(NewsNation) — Scientists may finally have a way to determine the sex of dinosaurs, or at least one group of them, according to a recent study.
Paleontologists have long struggled to identify the sex of dinosaurs from fossilized remains, but a new study, published in the journal iScience this week, may offer new clues.
Researchers focused on hadrosaurs, a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, whose fossils frequently show healed fractures on vertebrae near the base of the tail.
After evaluating several hypotheses, researchers believe these traumatic bone injuries may have occurred during mating, suggesting the affected hadrosaurs were likely female.
“The mating hypothesis is the one that, at the moment, best explains our observations and data,” lead study author Dr. Filippo Bertozzo of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences told CNN.
Bertozzo explained that while the team’s research was comprehensive, they wanted to study fossils from China and South America to form a larger dataset.