Oh, that's so not the official #Framestore I tagged there, oops

That exhibit is in desperate need for an upgrade....

Later in the day, I'll be streaming with @paleontologizing.bsky.social to explain and answer all your questions, so, you're welcome to join!

I want to thank all my amazing coauthors -especially my mentor Darren Tanke (who first hypothesized the mating hypothesis in 1989 -DARREN, WE DID IT!-), the many institutions that helped me, and the paleoartist Emiliano Troco for the illustrations!

there are MANY "but", "if", and biological implications.
The paper is published in OPEN ACCESS so you can read and give me your thoughts 😀

After this evaluation, we realize that the mating hypothesis was the one explaining the pathological pattern at best.
The mounting male presses on the female tail, causing the vertebral lesions on top of the spine.

Knowing where we were going, we had to be sure. Or, at least, we had to consider EVERY OTHER SCENARIOS to explain what really looked like something related to sexual activity: predation, locomotion stress, strange and particular behavior, herd stepping... all of them were missing soemthing.

This is the condition for the tails we could check, we also have many other vertebrae in the dataset

Via Finite Element nalysis, we discover that the spines were stressed by a heavy load coming from above, vertical-to-oblique (around 30-60° degrees).
Combine the fact that in that region there is the cloaca, plus the fact that, in articulated tails, the lesions were spread along many vertebrae...

We analyzed the dataset of pathological caudal vertebrae, noting a statistically significance of lesions in the anterior part of the tail. The spines are similarly broken in many different hadrosaur species from different regions and times. Hence, the cause was an event happening for all of them...