No I Did Not Mean Triceratops, I Meant Ceratops

Recently, the folks over at the Best Western Denver Southwest purchased yet another fossil cast for their amazing hotel!*  This time, the cast is of a skull nicknamed "Judith," a specimen that is referred by some paleontologists to the dinosaur genus Ceratops.  And, no, I didn't mean to say Triceratops.  Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Ceratops montanus: as a matter of fact, I hadn't really heard of it either until several weeks ago, when Greg Tally informed me that the Morrison Natural History Museum would soon be receiving a very large box in the mail!  Judith is still in the Cretaceous Room here at the MNHM, where she will stay for at least a few more weeks.  I really didn't know much at all about this dinosaur, and was eager to learn more.  Unfortunately, there's not much out there, as Ceratops is based on just a few bones that were discovered in the late 1800s.  Despite the lack of material, Ceratops does have a pretty fascinating history, and is an incredibly important dinosaur; not because of what has been discovered about the fossils themselves, so much as what these fossils resulted in.

Greg Tally peers through one of the fenestrae (literally means "window" in Latin) in the skull of Judith, the Ceratops montanus skull for the hotel that is temporarily on display at the Morrison Museum.  Photo Credit: Greg and Meredith Tally

When it comes to giving an animal or a group of animals a scientific classification, there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through, and a bunch of rules you have to follow.  Sometimes, groups of animals are named after the best known and understood animal in that group.  For example, Stegosaurus is the genus of dinosaur that defined the group of animals called the stegosaurs, and Tyrannosaurus is the genus of dinosaur that defined the group of animals called the tyrannosaurs.  Sometimes, it isn't quite as simple.  Think about it this way: Las Vegas is easily the most famous city in Nevada, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who spent a significant portion of their childhood thinking that Las Vegas was the capital of Nevada.  However, it is Carson City that holds the official title of capital.  Even though Las Vegas receives much more attention than Carson City, the state of Nevada isn't simply going to change where its capital is, and to the best of my knowledge, a change like that never really happens.

Although that comparison was a bit of a stretch and had about as many holes as the skull of Chasmosaurus, I think you get my point.  The same thing goes for scientific names.  Although Triceratops is the best known individual of the dinosaurian group called the ceratopsians, this group is still called the ceratopsians, as opposed to being called the triceratopsians.  That's because it was Ceratops, and not Triceratops, that was described by scientists first.

Ceratops montanus, temporarily on display at the Morrison Natural History Museum.  Photo Credit: Greg and Meredith Tally

The year was 1888, and paleontology in western North America was still going strong.  We've talked about the Bone Wars between paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope before, and we are going to revisit Marsh in this post.  To maximize the number of fossils he could describe, Marsh called upon the talents of a large number of fossil collectors, including the always brilliant Arthur Lakes in Morrison, Colorado.  Another of these collectors was a man named John Bell Hatcher.  Although Hatcher should also be remembered for a large number of his contributions to paleontology, for our purposes here we remember Hatcher as the man who discovered Ceratops.  On a trip to a known dinosaur fossil site near the Judith River in Montana, Hatcher discovered a number of fossils.  One of these fossil discoveries was composed only of a pair of horn cores.

Doesn't sound like much, does it?  Well, truth be told, it wasn't, though it was enough for Marsh to realize that he had something new.  If you click HERE, you can view the two page paper that Marsh published in 1888 that briefly described this new discovery as an animal called "Ceratops montanus."  There are several things of interest that we should take away from this paper, some of which are:

