14 DAY TRIAL // Millions of years ago, head butting was considered the best way to prove your point, paleontologists believe. This was probably because dinosaurs weren't masters of the art of conversation and couldn't talk their way out of a conflict.
According to a paper recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, it is likely that dome-headed dinosaurs butted heads much like bighorn sheep do these days on a regular basis.
Hence the fact that many pachycephalosaurid skulls unearthed by paleontologists show clear signs of head injuries.
Despite being herbivores and fairly small, these dinosaurs were quite vicious when the time came for them to settle squabbles over food, territory and potential mates.
“About 20 percent of the over 100 domes we looked at showed some kind of injury on the surface. Whether they were actually getting these injuries from head butting we can't know, but it definitely fits,” researcher Joseph Peterson says, as cited by Live Science.
By the looks of things, it often happened that head butts led to skin injuries that later became infected. In some cases, the infection would spread to the bone, thus endangering the dinosaur's life.