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All extinct animals receive a tomb in another dimension.
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Today, we will visit the monument that celebrates and keeps the memory of one of these jewels of
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evolution: the ceratopsians.
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A very successful group of dinosaurs that lived and died during the Cretaceous period.
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Some of the most emblematic species were immortalized here.
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We are the first to visit this exhibition, which has been patiently waiting for us for 66 million
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years.
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At its center, one of the most powerful and iconic dinosaurs of all time.
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An animal that has fueled the imagination of people of all ages for more than
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a century.
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The time has come to meet the real king of the dinosaurs.
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This is the life of the triceratops.
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Welcome to Hell's Creek.
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That night, the home of some of the last dinosaurs on the planet goes up in flames, scaring away the herds
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and claiming lives.
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But this is just another night here.
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In the morning, the animals return to explore the newly opened scenery.
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It may seem counterintuitive, but large herbivores benefit from fire.
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In a few weeks, the ash fertilizes the soil of the clearings formed, giving space
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to dense pastures of ferns and cannabaceous plants.
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Fire is an important element in this ecosystem, making the landscape less homogeneous, which
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allows the existence of a variety of colossal herbivores.
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One of the most abundant is also one of the largest.
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Triceratops was a North American dinosaur, having lived from Mexico to Canada.
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What is today a dry, scorching desert was a humid, densely vegetated
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and diverse environment in every way.
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Angiosperms, flowering plants, were dominating the world for the first time, experiencing
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an explosion of diversity and transforming environments, in what we call the
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Cretaceous terrestrial revolution.
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These new plants were selecting for new types of herbivores, such as hadrosaurs
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and ceratopsids.
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North America was divided by a large inland sea, known as the
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Western Inland Sea, and Laramidia was one of two landmasses that emerged from that sea.
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This is often referred to as “the most dangerous sea in history” for its abundance
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of giant marine reptiles like Mosasaurs and super-predatory fish like Xiphactinus.
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The other land mass was called Appalachia, located east of the Western Inland Sea.
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Laramidia was an area rich in diverse fauna and flora, including a wide variety
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of dinosaurs.
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But in the Mastrichtian, when Triceratops lived, this sea was already retreating, as
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North America rose, bringing together the two large land masses to the north, although
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to the south, they were already connected.
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Its fossils are found in a number of geological formations, in Hell creek
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they are particularly abundant.
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The name, in literal translation, means stream of hell, and here, some of the
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best-known dinosaurs lived today.
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In addition to Triceratops, the heaviest land predator of all time lived there:
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Tyrannosaurus rex.
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And the giant hadrosaur, Edmontosaurus.
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The Hell Creek Formation is a geological layer that extends across the states of Montana,
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North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, in the United States.
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It is one of the most famous geological formations of the Late Cretaceous period, dating approximately
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66 to 68 million years ago.
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Its rocks were deposited in river and lake environments, which ran from the continent
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to the continental sea.
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These conditions have allowed the preservation of a variety of fossils, including
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dinosaur bones, teeth, eggs and tracks, as well as plants and other animals.
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It is especially significant for the study of the last stages of dinosaurs
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before the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous.
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It is from here that many of the most complete and well-preserved triceratops came from.
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The genus Triceratops is home to two species: triceratops prorsus and triceratops horridus.
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His name means face with three horns.
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Prorsus had a longer nasal horn, a shorter face, and horns positioned
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higher on the skull.
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However, they had very similar sizes and habits, and they coexisted.
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Both species of the genus Triceratops had a lot of individual variation, both in size
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as in format.
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The shape, size and direction of the horns, for example, was one of the
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most unique characteristics of each individual, and could be an important form of communication
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between them, indicating sex, health, age and history.
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Each triceratops was unique.
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Perhaps this individual variation was also true in other aspects of their appearance
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in life, such as their colors.
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This makes species delimitation difficult, and several others have already been proposed, but
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only Prorsus and horridus are considered valid taxa.
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Imagine an elephant, 2 tons heavier, with an even larger head, an immense shield
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around its head and two horns instead of two ivory teeth.
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This must be what it felt like to see a triceratops in life.
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Weighing 6-8 tons, with the largest males when well fed weighing up to
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10 tons, it was one of the largest non-sauropod dinosaurs to ever walk the earth.
