WEBVTT - The Cambodian Stegosaurus 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.239 Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.280 Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Land, and I'm 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:18.960 Joe McCormick. Joe, what was your favorite dinosaur when you 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.919 were a child. That is an impossible question. It's impossible, 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.080 you know. I think my favorite was actually the fake 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.680 velociraptors from Jurassic Park, which are you know? The philociraptors 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.480 in Jurassic Park are not really much like real velociraptors. 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:37.360 There are more number of reasons. Yes, they're probably closer 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.040 to the dinosaur Dinonicus, right, but I was really into 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.479 them as far as real dinosaurs go. You know, your 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.199 triceratops as a fan favorite, it seems kind of like 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:50.920 the the workhorse protagonist of your dinosaur paleo art scene 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.320 where you've got a predator attacking and a triceratops defending 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.319 and volcanoes erupting in the background. So it always made 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:00.200 the triceratops look like the good guy, like the would 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.520 one while there was a ferocious tyrannosaur. It's also, I 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:05.640 don't know, predators are fun. It's it's hard to turn 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.120 down a Tyrannosaur. Well, I like your point about it 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:12.240 being impossible to pick a favorite, because ultimately, for a child, 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:17.240 dinosaurs are are less a roster of prehistoric creatures or 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.840 or a tree of prehistoric creatures. They're they're more a pantheon. 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.679 You know. They have different energies to them, they have 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:27.200 different roles, and you have to sort of love them 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:30.440 all because they all embody this this sort of wild 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.400 nature that I think the child, more than any of us, 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.720 certainly I mean more than us adults, is in touch with. Well, yeah, 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:39.360 that they do have a character, Like I was saying, 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:44.319 the tri Saratops very much has this kind of, uh straightforward, goodhearted, 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.320 working class hero kind of vibe. And the Dynonicus or 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.200 the velociraptor they're kind of sneaky, aren't they. Then how 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.240 would you classify the star of today's episode, the Mighty 0:01:55.320 --> 0:02:01.400 Stegasaurus good natured, dimwitted sidekick from psychick, Yeah, sidekick, not 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.000 psychicked sidekick? No, Like the character out of this has 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.040 got to be an archetype in some movies, like the 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.720 character who's on the good side, who's friends with the protagonist, 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:16.840 who's maybe not too bright and like has some malapropisms, okay, 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.280 but I can also easily see the stegosaurs taking the central, dimwitted, 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.160 strong hero role of say a like a Hercules or 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:27.160 a or a Samson Conan. Yeah, oh that I've never 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:29.880 thought about it that way, but the tiny headed stegosaurus 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:32.600 very much could be the conan, the barbarian of the 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.359 prehistoric world, you know, like Chrome. I've never prayed to 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:37.720 you before. I have no tongue for it, but if 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.560 you let me thagomize my enemies, Yeah, indeed. And he's 0:02:41.600 --> 0:02:43.840 got the armor, he's got the muscles, and he's got 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.799 that awesome weapon that he swings around. I want to 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:51.120 run some true dinosaur facts by you today because we 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:55.040 are going to be talking about some some dinosaurs pseudoscience 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:57.960 in the in the probably the second half of the 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.720 episode for sure. Yeah. So these are all one true facts. 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.560 I'm about to state. It can be proved that dinosaurs 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:09.920 are still alive today. They exist on every continent on 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:13.800 the Earth. There are literally even millions of dinosaurs currently 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.480 living in Antarctica. Thousands of people are maybe millions of 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.080 people for all I know, actually even keep dinosaurs as pets. 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:23.160 You might not have ever known about this, that they 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.520 keep dinosaurs as pets in cages, and sometimes they can 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.480 even train these dinosaurs to speak modern languages and repeat 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:37.280 phrases like poly wanna cracker. Those statements again a true 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:40.360 and certainly you can you can take them all in 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:44.520 kind of a dinatopia, uh spirit, where we imagine this 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:49.960 fantastic world full of antarctic dinosaurs and and pet velociraptors. 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.320 But uh, but but this is this is all a 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:57.160 much more mundane fact of our reality. Right. I'm actually 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.280 being pedantic and obnoxious because these are all true acts. 