Dave Hone

Palaeontologist and zoologist; Reader in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London. Trained as a zoologist rather than a geologist, and deliberately applies ecology and behavioural biology to extinct animals — his phrase is ‘I’m a zoologist but I work on dead stuff.’ Author of Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior and co-author (with Mark Witton) of Spinosaur Tales. Co-host of the Terrible Lizards podcast.

Background

Hone’s research spans tyrannosaur ecology, pterosaur biology, sexual selection in dinosaurs, bite-mark taphonomy, and the behaviour of non-avian theropods generally. He has conducted fieldwork in Mongolia and China, and named the tyrannosaur Jiuchengtyrannus. His approach is distinguished by scepticism: he uses the standards of living-animal behavioural ecology — requiring independent lines of convergent evidence — to evaluate palaeontological claims, and has argued at length against poorly supported interpretations of pack hunting, dietary specialisation based on single stomach-content specimens, and T. rex’s supposed primate-level intelligence (the Suberbiola neuron-density paper).

His work on Protoceratops — the best-sampled dinosaur population in the fossil record, with over a hundred specimens spanning embryo to adult — represents a sustained attempt to apply population-level analysis to a single species.

Core positions

• Predators primarily target juveniles, not adults of large prey species; direct evidence from bite marks and stomach contents in dinosaurs confirms this.
• Pack hunting in dinosaurs is unsupported by the existing evidence; trackways and bone beds are consistent with simpler explanations (sequential use of game trails, predator traps).
• Sexual selection drove much of theropod cranial anatomy; mutual ornamentation in both sexes hints at biparental care and mutual mate choice in at least some lineages.
• T. rex was primarily a power-walking endurance predator, probably nocturnal, exploiting its exceptional eyesight and efficiency over speed.
• Birds are dinosaurs — the surviving lineage of a clade that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for roughly 165 million years.
• Palaeontology faces a unique urgency: fossils erode and are lost permanently; the science is, in Hone’s phrase, ‘literally disappearing’.

In the wiki

• Dave Hone on Tyrannosaurs, Mass Extinction, and the Real Lives of Dinosaurs — full conversation on T. rex biomechanics, ecology, behaviour, sexual selection, extinction, and Jurassic Park