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It was not that long for its weight, measuring 7 meters from the tip of its snout to the tip of
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its tail, but unlike saurischian dinosaurs, with light, hollow bones like birds, Triceratops
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had a dense and robust skeleton.
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With immense areas of muscular attachment, we realized that this animal was a living tank,
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with the back of a Beetle.
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Its wide hips, short trunk, robust neck and thick legs immediately demonstrate
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that this is an animal built for strength and endurance, not for speed.
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Its head is one of the largest in relation to its body in any dinosaur, and we will soon
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see that it is much more complex than it seems.
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Its enormous weight brought the animal's center of gravity forward, even so, its body
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was so massive that the tail, which in many animals has the function of counterweight, was
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virtually useless for this purpose.
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Its tails are short compared to most dinosaurs, although it could still store
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fat and help regulate the animal's body temperature.
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Its super iconic and easily recognizable look made it the second best-known dinosaur
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to the general public, behind only Tyrannosaurus, its arch-enemy.
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Together, they form the pair of antagonists most represented in pop culture and
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cinema, immortalizing their relationship between predator and prey, almost always leaning on the side
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of the tyrannosaurus.
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But let's see today, that triceratops was not a helpless piece of meat, but a
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formidable opponent for any predator that dared to challenge it.
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Especially after the sick triceratops scene in Jurassic Park, it's easy to find
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plastic toys of something that resembles a triceratops anywhere.
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Triceratops is one of the best-known dinosaurs in the fossil record.
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Their remains can be found in many different places, more than 130 individuals
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may have already been collected by science, with at least 50 of them being considerably
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complete.
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Fortunately, the physical characteristics of triceratops favored its preservation
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during the last 66 million years.
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Its giant, dense and robust bones have proven resistant to time.
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Especially the skull, giant, massive and dense, took a long time to decompose in the open air,
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and favored the precipitation of minerals when buried.
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It was named by Charles Marsh in 1889, during the Bone Wars with his arch-enemy
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Edward Cope, to see who could describe the most spectacular dinosaurs.
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The first known bone recovered was a skull roof with horns, which was
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initially thought to be that of a giant bison, but when more complete fossils
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were unearthed, it was realized that it was a new and entirely different animal.
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Triceratops was part of one of the last groups of dinosaurs to evolve during the Mesozoic,
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the ceratopsines.
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When I say ceratopsines, I'm referring to the ceratopsians of the triceratops family
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and their closest relatives, which we'll get to know below.
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The ancestors of ceratopsines were bipeds, like Psittacosaurus, although it is not
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the ancestor of ceratopsians, but rather a representative of a lineage that did not leave descendants
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until the end of the Cretaceous.
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We know that Psittacosaurus had a series of bristles sticking out from the base of its
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tail, which makes it quite reasonable to assume that Triceratops did as well.
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Representing the protoceratopsines, very common in Asia, we have protoceratops, a
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small animal, but one of the first forms to return to the quadrupedal posture in the ceratopsines.
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Another basal family of ceratopsines are the leptoceratopsids, characterized by the
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absence of horns on the face, but giant beaks, extremely curved jaws and frightening heads
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like that of Udanoceratops.
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Ceratopsine dinosaurs are characteristic of the Cretaceous, although they appeared during
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the end of the Jurassic.
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Ceratopsids, from the innermost family of Triceratops, are divided into two groups:
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the centroaurines and the chasmosaurines.
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Among the centrosaurines we have Centrosaurus, Styracosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, Diabloceratops,
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Albertaceratops and Nasutoceratops, among others.
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Chasmosaurines include Chasmosaurus, Pentaceratops, Torosaurus and the most famous
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of all: Triceratops.
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All Ceratopsines, that is: psittacosaurids, leptoceratopsids, protoceratopsids and ceratopsids,
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are part of a large group of ornithischian dinosaurs called marginocephalians.
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The closest marginalocephalic dinosaurs to the ceratopsines are the pachycephalosaurs.
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Known for being bipedal, herbivorous, big-headed and quarrelsome, these animals share
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many characteristics with the ceratopsines, from their teeth and the presence of a small
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beak, as well as the thick head full of bony ornaments around it.
