Styracosaurus Characteristics

Styracosaurus measured 18 feet (5.5 metres) in length, 6 feet (1.8 metres) in height and weighed around 3 tons. It had 6 horns extending from a neck frill and a smaller horn above each of its eyes. Their skull was massive, with a large nostril and a tall straight nose horn. Each of the 4 longest frill spines was comparable in length to the nose horn, at 50 to 55 centimetres long. Styracosaurus was quadrupedal and had 4 short, thick legs, a thick, pointed tail and a powerful body and shoulders. Like most ceratopsids, Styracosaurus had large fenestrae (skull openings) in its frill. The front of the mouth had a toothless beak.

Styracosaurus was a herbivore and ate cycads, palms and other prehistoric plants with its tough beak. Ceratopsid teeth, including those of Styracosaurus, were arranged in groups called batteries. Older teeth on top were continually replaced by the teeth underneath them. Unlike hadrosaurids, which also had dental batteries, ceratopsids teeth sliced but did not grind. It was thought that Late Cretaceous ceratopsians may have knocked down angiosperm trees and then sheared off leaves and twigs.

Like other ceratopsians, this dinosaur was most likely to have been a herd animal, traveling in large groups and caring for its young after they hatched from eggs. Evidence of herding behaviour exists in the discovery of a bone bed in Arizona, USA with about 100 Styracosaurus fossils. Styracosaurus may have been a relatively fast dinosaur, perhaps running at up to 20 miles per hour (32 kilometes per hour). Dinosaur speeds are estimated using their morphology (characteristics like leg length and estimated body mass) and fossilized trackways.

When threatened by predators, Styracosaurus may have charged into its enemy like a modern-day rhinoceros does. This would have been a very effective defence. Styracosaurus intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was intermediate among the dinosaurs.

The first fossil remains of Styracosaurus were collected in Alberta, Canada by C.M. Sternberg (from an area now known as Dinosaur Provincial Park, in a formation now called the Dinosaur Park Formation) and named by Lawrence Lambe in 1913.