Abstract
Dinosaurs were a very diverse and evolutionary successful group. Development, longevity and life history are relatively well-documented in all but one major group of dinosaurs: the ceratopsians – the horned dinosaurs, such as the iconic Triceratops. As growth strategies may have played an important role in their evolutionary success and high diversity, a better understanding of growth strategies in ceratopsians is much needed. The national natural history museum of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, excavated two extraordinarily rich Triceratops bonebeds from the Lance Formation of Wyoming, USA. Over one thousand Triceratops bones of at least eight individuals of different age were recovered - an order of magnitude more bones than any other Triceratops site known to date. These bonebeds provide the first high-resolution single-site dataset needed to analyse ontogeny in Triceratops, identify heterochrony, and test hypotheses on ceratopsid cranial development and social behaviour. The present proposal aims for an integrated analysis of the Naturalis Triceratops fossils, by mapping both histological and geochemical analyses against the morphological data and taphonomic context. These analyses should result in a developmental series of Triceratops supported by absolute ages, allowing for the evaluation of traditional relative ontogenetic indicators, including signaling functions in cranial development and bone suture closure regimes, in a comprehensive developmental framework. This will not only provide insight in ‘how Triceratops grew’, but will also help to clear up evolutionary relationships, by testing for the hotly debated ontogenetic synonymy between controversial taxa.
Netherlands