Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
Speaker 1: chosen our twenty sixteen episode on tarosaars, not flying dinosaurs, terosaars.
Speaker 1: They were their own thing, and this episode brings out
Speaker 1: the inner child paleontologist in me. I hope it does
Speaker 1: for you too. There's only one way to find out.
Speaker 1: Sit back, relax and enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, just the two of us batching
Speaker 1: it today. Yeah, that's my dad used to say if
Speaker 1: he had to take care of me while my mom
Speaker 1: was working, We're just batching it?
Speaker 2: Is that? What was that what he said?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I thought that was a relatively new term.
Speaker 1: No, I mean at least the early eighties, all right,
Speaker 1: Maybe my dad was like way ahead of his time.
Speaker 2: Why hasn't there been a movie called batching it?
Speaker 1: I I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's actually pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: The fact that it was around as a word in
Speaker 1: the eighties makes me even more surprised that there's not
Speaker 1: a movie called batch in it. Yeah that like the
Speaker 1: protagonist has to put on like a car wash to
Speaker 1: save their business or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Owen Wilson, what did he do? Well? He would
Speaker 2: just be the star of batching it, I imagine, right.
Speaker 1: I guess. So could that guy be any more charming
Speaker 1: than he is?
Speaker 2: He's pretty charming.
Speaker 1: Speaking of charming, Chuck, let me introduce you to a
Speaker 1: wonderful little beast named ketzil Coloattus north Ropie. Mh are
Speaker 1: you are you familiar?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: So, ketzel Colattis is named after the ASTech flying serpent
Speaker 1: god quets old Colaudal. Yes, right, so it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But this guy was a real thing. Not to put
Speaker 1: down the Aztec's beliefs or anything like that, but this
Speaker 1: is a verifiable beast at one point, particularly in the
Speaker 1: late Cretaceous period, and it's what you would probably call
Speaker 1: a pterodactyl. But if you call it a pterodactyl, you'd
Speaker 1: be dead wrong. Pal. Yeah, what it really is is
Speaker 1: a terosaur. And there's a lot of misunderstandings that we're
Speaker 1: going to sort through, but the most important point is
Speaker 1: that this beast right here is twenty feet tall, as
Speaker 1: tall as a giraffe, and it had a wingspan akin
Speaker 1: to about an f sixteen fighter jet and it was
Speaker 1: a bad mamma jama. How's that for a leading That's good.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: I didn't even use the wayback machine, just trim the
Speaker 1: fat gone.
Speaker 2: Oh, you don't even need that old clunky thing anymore.
Speaker 1: We just use our imaginations. We're not actually in the
Speaker 1: Cretaceous period like we would be if we had used
Speaker 1: the wayback machine.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh yeah. These terra starts with the P of course,
Speaker 2: the silent peace, that is from Greek meaning winged lizards.
Speaker 2: And that's pretty on point because they were reptiles. They
Speaker 2: were not dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Yes, big big distinction here.
Speaker 2: They're close, it's like a sister to a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they're from the same claude, which is archosaurs, but
Speaker 1: it's a really wide claude. And all that means is
Speaker 1: that they have in the very remote past some single
Speaker 1: common ancestor with dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were around roughly the same time period
Speaker 2: and definitely and went away in the same fashion. So
Speaker 2: it's normal, I think for people to say, look at
Speaker 2: that pterodactyl, look at that flying dinosaur, even though neither
Speaker 2: one of those is necessarily correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So just to get this across, one more time.
Speaker 1: Pterosaurs were not flying dinosaurs. They were flying reptiles, but
Speaker 1: they weren't dinosaurs. They weren't birds either, And to confused
Speaker 1: things even further, there were birds around at the time
Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs and the time of the pterosaurs. And
Speaker 1: to confuse things even further, there were such things as
Speaker 1: actual flying dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: We call them velociraptors, right, and these vertebrates actually we're
Speaker 2: flying long before birds and bats, by like millions and
Speaker 2: millions of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this how stuff works article. This is
Speaker 1: a good one. I got to give big ups to
Speaker 1: Clint pump Free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 1: The pumpuff Yeah, it sounds like an action house Stuff
Speaker 1: works writer Clint pump Frey just b frock, you know,
Speaker 1: uh huh. But he said, I think eighty million years difference,
Speaker 1: eighty million years before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that's a lot of years.
Speaker 1: It is. So there's a lot of like confusing stuff
Speaker 1: flying around. And I think there's one other thing we
Speaker 1: should probably address right out of the gate, is that
Speaker 1: you you shouldn't call them pterodactyls, even though a lot
Speaker 1: of people do. Pterodactyls are actually a specific genus of pterosaurs.
