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<\/div>Paul Ryding\/Joseph Woodhouse<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Dinosaurs dominated the land for around 180 million years. Yet we have little idea what life was like for these prehistoric icons as interpreting fossils that are at least 65 million years old is fiendishly difficult. Finding out more had long seemed impossible. No longer.<\/p>\n
In the past few decades, new technologies and new specimens have provided previously unimaginable windows into their behaviour and ecology. This, along with insights from living animals, is finally allowing palaeontologists to build a picture of dinosaur life ranging from parental care, migration and hunting styles to communication, sociality and combat.<\/p>\n
David Hone is one of those working to glean more about life in the age of dinosaurs. A palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London, he has collated the latest findings into a forthcoming book, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior<\/i><\/a>: What they did and how we know. He gave New Scientist<\/i> a taste of what has been discovered, from migrating herbivores and semi-aquatic predators to why ostriches are a problem for understanding which dinosaurs doted on their young.<\/p>\n Colin Barras: Some of the largest dinosaurs \u2013 sauropods such as Diplodocus<\/i> or Brachiosaurus<\/i>, for example \u2013 were nothing like any living animal. How do you even begin to work out how they behaved?<\/b><\/p>\n