Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This episode originally aired
Speaker 1: on August nineteen, and it was a prehistoric Transylvania. That's right,
Speaker 1: a tale of giant Terra SAARs feasting on pony sized
Speaker 1: dwarf Sara pods. So it's just it's just fun for
Speaker 1: the entire family. You were standing in the halls of
Speaker 1: Schell Castle. You approach a golden chalice, resplendent in an
Speaker 1: embossed spiral of geologic time that winds around from rim
Speaker 1: to base. At the merest touch, the chalice chimes and shivers,
Speaker 1: dragging you back through two hundred years of history to
Speaker 1: the castle's raising in the Transylvanian wilds. Off you grasped
Speaker 1: the golden chalice, and time sheds from your perspective like
Speaker 1: this again, of a great serpent, spiraling out in every
Speaker 1: direction as you descend through the depths of centuries millennia,
Speaker 1: through eons of evolutionary change in geologic upheaval, until the
Speaker 1: chalice slips from your trembling grip and leaves you in
Speaker 1: an Age of Wonders pottig as you knew it is
Speaker 1: gone now a paleo island rising up out of the
Speaker 1: Late Cretaceous Sea. You glimpse movement and note the approach
Speaker 1: of several sauropods. Only these are not the hulking giants
Speaker 1: you're familiar with. They seem dwarf creatures the size of ponies.
Speaker 1: You could ride one, if only you dared to approach
Speaker 1: its alien flesh. But before you can muster the courage,
Speaker 1: the creatures scatter from the clearing predatory therapods to flee
Speaker 1: back into the forests. As a great shadow descends from
Speaker 1: the sky, a terrasaur to rival the dragon bowow of myth.
Speaker 1: It lands before you. It towers like a siege engine,
Speaker 1: but you've already thrown yourself to the ground. You're fumbling
Speaker 1: for the golden chalice so that it might take you home,
Speaker 1: or take you further back anywhere to escape the jaws
Speaker 1: of hats. A got to extend them A welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your mind? A production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radios has to works. Hey, are you welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind? My name is Robert Lamb, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And if you can probably guess from
Speaker 1: that fun little cold open that we have prepared for
Speaker 1: you there, we are going to be traveling back in
Speaker 1: time in this episode via paleontology, back to prehistoric Transylvania.
Speaker 1: That is so exciting, Robert, I can tell you are
Speaker 1: just itching to like write a novel about this, this
Speaker 1: ancient paleo island. Yeah. I was really inspired by this,
Speaker 1: and this is one of those situations where I was
Speaker 1: inspired by reading a dinosaur book to my son. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a book titled Atlas of Dinosaur Adventures by Emily
Speaker 1: Hawkins and illustrated by Lucy Leatherland, and it has these wonderful,
Speaker 1: you know, big two page spreads to show a different
Speaker 1: part of the world and an idea of what the
Speaker 1: prehistoric life might have looked like. And they had a
Speaker 1: spread they cover every continent, and they had a spread
Speaker 1: for heydeck showing like what what prehistoric Transylvania, of what
Speaker 1: prehistoric Romania would have might have consisted of. And uh,
Speaker 1: I have to admit, despite having you know, covered sauropods
Speaker 1: on the show, and certainly we've talked about gigantic terra
Speaker 1: saurs quite recently I wasn't really familiar with this corner
Speaker 1: of the prehistoric world. It clearly it set off a
Speaker 1: little explosion in your mind. I can sense the energy
Speaker 1: coming off of you on the subjective hottig and I
Speaker 1: wanted to say that you're opening reminded me of two
Speaker 1: different things. The poem Directive by Robert Frost, which is
Speaker 1: about going back in time and it also involves a chalice.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it talks about like I forgot about it,
Speaker 1: or if or if I just uh, you know, came
Speaker 1: up with that idea, you know, via some connection to
Speaker 1: things that were inspired by what he wrote. You should
Speaker 1: look it up again as a great poem directive, I mean,
Speaker 1: but it also was like a cross between directive and
Speaker 1: a sound of thunder. Yes, yeah, yeah, and I was,
Speaker 1: I guess I also was definitely thinking about the time machine. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, who can escape Wells's time machine when considering
Speaker 1: the past at all? I mean, anytime you're thinking about dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: you can, and another prehistar creatures such as the pterosaurs,
Speaker 1: you can't help but imagine like traveling back and encountering them.
Speaker 1: That's the ultimate frame of reference, right, What if I
Speaker 1: was standing next to one but this is the ultimate
Speaker 1: real monster versus fictional monster crossover because because well not
Speaker 1: to call dinosaurs monsters, but you know, they're the They're
Speaker 1: one of the closest things to monster myths, to dragon
Speaker 1: myths that you've got in the real world. So you've
Speaker 1: got like a really interesting sort of dinosaur fossil site
Speaker 1: with with interesting biogeographical qualities that we will explore as
Speaker 1: we go on in the and the rest of the episode.
Speaker 1: But it's right there in Transylvania, right It's it's vampire country, indeed,
Speaker 1: and you know, we will encounter a fossil that has
Speaker 1: been dubbed Dracula paleontolog is covering it. How about those
Speaker 1: pony size sauropods. You didn't make that up, did you know? No,
Speaker 1: that's all. That's one of one of like the really
Speaker 1: amazing things about about this particular scenario and and ultimately
Speaker 1: about everything we're gonna talk about in this episode, is
Speaker 1: that is that we're looking at an example, a prehistoric
Speaker 1: example of island dwarf is um and island gigantism, also
Speaker 1: known as the the island factor or the island rule.
