During an 1873 trip through the western US,
paleontologist and
naturalist Edward Drinker Cope collected some fragmentary dinosaurian material which he soon named as a new genus. Catalogued today as
AMNH FR 3950, the
type material included three
dorsal vertebrae, limb bone material, and what are now known to be
horn cores, from a
subadult individual. Although it was briefly mixed up with
hadrosaurs, and even considered to be a possible synonym of
Trachodon, it was recognized as a horned dinosaur in time for the first
monograph on horned dinosaurs (1907), wherein it was regarded as based on indeterminate material. Today, the name is used as little more than a historical curiosity, as it dates from a time before horned dinosaurs were known to exist. The most recent review listed it as an indeterminate ceratopsid. It has sometimes been listed as a synonym of
Agathaumas, or
Triceratops. ==Paleobiology==