Kind: captions
Language: en
T-Rex is definitely weird even compared
to all the other giant tyrannosaurs that
are very closely related to it because
it is by far ludicrously by far the
largest carnivore in its ecosystem.
>> So it doesn't really have competition
actually.
>> I mean so so this is a velociraptor
skull. There are some carnivores that
are a bit bigger than this but not
enormously so. Um which we're knocking
around as T-Rex. the the skulls the same
time tooth crown, right? But but like
you think about that
>> and that's like going
that's like going to Africa and going,
"Okay, there are lions. What's the next
biggest predator?" And it's like, "Well,
there's a weasel about this big."
>> Yeah.
>> Like it it's that kind of size
difference. And you don't get that
normally in ecosystems.
>> It would eat those the juvenile of the
herbivore.
>> Yeah. It's going to be eating
Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, and
Parasauralus. There's even a couple of
giant sorapods knocking around in some
places. It's It's going to be hoovering
them up. But like, how often is it going
to eat? Again, Velociraptor isn't there,
but how often is it going to eat
something the size of an adult
velociraptor? I mean, they're a fraction
of our size, and we're probably too
small. This is like lions hunting mice.
Like, you're just not going to unless
one like virtually runs into your mouth,
you're not going to go and try and eat
it.
The following is a conversation with
Dave Hone, a paleontologist, expert on
dinosaurs, co-host of the Terrible
Lizards podcast, and author of many
scientific papers and books on the
behavior and ecology of dinosaurs. This
was truly a fun and fascinating
conversation. This is the Lex Freeman
podcast. To support it, please check out
our sponsors in the description and
consider subscribing to this channel.
And now, dear friends, here's Dave Hone.
Let's start with the T-Rex dinosaur,
possibly the most iconic predator in the
history of Earth. You have deeply
studied and written about their
evolution, biology, ecology, and
behavior. So, let's uh first maybe put
ourselves in the time of the dinosaurs
and imagine we're standing in front of a
T-Rex. What does it look like? What are
the key features of the dinosaur in
front of us?
>> It's gigantic. It's almost trite now
because everyone knows T-Rex is massive.
But yes, if you actually stand in front
of one, you would be seriously impressed
just how absolutely vast they are. Um,
so I've got a copy of a T-Rex skull
downstairs from my office. And yeah, I I
could fit comfortably through its mouth.
So it would be just about capable of
swallowing me whole. And I'm a pretty
big guy.
>> Your body you can fit in.
>> I can fit through I can fit through it.
>> Wow. Oh,
>> and it's not even a particularly big
one. It's a copy of the one that's in
the Smithsonian. And they get bigger
than that.
>> You have a two scale copy.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Of
>> Yeah. It's a It's a car. So, it's just a
giant mold made and then
>> pulled out like the dentist do your
teeth, but very very big. So, yeah, they
are
12ish meters long. So, what's that? 14
yards.
Four and a half maybe five to the top of
the head standing up. So, another six
yards high. And then
7ish metric tons. What's that about 8
and a half short tons? So a colleague of
mine, Tom Holtz, described them as an
orca on land. That that's it. It is a
killer whales sized animal but on legs
on land. And those are massive
predators. So you're looking at
something absolutely colossal. And I
think that is what will stun you. I
think people don't realize how big a lot
of animals are, which sounds weird. Um,
but I used to work in a few zoos and
something I think you notice is when you
go and see things like elephants or
giraffes or rhinos, everything's built
to the scale of the animal. The elephant
house is huge, the doors are huge, the
bars are huge, the food is huge, and so
you don't see them in the context of
something that you have a good frame of
reference for. And I learned this, yeah,
when I was at London Zoo and was going
into the basement of the old elephant
and rhino pavilion and a rhino stuck its
head out from like this gap in the wall
and the head was twice the size I
thought it was once you stood next to
it. And the same with an elephant. I
once stood next to an elephant closer
than you are to me now and you go, "Oh,
oh, they are so much bigger than I
thought." And I think it's similar in
museums. Like even when you get up
relatively close to a T-Rex skeleton,
there's a bit of space between you and
it and then some bars and then it's
usually raised up a little bit on a
mount on a little mount to hold the
platform and then you stand back from
that and you don't actually get to stand
like under them. And when you do that,
yeah, you realize that Yeah. the the
foot finishes at my knee.
>> So is a T-Rex bigger than an elephant?
Would that be fair to say?
>> Yeah. I mean, a a very large savannah
African elephant is five to six tons and
we're looking at seven plus
>> and a biped and a carnivore. So, yeah,
you know, a a big lion a big lion is 200
kilos, so 430 lb.
>> Yeah. Well, that's what that's why I
mean it's widely considered to be
probably the most epic uh predator in
the history of Earth.
>> Yeah. I mean, and I think more than
that, it's I think it's one of the most
iconic animals, period. I mean, if you
if you're listing things that the
average person has heard of, lion,
elephant, giraffe, tiger, hippo, rhino,
there's a few more, but T-Rex is coming
somewhere up in that list. That that's
how prominent it is as an animal. So,
yeah, it's it's almost inescapable as a
paleontologist. And then doubly so for
me who works on dinosaurs and doubly so
again because I do work on tyrannosaurs
that yeah it just dominates
conversations.
>> Well some of the other features maybe we
can go through. So big skull, big head,
small hands,
>> massive head, very kind of boxy. It's
very robust. Um big forward- facing
eyes. Massive eyes. Massive m I mean
tennis ball sized eyes. These things had
amazing eyesight. Um, yeah, giant teeth.
There's a cast of a
>> what?
>> Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth. Yeah, I know.
So, it it it looks a bit bigger than it
is. So, this is all root. So, this would
be stuck in the jaw. This
>> tip part is the tooth.
>> The the tip as you call it and Yeah. Um,
you know, so that would comfortably go
through pretty much any bone
>> and then you realize just how thick it
is. So, this is a cast of a thing called
Cararodonttosaurus from um Africa. You
get it down in Nishair and a few other
places like that
and they're very very big. Not as big as
T-Rex but not a million miles away. And
then if you look at the teeth in
profile, they're a surprisingly similar
shape and not far off in size as well.
And then you look at them that way on
and you realize it's a third of the
width. So this isn't just massive, it's
thick. And of course being thick, it
makes it strong. And with that giant
head, with all that extra bone and then
all the extra musculature attached to
that giant head, they've got this uber
powerful bite and the ability to just
chomp through basically
it it wants to. Um, so yeah, they they
are truly unusual in that regard. Even
actually compared to a lot of the other
very big tyrannosaurs, they're often a
kind of step above in their proportions.
>> So incredible crushing power in the jaw.
>> Yeah. And then as you say like this
really short bull neck because you've
got this massive weight of this head up
front so you need to hold it up and not
tip forwards. Um really quite a massive
body. Again there's two or three other
big carnivorous dinosaurs which people
argue oh maybe they're a little bigger
than T-Rex. Maybe they're a little
smaller but it's always in terms of
length which is one way of looking at
things. You know pythons are very long
but they're nothing like as massive as
yeah lion or a tiger. Same thing. T-Rex
is massive. it is built. So really big
kind of barrel-shaped chest making the
body very very big as well. And so
that's why yeah there's things like
Gigonosaurus and Maposaurus from South
America maybe they get a bit longer
another meter or so in length but in
mass we're talking about maybe only 2/3
3/4. So T-Rex is just massively bigger
than basically any other big carnivore
we know of. Um and then yeah little arms
as you say. So, this is a not great, but
it's a cast of a T-Rex arm. It's not the
biggest animal. They do get a bit bigger
than this. Um, but as I love showing it,
it's not a million miles off the size of
my own. And I could do with a diet, but
I don't weigh seven tons. So, yeah, it
really is really pretty small.
>> Two claws, two fingers.
>> Yeah. So, two fingers. Some You'll see
sometimes that they say there's a third.
This is a slight misnomer. So you do see
this extra little bone here. This
doesn't turn up in all of them and it's
an extra hand bone. So it's these the
metacarpals, but it's not supporting an
extra digit.
>> So mostly functionalitywise it wasn't
very functional.
>> They're not doing very much at all. Um
you know you've this is what's called
the delto pectoral crest. It's really
important for basically big arm
movements because it's deltoids and
pectorals. Um the radius and ulna are
really quite thin, thinner than ours.
The fingers are pretty stocky. The claws
look big and curved and they are, but
other tyrannosaurs and indeed other
carnivores generally much more curved
claws. And then they have um these
little things. Where can I say it? There
you can see there's a little mark.
That's a ligamentous pit. And so what
you can imagine is if you're trying to
hold on to something and something's
wriggling, you want grip.
>> Mhm.
>> And there's a risk that you just like
dislocate your fingers. So we have
ligaments that hold bone to bone and if
you just put it flat to flat surface
area there's only so much you can
attach. Whereas if you turn that into a
little hemispherical dip you get a lot
more surface area for your area if that
makes sense.
>> So if you have a really big ligamentous
pit it means there's a really big
ligament which means your fingers are
really strong and they're really
resistant to being wiggled around and
pulled as if you know you've grabbed
something that doesn't want you to kill
it. Well, T-Rex has probably the
smallest ligamentous pits of any
Tyrannosaur.
So, that kind of suggests it's not doing
very much. And again, when you look at
the claws proportionally, they're not
that big and they're not that curved.
So, even though it looks like quite a
wicked thing to us, remember, put this
on a 7 ton animal whose individual teeth
are the size of entire fingers.
Suddenly, that arm doesn't look like
it's doing very much. What about the
feet? So massive. Again, not
surprisingly, you're supporting a
colossal amount of weight. Um, but they
have this beautiful adaptation in the
foot. So, the equivalent bones in the
foot, the metatarsils, so for us, make
up the flat of the feet, but these
animals walk like birds. They got three
toes on the ground and then the
metatarsils stick nearly vertically.
That overall extends the length of the
leg. So, you can walk a little bit
faster. You get a slightly bigger stride
length. Um, don't worry, I've got the
right bone here.
Nice. But they also have Yeah, there's a
good one. That one's a great one. Um,
but they also have this really neat
adaptation in the middle bone. So, you
can see it on this one quite well. And
then this is actually not a tyrannosaur.
This is an ornithmosaur.
Um, so one of the really ostrich-like
ones, galaminus from the first Jurassic
Park. Um, it has the same thing. You can
see the normal bones would be really
quite long and square and then flat at
the top. and instead this thing shrinks
in the middle and turns into this kind
of flattened diamond shape. And what
that means is
the bones either side kind of lock it.
In fact, at the top end, it actually
tends to wiggle a bit. So, actually goes
left and then right. And of course, what
that really does is then help these
things lock together. And so, this is an
adaptation to basically lock the foot
and make it stable. And we see it in a
whole bunch of things independently
evolved. Early Tyrannosaurs don't have
this. early or minus don't have this.
The over at Tauros, the early ones don't
have this and the later ones acquire it.
And a couple of other groups as well.
And it's about making the foot stable.
And what that really does is make the
foot energy efficient. So you can
imagine as an animal, you know, we we
have some cartilage and we've got some
ligaments and tendons joining all the
bones together and holding joints
stable. When you push down, that's going
to compress them to a little degree. And
when you lift that weight off, they're
actually going to spring back. You're
going to get a tiny little energy
return. It's the idea of those aerosols
they put in all the trainers and stuff
in the in the '9s. It's that same
principle. And you will you'll get a
little bit of energy return. But of
course, big force, particularly for a
big heavy animal, it's going to take the
kind of path of least resistance. And so
if your bones are all kind of loose in
the foot, what they're going to do is
they're going to tend to spllay out and
you're actually going to lose that
energy. But if you lock the feet
together, the bones can't move. And
instead, that's going to further
compress those soft tissue bits and give
you a bit more spring. And this is all
about I mean, this is about the
mobility, about the dynamics of the
movement.
>> It makes you more efficient. It means
you're putting less energy in to walk
because you're just getting a little bit
of spring off every single step. Uh, I
should say that I deeply admire people
like uh Russ Dedric, like the Boston
Dynamics teams, like uh the Tesla
Optimus robot teams that look at Bipedal
and Quadropeds robot movement. Yeah.
>> And they tried to make
>> humanlike movement to, you know,
basically efficient movement. And so the
question here is how the hell is a T-Rex
its size bipeedal able to move as a
predator? It's a weird body shape, is it
not? I mean the big head makes it look
more odd. But you look at dinosaurs as a
whole and over a third probably 40 45%
is the group called theropods which were
all bipeds. So T-Rex, Allosaurus,
Velociraptor, Spinosaurus, many many
others that people may have heard of.
They're all bipeds built in this way.
There's a whole bunch of ancestral
groups which were doing something very
similar including various crocodiles or
relatives of crocodiles. And then the
birds are bipeds. Um, birds are actually
doing it in a much weirder way than
theropods are. The the therapods are
basically a lizard on its back legs.
I'm oversimplifying a lot. I can hear
paleontologist screaming as I've just
said, it's a lizard standing up. It's
not a lizard standing up. But they're
doing a lot of the same stuff in the
same way. And that is really
functionally about where you put
muscles. Because what you really want to
do to walk forwards is you want to
basically pull the leg back so that
you're pushing the body off.
>> And the way they do that is the
musculature on the tail. So we don't
have a tail. And indeed mammals that
even do have a tail, you know, elephants
and even lions, you know, it's a piddly
little thing. There's not a lot of
muscle there. But if you look at a
lizard, particular if you look at
something like a crocodile, you see this
massive, massive block of muscle sitting
on the first third to half of the tail.
And that's what dinosaurs are doing.
It's the same thing as lizards and
crocs. They have this giant set of
muscles on the first half of the tail
that's anchoring on the femur, so the
thigh bone on the back of that. And
muscles contract. That's the one thing
they do. But now you've got a giant
muscle. Yeah. and T-Rex. This this
muscle is like two and a half, three
meters long.
>> It's going to be like this wide in the
middle.
>> So when that contracts, the leg goes
back, the foot stationary on the ground,
so the animal goes forwards.
>> So the the tail is integral to movement.
>> So it's a huge part of the biomechanics
of the movement.
>> We do it with the butt. So, we're kind
of weirdly how we organize our muscles,
but there's a this is generally probably
a better way of doing it because you can
get a really long muscle. Of course, the
longer the muscle, the more contraction
you can have. The hyper version of this
is kangaroos. So, kangaroos supposedly
get more efficient the faster they move.
They get so much energy return that when
they're moving faster, they get more
compression from the landing, meaning
they get more spring. So, we should be
imagining this gigantic thick tail, big
body, big head.
>> Yep.
>> And uh biped. And how fast does it move?
>> So, this is one of those things that's
gone backwards and forwards and
backwards and forwards. There was a
paper arguing that we've probably been
overestimating various speeds primarily
based on footprints. Um there's been I
don't know how many papers trying to do
T-Rex speed. The most recent one that
was pretty detailed I think had it
clocked at so I think it I think it was
25 miles an hour. So 40 kph was the very
upper end of the estimate. So probably a
bit less than that.
>> Well that means it can move.
>> Yeah. So
that's the but that's the thing like big
things move quick. I've seen Rhino and
Hippo going at full tilt and Yeah.
They're a lot quicker than you'd think.
Um, and at least part of it is simply
stride length. When your legs are 3ish
meters long, it's hard not to cover a
lot of ground with a single step. Um,
and yeah, big big therapods T-Rex is
going to be a power walker. It's not
going to run in the conventional
biomechanical sense where both feet are
off the ground at one.
>> So, it's not running as power walking.
>> Yeah. But when you've got a four or five
meter long stride,
doesn't really matter whether you're
airborne or not.
>> Power walking. So you're never So
running there's moments in time when
both feet are off the ground. And you're
saying likely here one foot is always on
the ground.
>> Yeah, it pretty much has to be for
loading.
>> Oh, if just because of the mass of the
thing.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Okay. All right.
>> The you know that's the origin of
cinema. What's that is whether is where
this is uh Edward Mbridge. So the the
origin of cinema was a bet as to whether
or not whilst running a horse had all
four feet off the ground
>> and no one really knew this for sure.
And a guy called Edward Mybridge, he was
British but he was living in the states.
He was a king photographer and he
basically did what people have seen the
Wowskis do for the Matrix. He set up a
whole row of cameras and set up a whole
bunch of triggers and had a horse run
through them. So, it took loads of
photos and lo and behold, in one of
them, the feet are off the ground. The
guy won his bet. But he also realized
that we already had things like zoo
practiscopes. You know, the little thing
you spin with a with a slit.
>> Uh, so you see them, right? So, he did
that with horses and now you have a
moving photograph. And that's pretty
much the origin of cinema was a bet
about biomechanics. Yeah, it's always a
good question and a bet. And there you
go. You're off the off to the races.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. All right. So, we're standing
in front of this thing.
>> Yes.
>> Uh, how screwed are we, you and I? We're
back in the time of the dinosaurs.
What's the probability of our survival?
There's two big things to weigh up which
are going to be interesting, which is
would they even consider us a potential
meal? Because we know that animals that
have never animals have to learn stuff
and so animals that have never
encountered things before are often
that they don't have a response because
they don't know what their response
should be.
>> We should say during that time there was
not something that looked like primates.
>> No, absolutely nothing. We would look
very weird.
>> We would we would look weird. Yeah. Um,
so you know, there's lots of really cool
records of um, particularly you've got
down in um, Indonesia and stuff where
you've got these insane volcanic spires
and it leads to these tiny little
valleys and people go in there and they
go, "Yeah, the animals walk up to us.
They've never seen a human. They don't
know what it is." So it might look at us
and animals are fundamentally cautious.
It doesn't know if we're a threat. So
maybe it might just find us weird or in
some way, shape or form off-putting and
so we may not even be considered on the
menu. Um the other thing is we might be
too small. Um my suspicion is we're not.
So animals, carnivores typically take
stuff that is much much smaller than
them. despite basically every dinosaur
documentary and movie ever shows T-Rex
hunting an adult triceratops which is
like the same size as it uh and every
documentary you got to have lions taking
down a wilderbeast or even a buffalo
like these are weird and rare outcomes
these don't usually happen the vast
majority of active predation is on stuff
much much much smaller than you I toted
some of this up for a paper I did on
microaptor this really small gliding
dinosaur from China where we actually
have a bunch of specimens with various
stomach contents in them. And we were
coming up with numbers of about like 5
to 20% of the mass being typical, so
prey versus predator. And that's
actually very similar to what we see
with modern carnivores. And it's not far
off what we've seen even with things
like tyrannosaurs where you occasionally
find consumed bones from prey. So if we
put the lower end of that as 5% of the
mass of a T-Rex, we might actually be
okay. Um, if it doesn't consider us
worth the hassle,
then
assuming you're encountering a big adult
and not a half-sized one that maybe only
weighs a ton, then we might be all
right.
>> What would be the survival strategy? So,
the there's a thing that you criticized
not being true that I I guess in
Jurassic Park, uh, not moving.
>> Yeah, it's nonsense. They they can see
really well. Like I said, like T-Rex has
giant eyeballs. People don't realize
that because like whales and like
elephants, it looks small compared to
the size of the animal. But what you're
really important for vision is absolute
size, not proportional size. And
absolutely, their eyes are gigantic.
>> Probably the biggest on Earth at that
time.
>> Yeah. Uh guy called Kent Stevens did a
paper. He's got a really nice graphic of
it. If if you if you just put sdev ns
t-rex
there it's the one with the we go.
That's the one with the with the googly
eyes. That's a baseball or a tennis ball
sized eyeball. And when you think about
the incredible visual accurity of
something like an eagle, which has eyes
not much bigger than ours, think about
what that's going to do. And we we
absolutely know there's been loads of
studies on this in mammals and birds and
other things as well that
basically eyeball size correlates with
visual acuity. And that can fold in two
different ways. It can be like general
sharpness, like how well can you see a
long way away? So, eagles and vultures,
it's really important. Or it can be good
in low light.
>> And I now discovered that there's a
nature was metal.
>> Oh, yeah. Subreddit. Yeah. Yeah. For
gnarly paleo things.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I come across it occasionally
>> for dinosaurs. Let's see what's the top
post of all time.
>> Oh, that's eclipted.
Argentinian farmer recently found a
20,000 years old fossilized crypto.
>> So these are these are giant armadillo
like animals with club tails.
>> Interesting. Wow.
>> Oh, that's black beauty. That's at the
Royal Terrell Museum. So giant eyeballs,
they can either see very well they can
see a very long way in daylight or they
can see very well at night. And my
suspicion is it's the latter. I think
they're probably primarily nocturnal
when when they get that size. Well, not
moving might be a good strategy because
it's cautious because it doesn't
understand what these primates are.
>> Yeah. Um, but I think if it if it starts
coming towards you, if you're truly in
the open, then you're in real trouble.
And I'm not sure what you do. I mean,
the one thing, the one advantage humans
have over almost
anything else on Earth, there's a
handful of exceptions, is we have range.
I can pick up a rock and hurl it with
reasonable accuracy.
Most things can't do that. And animals
probably don't like being hit in the
face or hit in the eyes with a rock at a
range because again, they're not going
to know how it's happened or how to
respond to this. All they know is
they're taking damage, and that's bad.
And that that might genuinely be enough
to do it. I wouldn't want to try, but
again, if I was dumped on a plane or a
prairie with nothing else but a T-Rex
that was interested in me, it's worth a
shot. Um, if you're in the forest, I
would try and get behind a tree. They're
they're quite good at turning. There's
been a couple of nice papers looking at
like the the mechanics of the foot and
the ankle and how quickly they could
like pivot. Um, but we're much better
cuz we're just so much smaller. So, it
it would be very kind of Looney Tunes,
but I think you could go round and round
a big tree, right? Yeah. But much faster
than it could.
>> Yeah. And so
>> it's going to get bored or lack interest
sooner or later.
>> So Luma, what did it eat? I mean, the
you could go for the classic joke of
whatever it wanted, but the reality is
um the relatively big herbivores that
are around at the time, it's probably
largely leaving them alone because
again, just the classic dynamics of
predators, even like quote super
predators like Tyrannosaurus, they're
still real animals. If you get injured
and you can't hunt, that's probably the
end of you. So, you don't want to tackle
an adult triceratops that weighs the
same as you and has meter meter and a
half long horns on its head and is
potentially pretty aggressive. Um, and
then even the big uh so the hydrosaurs,
the kind of classic duck build
dinosaurs, they're not they're not
present with any like obvious defenses.