Speaker 1: So to call all pterosaurs pterodactyls would be incorrect, but
Speaker 1: you could call all pterodactyls pterosaurs.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, And technically, like if you have seen this
Speaker 2: this thing in movies a lot that they say that's
Speaker 2: a pterodactyl, what you've probably been looking at this whole
Speaker 2: time is one of the species. And they're you know,
Speaker 2: potentially up to two hundred of these species right now.
Speaker 2: I think they've identified about one hundred and one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty ish. But a tara tara nodone, is that
Speaker 2: how you say it? I taranidon.
Speaker 1: That's what I would have gone with.
Speaker 2: I like tara nodone. Right, that's probably what you've been
Speaker 2: seeing in movies all this time, that you've been saying,
Speaker 2: that's a pterodactyl. Like if you if you look up
Speaker 2: in image search of the taranodon, you'll say that that's
Speaker 2: a pterodactyl because I saw it and can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like this giant winged beast with kind of short,
Speaker 1: stubby legs and a huge wing span and like a
Speaker 1: weird crest on its head and a long pointy beak.
Speaker 1: A pterodactyl. Everybody knows what a pterodactyl is. Don't be
Speaker 1: an idiot. Yeah, you saw in King Kong nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: saw the same thing in Jurassic Park three in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. Right, things hadn't changed all that much.
Speaker 1: But in that time span, it's actually kind of surprising
Speaker 1: because our understanding of terosaurs had increased dramatically, and yet
Speaker 1: we were still just basically thinking of them exclusively as pterodactyls,
Speaker 1: which isn't the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a paleontologist named O. C. Marsh who
Speaker 2: was a pretty good name for a paleontologist. Sure, he
Speaker 2: collected these first fossils in what is now and was
Speaker 2: then Western Kansas in the late eighteen hundreds, like eighteen seventy,
Speaker 2: and they've been well, I was about to say, they've
Speaker 2: been digging up lots of these since then. They sort
Speaker 2: of have, but not nearly as many as other types
Speaker 2: of fossils, because these fossils are really highly breakable and dissolvable,
Speaker 2: and they're tough to get a hold of and keeping
Speaker 2: one piece throughout the process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should, we should talk about that. Like, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons there is so little understanding of terosaurs
Speaker 1: is because they don't fossilize very well, Nah, because their
Speaker 1: bones were not designed to be fossilized. They were designed
Speaker 1: to allow these giant reptiles to fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They didn't say like, oh, we need to be
Speaker 2: designed to leave our mark later. No, it's like we
Speaker 2: want to fly right exactly.
Speaker 1: So early on, I think the first tearodon or the
Speaker 1: first terosaur specimen was found in the late eighteenth century
Speaker 1: in Germany, and by the time O. C. Marsh was
Speaker 1: digging them up one hundred years later in Kansas, they
Speaker 1: they'd been discovered, but they'd also just kind of been
Speaker 1: abandoned because there were very few follow up fossils that
Speaker 1: were identified. Right, Yeah, Marsh started to dig him up.
Speaker 1: This is a big deal. And because he was finding
Speaker 1: virtually all of the same species, the Tyrannadon, that became
Speaker 1: the common conception of what the terrasaar is. But it
Speaker 1: was coupled with an earlier name, Pterodactyl, that had been
Speaker 1: given to the entire species or the entire group by
Speaker 1: George Cuvier and I think eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that first fossil you were talking about, no
Speaker 2: one knows. No one got credit for that for digging
Speaker 2: that thing up. But like you said, it was in
Speaker 2: Germany in a lime in limestone, like one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million year old limestone, late in the eighteenth century
Speaker 2: that eventually found its way to a man with a
Speaker 2: great name, Cossimo Alessandro Collini.
Speaker 1: That's a great man. When I first came across this
Speaker 1: in this article, I was like, I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: hearing Chuck say that guy's name.
Speaker 2: That's him. He was Italian figure, and he was a
Speaker 2: natural scientist, and he, like many others to follow, for
Speaker 2: a long time, didn't really know what it was, since
Speaker 2: since they found that in an ancient lagoon with all
Speaker 2: kinds of seafaring creatures, he understandably thought it was a
Speaker 2: seafaring creature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And some of the best preserved fossils that we
Speaker 1: have of these things are found in things like lagoons
Speaker 1: where something happened to them. They died suddenly quickly fell
Speaker 1: into a like a body of water, which probably broke
Speaker 1: their fall a little bit. They landed at the muck
Speaker 1: and were covered up potentially in some anaerobic in an
Speaker 1: anaerobic state, and eventually became fossilized very gently. That's what
Speaker 1: it takes to fossilize a terosaur.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Cuvier who kind of got it all wrong
Speaker 2: by calling it a pterodactyl for everyone in the future.
