SSS 2009-01-28

（单词翻译）

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.

Triceratops, as the name suggests, were huge dinosaurs² adorned³ with three horns on their heads. Scientists now say those horns may have been a sort of battle bludgeon. Andrew Farke is a curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in California. He became curious about that headgear. Farke and colleagues wanted to investigate whether Triceratops fought each other with their horns. Which posed a problem: obviously, we can’t go back in time to watch the animals interact. So the researchers resorted to some techniques out of a Cretaceous CSI.

They examined more than 400 museums specimens⁴ of Triceratops and another closely related one-horned dinosaur¹ called Centrosaurus. They scanned the skulls⁶ for injuries around where Triceratops might have locked horns and wrestled⁷. Their assumption was that if the horns were just for display, both species would show few scars.

But the Triceratops had 10 times more skull⁵ injuries than their Centrosaurus cousins. The most likely explanation is that they probably jabbed each other in the head while fighting. The researchers published their findings in the journal Public Library of Science ONE. They also caution that the horns could have served more than one purpose—perhaps fighting and flaunting⁸.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.