‘Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior’ unearths paleontology’s biases

Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior
David Hone
Princeton Univ., $29.ninety five

In 1971, paleontologists stumbled upon the remains of an eighty-million-year-old battle in the sandstones of Mongolia’s Gobi Barren region. Dubbed the “Battling Dinosaurs,” the fossilized scene shows a carnivorous Velociraptor locked in a deadly embrace with an herbivorous Protoceratops. The turkey-sized predator had embedded its famed foot claw into its combatant’s neck. The downed plant eater had chomped onto and broken its attacker’s arm.

For some researchers, the remains all but confirmed that Protoceratops served as regular prey for Velociraptor. Paleontologist David Hone, though, isn’t entirely convinced. The preserved clash may reflect an abnormal situation instead of the ordinary dining habits of Velociraptor.

In his newest book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know, Hone warns against the use of individual fossils to make overarching claims about how dinosaurs behaved. “Specimens are, of course, single data points,” he writes, and may never be going to be used to infer an excessive amount of about a species.

The book starts strong with a straightforward and cautious introduction to dinosaur biology and behavior, and how biases affect our understanding of them. Hone forgoes the touches of non-public narrative that make other dino digests by contemporaries Steve Brusatte and Michael J. Benton so reachable. As a substitute, Hone thrusts readers right into a rigorous overview of the newest research, most of which he tempers with disclaimers. Such reality checks would sour most reads. But Hone’s frankness is welcome in a post-Jurassic Park world, where misconceptions continue to capture the final public’s imagination.

A pair of of the biases that shape our perception of dinosaurs come from paleontologists themselves. “New or rare species are more vulnerable to be collected and described than well-known ones,” Hone writes. Paleontologists also are inclined to compile and publish more on specimens related to the upward thrust of birds or those with unique features, leaving other dinosaur groups understudied.

But some misconceptions are born long earlier than a fossil even forms. Floods and rivers can carry carcasses miles far from where an animal died, misrepresenting where that species lived. Scavengers may per chance take their meal to head, displacing, damaging or preventing an animal’s body from being buried. Acids and bacteria in rainforest soil often decompose corpses earlier than they is additionally preserved, leading to gaps in the fossil record. “A [body] fossil only represents a moment in time,” Hone writes. “It sooner or later represents the moment that an animal changed into buried, and not on the total when it died.”

Certain behaviors are also better preserved than others. Take foraging. Teeth marks on the intact arm bone of a duck-billed dinosaur suggest that Tyrannosaurus rex most definitely stripped meat from the bone instead of chomping straight through. Tooth wear can lend a hand reveal whether sauropods equivalent to Diplodocus most well-liked snacking on tall trees or low-lying foliage.

Nevertheless the probabilities of a dinosaur being buried and, in turn, fossilized one day of a brief act equivalent to mating are slim to none. This is where scientists can turn to creative tactics, equivalent to inferring behavior from the last surviving dinosaurs — birds — and their closest relatives, crocodilians. As an instance, in 2021, scientists used an exceedingly preserved specimen of the herbivore Psittacosaurus to some-dimensionally reconstruct the dinosaur’s cloaca. Like this present day’s birds and reptiles, dinos used this all-purpose orifice to urinate, defecate and reproduce. The learn about revealed the cloaca had swellings that would have been a lot equivalent to the musk glands of this present day’s crocs, suggesting scent may possibly have been one way Psittacosaurus communicated.

Hone ends most chapters with case studies on an awful lot of some of essentially the most misrepresented dinosaurs thus far. Enter the predator Deinonychus, the inspiration for the cunning Velociraptor dinos of Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park (though Deinonychus itself won't ever be a Velociraptor). Within the Sixties, scientists unearthed four partial Deinonychus skeletons surrounding a single unlucky herbivore on the total often is termed Tenontosaurus.

Researchers used this finding to propose that Deinonychus and most of its dromaeosaur relatives hunted cooperatively. This idea “has sunk into public consciousness,” turning right into a common trope in popular media, Hone writes. But evidence for such % hunting in Deinonychus is “extremely limited,” he notes. For one, it’s you possibly can the Tenontosaurus had been scavenged instead of killed. What’s more, most Tenontosaurus skeletons found near Deinonychus at other web sites were half-grown, a more manageable snack for a lone predator. And a couple of research means that this famous crime scene depicts multiple Deinonychus battling over the carcass, not a coordinated attack.

Though Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior succeeds in presenting the newest research, many relevant findings never make it through Hone’s fine-tooth comb. Hone’s diligence and caution risk leaving readers with surprisingly little insight into how these iconic beasts really lived. That, of course, is the purpose. This book offers an authority’s thoughts on staying the course against biases, a feat many readers will to find rewarding.

Vigilant and authoritative, Hone sounds the alarm on the every now and then impulsive and rash nature of paleontology. “Numerous the scientific literature tends toward a self belief in interpreting dinosaurian behaviors that almost all definitely won't ever be going to be there,” he writes. “A failure to acknowledge alternate possibilities and the inherent uncertainty of interpreting ancient behaviors is a detriment to the field.”

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