Horridus was a herbivore or plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period (about 145 million to 66 million years ago). Horridus grows to an impressive size with a length of almost 7 meters and a height of more than 2 meters.
The fossil contains more than 260 bones and weighs more than 1,000 kilograms. The skull, which is about 98% complete, ends with two slender horns on the eyebrows and a short horn above the nose.
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The neck tuft stretches 1.5 meters and the skull weighs about 261 kg. The fossil was discovered on private estate in Montana in 2014. Museums Victoria, which operates three state-owned museums in Melbourne, acquired the specimen in 2020.
“The massive Triceratops that died 67 million years ago left an almost complete skeleton, one of the most intact ever found. On display to the public on March 12 at the Melbourne Museum in Australia in the new exhibition “Triceratops: Fate of the Dinosaurs,” said Melbourne Museum Representatives quoted SINDOnews from the Lice Science page, Wednesday (16/3/2022).
When Horridus arrived in Melbourne, the fragments of the fossils found were still dismembered and tucked away in eight chests. Some of them are as big as a car. The fossil makers measured, labeled and scanned each bone before the skeleton was assembled for display.
“Indeed, many articulated Triceratops skeletons have been exhibited around the world, but only Horridus actually came from a single individual,” said Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at Museums Victoria in Australia.
In the museum, Horridus stands in a room with projections illuminating his bones. Scientists can’t say for sure whether Horridus was a boy or a girl.
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However, there is much that can be learned from its complete skeleton, ranging from the evolution, biology, and behavior of Triceratops. “Permanently placed in the Melbourne Museum means this extraordinary fossil will be accessible to science for generations to come,” said Fitzgerald.
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