Jan. 28, 2009 -- Locking horns, whether for land or love, is a time-honored tradition in the modern-day animal kingdom. But according to new research, antelope and sheep are hardly innovators; pairs of mighty Triceratops were squaring off almost 70 million years ago, spearing each other with their four-foot-long horns in bone-cracking bouts.
Watch video of Triceratops at battle.
Andrew Farke of the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, Calif., and a team of researchers analyzed 400 skull bones from 50 different Triceratops skeletons and compared the number of injuries with injuries to the skulls of Centrosaurus, their single-horned cousins.
The three-horned beasts had 10 times as many gashes and healed breaks in their bony frills compared to Centrosaurus, indicating a taste for combat. But the question remains: why?
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In modern animals, males often fight over the right to reproduce. But there is also usually a discrepancy between males and females, with males sporting much larger antlers or horns. As far as dinosaur-hunters can tell, there is no difference in horns between the sexes in Triceratops.
The animals could have been fiercely territorial, too -- most of their skeletons have been found alone, indicating they were not herders.
"It's important to note that we're not saying the only thing Triceratops would use its horns for is fighting," Farke said.
"They probably served a variety of functions, like regulating their body temperature, or for display," he added.
Still, there's other evidence the animals liked to mix it up with each other. Triceratops' bony frills were thicker than Centrosaurus and their hornless cousin, Protoceratops. Triceratops also had a thick rim of bone over its eye that meant it couldn't see very well in front, but was probably needed for protection.
Michael Ryan of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History said mating and display were just part of the equation -- the horns must have served as defense from antiquity's greatest predator, Tyrannosaurus Rex. Though he agreed Triceratops probably did fight amongst themselves, some of the wounds Farke observed probably came from T. Rex attacks.
"As the biggest meat eater around, a full-grown adult T. Rex had only one option to feed itself; the largest prey, Triceratops," Ryan said. "It's clear that these animals came in contact."
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