy into keeping their bodies warm all the time, while reptiles don’t. But every species is different, and there are mammals like sloths that have very low metabolic rates and body temperatures. But they also live in the tropics, where it’s always warm anyway. And there are warm blooded fish, animals that keep some tissues warm but let other tissues vary in temperature, and on and on. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/triceratops-is-a-lie/548855.md?page=1)