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Instead of horns and a shield, pachycephalosaurs have a thick dome and rough,
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pointed bony projections around the skull and above the snout, presumably used in
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sexual display and interspecific contests.
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Marginocephalic dinosaurs in general, but especially ceratopsids, are very
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characteristic of Asia and North America, where they appear to have evolved, diversified
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and became extinct.
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It is possible that due to the relative geographic isolation of our continent at the time,
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they never arrived here in South America, where the dominant herbivores were
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sauropods, long-necked dinosaurs.
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While countries like China, Russia, Canada, the United States and Mexico are exploding with fossils
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of this type of dinosaur, they are practically non-existent in other parts of the globe.
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It is difficult to say whether an extinct animal was solitary or lived in groups, we generally
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infer gregarious behavior from skeletons found together, as is
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common in Styracosaurus, Centrosaurus, Torosaurus, among other close relatives of Tricerarops.
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Apparently, in general, ceratopsids were animals that roamed in groups, a tendency
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that we have discovered to be increasingly common among dinosaurs.
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While this is true, for triceratops, this is a bit more complicated.
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Around 50 solitary skeletons have been found, and only one aggregation of just
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3 young individuals, described in 2005.
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Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, this may suggest that Triceratops
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had a much more solitary lifestyle than most. of the ceratopsids.
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Perhaps its immense size protected it as much as numbers protect packs of
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smaller animals.
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Even so, it was a very abundant animal and it is possible that they stayed together when
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young, or formed smaller flocks during adulthood, which by chance, were never
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preserved together.
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It has been suggested that they form small groups of 5-10 adults, which would make them
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even more protected.
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Or perhaps they roamed alone throughout their adult lives, forming large concentrations
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during the breeding season.
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If true, these may have been extremely territorial and violent animals, ready
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to defend their piece of land even at the cost of their lives or that of anyone who challenged them.
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This colossal head was armed with the three horns that give Triceratops its name.
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When we look at a fossilized skull, the part we see of the horn is just the
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innermost structure, we must consider that in life, there was a keratin covering that made
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it much larger.
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This is also true in modern-day animals, whose skeletons seem to suggest a much
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smaller horn than in life.
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Cowboy horns are made from the outermost keratinous part of the horns.
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oxen, for example, which can have quite eccentric shapes.
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With triceratops, this was no different.
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In addition to the direction and size of the horn being an indicator of the animal's age, sex and health,
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there apparently was a lot of individual variation in the horns of Triceratops.
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Each adult had a visibly different, unique pair that could grow slowly throughout
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its life, with older ones sporting exaggeratedly long horns.
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And we have evidence that these horns were not just used to communicate with individuals
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of the same species or attract females, they had a powerful defensive and offensive function.
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As much as the horns attract attention, they are not the most unique
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and peculiar feature of this animal, as they exist in different forms in mammals, having evolved
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convergently, completely independent of the horns of any dinosaur.
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What appears not to have occurred in any other animal group is the shield or bony frill
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that extends from the back of the skull.
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The triceratops shield is quite basic when compared to that of other ceratopsids,
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mainly Chasmosaurineans, with large, heavily ornamented shields.
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Each species had a different type of shield that seems to have also interfered with their
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forms of combat.
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But their outrageous and extravagant forms have all the characteristics of a trait
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sculpted by sexual selection.
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Most have very large parietal fenestrae, openings that make the structure lighter,
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but the triceratops shield was completely closed, short and thick.
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Decorated with more superficial ossifications called osteoderms, they feature large
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grooves that, in life, may have supported veins that carried blood to the region, indicating
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that it was highly vascularized and possibly played a role in the thermal regulation of these
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warm-blooded animals.
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Increasing or decreasing blood flow in the shield, a large surface in contact
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with the atmosphere, may have been important for heating or cooling this animal, in a
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similar way to the large ears of an African elephant.
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Furthermore, this shield made it difficult to access the animal's neck, where its predators
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could preferentially target.
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We can see that in addition to protection, heat exchange and sexual display, the functions
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of this structure could be very diverse, otherwise such a wide variety
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of forms would not have evolved.
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Triceratops' paws were very different from how they are usually represented
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in the media, round, like an elephant's.