Speaker 1: And this is a concept we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show before. Oh yeah, yeah, it's come up several times.
Speaker 1: It has to do with body size in populations of
Speaker 1: animals that become isolated. It but will really just that
Speaker 1: become isolated because it doesn't have to be on islands.
Speaker 1: Islands is just the easiest way for it to happen.
Speaker 1: Like another way it can happen or in these interesting
Speaker 1: ecosystems known as sky islands, where um, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever see like like essentially a plateau, it
Speaker 1: could be the like that. One great example that I've
Speaker 1: been to is like in a big been National Park
Speaker 1: in Texas. So you you have desert and then in
Speaker 1: the middle of this there are some mountains rising up.
Speaker 1: And as you go up the slopes of the mountains
Speaker 1: and in between them at the higher altitudes, actually the
Speaker 1: climate changes, right because it higher altitudes, it almost kind
Speaker 1: of mimics higher latitudes, and so the types of plants
Speaker 1: you find change, the types of animals you find change.
Speaker 1: It goes from sort of desert to a weird kind
Speaker 1: of forest up in the higher parts of the mountains.
Speaker 1: And so this can function kind of like an island,
Speaker 1: right because there are creatures that can survive up in
Speaker 1: those mountain forests but can't traverse the vast expanses of
Speaker 1: desert down below, or if they do it, it can
Speaker 1: be very dangerous and that you know, might not make
Speaker 1: it to anywhere they could survive. So anyway, well, you know,
Speaker 1: wherever you have a case where species can survive in
Speaker 1: a very limited geographical range and they're cut off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the continental populations, you can have these
Speaker 1: cases of island gigantism or island dwarf is um. Basically,
Speaker 1: smaller species tend to become larger, and larger species tend
Speaker 1: to become smaller, and there are multiple reasons for this,
Speaker 1: but mainly it's that the smaller species tend to become
Speaker 1: larger because on islands there is a lack of predators
Speaker 1: that they would encounter on the mainland that would be
Speaker 1: a check on their their growth. Meanwhile, larger species tend
Speaker 1: to become smaller, presumably because of a lack of energy
Speaker 1: resources that you would find on the mainland. There's less
Speaker 1: to eat on the island, so it actually pays to
Speaker 1: have a smaller body that requires less food. A commonly
Speaker 1: cited example of this is like the mammoths that were
Speaker 1: found on certain islands, like the gigantic Colombian mammoth evolved
Speaker 1: a dwarf variety on the Channel Islands off the coast
Speaker 1: of California. There was also the Wrangel Island mammoths that
Speaker 1: were I think the last wooly mammoth's on Earth that
Speaker 1: went extinct around four thousand years ago. Were smaller than
Speaker 1: their continental varieties. And the basic idea with these examples
Speaker 1: is that they were able to reach these islands when
Speaker 1: the water level was lower, and then they end up
Speaker 1: trapped there essentially, and life goes on and evolution continues. Right,
Speaker 1: Life goes on, but there's less to eat, so if
Speaker 1: you're trying to make a bigger body, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to starve to death. So the ones with genes for
Speaker 1: smaller bodies tend to be the ones that survive. And
Speaker 1: so obviously we think about that, you know, examples of
Speaker 1: this in the recent past or in the modern world,
Speaker 1: But the same principles of evolution and energy and food
Speaker 1: dynamics would have been in place in the time of dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: right exactly, so you could run into exactly the same issue.
Speaker 1: And it seems like that's exactly what's going on in
Speaker 1: this ancient Transylvanian island called hot Egg. Yes, sixty six
Speaker 1: million years ago, this region was an island in the
Speaker 1: large body of water that we we refer to now
Speaker 1: as the Taffy Sea. And this would have covered large
Speaker 1: parts of Europe up through the Late Cretaceous period, and
Speaker 1: it would have uh and it would have caused this
Speaker 1: resulting group of islands to essentially be a European archipelago.
Speaker 1: And German born paleontologist Hans Dieter SEUs describes it as
Speaker 1: a quote shallow epicontinental sea dotted with variously sized islands.
Speaker 1: Uh SEUs his senior scientist and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
Speaker 1: at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.
Speaker 1: And he even has a dinosaur named after him. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know he's the real deal. It's a Paki
Speaker 1: cephalosaur and Pacula Pakia cephalosaur. Hans Sus Sussia and Ceci.
Speaker 1: Always a good sign and a paleontologist. The amount of
Speaker 1: honor is directly proportional to how hard it is to
Speaker 1: say a little known fact. We we should also note
Speaker 1: that you know we're we're talking a long time ago here,
Speaker 1: so it's not million issue. Oh, Europe was flooded back then,
Speaker 1: um no. As SEUs points out in a two thousand
Speaker 1: Tin paper titled an Unusual Dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous
Speaker 1: of Romania and the Island Rule, there was there was
Speaker 1: complex tectonic activity along the northern margin of the western Tethys,
Speaker 1: and then there was volcanic activity that resulted in these
Speaker 1: cretaceous islands rising up. So and then the largest of
Speaker 1: these covered much of what we now know as the
Speaker 1: Iberian Peninsula and France extending into central Europe. Now, this
Speaker 1: particular island in the Tats, which is you know, which
Speaker 1: corresponds to the modern region of Hatig Transylvania, This would
Speaker 1: have been roughly I'm reading eighty thousand square kilometers or
Speaker 1: thirty thousand, eight hundred eighty eight square miles. And to
Speaker 1: put that in perspective, modern day Ireland is uh roughly
Speaker 1: thirty two five hundred ninety five square miles in size,
Speaker 1: so so to Ireland. So sort of a you know,
Speaker 1: a Romanian Ireland. Um that's crawling with odd sized prehistoric creatures.
