Scientists: Triceratops and Torosaurus Are the Same Dinosaur

from the article:

“It was already known that triceratops skulls changed throughout their development, but not that the final result was a torosaurus. Torosaurus will now be abolished as a species and specimens reassigned to Triceratops, says Horner.”

But “triceratops never existed” is a much better hook, accuracy be damned!

It seems a bit speculative and premature. I guess that’s par for the course for ‘scientists’ who study fossils, though. Previous estimates of the body size of Triceratops and Torosaurus concluded that Triceratops was quite a bit the larger of the two…

“The torosaurus will now be abolished as a separate species remains from it reclassified as triceratops.”

Excellent!

I mean, thats a way cooler name than torosaurus.

Triceratops skulls have always shown a great variety. It’s been a challenge for paleontologists to figure out what’s a deformed individual and what’s a juvenile animal and what’s a female or male individual. The process of identification has been complicated by the tendency among early researchers to name new species whenever a new fossil differed slightly from another.

And then you had Torosaurus, where the skull is largest of any animal that ever lived on land, but the body is the same as Triceratops–and no juveniles showing the identifying features have been found.

A lot of progress has been made on this is in the past two decades. It’s fascinating what we’re finding out about the plasticity of ceratopsian bone and the life stages of these creatures.

Congratulations, and thanks, to all researchers involved.

Does any one have any idea of the number of fossils on which this reasigment is being made and how complete the trasition is from juvenile to adult. We wouldn’t want any “missing links”. I can’t believe I just wrote that.