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The back and front legs were quite different from each other, but both supported
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4 toes that were spread out on the ground, meaning that it was not built
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for speed, but rather for resistance and traction.
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The hind legs are robust and all fingers have claws.
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The front legs closely resembled a psittacosaurus hand, with a fifth finger that
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didn't touch the ground and just three fingers with nails that formed a small hoof.
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Those front legs went through a tremendous evolutionary rollercoaster, since the ancestors
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of all tetrapods were quadrupedal, but the ancestors of dinosaurs were bipedal,
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so all quadrupedal dinosaurs, like the ceratopsids, are actually secondarily
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quadrupedal.
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We realize this when we go back to the lineages closest to the ceratopsids, such as psittacosaurids
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and pachicephalosaurids, which are bipedal animals.
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Triceratops was not an especially intelligent dinosaur, although it may have been
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smarter than people realize.
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Most dinosaurs carry an image of being slow and dumb, capable of little
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, cognitively speaking.
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However, the fact that they had a complex, perhaps hierarchical, social life
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and a good spatial sense of their territory indicates that they are not that dumb after all.
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Analysis of its brain, relatively small for its size, showed that its sense
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of smell may have been one of the worst among all dinosaurs.
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Furthermore, the position and shape of their inner ear indicates an animal very sensitive
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to low-frequency sounds, which could mean that, like elephants, they communicated
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in the distance with deep sounds that cut through the forest.
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The balance position of the head was a 45-degree inclination that, at the same
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time as pointing the beak downwards, facilitating grazing, pointed the horns forward,
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against any threat.
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Even though the male was larger than the female on average, as can be demonstrated
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by mature skulls of smaller stature, the female Triceratops was not that different
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from the male.
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When the male and female of a species are very different, we say it is a
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species with a high degree of sexual dimorphism.
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It is possible that there were differences in color, just as there are subtle differences
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in the shape of the horns, for example, but in general, an adult female would be as capable
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of defending herself as a male.
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To withstand such a violent life, this animal had thick skin.
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The generosity of the fossil record allowed science to discover some examples
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of triceratops skin markings, showing that it did not have smooth skin like that of
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an elephant, but rather covered in polygonal scales, with spaced osteoderms, punctuating the
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entire body.
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Unfortunately, there are still no studies that have managed to find in these skin samples
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evidence of melanosomes, small pigment-bearing cells, fossilized in
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exceptional conditions of preservation that allow us to infer the color of the skin of an
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extinct animal in life.
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However, we have good reason to imagine that at least the triceratops shield carried
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quite bright and extravagant colors.
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In addition to the high vascularization of the region, we know that the wide variety of
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shield shapes among the ceratopsids is an indication that female preference played a
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role in the selection of these shapes, and of course, colors help a lot, if the big question
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is to have an eye-catching structure.
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Current dinosaurs have a very high and sophisticated perception of colors and often have
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very strong colors and psychedelic patterns, there is no reason to think that dinosaurs
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would be different, especially the ceratopsids.
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Triceratops was not a specialist or demanding herbivore, far from it.
00:23:31
This was an animal capable of feeding on an immense variety of resources, from roots
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to the ferns, cycas and creeping angiosperms that grew in North America.
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Interestingly, one of the most common plants in Hell Creek were cannabaceous plants, from the
00:23:49
cannabis family, which certainly fed triceratops and a variety of other herbivorous animals.
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Triceratops' only limitation was the height of its food, as it
00:24:00
was certainly unable to reach the treetops, despite being able to knock down smaller trees
00:24:06
to feed on the leaves.
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But the chance of triceratops eating only vegetables is very minimal.
00:24:12
An animal of its size and with such a dense and ostentatious skeleton would certainly supplement
00:24:18
its diet with small carcasses and skeletons of large animals.
00:24:22
This is because plants are poor in many of the minerals most necessary for building
00:24:27
bones, such as calcium.
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This habit is relatively common in modern herbivores, we call it osteophagy.
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This would make Triceratops an omnivore, mostly herbivorous, but an opportunistic scavenger,
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which would hardly do without at least a little meat and bones.
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Its jaw, teeth and beak support this hypothesis, as they seem adapted to a
00:24:52
highly fibrous diet.
