A team led by Queen Mary University of London researchers found it's actually very difficult to identify differences between sexes from dinosaur fossils, which challenges past studies.
00:00Identifying whether a dinosaur was male or female has been tough for paleontologists.
00:09Now, research led by Queen Mary University of London has found that despite past claims of success, it's very hard to tell them apart.
00:17The team studied skulls from modern-day gharials, a huge crocodilian species, to see if they could distinguish between genders with only fossil records.
00:25Researchers say they're a good model for extinct dinosaurs due to their size and growth rate.
00:30Males are bigger than females and have a growth at the end of their snouts, which can be identified in skulls with a bony hollow.
00:37Looking at 106 specimens, they found that, even knowing this, it was still hard to tell sexes apart.
00:43And researchers say with dinosaurs, there's even less information to go on.
00:47It's likely that dinosaurs had gender differences, much like modern-day species,
00:51but the findings, published in the journal Peer J, show this is hard to see with just a skeleton.
00:56This new research challenges past studies indicating ways to distinguish between sexes.
