The following is my translation of an article called: 'Vorwelt-Ungeheuer (Eine Übersicht unserer bisherigen Kenntnisse von den gehörnten Dinosauriern oder Ceratopsian)' von W. Gialf. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1923, Heft 10, Seiten 260-264. Some of the information is naturally out of date. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Trevor Dykes.

Prehistoric monsters (a review of our present knowledge of the horned dinosaurs or ceratopsians) by W. Gialf
The strata of our upper Earth crust, which have been deposited over the course of millions of years in the sea and on land, are like the pages of a rare and very ancient book containing thousands of remarkable and esoteric things and, as many of the symbols have now faded or been destroyed, lots of the pages are blank and valuable information is suddenly interrupted, so as to remain incomplete for all time. As with such ancient volumes only a few parts of the book of the Earth remain legible, and these can lie hidden and completely unknown, and their discovery alone can be a great stroke of luck. Therefore, although we can find an almost unproblematic presentation of the evolutionary history of strange, prehistoric giant reptiles on the next few pages, no reader should forget that a great deal of hard work and sacrifice by researchers has revealed it. Decades of search and excavation, hacking out, interpretation, reconstruction and reassembly, have contributed to reaching this present objective, and Charles M Gilmore, an American academic working on horned dinosaurs, was correct to say that the history of collection alone could fill volumes which would read like novels. And, when one hears that most of these excavations have occurred in places hundreds of kilometres from the nearest railway, in wild, unoccupied locations devoid of roads, so one can imagine what difficulties arose in the recovery of newly discovered reptilian remains; the weight of one single find, which happened 300km distant from the railway, amounted to not less than 3,425kg!

To us in Europe this dinosaur family is all the more strange as all finds have been made in America, and then only in a relatively band along the western side of the Rocky Mountains, stretching from Alberta and Canada in the north to the great ribbon of the Rio Grande to the south.

The history of discovery of horned dinosaurs is a peculiar one which began thus; in the year of 1887 a pair of horns were found in Denver, Colorado, and these were taken to an academic for identification. He declared the horns to belong to an extinct bison, and gave the animal the appropriate name of Bison alticornis. But two years later a completely preserved reptile skull with the same horns was discovered, and they really are very similar to those of a buffalo. No blame can be attached to the researcher for his incorrect interpretation especially as, prior to the second find, nobody knew anything of such strange animals -reptiles with horns. It then became clear that earlier finds of this strange dinosaur species had already been made and, indeed, in the year 1855 and again in 1876. The finders or discoverers then, Dr FV Hayden and Professor Doctor Koop (Sic: Cope), knew that these bones and teeth belonged to animals which were otherwise unknown to science, but they did not know more; they were named Agathaumus and Monoclonius.

Over the course of time may bones, bone fragments and, especially, skulls and skull bones of horned dinosaurs have been found; so that today, despite many gaps, a comprehensive series of development can be explained which, however, then breaks abruptly off before its true end because, in those relevant pages of the book of the history of the Earth, there commenced an impressive oceanic episode providing marine deposits and, naturally enough, that means next to nothing can be read about land animals.

The most obvious elements in the attire of these massive and awe inspiring prehistoric dragons (reptiles), which lived in present day America during the Cretaceous age of around five million years ago, are these very horns, and they provided the name of 'horned dinosaurs', but also the unique neck shields made from extensions of skull bones, which can be found in all manner of forms. The horns partly thrust out from the nose, as with the rhinoceros, but others can be found above the eyes or on the forehead. Both the horns and neck shields had, during this strange story of development, undergone complementary adaptations of form. The illustrations 2 and 3a present two representations from the extreme temporal limits of the lineage, with the geologically old Monoclonius (picture 2) carrying a mighty horn on its nose while the horns on its forehead are hardly noticeable. The neck shield is broken through with openings, so called 'windows'. The situation is completely reversed for Triceratops (picture 3a). The horns on the head are mightily developed, the nose horn has been reduced and the bone of the neck shield is closed. Between these two extremes stand a number of intermediary forms, as we know some with large or small horns curved forwards, backwards or to the sides, but also others with straight horns.

When the animals were alive, the neck shield and horns were covered with a layer of horn, which is shown by various lines of evidence. The horns would therefore have been longer as in our comparative illustration (picture 4b). This depicts the horned toad (Phrynosoma), a still living lizard from the north of Mexico, which has similar horns on the margins of its neck shield, and one of these (the darker coloured one on the right of the drawing) shows the horns are elongated; something similar should be imagined for the horns of the dinosaur.

These horns and neck shields often show clear signs of wounds, scars which deliver much evidence that these animals conducted hard fights among themselves. For example, a Triceratops skull has been found with one horn broken in youth and, when it healed, the remains were blunt and rounded off, whereas the development of the other horn shows the animal reached a high age.

All horned dinosaurs were four-footed. The feet (toes) were encased in hoofs. The wide, compact and round body carried short, strong outgrowths of bone. The short neck was completely covered by the extended neck shield growing from the skull. The tail was relatively short for a dinosaur, and it probably mostly dragged it along the ground. The eyes, well protected by horny rims, lay in deep holes. The teeth were arranged in closed, well filed rows which worked against each other like two blades of a pair of scissors when the jaws opened and closed. Comparisons of the build of the teeth show that horned dinosaurs were plant-eaters. The brain is notably small for such a giant skull, and proportionately smaller than for any other vertebrate known to us.

One even knows something of the skin of horned dinosaurs on account of a number of impressions. These have led to the surprising discovery that the skin pattern of each ceratopsid family is different. It mostly consists of multi-sided, small horn plates which, set against each other, built attractive patterns. Gilmore believes that it may be possible to categorize the horned dinosaurs according to species from such impressions.

Among all the many remains was but one complete skeleton, that of Monoclonius. It was completely encased in the mother stone, and could only be salvaged by chiselling it free.

From the many other single bones of all kinds it was nevertheless possible to reconstruct complete skeletons of Triceratops and Brachyceratops, the only examples of this sort. They stand next to each other in the American National Museum in Washington. These reconstructions are very informative as the small Brachyceratops -it is 180cm long and 68cm high- is one of the youngest representatives, as well as the smallest one found. And it closed this strange chapter of our still poorly researched book of the Earth; after it everything appears blank.

A terrifying monster among these mighty figures is Styracosaurus found by CM Sternberg in the uppermost Cretaceous of Alberta, with a half-metre long horn on its nose. The rim of its perforated neck shield is a semi-circle spiked with six horns, and this makes the skull 1.5m wide and 2m long. This skull is 72 larger than the skull of Phrynosoma, which is next to and increased in size in our picture in order to clearly show the similarities. There is also a comparative animal for Triceratops, a chameleon (Chamaeleon deremensis Matschie) from Usambara (German East Africa). In reality, both the comparisons are dwarfs set against the giants of the very distant past. And although these comparative pictures tell us that, given similar behaviour and conditions, similar forms (in miniature) can still develop today, it is nevertheless a fruitless task to attempt to imagine ourselves in such a strangely populated word.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.