of
seven or even eight feet and about three feet width; the usual length
is five or six feet and the width about three. In the best known
genus, _Triceratops_, the paired horns are long and stout and the
front horn quite short or almost absent, while in _Monoclonius_ these
proportions are reversed, the front horn being long while the paired
horns are rudimentary.

The teeth are in a single row but are broadened out into a wide
grinding surface. The animal was quadrupedal, with short massive limbs
and rounded elephantine feet tipped with hoofs, three in the hind
foot, four in the fore foot, a short massive tail that could hardly
reach the ground, a short broad-barrelled body and a short neck
completely hidden on top and sides by the overhanging bony frill of
the skull. In many respects these animals are suggestive far more than
any other dinosaurs, of the great quadrupeds of Tertiary and modern
times, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, titanotheres and elephants, as in
the horns they suggest the bison. For this reason although less
gigantic than the Brontosaurus or Tyrannosaurus, less grotesque
perhaps, than the Stegosaurus, they are more interesting than any
other dinosaurs. While thus departing far from the earlier type of the
beaked dinosaurs (the Iguanodonts) they are evidently descended from
them.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Skull of _Triceratops_ from the Lance
formation in Wyoming, one-eighteenth natural size. The length of
the horns is 2 feet, 9-1/2 inches. The rostral bone or beak, and
the lower jaw, are lacking; in the illustration on the cover they
have been restored in outline. This fine skull was discovered by
George M. Sternberg, and purchased for the Museum by Mr. Charles
Lanier in 1909.]

TRICERATOPS.

This is the best known of the Horned Dinosaurs, as various skulls and
partial skeletons have been found from which it has been possible to
reconstruct the entire animal. There is a mounted skeleton in the
National Museum, another will shortly be mounted in the American
Museum, and there are skulls in several American and European
museums.

_Triceratops_ exceeded the largest rhinoceroses in bulk, equalling a
fairly large elephant, but with much shorter legs. The great horns
over the eyes projected forward or partly upward; in one of our skulls
they are 33-1/2 inches long. During life they were probably covered
with horn increasing the length by six inches or perhaps a foot. The
ball-like cond