I’m not sure if I have an actual favorite… but it wouldn’t be the T-Rex if I did. Probably Triceratops but not sure. The T-Rex may be big and scary, but it just isn’t that cool. There are bigger dinosaurs, there are scarier dinosaurs, etc. and “scary” isn’t really what I like about dinosaurs anyway.
Yah, I’m another Trikki fan of long standing. They don’t look as scary-and-dumb as the T-Rex. Trikkies used to be very popular growing up (on a par with Ts and Brontos; most kids couldn’t pronounce Pterodactyl), by the time T’s popularity got ahead I was old enough to vote. The Ts make me think of a very, very, very dumb bully.
Geez, I had no idea there were so many trike fans out there. Here, I found a video just for you: Triceratops Tribute.
And, to those who aren’t Tyrannosaurus fans, maybe I can change your minds with a short video that I made especially for this thread: T. Rex hatching
I have read (somewhere) that Triceratops is the “most loved.” Personally I’ve been a fan of T. Rex ever since I read that they were in danger of being written off as slow scavengers…they’ve been sort of a whipping boy for any grad student who wants to draw attention to a paper. We all know in our hearts the conception of them as hot-blooded, fast-running, tail-balanced predators – with fantastic sense of smell and the most powerful bone-crushing bite in the history of life – must be true. I also recently heard that they are believed to have hunted in packs. Take THAT, Velociraptor fans!
But don’t sell Triceratops short. Not only was an adult Trike capable of fending off or killing a T. Rex, but I saw a program in which they claimed that a typical herbivore behavior is to hunt and kill the helpless young of your chief predator (to thin the herd of herd-thinners, so to speak). This program depicted it as common for Triceratops to kill unattended Tyrannosaur young whenever they found them.
Also, Triceratops has the heaviest skull of any land animal ever, and it’s mounted on a ball joint to enable quick changes of direction – to thrust and parry with those swords and that huge shield. There’s no question this was a fighting animal when necessary.
I used to love the T. Rex, then I read the one Jurassic Park book where the heroes went into the Pterodactyl enclosure.
Dive bombing dinosaurs! Hell yeah!
The Discovery Channel program Mega Beasts says that mosasaurs wiped out a giant shark that competed with them (the “Ginsu shark”) and drove the plesiosaurs into waters the mosasaurs didn’t inhabit, and by the end of their reign were the sole large ocean predator of note. That’s pretty badass.
I hate not being all unique and stuff. But Triceratops was always my favorite as a kid.
Since this thread opened, scientists have announced the discovery of a 17-meter monster named Leviathan melvillei. Technically not a dino, but worth a mention here.
Why Triceratops and not some of the othe Ceratopsids?
That’s a pretty stupid write-up, implying the modern sperm whale is non-carnivorous and even “gentle” because it eats squid. Tell that to the squid!
From the article:
An intern for Syfy read this sentence at 12:11 p.m. Pacific time yesterday. A script was completed by 12:48 p.m. and Giant Shark vs. Leviathan is now in pre-production. It’ll be on the air during Shark Week. 
The image is pretty misleading, as well. One imagines a giant-size monster gobbling up a blue whale or something like that. Really, though, Leviathan (and there is some speculation that the name might be invalid…) was a good 10 meters smaller than a Big Blue, making this fellow…not all that impressive (the article itself says it was sperm-whale sized anyway, so I’m not sure why they chose that image). Heck, sperm whales can reach 20 meters in length, making Moby Dick bigger and meaner than this guy.
The article says, “The researchers speculate that Leviathan was able to feed on very large prey up to 8m long.” Yeah…that’s dolphin-sized.
Ha! I knew Triceratops would own this thread. My favorite too.
I’m kinda digging the attack chicken too.
Yeah, looking through the dromaeosaurs and oviraptorids on Wikipedia, they’re nothing like they were when I was little. (Is it time to start waving a cane yet or shall I wait for the next major anatomical revision? 
)
I was always a brontosaurus guy. Changed my mind when I found out I was supposed to call it apatosaurus. My favorite extinct reptilian was always the kronosaur though.
I was a Triceratops and Brontosaurus fan.
Is it the Brontosaurus that doesn’t exist anymore?
It exists as Apatosaurus. The Brontosaurus name is still associated with what is now Apatosaurus as a junior subjective synonym (in ICZN*-speak), so nothing else can be named “Brontosaurus” in the future.
[sub]* International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature[/sub]
In laymens’ terms, that means apatosaurus and brontosaurus were originally identified as distinct species, and when somebody figured out they weren’t, the first name applied took precedence.
For you T. rex fans, this just in:
The scavenging critter in question was Tarbosaurus (an Asian tyrannosaurid), rather than Tyrannosaurus, but the two are closely related.
You can get the whole manuscript at the above link.
Yeah, this is kind of embarrassing.
But I have a theory.
For those who have tragically missed this masterpiece of cinema, it’s a screenshot of The Land Before Time, a movie I worshiped as a kid, which features a young, female triceratops heroine.