Painted and sculpted my Eotriceratops sweet pea and my pals lil taco salsa

A human version of my anodontosaurus, Url, in Path of Titans. Featuring my friend Moonie’s (“themoonweaver_creative” on Instagram)’s Eotriceratops, Rikka!

Dinosaur Eotriceratops xerinsularis, of Late Cretaceous, Canada!

While Triceratops is often held as the largest ceratopsian, there are few that are even bigger. One of, if not the largest, of these is Eotriceratops xerinsularis, with a skull length alone of around 3 m (9.8 ft) and an estimated body length of 8.5–9 metres (28–30 ft) and weight of 11 metric tons (12 short tons). It was a close relative of Triceratops, Nedoceratops, and Torosaurus, and looked similar, aside from several anatomical differences in its skull morphology, and of course its massive size. It was also older than the three, and was in fact basal to them, their possible ancestor. The fossil of Eotriceratops was actually first noted by paleontologist Barum Brown in 1910, during an expedition on Dry Island Provincial Park, but it was neglected because he was more interested in finding the Albertosaurus specimens in the area (everybody always seems to care more about the theropods). The fossil sat there and eroded and chipped away until a Royal Tyrrell Museum exhibition in 2001, when it was rediscovered by the group’s cook, Glen Guthrie, by accident.

Eotriceratops xerinsularis is known from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta, Canada. It would have lived alongside other ceratopsians like Anchiceratops, Montanoceratops, and Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus regalis and Saurolophus osborni, ankylosaurs like Anodontosaurus lambei, pachycephalosaurs like Sphaerotholus edmontonense, alvarezsaurids like Albertonykus, dromaeosaurs like Atrociraptor, and ornithomimids like Dromiceiomimus, Ornithomimus, and Struthiomimus. The apex predator of this formation was the aforementioned Albertosaurus, but it was highly unlikely it could have taken on a healthy adult Eotriceratops, and possibly only sick, injured, and young Eotriceratops would have had to fear the tyrannosaurid. Possible additional Eotriceratops specimens, which have been variously included in the species Ojoceratops fowleri and Torosaurus (as T. utahensis), are also known from the same time period, in New Mexico’s Ojo Alamo Formation and Utah’s North Horn Formation (respectively) and may actually belong to Eotriceratops.