Review update 45 (It's a big 1)!

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Hi everybody,

1stly, I published my 45th review ("Mostly good, part 1": www.amazon.com/review/R1BGIKWL… ). I'd really appreciate it if you'd read said review & vote "Yes" after "Was this review helpful to you": For 1, I want to make sure it gives a good idea of what to expect; For another, it's for a very good book that deserves more attention. Many thanks in advance.

2ndly, as you may have noticed, this is a big review update. That's b/c my 45th review was running long, so I put problem #2 here.

Cheers,
Herman Diaz

2) The "scaly Tyrannosaurus" & "larger females" hypotheses are very misrepresented...In reference to the former, the evidence for it is "essentially" ignored, while "a liberal coating of feathers" is taken as a given. Yes, said evidence hadn't yet been described in detail, but it had been mentioned in the technical literature. In reference to the latter, the problem is more layered:
-In the Preface, Hone says, "I have attempted to steer a middle course covering primarily what I think is the consensus opinion among dinosaur researchers." However, to quote Prondvai ( onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/fu… ), "it is generally accepted that gracile and more robust forms of Tyrannosaurus are males and females, respectively (Carpenter, 1990; Larson, 1994). Tyrannosaurus specimen MOR 1125 has been categorized as a robust form based on its femoral proportions (Larson, 2008), which is in line with the presence of MB in the same element (Schweitzer et al., 2005, 2016)." MB = Medullary Bone.
-In Chapters 1 & 19, Hone compares "larger females" to "dedicated scavenging" (See the Hone quotes). This is very misleading because the former actually makes sense (See the Chapman et al. quote), while the latter never made any sense (Quoting GSPaul from a 1988 book: "The idea that animals as big as most theropods were true scavengers is ecologically unfeasible").
-Said comparison is also very misleading because "larger females" has never been proven wrong, while "dedicated scavenging" has been proven wrong at least 3 times ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_… ): For 1, Mallon 2017 (which Hone helped with) hadn't yet been published & subjected to scientific scrutiny; For another, even if Mallon 2017 is right, that doesn't mean that "larger females" has been proven wrong (Quoting Mallon: "I suspect dinosaurs probably were sexually dimorphic[...]But the point is that we just don’t have enough fossil evidence to show it yet"); For yet another, Mallon 2017 is definitely NOT the last word on "larger females" (Quoting Ronson: "As for Larson and his T. rexes, he’s working on it. He’s been collaborating with Mallon to better support his theory of robust female bones and slender male bones with more data and better statistics").
-Said comparison contradicts what Hone says about "larger females" in Chapter 17 ("Controversial ideas can be useful in stimulating new research; the problems arise when they are clung onto long after they have been debunked. The ideas dealt with here are at least credible").
-There's no direct evidence that tyrannosaurs "exhibited some form of parental care over both the eggs and the newly hatched young", but Hone supports it because it makes the most sense based on what we know about their living relatives. Fair enough, though by that logic, he should also support "larger females". To not do so would be a double standard.

Quoting Hone: "The tyrannosaurs are endlessly charismatic: their size, appearance and reputation precede them wherever they go, and there is almost no media article or report on dinosaurs that doesn't mention them or relate any new find to tyrannosaurs in some way[...]There is also a huge number of tropes and memes about the animals that follow them around, and endless repetition does not make them right. Tyrannosaurs were not pure scavengers; they didn't spend their lives battling adult Triceratops, they did not have poor eyesight, they could not run at 50 km/h, females were not bigger than males, and so on."

Quoting Hone: "Collectively, this work is giving us a much clearer picture of tyrannosaurs than we have ever had before. Ideas like dedicated scavenging, and larger females than males, have been assessed and rejected; others, such as craniofacial biting and consumption of juvenile dinosaurs, have found support."

Quoting Chapman et al.: ( doc.rero.ch/record/213289/file… ): "The reversed sexual dimorphism model is considered reason- able because it follows the patterns seen in birds of prey, where dimorphism tends to be reversed and the differences larger as the prey gets larger and more active (see Amadon, 1975). The prey for T. rex presumably would be very large and active and, consequently, the large difference in size (in this case robust- ness) between the two morphs would be reasonable."

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