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Description

Styracosaurus, standing in the mist. (Photoshop painting)

I used Greg Pauls's skeletal reconstruction, skull images in Ryan et al. (2007), and a muscle diagram by Scott Hartman as references.

I have tried to get the skin to look remotely like that of ceratopsians. Many dinosaur groups show small scales, usually only a few mm in diameter. Ceratopsians, however, have larger scales on average. Most ceratopsian scales are generally a couple of centimetres across, with extra-large feature scales now and again. How frequent the feature scales are, I am not sure. I have put them in loose rows across the animals' back.

The midline feature scales running down the back are based on those described in Brown (1917) for Monoclonius. Unfortunately, I haven't found an image of what they look like; below is the description of them:

''...another specimen, No. 5430, probably this genus, seven dermal plates were preserved, all similar in form, symmetrical and about equal in size. Each is characterized by a narrow, elongate base and a high, median center. They are about an inch wide, an inch and a half long and an inch and a half high. In that specimen the pelvis, a part of the tail, and the hind limbs are preserved and the plates were probably located above the spines in the caudal region similar to those of Ceratosaurus.''

I have also given it square belly scales on the underside, which are known from a specimen of Triceratops. These scales hadn't been properly described at the time of illustrating this image (only in a SVP abstract was available), and I hadn't seen them myself. So, I based them on the brilliant restoration by Lukas Panzarin seen in some of the media exposure for Farke (2009) ceratopsian combat paper.

Description

Styracosaurus, standing in the mist. (Photoshop painting)

I used Greg Pauls's skeletal reconstruction, skull images in Ryan et al. (2007), and a muscle diagram by Scott Hartman as references.

I have tried to get the skin to look remotely like that of ceratopsians. Many dinosaur groups show small scales, usually only a few mm in diameter. Ceratopsians, however, have larger scales on average. Most ceratopsian scales are generally a couple of centimetres across, with extra-large feature scales now and again. How frequent the feature scales are, I am not sure. I have put them in loose rows across the animals' back.

The midline feature scales running down the back are based on those described in Brown (1917) for Monoclonius. Unfortunately, I haven't found an image of what they look like; below is the description of them:

''...another specimen, No. 5430, probably this genus, seven dermal plates were preserved, all similar in form, symmetrical and about equal in size. Each is characterized by a narrow, elongate base and a high, median center. They are about an inch wide, an inch and a half long and an inch and a half high. In that specimen the pelvis, a part of the tail, and the hind limbs are preserved and the plates were probably located above the spines in the caudal region similar to those of Ceratosaurus.''

I have also given it square belly scales on the underside, which are known from a specimen of Triceratops. These scales hadn't been properly described at the time of illustrating this image (only in a SVP abstract was available), and I hadn't seen them myself. So, I based them on the brilliant restoration by Lukas Panzarin seen in some of the media exposure for Farke (2009) ceratopsian combat paper.