Mostly moving. . .

Along with Sarah Werning and Shaena Montanari, I have a new blog over at the PLOS blogs network. We're The Integrative Paleontologists - go check it out! For the most part, I'm going to be moving my activity over that-away from here on out. . .the occasional post outside the domain of TIPs will still land here, though.

Nedoceratops - A Full Description at Last

Every group of animals has at least one notable yet neglected specimen. In horned dinosaurs, a particular example is a large skull at the Smithsonian discovered in Wyoming during the closing years of the 19th century. Unfortunately, this specimen has suffered a twisted and sometimes tragic history.

The skull of Nedoceratops hatcheri, modified from Farke 2011

The collector of the fossil, John Bell Hatcher, wrote a paper about the specimen, but died before he could publish it. So, the task fell upon Yale's Richard Lull, who gave this nearly complete skull the name of Diceratops hatcheri. It looked much like a Triceratops (the famous three-horned face), but differed from the standard "Trike" in having a tiny nose horn, several holes in the frill, and a handful of other characteristics. Later on, other scientists decided that these differences were probably just the result of individual variation, injury, or other illness. So, Diceratops became just another Triceratops to most workers (a 1986 paper by John Ostrom and Peter Wellnhofer was influential in this regard). Still, there wasn't unanimity in that thought - Cathy Forster, for one, published the opinion (in 1996) that Diceratops was indeed distinct from Triceratops.

Nedoceratops hatcheri, as restored by Nobu Tamura.

In 2000, the skull (which was on exhibit at the Smithsonian) was damaged when some rowdy museum visitors crashed through a barricade and broke the snout. Fortunately, the museum's preparators were able to fix it. As if to add insult to injury, it turned out that the name Diceratops wasn't unique. A German entomologist (coincidentally named Förster) had applied the name to an insect way back in 1868, so a new name had to be found for the dinosaur. Unfortunately, this didn't happen in the most organized way. Two researchers independently published the replacement names of Diceratus (in 2008) and Nedoceratops (in 2007). The second one, although less elegant (in my opinion), had priority because it was published first.

But wait - there's more! The story of Nedoceratops took an interesting twist last year, when John Scannella and Jack Horner suggested that it represented a life stage of Triceratops, halfway through its transformation into Torosaurus (see the figure below). This was not an evolutionary transformation, of course, but ontogenetic (one that happened as an individual animal got older). So, our three animals - Triceratops, Nedoceratops, and Torosaurus - were all just the same thing! Such revelations happen frequently in paleontology. For instance, the duck-billed dinosaur Procheneosaurus turned out to be young Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Hypacrosaurus, and the like. But, not all horned dinosaur experts are convinced that this was what was going on with Nedoceratops and Torosaurus.

From left, life restorations of Triceratops, Nedoceratops, and Torosaurus (all modified after originals by Nobu Tamura). The arrows indicate the relative age of each animal, as proposed by Scannella and Horner. If they all are the same thing, Triceratops is the "young" life stage, and Torosaurus is the "old" life stage, with Nedoceratops being a transitional form. The big question: are these the same animal, or different species?

Named, renamed, renamed again, broken, pieced together, and declared invalid, Nedoceratops has had a checkered past. Yet, the skull has never received a fair treatment in the scientific literature. I'm not just talking about people's opinions of the specimen. Instead, I'm talking about a full description.

Descriptions - detailed accounts of a specimen's characteristics - are the data upon which much of paleontology relies. But, the skull of Nedoceratops was never fully described. A few paragraphs have been written about it here or there, but it turns out that many aspects of these were inaccurate or incomplete. Given the controversy over this skull, an accurate and complete description of the animal was particularly important. So, I set out to fix the situation. In my recent PLoS ONE paper, I published the first comprehensive description and illustration of Nedoceratops hatcheri.

At risk of boring you readers with endless details, I'll just mention a few minor points. For instance, it turns out that many of the early drawings of the specimen were inaccurate (missing bone was shown as present, for instance). I was able to correct these errors, and talk about areas of the skull that were well-preserved but never discussed in the literature before. My paper also includes detailed and never-before-published photographs of the skull in various views, which I hope will be useful for folks who can't see the skull first-hand.

Finally, and probably of the broadest interest, I go out on a limb and say that Nedoceratops hatcheri is a unique species - not the same as Triceratops or Torosaurus. In my opinion (and it is but an opinion), there are just too many features that are different between these animals, and few features can be chalked up to injury or growth changes. Will this opinion stand the test of time? Maybe, maybe not. My opinion on the validity of Nedoceratops is probably the most tentative conclusion I've ever published, so my feelings won't be terribly hurt if I turn out to be wrong (although of course, I'd rather be right).

And what about the idea of Triceratops being a junior version of Torosaurus? I argue that Torosaurus and Triceratops are indeed distinct species, not just old and young versions of the same animal. Why is this?

• Triceratops and Torosaurus have vastly different numbers of bony bumps - called epiparietals and episquamosals - on the edges of their frills. If Torosaurus is the younger version of Triceratops, this means that Triceratops added a bunch of these bumps to the frill during growth. Yet, there is no good evidence that any other horned dinosaur did this.
• Triceratops has a solid frill, and Torosaurus has big holes in its frill. In all other horned dinosaurs we know (such as Protoceratops and Centrosaurus), if adults have holes, the young ones have holes. Thus, it doesn't make a lot of sense that Triceratops/Torosaurus would only add these holes when it got really big. [of course, I will admit that just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it couldn't happen - just that it is much less likely]
• It was previously claimed that there were no good examples of "young" Torosaurus. But, a skull at Yale (collected by Hatcher, the same person who discovered the Nedoceratops skull) fits all of the characteristics of a young animal. Its skull sutures are all open, or unfused, and the bone has a smooth texture typical of young dinosaurs. In my mind, this is probably the best evidence that Torosaurus is not a grown-up Triceratops.