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:06.600 Because birds are dinosaurs. Modern birds are biologically considered dinosaurs 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.960 in terms of phylogenetic analysis. Uh So hate me if 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.320 you want, but it's true. And because we're gonna be 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.680 talking about the concept of modern or recent dinosaurs today 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.320 and some pseudo scientific beliefs associated with that, I have 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.800 to say, as a precaution against getting a lot of 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.640 potential pedantic emails, I'll go ahead and be pedantic for you. 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.320 When we talk about dinosaurs in this episode, we're talking 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.200 about the classic kind, the non avian dinosaurs, the last 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.599 of which went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.920 period about sixty six million years ago. But modern day 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.520 birds are the descendants of the only dinosaurs that survived 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.760 this horrible mass extinction, in which about three quarters of 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.800 Earth's plant and animal species suddenly disappeared. Those dinosaurs that 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:52.120 survived became birds, and thus birds of today are dinosaurs. 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.520 So when someone says, hey, I wonder what what would 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:56.880 what it would have been like if dinosaurs had survived 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.760 into modern times, they did. They did. Behold here they 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.040 are dinosaurs poop on your car. It's just true. They 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:07.360 build nests in your shed, They fly into your home 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.200 depot and eat bird seed out of the home and 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.120 garden section. Yeah, there's a dinosaur stuck in the home depot, 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.960 going back and forth between the aisles. My cat is 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.160 out in the backyard hunting dinosaurs. And this is all 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:22.039 fun to say for multiple reasons, mainly maybe because we 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:24.719 all love us some flint stones right where humans and 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.280 dinosaurs they exist at the same time, And dinosaurs are 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.080 brutally enslaved to serve as household appliances. So you've got 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.800 a dinosaur garbage disposal. Is there a dinosaur TV? Do 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:38.640 they just watch a dinosaur acting out TV shows or something? 0:05:38.640 --> 0:05:40.320 I don't remember. I feel like they probably did have 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.760 a TV, but I can't. I can't instantly picture it 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.400 in my head. I think even most elementary school children 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:52.000 these days are aware that humans and dinosaurs, the non 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.320 avian dinosaurs actually never existed at the same time. That 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.160 that's like something that was maybe a little bit blurrier 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:00.920 when I was a kid, but I think that generally 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.920 made clear to children today. Yeah, my son has no 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:06.280 doubt about it. I mean part of it. I think 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.440 it's because he watched a lot of dinosaur trains, so 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.680 it might be possible then that dinosaurs spoke and had 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.680 a rail system that was able to travel back and 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.880 forth in dinosaur history, but they certainly did not live 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:23.440 alongside humans, right, So, as we were just saying, the 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.400 non avian dinosaurs all in extinct before or during the 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.400 Cretaceous paleo gene extinction event sometimes known as the KPg 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:33.760 or the KT extinction about sixty six million years ago, 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:36.640 and human beings have existed for far less than a 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.120 million years. If you want to get more specific than that. 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:41.440 There there are actually some interesting questions there, like it 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:45.200 can prove difficult to say exactly when Homo sapiens appeared, because, 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:49.000 of course, the transition from earlier species of bipedal hominids 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.160 to the anatomically modern human didn't happen overnight. But our 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:55.120 best guess is that Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.440 roughly two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand years ago roughly. 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:01.880 And that's a difference of about sixty five million years 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.479 or so. It's a big difference, right, It's not like 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.880 you could fudge the numbers a little bit one way 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.720 or another and say, maybe there's a little bit of overlap. Like, 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:11.760 it's a big enough difference that there's no way to 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:15.000 do that. Based on all the evidence available to us, 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.240 there is pretty much zero chance of human interaction with 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.200 non avian dinosaurs. So what are we to make of 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.520 stories and and little bits of art and things like 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.200 that that people sometimes present to say, no, no, no, 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:34.120 you're wrong. Humans have seen living dinosaurs and here's the proof. Yeah, 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.280 And as the title of this episode does suggests, one 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:40.840 bit of proof that we're discussing here today but also 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.640 using as just an