1
00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,400
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

2
00:00:06,440 --> 00:00:09,240
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb and this is another

3
00:00:09,280 --> 00:00:13,480
Speaker 1: classic episode from our archive. Every time a new cash

4
00:00:13,600 --> 00:00:17,320
Speaker 1: of the remains of incredible prehistoric animals crops up, it's

5
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:21,239
Speaker 1: cause for celebration. In this episode, we dig into the

6
00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:27,560
Speaker 1: amazing find of hundreds of parasaur eggs. Hey there, brain Stuff,

7
00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:31,120
Speaker 1: Lauren vogel Bomb. Here. Flight is a hard thing to master.

8
00:00:31,440 --> 00:00:34,920
Speaker 1: The vast majority of vertebrates can walk, swim, or do both,

9
00:00:35,080 --> 00:00:37,480
Speaker 1: but in the history of life on this planet, only

10
00:00:37,600 --> 00:00:40,839
Speaker 1: three groups of backboned animals have ever evolved the ability

11
00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:44,239
Speaker 1: to fly. Early bats acquired the skill roughly fifty two

12
00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:47,520
Speaker 1: million years ago. Feathered dinosaurs began to experiment with flight

13
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:50,800
Speaker 1: back in the Jurassic period. Incidentally, you probably know of

14
00:00:50,840 --> 00:00:54,560
Speaker 1: their descendants today as birds. Yet while birds and bats

15
00:00:54,560 --> 00:00:57,880
Speaker 1: are still around, the animals that first pioneered vertebrate flight

16
00:00:57,960 --> 00:01:01,360
Speaker 1: are long gone. That's because hundred and twenty eight million

17
00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:05,560
Speaker 1: years ago, a flying plade of reptiles evolved. These were

18
00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:09,240
Speaker 1: the pterosaurs. Though Hollywood often mislabels them as dinosaurs, they

19
00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:13,280
Speaker 1: actually represented a separate, contemporaneous group for more than a

20
00:01:13,360 --> 00:01:16,840
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty million years, dinosaurs and pterosaurs lived side

21
00:01:16,840 --> 00:01:19,480
Speaker 1: by side. It was an exciting time to be an aeronaut.

22
00:01:19,880 --> 00:01:24,280
Speaker 1: During their reign, the pterosaurs diversified like crazy. Some species

23
00:01:24,319 --> 00:01:27,479
Speaker 1: would be comparable to sparrows in size. Others had wingspans

24
00:01:27,480 --> 00:01:30,399
Speaker 1: of thirty six feet that's eleven meters or more, making

25
00:01:30,440 --> 00:01:34,000
Speaker 1: them the largest flying animals of all time. Then, sixty

26
00:01:34,040 --> 00:01:36,720
Speaker 1: six million years ago, the pterosaurs succumbed to the same

27
00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:40,520
Speaker 1: mass extinction that wiped out all non avian dinosaurs. In

28
00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:44,640
Speaker 1: four Italian naturalist Cosmo Collini became the first person to

29
00:01:44,680 --> 00:01:48,160
Speaker 1: write a formal scientific description of a pterosaur skeleton. At

30
00:01:48,160 --> 00:01:50,880
Speaker 1: the time, he thought this strange looking animal was some

31
00:01:50,960 --> 00:01:54,600
Speaker 1: kind of deep sea creature. But thanks to hard working paleontologists,

32
00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:57,920
Speaker 1: we've learned a great deal about these winged wonders. Nonetheless,

33
00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:00,960
Speaker 1: there are still some large gaps in our knowledge. One

34
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:04,400
Speaker 1: big mystery involves the early lives of young pterosaurs. The

35
00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:07,640
Speaker 1: first confirmed dinosaur and nest was unearthed in nineteen twenty three.

36
00:02:07,960 --> 00:02:11,120
Speaker 1: Since then, fossil hunters have excavated thousands of dino eggs

37
00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:14,919
Speaker 1: sites all over the world. Yet terrasaur eggs are considerably rarer.

38
00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:18,520
Speaker 1: None whatsoever were discovered until two thousand four, when two

39
00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:21,120
Speaker 1: appeared in China and a third showed up in Argentina.

40
00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:24,040
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, a fourth egg was found next to

41
00:02:24,040 --> 00:02:26,640
Speaker 1: the skeleton of its presumed mother, an adult animal from

42
00:02:26,639 --> 00:02:29,720
Speaker 1: the genus Darwin a terrace. Three years later and another

43
00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:33,960
Speaker 1: Argentinian egg emerged, along with five additional Chinese specimens. So

44
00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:37,519
Speaker 1: until very recently, the global scientific community hadn't found enough

45
00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:41,239
Speaker 1: terosaur eggs to fill as standard egg carton, but paleontologists

46
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,600
Speaker 1: just hit the motherload. In the December twenty seventeen issue

47
00:02:44,639 --> 00:02:47,440
Speaker 1: of the journal Science, a Chinese research team announced the

48
00:02:47,520 --> 00:02:50,520
Speaker 1: discovery of a new site in China's Globi Desert containing

49
00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:54,800
Speaker 1: at least two hundred and fifteen pterosaur eggs. Sixteen preserved

50
00:02:54,800 --> 00:02:57,600
Speaker 1: embryos were found there as well, along with some skeletons

51
00:02:57,600 --> 00:03:01,680
Speaker 1: from hatchling, juvenile and adult pterosaurs. These eggs are roughly

52
00:03:01,720 --> 00:03:04,320
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty million years old and were laid

53
00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:08,680
Speaker 1: by Hamateus tiensnsis a crusted toothy species with an eleven

54
00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:12,640
Speaker 1: foot wingspan that's about three point three meters. Terrasaur experts

55
00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:14,760
Speaker 1: are still trying to assess where it belongs on the

56
00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 1: family tree. One such authority is paleontologist David Hohne, who

57
00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:22,160
Speaker 1: told us in an email that Hamateus' closest relatives were

58
00:03:22,200 --> 00:03:25,680
Speaker 1: most likely various groups of terrasaurs known for being ocean

59
00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:29,280
Speaker 1: going or at least coastal foragers. In terms of lifestyle,

60
00:03:29,360 --> 00:03:31,800
Speaker 1: he says these animals would have behaved like today's gulls

61
00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:36,000
Speaker 1: and albatrosses. The newfound bounty of eggs was recovered by

62
00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:39,280
Speaker 1: a team representing the Beijing based Chinese Academy of Sciences.

63
00:03:39,800 --> 00:03:42,200
Speaker 1: Most of the shelled treasures were embedded in a sandstone

64
00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:44,440
Speaker 1: block that may be hiding even more clutches that have

65
00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:47,160
Speaker 1: yet to be revealed. One reason why this find is

66
00:03:47,200 --> 00:03:50,400
Speaker 1: so spectacular has to do with the fragility of terrasaur eggshells.

67
00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:55,400
Speaker 1: Like modern chickens, extinct dinosaurs laid hard shelled eggs. Contrast

68
00:03:55,520 --> 00:03:57,720
Speaker 1: these with the eggs of present day snakes, whose shells

69
00:03:57,720 --> 00:04:01,080
Speaker 1: are thin, soft, pliable, and have the xture of old parchment.

70
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,800
Speaker 1: Terrasaur eggs resembled the ladder, a fact confirmed by previous discoveries.

71
00:04:06,240 --> 00:04:08,760
Speaker 1: Because their shells were so soft, these rare eggs tend

72
00:04:08,800 --> 00:04:11,960
Speaker 1: to get squitched flat by the forces of fossilization, Yet

73
00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:14,040
Speaker 1: the ones that this new Chinese site were preserved in

74
00:04:14,120 --> 00:04:18,080
Speaker 1: three dimensions. The discoveries implications are still open to debate.