They don't have armor. They don't have
horns or spikes or anything like this,
but they're simply massive. Again, you
know, yes, T-Rex has got the teeth and
the bite and even if they're a bit
rubbish, the claws on the hands, but
like just grappling another animal which
is the same size as it, there's a risk
you're going to get a foot trotten on
that it's going to get off some kind of
body slam or whatever. And then even if
you do bring it down, you're never going
to eat it. Like if you you bring down an
animal that weighs five tons, it's
nearly your own mass. You're not you're
not going to eat it before it goes
rotten. That's a huge amount of kind of
not like wasted energy, but you've
probably put a lot of effort into this
and you're not getting that much reward
out. And again, there are again there
are exceptions. You've got things like
lyns are the classic one. Lynx are not
very big cats and yet they'll hunt adult
deer, way bigger than them. Lions hunt
things like buffalo, but they're
operating in a group, so it's a bit of a
cheat. So, there are some things that do
this, but fundamentally, the vast
majority of carnivores tackle stuff
that's way, way smaller than them. And
that's what we see. Um, every record we
have of basically any large carnivorous
dinosaur where you have stomach contents
where it's like consumed something or
healed bite marks, we get quite we get a
not quite a few. There's a handful of
them where there's an obvious damage to
a bone in more than a couple of cases
with a tooth broken off in the bone and
then the bone has healed over it so you
know it got away. They're they're
juveniles. They're relatively young
animals and that's what they're
targeting. Um, it makes ecological
sense. It's what modern animals do for
very good reason. Juveniles are
relatively small and weak. They don't
have the horns or frills or armor or
shields and other stuff. They're naive.
They don't they have you often have to
learn what predators are or you have to
learn how to avoid them or to check the
wind or even physically see them before
you know see them kill something else
before you know that they're a threat.
And juveniles forage badly. Um they're
relatively inefficient. So actually they
need to eat more for their size than an
adult does. And then on top of that
they're not very experienced at foraging
in the right areas. And even if they can
find a good patch, the adults will often
beat them up and chase them off.
>> You're talking about juveniles across
various species.
>> Everything. This is just a universal
pattern of being a smaller animal versus
a larger or a younger animal versus a
larger animal.
>> So So hunting young things,
>> young things is easier cuz they're dumb,
>> right? They're dumb, but they're
inexperienced. But but they're often
they're often feeding in suboptimal
areas. So this is the place with all the
best food. The adults will kick you off,
so now you have to feed somewhere else.
Maybe the food isn't as good, in which
case you need to eat more of it, so it
takes longer. Or maybe it's the one next
to the edge of the forest where the
T-Rexes hide, but either way, you're
stuck there, and then you don't really
know what you're looking for, and you
haven't got the armor. So, guess who's
getting eaten. Like, this is again,
there's lots of exceptions. You can't
have nature without things like that.
But this is the absolute rule of thumb
for how foraging and growth and
predation operate across everything from
fish to star fish as predators,
starfish, praying mantis, all the way up
to things like big cats via stuff like
crocodiles. It it's how it works. So
it'd be very weird if it didn't also
operate for dinosaurs. And then as I
say, we've actually got the direct
evidence for this from bite marks and
stomach contents. They're taken small
stuff. Bet Marks give a lot of
information.
>> Yeah,
>> that's a powerful signal in
paleontology.
>> Yeah, absolutely. I've done really quite
a lot of work on it and they can tell
you an awful lot if you've got the right
understanding of the burial conditions
because you weird thing that I think a
lot of people don't appreciate is you
basically can't take fossils at face
value particularly when you're trying to
get into stuff like behavior and ecology
because
so between the animal dying and the
paleontologist digging it up potentially
quite a lot has happened and that's
where it's really easy to start
misinterpreting things because if you
just go I I had one like this not too
long ago where I was an editor on a
paper and the the authors have done a
pretty good job to be fair but it was
this discussion of whether or not
several animals were together at the
time of their death
>> said multiple um theropods together in
this quarry and it's like right but
there was loads of debris and you had
loads of things like fish scales and
other small bones and it's like okay but
this looks Like these animals died,
potentially died somewhere else and then
a flood or a river washed them into this
bay or a channel or it then the water
level dropped and they ended up
together, but that doesn't necessarily
mean they were together when they died.
And so just cuz you've got three animals
together, what is potentially the story
of how they got there?
>> So you have to consider multiple
explanations and then try to figure out
what is the most likely.
>> Yeah. or what can you test with various
bits of evidence? So, there was some uh
tyrannosaur inflicted bite marks on a
duck bill from Mongolia that I worked on
years ago. The specimen was from
Mongolia, but it was held in Japan in a
Japanese museum. I was working with the
Japanese on it. And I'm I'm not a
tonomist of the study of like decay and
the history of specimens. And I am in no
way, shape, or form a geologist. I did
zoology for my degree. Um, but the guys
I was working with, like they were
really hot on erosion and damage and
they were looking at some of the way the
bones had been damaged and they're like,
"Okay, we're pretty confident that the
bite marks are sitting on top of
erosion."
>> What does that mean?
>> So, it means that the animal had died
and it was found in a it was found in
sand covered but in what would have been
a river channel. So, this animal has
died, washed down stream, ended up on a
sandbank. The sand is whipping past cuz
I've been in a sandstorm in China and it
is not fun. And that's starting to etch
some of the bones and damage them.
>> And after that, there's a bite mark.
>> After that, you're getting bite marks
coming in.
>> So, that can only be scavenging. That
thing has been dead and sitting out for
days, possibly weeks before something
came along and chewed on it.
>> It pretty much can't have happened any
other way. and you have to take these
really subtle signals to to reconstruct
the story,
>> but then you can start piecing some
other stuff together. So, in this case,
the skeleton is pristine. It's one of
the best skeletons out there. It's
certainly the best from Mongolia I've
ever seen. Um, and all the bite marks on
one bone, the humorus, the upper arm
bone, every every mark. We we went over
the rest of the skeleton, nothing. And
then the humorous is chewed to bits.
There's bites all over it. But when you
look, there's two really distinctive
patterns. There's deep circular
punctures. And remember what the shape
of this thing looks like.
>> Yeah.
>> At the ends and then along the delta
pectoral crest. Okay. It's much much
bigger than a hydrosaur. But this bit,
remember that's where all the big
muscles attach. There's all of these
types of this is from a different bone
but different animal, but all these
types of close parallel scratches.
And so that looks like selective feeding
because it's using its giant crunchy
teeth at the ends to get the bone off.
And this is off a buried skeleton.
And then it's got these actually T-Rex
has really small teeth at the front of
its mouth right right in the front where
our incizers are. They're called
incizform teeth. They look like
incizers. They're a fraction of the size
of the big ones. Um and they got a
really weird flat back.
>> Mhm. And that's what these are. It's
hidden this with the front of the mouth
and pulling.
>> And that's mostly for eating.
>> Yeah. And that's why it's just on the
delta pectoral crest because that's
where all the muscles are.
>> So it's I always liken it to getting
something like an Oreo and you take the
top off and you scrape the cream out
with your teeth. I think most people
have done that.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. But but that's what it's doing.
So, it's got this little row of teeth
and everywhere you get lots of muscle,
you get little rows of teeth together.
>> So, there's different bite marks for
sort of fighting, killing, and then
there's different bite marks for eating.
>> Yeah. So, it kills and dismembers with
the big teeth up the side
>> and then it feeds with the little front
teeth.
>> And all of that has evidence.
>> Yeah.
>> In the bones.
>> Yep.
>> What hunting strategy does it use? Can
we figure that out?
>> So, that comes down to the um to that
foot stuff. um they're relatively
efficient compared to a lot of other
things and particularly compared to the
herbivores. So that means they're
probably looking at long distance rather
than speed. And that makes sense cuz
even though the kind of stuff we're
talking about, like I said, maybe
they're getting to 20 25 mph. That's
pretty quick, but some of the smaller
stuff is going to be a lot faster than
that. And remember, that's a real upper
estimate. They're probably not that
quick. But yeah,
>> they're just jogging after you,
>> right? But but they've got they've got
the distance. So yeah. So it's much more
uh hyena or wolflike strategy than like
a cheetah going for hypers speed or a
lion going for a relatively quick burst
and it either gets you or it doesn't.
And then you the people kind of go well
like but that's ridiculous. Like they're
not even that quick. And it's like yeah
but if you're hunting something big
that's not that quick either. And so
that's a misconception. Like when I'm
talking about juvenile dinosaurs, I
don't mean just out of the egg and weigh
a kilo. Like a juvenile triceratops can
still weigh a ton
>> and be the size of a rhino. They're not
that fast. And again, if you get a head
start on them, because as I said, I
suspect they're nocturnal.
So, cuz that's the other thing. It's
really hard to hide a T-Rex. Even lions
and tigers struggle to kind of hide in
long grass. when you're three and a
half, four meters tall, like you you
can't hide. Maybe in a forest, but even
then you're probably going to stick out
and it's going to be hard to maneuver
between the trees. And we've got big
tyrannosaurs living in what we know to
have been relatively open environments.
Maybe there's some stands of trees, but
it's not like a woodland or a forest or
anything like that. So, they're living
in the open and surviving in the open.
So, they've got to have a way of doing
this. And I think it's either or some
combination of being nocturnal. So it's
you relatively easy to sneak isn't quite
the wrong word, but approach things to
cut the the distance down for your
initial strike and then just run in them
down because yeah, maybe a one ton
triceratops or one hydrasaur is rather
faster than you. But if you've covered
the first couple of hundred meters to
get up to your top speed before they
start running,
then you're probably much closer to
them. And then will they exhaust faster
than you'll keep going? Well, probably
not 100% of the time. No predators that
effective, but I suspect that's what
they're doing. And it fits with what we
know of their size, their vision. They
got a very good sense of smell. Again,
that makes sense at night. It makes less
sense if you're dial and operating
primarily in the day. and you got to
hide this thing and then we know they're
pretty efficient versus relatively fast
but not that efficient prey.
>> Well, there's a bit of a debate of
scavenger versus hunter.
>> They're obviously both. A because we've
got things like the bite marks I just
described which is pretty much
definitive scavenging and then we've got
the healed bite marks with T-Rex teeth
buried in bones which is pretty much
definitive active predation.
So, we've got evidence of it doing both.
But can we possibly figure out what was
the primary strategy?
>> That gets much harder. My guess is
they're probably still primarily
uh actively carnivorous because if you
look at stuff that's reliant on being a
uh scavenger um I mean the true
scavengers like the vultures and condors
and stuff like this, you have to be
ultra long distance very energy
efficient travelers. You know, they're
they're thoring soaring in thermals.
They're barely using any energy to fly.
It It's It's really hard to to get very
far.
>> How far were they spread? Where do they
Where did they live?
>> So, the ones we found, you've got them
from Alberta down to probably New
Mexico. There's some I want to say
there's some Tyrannosaurine,
so very close to T-Rex teeth that may or
may not be T-Rex in New Mexico. There's
similar teeth in Mexico proper down in
Kohila. Um so about halfway down Mexico
>> Mongolia also or
>> so Mongolia you have a thing called
Tarbosaurus which is a very very close
relative of T-Rex. It's the nearest
species or nearest genus that we have.
Um but T-Rex is probably occupying
almost all of western North America.
>> So at times the east was kind of split
off and and separate
>> but the entire surface of Earth had
dinosaurs on it. Yeah, most of it.
>> Yeah, we we've got them in Antarctica.
We've got them in Antarctica, even close
to the mass extinction event.
>> Just an insane number of dinosaur
species all over the earth. Just the
same kind of variety we have in the
animal kingdom today. You just have in
the dinosaur.
>> I mean, this is this is like how many
dinosaur species were that? I mean, I
basically wrote an entire book chapter
about this because there's so many.
But this would make the number higher,
but this would make the number lower,
but this would make the number high, but
this would make the number lower.
Counter versus counter arguments that
you can guesstimate almost any number
and probably be very accurate or very
far out.
>> Yeah, but we should say that a large
number of dinosaur species are
constantly being discovered.
>> Yeah. So, we've named give or take in
the realm of 1500,600 valid species.
that is not everyone agrees on every
species but most people would be
satisfied with that number
but we also name in the realm of 40 to
50 a year and we've been doing that for
at least the last 10 12 years that
number is rocketing up shows no signs of
slowing down there's loads of air like
we still never really explored India
very much we're starting to find
entirely new beds in places like Ecuador
um Argentina we know has a ton of stuff
but we've never excavated there very
much Austral Australia, we know there's
a ton of stuff we haven't excavated
there very much. Um, so there's lots of
places
even now to still go through. This is a
a good moment to take a brief tangent
and look at paleontology. So, how how do
we how do we find these fossils? What's
the uh what's the magic? What's the
science, the art? the same way more or
less that people did in the 1750s or
whenever you first start getting them
that there's for dinosaurs in
particular, but this is true of the vast
majority of stuff. There's essentially
two ways of doing it. The simple one is
where you have quaries of particularly
things like lithographic limestone. So,
the printing limestones or stuff that's
very similar to that uh sometimes that's
often volcanic.
um you get these super super super fine
layers of sedimentation and that's where
you get these places of exceptional
preservation. Whenever you see like the
feathers or almost always whenever you
see feathered dinosaurs it's like oh we
got the skin we got the claws and like
the whole skeletons laid out archaoptric
being like the the first bird in this
absolute classic example it's from these
beds and there you find them by
basically splitting limestone. We don't
usually dig for them. It's because there
are quarry workers and people who are
already doing this because the stone is
useful. Because there might be one
decent fossil for every, you know, few
hundred tons of rock you shift. In which
case, you could get every paleontologist
in the world there for a couple of years
and you wouldn't find very much. You
rely on the fact that there's hundreds
of guys doing this constantly and then
sooner or later they'll find something
and then you've got it. That's the super
easy way. The only slightly more
complicated way is you go to somewhere
where geologically we know it's the
right age and it's the right kind of
rock and ideally fossils have been
reported from there before. And again,
you know, geologists map all the world's
geology years ago in quite a lot of
detail. There's there's gaps. There's
places where we don't have the details,
but in general, we know. And then you go
there and then you walk around and you
look and that's basically it. and you're
looking for something that's sticking
out of the rock.
>> Yeah. So, you always get the So, there's
this constant and I think, you know,
borderline myth of the idea that
dinosaurs and mammoths and lots of other
fossil things like entered lots of
indigenous cultures because it's
impossible that the guys were wandering
around, say, Dakota and the Native
Americans didn't come across some
dinosaur fossils. That I'd agree with.
It's pretty much impossible they didn't
come across some dinosaur fossils. Did
they come across a whole skeleton laid
out on the ground? No, because those
don't usually exist.
Because even if they're tougher or it
doesn't matter if they're tougher or
weaker than the surrounding rock,
dinosaur bones are, you know, in some
way, shape, or form, they're lithified.
They they've turned to rock and they
will absorb some of the minerals from
whatever they've been buried in. And so
even in places like Mongolia and
northern China where I've been to where
actually the the fossil bone is quite a
lot tougher than the sandstone that it's
embedded in, like you can find a bit of
bone and pull it out like almost like
rub it with your hands and the the sand
comes off and there's your bone. They
will decay pretty quickly. You know,
sandstorms, you know, sand just etches
stuff. Um the tiniest bit of moisture,
particularly in winter, gets into the
cracks. Bones are incredibly porous.
that freezes, that expands, that cracks,
bones just shatter. And yeah, you find
shattered bone on the surface
everywhere. What you rarely find is a
decent bone on the surface, let alone a
skeleton.
>> So, there has to be something that's
sticking out just a tiny bit.
>> So, that you can see it, but it's still
buried, right? And it and it happens.
the the the greatest one that I saw or
that that I didn't see it happened by
with a friend of mine when we were in um
northern China and he went yeah I can
see a bit of a claw sticking out of a
hill and it was it was like this this
much you could see you know less than a
centimeter coming out of a hillside
and it's like so you know that's the
dream right
>> dig a little bit and there's a little
bit more dig a little bit there's a
little bit more dig a little there's a
little bit more okay and then the system
we were running there is some guys were
searchers and some guys were diggers So
he and I were searchers. We're told,
"Okay, you guys have you guys, he found
it. You found something. Go and look for
something else. We'll dig it out." And
so we come back a couple of days later
and check in on the digging team. So
what is it in the end? Oh, it's a
complete skeleton. And it was it was a
thing very very close relative of um
Velociraptor. Ended up naming it
Linhurraptor. So the raptor from Linhur,
which was the nearest town. And it was
Yeah. The legs were a little messed up
because water had got to them and the
end of the tail was missing. And that
was about it. So like 90 plus% complete
skeleton and it had been found with,
you know, 5 mil, a couple of 16 of an
inch of bone sticking out of a hill. And
that's what you want because every so
often behind that is a whole skeleton.
If you're looking for skeletons on the
surface, they're going to be gone before
you get to them.
>> And when it's near complete skeleton,
you you did a show of uh terrible
lizards on uh Stan.
>> Oh, yeah. T-Rex fossil that sold for
$31.8 million.
>> Exciting money.
>> So that that's a nice sort of big adult
T-Rex. So looking at a fossil like this.
>> Yeah.
>> So for $31.8 million, what's the
excavation process for when you have a
claw sticking out like you were
mentioning and getting that whole thing
out without damaging the bones? What can
you say about that process?
>> So it depends where you are. It depends
how many people you've got. It depends
on your budget and it really depends on
the rock. So again, like going into
China and Mongolia where this little gu
is from, the bone tends to be relatively
strong compared to the sandstone that
it's in. That also that means that a
it's fairly tough and resistant. Um, but
it also means that uh it's really easy
to dig. Like again, I've dug stuff by
long like pulling it with my hands or
like getting my fingers in. Getting
something like a chisel or a hammer, you
can just cruise through this rot, but
like you have to be really careful not
to touch the bone, I guess.
>> So, it depends how how strong it is. So,
again, some some bone is incredibly
strong, some isn't because they've all
fossilized differently. Um, what we're
usually doing is applying glue to it,
though. There's this um wonderful stuff
called paraloid and it's a special glue
for fossils. And I said bone super
porous. So it's really good at sucking
up liquids.
>> Oh, so you're basically filling it with
glue. So it like makes it stronger.
>> Yeah. And paraloid is really great
because you can dissolve it with acetone
and it basically doesn't react with
anything. So you can fill your fossil
with glue, but then if you want to take
all that glue out, you can pretty much
just dissolve the glue back out again.
>> Very cool. Um so yeah what you would
normally do is for for something say in
China
um where the rock is relatively soft uh
and the bones relatively tough and um
where we don't have any like manpower
and shipping problems which is a real
issue in other places. You basically map
out where you think the skeleton's
going. So, um, in the same way that you
were doing it, like, you know, if you
can imagine like a cake or something and
someone said, "I put a toy dinosaur in
there and you you you've got to find it
without damaging it." So, like, well,
you stick your finger in the cake and
just kind of dig until you hit the edge
of it and then you go in somewhere else
and go in. And that's what we're doing.
We're just going in from kind of all
sides. And once you've hit three or four
bones, you kind of know which way it's
it's going into the hillside usually.
Sometimes they're very weird and mixed
up. And then you can just like almost
trace the outline of it. And then you'll
just dig all the way around that which
might involve taking the top off a
mountain depending on where you are. In
the desert it tends to be a bit easier.
But yeah, we we've had stuff where like
the first 3 days is just 10 people with
pickaxes just digging a hole to get down
to the right level.
>> But sometimes the excavation requires
like large equipment, right?
>> Yeah. We've used jackhammers and stuff.
We we've used a backhoe. We've just
literally driven it into the desert and
just dug a big hole next to the the to
the fossil. Um, and then the classic
thing of covering it in a plaster of
Paris jacket. Strip strips of burlap
sacking plaster of Paris and some water,
wooden beams if you want to make
something really big and really solid
and just basically wrap it all up and
then take it out. And that's again
that's what they were doing 150 200
years ago. that that that hasn't
changed. Where it gets more complicated
is if you got really hard rock that's
very hard to get through, particularly
if the bone is fragile, then it becomes
difficult because if you want to like
get a jackhammer in, the vibrations
means you're going to shatter your bones
before you've even cut through the rock.
So then you might be down to doing it
manually.
>> And manual is like Yep. hand hand chip
chipping it out. Yeah. The the other the
other way you end up with that is
like the classic Jurassic Park thing,
like the the was it the second scene and
they're digging in the desert and
there's the whole skeleton laid out and
five or six guys all all digging digging
around it and exposing it. And that's
actually quite common in the states and
the reason is uh huge amounts of those
excavations are being done on government
land. They're national parks or whatever
or or or protected land. And very often
the rules are you're not allowed wheeled
vehicles full stop at all to protect the
environment. You can walk in and walk
out but you can't drive. And it's like
well right when we're in the desert in
Mongolia in China or China and Mongolia
and we're allowed to do this literally.
Yeah. My my boss drove into town, hired
a guy with with a JCB. He drove out,
picked it up with the bucket and drove
it back into town and put it on the back
of a flatbed and we drove it to Beijing.
If you're out in a protected area and
you can't, you've got two choices. You
can take it out by hand, but that means
it's got to be light enough that half a
dozen people can lift it,
>> which if it's a block of stone the size
of this desk, you know, couple of meters
by a couple of meters by a meter high,
is basically impossible. So that means
you either got to carve chunks off, so
take the head off, take the arm off, and
whatever. And you can get it out that
way, but it's not ideal. There's always
the risk of breaking. you're losing some
information and if you want to make a
really spectacular display, you don't
want to join through every big bit of
bone. You you want to show the public
one one piece. So the alternative is to
get rid of every bit of rock you
possibly can to make it light enough to
helicopter it out. And so normally, so
in China, if we hit Yeah. If we hit that
bit of bone going in, we're just like
going in round the sides until we've hit
it. Take the top off. take the bottom
off and just take it so the skeleton is
completely encased in rock and it's as
safe and secure as it can be and then
we'll do the preparation work back at
the lab.
>> That's heavy though. That's real heavy.
>> If you're going to have to lift it with
a helicopter and they've got a weight
limit of only a couple of tons
or if it's not, then you need to pay
twice as much for a much more expensive
helicopter. Then you take off every gram
of rock that you think you can to get
the weight down so you can ship it. So,
so it varies massively. Yeah. And
summing the size of Stan, that's that's
months of work. You're probably doing
that across three or four years with a
team of half a dozen people.
>> So, can we uh just talk through cuz just
using Stan as a case study. Stan was
first discovered in the spring of 1987
by amateur paleontologist
well Stan Seenson in Hell Creek
Formation near Buffalo, South Dakota.
>> Yeah. But it was the Len brothers from
the Black Hills Institute who dug it up.
And so they're they're a commercial
outfit, so they dig stuff up to sell it.
Um, but they also make casts and sell
them. Um, this Oh, I brought my others.
I do have a cast a cast of one of Stan's
teeth.
>> Um, so like you can buy cast of Stan's
teeth. You could buy cast of the head.
Um, you could buy the whole skeleton.
>> It's a famous skeleton.
>> You you see Stan in a whole bunch of
different places. There's a there's a
stand just up the road from here at
Oxford. Oxford's got a caster stand.
>> Oh.
>> Um, it's just at Lime Regis. uh the
famous fossil locality in the south of
the UK a couple of weeks ago. One of the
fossil stores has a skull of Stan in the
window. Stan Stan turns up again and
again and again.
