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The Future of Dinosaurs: What We Don't Know, What We Can, and What We'll Never Know | David Hone

2 posts | 1 reading

Out now: the new book by Dr David Hone which explores the frontiers of dinosaur research __________ Ever since we first started discovering dinosaurs in the early-1800s, our obsession for uncovering everything about these creatures has been insatiable. Each generation has made huge strides in trying to better our understanding of these animals and in the past twenty years, we have made more discoveries than in the previous two hundred. There have been extraordinary advances in palaeontological methods and ever more dinosaur fossils promise a landslide of new data and huge leaps forward in our understanding of these incredible animals. Over time, we have been bale to look at the sizes and shapes of bones, we have identified patches of fossil skin, we have looked at footprints and bite marks and we've calculated mass estimates and walking speeds. With surprisingly little data to work from, we can put together a picture of an animal that has been extinct for a million human lifetimes. But for all our technological advances, and two centuries of new data and ideas, there is stull much more we don't know. What parasites and diseases afflicted them? How did they communicate? Did they climb trees? How many species were there? In The Future of Dinosaurs, palaeontologist Dr David Hone looks at the recent strides in scientific research and the advanced knowledge we've gathered in recent years, as well as what we hope to learn in the future about these most fascinating of extinct creatures. __________

shanaqui

The Future of Dinosaurs: What We Don't Know, What We Can, and What We'll Never Know | David Hone

Today I learned that birds and reptiles can isolate infections in a single part of the body instead of the spread that often happens in mammals. I want to go read about how that works now, but I guess my theory would be a different lymphatic system? Though no clue how they would avoid spread through the blood stream... If someone finds out before I do, let me know!

(Note that I studied immunology as part of my degree, am interested in *detail*.)

shanaqui Hone doesn't give a lot of detail but apparently the dinosaurs had this ability too and there's an image of a hadrosaur skeleton with a healed crushed spine! Hang on, I'll add the image to the main post if I can... 1w

9 likes1 comment

shanaqui

The Future of Dinosaurs: What We Don't Know, What We Can, and What We'll Never Know | David Hone

Enjoying this so far. In odd synchronicity, it made me more curious about the papers behind this article (which I need to look into) which suggests we're finding evidence there has never been a mass extinction: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2481371-theres-growing-evidence-the-big-fiv...

This book, of course, is pretty certain that there was!

shanaqui But also says that science changes, some of the stuff in the book will be wrong, and that that's good.

I did like learning about ancient crocodilians in a footnote -- they were bipedal and stood upright! Article with an example image: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/20/revealed-the-terrifying-3m-long-... 3w

10 likes1 comment