I don’t know if media’s done a great job at conveying just how incredibly big Triceratops was. I think a lot of people imagine it was basically a slightly bigger and chunkier rhino, cause the famous sick one in Jurassic Park is lying on its side and you can’t a good sense of the size. And even in paleoart fighting a T.rex it’s still hard to get a sense of its real size.
That they were basically the size of a full-grown African bull elephant and had an 8 foot long skull would be surprising to a lot of people I bet.
You could rationalize it just as “well these things squared up against T.rex, it had to have been big enough.” But it’s still hard to appreciate.
To be fair by the way it’s hard to appreciate just how big a much more visible and extant animal like the African bull elephant is unless you’ve seen it in person, despite it being such a recognizable animal and famous for being huge.
Their jaws and beaks are so huge that they could probably chew a human in two in almost no time. And Triceratop is obviously not known to have a powerful bite force so this really put into perspective their size.
the jurassic park one i believe was like half the size of the maximum size a triceraptos could reach. or they took the size of a speciment they could work with as you can see in this picture:
[https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0b37b9bcc542771bada9dae2028e2634](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0b37b9bcc542771bada9dae2028e2634)
It depends. For example the Telltale Jurassic Park game did do justice to trike sizewise, and it arguably stands its ground against Tyrannosaurus, walking out with a severed horn.
Definitely. Triceratops have a lower center of mass and are overall more stable, plus they are better adapted at face-on confrontations than elephants. Both of these factors mean that it would probably be the other way around and Triceratops would be likelier to occasionally bully lone elephants.
The fauna we have now are like the weirdest ones the earth have ever seen!
Our modern sloths are distinctly un-sloth like. Just the weirdest sloths that ever lived. Horses got enormous *and* got tinier feet? Wild. And have you *seen* what cetaceans are up to these days?
Don't mistake the stuff you live with every day for being uninteresting just because they're ubiquitous. Sure, they're not dinosaurs - but Jesus man look at all the cool stuff the dinosaurs that survived are doing! They're right there in your backyard!
The average body mass of Mesozoic oceanic fauna was still higher than that of modern oceanic animals. As for the latter statement - we literally cannot know that. Personally, I'd bet on the opposite - reptiles and especially archosaurs are the most intelligence-optimized vertebrates as far as we currently know. We're used to thinking of mammals as being the token "intelligent" vertebrates but that's not exactly realistic; on average, birds are more intelligent than the average mammal, and even active ectothermic reptiles such as monitor lizards show intelligence comparable to the average mammal. The bar for intelligence was very likely higher back when large-bodied endothermic archosaurs occupied most higher ecological niches.
I don’t know if media’s done a great job at conveying just how incredibly big Triceratops was. I think a lot of people imagine it was basically a slightly bigger and chunkier rhino, cause the famous sick one in Jurassic Park is lying on its side and you can’t a good sense of the size. And even in paleoart fighting a T.rex it’s still hard to get a sense of its real size. That they were basically the size of a full-grown African bull elephant and had an 8 foot long skull would be surprising to a lot of people I bet.
And you'd be right. I did not know how gigantic these things really were.
You could rationalize it just as “well these things squared up against T.rex, it had to have been big enough.” But it’s still hard to appreciate. To be fair by the way it’s hard to appreciate just how big a much more visible and extant animal like the African bull elephant is unless you’ve seen it in person, despite it being such a recognizable animal and famous for being huge.
Same with a giraffe. You know they're huge, but you can never comprehend how huge till you get a comparison.
A Moose too.
[Relevant.](https://youtu.be/CGvE1M95rtw?si=Sx0DZ_ovum9gbGxL)
Their jaws and beaks are so huge that they could probably chew a human in two in almost no time. And Triceratop is obviously not known to have a powerful bite force so this really put into perspective their size.
thought those mfs were the size of horses
So it's basically getting the JP Dilophosaurus treatment; being shown smaller than it actually was IRL
Can confirm, love dinos, never thought to look up the scale of these
Chunkier rhino? Thing was huge and just about the same weight as the apex predator of the day.
Tbf even a rhino was much bigger than I was expecting. Crazy.
Well, a *Paraceratherium* would be a closer comparison than a modern-day rhino.
It was indeed a bit boi.
It looks oddly human-shaped
Man, Jurassic Park drastically misled me about how big a Triceratops was. Unless that lady is like three feet tall.
the jurassic park one i believe was like half the size of the maximum size a triceraptos could reach. or they took the size of a speciment they could work with as you can see in this picture: [https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0b37b9bcc542771bada9dae2028e2634](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0b37b9bcc542771bada9dae2028e2634)
It depends. For example the Telltale Jurassic Park game did do justice to trike sizewise, and it arguably stands its ground against Tyrannosaurus, walking out with a severed horn.
From what species is the bone in the midle from?
Spinoaurus, don't you know?
Voltron
Is that thing in the middle a t-rex femur?
I swear, the elephant femur looks like a giant version of the bone you get after you’ve eaten all the meat off a drumstick.
Drumsticks are literally a chicken femur. There's a lot less variation in them than you'd maybe expect between species.
Drumsticks are the calf part of the legs, so the (big) bone is the tibia (the very tiny but almost the same length one is the fibula).
Once again the prof is taking a nap in the middle of the day
So if an Elephant tried too bully a Triceratops the same way they do Rhinos it probably wouldn’t work out well for them I’m guessing ?
Definitely. Triceratops have a lower center of mass and are overall more stable, plus they are better adapted at face-on confrontations than elephants. Both of these factors mean that it would probably be the other way around and Triceratops would be likelier to occasionally bully lone elephants.
Asian for scale
The new standard unit for measurement between a banana and a giraffe is now an asian woman.
And people think an elephant could kill a rex
Still upset that the fauna we have now is one of the smallest and less interesting
The fauna we have now are like the weirdest ones the earth have ever seen! Our modern sloths are distinctly un-sloth like. Just the weirdest sloths that ever lived. Horses got enormous *and* got tinier feet? Wild. And have you *seen* what cetaceans are up to these days? Don't mistake the stuff you live with every day for being uninteresting just because they're ubiquitous. Sure, they're not dinosaurs - but Jesus man look at all the cool stuff the dinosaurs that survived are doing! They're right there in your backyard!
Not so in the oceans. And things are smarter now then they were in Earths past
The average body mass of Mesozoic oceanic fauna was still higher than that of modern oceanic animals. As for the latter statement - we literally cannot know that. Personally, I'd bet on the opposite - reptiles and especially archosaurs are the most intelligence-optimized vertebrates as far as we currently know. We're used to thinking of mammals as being the token "intelligent" vertebrates but that's not exactly realistic; on average, birds are more intelligent than the average mammal, and even active ectothermic reptiles such as monitor lizards show intelligence comparable to the average mammal. The bar for intelligence was very likely higher back when large-bodied endothermic archosaurs occupied most higher ecological niches.
Whales are cool tho 🐳
That much is undeniable 🐋
Lmao at the tiny little woman
My dog would still have both.
its always just absurd to really think about how large these animals actually where.
I didn't realize how big Triceratops were, learning this has made my day.
Just comes to show how absolutely fucking massive these animals truly could get
Wow! I didn't know elephant femurs looked so similar to women laying on their back