Speaker 1: So that's how we came to have these islands. Roughly,
Speaker 1: these European islands in the late Cretaceous. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, we ended up with various creatures stranded
Speaker 1: upon these islands. Uh. And they were subject to evolutionary
Speaker 1: changes that we refer to roughly as the island rule.
Speaker 1: So the Titanic sauropod is humbled to the size of
Speaker 1: a pony, and other creatures that will get to rise
Speaker 1: too much larger sizes. And who would read such a
Speaker 1: such a thing from the fossil record? You know, you
Speaker 1: might you might think, especially given um uh you know
Speaker 1: that that paper I just sided from two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: you might think, well, this is a fairly recent discovery.
Speaker 1: You especially might think that if you uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like me, we're not familiar with this, this marvelous world
Speaker 1: of of of oversized and undersized prehistoric beasts. But to
Speaker 1: look to the origin of these discoveries, we have to
Speaker 1: look to a rogue Austro Hungarian baron of the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth and early twentieth century. All right, let's take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will meet the baron.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, So it's time to meet the baron,
Speaker 1: a character who plays a major role in the history
Speaker 1: of the science and discovery of the the Paleo Island Hottig.
Speaker 1: And this baron is Baron friends Noche von Felso Silva's
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen seventy seven to nineteen thirty three. Yes,
Speaker 1: Baron Nope, And and I have to have to admit
Speaker 1: when we started this episode, I really didn't expect there
Speaker 1: to be a fascinating human story in the midst of
Speaker 1: all of this, even though, of course paleontology is always
Speaker 1: a human story because paleontologists are the humans who who
Speaker 1: uncover these secrets of the past. But I thought this
Speaker 1: was just gonna be all, you know, rampaging prehistoric beasts, right,
Speaker 1: But this is a fascinating individual. And Smithsonian dot com
Speaker 1: has a great article on Noche titled History Forgot This
Speaker 1: rogue aristocrat who discover dinosaurs and died Penniless by Vanessa
Speaker 1: vese Elka, which goes into far more detail in his
Speaker 1: life than we're going to explore here, especially concerning some
Speaker 1: some tragic in the later portions of his life. He
Speaker 1: was a really interesting figure though, and this is a
Speaker 1: great article, by the way, This is one that I
Speaker 1: think listeners just should go go off and read. Definitely yeah,
Speaker 1: he is. You know, it's tempting to want to just
Speaker 1: sum him up in a few words like say, oh,
Speaker 1: he was, you know, a gentleman scientists towards the end
Speaker 1: of the time period in which the general that gentleman
Speaker 1: scientists was a thing, and that's I think mostly true.
Speaker 1: But then there are all these other weird dimensions to
Speaker 1: his character. Um so, he was born into privilege and aristocracy,
Speaker 1: but he also seemed to live with what we would
Speaker 1: now likely classify as like as a manic depressive disorder.
Speaker 1: You know, he was he was apparently prone to periods
Speaker 1: of intense focus and energy, which is good when you're
Speaker 1: engaging in you know, early fossil study and some of
Speaker 1: the other activities he was involved in. But then, of
Speaker 1: course the flip side is that that there were these
Speaker 1: morose period as well. He's also described as like being
Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant in a scientific sense and mostly self taught,
Speaker 1: you know, just learning from like writing to people and
Speaker 1: getting them to send him books, and then teaching himself
Speaker 1: subjects like biology and geology that you know, he didn't
Speaker 1: have formal training in, and then making all of these
Speaker 1: discoveries about dinosaurs and paleontology, and about deep time, but
Speaker 1: also not always not always having the right kind of
Speaker 1: social skills within the professional context to get his work accepted.
Speaker 1: Like apparently he was very rude, and he was or
Speaker 1: it could be very rude but could also be very charming.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and and uh yeah. So much of it
Speaker 1: again was he was self taught. He's he's writing other
Speaker 1: experts and getting them to send him books. Or there's
Speaker 1: also the story of him going off to university and
Speaker 1: bringing this fossil with him from you know, from from
Speaker 1: the area of Romania and you know he was from
Speaker 1: and uh and the professor there was like he was like,
Speaker 1: what is this? Help me figure this out? And he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can figure it out, essentially like
Speaker 1: send him back with it, which you know, which is
Speaker 1: the author points out of the Smithsonian piece. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the Suka says, that's either like some great tutelage where
Speaker 1: the professor is like, oh, I'm gonna grow this young
Speaker 1: mind by inspiring them to go, uh find the answer themselves,
Speaker 1: or it's like a really lazy or overwork professor was
Speaker 1: like I don't have time to help you, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: decipher this rock. Go do it yourself, but do it himself.
Speaker 1: He did, and and so he's one of these remarkable,
Speaker 1: you know, accounts of his kind of like a self
Speaker 1: made gentleman scientists, though obviously had had a certain advantage
Speaker 1: on the situation by being born into the aristocracy. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a common thing you see in the history of
Speaker 1: science that that a lot of the great scientists of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth centuries say, we're we're sort of aristocrat types. Uh.