excuse to talk about the stegosaurs, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.800 is this idea that there is a twelveth century carving 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:51.360 in modern day Cambodia all the Stegosaurus, again, fossils of 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:55.520 which were not officially discovered until eighteen seventy seven during 0:07:55.520 --> 0:08:00.400 the so called Bone Wars in North America. So that 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:04.480 is the evidence that is presented. Um, we're not buying it, 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:06.440 but we will discuss it a little bit later in 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.480 the show. Right, So before we get to the twelfth 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:12.960 century Cambodian carving of a supposed Stegasaurus, we should look 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.600 at the stegosaurus itself, this powerful cone in of the 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.880 prehistoric world, this fascinating old herbivore with its plates and 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.680 its spikes and its tiny little head. I want to 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.360 know all about it, Robert, let's go in alright. Well, 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:29.040 like I said earlier, Stegasaurus was certainly one of my 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.360 favorites as a as a child. And my son, by 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:35.400 the way, he likes the stegosaurus, but he actually prefers 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.760 the Kintrasaurus, which is a smaller contemporary from East Africa. 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.080 Oh yeah, I believe, as far as I know, that's 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.079 the only one that was ever found in Africa, right 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:47.840 I believe. So yeah, So this one, if you're unfamiliar 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.040 with the with what this specimen probably looked like the 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.480 illustrations and the fossil reconstructions tend to show it with 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.640 typical bony plates roughly halfway down its back, and then 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.160 it has spikes, so it looks like a cross between 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.599 a proper stegasaurus and a pin cushion. But now I 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.760 should say that even though the Controsaurus was smaller, it 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.560 was still sixteen ft or five meters long, which is 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:18.120 still pretty enormous. A proper Stegasaurus Stegasaurus ungladas would have 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.080 reached thirty ft or nine meters in length and would 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.400 have weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of five point three 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:27.160 to seven tons. So this was a herbivore, and it 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.040 lived in what is now North America during the late Jurassic, 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:35.240 so roughly one sixty three five million years ago. Carnegie 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.960 Quarry at the US Dinosaur National Monument is a is 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.640 one of the places where you'll find a wealth of 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.960 Stegasaurus fossils. In fact, I was reading where one prominent 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.280 paleontologist had even complained at one point that the Stegasaurus 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.560 fossils were in the way of the sauropod fossils that 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.360 he wanted to to to fully examine. Oh, like, can 0:09:57.360 --> 0:09:59.800 we get somebody in here to sweep all these stegasaurs 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.280 out the way? I just have we have a nuisance 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:07.760 Stegosaurus is here. So stegosaurians were part of a branch 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.560 of dinosaurs that were the ornithiscans. Right now, what does 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.720 that mean, Robert bird hip? Dinosaurs bird hips. So they're 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.280 sometimes classified in terms of the orientations of their hip bones. 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.920 Right now, it does not mean slender hips or slender 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.760 thighs exactly, because if you've looked as Stegosaurus, it's it's 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:29.440 thighs are enormous, it has these enormous hind legs. It's 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:34.160 a meat on the bones. Yes. Now, unlike their ornithopod 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.600 relatives such as iguanadons and the duck bill dinosaurs, uh, 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:42.000 they couldn't run on their hind legs. Their hind legs 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:44.840 were far larger than their front legs, meaning that they 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.920 these creatures actually sloped forward with their hips higher than 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.240 the rest of their bodies, kind of leaning down. Yeah. Oh, 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:54.720 and they also had tall spines at the base of 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.960 the tail. They probably helped anchor powerful muscles that helped 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.480 it actually lift its four legs up off the ground, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.400 aid and feeding. So whin white couldn't run on its 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.880 hind legs. It's it could probably lift itself up and 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.640 you know, pull some branches down, that sort of thing. 