Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here between about a hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 1: and a hundred forty five million years ago, Alasaurus, a
Speaker 1: large predatory dinosaur, stopped what's now North America and Europe.
Speaker 1: The fossil record suggests that the beast was pretty common
Speaker 1: and did we mention it was big. Full grown Allosaurus
Speaker 1: could grow to be thirty four ft or ten and
Speaker 1: a half meters long, nine ft or three meters tall
Speaker 1: at the hip, and way around three point two tons.
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes creators or Arthur Conan Doyle mentioned the Alosaurus
Speaker 1: by name in his nineteen twelve science fiction adventure novel
Speaker 1: The Lost World. Yet, even giant carnivores take their lumps.
Speaker 1: From time to time, Ladies and gents, meet Big Al.
Speaker 1: A sub adult Alasaurus with a killer nickname big Ol
Speaker 1: lived in what's now North sun Troll, Wyoming. Scientists would
Speaker 1: eventually recover of his or maybe her or skeleton. Look
Speaker 1: closely at the remains and you'll find no fewer than
Speaker 1: nineteen separate bone fractures, and somehow al sustained injuries to
Speaker 1: multiple backbones. Towbones and ribs. There's also evidence of a
Speaker 1: serious infection on the right foot. Big Owl was unearthed
Speaker 1: at a Wyoming quarry. In five years later, fossil hunters
Speaker 1: working in the same state found another Allosaurus skeleton that's
Speaker 1: come to be known as big Al two, and just
Speaker 1: like its predecessor, this specimen was pretty banged up. Many
Speaker 1: of its bones have been fractured or otherwise damaged, only
Speaker 1: to be re healed during the dinosaur's lifetime, although one
Speaker 1: hip injury apparently never healed over and may have been
Speaker 1: implicated in the ultimate demise of Big Al two. Other
Speaker 1: Alosaurus fossils also bear the telltale signs of serious wounds.
Speaker 1: To fully appreciate eate these, we beat take a step
Speaker 1: back and consider the animals role in its environment. Allosaurus
Speaker 1: lived during the Late Jurassic period. Back then, giant herbivore
Speaker 1: dinosaurs called sauropods thundered across the planet, but we often
Speaker 1: find their bones in close association with Alosaurus materials. At
Speaker 1: Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah Colorado border, there's
Speaker 1: a protected quarry where visitors can look at a jumbled
Speaker 1: collection of fossils that's been lying together for the past
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty nine million years. Besides Allosaurus remains,
Speaker 1: this quarry includes the bones of such long necked sauropods
Speaker 1: as Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, and a Patosaurus. Fossils belonging to the
Speaker 1: unrelated spiky tailed plant eater Steatosaurus are also present. These
Speaker 1: were just some of the vegetarian dinos that Allosaurus interacted with,
Speaker 1: and there was competition at the buffet line. One of
Speaker 1: its rival predators in late Jurassic North Amera Rica was
Speaker 1: the Seratosaurus, a horn nosed carnivore that could grow over
Speaker 1: nineteen feet or six meters long, and which had a
Speaker 1: short cameo in the movie Jurassic Park three from two
Speaker 1: thousand one. Compared to some other dinosaurs, Alisaurus had a
Speaker 1: weak bite force. The bite of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the
Speaker 1: famous carnivore that evolved tens of millions of years after
Speaker 1: the last Allosaurus died out, may have been four times stronger.
Speaker 1: Even so, Allosaurus performed well under pressure. Mathematical models show
Speaker 1: that the beast's head could withstand lots of physical strain.
Speaker 1: In Paleontologists used computer simulations to learn more about how
Speaker 1: this dinosaur dismembered its prey. According to their research, Allosaurus
Speaker 1: may have sometimes behaved like an overgrown falcon at dinner.
Speaker 1: The animals skull was light and its nick muscles were peculiar,
Speaker 1: but with their simulations, the researchers showed Alasaurus would have
Speaker 1: had an see time plucking meat off of corpses by
Speaker 1: grabbing a hunk of flesh and its jaws and then
Speaker 1: yanking its head backwards. The falcons do the same thing today,
Speaker 1: but while those hunting birds have flight ready wings, Alasaurus
Speaker 1: had clawed hands. Noting their size and range of motion,
Speaker 1: dinosaur expert Kenneth Carpenter wrote in two thousand two that
Speaker 1: Allosaurus could use its arms to quote grasp moderately large
Speaker 1: prey and pull it towards the body. So what counted
Speaker 1: as moderately large prey for a ravenous Alasaurus Maybe beaked
Speaker 1: herbivores like the twenty three ft or seven meter Compotosaurus
Speaker 1: fit the bill, or perhaps juvenile sauropods. If Alosaurus hunted
Speaker 1: adults auropods, scientists aren't sure how. Some species alive in
Speaker 1: the late Jurassic were around twenty four to thirty four
Speaker 1: times heavier than even the biggest allosaurus, so the predators
Speaker 1: might not have bothered A few experts think Alasaurus only
Speaker 1: targeted young, sick, or dead sauropods, leaving healthy grown ups alone.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's possible that the dinosaur used
Speaker 1: its serrated teeth to rip the flesh off of giant,
Speaker 1: still living sauropods in non fatal attacks. There's a pretty
Speaker 1: awesome name for this hypothetical feeding technique, flesh grazing. A
Speaker 1: bite marks tell Us. Stegosaurus, for one, was on the
Speaker 1: menu only sometimes, though attacking and armored dinosaur might not
Speaker 1: have been the brightest IDEA one Alosaurus pubic bone shows
Speaker 1: a gaping wound that matches the size and shape of
Speaker 1: a Stegosaurus tail spike. Alosaurus has also been suspected of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: A survey that was published in May looked at two thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty eight fossil bones, all were covered
Speaker 1: at the same Jurrassic quarry in Colorado, almost tent bore
Speaker 1: the bite marks of meat eating dinosaurs with serrated teeth.
Speaker 1: Many of these not on bones belonged to sauropods and
Speaker 1: other herbivores. However, some of them came from Alasaurus. Since
Speaker 1: Alasaurus is also the most abundant predatory dinosaur found at
Speaker 1: this dig site, it's entirely possible that we're looking at
Speaker 1: evidence of cannibalistic behavior. Also, no discussion about Allosaurus would
Speaker 1: be complete without mentioning Utah's mysterious Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry
Speaker 1: or c l d Q. Fossils of ten different dinos
Speaker 1: species have been excavated here, including plant eaters like Stegosaurus
Speaker 1: and a Patosaurus. Yet a remarkable sixty percent of all
Speaker 1: the dinosaur bones found in the quarry were left behind
Speaker 1: by Allosaurus. Altogether, the quarry has yielded parts of at
Speaker 1: least forty six Allosaurus skeletons. Some were juveniles, others were
Speaker 1: full grown adults, but they all died in the same spot.
Speaker 1: And the question is why and why are the numbers
Speaker 1: so skewed? Why is Alosaurus so overrepresented there? Several explanations
Speaker 1: have been put forth over the years. Maybe the c
Speaker 1: l d Q was once a Jurassic predator trap, and
Speaker 1: basically that's a place where herbivores get caught in the
Speaker 1: thick mud or another substance and then attract carnivores who
Speaker 1: die the same way. All those bodies attract even more carnivores,
Speaker 1: with dead and dying predators vastly outnumbering prey species. Critics
Speaker 1: say the rarity of bite marks on the quarries dinosaur
Speaker 1: bones is a strike against this hypothesis, though Another hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that the quarry was the home of a poisoned
Speaker 1: watering hole or a normal one that dried up, leaving
Speaker 1: thirsty dinosaurs to die on its banks, and a third
Speaker 1: proposed scenario blames flooding for the accumulation of the skeletons.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article Allosaurus was a
Speaker 1: massive flesh grazer and possible cannibal on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of by Heart Radio in partnership of how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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