The Atlantic thornyhead (Trachyscorpia cristulata) is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the subfamily Sebastinae, the rockfishes, part of the family Scorpaenidae.

The Atlantic thornyhead was first formally described in 1896 as Scorpaena cristulata by the American ichthyologists George Brown Goode and Tarleton Hoffman Bean with the type locality given as off Georgia.

[3] When the Lithuanian-born American ichthyologist Isaac Ginsburg raised the genus Trachyscorpia he designated S. cristulata as its type species.

[3][5] The specific name cristulata is a diminutive of cristata meaning "tufted" or "crested", Goode and Bean did not explain this allusion but it may refer to the filaments behind nearly all the head spines.

[2] The overall colour is red with brown and white mottling on the head and body and pale blotches on the crown and along the spine.