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.920 And those spikes on the back of the stegosaurs tail 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.160 have a special name, right. Oh, yes, Now this is 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.600 a this is an informal name, but it is informal 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:22.679 even among paleontologists that they'll use it. I've read that 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:28.160 all paleontologists now called the spikes the phagomizer, the thagomizer. Yeah, 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:30.560 this is uh, this is great because this is an 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:35.480 ode to Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon one one in particular, 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:39.959 in which you had a number of caveman or Neanderthals, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.400 you know, the typical Gary Larson Far Side caveman, always 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.199 depicting dinosaurs and uh and cave dwelling humans alongside each other. Right, 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:49.880 and one is giving a presentation on the hind quarters 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.160 of a Stegasaurus and he's saying, now, this end is 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:58.040 called the thagomizer after the late Fags Simmons, and so 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.920 now we call it the thagomizer, which feels appropriate because 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:05.720 it looks like uh an instrument for thagamizing something. The 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.560 word thagamizer even fits so well with our Conan motif. 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.160 You can imagine Conan saying it. Yeah. And again you 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.120 can also imagine Conan wearing some heavy armor into battle 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:17.520 as well, at least, you know, not so much that 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:19.360 he covers all of the muscles, but you know, just 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.240 to strengthen him up a little bit. Okay. And indeed, 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:27.959 the Stegasaurs did have these very fascinating plates on its body, right, 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.360 And there's actually some interesting debate over what role those 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.679 plates played, right, Yeah, Because when you I mean, one 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.520 of the things about the Stagasar says, you look at 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:40.120 it and it even even if it's an action pay 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.000 a bit of paleo art. You know, there's some sort 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.400 of a battle going on. It is hard to really 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.640 nail down what the plates are supposed to be doing, right, 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:50.840 I mean the easy thing to say, which you've seen 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:52.920 a Stagasur, it's got these plates poking up off of 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.120 its back. Um, you could say, well, of course they're 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.480 armor there for protection, and there's no way to rule 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.920 out that they might have played some role along those lines. 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:04.880 But also, I mean, imagine a person running into battle 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:09.520 with like sheets of steel sticking straight out from behind 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:12.760 their back. You mean generally you'd want the plates more 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:17.080 oriented along the surfaces of the skin to protect from attacks, right, yeah, 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.880 I mean these things were big. They were kind of 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.880 arrowhead shaped, were more than two ft or sixty centimeters high, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:26.439 and and the I mean, one of the reasons for 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.040 such confusion even just about the placement of the plates 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:33.240 is that we have many well preserved specimens of the segasurist, 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.480 but there's never been one where the plates are still 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.960 attached to the skeleton. So there's been a lot of 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.040 discussion over how they might be arranged, so that the 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.680 vertical arrangement tends to be the one that you see, 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.679 the one that is accepted. Even then, it's uncertain if 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.400 we're looking at um two parallel rows of these or 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.480 there's a zig zagging pattern down the creature's spine. I 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.400 think the one layered zigzag is the favored today. Is 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:02.200 now I think out that there were paleontologists that argued 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.080 that they were actually in or on the skin more 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:09.240 like armor plating. But again, the popular theory now is 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:11.360 that there's a vertical arrangement. But if they were to 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.360 just be purely body armor, it would seem to make 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.600 more sense, at least to our our our human minds, 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:21.600 that they would be UH laid across its back like 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.920 plate mail, cover more of the body. Yeah, so they 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.360 were likely covered in tough horn, but some paleontogists have 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.760 theorized that you would have a layer of thin skin 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:32.920 that could have covered them as well, and this would 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:35.200 allow this would have allowed the place to serve as 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.760 heat exchangers. And then there's there are others who theorized 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.160 that it might have been brightly colored and used for 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:44.960 mating purposes. There's actually a cool fairly recent study to 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.480 back this up. At two thousand fifteen Princeton study argue 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:54.480 that stegasaurusmotsi actually featured differing male and female plate arrangements, 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.640 and this would certainly back up the mating theory and 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:03.480 also provide some different interpretations of UH stegasarian plating in general. UH. 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.120 They also argue that this sort of sexual dimorphism could 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.360 be widespread among non avian dinos. It means it's possible 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.520 that all three of these different theories are somehow involved. 