Speaker 2: He was actually the same dude though, who did say, actually,
Speaker 2: I think those are not paddles, right, And that was,
Speaker 2: you know, a big breakthrough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the reason he called them pterodactyls it means
Speaker 1: wing finger in the Greek, right, So terosar means winged
Speaker 1: lizard and pterodactyl means wing finger because as we'll see,
Speaker 1: the front edge of the wing, the leading edge of
Speaker 1: the wing is actually an extraordinarily long pinky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1: I think so too. That's a good way to lead
Speaker 1: up to a break too, don't you think?
Speaker 2: Agreed?
Speaker 1: Let's go Sish.
Speaker 3: Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
Speaker 3: I want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's stuff you should know. All right, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: I feel like we kind of jumbled things out up
Speaker 1: like a bunch of TerraSAR bones. Sure, so let's reset here,
Speaker 1: shall we?
Speaker 2: Should we reset with the head? Let's the head crests.
Speaker 2: If you've seen a movie like Jurassic Park and you
Speaker 2: saw what you thought was a pterodactyl and he had
Speaker 2: that beautiful looking he or she, well maybe he, because
Speaker 2: now they think that maybe only the malesh these head crests.
Speaker 2: These things were sort of one of the staples of many,
Speaker 2: if not all, of these species, but they were all
Speaker 2: really different and some fantastic looking, and they're not exactly sure.
Speaker 2: There's still a lot of debate over what they used
Speaker 2: these big crests for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they thought maybe they use them as a rudder
Speaker 1: in the air to steer with as they are flying around.
Speaker 1: It does make sense. Some people thought that they may
Speaker 1: be used him as a marine rudder. Maybe they used
Speaker 1: them for defense because they were like made of horn
Speaker 1: and bone covered with skin, and they think possibly they
Speaker 1: had coloring to them. Maybe they had feathers or light fur.
Speaker 1: They're not quite sure. But because there's just such a
Speaker 1: lack of understanding, and because terosaur fossils are so few
Speaker 1: and far between, it's still basically anybody's guess what they
Speaker 1: were used for. But then I think in Germany, and
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly certain when this was discovered, but a
Speaker 1: female terosaur was discovered and it had a or i
Speaker 1: should say she had an egg in her oviduct. Still,
Speaker 1: so it was the only terosaur to ever be positively
Speaker 1: identified by sex in the history of the world. And
Speaker 1: she lacked that headcrest, so it really lent support to
Speaker 1: the idea that it was males only, kind of like
Speaker 1: how a peacock has the very bright feathers and the
Speaker 1: p hen does not. They think that maybe it's the
Speaker 1: same thing or more kin to, like antlers in deer
Speaker 1: or moose. Their male are the ones that have the antlers,
Speaker 1: and they think they use it, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: for a defense, but mostly to say, hey, I'm a
Speaker 1: dude and I'm looking for some action. Check out the
Speaker 1: sides of my antlers. They think it was probably the
Speaker 1: same with tyrosaurs.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, and these things, like, it's amazing when you
Speaker 2: look up these pictures. Some of them are just really
Speaker 2: fantastically colored. Some of them are really big, like that
Speaker 2: Tapahara imperator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look up one terasaar during this episode,
Speaker 1: make it this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is cool. This thing looks like it literally
Speaker 2: has a sailboat sail on top of its.
Speaker 1: Head, and like if the coloring is anywhere remotely like
Speaker 1: what the artist's conceptions are. It just must have been
Speaker 1: something to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that niktosaurus is pretty interesting too. This one didn't
Speaker 2: seem to have any sort of a It looked like
Speaker 2: a sail without the sale, Like, what do you call
Speaker 2: the frame of the sale. I'm sure there's some great
Speaker 2: name for it.
Speaker 1: The uh, the timber, the timber.
