Horned Dinosaurs May Have Used Their Frills to Flirt
Fancy headwear was for lovers, not fighters, a fossil analysis suggests.
A new study suggest that relatives of Triceratops may have intimidated rivals and scored mates with their frilly headwear.
The findings are the latest in a long-running controversy over why ceratopsians—the dinosaur group containing Triceratops—lugged around massive, bony frills on their heads. The puzzle has sparked nearly as many explanations as there are fossils, such as the now-discredited notions that they acted as defensive armor, or even as temperature-regulating radiators.
“Ceratopsians are a real sod,” says David Hone of the Queen Mary University of London, lead author of the study, published January 14 in Palaeontologia Electronica. “Almost every hypothesis for their frills and horns is plausible in maybe a couple of species.”
Hone and his colleagues’ efforts to demystify the frill