>> So the process as written here involved
removing the overlying rock using heavy
equipment like a bobcat.
>> Yes. We call that the overburden, the
extra stuff. That's all the rock that's
sitting above the layer with our fossil
in. And when you're lucky, that's a foot
of sandstone and you shovel it out in an
hour. And I've seen guys in South
America. There was a team in Argentina.
I think it was my old boss Ollie Railut
showed me this and they took like 20 30
feet off the top of a hill to get down
to this fossil,
you know. So something, you know,
probably half an acre in size, 20, 30
feet of rock.
>> I It's incredible. I wonder if you could
speak to some of these other components.
carefully extracting each fossil bone by
hand with picks and brushes, plotting
and diagramming the bones using a grid
system at the dig site, wrapping the
bones in burlap and plaster for safe
transport to the BHI lab. Some of the
stuff you've spoken to, what's what's
with the diagramming? What's with the
plotting?
>> Yeah. So, you may well have seen
something like this for archaeology
shows or something like that. Um,
nowadays, again, tech's getting better.
People are using drones and stuff for
this or taking hundreds of photos and
then building photoggramometry models.
You just got a 3D model in the computer
>> or just kind of modeling what we're
looking at here.
>> Yeah. But but where you found
everything. So it goes back to that
stuff we were saying about the process
of fossilization or the or the process
of what's happened to that animal from
death to discovery is okay it right a
classic thing is bones being in a line.
So you can imagine if you know bones are
lots of weird shapes but mostly or
certainly lots of bones ribs arms and
legs things like this they're quite long
bones. So if they're in a current they
will tend to spin in the axis so that
they are facing the current. So if
you're finding all the bones are in a
line that probably tells you that this
thing has had quite a lot of water
washing over it. M got it.
>> You're then probably going to be missing
most of the small bones cuz the big
heavy bones won't be shifted by that
current, but maybe the small ones will.
>> Oh, so you actually model where the bone
where you're likely to find the bones,
the big bones, the small bones.
>> So it might it might tell you where to
go and dig further down the hill quite
literally. But it can also just tell
you, okay, this thing there's no way
this thing died here. It absolutely got
moved. So we need to factor that in when
we're trying to interpret it. or we've
got this one weird bone and we can't
work out what on earth it is. Well,
maybe it's from something else. Cuz if
we know a whole bunch of stuff washed
together, maybe that's a random bone
from a different animal.
>> Yeah. Maybe that was eaten or there
might be a different story if it was
washed
>> like you like like you were describing.
>> Any of that kind of thing. So, that's
where you want to have as much
information as possible.
>> It says here once at the lab, the bones
underwent more than 30,000 hours of
cleaning, preservation, restoration, and
documentation. And uh Stan's skeleton is
notable for its high degree of
completeness about 70% by bulk, 63% by
bone count, and the exceptional
preservation of its skull, which has
become a scientific standard for the
species.
>> Yeah. So there's this unbelievably
beautiful skeleton, Boreal Pelta. This
is this is a helicopter lift. Um
absolutely phenomenal preservation from
from northern Alberta.
>> What is this thing?
>> Its full name is Bala Mock Mitchelli.
And it's called Mark Mitchell, named
after Mark Mitchell, the preparator who
basically spent I think Mark spent the
thick end of two years on this. Like
this was his job. And he did other stuff
as well. He's doing some other prep.
He's doing some field work, but Mark
basically went in every day 9 to5
cleaning the rock because the rock was
hard and the bone was soft and it's
extraordinarily well preserved.
>> Boreala is a genus of planteating
armored dinosaur. Sure as hell looks
armored. This is an incredible preserved
specimen uh from the early Cretaceous
period about 112 million years ago.
Found in what is now Alberta, Canada.
Amazing. Look at this thing.
>> So, Bar Pelter is one of the ones where
we've even got some of the evidence of
patterning and it suggests that it's
darker on top and lighter underneath.
So, this illustration I think that's
Yes. Julius Choni did that. He's a
Canadian paleo artist. And so, that
color pattern is roughly accurate. Oh,
wow. So, this is true to color. So, we
can figure out color.
>> Give give or take some very large um
uncertainties. It's going to be
something like this.
>> That's so awesome.
>> So, these guys are
>> That's hard to eat that.
>> Near enough armored pine cones. Yeah.
Though it's very much the adult
condition. Uh the juveniles seem to be
far less if not unarmed.
>> We're back to the juvenile.
>> Right. So, right. So, so, but but that's
why we that armor is absolutely going to
be effective as anti- predator, but it's
probably evolved primarily for combat
and display between members of the
species. Cuz otherwise, if this stop you
being eaten, the babies would have it.
This fossil is considered one of the
best preserved dinosaur specimens ever
found with armor, skin, keratin sheets,
and even stomach contents all intact.
Incredible.
>> Yeah.
>> And so, for that, he really did the
work. and also found miles and miles and
miles out to sea or the the paleo sea.
So, this is from a site which normally
gives us big marine reptiles. So,
predatory plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs
and um uh mosasaurs and stuff like that.
And then it turned up anosaur well notur
in this case.
>> Yeah. Wow. This is incredible.
>> Yeah. So okay, let's complete the
journey of Stan to the museum to like
you get you get to the process of
cleaning everything, stitching it all
together.
>> Yeah, like Mark and like that suggested,
you know, this can be even on an animal
that size, you know, four or five m
long. We've only got the front two/irds
of it. Yeah, this can be like needle
level stuff.
>> That's how you get to the 30,000 hours.
>> Yeah, exactly that. If it's that quality
and you want to get everything open and
then something like Stan actually really
complicated skull the skulls full of
lots of little bones the bones are
really fragile so that just adds to the
time I mean at least the ankyosaur the
skull is just this giant solid block of
bone which makes life a little bit
easier so yeah they're going to put
those hours in and that's really going
to help them sell the animal which is
ultimately what happened I mean Stan sat
in the Black Hills Institute for decades
I mean 87 and they sold it in like 2020.
So, they had it for
30 years uh sitting in their kind of
little museum and then my understanding
was basically the brothers broke the
company up and that's why they sold it.
>> Yeah. But it was still incredibly
surprising that it was sold for 31
million.
>> Yeah. I mean far more than I think
anyone thought it was going to. I mean,
I I liken, you know, if you're not
buying like teeth or an ammonite in some
small fossil shop, you know, when you're
buying talking about things like whole
dinosaurs and whole tyrannosaurs, I
think it's a bit like the art market in
it's worth what people will pay for it.
>> And so, you know, plenty of T-Rexes had
sold for a few million dollars and
therefore everyone thought it would
might be five. you know, 10 would be an
absurd sum of money and then yeah, it
went for 30 and it's like, okay, well,
two I was going to say someone wanted it
that bad, but clearly not two people
wanted it that bad cuz if only one guy
is prepared to bid 30, then it goes for,
you know, a million more than the next
highest bidder. But presumably two
people, if not three, bid it to get that
high. Yeah, it was uh anonymous at the
time, but now it's Abu Dhabi's
Department of Culture and Tourism came
out that I know they've got it and uh
and then that record has been since
beaten apparently by uh
>> by Apex. The the Stegosaurus, which I
still haven't seen, though a friend of
mine has sent me some photos of this
thing.
>> Is it impressive to you, this thing?
>> No, not especially. That's why I can't
imagine that it sold for that much. It's
a really nice Stegosaurus.
It's pretty big Stegosaurus.
>> Well preserved. I've seen other very
good Stegosaurus and I don't understand
why that's worth that much more than
something like Stan, but it shows you
the market. So, so we're here in London.
There's a Stegosaurus called Sophie at
the Natural History Museum in London.
Sophie is a young animal, so she's not
very big. I mean, it's a sizable
specimen. I'd say fiveish six meters off
the top of my head, total length. But
Sophie's like truly exceptional. Like
there's a couple of plates missing, a
handful of ribs, a couple of bones in
the tail, I think a couple of toe bones.
Like this is by far the most complete
Stegosaurus out there.
>> That sold for I think $250,000. So maybe
$400,000 about a decade ago.
So this has now gone up like a hundfold
for an animal which is quite a bit
bigger but is way less complete.
So I for me those two things kind of
balance out because size is always
impressive and that's what the public
likes but also a complete one is better
than a half a one or 2/3 of one. So
yeah. So how's the price gone up a 100
to or from yeah 400,000 to 40 million in
10 years for roughly the same thing.
>> A T-Rex is a little bit more epic than
>> Well T-Rex has a massive premium on it
because it's Yeah. Stegosaurus is one of
those top tier, you know, it's you can
virtually do the less, you know, T-Rex,
Triceratops, Diplodocus, Brontosaurus,
Stegosaurus. It's in that first six or
seven. Okay, these days Velociraptor
thanks to Jurassic Park. But it's like
it right. But, you know, there's that's
the list of like seven or eight things
that any random human who doesn't care
about dinosaurs and doesn't know
anything about dinosaurs, but they've
probably heard of them. You know,
Stegosaurus is in that list and would
have an idea of what it looked like. Oh,
yeah. It's got like the big stuff stuck
along the back. You know, you you'd get
that answer from almost any, you know,
99% of people on the street. But, yeah,
it's it's not a T-Rex. So, how it's
worth Yeah. 50% more. And it's not even
a particularly complete skeleton Apex to
my understanding. I I I don't I don't
get it actually. Um since we're on the
topic of money, if I gave you, let's
say, $10 billion, how would you spend
it? You were forced I forced you to
spend it on dinosaur related things, how
would you spend it?
>> Um I mean, I'd probably drop half a
billion or so on the best museum you'd
ever seen and
>> to put together a museum. you're like
one of the great communicators, one of
the great scientists and so like you
would want to push forward
>> the the whole field and one of the ways
to do that is a great museum.
>> Yeah. But you wanted so it is twofold
because
Yeah. There's the communication and the
education part of it which is something
I'm I'm massive on and I think research
is pointless if you don't communicate it
at some level. Not saying everyone needs
to communicate everything. If you're
working on the nuances of a calculation
of the volume of a black hole or
something, yeah, probably doesn't need a
press release or a new museum
exhibition, but fundamentally we should
be talking about our work. Um, but also
you got to store this stuff. Um, many
fossils are fragile. They need to be
kept not necessarily in climate control,
but at least you want a basement that is
much more even than, you know, just
sticking it in a box in a warehouse
somewhere. So, you've got to be able to
store this stuff to be able to study it
or it's kind of pointless. Um, but with
the rest of that money, I'd buy a ton of
land like the the you know, quaries that
gave us archaeopric in in Bavaria and
have given us a ton of other stuff. I've
worked on a load of terasaurs, the
flying reptiles from there. These these
stuff are mostly commercially run or
just straight up privately owned and not
being commercially run. Someone's just
inherited it and it's just sitting on
this stuff. So if somebody's building
stuff on land, is does that threaten
like the damage of
of the the possibility of discovering
something on it?
>> It's it's more that they're not
necessarily exploiting it with fossils
in mind.
>> Presumably you have to balance the
search efforts and then the land by
>> Yeah. But you know 1 billion on its own
would go a very very long way almost
infinitely if you're just creaming off
the interest and then funding
excavations and supporting scientists
who already embedded in other museums or
other universities or other research
institutes.
>> So the rest is for buying up land so
that they those people can do the work.
>> Yeah. You look at somewhere like, you
know, Brazil and there's I can never
remember the name of it, but there's
again one of these zones of exceptional
preservation where superlative
terasaurs, fish, we've had a handful of
dinosaurs and a whole bunch of other
stuff has come out and it's just a giant
commercial mining operation. And yeah,
when they hit a fossil when they think
they're close to it, yeah, they stop and
pull it out and they'll send it to a
museum and more often they'll sell it to
a museum and museums only have so much
money. Whereas what if I owned that
quarry and then I made sure everyone who
worked there was trained and got a bonus
every time they found anything and then
I just handed everything they dug up
straight into a museum.
>> So there would be some element of a
crowdsource paleontology.
>> Yeah. But it's it's more that like no
researcher ever needs to spend money to
access that. No museum needs to go and
find a new donor to give them half a
million to go and buy this one specimen
knowing that it might still go
yeah to some Silicon Valley billionaires
foyer or whatever. It's like well I own
the land so it's mine so problem solved.
Like that that's what's in my head. It
just would be wonderful to scale up the
effort to where we can map out the whole
sort of story of this time because it's
such a fascinating time in in in the
history of Earth.
>> I've jokingly written a couple of times
about how all science funding in the
world should go to paleontology.
And the idea being that like yeah, if
you want to investigate black holes or
neutrinos or
chemical crystalallography or
pandogenetics or whatever it is, you can
do that anytime you want. Like that
that's not going to change a million
years from now as it will from tomorrow.
But fossils are in places that erode.
And if we don't dig them up, they're
gone.
So, we should dig all the fossils up now
and then we've got forever to study
them. But if we don't dig them up now,
who knows? You know, maybe there was
something twice the size of T-Rex and it
sat on a hillside for 6 months and then
the wind got to it and it's gone and
that was the only one that ever
preserved. Well, we'll never know. Now,
to be clear, this is a joke. I'm not
suggesting we should stop doing cancer
research and physics and other things
but but it is we're we're in a
fundamentally different field where our
science is literally disappearing.
>> Yeah. And I mean there's I know it's a
joke but there's some truth to it. And
um uh on the flip side one of the things
one of the hopes is that technology will
somehow ease the search and discovery
process but as you said so far most of
us
>> Yeah. I mean, so far, yeah, you know,
Jurassic Park 93, you've got that little
scene where they've got the like thumper
or something they call it, and it it
hits the ground and seismic and then
they go, "Look, look, here's the whole
skeleton." Yeah, they've tried it. It it
doesn't really work. Um, we've tried
looking for stuff with drones that helps
you getting into some inaccessible
areas, but until the resolution's
probably better, you've still got that
problem of like looking, you know, with
human eyes, which are binocular, and
being able to, you know, just tilt your
head completely changes how you see
something in a way that flying over just
just won't. Um, I know they've tried
looking. So, because the bones are
porous, they tend to suck things up. So
actually dinosaur bones can be really
radioactive if they're in areas where
there are things like uranium. So yeah,
there are drawers which have lead boxes
around them and stuff like this for
dinosaur bones or just signs saying do
not handle. They're very low level
radioactive like you'd have to like
stick it in your pocket for 6 months to
to run any real risk. But they're
radioactive much more so than the
background. So can we do that? Turns out
not really. Um, so again, may maybe tech
will advance,
>> but for now
>> humans are quite incredible.
>> Yeah, we are. But also, Paleo's kind of
at the bottom of the pile, you know,
there's not many of us. We don't have a
lot of funding. It takes real money to
adapt stuff. So, you know, like we're
scanning stuff with MRIs and things like
that in hospitals, but it mostly doesn't
work very well because the problem
you've got is, like I said, the bones
take on some of the properties of the
minerals in which they're embedded,
which means their density is really
similar. And things like MRIs or seismic
activity is basically looking for
differences in density. Well, if it's
the same density as the, you know, it's
like I put some green plasterine in some
blue plasters, there's going to be a bit
of a join and they're going to be very,
very slightly different, but ultimately
you're not going to be able to detect
that through most means if you're
looking for density or mass or anything
like that.
>> Well, I personally think uh that there's
few things as important to understand as
the history of life on Earth. There's
like books, right? There's like a or
maybe you could think of as chapters and
then one of the chapters is the time of
the dinosaurs and then there's a great
extinction just goes on.
>> It's not a million miles off to I think
Darwin had an analogy like that of we've
we've we've got a few words on a few
pages
spread out but between them you get an
idea of what the story is and where it's
going.
>> I think what humans don't quite realize
is we may end up being just a chapter in
a book. It might be our extinction event
self-created. Perhaps nuclear war.
Perhaps robots take over. Perhaps. We
don't know.
>> Well, or or or dumb luck. I mean, the
dinosaurs were doing absolutely fine
until a dirty great rock hit them. And
you you can't, you know, Ben Affleck and
Bruce Willis movies aside, there's only
so much you can do about that.
>> You take that back. There's nothing they
can do wrong.
>> All right. Uh, quick pause. Bathroom
break.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
>> we've taken a few tangents, but let's uh
continue on the thread of T-Rex. Go to
the skull.
>> Yeah.
>> So, uh the skull of T-Rex is iconic. You
describe it as being incredibly robust
and overbuilt.
>> Yeah, there's a lot of bone on there. I
said we mentioned a couple of other
things like Gigonodosaurus. So, this,
you know, giant carnivore. Uh if you put
Gigonosaurus T-Rex in, that's the one.
So, that's Yeah, that's on my old blog.
It's not my image. Um, what are we
looking at on the left and the right?
>> You got T-Rex on the left in orange and
Gigonosaurus on the right in red. As I
said, they're pretty similarly sized,
but just look at the robustity. Like the
front of the snout of T-Rex is all bone.
And yet the major opening, this is a
thing called the antorbital fenestra.
The opening in front of the orbit is
absolutely massive in Gigonosaurus. It's
like half the skull. The opening at the
back of the skull is much bigger. The
opening in the lower jaw is much bigger.
And actually the jaw, what you can't see
is side to side is much thinner. So the
heads are the same size and as animals
they are about the same linear
dimensions,
>> but you can just see there's just way
more bone in the T-Rex. It's incredible.
>> So this is like it's not overbuilt. It's
obviously it's evolved that this is the
right amount of bone for the stresses
and strains for what it's doing and how
it's acting. But you compare it to
anything that's not a very large
tyrannosaur and suddenly you see just
how much bone has gone into it. It is a
very large it's an absolutely large head
but it's a very heavy head with a lot of
bone and a lot of that bone is there to
resist all the forces of all the muscles
because it has this giant super powerful
bite which again you can see in the
teeth.
>> So the bone and the muscles kind of
evolve together to get bigger and bigger
and bigger. So you need this kind of
structure for the power that crush has.
So, one of the big things tyrannosaurs
have uh and this goes all the way down
to the the earliest tyranny were like
our size. They're like little diddy
things like 2 3 m long be a meter and a
half tall. Um but they have fused
nasals. So the pair of bones that in us
there's not a lot there but obviously in
something like a dog or something like a
baboon with a long nose it's like the
whole top of the snout and there's two
one each side. In Tyrannosaurus they
fuse together so they forms a solid bit
of bone. So the whole top of the nose is
solid and then that makes the skull just
fundamentally more rigid and able to
take more power through it. The very
early ones weren't super biters. I
suspect but they do but they do have the
little flatten teeth at the front. So I
strongly suspect the fuse nasals at
least originally is for resisting that
because again if you got a long nose and
you're pulling with quite a lot of force
at the very tip that's going to bend
your snout. So strengthen that. Can you
speak to the evolution from the smaller
to the bigger of the T-Rex? What what
were some of the evolutionary pressures?
What like what what's the story of the
>> Tyrannosaurs go back to the middle
Jurassic? So Tyrannosaurs around for 100
million years. So from about 160ish
165ish million years till the extinction
66.5 I think is the current dating on
that. So yeah got 100 million years of
them and the middle Jurassic annoyingly
is probably the bit of the misoic. the
whole dinosaur period that we know the
least of just by chance. We just don't
have many rocks exposed of the right age
that are fossil bearing. Um, but we got
two or three Tyrannosaurs from that time
and yeah, they're they're really quite
diddy. Yeah, they'd be chest high to us.
Two or three meters long including the
tail, probably more like three a lot of
them. Um, little heads, long arms. They
they look like every other carnivore
going. there's there's not a lot special
to them um at this point. They've only
just separated from their nearest
groups, which is actually something like
the ancestors of Gigonosaurus. Actually,
um they do have the fused nasals early
on. They do have these special little
teeth at the front of the jaw very early
on. They're feathered early on.
Definitively, we have skeletons with
feathers on them that are early
Tyrannosaurs. Uh at least until the
early Cretaceous. Um, but yeah, they're
knocking around as relatively small
animals in Europe and Asia. We have a
couple from the UK. Uh, we have a whole
bunch from China. There's stuff from
like Creistan and places like this. I
think there's one a relatively early one
from Russia. Um, and then when they get
into the early Cretaceous, they start
getting quite a bit bigger. Uh, so like
Utyrannus, if you want to There you go.
So Utterus is fuzzy. Um, we have three
specimens definitively feathered. Um, it
gets to 6 7 m long.
>> There's something funny looking about
the sexy smaller earlier version of the
T-Rex.
>> But, but again, this is 78 m, maybe
weighs half a ton or a ton. Like, we we
are very much on the menu for an animal
that size and it's massive and
dangerous.
>> Quite what triggered them. There's
general patterns in evolution of size
change. And one famous one called Kat's
rule I've worked on a fair bit which is
the idea that over time things tend to
get bigger and they do for various
different reasons. One of which is just
pure almost like diffusion. If you start
small and you evolve well you can't get
much smaller but you can always get
bigger. So you you naturally kind of
diffuse away. Whereas if you're a blue
whale you probably can't get much bigger
and its descendants will probably end up
being smaller. But there are reasons
that bigger things do better. You can
hunt more stuff. you're more energy
efficient, you can move more
efficiently. Um, you're dominant in
contest, particularly with con
specifics. If you're trying to win a
territory or win mating rights, bigger
things usually beat up smaller things.
So, there's going to be selection
favoring them. Um, but then big things
don't usually do well in extinction
events. So, that tends to reset the
clock by killing off the big stuff and
then smaller stuff does better again.
>> So, mostly there's evolutionary
advantages,
>> but but a fairly big one. So yeah, it's
the it's the classic thing of there's a
dayto-day advantage of being bigger and
that might last for a few million years
right up to the point that suddenly
there's the biggest drought the earth
has encountered in 5 million years and
then all the big stuff just gets nailed.
>> Also, we should probably say, is this
accurate to say that the bigger you get,
the fewer of you
>> there are Yeah, there's there's just
less fundamental space. You know,
there's more mice than there are
elephants. There are more elephants than
there are whales. like there's only so
much biomass that an ecosystem can
support
>> and bigger things are just worse at
repopulating in extinction events for
example,
>> right? So that so so they're less likely
to survive because they need more fuel.
You know, what would feed a mouse for a
year won't feed an elephant for a week.
So if and and of course the mice are
going to have an easier time finding a
few little seeds than elephant's going
to find tons of food. And then they've
got less genetic diversity. There might
be 5,000 mice. There might be 200
elephants. So, who's likely to have more
genes or who's likely to have selection
acting on those genes to produce a
survivor? Well, the one with five or 10
or a thousand times the population. And
then, yeah, on top of that, you've then
got the very slow reproductive cycle,
which then again gives evolution not a
lot to work with. If as an elephant,
you're breeding once every 5 years, and
as a mouse, you're doing it once every 8
weeks. What can we say about the the
evolution of just the the massive bone
crushing power of
>> So, so that starts kicking in seriously
kind of utteranizing up. So, that's when
you start getting they're not just
bigger animals that are getting to a
comparable size to the other big
dinosaur carnivores of the time. You
start getting those bigger heads. But
even then, relatively late in
Tyrannosaur evolution, so getting into
kind of the middle part of the late
Cretaceous, you you see a split and we
have a group called the aliramines
um which have really really long thin
skulls and they look much more like a
kind of there's a velociraptor. They
look much more like a giant
velociaptorish
than a tyrannosaur. Still relatively
small arms, um but it's it's a very long
snout. And so this is a fast biting
animal with a relatively light bite. So
it's probably taking really quite small
stuff proportionally. And then the other
side you've got the Tyrannosaurines
which are the really big-headed ones.