Speaker 1: And obviously I don't think that's because aristocrats are better
Speaker 1: at sciences because they had the resources and the leisure
Speaker 1: to pursuit to like to get into these pursuits. If
Speaker 1: you're a farmer working night and day, like, you don't
Speaker 1: have the time and the money to go into the sciences. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was, And I said, he's like I said,
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of emerging towards the end of the
Speaker 1: gentleman science being a thing at all, and certainly towards
Speaker 1: the end of his career. In the end of his life,
Speaker 1: he was kind of shut out from scientific circles. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of the ideas that he he was was
Speaker 1: promoting during his life were ultimately ideas that were not
Speaker 1: widely accepted, though interesting, interestingly enough, would become widely accepted
Speaker 1: many decades later. In the nineteen seventies, for example, is
Speaker 1: a time when people started looking back at him and saying, oh,
Speaker 1: here's this interesting character, uh from the history books. He
Speaker 1: you know, he published a hundred and fifties scientific papers
Speaker 1: in his life, and he identified twenty five genera of
Speaker 1: reptiles and five different dinosaurs. But we've largely forgotten him,
Speaker 1: and we don't celebrate him at all. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: people started, you know, looking back and realizing who he
Speaker 1: was and what he what he had discovered here, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other aspects to his life that are all
Speaker 1: interesting as well. Um, he was an adventurous individual. He
Speaker 1: served as a spy for the Austro Hungarian Empire, but
Speaker 1: he seems to have largely used his service to the
Speaker 1: state as a vehicle for pursuing his interest in geography
Speaker 1: and geology and the study of the Albanian people. Right.
Speaker 1: There seems to be this like mix of interests here,
Speaker 1: because like he apparently just loved the Albanian culture and
Speaker 1: like wanted to study it and you know, document all
Speaker 1: their customs and everything like that. But the government that
Speaker 1: was funding his work basically wanted a sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century equivalent of like a CIA fact
Speaker 1: book on a country, right, and they wanted intelligence that
Speaker 1: could be used and it could maybe be used in
Speaker 1: warfare or something like that later on. So that's the
Speaker 1: money going into what he's doing. But he but he
Speaker 1: apparently was just in love with Albania and its people
Speaker 1: and and its culture and at one point even through
Speaker 1: his name in the hat to the actually be a king.
Speaker 1: There's there's that whole storyline. Um. Again, I encourage everyone
Speaker 1: to read that article about him. But again, his in
Speaker 1: his scientific pursuits, he was very much ahead of his time.
Speaker 1: Uh for starters. The theory of continental drift is now widely,
Speaker 1: if not universally, accepted, but this was not the case
Speaker 1: during Noch's life. Yet he presented some of the most
Speaker 1: credible geologic evidence at the time for continental drift. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, when it came to fossils, this is where
Speaker 1: he made his arguably his greatest impact. He discovered some
Speaker 1: some very curious fossils in the Hattic region, many of
Speaker 1: which were noticeable for being quite smaller than examples that
Speaker 1: were popping up elsewhere, and he argued that these were
Speaker 1: examples of of of the island rule in action, that
Speaker 1: the Hattig region was once an island in a prehistoric sea.
Speaker 1: Now we'll get to the specific dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures
Speaker 1: in a little bit, but just just consider he found
Speaker 1: titanosaur sauropods the size of mere ponies, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that Titana sars are the largest land animals that we
Speaker 1: know to have ever existed, reaching sizes oh you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking a hundred and twenty one ft or thirty
Speaker 1: seven ms long and uh and the weights of somewhere
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of of of seventy six tons. And
Speaker 1: yet he finds fossil evidence of these multiple noticeably smaller
Speaker 1: uh Sara pods, and it just raised the question what
Speaker 1: were they so well, I mean, the obvious things that
Speaker 1: they're juveniles, dummy, right, aren't they Aren't they just baby
Speaker 1: sara pods? Yeah? That well that was what critics argue,
Speaker 1: that these were just juveniles and uh. And certainly one
Speaker 1: of the more alarming things about saraw pods is that
Speaker 1: they do grow to such alarming size from relatively small eggs.
Speaker 1: I mean, Sara pods are her weird and strange creatures. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that we're still you know, figuring out you know,
Speaker 1: all the you know, the answers to the mysteries of
Speaker 1: their biology. And so, you know, just the fact that
Speaker 1: you find some small ones, you know, it does seem
Speaker 1: like it could be it could be. One possible explanation
Speaker 1: could be that, well, these were just the juveniles. Um.
