A simple, but important, request to all readers

I’ve now been blogging for over 10 years and I’ve also written plenty of other news articles, appeared on TV, radio and in podcasts, and done whole rafts of talks and events as well as writing a book (here’s a huge list of links to things I have done) and consulted for plenty more too. I do this because I enjoy it and I think it’s very important for scientists to help engage with the public and explin what they do and what they have learend and why (and even more so when it’s research based on public money). It’s nice to get recognised for this kind of work but it is not why I do it.

However, at least some of this work is now undertaken as part of my job at Queen Mary University and so I need to try and get a handle on what I am actually achieving. So, as a result, I have a small but very important request. If you have literally 1 minute and have read my book, seen one of my talks, read a blog or article I’ve written, listened to a podcast I did, saw a TV show I consulted on, sent me an e-mail that I replied to, chatted to me at  science festival, or really anything at all from my outreach programs, please do fill in this tiny form. It’s really important for me and does take seconds. Please also share this far and wide with friends and family, I know I have hundreds of subscribers to this blog but my book has sold over 10 000 copies and some of my videos or podcasts I know have had audiences in the 100 000s so I really hope this message can spread far and wide and reach those who do not read this blog.

I don’t ask for much on here, so please spare me a minute of your time to fill this in and to share the link, retweet it, post it to a messageboard, or anywhere else some people may see it who like their dinosaurs.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kFlPnnxgmJQwcGmZMc0ZaYviTJd2LC4zgc1BXnD8k6g/edit

(Somewhat late) roundup of 2018

Lots of people are doing little end of the year reviews and with my general decrease in blogging in recent months this seemed a good motivation for me to do something similar if a bit later than everyone else.

It has been a fairly productive year for me research wise though there are lots more things that are nearing completion or are already out for review so hopefully the next couple of years will show a better return. Even the list below is inevitably a bit warped as some of these papers are effectively in press so will likely end up with a 2019 date on them, while others were out in 2017 but only now have a year appended.

First off are a few on the subject of trophic interactiosn between species. Most recently has been my paper on a Pteranodon with a shark tooth stuck in it, though this year also brough some theropod bite marks on juvenile dinosaurs. There was a rather broken peice of centrosaur frill that not nipped by something small itself, but more interestingly was a rather savaged juvenile diplodocid femur from Dinosaur National Monument. This one had bites very reminiscent of those made by derived tyrannosaurs at a time when they were not around suggesting simialr feeding mechanisms might have been present more extensively in big theropods and the paper also included some work on the issues of identifing ‘biters’ too.

My work on sexual selection and signaling also continued with two papers on this subject. First came one which is the first piece of work by my PhD student Andy Knapp looking at the evolution and changes in the horns and frills of various ceratopsians. This specifically targeted the idea that these things might have evolved as recognition signals but there was no evidence that these eveolved in response to sympatry (being in the same place so where you might want to be different to avoid confusion) and thus supporting the idea that they were more likely under sociosexual selection. Second in this area was work led by Devin O’Brien on the way things like ceratopsian frills grow which can be an indicator of sexual selection. This has been used in one form or another for years but this papers made things more rigorous in the use of reference traits for comparisons to sexually selected traits and marking out other things that also grow fast but are naturally selected.

Finally there’s a couple of papers that don’t really fit into either category. First there’s some work I was involved in looking at the exceptional preservation of dinosaur ‘dandruff’ and the implications that this brings about their biology. Second was a revision of the pterosaur genus Noripterus which has a complex taxonomic history and has suffered through most of the key material being lost. That turning up again allowed proper clarification over the definition of the taxon and a number of other genera that has been referred (os should have been to it).

So all in all a fairly productive time with a couple of my main research themes keeping pace while continuing to work on some other important areas. On the outreach front I continue to do lots of talks and school visits as well as podcasts and some consulting for various TV shows and the odd appearance. The Guardian cancelled their science blog network which ended the Lost Worlds, though it means I am doing more blogging here again as a result. Finally, an early 2019 addition was the creation of a Facebook page for my work and outreach which does a different job to both these pages and Twitter so do please follow me there too.

• Hone, D.W.E., Witton, M. P., & Habib, M.B. 2018. Evidence for the Cretaceous shark Cretoxyrhina mantelli feeding on the pterosaur Pteranodon from the Niobrara Formation. Peer J.
• Hone, D.W.E., Tanke, D.H., & Brown, C.M. 2018. Bite marks on the frill of a juvenile Centrosaurus from the Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Provincial Park Formation, Alberta, Canada. Peer J.
• O’Brien, D.M., Allen, C.E., Van Kleeck, M.J., Hone, D.W.E., Knell, R.J., Knapp, A., Christiansen, S., & Emlen, D.J. 2018. On the evolution of extreme structures: static scaling and the function of sexually selected signals. Animal Behaviour.
• McNamara, M.E., Zhang, F., Kearns, S.L., Orr, P.J., Toulouse, A., Foley, T., Hone, D.W.E., Rogers, C.S., Benton, M.J., Johnson, D., Xu, X., & Zhou, Z. 2018. Exceptionally preserved skin structure reveals the coevolution of skin, feathers and metabolism in feathered dinosaurs and early birds. Nature communications.
• Knapp, A., Knell, R.J., Farke, A.A., Loewen, M.A., & Hone, D.W.E. 2018. Patterns of divergence in the morphology of ceratopsian dinosaurs: sympatry is not a driver of ornament evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B,
• Hone, D.W.E., & Chure, D.J. 2018. Difficulties in assigning trace makers from theropodan bite marks: an example from a young diplodocoid sauropod. Lethaia.
• Hone, D.W.E., Jiang, S., & Xu, X. 2018. A taxonomic revision of Noripterus complicidens (Young, 1973) and Asian members of Dsungaripteridae. Geological Society of London, Special Volume, 149-157

A new venue

Becuase writing the Musings annd being on Twitter (and perviously doing the FLugsaurier blog and pages, and Ask A Biologist, and The Lost Worlds for the Guardian) isn’t enough, I finally decided to start up a proper page on Facebook. So if you want to follow me there and post soem dinosaur stuff and get more involved in discussions and research then hope over here to Dave Hone’s Dinosaurs page.

I’m still doing other outreach things like talks, consultations for documentaries and podcasts (here’s a very recent one on pterosaurs) and I’m writing a second book so there’s still lots more going on. But this new page will, I hope, allow me to engage with a different audience in a different way so do please go over there and like the page and share it around.