What is the purpose of the Triceratops frill?
Why the frill? The Triceratops frill might have helped to protect its neck, but some specimens show Tyrannosaurus bite marks puncturing the frill, so it wasn’t always enough. The frills could also have been used to attract mates, as a way for members of the same species to recognise each other.
Where are ceratopsian found?
Ceratopsia or Ceratopia (/ˌsɛrəˈtɒpsiə/ or /ˌsɛrəˈtoʊpiə/; Greek: “horned faces”) is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic.
What is a dinosaur frill?
A neck frill is the relatively extensive margin seen on the back of the heads of reptiles with either a bony support such as those present on the skulls of dinosaurs of the suborder Marginocephalia or a cartilaginous one as in the frill-necked lizard.
How many ceratopsians are there?
Meet the Horned, Frilled Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era. Ceratopsians—the horned, frilled dinosaurs—were some of the most common plant-eaters of the later Mesozoic Era. Explore pictures and detailed profiles of over 60 ceratopsian dinosaurs, ranging from A (Achelousaurus) to Z (Zuniceratops).
What are the major ideas put forth to explain the function of horns and frills in ceratopsid horned dinosaurs?
Palaeontologist David Hone (University of London), explained that this study suggests that these ornamentations evolved as “social-sexual functions” i.e. as both males and females of each species had similar ornamentation, the horns and frills evolved to help advertise the animal’s condition and fitness for breeding.
Why do Ceratopsians have frills?
The ceratopsian frill provided protection for the neck, normally one of the most vulnerable parts of the body to be targeted by predators. Horns on the nose and brow were undoubtedly dangerous weapons when thrust into action by an angry ceratopsian.
Why do ceratopsians have frills?
Which ceratopsian has the biggest frill?
male ceratopsians
The trick is that, as a rule, male ceratopsians had bigger frills and horns, while those of females were slightly (or sometimes significantly) smaller.
Did the Dilophosaurus have a frill?
Many people are at least vaguely familiar with Dilophosaurus thanks to its bit-part in the first Jurassic Park movie. It was that small-ish, cooing theropod with a pair of crests on its blunt head and that turned out to have a shocking extendible neck-frill and the ability to spit venom like a cobra.
Did Dilophosaurus have frills?
The real Dilophosaurus had no neck frills, was a monster at a length of 20 ft, and did not spit venom. When Jurassic Park was shot, Dilophosaurus was already known to be a large dinosaur, while the frills and the venom were fictionalised embellishments.