Speaker 1: And and this read doesn't seem to have completely fallen
Speaker 1: out of fashion. As recently as two thousand seven, a
Speaker 1: paper in historical biology by Jean Leloof argued that, uh,
Speaker 1: that's some hot tag. Saarapod fossils might suggest quote age
Speaker 1: class communities among sauropod populations. Oh so this is like
Speaker 1: a gang of sauropod youths, Yes, exactly, like, yes, a
Speaker 1: street gang of youths. Uh. You know. And I believe
Speaker 1: we've discussed uh, this sort of thing in terms of
Speaker 1: crocodilians and maybe commodo dragons on the show in the past,
Speaker 1: the idea that some animals experienced tremendous body size changes
Speaker 1: and therefore corresponding changes in diet and behavior and maybe
Speaker 1: thought of as living in their own uh, niche daring
Speaker 1: different phases of their life, either alone or in groups. Yeah,
Speaker 1: different life phases. They're almost kind of like different animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, like a small commodo dragon is going
Speaker 1: to eat different food than a full grown adult komodo dragon,
Speaker 1: and the same might be the case with with like
Speaker 1: a juvenile Sara pod versus of course a fully grown,
Speaker 1: towering Sara pod. But according to SEUs, subsequent bone studies
Speaker 1: have backed up the theory that we're seeing the effects
Speaker 1: of the island rule in the bones of these fun
Speaker 1: size Sara pods. Basically, in twenty eight ten, a team
Speaker 1: of paleontologists looked at the micro structure of the bones
Speaker 1: to determine age and growth patterns, and they showed that
Speaker 1: this particular sauropod, these pony Saara pods, were fully grown
Speaker 1: adults with small body sizes. And this is from a
Speaker 1: paper from Benton at All published in Paleoclimatology paleo Ecology, Right,
Speaker 1: I think so it mentioned in uh one of the
Speaker 1: articles we were reading, I think it was the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: article that his methodology was that he actually did molecular
Speaker 1: analysis of the bones like the Nopesio was able to
Speaker 1: determine the innosaurs were small adults and not young because
Speaker 1: he was able to like look at the layers of bone,
Speaker 1: like osteogenesis rings within the within cross sections of these bones.
Speaker 1: Yeah so, or the fossils, I mean, yeah so. I
Speaker 1: mean he was not just you know, making a wild
Speaker 1: guess here, who was forming the best scientific hypothesis that
Speaker 1: he could based on the material. And I have to say, though,
Speaker 1: I guess it's just the idea of pony size sauropods.
Speaker 1: It's just so attractive. I I'm so flint stones it is.
Speaker 1: And there was like there was some movie growing up
Speaker 1: too is I think it may have just been called
Speaker 1: The Last Dinosaur, or like maybe the dinosaur had a name.
Speaker 1: But I remember there being like a pony size sauropod,
Speaker 1: some sort of puppet that that the the actors interact with.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing that as as a child, So it's
Speaker 1: probably uh, you know, brings back some of those memories.
Speaker 1: But then also I mentioned when I was telling my
Speaker 1: son about this reading to him from that dinosaur book
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, you know, he was instantly in love
Speaker 1: with this idea of pony size sauropods because guess the
Speaker 1: idea is if it is pony size, you could ride it.
Speaker 1: You could walk up to the gentle saua pod and
Speaker 1: jump on its back and go for a wild ride
Speaker 1: through the late Cretaceous jungle. That's so good. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is the same last Dinosaur you were
Speaker 1: thinking of. I just I was trying to call something
Speaker 1: out of the deep childhood memory. And it is a
Speaker 1: It is a dinosaur from an animated series of things.
Speaker 1: It was like Fringe or something called Denver the Last Dinosaur.
Speaker 1: And it is a He's like a hip skateboarding, sunglasses
Speaker 1: wearing dinosaur with a kind of with a with a
Speaker 1: head feature that looks like a mohawk. And I can't
Speaker 1: tell if he's supposed to be a sauropod or a therapod.
Speaker 1: It seems unclear. No that I don't think I've seen
Speaker 1: that one. This would have been some live action fair
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking of, like a VHS rental for sure. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe after we get out of the studio today we
Speaker 1: can go watch some Denver the Last Dinosaur and see
Speaker 1: how it does. All right, Well, we're gonna take another break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll discuss some of the specific
Speaker 1: prehistoric creatures that we we we have thus far encountered
Speaker 1: in hot digg. Alright, we're back and it's time to
Speaker 1: discuss the pony size magyaro saris. Okay, let's go for
Speaker 1: a ride to settle them up. Alright, So again, while
Speaker 1: while some have considered them to be juveniles perhaps living
Speaker 1: in their own you know, social group apart from the
Speaker 1: giant adults, bone evidence seems to suggest that they were
Speaker 1: fully grown adults. And this would be, you know, probably
Speaker 1: be perhaps one of nature's most impressive displays of the
Speaker 1: island effect, humbling even the mighty Titanus are into a form,
Speaker 1: you know, more befitting of this late Cretaceous ireland sized
Speaker 1: uh island in what is now known as Romania. So
Speaker 1: Sara bods in general, again, are just strange and mysterious creatures,
Speaker 1: perhaps some of the strangest creatures ever to walk the Earth.
Speaker 1: I mean, they push the boundaries of what's possible in
Speaker 1: a terrestrial organism, like what sustainable, what's even you know,
Speaker 1: morphologically possible, and you know, and if these little guys
Speaker 1: are just a ripple in an already amazing glimpse of
Speaker 1: the prehistoric past, I mean, we've been seeing sarropods our
Speaker 1: entire lives, right, I mean we see them in in cartoons,
Speaker 1: in toys and you kind of take them for granted. Right.
Speaker 1: There's just this thing that Fred Flintstone slides down the
Speaker 1: neck off or the tail off, I can't remember, at
Speaker 1: the end of his work day, but getting petted by
Speaker 1: Sam Neal. Yeah, they're just kind of the Jurassic Park.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of the backdrop. They don't really do anything,
Speaker 1: um well, because they're not a media to source us,
Speaker 1: but they are their own mystery, you know, when you
Speaker 1: start getting into the details of you know, how they
Speaker 1: fed themselves and and and even the various discussions about
Speaker 1: just how something this big lives. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: starts well as you were just alluding to. It sort
Speaker 1: of makes you question the what are the extremes of
Speaker 1: what an animal can be and how it can survive?
