horny dinosaurs

[farlow@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU]

Partly to amuse myself, I have just compared Cathy Forster's ID of species
morphs of Triceratops to tentative sex identifications that I made in
1990 in my Paleobiology review of R. McNeill Alexander's little dinosaur
book.  Following work done by Craig Packer on antelopes, where males have
horns with stouter basal areas than do females of the same species, I
plotted horn basal area against skull length in specimens of Triceratops.
Sexist swine that I am, I tentatively IDed the specimens with relatively
stouter horns as laddies, and those with more gracile horns as lassies.
Here is what happens if you compare my sex IDs with Cathaceratops' species
IDs:

Specimen               Forster species        Farlow sex
BSP 1964                 prorsus                female
YPM 1822                 prorsus                male

USNM 1201                horridus               male
USNM 2100                horridus               male
USNM 4928                horridus               male
YPM 1820                 horridus               female
YPM 1821                 horridus               female
YPM 1823                 horridus               female


Thus for those specimens which Cathy IDed to species, and I IDed to sex,
there is EXACTLY a 1:1 ratio of putative males to females.

I don't know if it MEANS anything, but it's cute.