Dave Hone

I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far off.

Yeah, there's truth to that.

You have...

used an analogy that Conan Doyle specifically used for Holmes going back to paleontology.

Yeah.

That's how on the nose you are with that one.

Yeah, we got off topic before we even got onto Jurassic Park.

On just Velociraptor, you said that, you know, yeah, the size, the pack hunting, all of that.

The pack hunting, just to round off on that, it's like, I don't know.

Maybe there's actually been some more recent stuff on Deinonychus looking at things like isotopes in the teeth and feeding traces and some other stuff that's hinting that maybe there is more going on there, which is great.

I'm not anti the idea that this exists, but you absolutely get this buildup of the idea that Velociraptor is a pack hunter comes from Deinonychus.

And I think the evidence from Deinonychus is really weak in exactly the way that, okay, lions are group hunters.

We know they are.

Does that mean that leopards are and tigers and puma?

No.

So why on earth do you think that just because, even if Deinonychus is, that doesn't really tell you anything about Velociraptor?

Group hunting has all kinds of more complicated dynamics going on it than just close relatives tend to do it.

You can flip that around.

African hunting dog, wolves, things like bush dogs, there's various canids that all hunt in groups.

But then you've got things like main wolves, which are effectively solitary.