Speaker 2: Sure, but these, I mean, it's they they like it
Speaker 2: in this article the pump does to television intena and
Speaker 2: they are really big and look only clunky to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it'd be good for skewering, I guess,
Speaker 1: but it could also be terrible for skewing. Like if
Speaker 1: you were hunting or spearing fish with it, you could
Speaker 1: probably catch a lot of fish, but you couldn't get
Speaker 1: the fish off because it's they're just these antenna We're
Speaker 1: just way too tall and long.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then this terradustro is really you should look
Speaker 2: that one up too, It's pretty amazing. This one looks
Speaker 2: like this one looks like if a dinosaur mated with
Speaker 2: a pelican and a toothbrush.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw one person described it as a toothbrush
Speaker 1: with wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the lower jaw has like a thousand really long,
Speaker 2: small needle like teeth, and it looks like this big
Speaker 2: toothbrushy underbite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it does. Like when you look at it,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, it's clearly got to be related to
Speaker 1: a pelican. Again, it's not pelicans, a bird, and birds
Speaker 1: were around during the time of dinosaurs, and if birds
Speaker 1: are anything, they're actually the real flying dinosaurs. But it
Speaker 1: does look a lot like it, and it makes sense
Speaker 1: that it would because from what we're learning about pterosaurs
Speaker 1: now these days is that a lot of them were
Speaker 1: ocean going, that they had the goods to fly across
Speaker 1: an entire ocean over the course of a few days,
Speaker 1: like maybe an albatross wood, and that they would fly low,
Speaker 1: some of them, and skim the surface of these ancient
Speaker 1: oceans on Earth and scoop up marine life with their jaws,
Speaker 1: with their lower jaw, just like a pelican would. So
Speaker 1: what's even more interesting about that, besides the idea that
Speaker 1: this is going on one hundred million years ago, is
Speaker 1: that pelicans are not related to these things, so that
Speaker 1: this trait, this behavior, this characteristic evolved more than one time.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I find that fascinating rather
Speaker 1: than saying, oh, pelicans descended from that, Actually they didn't.
Speaker 1: That's just two different branches of the same tree developing
Speaker 1: into something very similar.
Speaker 2: Position in isolation. Didn't know what they call that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or no convergent evolution, Okay, I think yes, it is.
Speaker 1: It's conversion evolution when like a trait or behavior characteristic
Speaker 1: develops separately among different branches of the tree, rather than
Speaker 1: developing once and then descendants all have that same trait.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And although they did certainly love a good seafood meal,
Speaker 2: they used to think that was sort of all they ate,
Speaker 2: And now new research suggests that they do eat or
Speaker 2: did eat, all kinds of things, even tiny dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The way that they're they describe them now is
Speaker 1: that it's just like birds, Right, You've got birds that
Speaker 1: eat all sorts of different things, that fill all sorts
Speaker 1: of different ecological niches. That's what they're coming to to
Speaker 1: the conclusion about with terosaurs, which I mean, chuck, this
Speaker 1: is like a huge sea change from what it was
Speaker 1: even back in the nineteen fifties or sixties or seventies,
Speaker 1: and we thought there were just a few species, and
Speaker 1: it turns out there were a ton of different ones
Speaker 1: and a lot of variety and a lot of diversity,
Speaker 1: and now we're starting to kind of get a handle
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they think they were probably able after they
Speaker 2: hatch to fly pretty quickly, to take care of themselves
Speaker 2: pretty quickly, and like you mentioned, they're flying. They believe
Speaker 2: now was they were kind of built for the long
Speaker 2: haul that it weren't super fast, but could you know,
Speaker 2: like a long distance jetliner.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But some of them were small, some of them were
Speaker 2: small songbirds, and I imagine they were flitty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of one, but there was
Speaker 1: one that was extremely tiny, a very tiny, little little
Speaker 1: flying terosaur.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine anything more frightening than what you would
Speaker 2: call a terodactyl the size of a robin?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I imagine a hundred of those.
Speaker 1: Or it could look kind of cool like the little
Speaker 1: UFOs and batteries not included, remember those.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that movie.
Speaker 1: Do you remember like the ads or anything from it? Though?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: It was basically Cocoon, but set in a tenement and
Speaker 1: with UFOs rather than the actual aliens. Okay, it was
Speaker 1: very similar though, uh huh. I think Donna Michi was
Speaker 1: in both Maybe.
Speaker 2: Why not had he had that market cornered.
Speaker 1: If you can get your hands on Donna Michi, you
Speaker 1: put him in your movie.
Speaker 2: Buddy, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: So okay, where are we at, Chuck, Well, I.
Speaker 2: Think we can go. We can hop over to the
Speaker 2: fact that for many years people thought we've already mentioned birds,
Speaker 2: but bats was the other thing that people confused them with.
Speaker 2: There was a an anatoby professor named Samuel Thomas von
Speaker 2: Summering in the eighteen hundred. He incorrectly suggested that these
Speaker 2: were bats. Another Paleontoller's named Harry Seely even wrote a
Speaker 2: book called Dragons of the Sky in which he said
Speaker 2: birds were the descendants of these And it's understandable why
Speaker 2: these dudes were wrong. They were doing the best they could.
Speaker 2: And when you look at those wings, it looks, you know,
Speaker 2: that membrane, it looks like it would be a batswing.
