Triceratops

Triceratops (three horned face) is a well-armored dinosaur, and one of the last dinosaurs to have ever existed. (According to some palaeontologists, it might be one of the sexes of a different ceratopid dinosaur, Torosaurus, though this is unlikely.)

Triceratops was at least 10 feet (3m) tall, 26-30 feet( 8-9 meters) long, weighed as much as 8 tons, and had a skull up to 2-2.5 meters in length, and was over two and a half meters in height, and also weighing up to 12 tons - something that makes it one of the biggest, if not, the biggest of the horned dinosaurs or ceratopsians.

These dinosaurs also lived in huge herds. If a Triceratops was running towards and you just moved out of the way, you'd gonna feel like you’ve been hit by a train, but a train moving at only 15 miles per hour.

A fully grown Triceratops was far from defenseless. Its frill was made of solid bone and sheathed in keratin. But younger Triceratops know better than to stand their ground. When they fed, these animals weren’t like cows, they didn’t graze. What they did is they were browsers, like black rhinos. They fed on low shrubs.

Like their smaller, Asian cousins Protoceratops, Triceratops had beaks that could snap of branches as thick as a man’s arm. For youngsters to grow to eight tons, they’d have to spend most of their life eating. Triceratops was long thought to look like a giant herbivorous rhino with 3-horns, sprawled forelegs, and a parrot beak. In reality, this wasn't quite the case.

Another part of spending their lives was jousting with one another. That’s what Triceratops did in the wild. Like their relatives Torosaurus, Triceratops obviously had jousting tournaments in nature, even during breeding season, and they injured their frills and necks when they fought.

But regardless of how they lived, fought, and protected themselves, Triceratops were magnificent dinosaurs to say the least.

Unlike most of its relatives, Triceratops lacked the two holes that are covered with skin on its bony frill, allowing it to use it as a shield to its neck as well as using it for display. The front end of its jaws ended in a sort of a beak that enabled the dinosaur to browse the fronds and twigs of the woody plants that were contemporary to the end of the Cretaceous. Its limbs were thick and the hind legs were somewhat longer than the fore, which had a digitigrade posture, i.e. the weight was distributed to its toes, rather than the whole foot.

The three horns of Triceratops were devastating weapons probably could charge like a modern buffalo at a speed of 15 mph or faster thanks to thick powerful legs and its large reinforced skull designed to absorbing impacts. Triceratops would dip its head so that the brow horns faced forward like a lance of jousting knight piercing through vital organs of a T-Rex killing it or the impact of the charge would knock T-Rex off his feet & out cold. The nose horn was probably used as weapon to fight off smaller predators like the raptors, which preyed on Triceratops' young.

Triceratops was one of the most successful dinosaurs ever, it once lived in huge herds of to 30 or even a 100 individuals filling up the plains in North America like modern day bison used to do.

Triceratops was one of the last dinosaurs to go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period 66,086,000 BC.

But regardless of how they lived, fought, and protected themselves, Triceratops were, without a doubt, magnificent to say the least.