HOME | DD
DrScottHartman — Spiked 'do reptile
Published: 2011-06-13 18:53:09 +0000 UTC; Views: 16180; Favourites: 223; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
A reconstruction of CMN 344, the type specimen of Styracosaurus. The outrageous hairdo clearly stems from the ceratopsians' experimental college days......erm, were most likely for intraspecies display and mate attraction.
Edit: Minor soft-tissue adjustments to the silhouette.
Related content
Comments: 49
So how common are the skeletons for this dinosaur? And are there any indications of sexual dimorphism in the species (i.e. females having smaller horns and frill spikes)?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Not common at all unfortunately. With the current sample size we really can't say anything about dimorphism.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I used this for this dinodanthetrainman.deviantart.…
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Styracosaurus or "Spike" is the nice looking horned dinosaur of da.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
You should upload, if at least in your Scrap folder, a version of this with the nose horn curving up toward the head, rather than away.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
But that's not the specimen I'm using.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I know, which is why I suggested putting in Scraps, for my personal admiration, while avoiding the attention of people who might feel mislead.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
my favorite Dinosour. this guy seems to be right out of a sci fi novel but he actually existed.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I feel that way about every dinosaur. They blow me away.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Cheap kid's toys really mess things up.
I say a (supposed) toy version of this dino, and it gave it the fancy frill and the tri-horns from Triceratops.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yikes, that IS bad. You are right, most toys (and even most kids books) don't get basic dinosaur anatomy right. Sigh...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The Deinonychus was worse. It was more like a daschund-raptor
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very interesting. Another inconsistency between depictions. Most examples depict the central horn curving toward the frill, while you've depicted it curving away from the face.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
There are skulls that do both. Most restorations outside of this one are based on the excellent specimen at the AMNH (which Greg Paul has done a skeletal reconstruction of), but there are specimens with horns that bend even further forward than the type specimen that I illustrate here.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
This has long been one of my favorite ceratopsians. Those spikes are pretty impressive-looking.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Awesome work! Styracosaurus is my favorite ceratopsian.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Medusaceratops is mine, but that's just for vanities sake. Styracosaurus is really cool though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I've always loved the ceratopsians and Styracosaurus in particular. What are your feeling on these theories that they were omnivores? the family more than just Styracosaurus...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Honestly, almost all organisms will eat meat if they get a chance (driving along in Wyoming I frequently saw deer and ground squirrels eating road kill); the calorie-dense proteins and fats are both calorically-dense and they provide some nutrients that are harder to come by.
So I see it more as a spectrum, from animals that eat mostly meat, to those who eat meat only a little (and only when the opportunity presents itself). Ceratopsians, with their hooked beaks and teeth that sliced more than ground up food certainly seem better able to process meat then say hadrosaurs, so I wouldn't be surprised if they say purposely took advantage of carcasses when they found them. Horned dinosaurs would have even been able to camp a carcass if they wanted to (and ability that hadrosaurs would have lacked).
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
that is true I grew up in Colorado till I moved to Georgia to marry my wife so I have see the same myself.Heck I've seen goats do it here on the farm we have. So you have a good point. I guess from what I had heard the idea was that they were like Dion-pigs eating what they could find animal, vegetable, whatever. Interesting nonetheless!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I think pigs are a pretty good model actually. Of course then we have to imagine a rhino or elephant-sized suid with giant horns...so the comparison is still a bit limited.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
Isn't that essentially what an entelodont is?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Sort of. Entelodonts aren't actually that closely related to pigs (despite the "killer pig" nickname). Also, with a couple of exceptions entelodonts were closer to wolf-size than horse size (and none were rhino sized).
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I could see it, it's a very interesting idea to me. I mean think of said Styracosaurus or a Pachyrihinosaurus rushing in to a kill site of some smaller predators. Brandishing their horns and wagging their huge heads with the colorful frills a gleaming. Snorting and the like.... it make me run away from my kill.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah, I could definitely see herds of ceratopsians driving predators from carcasses, although I'd expect that sort of behavior to be more common during lean seasons, as it does entail some risk.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Indeed, I don't see it being an everyday affair myself, Hogs don't even do that. it causes an interesting thought of if they had not bit it in the end if a few species could have gone the predator root... doubtful, but an interesting possibility...
