Picture a prehistoric animal. Don’t worry, I won’t judge you if it’s Tyrannosaurus or another super-popular species. Any
creature will do. Now, what age is the animal you imagined? I’d be willing to bet that it’s an adult, representing a healthy
individual in the prime of life. (If not, and you pictured a hatching or […]…
Vertebrate paleontology has a sample size problem. Only a fraction of all the creatures that ever lived became preserved in the fossil
record, and an even tinier sliver of that array has been discovered, cleaned, and studied. Even the most famous animals, like the fearsome
Tyrannosaurus, are known from a (figurative) handful of individuals scattered […]…