Triceratops Bone, from The Lance Formation, Weston Country, Wyoming, USA (No.99)

The name Triceratops means "three-horned face” (it was named by the famous America dinosaur hunter, Othniel C. Marsh, in 1889). Triceratops was herbivore, which grazed in large herds throughout western North America at the very end of the Late Cretaceous Period.

It was the largest and heaviest member of the dinosaur family called Ceratopidae, which were four-legged dinosaurs with sharp horns growing from massive heads. Ceratopsians grew bony frills from the base of the skull to guard their necks from attack. A fully grown male Triceratops would have weighed more than one of the largest of today’s African elephants.

The Triceratops had to be able to defend itself from attacks by the large two-legged predators that hunted in North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, such as Tyrannosaurs (T-REX).

Triceratops’s best weapons in defence were it’s long brow horns, which could be at least 1 metre (3 feet long). Using it’s powerful neck muscles and thick, pillar-like legs to thrust with these horns, Triceratops would have been able to cause a lot of damage to an attacker. It’s third, shorter horn was thicker than the brow horns and placed towards the end of it’s nose.