American Museum of Natural History

This Fossil Friday is a blast from the past! Snapped circa 1959, this photo depicts Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops on display in the Museum’s Hall of Late Dinosaurs. These iconic dinosaurs are still on display at the Museum, but they now sit in separate halls. You can find T. rex in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs—saurischians are characterized by grasping hands, in which the thumb is offset from the other fingers. Triceratops is in the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, which displays dinosaurs that are characterized by a backward-pointing extension of the pubis bone. This bone was thought to have helped support the enormous stomachs that these animals needed to digest masses of tough vegetation!

Photo: Image no. ptc-884 / © AMNH Library

What are the different types of dinosaurs found in the dinosaur family tree? What makes these ancient reptiles different from the lizards and snakes we see today? And what features do they share with the living dinosaurs—birds? Find out in the latest video on our YouTube channel!

Today's Exhibit of the Day is a blast from the past! This archival image, snapped in 1938, depicts Museum preparators sculpting a model Triceratops. This large herbivore could reach lengths of 28 ft (8.5 m). The model pictured here isn't on display today, but Triceratops fans can spot a fossil skeleton in the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs.

Photo: AMNH Library / Image no. 315711

Here's one last Fossil Friday for 2023! Have you ever heard of Centrosaurus apertus? This dinosaur lived during the Late Cretaceous, about 75 million years ago. Unlike Triceratops, it had one large horn over its nose, small horns over the eyes, and a relatively short frill. This specimen was uncovered by famed Museum fossil hunter Barnum Brown in 1914 in the badlands along Canada's Red Deer River. He considered it to be the most complete specimen he had ever found, “in all details from the tip of the tail to the end of the nose.”

This photo was snapped circa 1956—and you can still see Centrosaurus up close in the Museum's Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs! Plan your visit.

Photo: Image no. 324095 / © AMNH Library

This Fossil Friday is a blast from the past! Snapped circa 1988, this photo depicts Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops on display in the Museum’s Hall of Late Dinosaurs. These iconic dinosaurs are still on display at the Museum, but they now sit in separate halls. You can find T. rex in the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs—saurischians are characterized by grasping hands, in which the thumb is offset from the other fingers. Triceratops is in the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, which displays dinosaurs that are characterized by a backward-pointing extension of the pubis bone. This bone was thought to have helped support the enormous stomachs that these animals needed to digest masses of tough vegetation!

Photo: Image no. ptc-3768 / © AMNH

To see T. rex, Triceratops, and other prehistoric animals, plan your visit!⬇️

It’s time for #FossilFriday! In the 1880s, no one had ever seen a fossil from a horned dinosaur, so when paleontologists first examined Triceratops horn fragments, it was thought to be an ancestor of the American bison. Triceratops’ skull measures about 8 feet (2.4 meters) long—almost a third of its body length—yet it was much lighter than it looks. Inside its massive head, its brain was smaller than that of a German shepherd! And in its beak-shaped mouth, Triceratops had between 144 and 160 teeth, which it replaced completely between two and four times over its lifetime. Photo: E. Louis/© AMNH #dinosaurs #triceratops #amnh #naturalhistory #dyk (at American Museum of Natural History) https://www.instagram.com/p/CeE1UVAvaBf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Happy Dinosaurs Day! This 65-million-year-old Triceratops in the Museum’s Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs has a large frill on the back of its skull, two large horns over its eyes, and a smaller horn on its nose. On the side of the skull on display is a partially healed injury, perhaps caused by a conflict with another Triceratops.

A Triceratops horn is the fossilized remains of what was once living bone. When this animal lived, the bone was covered in a material very similar to that in human fingernails. Technically, the term "horn" refers to the hard, thick covering around the bone; the horn was roughly 40 percent larger than the bone. The bone inside the horn is called a horn core.

Learn more: https://goo.gl/n1RyuY

Plant-eating dinosaurs had teeth of various shapes designed for their particular diets. Triceratops, for example, had hundreds of teeth that formed a solid “wall” with sharp ridges. The teeth were used to chop off vegetation. Other plant eaters, such as Anatotitan, had wide flat teeth that they used to grind up tough vegetation. The long-necked dinosaurs, such as Diplodocus, had long pencil-like teeth that they used to rake the leaves off branches. These dinosaurs swallowed the leaves whole. They also ingested small stones, called gastroliths, most likely to grind up the food in their stomachs, much the same way modern birds, such as parakeets and chickens, do today. Learn more on the dinosaurs website.

This Fossil Friday has quite the surprising noggin! Triceratops' horn and frill look heavy, and its skull is about eight feet long—almost a third of its body length—yet it was much lighter than it looks. And its brain, which was smaller than that of a German shepherd, certainly didn't weight it down.

Learn much more about triceratops and other Ornithischian dinosaurs in a tour given by the Museum’s MEEP (Museum Education and Employment Program) Interns earlier today on Facebook Live. Watch the broadcast.

Visiting the Museum? The Explorer app provides turn-by-turn directions from the edge of the universe to the age of the dinosaurs, tons of cool facts, plus the shortest route to restrooms, shops, cafes, and exits. 

Download Museum’s Explorer app, now available in Beta, on the App Store and on Google Play.

It's a Triceratops type of throwback Thursday! 

This photograph, "Girl viewing triceratops skeleton, Cretaceous Hall" was taken in 1959 by Alex J. Rota and Morton Yourow. Today, the Triceratops can be found in the Museum's Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs. 

AMNH/326625