Speaker 1: Like um you know, obviously we've talked about giant animals
Speaker 1: on the show before and about how they're they're just
Speaker 1: sort of like problems that you might not even expect
Speaker 1: when animals start getting past a certain size and volume,
Speaker 1: problems with like heat distribution or like or like heat exchange,
Speaker 1: and of course there'd be like energy issues especially, so
Speaker 1: sorrow pods are you know, these are gonna be herbivores, right,
Speaker 1: They're they're not meat a sources, so they're needing to
Speaker 1: eat plant matter in order to sustain a body the
Speaker 1: size of a boat or bigger, you know, So like
Speaker 1: you just start to wonder, like how could they possibly
Speaker 1: eat enough to survive? How could they do it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like biology just out of control to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. And uh and then in a sense, you
Speaker 1: I guess you could look at it like that, you know,
Speaker 1: like here is a form that is totally unsustainable if
Speaker 1: anything drastic happens to the environment. And of course drastic
Speaker 1: things did happen to the environment, and these were these
Speaker 1: were not certainly not the forms to survive the Late
Speaker 1: Cretaceous extinction event. But yeah, I would love to come
Speaker 1: back and do perhaps a whole episode on sorrows in
Speaker 1: the future, or bring on you know, a guest and
Speaker 1: expert who can talk to us about the weird mysteries
Speaker 1: of sarropod life totally now. Right at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode, we mentioned a a terrasaur called hats agopterics.
Speaker 1: I know this one caught your fancy Roberts. So what's
Speaker 1: the deal with hats agopterics? Alright, So we've we've talked
Speaker 1: about the flying terrasaurs on the show before, the prehistoric
Speaker 1: flying reptiles that took to the air on a membrane
Speaker 1: of flesh that stretched between their ankles, and they're greatly
Speaker 1: elongated fourth finger. So creepy to see the skeletons and
Speaker 1: realized that the wing is a finger. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a distinctly different wing arrangement compared to the
Speaker 1: vertebrate flight of birds and bats. Closer to bats, it
Speaker 1: seems closer to bats. Yeah, but still, you know, very
Speaker 1: much its own thing. And of course we've recently discussed
Speaker 1: the mighty uh Quatso koalis, the this this godlike giant
Speaker 1: terra saar that was found in the late Cretaceous but
Speaker 1: in North America. We often speak of it as being
Speaker 1: perhaps the largest creature to ever fly inve Indeed, it
Speaker 1: truly did fly, and and most paleontologies seem to think
Speaker 1: that it did, but there is some disagreement there. We'll
Speaker 1: get into an example of that. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's ultimately only one of the sky Lords of Old,
Speaker 1: because we had certainly had had Q the wing serpent,
Speaker 1: but we also had hats agopter X. Both are of
Speaker 1: the same family as dark a day So named for
Speaker 1: the Persian dragon Ozdaha. So hats agopter X was a
Speaker 1: terra saar, a winged reptile that when it was standing
Speaker 1: on the ground, would have been as tall as a giraffe.
Speaker 1: And that's that's on. We're not talking like reared up
Speaker 1: on its hind legs exactly, though it's morphology is is
Speaker 1: very distinct. We we have an image of this creature
Speaker 1: and an artistic rendering that you'll find on our home
Speaker 1: page and stuff to blow your mind dot com. But
Speaker 1: as it's you know, it's standing there on its hind
Speaker 1: legs and on its its wings, it would have been
Speaker 1: as tall as a giraffe with this enormous head, and
Speaker 1: if it were to actually spread its wings you would
Speaker 1: have a wing spat of roughly thirty six feet. It
Speaker 1: had this broad skull uh and and you look at
Speaker 1: examples of the skull or at least two ideas of
Speaker 1: what the full skull would have looked like, and it
Speaker 1: almost looks too big to fly, but apparently it was
Speaker 1: made fliable by polystyrene like structure that gave it tremendous
Speaker 1: strength but also lightness. Yeah, this is the thing you
Speaker 1: see with birds and you see with pterosaurs because their
Speaker 1: bones have to be very light in order to fly,
Speaker 1: so they often have a kind of hollow or low
Speaker 1: density structure. Now, one of the really cool and ultimately, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nightmarish things about the hatsogopterres and and other
Speaker 1: uh and and it's you know, large terra Sarkin is
Speaker 1: that regardless of their flying ability, to whatever extent they
Speaker 1: were or were not capable of flying, their fossil suggested
Speaker 1: they were rather adapted moving about on all four is
Speaker 1: on the ground, and not not only just moving about,
Speaker 1: but hunting their prey in this fashion. So you know,
Speaker 1: great folded living cargo planes that tower over the dwarf
Speaker 1: herds of of saara pods, scooping them up and their
Speaker 1: powerful jaws and gobbling them down. Uh. That's that's ultimately
Speaker 1: the vision that we're left with. It's astounding to imagine
Speaker 1: this thing, that this form that has evolved to take
Speaker 1: to the air and then returned a giant to the
Speaker 1: earth and then ruling over these these diminished sara pods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not really similar to what you see with birds,
Speaker 1: for example, because birds don't crawl with their wings right.
