Review : Journey round the horns

14 December 1996


The Horned Dinosaurs: A Natural History by Peter Dodson,
Princeton University Press, £23/$35, ISBN 0 691 02882 4

CERATOPSIAN (more correctly, ceratopian) or horned dinosaurs are the
quintessential dinosaur. I seriously doubt that there is anybody reading this
who has not at least heard of one of their most notable representatives:
Triceratops. This group of dinosaurs are among the most spectacular and
bizarre examples of the clan—quite a claim, given how strange and
enigmatic most dinosaurs appear to the casual observer.

But there is no denying the bizarre appearance of the plant-eater whose skull
alone can be 2 metres long and combines a huge, hooked, eagle-like beak, with
adornments such as various sharply pointed horns (a metre or more long) topped
off by a huge frill, like an overgrown Elizabethan ruff, all of which are stuck
on the front of a stout, rhinoceros-shaped body that can stretch to 9


Indeed, as Peter Dodson relates, this odd combination of features, exhibited
by the small Asian ceratopian Protoceratops, could conceivably be the
source of the legend of the griffin. Beautifully articulated, upright, white
skeletons of Protoceratops have been weathering out of the soft, red
sandstones of the Gobi Desert for countless centuries. Is it any wonder that
legends of griffins, the wilderness-dwelling guardians of gold hoards, derive
from tribespeople and travellers from Asia? Aeschylus (460 BC) called them
“silent hounds with beaks”.

So why devote a whole book to Ceratopians when they already feature in all
compilations on dinosaurs? Is this justified? Does Peter Dodson have anything
new to say? Dodson’s credentials are impeccable: he is a professor of anatomy at
the University of Pennsylvania and the coeditor of a vast technical manual on
the Dinosauria, published in 1990. He is also arguably the leading authority on
horned dinosaurs and is undeniably passionate about them, so there is nobody
better placed to write such a book.

However, I think a book on one group of dinosaurs can be justified—
after all, modern biologists and natural historians devote entire books to
restricted subjects such as sharks, lions, whales, bears or canaries.

And palaeobiology is coming into its own within the natural sciences. So the
prospect of books on the natural history of specific groups of extinct animals
is a challenge. A writer has to lay bare the processes by which we deduce the
biology and way of life of remote and completely extinct forms of life when
there are no significant living counterparts to fall back on. This is a far
harder task than that of dealing with prehistoric subjects such as mammoths,
sabre-toothed cats and human ancestors, all of which have living counterparts
which can help when interpreting scenarios of biology and ecology. There are no
such counterparts for the ceratopians. Their ecology, behaviour and physiology
all have to be inferred indirectly by palaeobiological research programmes. So
how does Dodson try to meet this challenge?

The Horned Dinosaurs is split into nine chapters, plus a copious
section devoted to supplemental notes and references. As a taster, Dodson
outlines the general history of the discovery and recognition of these dinosaurs
and describes some of the overviews of behaviour and lifestyle which have been
applied to them. He devotes a chapter purely to anatomy—rather a bold
step, but helped by the full-scale cast of a ceratopian dinosaur (
Chasmosaurus) he carefully reconstructed in his living room. Though a neat
textual device, well-written and illustrated, I fear that this will be pretty
heavy going for general readers—and probably skipped by all but the most

Next Dodson deals in enormous detail with the main—and most
impressive—ceratopians: Triceratops and its allies, the
chasmosaurines; and Monoclonius and its allies, the centrosaurines. The
cataloguing of discoveries dominates these chapters—times, dates and
people involved in the discovery of all the main genera and species are
itemised. The tone is lightened by an overview of the biology of these animals,
particularly the centrosaurines. (Dodson has been involved in the matter of
resolving the taxonomy of the centrosaurines, and eliminating the problems
created by sexual dimorphism.)

He then turns to the less elaborately adorned and mostly smaller types of
ceratopian, of which Protoceratops is a notable example, as well as the
unusual small, bipedal forms such as Psittacosaurus and
Microceratops. Again, details of the sequence of discoveries are profuse
and well illustrated, and Dodson’s own work on the biometry of
Protoceratops helps to illuminate the problems encountered by
palaeobiologists when they are trying to distinguish between male and female
members of extinct species. He also covers the recent discoveries from Mongolia,
which have shown that many of the nests of eggs previously assigned to
Protoceratops are now more likely to be associated with the unusual
theropod Oviraptor, the animal that was always portrayed as stealing
the eggs of the unfortunate Protoceratops.

Dodson then turns to the evolutionary relationships between the ceratopians
generally, and interpretations of their ways of life. He outlines the history of
ideas concerning ceratopian descent, as well as more recent approaches to the
subject, specifically in relation to cladistic analyses and his own attempts to
rationalise the cladistic patterns suggested in recent years. This section seems
to be directed at his peers, rather than at the general audience to which the
book seems, for the most part, to be aimed.

Not until the final chapter (only 20 pages long), do we reach the rather
delayed “meat” of the book, the natural history of the horned dinosaurs. Dodson
examines evidence of herding from mass-mortality discoveries (bonebeds), feeding
mechanisms and possible dietary preferences, the stance and gait of these
animals (whether they could charge about the landscape at great speeds, as often
indicated in purely artistic reconstructions inspired by the opinions of Robert
Bakker). Anatomical and trackway evidence would seem to point to a more sober,
lumbering gait, with the forelimbs somewhat akimbo and a consequently less
dashing image for ceratopians generally (except for the smaller and either
lightweight or bipedal forms). The anatomy of running vertebrates is contrasted
with that of ceratopians and in all respects supports a lumbering, ambulatory
gait. Finally, Dodson almost apologetically ends up favouring a gradual,
long-term decline in ceratopian diversity rather than the cataclysmic end that
is preferred by almost all palaeobiologists at present.

In all, this book proved a little disappointing. The text is well-written by
an obvious enthusiast and aficionado of ceratopians. And the illustrations are
pleasingly chosen, mixing original lithographs, lino-cuts and pen-and-ink
drawings with more modern reconstructions and paintings. The book is nicely put
together. But I do not think that Dodson has succeeded in presenting a genuine
natural history of his beloved horned dinosaurs. I expected far more about the
natural history of these animals, and greater emphasis on the scientific process
of unravelling their biology than Dodson has been prepared to offer. This is an
excellent historical review of the discovery and study of ceratopian dinosaurs
and should be judged as that, but I don’t think that it qualifies as a natural
history of these animals. It will be of interest to the general reader,
especially all those dinosaurophiles out there, but I can’t help feeling a
little bit cheated: I know Dodson well, and know that there is so much more he
could have told us.