Dave Hone

Digging for water is critical, but it's probably not what started it.

And I think that's where we get trapped with things...

like say the paddle tail of spinosaurus or stuff like or you know or t-rex arms it's like well why are t-rex arms like that well maybe we need to consider what a slightly longer arm is like or what it was being functioned for and its ancestors or how it works in other species or what else it might do rather than every paper is like did it do this or did it do this or did it do this it's like you know it could be all of them

That's a very different question to try and answer, but people don't tend to think of it.

And it ends up being very binary.

And again, biology is not like that because it's a compromise.

Yeah.

What does a miniaturized version of this look like?

And what might that function for?

Or how does it function in ancestral forms?

A really good example of that is giraffe necks, which have been argued about.

about, you know, forever and a day it was giraffe necks are to help them feed up high.

And then in the late 90s, early 2000s, a couple of papers coming out going, actually, maybe it's sexual selection and competition.

And then that drove down into arguments about, well, what does a short neck look like in the acarpia?

It's near as relative.

And what do short legs look like?

And how do they work?

And plus a whole bunch of other studies.

And ultimately it came out that we were right the first time.

This is all about feeding.