Who doesn’t like a flashy bit of headgear? A wide variety of cranial ornamentation is found on a wide variety of animals: sharp horns, branching antlers, bumpy knobs, and more. In this episode, we break down what technically counts as a “horn” (you’ll be unsurprised to learn there isn’t a simple answer!), the vast diversity of animal headgear today and in the fossil record, and the various ways animals have found to use these remarkable structures.

In the news: sabertoothed faces, head origins, dinosaur climates, and ancient false gharials.

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome.

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0