386 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



H. Sternberg to find in the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Alberta, 

 Canada, the most ornate head of one of these animals that has yet 

 been brought to light. The skull of Styracosaurus, as this specimen 

 has been called, is over 6 feet long, with a great horn above the center 

 of the nose that is nearly 20 inches high and 6 inches in diameter at 

 the base. Most striking, however, is the development of the six 

 horn cores that radiate from the rim of the frill, as shown in plate 

 6, left-hand figure, a top view of the head, which at its widest part 

 measures 4^ feet across. The name Styracosaurus is in allusion to 

 these spikelike horns, which must have made this reptile a veritable 

 moving chevaux de frise. 



Among the laity there is the mistaken notion that extinct animals 

 and especially the dinosaurs have a corner on all that is unusual in 

 size and peculiar in form. In size, some of the extinct reptiles, as 

 Brontosaurus and Brachysaurus, were the largest land animals the 

 world has ever known, though in bulk probably none exceeded the 

 present-day whales. In the matter of appearance it must be borne 

 in mind that many of the striking peculiarities of the extinct forms 

 is enhanced by their great size, and that is especially true of Styra- 

 cosaurus, for when contrasted with the skull of the common horned 

 toad (Phrynosoma), which by the way is not a toad at all, but a 

 lizard, a startling resemblance is found in the hornlike decorations of 

 their skulls. Though in size the Styracosaurus skull is 72 times as 

 long as the horned toad, when the latter is enlarged to the same size 

 as the fossil it appears quite as bizarre as the extinct reptile. (See 

 pi. 6.) Again in the dwarf chameleon {Chameleo owenii) from the 

 Kamerun of Africa, a small living reptile possibly 8 inches in 

 length, we find a resemblance to the large-headed Triceratops. It has 

 not only a fairly perfect backwardly projecting frill, but three horns 

 as well, one on the nose and a pair above the eyes, as shown in the 

 accompanying illustration, plate 7. (Compare figs. 1 and 2.) 



The ceratopsians made many attempts to perfect their skeletal 

 organization in order to bring it into harmony with their changing 

 surroundings, and it seems a pity they should have been so suddenly 

 exterminated, but all things have their day, even the horned 

 dinosaurs. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATES. 



Plate 1. 



Restoration of Triceratops. Duck-billed dinosaurs in the distance. This 

 picture also depicts the low, swampy character of the country at the time these, 

 animals lived. From a painting by Charles R. Knight. After Hatcher. 



Plate 2. 



Skeleton of the horned dinosaur (Monoclonius), from the Belly River forma- 

 tion, Upper Cretaceous, of Alberta, Canada. Shown as new exhibited in the 