And so that is few ancestral things like
Albertaurus and Gorgosaurus um from both
from Alberta. Um but then Despleosaurus,
a thing I named called Gang Tyrannus in
China and then Tarbosaurus and
Tyrannosaurus. And you've really only
got three or four of these ultra giants
which are all kind of 10 m plus in size
and then have the really broad skull
with the real kind of excessive bite
force. But even things like
Albertasaurus
which is I mean a big animal 7 8 m yeah
ton or so they're not quite T-Rex but
they're definitely more robust than the
other contemporaneous carnivores. So
there is this progression of getting
bigger, getting a bigger head. The teeth
get bigger, but there's fewer of them,
building up the bone biting and the and
the power. Um, but with some interesting
evolutionary offbranches in the way
that, yeah, cats are largely much of a
mness, but then you get things like
bobcats and lyns, which are actually
quite bulky, stocky little cats that
don't have the long tail and are doing
something quite different. Can you just
speak almost more generally because um
T-Rex is sort of one of the great apex
predators of history of Earth. How does
a apex predator evolve? Like what why
did T-Rex win? Why why isn't everybody
why isn't there like a vicious race to
the top?
>> I have a I have a problem with the term
apex predator because um
ecologically apex predators are
generally defined as things that eat
other predators.
So a great white shark is because it's
eating stuff like tuna and sea lions
which are themselves predators. So it's
a predator of predators. Whereas
people people love saying lions are apex
predators and they love saying T-Rex is
an apex predator. They're eating
herbivores. This is not some this is not
some weird and unusual thing. They're
the largest predator in their ecosystem.
Uh and they are a giant one. My friend
Darren Nish has moved to using the word
arch predator. It's like some kind of
massive thing, but avoiding the term
apex because I think that leads into a
it it it's a subtle terminology thing,
but like
>> uh an important one. I just learned
something today. So, I didn't
understand. I thought I was I was using
the the word apex predators.
>> Everyone keeps using it when I don't
think they should. And and now you're
getting into linguistics and it's like,
well, if everyone uses it to mean that,
does it now mean that rather than what
it should mean? And then I'm probably
losing that argument because actually
you'll probably find way more stuff
calling it an apex predator than you
will an arch predator. But but here we
are.
>> Arch predator. Beautiful. I I learned
something today. But that would that
you're saying T-Rex didn't eat other
predators?
>> Well, it's it's probably not going to.
So we can get into though I'd prefer not
to because it's tedious the argument of
whether or not there's these small
things which some people have said is a
different group called nanotrannus or a
different species called nanotrannus.
But fundamentally, T-Rex is definitely
weird, even compared to all the other
giant Tyrannosaurs that are very closely
related to it because it is by far,
ludicrously by far the largest carnivore
in its ecosystem. So,
>> so it doesn't really have competition
actually.
>> I mean, so, so this is a velociraptor
skull. There are there are there are
some carnivores that are a bit bigger
than this,
>> but not enormously so.
um which were knocking around as T-Rex
the the skulls the same type tooth crap,
right? But but like you think about that
>> and that's like going
that's like going to Africa and going
okay there are lions. What's the next
biggest predator? And it's like well
there's a weasel about this big.
>> Yeah.
>> Like it it's that kind of size
difference and you don't get that
normally in ecosystem. So, it didn't
have some of the other big dinosaurs
around it.
>> Not carnivores. There's huge herbivores,
>> but there's no huge carnivore.
>> Oh, I see. It would It would eat those
the juvenile of the herbivore.
>> Yeah, it's going to be eating
Triceratops and Edmontosaurus and
Parasauralus. There's even a couple of
giant sorapods knocking around in some
places. It's It's going to be hoovering
them up. But like, how often is it going
to eat?
>> Again, Velociraptor isn't there, but how
often is it going to eat something the
size of an adult velociraptor? I mean,
they're a fraction of our size and we're
probably too small. This is like lions
hunting mice. Like, you're just not
going to unless one like virtually runs
into your mouth, you're not going to go
and try and eat it.
>> So, the question still stands about arch
uh predators then. Like, how does it how
how do you win in evolution?
>> Well, I mean, so I mean, there's there's
no real winners. there's just, you know,
turnover because ultimately the birds,
you know, it it's it still lost out when
when things went wrong. And as we was
just talking about, you know, things do
tend to lose out when they're big.
They're just so much more vulnerable to
extinction. Um, but clearly dinosaurian
ecosystems
had much bigger herbivores and therefore
by extent much bigger carnivores than
any system we've seen before or after.
um even in relatively sparse ones like
spits of the late triacics when the
dinosaurs are really just getting going
or the very early Jurassic but you've
still got some like multi-tonon
herbivores and then you've got some
multiple 100 kilo predators so about as
big as elephants and lions get today and
then once you're in the Jurassic and
Cretaceous it is entirely normal to have
multiple species that are 10 20 30 tons
plus as herbivores and anything up to
five tons as a carnivore. I mean, T-Rex
is probably the biggest of them, but
carnivores that exceed fully terrestrial
carnivores that exceed a ton, there's
dozens of species of dinosaurs.
>> Is it interesting to you that no other
carnivore predator was able to develop
in that environment over millions of
years? I mean, they're probably just
ecologically dominant in the way that
mammals are now. You know, crocs get
bigger than lions and tigers, but
they're fundamentally tied to the water,
but you don't see crocs roaming
or anything like that. Um, but yeah, big
I mean, the really big crocs even now
get to over a ton. So, those are very
serious animals. And I think big polar
bears are in the like 500 kilo range,
though. Again, they hunt a lot of stuff
in water. And then things like grizzlies
are at least partially herbivorous or
omnivorous.
>> So there was a very large marine
reptile, Mosasaurus. Did T-Rex ever come
across that?
>> In theory at least, the really giant
mosasaurs are much bigger in the same
way that unsurprisingly whales are much
bigger than terrestrial carnivores. Now,
um Jurassic Park unsurprisingly has
rather exaggerated it. So the one from
it Jurassic World, it's like twice the
size it should be. But some of these
things were still like, you know, 15, 20
m. But yeah, some of them are absolutely
giant. We we had one dug up in the UK
just a couple of years ago, and I got to
see the skull of it or a cast of the
skull. And yeah, it's about the same
size as a T-Rex skull. If we take a
ridiculous detour before we get back to
science,
what creature in the history of Earth
would challenge a T-Rex in a fight,
would you say?
>> On land.
>> I mean, nothing reasonably.
like the the the really big ones are
going to be
>> the the only other thing you can really
add is the this might be a very British
ad add adage of it's not the size of the
dog in the fight, it's the size of the
fight in the dog. Um so yeah, maybe
there's something a bit smaller which is
just hyper aggressive and that would be
enough to win like the classic honey
badgers chasing off lions. It's not that
a honeybger would win in a fight, but if
the honey badger is prepared to put up
that much of a fight and the lion really
doesn't want to get hurt, then then he
kind of technically wins.
>> You can't imagine like like any of the
cats can't like tigers I know can do. I
mean the size difference, the power of
the jaw, all that kind of stuff.
>> Yeah. But going to T-Rex like what could
reasonably challenge it. There's couple
of other giant Tyrannosaurs. There's a
couple of giant cockarodons from South
America that I say are comparable in
linear measurements, but are probably
rather smaller and rather lighter, in
which case your money is going to be on
the bigger guy with the bigger bite. And
that simply is T-Rex.
>> Yeah. And the bite is important.
>> Yeah, I think it is because Yeah. these
these guys, the carcarodonttosaurs,
they're they're much more cutting and
they're really killing stuff probably by
grappling with the arms cuz they do have
big muscular arms with big claws and
then slashing away at stuff. So, I think
they're probably doing something more
like almost like wolves or hyena or
hunting dog where they're harrying stuff
and slashing at it and you're basically
bleeding them out
>> and wearing them down. So, what about
that strategy? So, uh maybe you could
speak to biting strategy. So, a T-Rex is
a I guess a relatively slow bite,
extremely powerful. What about animals
that have very fast bite?
>> So, it's very simple mechanics. You
know, if you have a very long jaw,
you're going to close faster but with
less power at the tip than if you have a
really short one that's deep. And so,
that really is it. Um but yeah, as I
say, there's there's things like the
Aora and then there's things like yeah,
Velocitor and a lot of its relatives
really very and not just small, but you
know, narrow. It is narrow snouted.
There's not going to be a lot of
fundamental strength here. The teeth
very numerous, very small. Um so they're
much more about grabbing something tiny.
You know, velociraptors eating ratsiz
stuff. that's going to be probably its
primary diet or
>> so I wonder if there's a bunch of
smaller fast biting things that could
just bleed a T-Rex to death.
>> They're going to struggle though. Um, I
remember doing some work for one
documentary and they yeah, they
literally wanted Velociraptor fighting a
T-Rex and I said like you you do know
this is like we're we're going to shoot
some Mia cats killing a lion and it's
like well you can film it but no one
would believe it because you know these
ankle high things trying to like savage
a shin bone are Yeah, I'm sure they'll
make some holes and it'll lose some
blood and it may not be very happy, but
it's I don't think they're going to
The size of a Voleropter was uh
exaggerated by Jurassic Park
>> enormously. I mean, they get a bit
bigger than this in terms of the skull,
but yeah, they they're kind of thigh
high to me, like a meter or so to the
top of the head, 2 m long, whereas in
the movies, they're like standing taller
than guys who are 6 foot. So, it's just
massively massively scaled up. And then
these kind of big kind of domey heads.
And they're not the really long narrow
snout.
>> Maybe we could take that tangent. What
does Jurassic Park and Jurassic World
franchise get right and wrong?
>> I mean, get wrong a hell of a lot.
>> What What are some of like really
definitive things to you that are
interesting that it gets wrong? And
also, what are the things it it gets
pretty close to right? Um, I mean, I I
just want to press with my answer
because I always I always get asked
about this understandably, and it's like
I I get that it's a movie, but if
someone's going to ask me, "What does it
get wrong?" I'm going to give them an
answer. But I do get people going, "Oh,
you're just nitpicking. Oh, you know,
it's fiction. Oh, you know, it's made
up." Yeah, I do know, but someone asked
the question, so here's the answer. I
should say that some of the things I've
heard you describe. I feel like it's the
responsibility of those folks to get it
right. I I think there there's there's
something um I really deeply admire.
There's a show called Chernobyl.
>> It's like they don't need to be that
accurate, but they really It's like the
detail of the the kitchen wear.
>> Yeah.
>> In a room like just to get the tiniest
detail right. Who's that for? I don't
know who's that for, but that's for the
That's great art. That's for That's the
spirit of the thing. And like that if
you focus on getting those tiny details
right, there's some magical thing
happens about the bigger story. If you
don't care about the details, the story
gets corrupted. So I I just want to say
that some of the things you describe
like how many fingers uh
>> it's like that's important to get that
right because if you do some magical
stuff can really emerge and it could
become a legendary film as opposed to
just uh
>> Yeah. I mean that's my take again. I you
know I' I've worked on documentaries
where they're claiming that accuracy is
absolutely critical and 100% important
and they won't put anything on screen
that I haven't told them to and then
many of those things turn out not to be
quite as true as advertised once you get
round to it. So I'm I'm aware that when
even documentaries will take massive
liberties,
you can't be too harsh on what is
popular fiction. Um, on the other hand,
I am also aware that it is by far by a
ludicrous degree the most popular bit of
any kind of media that includes my work
as it were or something that I'm
actively engaged in and know about. And
so whether or not it should have that
influence or whether or not the
filmmakers should have responsibility,
it it does. It does have that knock on.
Um, so I mean it's simple as stuff as
Trets can't see if you can't move. Yeah,
it could. I don't know where that came
from. As far as I can tell, Kiteon just
dreamed it up. He in in The Lost World,
his sequel book, he hints that there's a
research paper that says it and that's
kind of where he got it from. Um,
there's a second paleontologist
character who's advising Dodson, the
evil in guy, and he says, "Oh, no,
that's from such and such's research."
And like I tried looking up, as far as I
can tell, it doesn't exist and never
did. Um, so I think it's just straight
fiction and it's like it works for the
it works for the book and it works for
the movie, but it's as far as I can tell
it's straight fiction and CR just made
it up. If it's buried in some bit of
literature, he's done better finding it
than I have and I've had a really good
look and I know how to look and I've
never come across anyone who's found it
either. Um, but it does it just like
warps the perception. you know,
velociaptor, cheetah speed, pack
hunters, super intelligent, giantsized
animals, and okay, 1993, it's a bit more
forgivable, but even then we were pretty
confident they had feathers.
>> Is any of that true? Wait, so uh
>> probably not.
>> The the the the pack hunter aspect.
>> Um, so that's something I've written
quite a lot about. Um, the evidence for
pack hunting in any dinosaur at all is
almost non-existent.
um it it basically doesn't exist. And
that's going exactly back to again that
stuff we were talking about bite marks
and tonomy and like the history of
specimens and and how you interpret.
>> So what kind of evidence would show like
maybe bite marks from multiple sources?
>> So it's so it's really really tough. So
the the main one which was put forward
is there's this famous um association in
Montana of Donicus which is often
confused with Velociaptor including in
the books and movie um basically a
bigger version of this that's rather
older from the um early Cretaceous and a
thing called Tenontosaurus which is kind
of iguanadontin so I guanod spiky thumbs
basically otherwise a fairly
run-of-the-mill herbivore and there are
two sites I believe for this but there's
one that's much more important where you
have a tontosaurus carcass with donicus
carcasses. And so the interpretation of
this is well this is a group that
brought down the herbivore. And of
course the immediate kind of
counterargument to that is well why do
they all die there? Like when you know
when lions kill a wilderbeast they eat
it. They don't all just die next to it.
>> Yeah. or even if they did kill it and
start eating it and then like if they
got into a fight and killed each other,
well, lions as a species are not going
to hang around for very long if every
time they kill something they get into a
mortal fight and kill half the pride.
Um, there's nothing obvious that killed
them. Um, but it's at least possible
that this was something like a predator
trap. So, predator traps are really
neat. So, Labraa tarpets is a classic
example. The idea is a herbivore
stumbles into something like tar. You've
got your deer or wilderbeast or mammoth
or whatever it is waist deep in tar and
going I'm dying. I'm doing and making
horrible noises and you know Smeodon
walks over and goes great and wades out
after it and he's now stuck and then the
next one and the next one and the next
one and the next one and then lo and
behold you now have something like
Labraa where they've got like the the
numbers are something absurd like I
think they've got like three mammoths
and one ground sloth and then it's like
100 direwolves and 40 smeiladon because
it's just sucking the carnivores in.
>> Wow. and you get these really distorted
ratios. I don't think that's the case
with the Donicus to Monttoaurus stuff
because there's ways that you can
probably rule that out, but there are
probably places like this where it's
happened. Again, the other one is um the
toxin one who's yeah, Cleveland Lloyd.
So, it's just coming up on your screen.
That's another one with loads of
dinosaurs. That's Allosaurus. Um but
we've definitely seen it with I think it
I think this has come up with something
like lions or wolves. like they found
loads of them dead by a lake and it
turned out or this pond and this pond
had got some really sort of nasty algol
bloom toxin in it and the interpretation
was the same kind of thing is that like
a couple of deer were drinking this
stuff's toxic and kills you within
minutes over dies wolf smells dead meat
comes over starts eating it has a drinks
over and dies and then so it's not
getting you're just dying from the
toxicity rather than being like
physically sucked in and trapped, but
the same effect can happen. And so you
just end up with a pile of dead bodies.
So I'm pulling up some stuff here. First
of all, shout out to Perplexity. Super
awesome. Uh there it'd be great if you
fact check some of the stuff. So fossil
discoveries, including parallel
trackways and bone beds containing
multiple Tyrannosaurus suggest these
large predators sometimes moved and
possibly hunted in groups. You as a
person who wrote a book about the
behavior of dinosaurs?
>> Yep. Let me deconstruct that like almost
instantly. So it's because it's really
easy because this this is my my book on
dinosaur behavior. This is just the kind
of thing I'm talking about. So the the
tyrannosaur trackways of a group of
tyrannosaurs is I think four or five
tracks total. So it's like two from one
animal, two from a second animal, and
one from a third animal. That's not the
end of the world. That's somehow how
trackways formed. Like you know the
rocks broken up, they stood on mud and
then they didn't. Whatever. Just to
clarify, trackways means footprints of
multiple maybe steps.
>> Yeah, one of them has got a left and
right and the other two don't. It's it's
very fragmentaryary, but I I have that
that's not a problem with the
interpretation. The problem is this is
interpreted as a group of them moving
together. Well, why? Because they're
going in roughly the same direction.
Okay. And they're roughly equal sizes.
Okay. But like I've seen solitary
animals moving in groups. Um a guy I
know quite well in South Africa, I got a
South Africa regular for my teaching
actually. Um and he's one of the big
guys at South African National Parks and
he gives me the skinny on all kinds of
weird stuff. And he's telling me a few
years ago that one of his park rangers
had observed leopards hunting together
in a group. Now leopards are basically
not just solitary, they're like
antisocial. like they beat the hell out
of each other if they come near each
other. But I've also seen, you know, you
you get game trails are a thing, paths
that single animals take. If a female is
in heat, like males will track her down
and follow her.
>> So you'll get one set of footprints and
then a couple of hours later a male will
come past and a couple of hours later
another male will come past. And now
you've got three sets of footprints all
traveling in the same direction on the
same bit of path, but they live on their
own. let alone hunting together, which
is a massive step above this. And then
the one I've talked about quite a bit in
my book is Spotted Hyena, Crauta Craut,
which is the one. There's a whole bunch
of hyenas, but this is the one everyone
knows. They're the big laughing hyena.
And can see plenty of Atra type
documentaries of them, seven or eight of
them or even 10 or 12 of them going into
a herd and ripping apart or zebra,
whatever it is. But actually, if you
read the scientific literature, this is
really rare. They mostly hunt on their
own. Now they do live in these social
clans with hierarchies and complex
social interactions. They are very
social animals, but they mostly hunt on
their own.
So even if you find loads of trackways
of them moving together, or as again
there's one if not two for Tyrannosaurs
where we've got multiple Tyrannosaurs
together and that's been argued for pack
hunting. At best, that argues they might
have lived together, but it doesn't tell
you whether or not they hunted together.
>> So, how can we make a decision on one
way or the other?
>> So, I I mean, I I tend to be
ultra-conservative in this context, and
I think we should probably avoid saying
things that we're not quite confident
about. I I don't want to ever go down
the we must have really definitive, 100%
convincing evidence because this is
paleo and we don't have that kind of
data. But just as I talked about with
things like the predator prey size ratio
stuff, there is data we can start to use
on living species about what tends to
trigger hunting in groups or living in
groups and what data there might be from
stuff like brain sizes or other
trackways or again we do have bite marks
indicating prey size. If you start
finding repeated attacks on big prey
from relatively small predators, that
would be quite convincing. Um, as you
said, maybe we had bite marks of
multiple different sizes. Now, that on
its own, it comes hard because obviously
scavenging,
um, you know, tyrannosaurs are an
exception. Most dinosaurs, most
carnivorous dinosaurs have pretty
similarly shaped teeth. So, how easy is
it to tell an adult from a juvenile from
an adult from a different species that's
just a bit smaller? Probably pretty
tricky. I mean, for me, I think the the
kind of gold standard, which I don't
think we're ever going to find, but you
never know. Like, you could in theory
get a track weight of something like a
herbivore
with a whole bunch of carnivore tracks
coming by it. We do have a couple like
this, but they don't have what I'd
really want to see, which is if you
trace the footprint of the individual
carnivores. And if A's in early on A's
footprint go on top of B's, but later on
B's go on top of A's, they must have
been there at the same time cuz there's
no way they could have been even minutes
or hours apart. So, if you had that,
then those two must be together or at
least within sight of each other and
one's not turning around and roaring or
having a fight. If you can do that with
seven or eight all converging on one
herbivore and then everything goes
manic,
well, that's really pretty convincing.
>> It is so fascinating and awesome the
like the Sherlock Holmes aspect of
paleontology like figuring out cuz you
have very little signal and you have to
figure out the puzzle of it from that.
And like that's this is such a brilliant
you're giving so many brilliant examples
of like yeah if A steps on top of B and
then B steps on top of A that's a strong
signal that they were walking together.
>> I am a bit of a Sherlock Holmes fan and
he references Kuvier. So Kuier is this
legendary French anatomist Baron Kovier.
Uh he was the first guy to posit that
things went extinct working on mammoths
and he said well there's nothing like
this alive today so extinction happens
which before that we didn't really know.
And Holmes has a line about
just as Kouvier can restore an animal
from the smallest bone, so I can restore
the events from the smallest detail. Or
I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far off.
>> Yeah, there's you have
>> used an analogy that Conan Doyle
specifically used for Holmes going back
to paleontology.
>> I mean, it's obvious. It's clear. It's
right there. Yeah,
>> that that's how on the nose you are with
that one.
>> So, okay. So basically you clarified and
showed all the things that Jurassic got.
>> We we yeah we we got off topic before we
even got on to Jurassic Park but
>> on just Velociopter you said that you
know yeah the size the pack hunting all
of that
>> the pack hunting just to round off on
that like I don't know maybe um there's
actually been some more recent stuff on
Donicus looking at things like isotopes
in the teeth and feeding traces and some
other stuff that's hinting that maybe
there is more going on there. Um which
is great. I'm I'm not anti the idea that
this exists, but you you absolutely get
this buildup of the idea that
Velociraptor is a pack hunter comes from
Dionicus. And I think the evidence from
Dionicus is really weak in exactly the
way that okay, lions are group hunters.
We know they are. Does that mean that
leopards are and tigers and pummer? No.
So why on earth do you think that just
because philos even if Donicus is that
doesn't really tell you anything about
Velociraptor?
Um group hunting has all kinds of more
complicated dynamics going on it than
just close relatives tend to do it. You
can flip that around. You know African
hunting dog, wolves, um things like bush
dogs. There's various cannids that all
hunt in groups. But then you've got
things like main wolves which are
effectively solitary. Um, the hyenas,
spotted hyena are yeah, these super
social animals, but the brown hyena, the
striped hyena, and the odd wolf are
solitary. So, you you just can't do
group versus solitary off
close relatives or anything like that. I
am very sure a ton of dinosaurs were
aggregates, live lived in groups to some
degree, and I'm very sure some of them
were social with complex lives and
hierarchies and even pack hunting. Which
ones
I have very little idea because I think
the data is so sparse that we can't
really say it with any confidence for
anything in my opinion. I think that can
be got at. I think we need to start
getting at it with the sort of stuff I'm
talking about like get a better
understanding of what drives sociality
in lions versus tigers versus leopards.
