By all accounts, it is a very long bucket list of wants, but these two would certainly make mine.
The problem is, using fossils to deduce such behaviour is a tricky business. But a new, Yale-led study offers a promising entry point — the inner ear of an ancient reptile. The shape of the inner ear offers reliable signs as to whether an animal soared gracefully through the air, flew only fitfully, walked on the ground, or sometimes went swimming. In some cases, the inner ear even indicates whether a species did its parenting by listening to the high-pitched cries of its babies.
The inner ear of Hesperornis, an 85-million-year-old aquatic bird first discovered by the Peabody’s O.C. Marsh, is helping us to better understand how these ancient species moved, parented, and communicated.
The Peabody is a marvellous museum — home to the world’s only Hesperornis fossil that preserves the tiny structure in all three dimensions. It was used in a just-published study, led by Yale University Ph.D. student Michael Hanson and curator Bhart-Anjan Bhullar.
Photo: Hesperornis, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Photographer: Robert Lorenz
Care to read all about it? Here's the link:
https://news.yale.edu/2021/05/06/what-can-dinosaurs-inner-ear-tell-us-just-listen?fbclid=IwAR0ZqbxsMkBoLRhxGCiKWoj5s3F7BfXE-Sahk9R15LC0i_7bOjRvZOqBLZE
