Dr. Dean Lomax

It's also on different continents.

So you had Hesperonothorids in North America, Velociraptors in Asia.

But also then it's when you kind of get to like the finer, like nerdy details of it.

It's kind of like, right, when you think you found something new, you've got to look at like the features, the bones in the skull, bones in the skeleton and compare them to pretty much everything on the family tree, including Velociraptor.

Then eventually you'll be like, okay, clearly it's very different to a Velociraptor.

Yeah, exactly that.

And that's because even if you've got a baby and the oldest individual or a really tall individual, what we call the morphology, so the shape of those bones and the structure, even though they'll look different in terms of their density and that, they'll still have the same shape overall and they'll still be able to say, yeah, that's the same species.

Oh, wow.

It becomes a bit harder when you introduce kind of, say, in dogs.

So you've got so many breeds, like look at a Chihuahua compared to a Great Dane.

If you look at the finer anatomy, it's very clear they're still a dog, but things have been modified.

But that's where humans have played kind of, you know, intervened and kind of modified it.

So you've got like shorter snouts and a Chihuahua and all that stuff.

But that becomes a little bit harder, but you still have the same anatomy.

Right.

Yeah, when you're dealing with fossils and of course it's good to point out too is that you're not always getting a complete picture.

It's so nice if you go to a museum or if you're reading a book and it's like, oh yeah, beautiful complete skeleton.

That's usually not how it is.

Usually you've just got fragments of fragments and you're like, what the hell is this?

How are we going to work this out?