BBC: Experts tell Mr from Mrs dinosaur
Palaeontologists think they have found a way to tell whether dinosaur fossils are from males or females.
When I was at university in the mid-80s, I attended an archaeology class in which we got to play around with the bones of dead Anglo-Saxons. The honorary lecturer (a surgeon who dabbled in archaeological bones for a hobby) handed me a skull and asked me if I could tell him anything about it:
“It’s definitely human.”
“Very funny. Anything else?”
“It’s definitely dead.”
“Come on now, be serious. Can you tell me anything about this skull?”
“Erm… It’s female.”
“Excellent! That’s amazing! Sexing a human skull is surprisingly difficult. What makes you say it’s female?”
“Its mouth is open.”
I was then lynched by a couple of feminist archaeology undergraduates wearing dungarees who had absolutely no sense of humour.
Actually, despite my titting about, it was a really cool class: we got to mess around with lepers’ bones, and re-assemble a fox’s skeleton with its head on the wrong end.