You know, relatively close relatives who
overlap. Don't forget in India leopards
and tigers overlap with lions. the
Asiatic line is still there. Um, so you
can talk about ecosystem structure and
prey size and prey type and all this
stuff. We can maybe maybe we can start
piecing that together a bit better and
then apply that to stuff like the
trackways and the isotopes and all the
rest of it. Um, bite marks and these
mass mortality sites. So I think it can
be done, but personally like what were
pack hunters? No idea. I don't think I
don't think any of them were in the
sense that I don't think we've got good
evidence for any of them,
>> but there probably exists on Earth
definitive evidence one way or the
other.
>> Yeah, probably for some of them. I mean,
I think it's well within their scope.
One of the papers writing about this,
ironically arguing against pack hunting
in Donicus
um said that, well, it's probably not
the case because you don't really see
pack hunting in birds. And so if you
don't see it in birds, then dinosaurs
being their ancestor, or if birds can't
evolve it, then maybe dinosaurs couldn't
have evolved it, which I'm not sure is a
great logical argument because of the
complexities of social behavior anyway.
But then there are a couple of birds
which actively hunt in groups. Uh things
like the giant ground horn bills. Um
Ethiopia and South Africa are a really
great example of that. So so that point
is incorrect. And then we see if not
true sociality, we see cooperation in
crocodilians and we're seeing degrees of
social behavior in things like iguanas.
So the idea that like well birds are
super advanced and dinosaurs can't do it
cuz the stupid reptiles are too stupid
and therefore dinosaurs are more like
them, which isn't quite what they're
saying, but it's sort of the unwritten
idea. Well, we have social behavior and
cooperation behavior in crocs and in
lizards. So that really gives you the
impression that dinosaurs theoretically
at least are perfectly capable of that.
>> So there's pack hunting but there's also
sociality which is such an interesting
idea is how did they live and this is
something you look at that paleontology
doesn't often touch is like the lives.
>> Yeah because you know animals are doing
complicated things. So, you know, in the
case of lions, a large part of this is
down to territoriality in that the males
ultimately are defending the territory,
and that's effectively protecting the
females, but of course, what they're
mostly protecting them from is other
males. So, there's a ludicrous bit of
self-interest. Um, but that's
effectively how it's operating as a
system, but it could just be predatory
type. Cheaters are my go-to example for
this. So cheetahs are the weird ones
compared to the other cats because
females are solitary but males are
social. So brothers will when when you
know if the female has five or six cubs,
the brothers will stay together in a
group and then the girls will go off on
their own. And if you're if you're the
only brother or the only survivor, you
will usually hung up hook up with a gang
of other males. So cheaters are pack
hunters if you're male and a solitary
hunter if you're female. So it's not
about territory defense or occupation
for them. It's about prey type.
>> Is it possible to know the sex of a
T-Rex or any of the other dinosaurs?
Like what what can palentology show us?
>> So, in theory, yes. In practice, it's
way more complicated. So, unless you get
very lucky, we have a handful of
specimens that still have eggs inside
them. Instant giveaway. Um, but this is
like two or three. Um, what you can look
for is both reptiles and birds have a
thing called medullery bone. And when
you're laying eggs and you need a lot of
calcium very quickly cuz the that
eggshell goes on basically like kind of
like the last minute during egg
development. So you need a lot of
calcium very quickly. So during the
laying season, these animals grow this
really weird kind of bone texture on big
things like the femur and the humorus,
like really big bones in the body. And
that's it's got a weird texture because
it's full of blood vessels. And it's
full of blood vessels so that you can
basically apply a lot of blood supply to
it quickly. suck up some of the calcium
from that bone, take it through the
system, put it on the eggs, lay your
eggs. We can find that. So, if you have
a dinosaur bone and it's the right kind
of thing, so you can't do it on like a
finger or a claw or a bit of rib, but
nice big bone, you could cut a chunk of
that out, grind it down to the point
that it's virtually transparent,
fraction of millimeter thick, put it
under a microscope, and have a look. And
if you see the right bone texture,
that's there there's some exceptions,
but that's very probably medullery bone
and you have yourself a female.
So the instant assumption is okay, so
you can tell female from male. No, we
can tell laying female from everything
else. So males won't have medallery
bone. Young females won't have them.
Females outside of the breeding season
won't have it. Females inside the
breeding season, but maybe they've been
really sick this year don't have it. or
they laid their eggs early and now they
don't need it anymore, won't have it. So
occasionally
if you cut up a bone, which of course we
try not to do that much, you can get the
signal of medullery bone and infer that
you have a female in the breeding
season,
>> but there's no like large bone structure
differences.
>> Well, maybe there is, but we haven't
seen it. You look at things like um kudu
or um black buck and all kinds of
antelope or even most deer and the males
have horns or antlers and the females
don't. And then you look at something
like triceratops and all the
sereratopsians. It's a big cate of oh
must be 40 species by now and every
single one of them has the frill and has
some kind of horn somewhere. You don't
have the hornless ones or the frillless
ones in the way that we do with a lot of
these.
>> I'm I'm trying to figure out how is
there how many of the species is it
obvious that there's uh like like pelvis
differences all that. So pelvis
differences works on like humans and
apes and maybe a couple of other
mammals, but it's mostly not very good
because we it's because we give birth to
such a gigantic baby comp with a
gigantic head compared to our sizes that
women have different pelvises to men.
>> And then there's size differences like
the skull is not as tall.
>> It's not. And then again, you just need
to look at, you know, humans are always
slightly dodgy with this because of, you
know, our evolutionary and cultural
history, but like, you know, there's
there's population differences. You
know, you you there are there are main
female lions in places. There are
mainless male lions in places. Um,
reindeer uh female reindeer have antlers
in winter. So, Rudolph was a girl
because every illustration of Santa and
his reindeer ever had they all have
antlers and that's that's a female
reindeer, not a male. if it's winter.
>> So, basically, we don't know much about
the dating and the sex lives of T-Rexes.
>> Well, not much, but you can make some
inferences. So, for example,
um, all tyrannosaurs uh, have at least
some kind of crest on the head. The
early ones have like this midline c, it
really doesn't work on a human. They
have like a midline crest running along
the top of the nose that sticks up. The
later ones largely don't, but they do
have this weird armored structure along
those fused nasals and then they have
little horns over the eyes. Those, as
far as we can tell, don't really have
any kind of obvious mechanical function.
And loads, like outside of the feathered
dinosaurs, the vast majority of
dinosaurous dinosaurs have some kind of
crest or display feature on the head.
when you say display feature meaning for
sex appeal to attract mates
>> or something like that. So I I've always
favored the term socioexual selection to
cover both sexual display and sexual
dominance and communication um but also
social ones because those two things are
hard to tell apart. Female lions find
males with darker manes sexier but male
lions find males with darker manes more
intimidating. So one of them is sex but
one of them is social. Nice. They're
like I mean I guess it goes hand in
hand. Sure.
>> It it can. But then you get things like
the other one I go for is uh black
swans. These beautiful Australian birds.
They have these really weird curly
feathers on their wings. And males and
females both have them. And males prefer
females with curlier feathers and
females prefer males with curlier
feathers as an obvious sexual link. But
then females fight too. Females fight
over the best n nesting spots. And the
females with the curliest feathers tend
to win those fights.
>> How does that make sense?
>> This gets into classic sexual selection
theory. It's it's what's called an
honest signal. You couldn't have those
curly feathers if you weren't able to
support them
>> because they're the primary feathers on
the wings. And what it actually does is
it makes it harder to fly.
>> So you're basically going,
>> "Look how tough I am. I've grown this
big and I can fly and carry on with my
giant curly feathers.
because I'm really tough and I'm in good
shape. And it's the same with the lion.
The reason you get pale lions in the
south is because it's or close to the
equator because it's too hot. So there's
the trade-off because if you have a
really black mane, yeah, all the males
know you're rock and all the females
know you're super sexy, but you just die
of overheating. The trade-off is if the
heat's going to kill you, you're
probably better off being a bit paler
and surviving in order to reproduce than
you are being jet black and just dying
instantly as soon as it gets hot.
>> So, there's trade-offs there. Okay.
>> Yeah. And that's probably what's
happening with the therapods, the all
the little crests and horns,
seratosaurus, dilophosaurus,
tyrannosaurs, allosaurs have big crests
over the eyes, and all kinds of others.
My I've written about this. I think this
is the tradeoff. You're going for the
sexiest look and the sexiest look is the
biggest horns or the biggest spikes and
whatever is on the head. Probably also
then with the brightest colors and the
most display patterns. But also this
this gives you away to your prey. If
you're trying to hide or you're trying
to sneak up on something, being brightly
colored or having stripes or all this
extra stuff on your head, you you you
get spotted. But then that's the
tradeoff is if I'm this big and my horns
are my horns are this big and this red
and yellow and I can still whoop I can
still run those guys down and hunt them
and kill them and eat them.
>> Yeah. Then look how great I must be.
Whereas that little guy, he's only got
weedy little crests and they're and
they're really dark because he's so bad
at catching stuff. He doesn't have the
extra energy to grow big crests. And so,
and that's why, but when you're a
herbivore, you don't have that pressure.
Particularly something like this is
protoeratops, but something like
triceratops and these guys, they're
living in big groups. You can't hide
from a predator when you're a group of
20 animals that are 10 tons each. So,
who cares? You just grow the biggest
signal you can possibly grow. And lo and
behold, they have giant frills and giant
horns.
>> What can you say about beauty in
evolution? So something that's uh maybe
you can educate me but something that's
not quite an honest signal that's just
pure beauty like peacock feathers.
>> So there are things which we think
operate closer to that. So there are
these are the two kind of classic ideas
of sexual selection and both are
probably true to certain degrees in
various different species. One is the
honest signal of a it's the kind of the
handicap hypothesis because you're
holding yourself back whilst proving you
can still do it. I I run the marathon
you know carrying a couple of weights.
you're obviously stronger than the guy
who ran the marathon without. Um, and so
that's why it's an honest signal and
it's why it's a handicap. But the other
one is what's called the sexy sons
hypothesis. And the idea is a female
might just find a male attractive for no
other reason than random. There is some
component of her brain or whatever it
may be that that just looks cool. And
you can actually sort of get this as a
human like forget forget human beauty.
You could you can look at a bottle and
go that bottle's kind of nice and that
bottle's kind of ugly.
>> Where do you put like like birds are
interesting with this? Where do you put
peacock feathers?
>> So, they're they're probably more
handicap hypothesis because the colors
that go into them and the sheer size and
shape and these things basically can't
fly. Um they're really vulnerable to
predators.
>> Can a handicap hypothesis explain just
how beautiful peacock feathers get?
because they go
>> probably not entirely. There's there's
almost certainly randomness going on in
there as well. And then the eye spots,
we know that eye spots are attractive,
are probably encoded in some way. Um,
but yeah, so going back to the sexy
sons, the idea is females prefer
something different for whatever reason.
And there might actually be some reasons
females prefer things that are
different. Different usually means
separate and outside. And that usually
comes with it variation like in
inherently.
>> Oh, so variation is evolutionary a turn
on.
>> Yeah, basically.
>> Wouldn't that man? You're rolling the
dice though, aren't you?
>> Yeah. Well, you right. Right. So, so you
you've you've got to remember again it's
really easy to look at that sort of
thing with a human perspective where uh
maximum reproductive output I think the
the record there there's some obscure
it's something like 66 children which is
probably apocryphal for this Russian
woman who had loads of triplets and
quads but like humans don't have many
offspring but most animals
lay dozens of eggs or hundreds of eggs
or thousands of eggs at a time. So
actually,
>> so diversity pays off more there.
>> So diversity can pay off. We we think
that's probably a major part of the
reason that sex evolved in the first
place is it gives you resistance to
changing environment and it gives you
resistance to parasites and diseases
which often reproduce way faster than
you do.
>> You know, bacteria can divide in a few
hours. We reproduce every 20 years.
That's quite the difference. If we were
all asexual clones and you're vulnerable
to some disease, you're probably going
to get wiped out. look at the, you know,
Irish potato famine or something like
that. Um, so different may be appealing
simply because it is different. It's
giving you variation.
Um, and there is at least some evidence
for that. There's um sword tails. So,
anyone who keeps little fish uh if
anyone who's a tropical fish uh keeper,
uh, sword tales are really quite common
little tropical fish that you can get in
all kinds of aquarium shops. And they're
a very boring fist shape, but the lower
lobe of their tail has a big spike on it
and that's the name. And they're really
close relatives of a group called the
mollies which basically don't have that.
And in the wild there, these are
Amazonian fish. They don't usually
encounter each other. But even if you go
and get not even the domesticated form,
cuz these things have been bred for, you
know, decades at this point. You can go
and get some wild mollies and give them
a wild male sword tail and they think he
is so much better than all the male
mollies. they will go for that one and
they will preferentially mate with that
one. We don't know the exact mechanism,
but it appears to be it looks similar
enough that I recognize it as a
potential mate, but different enough
that this is exciting.
>> And then this is where the sexy suns
kick in because the females are now
assuming those animals are successful
and they can hybridize or maybe it's
just a male who just happens to be a
little bit blue or a little bit red or
whatever it may be. Um, well, the female
offspring, the daughters are probably
going to inherit mother's preference. I
really like red. And the males are
probably going to have red in them
because their dad had more red.
>> So, guess what the next generation does?
There's more red and the females like
more red. And you don't have to come
back much further and suddenly all the
males are bright red. And that's closer
to beauty than I think almost anything
else would be with still a naturalistic
explanation.
>> We kind of started talking about beauty
from how much uh social life.
>> Yeah. A T-Rex might have.
>> A T-Rex might have. So um just to kind
of take that to a place of what we know
and what we don't know. So can we kind
of know something about their uh their
social life, where they lived, how they
lived. So the very fact that they have
these apparently socioexally selected
signals, the little crest and stuff in
the head.
So there's a branch of sexual selection
called mutual sexual selection. And the
the black swans are an advanced example
of this. The the classic sexual
selection is yeah, your peacocks and
your lions and things like this. males
are bigger and more flamboyant and
whatever it is and they're doing all the
competing. But you get mutual sexual
selection and this is really common in a
whole bunch of things that people are
familiar with but don't know. Loads of
seabirds um stings the common sting that
we have Europe and it's been introduced
into the US parrots various other things
where basically males and females invest
similarly in rearing the offspring. And
so the idea generally both with handicap
and sexy son, but particularly with
handicap is the idea is the males are
proving their worth. They're basically
saying, "I'm the biggest, strongest,
healthiest, I've got the best genes. I
should be the father of your offspring."
They go around showing off and then mate
with as many females as possible, while
the females then do all the work and
make the nest and look after the chicks
and yeah or rear them or give birth or
whatever it may be, yada yada yada. And
so the idea with mutual sexual selection
is well what if there's not much food
around things like puffins or you know
penguins in the Arctic you know where
the male sits with the egg and the
female toddles off gets food and then
comes back two months later or whatever
it is um on their own they can't rear
the offspring they have to have male
investment. Well now suddenly the male
is now putting loads of effort in. So
the male's now in the same position that
a female would be in under the normal
conditions. You don't want to be the
sexiest, toughest, biggest male, and you
can only mate once. All right, there
there's various cheats, but we won't get
into that just yet. You're only going to
mate once, and you're going to put all
your effort into helping rearing
offspring rather than chasing down as
many girls as possible. Are you going to
go for the biggest, fittest female as
well, or are you going to go for the
small, weedy one that doesn't look very
well? You go for the best one. Well, how
do you know that? Well, cuz she's got a
crest as well. And so suddenly you now
get mutual ornamentation just like the
black swans where the males are checking
out the curliest females and the females
are checking out the curliest males. And
you'll see they mutually pair up. This
is what we see with things like
starings. Males like the brightest
females, females like the brightest
males. They tend to form pairs. The
darkest and least bright ones are
obviously kind of left with each other
at the bottom of the pile. They tend to
pair up. But it means that when you've
get signals in both males and females,
like every Triceratops or every
Tyrannosaurus, it at least hints that
they're going down this route and that
they might cooperate for reproduction.
>> Wow. Another like weak signal that tells
a story.
>> And the problem is it's compromised by
lots of things. So that goes back to
your earlier question about telling
males from females apart. The vast
majority of dinosaur species, like 90
plus% are known from a single specimen.
And a specimen is not necessarily very
complete at all. It might be a couple of
bones. It might be one bone. It might be
a tooth in a couple of cases. The actual
number where we've got a decent number
of real
skeletons that we can actually compare
to each other,
less than 10. Probably more like five or
six. Can I ask you a weird question?
If you were to uh let's say all humans
died right now, press a button, gone.
>> How much of human civilization would you
be able to reconstruct from just the
skeletons? They're in the ground. Like
you just started collecting skeletons.
There's a lot of them.
>> There's there's billions of them. Would
you be able to start telling a story
like urban centers?
>> Yeah, probably.
>> Probably reconstruct a lot. And and if
if nothing else just the you know
superlative brain cavity will tell you
quite a lot you know with must must must
have been very very smart with brain
that big
>> you can probably reconstruct some of the
behavior a lot of the behavior social
behavior a lot of the stuff
>> and you're going to see stuff like you
know the famous one of I think it was a
neanderal there was a famous question of
like you know at what point do you think
society exists and it may have been one
of the leakies but the answer was
basically this skeleton because it was
someone with a really like a properly
busted leg and then it fully healed and
it's like if that person was on their
own just dead. Someone had to look after
them for months to get that level of
healing. You only do that to someone
you're really devoted to and probably a
group of people because even one person
can't look after one other person in
Right. So that's your society. And yeah,
you think about the the pathology of
skeletons in the human race. How, you
know, how many of us have broken a bone?
Most most adults have probably broken a
couple of bones, even if it's just a
finger or or a nose or something. But
then you think about what medicine has
done, and you would be able to see
treatments of complete compound
fractures of guys who survived horrific
car crashes and treatments of cancer,
bone cancers, and stuff like that. you
would see that. Well, how's that
happening? Either they're magic or
they've got some kind of in which case
they'd probably cure it instantly or
there's some kind of technology in
society supporting that change.
>> That just hints at the fact that the the
evidence collection and the reasoning
mechanism that paleontology and
archaeology uses is really powerful.
>> Yeah.
>> So, it it could be very effective even
even just with a small amount of data. I
mean, you
>> but but it's the right amount of data.
That's the thing. We can we can find
dozens of skeletons that we can't do
very much with and then the right one
that you know things like stomach
contents you know that's a super or bite
marks that's a super powerful bit of
data but it doesn't turn up that often
so it's not like you can get it off
every skeleton and that's the thing it's
it's the it's the pool of data and I
think that's what people miss we we as
paleontologists um we get caught up on
single superlative specimens and then
try and teach them as a like a silver
bullet almost. So, Microaptor, I
mentioned this before, little flying
dinosaur crows or gliding dinosaur crows
thing from China. We've got at least a
dozen good specimens of it by now and
multiple ones with stomach contents. Um,
there's one I've described with a little
mammal foot inside it. There's one with
a bird inside it. There's one with a
lizard inside it. And there's one with a
fish inside it. On their own, and this
happened for at least two of the papers
describing these things, it's like it
ate fish. These are fish eating animals.
No, that one ate one fish once.
That one ate one bird once. That one ate
one mammal once. And that one ate one
lizard once.
So, what have we actually got here? I
suspect we've got a group of generalists
and we just happen to have found them
eating different things at different
times. But equally, it's also possible
at least that yeah, this is one of these
things and it had leared to eat fish
when the others hadn't. And actually,
this was mostly fish eaters and the
others ate whatever they could get.
Maybe one caught a bird up a tree in a
nest. Maybe one found it dead on the
ground.
You don't really know what one of these
things on its own is fascinating,
but potentially misleading. The way
you're describing it now, it seems like
yes, it's potentially misleading. But
there's
in your whole way of being and the way
you've been talking about this stuff, I
can see that it's not just the direct
evidence you're mentioning. It's like
it's a bunch of intuitions you build up.
It's like you're stitching together a
bunch of little things. It's the
Sherlock Holmes things. It's not just
the clearly this one piece of evidence.
It's like, okay, what do I know about
the general other dinosaurs around the
area, the the the different animals, how
animals usually behave about this
period, about the environment, and all
of that comes together. And then
>> and that's so one thing I've definitely
written about um is yeah the the
independent lines of evidence. Can you
get stuff that is as far as possible
truly independent from the other data
and does it give you the same answer?
And then when it does that's incredibly
powerful. Um so Spinosaurus or the the
Spinosaurs as a whole is my go-to
example for this. So, the guys, the
famous big sail back and the weird
crocodile- like head. Uh, though some of
them look rather different to that. And
if you look across all the species and
specimens that we have, and incredibly
fragmentaryary and very badly known, but
they're all basically associated with
um when you look at the Gish, you see a
whole bunch of stuff for these things.
So, they do have a surprisingly
crocodile-like head and crocodile-like
teeth compared to every other
carnivorous dinosaur. And when you do
the mechanical analysis, you see they
function in a very similar way. And
indeed, teeth. Oh, here's a spinosaur
tooth. Uh, with very nearly circular
cross-section, really distinctive,
similar to crocodiles, similar to
dolphins, similar to fish eating fish.
So, points to fish. Crocodile like head
points to fish. crocs eat other stuff
too, but still um they're usually found
in or near aquatic systems. Now, fossils
in general tend to turn up in aquatic
systems because you got to be buried to
become a fossil. So, water association
is common. But even so, that's true.
They turn up in places where lots of
other dinosaurs don't tend to turn up,
including carnivores, which suggests
they're eating something else. Um, if
you look at the isotopic signature of
the teeth, um, often it correlates with
crocodiles, fish, turtles, and stuff
that lives in water and doesn't
correlate well with other land living
dinosaurs that lived in the same time in
the same place.
So, you put all of that together
and it's really hard to argue, oh, in
addition to the tiny detail of
Barionics, the British one was found
with fish scales inside its chest
cavity. So, you put all of that together
and yeah, I'm not saying it only ate
fish. I'm sure it ate big shrimp and
turtles and we know they were predating
on terrestrial dinosaurs and terasaurs
because again stomach contents and teeth
and stuff. But fundamentally, this is an
animal or a group of animals doing
something different to the other
carnivorous dinosaurs and it's probably
linked to water and it's probably linked
to fish as a predominant way of living.
We should mention that you're working on
a book out in early 2026.
>> Um, so in the UK it'll be out in
November. In North America, January or
February 2026.
>> It's it's called Spinosaur Tales: The
Biology and Ecology of the Spinosaurs.
And uh
>> written with Mark Whitten who did that
picture.