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.480 But but one can imagine a scenario where some sort 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.920 of what was originally armor plating becomes increasingly involved in 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:23.960 mate selection and does just get out of control. So 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:27.640 they're just they're sticking up, they're they're less protective. Uh, 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.240 they're they're brightly colored. And then you know, millions and 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:34.320 millions of years later, a new species of super intelligent 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:36.440 apes just has a hard time figuring out what it 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.760 was all about. Now, when it comes to the tail 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.240 of the Stegasaurus, there's there's a lot less doubt about 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.760 what it was for. Yeah, it seems pretty clear that 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:48.280 it was used for defense, right, Yeah, everyone's pretty certain 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:51.600 that these were used just like the sort of medieval 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.800 morning star weapon that it resembles, that the stegosaurus would 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:57.120 have would have swung this thing around in battle to 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.680 protect itself from carnivores. And to one of the cool 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.000 things is that we actually have some fossil evidence, fossil 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:08.520 evidence of spike wounds on on on Alosaurus is to 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:11.760 back this up exactly. So the Alosaurus was a predator 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.359 that would have been around to prey on the stegosaurus, 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:21.080 and inteen there emerged a really awesome, fantastic example of this. 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:25.720 So inteen, the famous paleontologist Robert Backer, who if you'll recall, 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:28.080 he actually gets a name drop in Jurassic Park. You 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:33.880 remember that little the kid Tim who's following around Alan Grant. 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:35.880 He's like, I read this other book by this guy 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.600 named Backer. Yeah, that's him. Spells his name like our 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:43.280 Scott Baker. But h but Robert Backer. So he announced 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:47.560 a discovery ineen that the Geological Society of America that 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.960 the fossil remains of an Allosaurus. This predator in a 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.920 Wyoming museum showed signs of having been killed in combat, 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.360 with the stegosaurus, specifically being spiked to death in the 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.879 groin O man crosthagamized to death. There you go that. 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:10.080 If that's not some some con conan the barbarian behavior, 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.199 I don't know what is I know. So, what's the 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:15.240 evidence of this? Right? The allosaur skeleton has this deep 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:20.040 conical whole punctured right in its pubic bone. Can you 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.520 imagine how strong a blow would have to be to 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.000 punch a hole right through the bones of a massive 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:30.280 prehistoric predator. Wow? Yeah, that's some serious punch. Yeah. So 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.720 apparently this wound would have left shattered bone fragments and 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.479 all kinds of dirt and contaminants in a deep wound 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.159 like this, and then it appears what happened is the 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:43.760 wound got infected. So Backer says, quote a massive infection 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.920 ate away a baseball sized sector of the bone. Probably 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.320 this infection spread upwards into the soft tissue attached here, 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:56.159 the thigh muscles and adjacent intestines and reproductive organs, and 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.080 the wound. They are sure that it killed the allosaur 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:01.920 because the wound does show any signs of having healed over, 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.080 which is usually a sign that the animal died from 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.719 the wound, or maybe just coincidentally died right after receiving it. 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.840 But it probably died from this horrible wound, right. So 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.639 Bocher is talking about the specific weaponized qualities of the 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:18.159 thagomizer and the stegosaur's tail in general, and he says, quote, 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.560 most dinosaur tails get stiffer towards the end, but the 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:25.080 joints of a stegosaur tail look like a monkey's tail. 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.360 They were built for three dimensional combat. And the way 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.199 I've seen this explained was that Baker's team says, we 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.760 often think about the combat behaviors of stegosaurs as in 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:37.960 like they can just sort of wave their tail back 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.120 and forth like we see in cartoons, right, I mean 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:42.160 they probably would have been able to wave their tail 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.080 back and forth. But Baker and colleagues instead argue that 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.120 the stegosaur was not limited to this motion, but could 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:52.359 make these powerful stabbing thrusts with its tail like we 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:55.159 would with a spear or a sword. Oh I love this. 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:57.760 So so it's it's it's not just this idea that 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.520 it just has to wave it back and forth, and 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:01.760 it's just kind of a general don't approach me from 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:04.600 the rear because there's there are spikes back there, but 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.520 it's more of a strategic weapon that it can use 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.280 against the offender. Yeah, it's almost like a spiked arm. 