Triceratops4

[[image:triceratopsINT.gif width="335" height="322"]] **Triceratops **
 Triceratops is a dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 65 million years ago in what is now North America. It was one of the last dinosaurs to appear before the great mass extinction. It has a large bony frill and three horns on its large four-legged body. A Triceratops is estimated to have reached about 26.0–29.5 feet in length, 9.5–9.8 feet in height, and wade 6.1–12.0 tons (13,000-26,000 pounds). The most distinctive feature is their large skull, among the largest of all land animals. It could grow to be over 7 ft in length, and could reach almost a third of the length of the entire animal. It had a single horn on the snout, above the nostrils, and a pair of horns about 1 m (3 ft) long, with one above each eye. At the back of the skull was a kind of short, bony frill. The frills of Triceratops were pretty solid. The neck ligaments and muscles are connected to the main part of the frill above the opening for the spinal cord.  Triceratops species had a sturdy build, with strong legs and short five-hoofed hands and four-hoofed feet. The posture of these dinosaurs has long been the subject of argument. First, they thought that the front legs of the animal had to be sprawling at angles, to hold the weight of the head. But, evidence in the form of tracks from horned dinosaurs, and recent reconstructions of skeletons seem to show that Triceratops had an upright stance during normal walking, with the elbows slightly bowed out, in an intermediate state between fully upright and fully sprawling. The sedimentary rocks that preserve the bones of Triceratops are typical of the present southeastern Atlantic Coast and the Gulf Coast of the United States.

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// Triceratops as a whole was one of the largest horned dinosaurs ( ceratopsians ). In life, a typical Triceratops probably weighed about 5 tons.// The eye socket was very large, suggesting that sight may have been an important sense to the animal. The eyes were directed to the sides of the animal to widen the field of view. ======  = = 