Styracosaurus

Styracosaurus albertensis is a ceratopsian known for its striking frill ornamentation. It possessed four to six long spikes that grew from the back edge of its frill, along with a single nasal horn that could reach over 60 cm in length. Its frill was also moderately windowed, or fenestrated. Smaller horns flanked the lower face on the cheeks. This dinosaur followed the standard centrosaurine body plan: it moved on four legs, was robustly built, and had a parrot-like beak, complex batteries of teeth, and a heavy tail.

It was a medium-sized ceratopsid, measuring between 5 and 5.5 m and weighing around 2 tonnes. Currently, only the type species S. albertensis is recognized as valid. Other species once assigned to the genus, such as S. parksi and S. ovatus, are now classified under Rubeosaurus or treated as synonyms.

Recent phylogenetic studies (Ryan et al. 2007; Holmes et al. 2020) place Styracosaurus within the Centrosaurini. It is grouped with Centrosaurus and Coronosaurus, while species like Pachyrhinosaurus and Achelousaurus sit on a closely related branch.

Styracosaurus inhabited floodplains and coastal environments during the Late Cretaceous. It lived alongside other famous dinosaurs such as Centrosaurus, Lambeosaurus, and the predatory Gorgosaurus. Large-scale bonebeds of related species indicate that centrosaurines lived in massive herds. While Styracosaurus bonebeds have been found, they are typically smaller than the mega-sites associated with Centrosaurus.

The spikes on its frill have been viewed as weapons for defense or combat, as well as structures for display or species recognition. Most researchers now believe their primary roles were display and identification. Healed wounds found on adult skulls are more consistent with frill-pushing contests between rivals of the same species than with attacks from predators.

• NMC 344 — Lambe's holotype, Canadian Museum of Nature.
• AMNH 5372 — well-preserved adult, American Museum of Natural History.
• Multiple Dinosaur Park specimens — Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Species count — S. albertensis is universally accepted; previously named species are mostly placed elsewhere. Frill function — display + species recognition + possible combat. Phylogenetic position — well-resolved within Centrosaurinae.

Styracosaurus is one of the most-recognised non-Triceratops ceratopsians. It appears in Walking with Dinosaurs, Disney's Dinosaur (2000), Prehistoric Planet (2022), and many dinosaur reference works.

• ceratopsia
• triceratops
• centrosaurus
• pachyrhinosaurus
• protoceratops

• Lambe, L. M. (1913). A new genus and species of Ceratopsia from the Belly River Formation of Alberta. Ottawa Naturalist, 27, 109–116.
• Ryan, M. J., et al. (2007). A new pachyrhinosaur-like ceratopsid from the Late Campanian of Alberta. PaleoBios, 27, 1–18.
• Holmes, R. B., et al. (2020). Cranial morphology of Styracosaurus albertensis. Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology, 8, 79–98.
• Dodson, P. (1996). The Horned Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press.