Speaker 2: But there are some differences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some big differences. And you like a bat
Speaker 1: in particular, I could see confusing it with right, like
Speaker 1: an ancient bat, because with a bat you have four digits,
Speaker 1: and three of those digits form the bones in the wing,
Speaker 1: and you got one little digit wiggling free, so a
Speaker 1: bat can climb around with its index fingers. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: with a terrasaar, you have three digits that are free,
Speaker 1: and then the pinky. The fourth digit is the one
Speaker 1: that forms that long sometimes ten twenty feet long bone
Speaker 1: that's the front ende of the wing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy, but they had three.
Speaker 1: They had three fingers free. And this is really significant
Speaker 1: because before they used to think and if you go
Speaker 1: back and you look at how pterodactyls were drawn in
Speaker 1: like the middle of the twentieth century, when they weren't
Speaker 1: in flight, they were probably standing on their back legs,
Speaker 1: and they realized that this is probably not how pterosaurs stood.
Speaker 1: That instead, because their forearms were far more powerful than
Speaker 1: their back legs, they were probably quadrupeds, which meant that
Speaker 1: they walked on all four legs, putting most of their
Speaker 1: weight on their front way legs with their front forearms,
Speaker 1: with their three free digits and their wings tucked off
Speaker 1: to the side. And they look kind of like a
Speaker 1: cartoon bulldog walks, is what I'm seeing. That's what they
Speaker 1: think now.
Speaker 2: Like a cartoon bulldog, not a real.
Speaker 1: One, right, Well, I mean a real bulldog doesn't walk
Speaker 1: quite like a cartoon. Bulldog cartoon. Bulldog's more exaggerated pronounced,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Sure, it's a cartoon.
Speaker 2: Should we take another break? Sure, all right, we'll do
Speaker 2: that and then we'll talk a little bit about how
Speaker 2: they fly and other good stuff.
Speaker 1: Right for this pterosaurs, Josh.
Speaker 3: Suis, Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
Speaker 3: I want to learn a thing or two from Josh
Speaker 3: am Chuck.
Speaker 1: It's stuff you should.
Speaker 2: Know, should all right? All right, So you mentioned they
Speaker 2: were quadrupedal m.
Speaker 1: Four footed, four footed.
Speaker 2: And initially they thought that they would like birds because
Speaker 2: we see birds do it, and it's probably especially back
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds, it was maybe they were all
Speaker 2: working off the notion of the easiest solution is probably correct, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they would see a bird hop off those back
Speaker 2: legs and think, well, this is clearly what pterodactyls did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I never thought about that, but that's exactly
Speaker 1: what a bird does. It jumps up in the air
Speaker 1: from its back legs and flaps its wings and then
Speaker 1: provides lift from that point on using its wings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd never really thought about that, but that's how birds fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they hop around and if they want to. And
Speaker 2: it is funny one of the other articles you sent.
Speaker 2: One of those guys believed the pale tallers believes that
Speaker 2: it even evolved into flying, that they used to hop
Speaker 2: around on four legs and eventually they started jumping higher
Speaker 2: and higher and then started flapping and then before you
Speaker 2: knew it, they were flying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they went from leaping to gliding to lying,
Speaker 1: and they don't know. Again, they haven't found what you
Speaker 1: would call a proto terosaar like whatever was the link
Speaker 1: between ancient reptiles and terosaurs. But that's kind of the
Speaker 1: current guess right now, is that they evolved from some
Speaker 1: small white lizard that was good at jumping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're they one of the big keys in
Speaker 2: finding out and I don't think you said this how
Speaker 2: strong their arms were. Yeah, that sort of was a
Speaker 2: big breakthrough because when you think of like, you think
Speaker 2: it all comes from the legs because they're jumping. But
Speaker 2: because they found more fossils, they realized they were quadrupedal,
Speaker 2: and they said, man, they actually have incredibly strong arms
Speaker 2: and shoulders and these little tiny feet. So not only
Speaker 2: are they quadrupedal, but a lot of that initial hopping
Speaker 2: lift may come from the arms and not the legs
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: So they think, now what they do is it's just
Speaker 1: basically pushed themselves off their front arms and legs to
Speaker 1: an extent and just basically hop up into the air
Speaker 1: and then start flapping their wings rather than like a
Speaker 1: bird jumping off of their back legs. Is that what
Speaker 1: you mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And then but most of that comes from the
Speaker 2: from the arms and shoulders rather than the feed, right,
Speaker 2: And the feed I think just sort of drag behind
Speaker 2: and perhaps maybe helped with steering, is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And they so there you can actually divide pterosaurs into
Speaker 1: two groups depending on when they were around. One started
Speaker 1: around one hundred and fifty million years ago, and then
Speaker 1: one came later. And the first groups had long tails.