00:24:58
There is much debate about the presence or absence of cheeks in Triceratops, a question
00:25:03
that remains open until preserved skin from this part of the face is found.
00:25:07
The curved beak has nothing to do with parrot beaks, for example, as they
00:25:13
are another very separate lineage of dinosaurs, which means the similarity is due
00:25:19
to an evolutionary convergence.
00:25:21
We have evidence in other ceratopsids that this beak could be covered not
00:25:26
just by keratin, but by a pattern of skin similar to the body.
00:25:31
Its function in life was to cut fibrous plants and pull roots from the earth with tremendous force
00:25:36
.
00:25:37
The teeth, with a peculiar triangular shape, were organized in batteries,
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constantly replaced, indicating that they were capable of processing very hard vegetable matter,
00:25:48
and even bones, although they didn't chew exactly like mammals.
00:25:53
Many aspects of Triceratops reproduction were unknown and completely speculative.
00:25:59
Copulation does not seem as complicated as in other dinosaurs, however, until recently
00:26:04
, nests of ceratopsid dinosaurs were not known.
00:26:09
Those attributed to them were often confused with actually being
00:26:15
theropod eggs like oviraptors.
00:26:18
To explain this, it had even been proposed that they could give birth to
00:26:22
offspring, in a convergent evolution with mammals.
00:26:27
However, new discoveries have revealed the reason for the apparent absence of eggs from these
00:26:31
animals in the fossil record: like pterosaurs, their eggs were leathery, that
00:26:38
is, they had a leathery texture, rather than being fully mineralized like
00:26:43
bird eggs.
00:26:44
This means they are fragile, decompose quickly and do not fossilize easily
00:26:49
.
00:26:50
But there is a chance that they were careful and overprotective parents.
00:26:57
This was an animal that underwent significant transformations, mainly in its skull,
00:27:02
during development.
00:27:03
Instead of being born a miniature adult that only gains size, the shape of the face,
00:27:09
horns and shield changed over time, making its sex and age obvious.
00:27:16
In addition to bone remodeling, there is a chance that colors will also change throughout
00:27:21
their growth, with some being a clear sign of maturity and health.
00:27:25
The horns, in youth, were curved backwards, and as they matured, they ended up
00:27:31
bending forwards.
00:27:33
Many fossils belonging to almost all stages of the Triceratops' life have already been
00:27:38
unearthed, allowing scientists to create a faithful portrait of the stages of its development.
00:27:43
Some of them were initially treated as new species, as they were so different
00:27:48
from the adult triceratops, but research involving microscopic details of the
00:27:53
bone tissue showed that they were juvenile phases of the life of a larger animal.
00:27:58
This whole story involving the complex ontology of triceratops motivated
00:28:03
even more radical proposals, such as that of paleontologist Jack Horner, who proposed that Torosaurus, a
00:28:09
species of ceratopsid similar in size to triceratops and which lived with it, was
00:28:14
actually the last stage of development of triceratops.
00:28:18
This is because Torosaurus has a longer shield, with two large fenestrae, which make
00:28:23
it the owner of the largest skull that has ever lived on the continents of planet Earth.
00:28:28
According to Horner's hypothesis, as it aged, the triceratops shield lengthened
00:28:32
and gained two holes, a characteristic pattern of Torosaurus.
00:28:37
But factors such as the lack of transitional stages, other differences between species and
00:28:43
geographic distribution incompatible with the hypothesis, debunked this idea, and Torosaurus remains
00:28:49
a separate species, as incredible as Triceratops.
00:28:54
Although rarer.
00:28:59
Disputes between triceratops and other species, especially its predator, were common.
00:29:07
We know this because many triceratops skulls bear the marks of these fights.
00:29:11
Bite marks are found, both on the shield and on the vertebrae, ribs and femur of the triceratops,
00:29:17
that can be directly attributed to Tyrannosaurus rex.
00:29:23
Some of these marks show signs of healing, indicating that the animal survived the
00:29:28
predation attempt, while others, without any healing, clearly reveal the cause of the animal's death.
00:29:37
These marks show that the hip and shield were the most targeted parts.
