Introduction and Overview
Torosaurus -- the "pierced lizard" -- has been the target of several investigations at the dawn of the 21st century (see key citations below for a few of the relevant papers as well as some important previous descriptions of Torosaurus). The holotype specimens for Torosaurus latus (YPM 1830) and its junior synonym Torosaurus gladius (YPM 1831) are both housed at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History (YPM) in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, and have been integral to many discussions about this animal.
In March 2000, I spent several days at the YPM taking detailed notes on the Yale specimens. This file contains scans of the original notes, which I am releasing as a service to the community. My hope is that the data will be of at least some use to others interested in these enigmatic horned dinosaurs, as well as an encouragement for other paleontologists to distribute their own museum notes.
Disclaimer
The sketches, measurements, and notes are all my personal work and interpretations. These data are thus presented "as is", and users should be appropriately cautious when relying upon my notes for their own research. Although I strive to be accurate, inadvertent mistakes or inaccuracies are possible. In the end, there is no substitute for personal examination of a specimen in order to answer some questions.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Mary Ann Turner (YPM) for facilitating access to the specimens, and to Museum of the Rockies for support of the original research trip.
Key Citations
Colbert EH, Bump JD (1947) A skull of Torosaurus from South Dakota and a revision of the genus. Proc Acad Nat Sci Phila 99: 93-106.
Farke AA (2006) Cranial osteology and phylogenetic relationships of the chamosaurine ceratopsid, Torosaurus latus. In: Carpenter K, editor. Horns and Beaks: Ceratopsian and Ornithopod Dinosaurs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 235-257.
Farke AA (2011) Anatomy and taxonomic status of the chasmosaurine ceratopsid Nedoceratops hatcheri from the Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A. PLoS ONE 6: e16196.
Hatcher JB, Marsh OC, Lull RS (1907) The Ceratopsia. US Geol Surv Monogr 49: 1-300.
Longrich NR, Field DJ (2012) Torosaurus is not Triceratops: ontogeny in chasmosaurine ceratopsids as a case study in dinosaur taxonomy. PLoS ONE 7(2): e32623.
Lull RS (1933) A revision of the Ceratopsia or horned dinosaurs. Yale Peabody Mus Memoir 3: 1-175.
Marsh OC (1891) Notice of new vertebrate fossils. American Journal of Science, Series 3 42: 265-269.
Scannella J, Horner JR (2010) Torosaurus Marsh, 1891 is Triceratops, Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 30: 1157-1168.
Scannella JB, Horner JR (2011) `Nedoceratops': an example of a transitional morphology. PLoS ONE 6: e28705.
How to Cite This
Some aspects of these notes were incorporated into a previous publication (Farke, 2006), and you may wish to cite that if the data were included there. Otherwise, I do request that you cite these notes through reference to the appropriate page on figshare.com, or another appropriate link if figshare.com is not available at some point in the future.
License:
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
This version of the document was assembled and uploaded on March 2, 2012