Undoubtedly, many other paleontologists will have something to say about these issues. Some will agree, some will disagree, some will show parts of my paper are incorrect, and others will present more supporting data (at least I hope, on all counts). I suspect the next few years will feature much, much more discussion on these fascinating horned dinosaurs!

Coming Up: It is safe to say that I have had more fun with this project than with anything else I've done recently. Why is that? In part, it's been due to some very stimulating discussions with John Scannella and Jack Horner, who recently published the "Toroceratops" hypothesis. See my next post for more!

Citations

Farke, AA (2011) Anatomy and taxonomic status of the chasmosaurine ceratopsid Nedoceratops hatcheri from the Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A. PLoS ONE, 6 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016196

Forster CA (1996) Species resolution in Triceratops: cladistic and morphometric approaches. J Vertebr Paleontol 16: 259–270.

Förster A (1869) Synopsis der Familien und Gattungen der Ichneumonen. Verhandlungen des Naturhistorischen Vereins der Preussischen Rheinlande und Westfalens 25: 135–221.

Hatcher JB (1905) Two new Ceratopsia from the Laramie of Converse County, Wyoming. Am J Sci, series 4 20: 413–422.

Mateus O (2008) Two ornithischian dinosaurs renamed: Microceratops Bohlin, 1953 and Diceratops Lull, 1905. J Paleontol 82: 423.

Ostrom JH, Wellnhofer P (1986) The Munich specimen of Triceratops with a revision of the genus. Zitteliana 14: 111–158.

Scannella JB, Horner JH (2010) Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny. J Vertebr Paleontol 30: 1157–1168.

Ukrainsky AS (2007) A new replacement name for Diceratops Lull, 1905 (Reptilia: Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae). Zoosystematica Rossica 16: 292.

Horned Dinosaurs: When It Rains, It Pours

2010 will surely go down as the annus mirabilis of horned dinosaur research. Between the publications of the horned dinosaur symposium volume (with its myriad new taxa and other exciting pieces of research), a "bagaceratopsid" in Europe, a true ceratopsid in Asia, the hypothesis that Torosaurus and Triceratops are growth stages of the same taxon, and more, it's really tough for a "ceratophile" (to borrow Peter Dodson's term) to keep up!

Today continues the embarrassment of ceratopsian riches. With my co-authors Scott Sampson, Mark Loewen, Cathy Forster, Eric Roberts, Alan Titus, and Josh Smith, I'm pleased to introduce you to Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni (at top and bottom, respectively, in the image at right), freshly published in PLoS ONE. Although it's been a long time coming, our hope is that these new critters will really knock your socks off!

So what's so special about these two animals? Well, for one they're new dinosaurs. And new horned dinosaurs at that. On a broader note, our new critters (along with careful radiometric dating of the Kaiparowits Formation, the rock unit in southern Utah from which they originated) provide important evidence for dinosaur provincialism during the Late Cretaceous. In other words, these big, elephant-sized dinosaurs weren't traveling far. They're the same age as dinosaurs known from much further to the north, yet represent a very different part of the horned dinosaur family tree. This is strange, especially when you consider that today there is only one (or maybe two, depending on whom you ask) elephant species in all of Africa! 75 million years ago, there were three or four closely related species of horned dinosaur living simultaneously on that little strip of beachfront property that comprised western North America. And that's not counting a few more less closely-related horned dinosaurs (centrosaurines) that lived at the same time! Truly weird.

There's been a lot said more eloquently elsewhere about these animals, so I'm just going to close with an answer to the question that should be at the top of many people's minds. Given the possibility that Torosaurus and Triceratops might be growth stages of a single species, how do we know that Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops aren't just growth stages of one species? After all, they lived at the same time in the same place, and end up somewhat close together on the phylogenetic analysis. Well, we certainly haven't done much in the way of histology yet, which would lay the issue completely to rest. However, as readers of the paper will note, we have obvious juveniles (based on sutural fusion and cranial element size) of both species. Although these remain to be published, in my opinion they pretty firmly demonstrate that both species of dinosaur were very different very early on in their development.

So, go read the paper!

Full disclosure: I am a section editor at PLoS ONE, the journal at which this new paper was published. However, I had absolutely no involvement in the handling of the manuscript (assigning the academic editor, selecting reviewers, making a publication decision, etc.).

Image credit: Lukas Panzarin

Citation
Sampson, S., Loewen, M., Farke, A., Roberts, E., Forster, C., Smith, J., & Titus, A. (2010). New horned dinosaurs from Utah provide evidence for intracontinental dinosaur endemism PLoS ONE, 5 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012292

The Award-Winning Open Source Paleontologist

I was pleasantly surprised to learn earlier today that last week's post about pachycephalosaur ontogeny was awarded "Blog Pick of the Month" for October by everyONE, the PLoS ONE community blog. Thanks!

On a related note, check out the following video from UC Berkeley, with a great summary of the research published last week in PLoS ONE: