Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vocal bamb here with another classic episode from our
Speaker 1: archives featuring former host Christian Sagar. This one is so
Speaker 1: classic that it's prehistoric. How do we know what dinosaurs
Speaker 1: looked like? Hey? I'm Christian Sagar and this is brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Dinosaurs are super old and they are also super popular.
Speaker 1: We see them in movies, museums, children's toys, cartoons and more.
Speaker 1: But how do we know what they actually looked like?
Speaker 1: It all comes down to fossils. Think of reconstructing a
Speaker 1: dinosaur's appearance like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The fossils
Speaker 1: are the pieces on the edge of the puzzle, but
Speaker 1: most of the other pieces are missing. So while they
Speaker 1: don't tell us everything, fossils are the best starting point
Speaker 1: for figuring out a dinosaurs appearance. The way the bones
Speaker 1: fit together can give us a basic understanding of a
Speaker 1: dinosaur's shape and paw sture. We can learn a lot
Speaker 1: from the teeth to Flat leaf shaped teeth indicate herbivores,
Speaker 1: while sharp pointed teeth suggests a carnivore. Cavities in the
Speaker 1: skull can help us figure out how well a dinosaur
Speaker 1: could see or hear. We also use CT scans to
Speaker 1: build three D images of the skeletons. From there, we
Speaker 1: can add virtual layers of tissue, muscle and skin. Under
Speaker 1: very rare conditions, a dinosaurs soft tissue can fossilize two
Speaker 1: in paleontologists Tyler License found in Edmonton Soaurus in North Dakota.
Speaker 1: The skin and muscle tissue of its fossil remained intact.
Speaker 1: CT scans of the body have revealed a treasure trove
Speaker 1: of new information about dinosaurs. And here's the weirdest thing.
Speaker 1: Dinosaurs weren't all scaly creatures like crocodiles or Godzilla. Some
Speaker 1: had weird filaments all over their bodies, which dinosaur expert
Speaker 1: Brian Swittek calls dino fuzz and some dinosaurs even had feathers.
Speaker 1: We can tell by quill barb marks little bumps where
Speaker 1: feathers connect to bone. These marks aren't just one or
Speaker 1: two obscure species either. We're talking about famous dinos like velociraptors.
Speaker 1: It turns out quite a few dinosaurs had these feathers,
Speaker 1: or technically something like feathers. Not every paleontologist is comfortable
Speaker 1: with the name preferring to describe these markings as into
Speaker 1: gumentary structures or proto feathers instead. But these feathers and
Speaker 1: feather like structures may have been pretty colorful too. In
Speaker 1: scientists analyzed a micro raptor fossil with a scanning electron
Speaker 1: microscope and found evidence of melanosomes. These are the organelles
Speaker 1: inside a cell that store melanin or pigment. Different types
Speaker 1: of melanosomes store different colors. This is the same stuff
Speaker 1: that determines your hair color. The researchers found that this
Speaker 1: microraptor had an irridescent glossy coat. As scientists look for
Speaker 1: more fossilized melanisomes, they're reconstructing the appearance of Earth's ancient
Speaker 1: dinosaurs with increased and impressive accuracy. Not a bad job
Speaker 1: considering they're literally working with a pile of bones. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Ben Bolan and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: topics that you can really dig into, visit our home planet,
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