Hollywood has certainly taken advantage of our fascination with dinosaurs in a range of movies, but those movies have not always played fairly with our ancient friends. Two dinosaurs that have, for better or worse, gotten the wrong reputation from the movies are the well-known Triceratops and the lesser-known Dilophosaurus.
In 1890, O. C. Marsh, one of the first paleontologists, coined the word Ceratopsia (that is, “horned face”) to name a group of large, plant-eating dinosaurs that walked on four legs across their native range of western North America in the Late Cretaceous period, the end of the age of the dinosaurs. Later, it was found that the group had reached further, all the way to Mongolia, the habitat of Protoceratops (the first dinosaur nest ever discovered was of Protoceratops).
The best-known and largest member of the group is Triceratops, whose name means “three-horned face.”
Triceratops was imposing, even compared to other dinosaurs, about thirty feet long. Most amazingly, about a third of the length was made up of its huge skull. Triceratops probably weighed up to eleven or twelve tons. Just the sheer size of Triceratops would have been its major form of protection, besides its thick skin (of which paleontologists have found fossilized impressions) and horns. Actually, many believe that the horns were used for display to other members of its species rather than for protection from enemies.
Damage to many skulls that scientists have found make them believe that Triceratops may have butted heads to establish dominance in their herds, which judging from remains of a number of animals found together, paleontologists believe that Triceratops lived in. It may have responded to attack by charging individually, like a rhinoceros today, or by forming a circle of several members of the Triceratops herd with horns pointed outward, as some horned animals do today.
It was probably one of the last of the dinosaurs to go extinct. Triceratops fossils are among the most abundant of all dinosaur remains.
It may sound strange to say a dinosaur especially a huge, leathery beast with big horns, is loveable, but the creators of The Land Before Time (1988) and its sequels, gave their Triceratops, named Cera, an especially charming personality, even though the evidence is that Triceratops was a big, irascible beast.
Probably no dinosaur is more different from Triceratops than Dilophosaurus (“two-crested lizard”), and yet it, too, suffered misinterpretation at the hands of Hollywood scriptwriters.
Unlike Triceratops, Dilophosuarus was a carnivore that walked on two legs and was one of the earlier dinosaurs. It probably did not weigh over half a ton, and most of its length of some twenty feet was made up of its tail.
Dilophosaurus had two thin, high crests on the top of its head, which may have been used for in courtship or for establishing dominance. With Dilophosaurus and Triceratops, as well as with other dinosaurs, we can only speculate about behaviog.
Dilophosaurus had short arms and walked on its powerful hind legs, with three fingers on its hands and four toes on its hind feet, all carrying sharp claws, with which it killed its prey. The fossils of this dinosaur have been found in North America and China, and trackways (fossilized footprints) of Dilophosaurus have been found in the western United States.
Unlike Triceratops, Dilophosaurus is hardly known except for its role in Jurassic Park (1993), in which it appeared with an extended collar around its neck. That collar is based on the collar of a modern lizard, the frilled lizard, and not on any fossils of Dilophosaurus. Surely Dilophosaurus with its threatening, teeth-filled grin and its strange headgear would have been impressive enough, but it was felt that the collar would make the dinosaur look scarier.
Although Jurassic Park popularized some recent ideas about dinosaurs and The Land Before Time enforced kids’ love of dinosaurs, movies are for entertainment, not education… and perhaps in Hollywood everyone, even a dinosaur, has to wear make-up.
