page_title: Torosaurus
section_title: Discovery and species
hierarchical_section_title: Torosaurus / Discovery and species
caption_attribution_description: Marsh's original illustrations of the skulls of T. latus and its synonym T. gladius.
context_page_description: Torosaurus is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Cretaceous period, between 68 and 66 million years ago, though it is possible that the species range might extend to as far as 69 million years ago. Fossils have been discovered across the Western Interior of North America, from Saskatchewan to southern Texas.
  Torosaurus possessed one of the largest skulls of any known land animal. The frilled skull reached up to 2.77 metres in length. From head to tail, Torosaurus is thought to have measured about 8 to 9 m long and weighed four to six tonnes. Torosaurus is distinguished from the contemporary Triceratops by an elongate frill with large openings, long squamosal bones of the frill with a trough on their upper surface, and the presence of five or more pairs of hornlets on the back of the frill. Torosaurus also lacked the long nose horn seen in Triceratops prorsus, and instead resembled the earlier and more basal Triceratops horridus in having a short nose horn. Three species have been named, Torosaurus latus, T. gladius and T. utahensis. T. gladius is no longer considered a valid species, however.
context_section_description: In 1891, two years after the naming of Triceratops, a pair of ceratopsian skulls with elongated frills bearing holes were found in southeastern Wyoming, Niobrara County, by John Bell Hatcher. Hatcher's employer, paleontologist Professor Othniel Charles Marsh, coined the genus Torosaurus for them.
  The name Torosaurus is frequently translated as "bull lizard" from the Latin noun taurus or Spanish toro but much more likely is derived from the Greek verb τορέω (toreo, "to pierce, perforate"). The allusion is to the fenestrae or ("window-like") holes in the elongated frill, which have traditionally served to distinguish it from the solid frill of Triceratops. Much of the confusion over etymology of the name results from the fact that Marsh never explicitly explained it in his papers.
  Two Torosaurus species have been identified:
  T. latus Marsh, 1891 (type species). Latus means "the wide one" in Latin, in reference to the frill.
  T. utahensis (Gilmore, 1946) Lawson, 1976
  Another species was subsequently regarded as identical to T. latus:
  T. gladius Marsh, 1891. Gladius is "sword" in Latin, in reference to the elongated shape of the squamosal.
  T. latus was based on holotype YPM 1830, a partial skull. The holotype of T. gladius was specimen YPM 1831, a larger skull. Both fossils were found in the Lance Formation, dating from the Maastrichtian. Similar specimens found in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Saskatchewan have since been referred to Torosaurus. Those that can be identified with some certainty include: ANSP 15192, a smaller individual in South Dakota uncovered by Edwin Harris Colbert in 1944; MPM VP6841, a partial skeleton with skull, now mounted at Milwaukee; SMM P97.6.1, a skull lacking the snout; and two partial skulls from the Hell Creek Formation reported in 2002: MOR 981, discovered in 1998, and MOR 1122, from 2001. Fragmentary remains that could possibly be identified with the genus have been found in the Big Bend Region of Texas and in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico. Paleontologists have observed that Torosaurus specimens are uncommon in the fossil record; specimens of Triceratops are much more abundant.
  Torosaurus utahensis was originally described as Arrhinoceratops utahensis by Charles Whitney Gilmore in 1946, based on specimen USNM 15583, a frill fragment from Emery County, Utah. In 1976 it was renamed Torosaurus utahensis by Douglas Lawson. Review by Robert Sullivan et al. in 2005 left it as Torosaurus utahensis and somewhat older than T. latus. In 2008 Rebecca Hunt referred considerable additional material to this species. Research has not yet been published on whether T. utahensis should be regarded as a new genus or, as has been suggested for T. latus, the mature growth stage of some species of Triceratops.
caption: Marsh's original illustrations of the skulls of T. latus and its synonym T. gladius
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