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The conclusion overturns a century-old belief about Triceratops and Torosaurus representing two different dinosaur species. Triceratops had a three-horned skull with a short frill, compared with the much bigger frill of the three-horned Torosaurus skull that included two large holes.

John Scannella, a paleontologist at Montana State University in Bozeman, investigated the Triceratops mystery alongside famed paleontologist Jack Horner. Their findings appear in a paper published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“Paleontologists are at a disadvantage because we can’t go out into the field and observe a living Triceratops grow up from a baby to an adult,” Scannella said. “We have to put together the story based on fossils. In order to get the complete story, you need to have a large sample of fossils from many individuals representing different growth stages.”

Past confusion makes sense, because young dinosaur skulls changed drastically as the animals grew up, Scannella noted.