00:29:41
Horn marks from other triceratops are also found, mainly on the side
00:29:46
of the face and shield, with some extreme examples of open holes, which correspond
00:29:51
to the width of a horn from another adult individual.
00:29:55
A sign that these disputes were frequent and bloodthirsty.
00:29:58
To understand Triceratops, it is necessary to look at Tyrannosaurus rex, because
00:30:04
most likely, one would not exist without the other.
00:30:07
It is no coincidence that the heaviest land predator of all time and one of
00:30:13
the most heavily armed herbivores in the history of life cohabited the same ecosystem.
00:30:18
One shaped the other in a dramatic evolutionary arms war over millions of rounds
00:30:25
of life and death.
00:30:26
The relationship between predator and prey is one of the most influential evolutionary forces in
00:30:31
nature, and the presence of a 12-meter-long predator terrorizing Hell
00:30:37
Creek certainly explains an important part of the Triceratops' life.
00:30:42
Tyrannosaurus rex was an intelligent and sophisticated predator, despite its brute strength, and
00:30:48
therefore would not have often hunted adults alone.
00:30:50
We've gotten used to seeing Triceratops always losing to Tyrannosaurus.
00:31:00
But a one-on-one confrontation could have any result.
00:31:04
Tyrannosaurus's bite, adapted to break bones, could leave a triceratops
00:31:16
without the movement of its hind legs, if it hit the right spot on its spine.
00:31:21
The Triceratops' horns can easily tear the rex off the ground with their
00:31:33
immense strength.
00:31:47
This is a battle that has been repeated millions of times on this planet, and this is the last of them.
00:32:07
The extinction of most species of non-avian dinosaurs that ever existed was caused
00:32:17
by environmental, ecological, climatic changes...
00:32:21
But not Triceratops, as well as all dinosaurs that still existed 66 million
00:32:27
years ago.
00:32:28
The cause of the definitive disappearance of these last non-avian dinosaurs was extraterrestrial.
00:32:34
They existed and thrived on the worst day in the history of planet Earth: the impact that
00:32:40
created the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.
00:32:44
One day, triceratops was one of the dominant species in North America, the next,
00:32:50
not so.
00:32:51
If there were survivors of the impact, shock wave, heat wave, tsunamis, earthquakes
00:32:58
and rain of molten rock spheres that caused global fires, they did not last
00:33:03
long.
00:33:04
Their fate was to suffocate in the cloud of smoke that blocked sunlight, or to die of starvation
00:33:10
in a world in which all the world's forests turned to ashes overnight.
00:33:15
It happened during spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a crucial and delicate moment for the
00:33:19
reproductive cycle of many animals and plants.
00:33:22
We don't know how much longer Triceratops might have lasted if the impact had never occurred,
00:33:28
or what its descendants would have looked like.
00:33:31
Would ceratopsids even larger than it and Torosaurus be a reality?
00:33:36
We will never know, because this event put an end to all ceratopsid lineages.
00:33:47
This video is the result of more than 6 months of work by the
00:33:51
ABC Terra team of paleoartists.
00:33:52
A huge thank you to Lucas Mateus, whose unbelievable talent was able to bring
00:33:57
these animals back to life, in the 3D animations you just saw.
00:34:02
They were sounded by Pedro Miguel, thanks Pedro!
00:34:06
The fantastic illustrations of our triceratops are works by the very talented
00:34:10
Heitor de Sá, to whom I am also very grateful.
00:34:13
To learn more about the process and stay up to date with how it was all done, become a
00:34:18
member of the channel to watch the Making off of “The Life of Triceratops”, and I guarantee
00:34:22
you will be surprised.
00:34:24
There you also have access to the course we produced to help you familiarize yourself
00:34:28
with the basic concepts of natural history and evolution.
00:34:32
In the course “Evolution, Earth and Time” key themes for understanding and studying more paleontology
00:34:38
are discussed in a didactic and objective way!
00:34:40
Being a member is the best way to help our project, but it's not the only way.
00:34:45
Sending a pix of 10 reais to contato@abcterra.com or using the QR code on the screen helps as much as
00:34:51
watching this video a thousand times.
00:34:54
As always, thank you very much for watching until the end, share this
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video with your friends, subscribe and have a great life!