Speaker 1: So if you look at old drawings of pterodactyls, you'll
Speaker 1: frequently see with kind of like a long forked devil's tail,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's actually kind of accurate. They think
Speaker 1: that the original ones had longer tails to learn to
Speaker 1: steer in the air, but then as they got more
Speaker 1: and more adapted to flying gracefully, they lost their tails
Speaker 1: to the ones, the ones that were around when the
Speaker 1: Cretaceous period ended suddenly mostly called osdar kids, which is
Speaker 1: not an easy word to pronounce that that they had
Speaker 1: they had lost their tails because they had developed other
Speaker 1: methods of changing how they fly mid flight. Right, So
Speaker 1: like they because the wing membrane was connected to their
Speaker 1: ankle from their shoulder with their finger, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: providing the front of the wing. If they altered the
Speaker 1: angle of their wristbone where they moved their ankle in
Speaker 1: and out, it would change the actual dynamics of their
Speaker 1: wing and they could dive and lift and do all
Speaker 1: sorts of other things, which is this is a big
Speaker 1: sea change in our understanding of pterosaurs too, because they
Speaker 1: used to think that they basically had to run and
Speaker 1: jump off of a cliff to gain.
Speaker 2: Flight or hang like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they were so weird looking and so weirdly
Speaker 1: developed in different ways, huge heads, enormous beaks, big heag crest, small,
Speaker 1: puny little withered.
Speaker 2: Feet, you know, like like mister Burns hands or yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, or David Cross in the Titanica
Speaker 1: segment on Mister Show like that, right, that's like a
Speaker 1: terosaur's legs. So it didn't make any sense, how they flew.
Speaker 1: But now that we're starting to learn more and more
Speaker 1: about him, we're like, oh, actually, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of really really interesting adaptations, not the least of which
Speaker 1: was their bones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, are all of their bones hollow or
Speaker 2: just those wing bones all of them? Wow? I mean
Speaker 2: that made them incredibly light, obviously, But that also ended
Speaker 2: up being one of the problems in trying to get
Speaker 2: fossils of these guys, because they just they were very
Speaker 2: highly destructible, non fossilizable, non fossilizable.
Speaker 1: Do you remember a fossil episode that was like one
Speaker 1: of the better old ones if you ask.
Speaker 2: Me, Yeah, I agree, I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should trot that out in the selects soon.
Speaker 1: That's a great idea.
Speaker 2: That'd be a good one. They also thought if they
Speaker 2: were on water, like they had just had a little
Speaker 2: snack on a lake, that they would use those wings
Speaker 2: as paddles and just get going that way, pushing off
Speaker 2: the surface and then flapping until they were, you know,
Speaker 2: shaking it off twenty feet above the above the water.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly a lot like marine birds do today. Right,
Speaker 1: So those bones, like you kind of hit it on
Speaker 1: the head they are extra. They were extremely light, right,
Speaker 1: they were about a millimeter thick, something like the thickness
Speaker 1: of a plane card I saw.
Speaker 2: But nuts.
Speaker 1: It is super nuts, especially considering that these things were
Speaker 1: holding up like a bird that was up to twenty
Speaker 1: feet tall, right, or not a bird, a terrasaar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not a cherodactyl.
Speaker 1: Man I just averted so much email chuck, like a
Speaker 1: millimeter thick bone wall. But the way that their bones
Speaker 1: were made, they were made of cross sections of basically
Speaker 1: like plywood, so they were really strong. And then if
Speaker 1: you cut their bone in two and looked down the
Speaker 1: hollow tube, you would see that there are little struts
Speaker 1: criss crossing to provide even more internal support for those bones. Amazing,
Speaker 1: So you could have a twenty foot tall terrasaar that
Speaker 1: could actually fly because it was that light. I saw
Speaker 1: one one of that as dark kids was something like
Speaker 1: had a twenty foot wingspan, but it probably didn't weigh
Speaker 1: any more than twenty pounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some of these, I mean, what were the
Speaker 2: largest ones, like thirty five forty feet in wingspan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so about like ten to fifteen meters in wingspan,
Speaker 1: like the size of like a jet plane. Like a
Speaker 1: fighter jet.
Speaker 2: I just flew in my first private jet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how was it?
Speaker 2: You know what? First of all, I've always wanted to
Speaker 2: fly on a private jet, but never thought I would
Speaker 2: have cause to, because, you know, unless you're extremely wealthy,
Speaker 2: you only do that if you get invited to for
Speaker 2: some strange reason, like you don't just book it.