1. Marsh originally suspected that this new creature was "nearly allied to Stegosaurus of the Jurassic, but differs especially in having had a pair of large horns on the upper part of the head."  Marsh got the location of the horns right, but the close relation to Stegosaurus.....not so much.  Given the enormously tiny sampling of bones he had to work with though, it's not a surprise that Marsh compared this new animal to something that he already knew a good deal about.  Keep in mind that this is the very first scientific description of a ceratopsian dinosaur, so Marsh just had to go off of what had already been discovered.  Which was nothing.
2. Marsh notes that the "position and direction" of the horns could be likened to the enormous Meiolania, an extinct turtle from Australia, as well as the lizards in the genus Phrynosomax, the horned lizards.  He also notes that amongst the dinosaurs, the "only known example of a similar structure....is the single median horn-core on the nasals of Ceratosaurus," a mid-sized theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation.   
3. In 1887, the year before this paper was published, geologist Whitman Cross sent Marsh a pair of horn cores about two feet in length and six inches across at their widest point.  Discovered right smack dab in the middle of where Denver, Colorado is today, Cross relayed to Marsh that they had been discovered in beds of Cretaceous rock.  Marsh, however, decided that these horns must have belonged to some sort of enormous bison, and gave the horns the name "Bison alticornis."  Perhaps Marsh was still suffering from the misconception that the 1887 discovery was, indeed, an enormous extinct bison, as these 1887 Denver horn cores are not mentioned in the brief Ceratops paper.  It is mentioned, however, that if the horns were discovered "detached," their "resemblance in form and position of the posterior horn-cores to those of some of the ungulate mammals is very striking," and the horns would "naturally be referred to that group."  I have no evidence to support my hypothesis, but I wonder whether this comparison to the mammalian ungulates is insurance on the part of Marsh, as perhaps at this point he had recognized the true nature of the 1887 horn cores.  This is pure conjecture on my part, and is mostly irrelevant anyways, as in 1889 Marsh recognized the dinosaurian nature of the Denver cores, and referred them to the genus Ceratops.  Today, these horn cores are regarded as belonging to Triceratops.
4. Marsh mentions that several limb bones, vertebrae, and teeth were also found in the Ceratops horizon, as well as several bits of dermal armor, and states that he believes they also belonged to Ceratops.  Whether this is true or not I do not know, but what I do know to be false is Marsh's next sentence, in which he states that the bones "indicate a close affinity with Stegosaurus, which was probably the Jurassic ancestor of Ceratops."  The specimen is housed in the Smithsonian today, under the catalogue number USNM 2411.  A search through the online records of the Smithosonian shows that 2411 consists only of a partial skull, which seems to be consistent with what I've read in other sources.  I'm not sure whether these other skeletal elements mentioned above have found a definitive dinosaurian home, or whether their true owner is uncertain.  
5. The final paragraph is, in my opinion, inarguably the most important.  The paragraph reads as follows: "The remains at present referred to this genus, while resembling Stegosaurus in various important characters, appear to represent a distinct and highly specialized family, that may be called the Ceratopsidae."  In this paragraph, Marsh has created the group of dinosaurs that, more colloquially, we refer to as the ceratopsians.  Or, more colloquially than that, "those dinosaurs that look like Triceratops with those horns."

Ceratops was discovered in what scientists now call the Judith River Formation.  Several other ceratopsians have been discovered in this formation, and due to the small amount and fragmentary nature of the material that was originally described as Ceratops, most paleontologists consider the dinosaur to be a nomen dubium.  Nomen dubium pretty much means that the material is too fragmentary for it to be diagnostic, and can't really be used in the future to determine whether new specimens are the same as the original or not.  Whether or not the newly discovered Judith specimen currently on display at the Morrison Museum is, indeed, Ceratops is still up in the air, as the paper has not been published yet.  Almost all of my Ceratops knowledge is out on the table for all to see, so I am not going to speculate or attempt to draw conclusions about something that I don't really know enough about to have an informed opinion on.  Guess we will just have to wait and see!  In the meantime, come on by the Morrison Natural History Museum and the Best Western Denver Southwest to see Judith, and much more!

*If you've been living underground amongst worms and fossils for the last few months, you might not have heard of the hotel, so you can check out some incredible pictures of the best Best Western by clicking HERE and HERE.

Works Cited:

23 Fact Tuesdays: Ceratosaurus, Octopi, Aye-aye, and More!

Introducing:  23 Fact Tuesdays!  I'm thinking that (possibly) each week, we can look at twenty-three different groups of....things....and we can learn a fun fact about them each week!  Many of these topics feature North America, as that is where both I and most of my readers reside, but other topics include penguins, fossil horses, fossil mammals, early humans, various fish and birds, dinosaurs, and many more!
Here they are!