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.200 Like it's got three dimensions of freedom of movement. Right, 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.159 So so if it gets uh, snuck up on by 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.280 an allosaurus. Allosaurs runs up on the stegosaur from behind 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.399 the stegosaur, it's not like has its tail pinned down. 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.240 Now it can go up and stab the allosaur and 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.160 the groin. And that's what happened here. I like how 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:32.080 Baker reminds us that the stegosaurus would not have kept 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:36.040 its thagamizer and sterile conditions. And it also kind of 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:37.600 makes me think, oh, what if it What if it 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:39.960 was quite the opposite. What if this thing was just nasty, 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.320 just it just it just dragged its thagamizer through its 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:46.920 own extrements. So it was just this this sharp brutal 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:52.760 of just feces encrusted the instrument of death, that it 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:57.240 would that it would weave back and forth that its enemies. Gross. Yeah, 0:19:57.400 --> 0:19:59.040 I mean that that's great. That would have been a 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:01.400 really devious weapon. I don't know if you could have really, 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:02.960 I mean, when you think about it, could they have 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:05.880 had a selection pressure for that if like it wouldn't 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.560 immediately kill the allosaur that's attacking it, but would kill 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.479 it like within a few days from infection. I don't know. 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.400 I don't know. And I mean to to his actual point, though, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.000 you would not have to have a feces encrusted thagomizer 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:23.920 to results in catastrophic infection exactly. No. Yeah, you'd stab 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:26.280 a hole through the bones, leave a bunch of fragments, 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:28.760 you get some dirt in there. Yeah. So, and in 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.480 any case, even if it doesn't immediately kill the allosaurus, 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:33.639 it's gonna wound it bad enough that the stegosaur is 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.360 probably gonna be able to get away, right. Yeah. Oh 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.359 interesting side note. If you look at older illustrations of 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:43.360 the stegosaurus, uh, they'll often be extra spikes on the thagomizer. 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.280 Oh yeah, Now everyone tends to agree you're looking at 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:48.959 four spikes, but you you see older paintings where they 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:51.440 have eight. Yeah, And in that paleo are you also 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:54.560 see the parallel arrangement of the vertical plates on the 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:58.320 back instead of the single line arrangement. Another side note 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.640 about this fine with the groin stab from the thagomizer, 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:05.760 it also affects an interesting debate over the basic survival 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:09.879 niche of therapod carnivores like Allosaurus. So you've got the therapods, 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:14.640 you know, the Tyrannosaurus type dinosaurs, the two legged walking dinosaurs, um, 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:19.120 these therapod predators. Some have proposed that allosaurs and tyrannosaurs 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:24.080 were actually scavengers primarily, rather than active hunters, and this 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:28.440 wound in others like it inflicted by herbivores on carnivores 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:31.399 seems to me to be pretty good evidence that large 0:21:31.440 --> 0:21:35.840 therapod carnivores like Allosaurus were active hunters, right, yeah, because 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:38.959 why else are you gonna thagamize somebody right there? There 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.000 would be no reason for a stegosaurus to jab an 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:44.639 allosaurus to death unless the allosaurs was attacking it. YEA 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:46.720 stegosaurus is not gonna walk up and be like, stop 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:52.760 disrespecting the dead, yeah, because because the segasaurus doesn't doesn't 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:56.960 think like that, right, And speaking of thinking, the Stegasaurus 0:21:56.960 --> 0:22:00.920 had an extremely small head, a mirror sixteen inches or 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:05.199 forts long. The brain, it's often pointed out, would have 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:08.480 been roughly the size of a walnut. I like this, 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.240 but I also like because that's an often cited fact. 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.840 The paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter, who's director of the U. S 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.840 U Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Utah, has said that despite 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:23.000 the despite the common comparison of the stegosaurus brain to 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:26.120 the walnut, he makes an even more specific comparison, which 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:28.679 is to say, quote, actually, it's brain had the size 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.159 and shape of a bent hot dog. I really like 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:34.879 this this interpretation because it kind of implies that all 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:38.359 the Stegasurians were we're deviance. You know, they had a 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:40.560 real bent hot dog of a brain. All right, I 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.440