75
00:04:18,800 --> 00:04:22,800
Speaker 1: Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Shallon Wang was the lead

76
00:04:22,839 --> 00:04:25,479
Speaker 1: author of the paper in the journal Science which announced

77
00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:27,760
Speaker 1: this big find. In it, he and his co authors

78
00:04:27,800 --> 00:04:30,239
Speaker 1: suggest the site may have a lot to say about

79
00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:33,800
Speaker 1: terrasaur parenting. As Whang and his colleagues point out, some

80
00:04:33,839 --> 00:04:37,360
Speaker 1: of the embryo's lack teeth and their wingbones seem underdeveloped.

81
00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:40,919
Speaker 1: The paleontologists think this could mean that newly hatched Hamma

82
00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:44,640
Speaker 1: terrists could neither fly nor eat solid food. Thus they

83
00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:47,040
Speaker 1: would have had to depend on their parents for protection

84
00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:51,279
Speaker 1: and sustenance. Other scientists have disagreed with that conclusion. In

85
00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:53,760
Speaker 1: present day reptiles, teeth are one of the last things

86
00:04:53,839 --> 00:04:57,800
Speaker 1: embryos developed, so while these developing terosaurs were toothless, they

87
00:04:57,920 --> 00:05:01,159
Speaker 1: might still have grown some choppers before had ching. Also,

88
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:04,480
Speaker 1: according to Michael Habib, a pterosaur specialist at the University

89
00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:08,000
Speaker 1: of California, the fetal wings appeared quite robust, meaning the

90
00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:10,599
Speaker 1: newborns might have been able to start flying right away.

91
00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:14,400
Speaker 1: A point of consensus among paleontologists, though, is that pterosaurs

92
00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:17,800
Speaker 1: probably didn't brood their eggs like present day birds. For

93
00:05:17,880 --> 00:05:20,520
Speaker 1: one thing, as Homee told us, the extinct reptiles simply

94
00:05:20,520 --> 00:05:24,320
Speaker 1: could not sit like birds due to the anatomical differences. Also,

95
00:05:24,480 --> 00:05:27,679
Speaker 1: while terrasaurs were coated with fuzzy stuff, they lacked feathers,

96
00:05:27,760 --> 00:05:31,760
Speaker 1: which roosting avians used to keep their clutches nice and warm.

97
00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:35,400
Speaker 1: Another leading expert in modern terrasaur science one S Christopher

98
00:05:35,440 --> 00:05:39,200
Speaker 1: Bennett of Fort Hayes State University in Kansas, agrees. He

99
00:05:39,240 --> 00:05:42,159
Speaker 1: said via email, there's no evidence and no reason to

100
00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:46,000
Speaker 1: think that terosaurs incubated their eggs. Rather, they probably deposited

101
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:49,320
Speaker 1: them in sands, soils, or vegetable matter, like modern reptiles.

102
00:05:50,360 --> 00:05:52,680
Speaker 1: In the past, Bennett has championed the idea that at

103
00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:56,720
Speaker 1: least some terrasaurs formed nesting groups near environments suitable for

104
00:05:56,760 --> 00:05:59,960
Speaker 1: the hatchlings to feed and grow safely. He feels the

105
00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:02,920
Speaker 1: new Hemiates site may lend some credence to that notion,

106
00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:05,480
Speaker 1: a sentiment shared by Weighing and his co authors, but

107
00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:09,600
Speaker 1: it added careful excavation of terrasaur egg deposits could certainly

108
00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:12,760
Speaker 1: provide evidence as to whether eggs were buried and whether

109
00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:21,600
Speaker 1: terrasaurs reused desting sites year after year. Today's episode was

110
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:24,200
Speaker 1: written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tristan McNeil and

111
00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:26,839
Speaker 1: Tyler Playing. For more on this and lots of other

112
00:06:27,120 --> 00:06:32,160
Speaker 1: terrorific topics, visit housetuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production

113
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:34,679
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

114
00:06:34,839 --> 00:06:37,560
Speaker 1: visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

115
00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:38,840
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows,