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