Speaker 1: You should be on high alert if you some wealthy
Speaker 1: person invites you on the private jet.
Speaker 2: And it was awesome. It was as awesome as you think.
Speaker 2: And the most awesome part of it was the uh,
Speaker 2: just the sheer lack of hassle. Yeah, like you Like,
Speaker 2: I parked my car at the little tiny airport here
Speaker 2: Intocab County, walked across the parking lot and into the
Speaker 2: lobby and there's literally a guy standing there, a captain,
Speaker 2: and he was like, are you Chuck, And I said yes,
Speaker 2: and he said right this way, and he walked out
Speaker 2: the back door and there's a plane and they say
Speaker 2: watch your head. You get on it, and he says,
Speaker 2: you're ready to go.
Speaker 1: That's was it just you?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that was like five of us on
Speaker 2: an eight seater.
Speaker 1: Everybody was waiting for you.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I was the last person to get there,
Speaker 2: and I was a little stressed. But then I thought,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, that's the other perk is they don't
Speaker 2: leave you. Yeah, like there, I mean there's a schedule,
Speaker 2: but it's really late. Uh but it was cool. I
Speaker 2: mean they're the one we were on. Was uh. I
Speaker 2: mean it's not roomy, so it's not like Air Force
Speaker 2: one or anything like you feel like you can just
Speaker 2: walk around. But like when I was standing, I'm five
Speaker 2: foot ten and if I said completely straight, my head
Speaker 2: would brush the ceiling a little bit.
Speaker 1: M but uh, and you're just like, ugh private.
Speaker 2: But no TSA like you just you just walk on.
Speaker 2: They fly you there and then you get off and
Speaker 2: you're right there. It's like this just the lack of hassle,
Speaker 2: And all I could think of was like, man, it
Speaker 2: must be great to be a billionaire sure and never
Speaker 2: have to deal than airport again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2: It was kind of cool. But then also once you're
Speaker 2: up there, you're kind of like, eh, well, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's not like life changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You me, actually I've never flown on one. You
Speaker 1: me flew on one, And she said basically the exact
Speaker 1: same thing you did. That just the lack of hassle
Speaker 1: and how fast you get somewhere yeah, is just just
Speaker 1: beyond amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it takes away hours and hours of
Speaker 2: airport crap.
Speaker 1: I know, you start to develop like that terrible sensation
Speaker 1: where your eye's hurt for some weird reason, even though
Speaker 1: you haven't even gotten on the plane yet. Like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that I'd be happy to leave behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it also when you're going to take off,
Speaker 2: because just because it's small, it feels like you're going
Speaker 2: as fast as you're going, whereas in a jumbo jet
Speaker 2: it really doesn't. Right, Like I was kind of like, man,
Speaker 2: we're going fast.
Speaker 1: So oh hey, So speaking of you, me and flying,
Speaker 1: I have an update. Okay, do you remember the story
Speaker 1: about the Russia visas that we failed to get?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: I told her that I told that story and she
Speaker 1: was like, you said we forgot And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did, right, and she's like, no, we asked like
Speaker 1: five different people, five different times, and we're told we
Speaker 1: didn't need visas. So I wanted to let you know, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that we actually are as buttoned up as you think.
Speaker 1: We were just misinformed.
Speaker 2: We got that great email from a new listener that
Speaker 2: was like, listen to some dumb story about some guy
Speaker 2: and his dumb visa. I was like, oh, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show, brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah you should probably the door. Was that that guy?
Speaker 1: That one guy? Uh huh oh okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very turned off by your side about your
Speaker 2: visa story. Yeah whatever, So anyway, thanks for indulging the
Speaker 2: private jet convo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll bet that guy loved the private jet aside.
Speaker 2: It'll probably never happen again, but it was basically like
Speaker 2: riding around on a terosaur. So that's how I wedged
Speaker 2: it in there.
Speaker 1: Nice work, that's nice. So I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: what else. Like tasaur is kind of to bring out
Speaker 1: the little entertain year old to me. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've noticed, but I'm wearing my little outdoor archaeologist boots.
Speaker 1: I see that white pull up crewse socks, and I'm
Speaker 1: just a total little nerd.
Speaker 2: You keep dusting everything in here too.
Speaker 1: I'm not even like one of those dinosaur nerds, but
Speaker 1: some just getting into researching dinosaurs. Does it do that
Speaker 1: to you two? It just kind of draws out like
Speaker 1: the little kid.
