Dave Hone

there's two good reasons that they would probably evolve and exactly pulling them apart or which is more important and again they're they're probably bifunctional as soon as you start making feathers and making them more colorful where you're staying warmer so that's an advantage or as soon as you start making feathers to make them warmer it probably won't be long until someone evolves them to be a bit brighter red and then we're back to oh my god red right but but that's what's happening and then they're gonna they're probably gonna push each other potentially

they absolutely do.

I think, yeah, I think it gives them opportunities that, that,

scales and solid structures simply don't.

I mean, the sole ability, I mean, I say like, you know, peacocks and pheasants, they are a massive disadvantage to males when they've got these extra plumes on them because they're so big and heavy.

Peacocks can barely fly.

But the fact is, you can still kind of fold them up into a fairly neat package and kind of hide if you really wanted to.

Whereas if you're something like Triceratops,

that billboard on the top of your head is not only enormous, but also bone.

It's massive, it's heavy, and you've got to lug it around the whole year.

Whereas peacocks at least can go, well, all the girls have settled down on their nests now.

I'm just going to get rid of all this extra weight and dump it.

Yeah, I do.

But I guess maybe not much more so than I would anyway.

as in I already, because again, I don't really think of myself as a paleontologist in a lot of ways.

It's not that I don't love my work, but it's,

I'm a biologist and this is what I'm looking at, but I'm fascinated and amazed by lungfish and flying frogs and caterpillars and onychophorans and butterflies and a million and one other hagfish and things that I think are cool and interesting and fascinating.

And I could happily read about them or watch them in a zoo or documentary or whatever it may be.

almost every bit as much as I would with dinosaurs.

I probably appreciate the dinosaurs and pterosaurs in a very different way because I have such a greater intimate knowledge of the science in a way that I try and read the lion literature because I'm really interested in predation dynamics, but I can't keep up with it whilst doing all the other stuff as well.