Sexing Dinos: Paleontologists Seek Fossilized Hormones
How can you tell if a dinosaur is female or male? It’s one of the most basic aspects of biology and yet, for the most part, it continues to be a mystery in paleontology. We don’t yet know the sex of most extinct species, even if those in museum displays have gender-specific names like Sue the T.rex or Cliff the Triceratops. But this past October at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists, one scientist offered insight into the work he and his team are doing to uncover hormones in fossil bones.…