00:00Identifying whether a dinosaur was male or female has been tough for paleontologists.
00:10Now, research led by Queen Mary University of London has found that despite past claims of success,
00:15it's very hard to tell them apart.
00:17The team studied skulls from modern-day gharials, a huge crocodilian species,
00:22to see if they could distinguish between genders with only fossil records.
00:26Researchers say they're a good model for extinct dinosaurs due to their size and growth rate.
00:31Males are bigger than females and have a growth at the end of their snouts,
00:34which can be identified in skulls with a bony hollow.
00:37Looking at 106 specimens, they found that, even knowing this, it was still hard to tell sexes apart.
00:43And researchers say with dinosaurs, there's even less information to go on.
00:47It's likely that dinosaurs had gender differences, much like modern-day species,
00:51but the findings, published in the journal Peer J, show this is hard to see with just a skeleton.
00:56This new research challenges past studies indicating ways to distinguish between sexes.
01:01This new researchaba rundown a hole in the cemetery of Queen Mary & Christine
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