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I'm a sucker for the weird and wonderful, and this nicely fits into both of them 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yeah - I sometimes shy away from skeletals when I know that someone has done it well already (thought not always, sometimes surprises await), but when another really good specimen is available it always feels like a more useful public service.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very cool stuff as usual. Are the cranial differences between this and the AMNH specimen really that big (or is the classic GSP recontruction of the latter just plain inaccurate)? If memory serves well, the AMNH skull shows a strongly upturned frill and a less deflected, hook-shaped predentary.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'd like to visit them both in person again to see how much more could be attributed to post-mortem distortion, but I think they're fairly different. Some of it can apparently be attributed to ontogenetic stages though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Or perhaps Styracosaurus albertensis and Styracosaurus parksi really are separate species
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Quite possibly. I'm not sure how the stratigraphy works out for those two specimens; it could be another example of an anagenetic lineage as well.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
As if that means anything. If a population becomes distinct from a preceding one in time, and attains some consistent morphological distinction from the one preceding it, then it could be reasonable to recognize this with nomenclature. Anagenesis be damned. This is how you can have a clinal trajectory of distinction from a "origin" to a "result" where the end points are drastically distinct from one another, but the mid points less so. If there is no recovery of the mid points in this trajectory, then we can hedge our bets and argue for nomenclatural distinction. This is different from arguing genetic distinction, much as we continue to argue about using paratoxonomy when we shouldn't on a genetic basis. We are cataloguing two distinct types, potentially. If parksi and albertensis do not necessarily co-occur, but are still each others closest sister taxa, we can approximate this genetic argument with nomenclature and retain the nomenclature applied to it in the past. We merely re-align what we're calling what.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yes...but at higher resolutions we'll have more trouble drawing the line between species. I'm not disagreeing Jaimie, but it IS different from cladogenesis (especially if you're a punk eeker, in which case cladogenesis would actually proceed the sort of changes seen in anagenesis), in that cladogenesis leaves two populations at the same time that cannot interbreed, while apply that definition in anagenesis is very, very difficult without the Back to the Future time machine (built into a semi trailer rather than a sports car) to see what happens when a T. horridus and a T. prorsus get to spend some quality time together.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I agree, then. I just don't like hearing or seeing, especially from some quarters, that it's anagensis NOT cladogensis, when it is clearly the one and the other, just scaling out our perspective and taking the environmental overlap (rather than isolation) of new "species" into account. Using this series of arguments to support or deride nomenclature kinda burns my biscuits, if you know what I mean.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Anagenetic? Sorry, I'm embarrassingly unfamiliar with that term, what does it mean?
I think this version is amazing, but I have a few questions. Is the lower beak really that long and recurved? I don't even recall this skull having been found with the lower jaw. The nose horn is a bit forward-curved, is that speculative or proven? Also I had thought the frill was a bit longer and more vertically-oriented relative to the snout. All the same, great skeletal, remarkably different from any other. I'm tempted to do my own version of this specimen
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Anagenesis is when a population evolves over time without splitting into two new species (i.e., no cladogenic event occurs). For example, stratigraphic correlation is showing that Triceratops prorsus and T. horridus aren't two species that co-existed, but rather that T. horridus is what Triceritops looked like earlier in the Maastrichtian, and T. prorsus is what it looked like late in the Maastrichtian.
As for the skull here: both the rostral and predentary are unknown in this specimen, so they are based on the AMNH specimen. The nose horn definitely curves forward, although only about 60% of it is known. As for the shield, the specimen is somewhat squished, so it's possible that the frill oculd be more upright (I may still alter that at some point), but it's apparently not as upright as the AMNH one (which I presume is what you're thinking of, since I actually illustrated the frill as more upright then in the actual specimen as restored during prep).
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
Anagensis is indistinguishable from a speciation event, merely at high resolution (a referent to time, rather). That's a potentially genetic argument, though. Change occurs, though, and is population-wide. The argument for anagensis is replacement with change, and that occurs identical to speciation, competition, and replacement. It should look virtually the same as anagesis at lower resolution.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Thanks for the info! I suspect S. albertensis is the later form and S. parksi is the early one since it looks more like Centrosaurus nasicornis in horn, snout, and frill shape. Is anyone doing a paper on the stratigraphy of these specimens?
I also suspect Triceratops had a third, basal form ancestral to T. horridus: T. eurycephalus. It's a pretty old specimen, with skull proportions somewhere between T. horridus and Torosaurus. Assuming Triceratops and Torosaurus shared a recent common ancestor, T. eurycephalus appears to be close to that node.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Done in 2007, Ryan et al. (2007) A Revision of the Late Campanian Centrosaurine Ceratopsid Genus Styracosaurus from the Western Interior of North America.
"The synonymy of S. parksi with S. albertensis by Dodson and Currie (1990) was also followed by Dodson et al. (2004). Although neither group of authors provided a justification of their synonymy it is now known that the differences in the squamosal that Brown and Schlaikjer (1937) used to support S. parksi fall within the normal range of variation seen in S. albertensis. Of note is that the quarry of AMNH 7372, long lost, was relocated by Darren Tanke of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in 2006 in the upper portion of the Dinosaur Park Formation (Tanke, pers. com., 2006)."
Though they seem to have a typo, AMNH 7372 instead of AMNH 5372.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very nice work, Scott.
Although nowhere near the biggest ceratopsian this must have been an impressive and magnificent animal.
Spike.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It's big enough that you wouldn't want it to step on your toes
Mostly I was just excited to work on the type since everyone ignores it in favor of the AMNH specimen with the prettier skull. I'm pretty sure there's an off-color joke in there somewhere if someone were to try.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0