Speaker 2: I think so, And I think probably because at least
Speaker 2: when I was and you and I were growing up,
Speaker 2: I feel like public schools just like did such a
Speaker 2: poor job of talking about these periods.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, yeah I remember that. But I
Speaker 1: also remember dinosaurs being kind of huge in the eighties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least they were in Ohio. Does that an Ohio thing?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm trying to remember. I mean, Jurassic
Speaker 2: Park obviously changed everything as far. Yeah, but when was
Speaker 2: that nineties? Yeah? Early nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I feel like dinosaurs are pretty popular among
Speaker 1: the kids before that. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I hit
Speaker 1: my head and don't realize it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I know kids. I mean, my daughter
Speaker 2: loves dinosaurs. So it's a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely is a thing, and it's getting to
Speaker 1: be even more of a thing the more we learn
Speaker 1: about terosaurs too, which is somebody called the twenty first
Speaker 1: century the Golden Age of terosaar research. So they're expecting
Speaker 1: big things from the field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, hopefully they can find that
Speaker 2: proto terosaur and that's when the community really gets all
Speaker 2: excited when they can make those links.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, it's speaking of the community. I read
Speaker 1: this article in National Geographic and God bless them. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the guy who wrote it, but it's called
Speaker 1: why Terosaurs were the Weirdest Wonders on Wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a good one.
Speaker 1: It's a great article. And the guy basically just got
Speaker 1: into all like the dirty laundry of the terosar paleontology community.
Speaker 1: And apparently they're very well known among paleontologists for just
Speaker 1: despising each other. Like the terosaur paleontologists don't like each other,
Speaker 1: talk smack about each other publicly, and just snipe at
Speaker 1: one another a lot, which makes the whole thing even
Speaker 1: that much more fascinating, you know, huh. Like they're real
Speaker 1: competitive and real backbitity.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, and in this case that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they keep pushing one another. Agreed, You got
Speaker 1: anything else?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Are we done with terosaurs?
Speaker 2: I don't have anything else, I don't think.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, if you want to know more about terosaurs,
Speaker 1: go to your local natural history museum and say, hey,
Speaker 1: tell me about that pterodactyl. See if you can stump them.
Speaker 1: And since I said stump, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this one. Which one is this? One, oh, footbinding.
Speaker 2: I believe we did this in a select episode. It's
Speaker 2: one of our older ones, but a really good one,
Speaker 2: I think agreed, and this goes like this. Hey guys,
Speaker 2: I'm assumed to be grad student from Guangdong, China and
Speaker 2: have been a listener for a couple of years now.
Speaker 2: This is my first time riding in and it's about footbinding.
Speaker 2: I talked to my grandmother after listening, remembering she told
Speaker 2: me that her grandmother had bound her feet. I asked
Speaker 2: if great Grandma had trouble walking, and she said she
Speaker 2: had never even wabbled a little bit. Because it turns
Speaker 2: out she never made her own little shoes. She just
Speaker 2: bought toddler shoes for herself.
Speaker 1: That's called making lemons. No, that's called making lemonade out
Speaker 1: of lemons with your feet.
Speaker 2: That's right, she said. Great great grandma came from a
Speaker 2: wealthy family and bound feet for more of a symbol
Speaker 2: of your family wealth, meaning you don't have to do
Speaker 2: farming chores in catering to the male foot fetish at
Speaker 2: that time. We are not exactly sure when she was born,
Speaker 2: but we do know that when her daughter, my great grandmother,
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen fourteen, she made sure that her
Speaker 2: feet were never bound. She also put all of her
Speaker 2: kids through high school, which is very remarkable back then.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, footbinding is certainly not something that I am
Speaker 2: proud of. To think that I'm just five generations away
Speaker 2: from having to get my own feed bound as supposed to.
Speaker 2: Sitting here writing you guys right now, it just says
Speaker 2: to me how far we've gone. Thanks for the show.
Speaker 2: By the way, the Draft podcast, Josh was having trouble
Speaker 2: pronouncing qi n G dynasty Q maybe roughly pronounced as ts,
Speaker 2: not exactly the same, So just say sing next time,
Speaker 2: that would do.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't even think I tried that one.
Speaker 1: I tried every other phone me except for sing.
Speaker 2: And this is best regards from Ruoi.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Ruoi. That's pretty cool and like
Speaker 1: nice sense of perspective too. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with an awesome story like Ruoi did,
Speaker 1: you can catch up with us on social media. Just
Speaker 1: go to our website stuffishould Know dot com and you
Speaker 1: will find all of our social medi links there. And
Speaker 1: if you want send us a good old fashioned email,
Speaker 1: wrap it up, smack it on the bottom and send
Speaker 1: it off to stuff Podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com.
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