Speaker 1: When birds move around on the ground, they tend to
Speaker 1: they walk on two feet. They're more like the therapod
Speaker 1: uh dinosaur design. They walk on the two feet and
Speaker 1: they got their wings folded up. These are more like
Speaker 1: sometimes you can see bats crawl this way where they've
Speaker 1: got the they've got the winged hands that are part
Speaker 1: of the wings, but they still use them to crawl quadrupedally.
Speaker 1: And so when you see representations of this, I've seen
Speaker 1: it animated the way these giant terosaurs would crawl. It
Speaker 1: looks messed up. It's really scary. Yeah, I think bats
Speaker 1: are probably the best uh you know, contemporary comparison. Particularly
Speaker 1: there is a type of of of bat that you'll
Speaker 1: find in New Zealand, uh the Mista synoda bats, and
Speaker 1: they spend much of their time on the ground there.
Speaker 1: They're certainly capable of flight, but they crawl around a
Speaker 1: lot of the time. So they have their their claws
Speaker 1: have extra projections that aid in digging around in the
Speaker 1: dirt and uh and and climbing on the on on
Speaker 1: the sides of trees and their wings fold back in
Speaker 1: a unique way. So there, you know, it's more streamlined.
Speaker 1: So when it's in in ground mode, it it really
Speaker 1: looks more like some manner of rodent in a sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's is still clearly a bat, but but
Speaker 1: it does seem like this you're seeing a similar situation
Speaker 1: where this this this winged form has taken act of
Speaker 1: the earth and due to uh, you know, the particular
Speaker 1: you know, relaxation of the predatory pressure in its environment,
Speaker 1: is able to sort of become you know, a big
Speaker 1: deal on the ground again. Okay, so it has the
Speaker 1: optics big on the ground, big on the ground, A
Speaker 1: big deal on the ground. I guess that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that's just that's just so um, you know,
Speaker 1: topsy turvy about the scenario, right, is that again the
Speaker 1: small saua pods and the giant winged creature that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to fly anymore, that they can just uh
Speaker 1: you know, roam about on all fours and gobble up,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it pleases with virtually no predators. And
Speaker 1: that's that's key to to figuring out why has the
Speaker 1: gop directs was so big. It would have had no
Speaker 1: predators in an abundance of food. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: perhaps even a larger food than they would have found elsewhere,
Speaker 1: because they have this enormous meal that you know they're
Speaker 1: They're probably not eating a saua pod uh in other scenarios.
Speaker 1: But here, well no, of course not, I mean unless
Speaker 1: there may be scavenging or yeah, but but but here,
Speaker 1: suddenly the sauropods are smaller, perhaps even bite size or
Speaker 1: fun size, if you will. And so they grew large
Speaker 1: and dominant lords of earth and sky, and keeping with
Speaker 1: the Mahars of Edgar Rice Burroughs fiction, these were the
Speaker 1: this sort of Terra sar like creatures that ruled over
Speaker 1: one of his fictional worlds. Fattened on Sara ponies. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: there's even one particularly large fossil that they found in
Speaker 1: Hauntig that they actually dubbed Dracula. And this wasn't in
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, and they found fragments of an
Speaker 1: even larger specimen or at least a specimen of the
Speaker 1: far larger lower jaw in two thousand eighteen. Michael Habib,
Speaker 1: an expert on terra sars at the University of Southern
Speaker 1: California told National Geographic dot Com and een that he
Speaker 1: believed that this latest specimen was this latest specimens especially
Speaker 1: was probably too large to fly. Uh that it may
Speaker 1: have flown when it was younger, but then it basically
Speaker 1: reaches the point where it's it's large enough and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to anymore, which is interesting because we're kind
Speaker 1: of coming back to this idea of a creature growing
Speaker 1: and it's sort of mode of of operations. It's a
Speaker 1: it's diet changing. So you could have a creature here
Speaker 1: that you know, when it's young, it's still flying from
Speaker 1: place to place, but then once it reaches a significant size,
Speaker 1: it has no need to fly anymore, maybe has limited
Speaker 1: ability to even achieve powered flight anymore, but it's not
Speaker 1: an issue because it's a towering TerraSAR monster that eats
Speaker 1: all the dwarf sauropod babies that it wants. And then
Speaker 1: Michael Michael Haby he compares this to the elephant birds
Speaker 1: of Madagascar, which will work, which one extinct roughly a
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. But we're a large flightless bird that
Speaker 1: thrived in that part of the world cut off from
Speaker 1: the rest of Africa. Big Death. Ostrich but there are
Speaker 1: a few other examples worth touching on here. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's uh Tomatosaurus. This was a hadrosaur or a duck
Speaker 1: build dino, another variety I'd love to come back to
Speaker 1: and discuss in detail on the show because they're so
Speaker 1: alien and also in some ways a great example of
Speaker 1: kind of peake dinosaur prior to the Late Cretaceous extinction event.