>> It's a beautiful creature
>> which I think is in there. He Mark's
done a ton of new artwork. He he helped
write the book, but he's also the the
artist.
>> I mean, can you describe a little bit
more about this creature? There's a
there's a bunch of stuff like what you
just mentioned. And there's some debate.
>> Weird.
>> Is it is it how to what degree is it
aquatic? So what what
>> not very is my take.
>> So does it live in the water? Does it
step in the water? Does
>> Yeah. So I think it's basically a big
wider. It's a poor analogy, but it's a
very weird giant stalk.
>> Oh god.
>> Or heron.
>> What's giant?
>> Um yeah. So potentially bigger than
T-Rex. Linearly not in mass. Again,
really quite narrow chest versus that
T-Rex barrel, but potentially 15 m long.
So, bigger than any T-Rex we found, at
least in terms of length.
>> Can you describe what it looks like
though? I mean, there's some iconic
features to it, right?
>> Yeah. So, this really quite long head um
with a kind of wavy jawline like like
animals have, you know, most carnivores
have straight jaws. This one has a kind
of um somewhat wiggly jawline. It really
narrows at the front and then opens up
again into like a little it's called a
rosette. So you got like a little
semicircle and then a dip and then the
jaws go back and then the teeth line
waves up and down. These really conicle
teeth which doesn't sound very exciting
but it makes them different to every
other car dinosaur. Like no other thing
has a conicle tooth which is a classic
fish thing or at least biting hold of
something that wriggles. Um the nostrils
are not at the tip of the nose. They're
pushed back at least somewhat. It has a
bunch of crests on the head. It's got
quite a long neck. Spinosaurus and at
least a couple of the other closest
relatives to it. Thing called
ichthoventor from uh I can't remember if
it's Thailand or Laos. I think it's
Laos. Has this giant elongated bit to
the top of the vertebrae and so it gives
it this giant sail along the back.
Spinosaurus at least possibly
probably not any of the others. then has
this weird like thin like mute like
expanse to the top of the tail giving it
kind of like a giant ore paddle
appearance.
Mostly they have very large arms with
giant claws on the hands. Um and
Spinosaurus at least appears to have
really quite short legs but the others
don't. Um, but again, so Spinosaurus is
like totally iconic, but if you look at
something like Barionics from the UK or
um, Sukumimus from Nishair,
it's still got the same head. It's still
got the same neck. It's still got the
same arms, but it doesn't have this sail
and it doesn't have this tail and it
probably doesn't have short legs. So,
Spinosaurus is super weird and
exaggerated version of what is already a
kind of super weird group of therapods.
So, Spinosaurus is properly strange. And
then as you kind of hinted at like super
controversial as well because various
papers have claimed it's a diver or a
really good swimmer and I think the
evidence for that is
very weak at best.
>> So your book is going to be you're going
to start some with your book is
going to be
>> I think I I think I already have to be
honest. Like I've written I've written
three major papers and one in particular
with my colleague Todd Halt where we
frankly savaged the idea that it's a
good swimmer. Um and then other people
have since including actually some of
the authors who were on the original
paper claiming it did swim well have now
effectively reversed their position and
said it didn't.
>> So the Jurassic Park 3I fight between
the two.
>> Yeah,
>> it's famous. Uh in real life encounter
who wins?
>> So probably still T-Rex. I mean, the the
Jurassic Park Spinosaurus was pretty
good for its time. Um, because some of
the stuff that I've just talked about,
particularly the short legs were
suggested way back in 1910, 1912, but it
was really uncertain. Um, now it appears
to be more likely the case than not. The
tail was unknown at this point, so it
was genuine a very generic tail. Um, but
the crocodile like head is pretty good.
The neck's a bit short. the sail is a
bit too like it's almost just like a
semicircle stuck on the back and it's a
bit more complicated than that. Um but
personally I'm quite a big fan of the
Jurassic Park 3 Spinosaurus. I think for
its era it's really quite good. Um it is
massive. So there is this um they're
from I got to say Morocco cuz
Spinosaurus is found throughout North
Africa. Morocco, Algeria, Egypt. There's
a massive pair of jaws or snout that's
in a collection in Milan that's
absolutely outsized, just like an
absolute giant. And that points to a
truly monumentally sized Spinosaurus,
which is where all these upper estimates
of 15 plus meters come from. It's just
this one set of jaws. But yeah, it it's
about right, but it's just a bit too
muscly and a bit too bulky. Um, but in
gross appearance, it's pretty good.
>> Does it have a chance against a T-Rex?
No, because it's got this unbelievably
long thin jaw which whilst much stronger
than something like Barionics is
fundamentally not that strong. The the
jaws are very long and thin and then the
teeth are Yeah, they're big but they're
not big big. Um, you know, the the the
whole like it grabs the T-Rex neck and
then like snaps it. Well, Spinosaurus
actually its neck is really strong going
up and down and is very weak rotating or
going side to side. So, it's got the
weakest kind of possible neck to like
rotate and snap the T-Rex. And then
T-Rex has got like the strongest neck of
anything. So, you've got like the
weakest jaw with the weakest spin versus
the strongest neck. So, no, I don't buy
it.
>> So, that brings it back to the topic we
touched on a little bit. What are you've
mentioned a bunch of the stuff that the
Jurassic Park series gets wrong.
>> Uh maybe you could speak to more things,
but also what does it get right?
>> So, a a lot of like very in some level
generic but quite important things it
gets right. T-Rex is about the right
size and shape and is massive and you
don't actually see it run. You see it
power walk. If you watch the Jeep chase
again, you'll see it only ever has one
foot on the ground. The weird thing for
me is how much some of them vary. So
like I'm a big terasaur guy. I do lots
of work on terasaurs, the flying
reptiles. The pteranodons in Jurassic
Park 2: The Lost World, you see them
very, very briefly in one of the last
shots, and they're okay, but they're not
great, but it's clearly a bit of a
throwaway shot. The ones in Jurassic
Park 3, I think, are mostly excellent.
Really, really good. And then the ones
in Jurassic World are terrible. Like a
massive regression. there's loads and
loads of details that are right in JP3
that are completely wrong in Jurassic
World. And you're like, why did you take
a really good model and make it much
much worse and less accurate? I don't
understand. Um, and I again, it's
fiction at one level, who cares? But
like, as as you said, like
I I don't think so. See, the weird thing
for me is I don't think it would affect
how they're perceived by the public.
Some things I get, like for example, in
Jurassic World, the pteranodons pick
people up with their feet and fly off
with them. Pterannodon's feet don't work
like that. It would never be able to do
that and it would never have the lift.
But I get for dramatic purposes, you
might want to show that. Okay, fine. You
know, this is your big sequence. You
need that. But for the rest of the
animal, it's weirdly inaccurate. And I
don't think the public would know, and
they might well care if it was much more
accurate. And I don't think it would be
any harder to make it accurate than to
make it inaccurate. Um, I've spoken to a
colleague of mine, who I won't name just
in case I get him into trouble. Um,
who's a big dinosaur nerd, but also a
big creature creator and designer and
has done a whole bunch of proper
Hollywood A-list movie stuff. And I
asked him about this and I went, "Okay,
but like is it just easier to take the
model that you've got and mess around
with it than to if I came in and said,
"You need to fix that, you need to fix
this, you need to fix this, you need to
fix that." and he basically went, "No,
it's about the same amount of effort."
It's not like
we don't have the director or the
producer or the lead designer going,
"No, I want that arm a bit longer. I
want that tail a bit brighter. Can you
add a few more bits there? I don't like
those scales." So, he said, "We're doing
that constantly anyway. So, doing it to
one set of design specs versus another
set of design specs is no more hassle."
In other words, he said, "It's no harder
to make it accurate than to make it
inaccurate." And it's like if that's
truly the case, then just make it right
and then you can claim a level of
accuracy and engagement that you can. I
mean, it's interesting. There's there's
a thing called the Jurassic Foundation
after the first Jurassic Park made an
absolute fortune. Spiel I think it was
Spielberg directly may have been through
Universal, but anyway, they set up the
Jurassic Foundation and it's a small
fund of money for research on dinosaurs
and related animals and academics can
apply for it. my PhD, one of my PhD
students got some money from the
Jurassic Foundation. Like, that's great.
He didn't have to do that. He went,
"Paleontologies helped give me this. I'm
going to give back a bit." And after
what must be what, 30 years now, it's
probably funded an awful lot of research
and help young researchers get a start.
So there's a level of engagement there
that I think hasn't been in subsequent
films, which you can kind of see once it
goes from being a one-off to being a
franchise and it's changed hands. I
mean, how many different directors has
it had now,
you know, Spielberg did the first two
and then don't know about the next five?
Must be two, if not another three more
people. Uh, you know, and 30 years
later, it it's it's all changing.
>> Yeah. Yeah, but that's the path of
creating a legendary film
>> that the depth of accuracy and it's not
that difficult to work, but it's also it
does something to the to the whole
artistic creation if you create a
culture of where the details really
really
>> matter. Yeah. And and and again there
there's some oddities. So like
Galamimus, I mentioned it earlier. So
one of the
model for Galamimus in Jurassic World is
nearly identical to that from Jurassic
Park. One of the differences, which you
can barely see on film, but I know this
is true because I found it in like
Jurassic World Kids book because I
flicked through it when it came out.
It's a closeup of the head with an arrow
to the teeth. Galamimus doesn't have
teeth. It's got a beak. So, someone has
taken the original model and actively
spent time adding teeth to an animal
that didn't have them. I would
understand it. I'm not saying I agree
with it, but I'd understand if if it was
a rule of cool and like, "Yeah, but it
would look so much better with all these
gnarly big teeth and whatever." And it's
like, you can't even see it in the final
thing. They've got tiny little heads. In
the film, all they do is like run past
the camera briefly. It's not like
they're a big carnivore and they're
engaged in like one of the big battle.
Like, why? Why? It's not like you can't
even barely see them. Uh well, yeah,
again, just to linger on it, there is a
lot of value to authenticity in all
walks of life, and one of them is
accuracy. When you're talking about
dinosaurs, it's so valuable and so
worthy, and it's respectable for the
long life of a film to be accurate. I
just wish I I hope they do that. There's
certain directors that really
dogmatically push that. Alex Garland
comes to mind. You know, he did whenever
he integrates like quantum computing or
AI into a film.
>> Nolan with the black hole in
Interstellar where they ended up
publishing a paper on the calculation to
visualize.
>> I mean, that's legendary. That's great.
And like you think that has nothing to
do with the story, the narrative of the
film, but it does. It like permeates
everything. If you get that black hole
right,
that everybody else steps up their game
and really really tells a story in this
way that reverberates through time and
it like really moves people. So
>> yeah, I Yeah, I mean, as I say, I I I
wish it was better. I mean, the the only
thing I' I'd flip it around, it's a joke
I've made more than once, but like just
just don't take it as a documentary. No
one wants watches James Bond and goes,
"That's how international espionage
works." you know, he's got the laser
watch and the exploding car and it's
like may maybe treat it a bit as
fiction. I I I've heard from a friend of
mine who worked at uh the Royal Terrell
Museum, which I've mentioned before, in
in Alberta, which is an absolutely
phenomenal place. Um, and she said after
the first one, genuinely
like it was not common, but more than
once people were annoyed that they
didn't have the real dinosaurs out back
because they'd seen them and they knew
that the real ones were out there, which
is a testament to Industrial Light and
Magic and Stan Winston, but also
slightly horrifying that anyone watched
Jurassic Park and literally thought that
m also, why would you go to a museum?
You go to the zoo if it's alive
>> there. You will also meet uh what is it?
King Kong and got
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Uh
I I don't think we quite touch on this.
I I really want to ask you about uh
intelligence. What we know about the
intelligence of let's say T-Rex. We
talked about his big head. What do we
know about
>> Not much. So there's there's a T-Rex
brain or at least a very rough cast of
part of one.
>> That's the actual look of
>> Yeah. This is so dinosaurs. In fact,
most reptiles I wonder if you can see it
on the velociaptor.
>> Not really, unfortunately. Um,
>> it's elongated.
>> Yeah, but it's more that they have we we
are weird in that we have a brain that
basically fills the inside of our skull.
What most animals have is actually a
little kind of subskull inside the main
skull which is called the endoccast or
endocranium and the brain is in that. Um
and even then it's not like full of
brain because we've packed an awful lot
of brain into our limited space and they
then have quite a lot of goo and fat and
other stuff around it. Um, but it means
for dinosaurs and then deep reptiles and
birds in general.
In the old days, you could basically cut
one open, but now we'll CT scan through
them. You can take an internal mold of
the endocranium of the brain case. And
then whatever filled that would have
been the brain and its surrounding
tissues. And that's how you get
something like this. In this case,
someone literally cracked open an old
skull and basically took an internal
mold in the same way that you do an
external mold for the for the skulls.
And that tells you quite a lot about
certain things. Um, so for example,
you've got a bulb at the front which is
the oldactory bulb. So brains are very
stereotyped. Again, ours are super
weird. So you have your factory bulb at
the front and behind that you have the
optic bulb or the optic lobe. So roughly
how big they are will tell you roughly
how much of the brain is devoted to, for
example, sight and smell. So if it's a
lot, it's pretty good. If there's not
much, it's not very good. That goes
quite a long way already. Um, one thing
we've done in the last few years is you
can also get into the, it's not shown
here, it wouldn't be part of this, uh,
but the inner ear.
>> We can CT scan into the structure of the
bony inner ear. And from that you can
actually get an idea of what frequency
of sounds the inner ear was structured
to be pitched to.
>> Wow.
>> Which is doesn't actually tell you very
much but it's phenomenally cool that you
can do it.
>> We should say you also have quite a bit
of a background in biology. So you try
to reconstruct biology from go from
paleontology to biology.
>> Yeah. I my my go-to oneliner is I'm a
zoologologist but I work on dead stuff.
My degree was zoology. My official job
title now is reader of zoology. I teach
zoology. I don't teach paleo. Um, so
yeah, living animals was always actually
my primary interest and I kind of fell
into paleo, but then I wanted to drag
that with me because I'd been trained in
behavior and ecology and it's what I was
most interested in. So then applying
that knowledge and understanding
to these animals.
>> So to some degree it is possible to
reach towards the biology.
>> Absolutely. Yeah. So with the ear,
that's interesting. The brain, we can
know something about the brain.
>> Yeah. But then but then when you get
into intelligence is when it gets really
awkward because working out exactly
which bits of this are probably linked
to like the main fundamental processing
and what you link to actual intelligence
is tough. Um on top of that, we don't
really know what's been the big
challenge of the last couple of years of
this question. Was T-Rex and other
dinosaurs super intelligent of like
neuron density? How many basically nerve
cells can you pack in per bit of volume?
Because birds have some weird tricks
which means they get a lot more brain
per volume. Um just how much of the
brain case was brain and how much was
like goop around it we know varies. So
you get an kind of fairly big upper and
lower band. And then the other big thing
we always have to do is factor in size.
Big animals need bigger brains to
operate them. So whales have really big
brains, but whales weigh tens of tons.
They're not smarter than us. So you have
the the classic thing is a thing called
the um incilization quotient, which is
at a very simple level. It is the volume
of brain scaled against the size of the
animal. So we have huge brains compared
to how big we are. So we're massively up
the chart. And then you do have a few
things with like worms. I should
probably stick to vertebrates.
some stupid stuff which has a
surprisingly small brain for its size.
Most things that aren't primates and
things like crows and parrots sit very
neatly on a couple of different curves.
There's a curve for reptiles, a curve
for birds, curved for mammals, and
things like this. Um, and basically
that's it. But also actually our
understanding with mass estimates for
dinosaurs is good but not great. And so
you could easily be out by you could
easily be out by like 20 or 30% on the
volume of the brain inside the brain
case. And then you could be out by 20 or
30% on your mass estimate. Well, now
suddenly
it's very easy to make the brain too big
and the animal too light and it's super
smart or make the brain too small and
the animal too heavy and it's super
dumb.
>> So
>> um that's awkward unfortunately. So
apparently there's uh some controversial
paper that suggests that T-Rex is a pime
has primate level intelligence.
>> Yeah. And then that was shot down within
a few months by a team of
paleontologists and a couple of other
neurologists who really went to town on
it
>> just counting the number of try to
estimate the number of neurons.
>> Yeah, it was the neuron density thing.
And yeah, I I I unsurprisingly support
the revised one which was done by a
whole bunch. Yeah, the Caspar paper. Um,
I've spoken to Casper about it, a couple
of the other authors.
>> So, they uh scaled down the number of
neurons from 3 billion down to 250
million to 1.7 billion, which is similar
to crocodiles. Not bad.
>> Yeah. Which is kind of what you'd
expect. I mean, a couple of other
people's at various times have suggested
they're really smart. And again, you
know, birds have this thing of they have
this weird thing of neuron folding and
they can basically pack in a lot more
than you'd expect. you know, that's why
crows are that smart despite having tiny
brains relatively even compared to their
overall size. Um, but I'm being
obviously overly facitious. But if
ultimately part of your scaling is how
big is the animal versus how big is its
brain? That's most of a T-Rex brain.
It's a fraction of the size of a chimp
brain. And chimps don't weigh seven
tons. So
you you you know it's a kind of Hitchens
like extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence but like you just
look at it and go that's about the
proportion we'd expect for a croc. Now
crocs are smarter than people think but
they're sure as hell not monkeys. Um
you're going to have to really come up
with something much more convincing than
oh if you just pack them and if you
scale them this way. Uh a bit of a
ridiculous question but is it possible
to find evidence of tool use? I mean, in
theory, it it depends how quite how you
define a tool. So, birds building nests
is arguably tool use to a certain
degree.
>> I'm aware of
I I suspect it turned out not to be the
case. I was I was shown a very rough,
not very wellprepared fossil
20 years ago now, no 15 years ago now,
where someone said, "We think this might
be a early bird nest and therefore
potentially even a dinosaur nest." And
nothing's ever been published. So my
guess is once they excavated it and had
a good look at it, they went, "Nah, it's
nothing really." I mean, I guess the
question is how would you know?
>> Yeah. as if it was be difficult unless
it's obvious widespread primate life.
>> Yeah. But even then, like, you know,
sapient, you know, chimp chimps make
loads of tools, but it's mostly made of
wood and they're mostly just breaking
stuff and then that's the odds of that
preserving are very low. You do get
things like chimps and otterters, sea
otterters. They have their favorite
anvil and hammer stones to break stuff
open. But again, the reason they picked
that stone is because it's really heavy
and good at breaking oysters or breaking
nuts. It's not going to leave or
probably not going to leave
stereotypical points on the rock. And
even then, you could just go, well,
maybe it,
you know, just got bashed up in a river
or something. So, in your book,
Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior, you uh you
kind of conclude that there's a lot we
might not know. What's a particular lost
behavior that we don't know about that
you think might be out there? Something
like midden use. It's a whole bunch of
animals and birds who basically crap in
the same spot. They they have their spot
and that's where they go. So rabbits do
this, sloths do this, um oddvarks, even
things like wilderbeast and zebra not
zebra impala will tend to go back to the
same place every day.
But the fossil record of soilites,
fossilized feces and fossilized waste
from dinosaurs, it exists, but it's
extremely rough because of course this
is the stuff that's already been
digested and broken down. It's already
kind of gooey and broken up and doesn't
have a lot going for it. Um,
if they do it in water, it's going to
dissipate instantly. If it rains, it's
probably going to fall apart. Things
like dung beatetles and flies will break
it down. Even if it gets covered by sand
or whatever from a sandstorm, it's
probably still going to compress and
separate. So, are you ever gonna find
it?
Maybe go going back to our trackway
stuff. But even if you do, what species
left that? We know a big herbivore did
this, but was it Triceratops or was it
an ankyosaur? Those animals are very
different things, doing very different
things, and it would tell you different
things about their behavior if we know.
>> Yeah. So, one one one piece of behavior
I forgot to ask you about. Yeah.
>> So, a T-Rex engage in cannibalism.
>> Yeah, almost certainly. Well, certainly.
I think we've got um there's a T-Rex
bone with a T-Rex embedded tooth in it
with with overgrowth.
>> Yeah,
>> there's I think it's I want to say it's
an Albertaur rather than T-Rex, but
there is a there is a Tyrannosaur jaw in
Alberta with a T-Rex tooth stuck in it,
and you can pull the little tooth out.
Um, and then there's a T-Rex footbone
with these distinctive feeding traces on
them. And this actually goes back to
that early point about T-Rex being weird
being the only big carnivore it's an
environment. Because if this was even
Mongolia at that time, but anywhere else
there's three or four or five big
carnivores. And so you find a bone and
it's chewed up by a big carnivore, we
don't know who did it. But when you see
a big bone chewed up in a T-Rex
ecosystem, well, you know, if it's
anything bigger than this, you know it
was T-Rex. And so when it's a T-Rex bone
with T-Rex bite marks,
>> Yep.
>> QED. Yeah. So it it must have been
>> That's fascinating, isn't it? That they
would attack themselves.
>> Cannibalism turns up in a whole bunch of
stuff. Um, but it's not it's very rare
as like a fairly habitual behavior.
>> So, but there's several reasons you
might be engaging in or or rather teeth
marks might tell various stories. So, it
could be just fighting for dominance,
right?
>> It it could, but it's unlikely. And in
this case, so again, we see there are
loads of facial injuries in Tyrannosaurs
in carnivorous dinosaurs generally, but
particularly Tyrannosaurs. They have
really beaten up heads. Like half or
even twothirds of adults have scarring
and facial injuries, but you see healing
on it. Whereas this foot does not show
healing and it's got multiple different
bites. The idea that you'd bite a foot
whilst fighting someone and then go back
and bite that one foot again, that's
pretty not impossible, but pretty
unlikely.
>> So, looks like it's eating, not
fighting.
>> Yeah. And they're more like the feeding
scrape traces than they are the big
puncture wound. So, again, not
impossible, but very weird for that to a
fight. Um, so yeah, they're they're
they're fighting they're fighting
probably quite a lot. Um, but whether or
not you actually eat something that
you've killed or that you stumble across
as a body, it's definitely happens
occasionally, otherwise we wouldn't have
the record of that. But there's a reason
carnivores often don't eat carnivores
and particularly don't eat their own
species, which is parasetism.
You know, carnivores in general are
loaded with parasites because they spend
their whole lives eating food which has
parasites and stuff in it and so they
tend to accumulate a lot of them. What's
the one thing that's going definitely
going to have the most parasites in it
that can infect you as for example a
lion? It's another lion that eats the
exact same stuff that you do. So whilst
it is food and particularly if you just
won a big fight you might want to eat
in general cannibalism is pretty rare
because it's generally not a good idea
if there's other food available. But
yeah, if you're starving to death or you
know the other guy ripped your leg half
off and you don't think you're going to
walk for six weeks, not that you'd
think, but you know what I mean. Like
and now and now there's a body in front
of you that's two tons of meat. Well,
maybe you should tuck in. This is so
fascinating. Like once again figuring
out this puzzle
>> and like what does animalism tell you?