Don't want to read all twenty-three!  Well, in my opinion, the best ones are 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 19!  Enjoy!

1.  Alaskan Mammals:  The Sitka black-tailed deer will graze on beach plants like dune grass and kelp during the lean season.

2.  Alaskan Fish:  The whitefish may fast for eight or nine months during the lean season, surviving off of their stored fat.

3.  Dinosaurs:  In 1883, Ceratosaurus was the first large meat eating, or Theropod, dinosaur skeleton that was discovered more than half complete.  The first skeleton was discovered in Colorado.

4.  Dinosaurian Contemporaries:  Lagosuchus was either the direct ancestor, or a close relative of the ancestor, of the dinosaurs.

5.  North American Birds of Prey:  The robin-sized American Kestrel is not only the smallest hawk in North America, but it is also the most common.

6.  Tideland Treasures of South Carolina:  The palmetto, which is the state tree of South Carolina, can live for 75 years, and grow to a height of 60 feet, with a 1 or 2 foot diameter.

7.  North American Mammals:  The least chipmunk, besides eating the usual rodent foods like nuts, will also dine on insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

8.  North American Hoofed and Marine Mammals:  The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales.

9.  North American Birds:  The common goldeneye will often take over abandoned woodpecker nests.

10.  Fossil Mammals:  Despite the fact that primates no longer live in North America, many paleontologists think that they either evolved there or in Asia.

11.  Penguins:  Despite the fact that most people think of penguins living in cold, snowy climates, the king penguin typically forms colonies in the shelter of dense tussock grass.

12.  Fossil Horses:  One species of Hypohippus, H. osborni, had weak and infrequently used side toes.  Although not very exciting sounding, this is an important step from multi-toed horse ancestors to the one-toed horses that we know today. 

13.  Dinosaurs....Again!:  Ornithomimus, one of the "ostrich-dinosaurs," lived both in the states of Colorado and Montana, but also in the country of Tibet.

14.  Extreme Abilities:  In order to protect itself from various predators and to hunt its various prey, the amazing Indo-Malayan octopus can mimic an enormous variety of different animals, including flounder, sea snakes, crinoids, jellyfish, lionfish, hermit crabs, stingrays, brittlestars, stomatopods, and sea anemones, amongst many others.

15.  Extreme Movement:  Although this dude looks like a worm or something, the caecilian is actually a close relative of newts and salamanders.  It lives strictly underground, and is rarely seen, despite the fact that they can grow up to five feet long.

16.  Extreme Growth:  The ostrich is a serious record breaker amongst birds.  Not only does it when the tallest bird and heaviest bird awards, but it also is the fastest runner, has the biggest egg, and has the largest eyes.  In fact, the smallest bird on the planet, the tiny little bee hummingbird, could easily fit inside the eye of the ostrich!

 17.  Extreme Families:  The "Biggest Nest of Any Bird" Award goes to the orange-footed megapode, or the scrubfowl.  Although these nests are just on the ground (the biggest nests in trees are built by bald eagles), they are still very, very impressive.  On average, these nests can be 11.5 feet wide and 39 feet tall!  The biggest ever recorded, however, was a whopping 164 feet wide!

18.   Remarkable Mammals:  The aye-aye, possibly one of the creepiest looking animals in the natural world, is a type of lemur whose large incisor teeth grow continuously.

19.  Remarkable Birds:  Once thought to be the missing link between reptiles and birds, the South American Hoatzin hatches out of its egg with claws on its wing greatly resembling those of the ancient Late Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx.  These wing claws are not often, and maybe even never, found on birds today, with the obvious exception of the baby Hoatzin.  As the Hoatzin grows, its wing claws disappear.  

20.  Remarkable Fish:  The electric eel can discharge fifty volts from its body.

21.  Remarkable Reptiles and Amphibians:  The Cuban tree boa will position itself in small apertures in caves, striking with deadly accuracy at bats that fly out of the cave.  Remarkably, the snake will do this in complete darkness, somehow sensing where the bats are.

22.  Prehistoric Animals:  Like Lagosuchus, Effigia is another possible relative of the dinosaurs.

23.  The Evolution of Humans:  Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have been the last common ancestor between the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and us humans, Homo sapiens.