Chasmosaurus: Ceratopsian Dinosaur on Display

Описание: A pretty face shotta on #CeratopsianSunday
(Shotta = armed gangster for those my age🤣)

Chasmosaurus, “Opening Lizard” (Lambe, 1914) didn’t start off as #Chasmosaurus. The () around Lambe indicates something has changed from it’s originally given name.

Lambe in i1902 referred material to a new species of #Monoclonius, M. belli. Hatcher in 1905 referred that material to a new genus, making #Ceratops belli.

Lambe re-searched and studied new material, where he realized it was a “new-new” (my term, not his) genus and dubbed it #Protorosaurus in 1914, only to later discover that name was taken. Doh! This led him to naming it Chasmosaurus. Par for the early 1900s.

Chasmosaurus is a ~15’ long, ~2 ton #ceratopsian #dinosaur. It gives its name to one of the two great groupings of ceratopsians, the #chasmosaurs. The other group is the #centrosaurs.

The #chasomosaurs have long shields typically lacking spines and fancy adornments. They usually have the “classic” three horned face, with two large horns over the eyes and one over the nose.

Chasmosaurus lived in the Late #Cretaceous (~77 mya) of Alberta, Canada. What I find fascinating about this specimen is you can see it has a largish nose horn but I don’t see brow horns. Possibly they didn’t preserve?

Note the large fenestrae (windows) in the shield. I’m not sure how defensive those would be in stopping teeth from the local #tyrannosaurid.

Those holes were likely covered by skin/scales and, as such, would have made neat display space to advertise they were dangerous, looking for a mate, or both. Especially if they could flush blood to that area.

This could also help them thermoregulate, like an elephant’s ears. Though the “wiggle” to move high volumes of air would require moving the head vigorously side to side or use the 4/40 method of cooling, the same as my first car had: 4 windows down and 40 mph :-). No, it likely couldn’t hit 40 mph, but it could probably move surprisingly quickly for short distances. 0-impact speeds were important, hahaha! Ramming speed guesses, anyone?

This specimen is at the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah.

#FossilCrates