Speaker 1: But this particular specimen in in Haunting was smaller than
Speaker 1: a modern crocodile, so roughly like five meters long or
Speaker 1: so um and and this was and this was one
Speaker 1: that would have seemed almost mountable to a human if
Speaker 1: you were standing next to it, or at least while
Speaker 1: this hadrosaur was on all fours, because other hadrosaurs were
Speaker 1: considerably larger and would have towered over humans, particularly when
Speaker 1: they reared up on their into bipedal form. And here's
Speaker 1: another interesting fact about Tomatosaurus. A fossil of the juvenile
Speaker 1: specimen was discovered in twenty six with evidence of a
Speaker 1: benign tumor in its lower jaw. And this is the
Speaker 1: first for a dinosaur fossil and ultimately proved that that
Speaker 1: such tumors are not mere modern biological realities, so of course,
Speaker 1: and then there's a bald Our bond doc okay, and
Speaker 1: this is that we we referenced this name earlier in
Speaker 1: the Cold Open. But this particular species was named after
Speaker 1: the dragon of Romanian legend, and so this would have
Speaker 1: been a therapod hunter in keeping with raptors such as velociraptor.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the Dromo sarid's But it differs
Speaker 1: from other Droma Sarid fossils because it had only two
Speaker 1: functional digits on its hand. Most of its relatives would
Speaker 1: have had three for proper grasping, so reduced ability in
Speaker 1: this department. But it also had more digit functionality and
Speaker 1: its large talent feet, and so this is what SEUs
Speaker 1: has to say about this. Thus, each foot of Baldar
Speaker 1: sported a double set of these large claws, which were
Speaker 1: likely used for seizing and disemboweling prey. The robust hind
Speaker 1: limb shows extensive fusion of bones in its proportionately short
Speaker 1: distal portion, with formation of a tv O tarsis and
Speaker 1: a tarsa metatarsis. Uh. These unusual features suggest that Baldoor
Speaker 1: was capable of delivering powerful strikes with its feet, and
Speaker 1: Sus contends that these changes were likely due to the
Speaker 1: island effect as well. So just another peculiar example of
Speaker 1: of of a fossil species that was not found elsewhere
Speaker 1: but was was warped, was changed and took on a
Speaker 1: special form due to its isolation on this island and
Speaker 1: got the gutting kick. Yeah, well now maybe we I
Speaker 1: think you've changed my mind and my number one time
Speaker 1: travel destination. I think I want to go to Hot Egg. Well,
Speaker 1: I would definitely visit if it were visit Hoteg give
Speaker 1: hateg were you know, a special exhibit at a Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park type scenario. But that it brings me back to
Speaker 1: my my past rants about Jurassic Park, like why do
Speaker 1: we keep coming back to the same and in many
Speaker 1: cases outdated um dinosaur or in prehistoric forms when we
Speaker 1: could be encountering these creatures like this should be the
Speaker 1: next Jurassic Park film. In my opinion is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: don't bring back the uh, the the t rex, don't
Speaker 1: bring back the velocira raptors. Don't change their color just
Speaker 1: so you can sell a slightly different toy uh to
Speaker 1: the kids. Uh No, still you can still sell plenty
Speaker 1: of toys to the kids. But make it. Make it these,
Speaker 1: you know, make it pony sized sauropods. Make it hot
Speaker 1: sagopter X. I think hot sagopteras would make a terrific
Speaker 1: c g I villain. I think that that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential here. I mean, people would want
Speaker 1: to have that. They'd have reason for bringing back a
Speaker 1: pony size sauropod if they could have a petting zoo,
Speaker 1: kids could ride them. Yeah, yeah, that that's more plausible
Speaker 1: plot wise. All right, So there you have it. We're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna leave it right there. Um again, that
Speaker 1: that really cool children's dinosaur book. Atlas of Dinosaur Adventures
Speaker 1: by Emily Hawkins and illustrated by Lucy Leatherhead. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: definitely imprint deaf only worth picking up. And I think
Speaker 1: it's worth picking up even if you don't have any
Speaker 1: kids in your house or in your life. If you
Speaker 1: love dinosaurs and prehistartic creatures and or you know geology
Speaker 1: and geography, it's it's it's a great just a tabletop
Speaker 1: book if nothing else, But you can also spend lots
Speaker 1: of time reading through it with young ones, uh and
Speaker 1: and feeding their need for for dinosaurs and terra saurs, etcetera. Um. Also, obviously,
Speaker 1: we we surely have listeners who either reside or are
Speaker 1: from Romania or have visited Romania. And perhaps you've you've
Speaker 1: visited some of these areas. So some of the articles
Speaker 1: we're looking at mentioned that you know, there are attempts
Speaker 1: to celebrate paleontology in Romania, various museums that have you know,
Speaker 1: the efforts that have been put together. So we would
Speaker 1: love to to read your field reports on Romanian paleontology.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh and and ultimately just you know the
Speaker 1: world that we are discussing in this episode, only you know,
Speaker 1: millions of years later. Absolutely, also send us your barren
Speaker 1: friends nope, chef fan fick. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, go
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, the best thing you
Speaker 1: can do is to rate and review wherever you have
Speaker 1: the power to do so. But also make sure you
Speaker 1: have subscribed. And hey, we have another podcast titled Invention,
Speaker 1: and I think you should give that a shot. You
Speaker 1: should subscribed to that as well. And you might be thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Robert and Joe. I really like these
Speaker 1: trippier episodes, these weirder episodes that you put together. I
Speaker 1: don't know how trippy and weird technology is. Well. I
Speaker 1: just want to read you a quick quote from Terence
Speaker 1: McKenna on technology to remind you otherwise. He says, um,
Speaker 1: we take in matter that has a low degree of organization,
Speaker 1: we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels,
Speaker 1: space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like
Speaker 1: coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psy
Speaker 1: kick objects. And that's exactly what we talk about every
Speaker 1: week on Invention. Couldn't have put it better. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: make sure you check it out. Make sure you have
Speaker 1: subscribed to Invention. Subscribe to Invention anyway. Huge thanks to
Speaker 1: our audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson and Maya Cole. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us directly
Speaker 1: to let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
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