Dinosaur Behavior: What We Know and How We Know It

David Hone's new book is an eye-opening journey into how dinosaurs lived.

Reviewed by Davia Sills

I'm always looking for books and documentaries about animals about whom I know little to nothing, so I was thrilled to learn of a new book by Dr. David Hone, one of the world's leading dinosaur experts, titled Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know. Many people write off these fascinating prehistoric animals as dullards or intensely aggressive animals because of the lack of detailed information on who they were and how they behaved, but this is highly misleading.

For example, in his eye-opening book, Hone describes behaviors across the whole range of species and groups, from feeding and communication to reproduction, sociality, and combat. Here's what he had to say about these highly diverse beings whose behavior can be seen in numerous extant animals.

Why did you write Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior?

Really to try and get to the heart of the problem of modern studies on dinosaur behavior. I've written two or three dozen scientific papers on this area and keep running into the same problems because there's a lot of vague and undefined terms leading to confusion, a lot of "either/or" type hypotheses being tested when there are animals that can do both, or overly strong conclusions based on limited evidence.

We do know, and can work out, a lot of dinosaur behaviour, but I think we can do a lot of things a lot better. So I wanted to try and tackle some of these and get a bit of a "state of the art" piece together that could be a launchpad for the future.

How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

I still say that I'm a zoologist who mostly works on dead things. I've always been interested in all kinds of animal life, and behavior was a real interest of mine as a student. So, I try to draw on all the parallels and examples and oddities of biology as a basis for interpreting dinosaur behaviors.

We do need to focus on their nearest living relatives (birds and crocodylians) and the nearest analogs of large species (like elephants and lions), but there are big patterns of behavior and ecology that transcend these comparisons as well as unique and odd creatures that can provide useful insights if they share similar traits with extinct species.

Who do you hope to reach?

Everyone, really. One of my big worries for the book is that it was trying to do too much in terms of reaching audiences and so wouldn't really hit any of them. I want academics (both those working on fossils and experts in behavior) to use this to see where we might be going wrong and where we might go in the future, but I'd also hope that students and the general public would be able to read it as a review and synthesis of where we are now and what we know and what we don't. So far, the feedback from all those different audiences has been pretty positive, so fingers crossed I've been able to make something that's quite accessible and useful to everyone.

What are some of the major topics you consider?

The bulk of the book is a review of the major aspects of dinosaur behavior, including grooming, feeding, combat, signaling, group living, and the like. All animals with fur and feathers engage in some form of grooming behavior, but finding evidence of this will be challenging.

But the book starts with the background data that we have and the principles we have to work from, from interpreting the fossil record to the drivers of behavior in living species. But I also try to go beyond what we do know and suggest ways that we can tackle some tricky areas in the future—areas where I think we have the fossils and the understanding to produce some better understanding of things, such as male dinosaurs' investment in reproduction.

How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

I don't think there's anything else like this out there, to be honest. It's dedicated specifically to the science of dinosaur behavior and the underlying research and principles. While it's not a textbook, it's very much on the real science side of things with some genuine depth.

Are you hopeful that as people learn more about this topic, they will come to a better understanding of who these fascinating animals were and how they survived and thrived?

Definitely, yes. I think there are a lot of misconceptions that the public has about dinosaur behavior. Things that are outdated, things that were never right, and all kinds of slightly twisted ideas about what we know and what we don't know. But I'd also venture that quite a lot of the research we are doing on dinosaur behavior could be framed better, and while I don't think that the research we have done is a house of cards, I do think that some of the foundations are not as firm as many would think and that going back a bit to first principles and establishing some basic ideas with better data and consideration of our modern understanding of ethology would be of real benefit moving forwards. I really do hope this can be an important work going forward for us to learn more about these animals, and it's far from just a review of our existing knowledge.