You're piecing together the story of
T-Rex, their their life, their hunting
life, their social life, from their
evolution to their biology to their
behavior. It's so fascinating.
>> Yeah, we we try to, but the thing is
it's it's it's always getting better,
which is so that's the what I try to
finish on in my book on behavior is I
felt I'd written a couple of hundred
pages of we keep screwing this up. We've
overstated this. I think people have
misunderstood this this, you know, like
the trackway stuff and it's like this is
not as confident as we think. You need
to look at these alternate explanations.
This behavior shows that that behavior
probably doesn't correlate the way you
said it does. yada yada yada. It's like
I now feel I've just written a book
trashing my entire field and all my
colleagues or at least many of my
colleagues and then then you you flip it
on its head and going we've got
techniques that were undreamed of 10
years ago. We've got data streams that
were undreamed of 10 years ago and we've
actually got a much better understanding
of living species and then on top of
that we're just constantly finding new
animals. you know, we have not just new
species, which are often, I think, a lot
less important, but just new specimens
of ones we know because again, it's
building up that database. You know, we
drifted off about sexual selection, but
like yeah, you if you want to know
growth, one or two animals doesn't tell
you how an animal, a species grows. 50
or 100 does. And then that reveals a
hell of a lot more about things like
sexual dimmorphism and growth rate and
how vulnerable juveniles are and
population structure and maybe how
they're reproducing. So,
I'd like to think I knocked down I think
I knocked down a few towers that
probably a few people were fond of, but
I think we have the raw materials to
build much better, stronger edifice of
behavior. Um, but as you say, it's it's
always going to be based around
often very peacemeal evidence and like
possibilities and probabilities rather
than certainties.
>> Well, let's talk about a sad topic.
Extinction. Yep.
>> How did the dinosaurs go extinct?
>> Mostly probably pretty quickly, but it
really is the answer that I think most
people are now probably familiar with,
which is it's an asteroid impact or some
kind of extraterrestrial body hit just
off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula
in Mexico about 66 million years ago
that basically atomized the asteroid.
But also importantly, the bit of the
ground it hit or below the seabed that
it hit was basically the worst kind of
rock. And so it put up this enormous ash
cloud and basically you have a nearly
instantaneous nuclear winter. I mean
immediate devastation,
you know, any anything immediately next
to it is obviously just like vaporized.
Uh but you know, this is the sort of
thing that's it's like hot enough to set
fire to the atmosphere. I think the one
I read was it's something like a piece
of rock about the size of Mount Everest
traveling at something like 10 times the
speed of sound. So just the momentum
between that speed and mass thing is
just you know beyond extraordinary.
>> But I think what does a lot of damage is
the change in the climate.
>> Yeah. And so so every there are five
recognized mass extinctions in the
history of life on Earth and all of them
are ultimately some form of climate
change. um whether it's volcanic
eruptions or hyper oxygenation or an ice
age or whatever, it's it's it's climate
changing too quickly for things to adapt
to.
And that starts, you know, that just
cripples entire populations and entire
species. And then if you do enough
damage to enough things, you start
getting ecosystem collapse. You know
that this moth has died out. Well, it
turns out that moth is the primary
pollinator of this tree. Well, that tree
produced nuts and that was the entire
winter survival store for this squirrel.
Well, that squirrel was the main food of
this cat and now suddenly the moth going
has killed four other things and and
everything that's attached to that. Um,
and so that that's really what did for
them. And sadly the big things well
everything dies but the big things have
a lot of trouble recovering.
>> Yeah. So I mean this this is you know a
classic example to oh well you know what
is paleontology good for? Well one
actually really is extinction which is
very relevant right now in that we have
a very good handle on when you have
extreme climate stress what tends to
suffer more and what tends to suffer
less. And as we say big big things
fundamentally do they require more
resources they require more area of
land. you need to roam further, which
means, you know, if you're a mouse and
you happen to have a little bit of land
and that bit doesn't get hit, you're
fine. Whereas, if you're an elephant and
you need all of this land and even a
chunk of it goes wrong, well, that's
probably maybe not enough for you to
survive anymore. So, yeah, big things
suffer disproportionately badly from
these things. And mostly as well we
think um terrestrial things generally do
worse than things in water because water
is a great equilibriating medium. You
know it takes ages to heat up. It takes
ages to cool down. Um yes if you live in
specific coastal conditions or something
maybe you can't travel that easily but
you know whales can go from pole to pole
quite happily and plenty of other fish
do too. So if it's too hot or too cold
or too nasty here you can just swim
somewhere else. Whereas if you're an
animal and you hit a desert or you hit a
mountain range or you hit a river, you
stop moving and you're trapped and and
then you die. So dinosaurs were yeah,
the the worst possible combination. They
were mostly big and they were mostly on
land and yeah, it's not really
surprising they did very badly out of
it. And then some species did survive.
Uh, I guess I think you've said that
it's it's very possible that some
dinosaurs even survived for a time that
we might be able to discover dine line.
>> I'd be amazed if they didn't. I mean,
there's been various reports over the
decades of the the KPG or KT extinction,
the Cretaceous Paleogene or Cretaceous
tertiary extinction of of dinosaurs
surviving. And none of them have held
up. It's usually been um biurbation. So,
literally things like prairie dogs
digging and of course they'll dig a
tooth up and then move it through the
layers or things like this or plant
roots can can move stuff. Um, or just
soils can get churned up, but I would be
shocked if they didn't. Not not like, oh
yeah, the dinosaur survived and the lock
next monster and stuff like that, but
but like yes, it was a global
devastation. Yes, it's what ultimately
killed the dinosaurs, but I'd be amazed
if there wasn't some equivalent of
Hawaii or New Zealand or some other
tucked away island or valley where
actually dinosaurs were fine for
anything from a few hundred thousand to
a couple of million years. But on a
global scale, it's a dot on a map. And
the odds that we'll ever uncover
any rocks, fossiliferous rocks of that
age that we then have access to that we
then find a dinosaur in that we can then
date properly.
I think is almost non-existent. But it
would just be weird if they didn't
survive somewhere for a bit or even
quite a few of them in places. It's a
small local population.
>> We see it all the time. you know, the
lemurs in Madagascar,
all the stuff in New Zealand. There's
tons of weird archaic stuff hanging
around in Hawaii, you know, Galapagus
finches and tortois or the tortoises
that you don't see anywhere else in
Australia with the marsupials. They're
almost and then the monotreams are
almost ex unknown outside of there. This
this is pretty normal bit of biology for
animals that were so dominant globally.
We know there were patches that were
largely unchanged. Otherwise, we
wouldn't have had the mammals surviving
and the crocodile surviving and the
birds surviving and every utes and frogs
and everything that did survive. I'm
sure a few of those patches had some
dinosaurs in them, but it it is
ultimately what killed them.
>> What do you think is the chance that
they would have survived? So, you take
some local populations and they
flourish.
>> It's happened. Look at look at
Australia. Um, you know, the marsupials
have done pretty well there.
um for a very long time. You can imagine
if the next mass extinction,
you know, flattens a large chunk of
Indonesia, for example, kangaroos could
island hop pretty easily, make it to
mainland Asia.
>> But then, I mean, to then lead, you take
the dinosaurs, a small fraction
survives, and then they eventually
repopulate the earth again. I mean,
that's extraordinarily unlikely because
once your population's been crashed like
that, you do have the problems of things
like inbreeding or maybe you're a great
specialist to a certain area or you're
surviving because you're isolated,
you're in a you're in a valley or you're
on an island and then dispersing again
becomes really or breaking out into
those areas becomes much much harder.
>> So like the great predator is like a
even though the T-Rex is such a great
predator that doesn't that doesn't give
you
>> Yeah. because because you've still had
the extinction event and the environment
is no longer what it was that you
evolved into. Um, and once those systems
start to recover, those other animals
are going to adapt much better to them.
>> How does that make you feel that that um
this stupid asteroid from nowhere?
>> Well, I mean, at one level, I probably
wouldn't be here if it hadn't.
>> So, I mean, that's that's an interesting
question. I mean, do you think um
there's several ways of asking that
question, but if dinosaurs didn't go
extinct, do you think humans would still
be able to evolve? I mean, my guess is
probably not. I don't I don't think I
don't think it's quite the um what what
was it? Oh, Simon Conway Morris had that
book, Inevitability of Man, that like
even if you rewound it, everything would
come back. I'm I'm not I don't think
it's that far. Um, I certainly don't
think it's um anything like quite like
the butterfly effect of, you know, if
one mammal had been trotten on by one
T-Rex, then humans would never have
evolved either.
>> We should say that the uh ancestor of
the primates or the closer there's a lot
of debate around this. Uh, it's a kind
of tiny creature purgatorious that was
our ancestor. Yeah. So, this is us. This
is what we evolved from.
>> Yes. Scandentia, I think it's the group
basically.
>> Yeah. I mean, there were probably
primates around in the Cretaceous. Some
of the molecular clock stuff suggests
that primates were around alongside the
dinosaurs, though we've never found um
any osteological evidence to that. But
yeah, the there's been a backwards and
forwards about were dinosaurs already on
their way out or were they a bit limited
by the very end Cretaceous? I think the
more recent analyses have shown that's
probably not the case. So, in other
words, they were basically doing fine um
right up to the extinction event. And
so, yeah, if the asteroid hadn't hit,
there's no reason to think that they
were on some kind of terminal decline.
Something else may have hit. There may
have been
um you know, some other environmental
disaster or something may have happened
or maybe they're more vulnerable to
stuff um
than we know of. But there's no I don't
think there's any really good reason to
think
they wouldn't have carried on relatively
well. I mean, even post Ninosaur
extinction, you had a window where the
mammals and the birds were pretty
competing. There was a lot of big birds
getting going and various big
carnivorous terrestrial kind of hyper
predatory ostrich-like things like the
forcerids. Um, so there's no guarantee
that mammals would have even taken over
post the dinosaur extinction. Um, since
initially they were in a bit of a u a
fair bit of competition. So this is just
going to based on current scientific
understanding, human evolution would be
highly improbable if dinosaurs hadn't
gone extinct 66 million years ago
because dinosaurs dominated ecological
niches for everything basically.
>> You look through Yeah. the Misoic, the
late Triacic
dinosaurs are there alongside a whole
bunch of other big and unusual and
interesting reptiles and and some other
early premalllike things that closer to
mammals than than the reptiles. But once
you've gone into the Jurassic, you've
now got a solid like 120 130 million
years where almost anywhere on Earth if
you saw an animal bigger than like a
raccoon, it was probably a dinosaur.
That's how incredibly dominant they, you
know, as dominant if not more dominant
than modern mammals.
>> But is it fair to say that they were
mostly dumb?
>> I don't think so. Cuz I think I think
that comes down to a that bit of kind of
classic almost Victorian
speciesisms and you get these insane
hypotheses like dinosaurs as a species
or as a lineage became scenile so they
forgot to breed. That was literally a
suggested idea. uh you know the mammals
ate their eggs and all of this kind of
stuff. You know, dinosaurs only lived
alongside mammals for hundred million
years. Be weird if they all went extinct
at the same time because suddenly egg
eating evolved. Um you know, you you've
got problems like this. Um but also
again that that general
speciesism which you know even goes back
to stuff like Lanaeus and his taxonomic
ranks and even could be stuff like
Aristotle. You've got like, you know,
humans are superior in some way and
we're superior to the other mammals and
of course mammals are closest to us so
they must be quite good and then they've
got to be better than lizards and then
lizards have to be better than frogs and
frogs have to be better than fish. So
that that gets you into the well
reptiles must be stupid and and they're
not.
>> I I wonder if a human intelligence level
organism could have evolved from the
dinosaurs. I mean it's that's been
hypothesized plenty of times. Dale
Russell, Canadian paleontologist, the
famous guy came up with this humanlike
truer danted that was done for a um TV
documentary. I think the one that
Christopher Ree narrated that I think is
a remake, but I've seen the original
that Dale had made for his TV show and
it's still uh it's sitting in the
collections of the National Museum of
Nature in in Ottawa for Canada. It's
really really cool. It's like this 5
foot tall dinosaurid. That was it there
on the screen.
>> Model of the hypothetical dinosaurid and
display at the dinosaur museum in
>> Oh, Dorchester. That's in England. Yeah,
I knew there was a couple of copies of
it. Trudon always comes back as like the
most intelligent dinosaur because it has
really quite a big brain for its size.
It does have a high inphilization
quotient. So, it's always been like
tagged as like a very good candidate for
being the smartest dinosaur. And
basically, he just hybridized that with
a human. But of course, why would these
things end up as like plantigrade
quadripeds? And why would they go back
to five fingers? And actually, I think
he's only got three to be fair, but he's
got very humanlike feet. Why has it got
no tail? Wh why would those things
suddenly disappear? There's no real
reason other than just kind of human
exceptionalism. But like I mean you
could argue
some parrots, some crows are
phenomenally intelligent and show
extremely clever behaviors on a par with
apes. So at some level some dinosaurs
were extremely intelligent. I mean,
yeah, this is a whole another
conversation, but all the tiny details
that lead to the explosion that is in
the our evolutionary tree that is homo
sapiens like what is it? The opposable
thumbs, right? Is it the invention of
fire and the meat eating? Is it some
other
>> and sociality
predation pressure and then the changing
changing environment? I mean, the
shrinking of the forest pushing apes out
of the trees into the environment or
into into the open environment. And
probably the same kind of story could be
told about the dinosaurs or about about
anything really.
>> Yeah. I mean I mean if you have 160
million years and a global domination
but I mean this is the thing you talked
about like lost behaviors but like the
lost lineages. I wrote about this in one
of my books and like you you want to
find you want a weird animal you go to a
volcanic island like you go to New
Zealand you go to Hawaii you go to the
Galapagus and yet those are the places
that basically don't really form
fossils. So, you think the dinosaurs we
know about are strange? What was the
stuff knocking around there? We're never
going to know, sadly. But for everything
you think weird, you know, you think
birds are cool. Think about penguins
compared to your average bird.
>> Mhm.
>> They live on an ice shelf for 6 months
of the year and can't fly and massively
modified skeletons. And you know your
you compared to your average bird,
penguins are unbelievably weird. So
yeah, take an average dinosaur and take
it to like penguin level or ostrich
level e or hummingbird level evolution.
There's going to be weirder stuff out
there than we found. Much weirder. If
you travel back in time, you probably
your mind will be probably blown by the
weirdness. Yeah, because those things
are almost always in small isolated
places that don't preserve fossils very
well. And so the odds of us ever coming
across them, I mean, you you see it to a
degree. So you've got um the stuff that
comes out of uh like what is modern
trans was Transylvania uh Hatseg that
that's that was a series of islands in
the Mediterranean at the end of the
Cretaceous and some of the weirdest
dinosaurs are from that chain of
islands. And that's not very isolated
compared to again something like Hawaii
or New Zealand, but it's fitting the
exact pattern. You you get dinosaurs on
islands, they turn weird. Um we we see
that. So again, dinosaurs were real
animals.
Like again, sound sounds really
painfully obvious, but they they weren't
monsters. They followed the same rules
might be pushing it, but certain like
guidelines like ecology operates in
certain ways. If you're bigger, you need
more food, but you're more efficient.
You just are. That's pretty much just
physics and scaling. So, big dinosaurs
are going to follow the rules of bigger
animals and small dinosaurs are going to
follow the follow the rules of smaller
animals. They just will. quite how they
violate it in certain ways by having
unusually long necks or unusual
physiology or eating an unusual diet or
because there was a weird plant that was
alive then that isn't now or whatever it
may be that there's obviously a huge
amount of variation and uncertainty. But
fundamentally
we know what makes animals and
ecosystems work and dinosaurs or animals
in ecosystems.
They're not that strange at some level
and therefore reconstructing
their actual biology is
challenging but far from impossible.
>> Strange question. So, as everybody
knows, dragons are obviously real.
>> I I've been asked that on live TV
before, only not with the sarcastic
tone.
>> Do you dare disagree with this notion?
>> Yes, I I I I do. if they don't.
>> And and again, I
>> they're real to me. So
>> that's fine. But again, you know, we we
kind of touched on it, but I I I think
there's probably very little of any kind
of paleontological law that ended up in
things like Chinese culture with the
Chinese dragons and all of that stuff.
You know, that one comes up repeatedly.
The only one I do know of again from
Alberta
um is buffalo stones uh that then
apparently some of the Native Americans
had which are actually bits of
ammonites. So ammonites the curly
spiralshelled sephopods are related to
octopus and squid. Um, so they have all
these little segments to the shells and
the right species. And when they break
open, they have like two little pairs of
legs and then a bulge and then a little
bulge and it looks very roughly like a
bison. And apparently these were thought
to be like somehow miniature bison. Uh
they're very rare because ironically
although the dinosaur bones are
extremely common, um it was very swampy
and so you didn't actually have a lot of
sea coming in. So you didn't tend to get
things like ammonites and oceangoing
animals and then the shell would have to
break in the right way. But apparently
for the local tribes and sadly I cannot
remember who it is in that bit of
Canada. Um but yeah these were these
were quite valued um if you got a
buffalo stone and I've seen a couple of
them and yeah you have to squint a bit
but as a little buffalo it's not far
off. Um, but yeah, but that whole like
were they finding mammoth legs and were
they finding T-Rexes and was this
inspiration for this animal or this
mystical animal? I don't think they were
because you just don't tend to find them
like
>> So where where do you think like you
know cuz dragons show up in a bunch of
different myths?
>> Well, right. But that's thing they turn
up in British mythology and we barely
got any dinosaurs here at all. You you
only you only find them when you start
digging for coal mines, which we weren't
doing in
>> Is it basically dramatization of like uh
of snakes and lizards and stuff?
>> Yeah. And just general exaggeration and
and welding stuff together. I mean,
that's one thing you could I guess
potentially argue is that, you know,
yeah, we find Tyrannosaurs in North
America and in East Asia. In fact,
there's a whole bunch of stuff in the
End Cretaceous, which is often very
common because it's a relatively recent
in the grand scheme of things in the
history of the world. The fauna of East
Asia, China, Mongolia, Eastern Russia is
very similar to what you get in Canada
and the USA and down in Mexico. And so
you find the same rough stuff. They're
not exactly the same, but you get
seratopsians, you get tyrannosaurs, you
get the big edge darker terasaurs, you
get ankyos, the armored ones, this,
that, and the other. So, if these were
influencing all those different
cultures, why don't Chinese dragons look
like Mexican dragons or equivalent of
Thunderbirds or whatever? Well, because
it probably wasn't influencing them. If
they were all seeing the same skeletons,
they'd probably all produce the same
kind of mythical animals. They all
produce different ones.
>> You have to understand paleontology is
not perfect. So, they were just
misinterpreted.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, uh, dragons
aside, I'm sure, like we said, with
weirdness, there would be creatures
that would be remarkable, right? You
look at it and you might as well be
seeing a dragon. It could be I mean,
there's creatures alive in the sea
today.
>> Yeah. I mean, if you if you if you
dredged up a colossal squid, I think
you'd have
>> Yeah.
>> You know, or or even just dongs and
manatees. I mean, they're really quite
strange. And if you allow yourself to
marvel at the small things on Earth,
like I was in the Amazon jungle, like
the insects, they're just like, "What is
happening there? There's so many things
going on."
>> Oh, they're like hairy and colorful and
and probably poisonous and they have
teeth and what they're
>> and and all the little weird eyes. I've
I've
se several times I've pitched a book to
publishers where I want to write a book
that basically makes the point that
there is
almost nothing. I mean, you can always
dream up something totally ludicrous.
There is basically nothing in science
fiction that doesn't already exist on
Earth in some way, shape, or form.
>> Yeah, that is why I often think about
alien civilizations and aliens out
there. And I'm very certain that there's
aliens everywhere throughout the
observable universe. It's very strange.
We haven't seen them, but it's it's fun
to marvel at what they possibly look
like because there's a huge variety of
organisms and species here on Earth and
you just expand that out.
>> Yeah.
>> To like more and more Earths and you can
just imagine there's a lot of weird
>> Well, that that's the thing. I think
most people, you know, understandably,
I'm I'm a biologist and I particularly
pride myself on finding out about
particularly weird animals, but yeah, I
think people would be stunned about some
of the weird stuff that's out there um
that they just wouldn't realize are
real, you know, things like velvet
worms. Um, you know, it's just
they blow your mind,
uh, you know, or Siccilians and stuff
like this and and their reproductive
behavior. It's just jaw-dropping. I
mean, I love teaching about them. I I do
a class on diversity of life and I do
it's about eight weeks of vertebrate
diversity and I love just dropping
things in and the students are like,
"What do what do you mean that exists?
What do you mean something like that
normal for this group?" Yeah. Yeah, they
do that.
>> What from that like that class, but
everything you've studied with the
dinosaurs?
What have you learned about the
evolution of life on Earth? That
mechanism?
It's
It's really good. It sound It sounds
obvious, but it's I think the bit that
still fries my brain is just like the
raw numbers because I think we're very
bad at considering like I regularly talk
about, oh, this is 70 million years old,
but this is 78 and this is 104. And
people are just like, oh my god, how on
earth do you deal with those numbers?
And I don't. They're just numbers
because I can't conceive of it really
any better than you can. That they are
astronomical. Yeah, last Thursday was
quite a long time ago. 66 million years
is mindboggling. Like I I I can't fathom
it. Um but that's it. I think the
evolution thing is a my suspicion is
quite a lot of it happens. It's not
quite Steven Gould punctuated
equilibrium, but I think
stressful events probably prompt a lot
more than less stressful events and you
know population crashes and all these
things that then
odd things survive and then that's
changing your genetic component and all
the rest of it. But you you've just got
to remember that it's just it's almost a
numbers game. Um, you know, it's that
bad analogy of like, oh, evolution is
just rolling dice and hoping you get all
sixes. And it's like, no, a friend of
mine said, no, it's rolling dice, but it
gets to keep the sixes. I mean, then
suddenly getting a hatful of sixes isn't
that hard. But also you're in the
context of even rare species, you know,
ultra rare I'm short of stuff that like
we've nearly killed off, but like very
rare species have populations in the
thousands or hundreds of thousands and
are probably around for hundreds of
thousands of years and very few, you
know, other than a few things like
whales and apes and elephants mostly
have dozens or thousands of offspring at
a time. So a few thousand animals that
have a few thousand offspring at a line
for a few hundred thousand year. Yeah,
it's billions and billions and billions
of them.
>> That and that's the rare stuff. You look
at mamola, the ocean sunfish, though. I
think I think ma has just been split up
into like five species. It's one of the
weirdest looking animals. It's love it.
Love it. Love it. Love it. I mean, what
a what a fish that is. swims with a
giant dorsal and I think it's a giant
anal fin and then they flap
alternatingly.
>> Does it have a face? Yeah.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Little one at the
front. Eight jellyfish. Super open
oceanic and they get really big. You see
that one with the diver? But I think
these are the record breeders for
animals and they have something like a
100 million eggs at a time.
>> Whoa.
>> Don't quote me on that, but it is
something in those kinds of numbers.
So yeah, that's you don't need a very
large population of sunfish to start
having an awful lot of numbers. Are you
going to Google it and see if you can
find it? Uh number of eggs or something?
Yeah,
>> 300 million. Oh, I under a single cut
it.
>> A single female can release up to 300
million eggs at one time during a
spawning event. Boy, these eggs are
incredibly small, measuring about 1.3 mm
in diameter. That's still a lot of eggs
though when you think about it.
>> It's not that small.
>> Yeah. Right. 300 million of of 1 mil is
still quite a bit.
>> Uh fertilization is external. Females
release their eggs into the water while
males then fertilize them.
>> Wow, man. There's a lot of different
ways to have sex. I guess this is
>> Yeah. But but but but that's that's the
bit of evolution that I think I
understand why people don't get it. We
are mostly talking about millions in
population times millions of years times
thousands of offspring.
>> Yeah. And it's kind of a numbers game.
Well, how could this evolve? Well, the
right selective pressure and when you've
got a 100 billion offspring, probably a
few of them have that.
>> And when you focus in on a single
species and trace its history, you can
see how effective evolution is, natural
selection is. And then you just have to
like go across species and you
>> but it but it's also a massive
compromise which is the bit that people
always miss. You know it's Darwin's
line. It's descent with modification.
Yes. Over time you can end up with
extraordinarily weird things but mostly
what's happening is you're changing
something fairly simple.
>> You're you're making edits to the
existing plan. Um which is why you don't
have animals with tentacles. They they
have legs which have joints which have
fingers and they all have one bone then
two bones then a bunch of little blocky
bones and then a few more and then the
little ones that make up the digits for
hands and feet. And basically everything
has that
>> because you're modifying that pattern.
And occasionally you get something weird
like um most of the modern lung fish
have basically reduced those down to
well they they had a more simple plan to
begin with but reduce it down to a stump
and then they got something like a
flaily tentacle.
But yeah, you know, or snakes have got
rid of them or the various legless
lizards and things like that and again
Siccilians and um all the rest. But
yeah, it you you're subtly changing
certain things in certain ways is mostly
what's going on and then those build up
over time. But also against that
compromise of there's things that do and
don't work. There's things that are
interlin and so you can't modify A
without modifying B. Modifying A will
kill you. Therefore, be never modifies
because the two are genetically linked
in some way. Or, yeah, like the
compromise of the lion's mane, making it
darker makes you sexier, but more likely
to kill you. You you I think people
think evolution is like perfecting
things in some way, and they're not.
They're they're bodgege jobs, you know?
That's why we have a blind spot in our
eye, but things like squid don't.
>> But that process nevertheless does have
inventions in it. You have tectalic. You
have a fish that learns to breathe that
crawls out.
>> But it already had a swim bladder that
it was probably processing a minimal
amount of oxygen through and the swim
bladder evolved for a certainly
different function.
>> Yeah. But that's one of the powerful
things about uh evolution. It switches
the function.
>> It develops it for one function, but
once you once you get there, you're
like, okay, this could be used for
another function. That that leads to
something that we in retrospect can see
as a major invention which is
>> a fish that's able to crawl on land and
all of a sudden we have absolutely
>> we have uh cities and
>> and rockets and uh yeah tic talic
specifically like there's something
really
>> mindboggling about a fish that crawls
out of the sea and you just the image of
that.
>> Yeah. But again you've got stuff that's
not a million miles away from that. You
have things like frogfish which are
fully marine but kind of clamber through
seaweed and stuff and they've got pseudo
functional limbs because again it's that
tectalic is not a weirdly derived frog
fish but it's not like it's a fish that
suddenly came on land or a fish that
suddenly evolved legs. There was already
that selective pressure that was pushing
it into a new opportunity which gave it
a and then on and on and on and that's
what keeps going. But it also brings up
another thing going back to dinosaurs um
and the behavior stuff which again I
think has been a problem is um the
functionality thing and how there's
always been I think this big perception
of
single traits having single functions
which isn't how a huge amount of biology
works for some yeah like eyes are used
for seeing they don't really do anything
else um but I think there's a lot of
again it comes down to a lot of the
sexual selection stuff but things like
horns on triceratops that's probably
quite good for fighting off predators,
but it's also quite good for fighting
other triceratops. And then things like
elephants dig with their tusks as well
as fight other elephants as well as
fight lions as well as stripping the
bark off trees. So you got to be very
careful about how you think of
functionality in two different ways. One
way is what possible things could that
thing do and what possible things could
have been the main selective pressure
before. So, you think about elephant
tusks, as I say, they do all these
different things. But when an elephant's
just got the tiniest little nubs, like
the first elephant whose teeth are
growing the wrong way and have pushed
out of its jaw, and now it's got a
couple of little spikes, it can't really
dig a hole with them. It's certainly not
digging for water.
They're probably not great against a
predator because you'd basically have to
get on your knees to try and lean over
and try and stab it a bit. But you can
show off to the girls and you can
immediately fight another elephant who's
head-to-head the same height as you and
you've got a massive advantage.
So evolutionarily
they probably started as some kind of
sexually selected feature.
But now functionally they are probably
compromised by the fact that having the
best fighting tusks but also having the
tusks that are best at digging up water
to keep you alive during a drought
is putting selective pressure on that
>> and those are although selection sexual
selection appears in both ends those are
two different things digging for water
is critical but it's probably not what
started it and I think that's where we
get trapped with things like say the
paddle tail of Spinosaurus or stuff like
or you know or T-Rex arms. It's like
well why are T-Rex arms like that? Well,
maybe we need to consider what a
slightly longer arm is like or what it
was being functioned for in its
ancestors or how it works in other
species or what else it might do rather
than every paper is like did it do this
or did it do this or did it do this?
It's like you know it could be all of
them. Mhm.
>> That's a very different question to try
and answer, but people don't tend to
think of it and it ends up being very
binary and again biology is not like
that because it's a compromise
>> and it may be wiser to then look at the
evolutionary origins how it first sprung
up.
>> Yeah. If you Yeah. You know what what
does a miniaturized version of this look
like and what might that function for or
or how does it function in ancestral
forms? You know, a really good example
of that is giraffe necks, which have
been argued about, you know, forever and
a day it was giraffe necks are to help
them feed up high. And then in the late
90s, early 2000s, a couple of papers
coming out going, actually, maybe it's
sexual selection and competition. And
then that drove down into arguments
about, well, what does a short neck look
like in the Accari? It's nearest
relative. What are short legs look like
and how do they work? And plus a whole
bunch of other studies. And ultimately,
it came out that we were right the first
time. This is all about feeding.
But it's a really interesting way of
thinking about it and looking at it.
>> Got to ask you the ridiculous question.
>> Uh we do have dinosaurs here on Earth
today. They're birds.
>> Yep. Um 10 and a half 11,000 species of
dinosaur.
>> Are birds dinosaurs?
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. Isn't that
>> it's just a Yes. Yeah. It's
>> How many people know this by the way?
>> So there there's an interesting one. And
I did a radio show ah it's probably
seven or eight years ago now with a
couple of present you know drive time
afternoon nothing serious nothing
science or anything like that and I
mentioned something like this and one
presenter was oh my god what do you mean
birds are dinosaurs and the other one is
what do you mean you don't know birds
are dinosaurs so it's hitting that
tipping point of common knowledge
I think where
no does does everyone know but no but I
think an awful lot of people know and
are now kind of used to it as an idea.
>> So what's evolutionary the connection
between birds and dinosaurs? The
>> I mean they literally are in the same
way that we are apes and mammals. Birds
are dinosaurs. The direct if you trace
back the evolution of all the birds. So
hummingbirds and albatross and ostrich
and kiwi and parrots and pelicans and
penguins and whatever else and take them
down to their ancestral point and then
go back quite a few more million years.
Their nearest rel to them is a dinosaur.
It is actually something very close to
velociaptor
um or at least a small version of
velociaptor. So they birds have
literally descended from dinosaurs.
Therefore they are dinosaurs. We have
literally descended from other apes. We
are apes. It it is that
form of evolutionary connection
>> throughout that whole process. Did they
have feathers or did feathers come and
go?
>> So feathers are in tyrannosaurs. So
feather feathers go back at least so
ironically
cuz the fossil record is very
incomplete. Um most of the things that
are closest to birds we know from the
early and late Cretaceous. So the last
kind of 50 million years of dinosaur
evolution up to the extinction. And
actually birds almost certainly go back
another 50 million years. So birds did
not appear as a result of the dinosaurs
going extinct. birds lived alongside the
dinosaurs for a hundred million years.
This was this is the bird birds were not
new on the scene and it's all like, "Oh,
the dinosaurs dies and from the ashes
rose the bird." No, they've been
knocking around forever.
>> They just survive cuz they're small
>> in a very large part. Yeah, that's
that's almost certainly what really
helped them. Um, birds took a kicking in
the Katy extinction. So did mammals.
Loads of bird lineages went extinct and
only a handful got over the line, but
they did. But yeah, we have feathers in,
as I said, we've got middle Jurassic
tyrannosaurs that are 165 million years
old. So 100 million years before the
extinction that have feathers, simple
feathers. They'd be like those you get
on most baby chicks. So they're not with
the big kind of classic pick up a
feather in, you know, in the street or
on a field of the big vein up the middle
and then the kind of paired flat pieces.
Um, this would be much more like a hair,
but we have them. We've got something
which is very close to a bird but might
not quite be a bird with modern but with
modern feathers. Um in the middle
Jurassic we've got definitive stuff like
archaeoptics in the late Jurassic. And
then into the early Cretaceous we have a
series of fossil beds in China which are
just heaving with them. So yeah and
there's trannosaurs have feathers.
Velociatro had feathers. Trrodonts had
feathers. Um orinosaurs we've mentioned
they had feathers and so did a whole
bunch of other groups as well. There's
it's about eight or nine kind of major
groups kind of the size of something
like yeah literally like carnivores or
um deers, you know, some massive groups.
About eight or nine of them were fully
feathered as far as we can tell. So
feathers massively predate bird origins,
but it was a major part of their
evolution.
>> Do I understand why feathers evolved
with the function the the the sexual
selection? Yeah, it's probably a a
fundamental twofold one, which is
feathers insulate you. They keep you
warm. And most dinosaurs were, it's an
archaic term, but it's what most people
know, warm-blooded. So, they were much
more like us and birds. They had a
stable, high body temperature regardless
of the environmental conditions. And so,
if you're burning a lot of calories to
stay warm, you want to kind of keep that
heat. And feathers really help you do
that. And then the other thing is, yeah,
the obvious thing is sexual selection
and communication. Feathers do stuff
that scales can't. You can shed them in
winter and change color and come back as
another one. That's quite handy trick.
Um, you can change them between
juveniles and adults. So, baby birds
have one type of feather, adults have a
different one. We know of dinosaurs that
do that where we've got adults and
juveniles with different feather type
types preserved in the fossils. Um,
yeah, you can produce all kinds of weird
colors and displays. You can you can
erect feathers. can hold them up and fan
them out like a peacock or a pheasant.
Whereas scales, you can't really do that
a bit or you need a huge amount of bone
like protoeratops. So there's two good
reasons that they would probably evolve
and exactly pulling them apart or which
is more important. And again, they're
they're probably bifunctional. As soon
as you start making feathers and making
them more colorful where you're staying
warmer, so that's an advantage. or as
soon as you start making feathers to
make them warmer, it probably won't be
long until someone evolves them to be a
bit brighter red and then we're back to
oh my god, red, right? But but that's
what's happening. And then they're going
to they're probably going to push each
other potentially.
>> I mean, it is true that the birds went
real crazy with the feather and the
colors and the prettiness.
>> They absolutely do.
>> I mean, maybe there's something about
feathers that allows for that efficient
>> sort of uh diversification of fashion. I
I think yeah I think it gives them
opportunities that that
>> scales and solid structures simply
don't. I mean the sole ability I mean I
say like you know peacocks and feeasants
they are a massive disadvantage to males
when they've got these extra plumes on
them because they're so big and heavy.
Peacocks can barely fly. But the fact is
you can still kind of fold them up into
a fairly neat package and kind of hide
if you really wanted to. Whereas if
you're something like Triceratops, that
billboard on the stuck of on the top of
your head is not only enormous, but also
bone. It's massive. It's heavy. And
you've got to lug around the whole year.
Whereas peacocks at least can go, well,
all the girls have settled down on their
nests now. I'm just going to get rid of
all this extra weight and dump it.
Just looking at the entire history of
Earth, what has studying hundreds of
millions of years of evolution, studying
this epic age of the dinosaurs, what has
that done for your appreciation of what
makes Earth beautiful? Do you ever just
like sit back and like, "Holy this
is incredible." This whole
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I do. Um,
but I guess
maybe not much more so than I would
anyway
>> as in
I already
cuz again I don't really think of myself
as a paleontologist in a lot of ways.
Um, it's not that I don't love my work,
but it's I'm a biologist and this is
what I'm looking at, but I'm fascinated
and amazed by lungfish and flying frogs
and caterpillars and onofferins and
butterflies and a million and one other
hagfish and things that I think are cool
and interesting and fascinating and I
could happily read about them or watch
them in a zoo or a documentary or
whatever it may be.
almost every bit as much as I would with
dinosaurs. I probably appreciate the
dinosaurs and terasaurs in a very
different way because I have such a
greater intimate knowledge of the
science in a way that I try and read the
line literature because I'm really
interested in predation dynamics, but I
can't keep up with it whilst doing all
the other stuff as well.
>> Predation dynamics.
>> Well, right. So, like the difference of
like what prey are they taking, why, at
what percentage, what what influences,
how are they competing with leopards and
>> well, there's a literature body of
literature on this. Yeah. All right.
Yeah. People are studying lions and who
what they hunt and what they eat and
where they do it. There's a there's a
whole bunch of stuff on particularly the
the African carnivores cuz there's so
many of them. They're so big and their
populations aren't terrible compared to
like South America or North America or
or a lot of Asia for example. Um but
yeah, going back to your question, yeah,
like I could appreciate all of it. It's
all cool. Some of it is definitely more
awesome than others. I work on some of
the giant terasaurs, the ones with 10
meter wingspans.
>> Yeah. And it's it's hard like uh my
partner's family's from Uganda and we
was in we were in Uganda last year. I
was watching um Maribou stalk circle
overhead and you're like wow these
things are huge and amazing and then I'm
like the wingspan's about a fifth of the
stuff I work on. Actually, these are
quite pitly in the grand, you know, be
like an airliner going overhead. And
when you think about it in that context.
>> Yeah. I mean, cuz cuz that's it with
the, you know, I know people tend to be
obsessed with size and you kind of get
it. Like blue whales are fundamentally
cooler than smaller humpback whales.
Even if humbuck whales are cool, like
it's hard not to be impressed by Pago
Titan or Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops or
Ketchamas or any of these like ultimate
giants. There's a reason we love great
white sharks. There's a reason we love
giant squid. There's a reason we love
lions and grizzly bears and stuff. But
the dinosaurs do kind of do it better
than anyone else or you know and the you
know marine reptiles and the flying
reptiles cuz it's just so insane.
>> Yeah. Both size and diversity.
>> Yeah. and and longevity as well. I mean,
you you look at, you know, elephants
have come and gone and, you know, the
whales, okay, the whales have reached
superlative sizes, but they're
relatively new on the scene. Um, could
easily have gone extinct in the last
century, but yeah, you know, there's
truly titanic dinosaurs for at least 100
million years.
>> It's a long time. It's hard sometimes,
and as you said, it's very hard to load
in just how long that is. They really
dominated Earth for a very long time.
>> Yeah. And and almost absolutely
everywhere. There's a handful of places
that we found where appears that
dinosaurs didn't really get in.
Something else kind of took over, you
know, like a bit like Australia with the
marsupials versus the the other
Etherans. Um but yeah, fundamentally it
it was a dinosaur planet for
after the the Triacic less so at the end
of the Triacic when they're first
getting going. But yeah, Jurassic and
Cretaceous. Yeah, it's it's 140ish
million years of Yeah. just absolute
dominance.
>> I think it's hilarious and just perfect
that there's a giant uh dinosaur head
next to you and you didn't mention it
once during this conversation.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I thought I thought we'd
get Well, I mean giant. He's an absolute
diddy one. Um Yeah. So, this is
Protoeratops Andrews eye and I've done
loads of work on Protoeratops. It's from
Mongolia. This is a latestized juvenile.
So, I've I've got a big head and the big
head's kind of like this, but I really
couldn't fit it in the bag.
>> So, this is two scale.
>> This is cast. So, this is not this is
not a this is not original, but someone
has molded and copied it. So, it's not
even it's not carved. It's a it's a it's
a cast and and a mold taken. So, this is
100% accurate to the original specimen
or at least extraordinarily accurate to
the original specimen.
>> A young guy.
>> Yeah. Um but yeah, I mean at full size
it's going to be like pig or sheep size.
So big but not massive. Um but I've got
it partly because it's affordable cuz I
can't afford to buy the big skeletons
and skulls. Um but I've done a huge
amount of work on it. And in part and it
goes back to those earlier conversations
about populations. And if you really
want to understand animals, you need an
understanding of what a real population
and a growth of what these animals looks
like. And Protoeratops is, I would
argue, probably the only dinosaur where
we can really do that, or at least as
close as possible as you could get to
any modern animal as an analog. We've
got well over a hundred good skeletons,
though not probably only about 70 or 80
in really accessible museums. That's
still a hell of a lot. We have
everything from here's a tiny baby one.
This is a really cheap and nasty 3D
print I had made. Um, but that's a
hatchling sized one or not much bigger
than a hatchling sized one all the way
up to the big adults. We've now got
embryos as well, which we didn't have um
until about 10 years ago. So, we've got
embryionic animals all the way up to big
adults. They're all pretty much from one
place in um Mongolia and they are as far
as we can tell from a relatively narrow
window in time only about 100 thousand
years which in the grand scheme of
things is very close.
So you've got one population from one
place from one time with a 100 animals
from embryos up to big adults. So now if
you want to look at as I do something
like sexual selection and when does
growth of the signal kick in and at what
size and what evidence for dimmorphism
well suddenly you've got a population
you've got something you can work with
and that's why proeratops is so
important and I think way more important
than even a lot of my fellow
paleontologists realize and I genuinely
think we should be pouring a lot more
research into them because they can tell
us stuff that pretty much no other
dinosaur can because you have the
population data. So you can you can have
>> and we can treat it as a population. So
going way way back to a conversation
about telling males and females apart
and I said big problem is population
data or at least the number of specimens
that you have when mostly you've only
got one, two or three. Um I did a big
study on this a few years ago on gials,
the really long snouted crocodilians
from Nepal and India and Pakistan with a
giant bulge on the end of the nose. And
even though the males are all bigger
than the females and the males all have
this weird nose growth though that's
mostly soft tissue but they have a weird
depression in the jaw in the in the end
of the snout where the nostrils sit. We
got a sample size of something like
about 110 animals. So these are very
very rare animals. So we had to ransack
every museum worldwide. I was sending my
students sending emails to huge numbers
of people. Have you got one sitting in
your collection lost? Can you get it for
us? can you take these photos or these
measurements, we can measure it. We put
the data set together and then we found
that actually apart from the very
biggest males, it's really hard to tell
males and females apart. And this
actually really closely matched um some
modeling data that I' done with a
colleague Jordan Malin in Ottawa um
looking at this for alligators and and
trying to compare it to to dinosaurs.
Cuz though we talked about mutual sexual
selection before um mutual sexual
selection in particular, you tend to get
things that are extremely similar. Males
and females are very hard to tell apart.
But there's also there's a gradient, you
know, all the way up to things like
peacocks all the way down to you can't
tell them apart like parrots.
And for some features when they take
time to get growing or because dinosaurs
grow over a very long window and are
sexually mature over a very long window,
you run into the problem that a big
female will look like a small male
>> and we can't sex them. And lo and
behold, this is what you get with the
giels. The really big males are obvious
because they're so much bigger and
they've got this big depression in the
in the snout, but
medium-sized and big females look like
medium size or smaller males and very
small males. And so yeah, that's
basically what we have with dinosaurs.
Even with protoeratops where we've got a
data set of like a hundred
papers have come out saying there's very
mild sexual dimmorphism or there isn't
sexual dimmorphism.
Sexual dimmorphism could be very strong
in protoeratops, but we can't find it
because we can't tell the males from the
females because we haven't IDed enough
through something like medullery bone.
And so you're in this horrible situation
where because going back to the T-Rex
thing is like well maybe it's mutual
sexual selection and therefore they're
cooperating and that would be cool but
also maybe males are much bigger but we
can't tell cuz our data sets too small
in which case they're not under mutual
sexual selection and we've got it all
wrong. Ah, it's maddening because it's
so
>> if these were living animals, you just
watch them or you just genotype them or
you sex them and you just know and and
we just don't. But on the other hand, we
do have the mechanism to do it. There
are a handful of places where you get a
bunch of protoeratops together where
it's a mass mortality site. Well, let's
go and drill every bone because if
that's the breeding season, we might
find seven or eight females and then the
others are pretty much by default males.
If we know it's the middle of the
breeding season cuz all the others have
medaly bone and now you know where your
male female split is.
>> Now let's analyze those two data sets
and then maybe we'll see a difference
and maybe we won't.
>> Yeah, I love how that that frustration
is sort of a catalyst for figuring out.
You're like searching
for a place a piece of evidence that
just shows you clearly
>> there are ways in. This is the thing.
Yeah, there there are there are ways in.
Maybe we got to get lucky because maybe
it's not the breeding season or maybe
that was just happen to be a group of
all males and therefore we're not going
to get the signal we're looking for. But
there's enough of them and they're
common enough and yet still digging in
Mongolia. We keep finding new species.
We keep finding new cooler stuff. But
I'm like, can can we dig up some more
prediceratops? Because actually, however
cool these new things are, genuinely, if
you want to know what dinosaurs are and
how they worked, another 100
protoeratops will actually probably tell
us a lot more than 50 new species,
however cool 50 new species might be.
Paleontology is an incredible
discipline. It really is Sherlock Holmes
territory. So, uh, this was an
incredible conversation. I'm really
grateful for all the work you write that
you put out there. the uh the podcast is
incredible. I just thank you. Thank you
for being you and thank you for talking
today.
>> Well, thank you very much for having me.
I I hope I haven't worn out my welcome
with dinosaur story
>> talk for many more hours. Thank you,
brother. Thank you, Dave.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you for listening to this
conversation with Dave Hone. To support
this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description and consider
subscribing to this channel. And now,
let me leave you with some words from
Carl Sean.
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the
exception.
Thank you for listening. I hope to see
you next time.