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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from house up

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Speaker 1: works dot com. The allosaurus attacks, his teeth plunge like knives.

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Speaker 1: The Diplodocus's skin turns ragged and red. The allosaurus bites deeper,

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Speaker 1: his claws gripped her belly. A frightened diplodocus roars to

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Speaker 1: the herd. Another diplodocus swings his rump sideways. His bony

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Speaker 1: tail snaps like a whip through the air. The allosaurus

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Speaker 1: falls back, his eyes sting like fire. The mother quetsoco

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Speaker 1: Atlas jerks backwards in fear. She hears her maid calling

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Speaker 1: as he flies overhead. Too late. The dromeo Saurus attack.

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Speaker 1: They swallow eggs hole, they rip leathery wings. The quetso

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Speaker 1: co Atlas swoops down as near he dares he sees

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Speaker 1: and understands. He turned sharply away. I am quetzo co Atlas.

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Speaker 1: The ground trembles below me. I glide over the rock

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Speaker 1: ledge and soar into the sky. Hey, you welcome to

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb,

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert I gotta ask, when

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Speaker 1: you are at home reading dinosaur books with your son,

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Speaker 1: do you read them out loud in that Tulsa Doom

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Speaker 1: voice you just did. Yes, if I can get away

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Speaker 1: with it, I use voices, but sometimes he just says,

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Speaker 1: use your regular voice, dad, and I I have to

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Speaker 1: oblige or he could just grow up thinking that Fulsa

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Speaker 1: Doom is his dad. Well, these books in particular really

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Speaker 1: really encourage a very dramatic reading. Now who wrote these

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Speaker 1: two we were looking at it was two different books. Yes,

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Speaker 1: now these are. One book is called I Am Quetzalcoatlas

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Speaker 1: and the other one is I Am Diplodocus. These were

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Speaker 1: written by Karen Wallace and illustrated by Mike Bostock. Now,

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Speaker 1: you sent me a link to these on Amazon, and

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Speaker 1: I went and looked it up, and it is so

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Speaker 1: funny because there is just one star review is coming

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Speaker 1: out the eye sockets. People are mad about these books. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the first of all, I want to get out there.

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Speaker 1: These are great books. I highly recommend. These are five

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Speaker 1: star books in my opinions. These are these are dinosaur

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Speaker 1: children's but dinosaur children's books. And uh. And when I

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Speaker 1: say I love them, I'm not being like ironic, like,

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Speaker 1: oh it's a horrible book, and you know it's but

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Speaker 1: I but I find something weird about them. Now, these

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Speaker 1: are these are great dinosaur books, but they are a

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Speaker 1: bit dark, or at least they're a bit realistic. You know,

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Speaker 1: so many dinosaur books are like kids having adventures with

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs or things are kind of whitewashed. No, these these

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Speaker 1: books encourage the child to look through the eyes of

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Speaker 1: of of an animal living in an in an ancient time, uh,

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Speaker 1: competing for resources, having to deal with the relentless predators,

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Speaker 1: encountering death and injury, and and I think all the

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Speaker 1: ones I've read end in death. Uh. But and it's

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Speaker 1: weird because when I read the first one to my son,

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Speaker 1: which I think was the quets solco Atlas one, I

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Speaker 1: was reading it for the first time allowed to him,

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Speaker 1: and we were getting to the violence, and then we

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Speaker 1: were getting to the part where the male Quetsoco Atlas

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Speaker 1: flies over and sees his family consumed by predators, and

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Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, my kid's gonna lose it.

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Speaker 1: This is too dark, this is too violent. He doesn't

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Speaker 1: he makes a skip over predation and documentaries. He's not

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Speaker 1: crazy about super dramatic scenes in children's movies, so I

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Speaker 1: didn't think he'd be able to handle this, but he did.

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Speaker 1: He loved it, and and he has this, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: an interesting disconnect where if it's dying a saur violence,

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Speaker 1: it's okay. If he has a whole book about like

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Speaker 1: it's called The Death of the Dinosaurs, it's a kid's

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Speaker 1: book in which it's just it's basically Corman McCarthy's The

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Speaker 1: Road with Dinosaurs, Death after Death after Death. And he

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Speaker 1: and after we read it, he was like, oh, that's

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Speaker 1: a great book. I love that. Yeah, there is no

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Speaker 1: God and we are his dinosaur prophets. Uh. And indeed,

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Speaker 1: one of the reviews for the uh for the book

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Speaker 1: by Karen Wallace, I am a t rex Ryan Toronto

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Speaker 1: Tyronosaurs Rex. Uh. One of the one star reviews, someone said,

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Speaker 1: this reads like a Cormy McCarthy novel. They did, and

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Speaker 1: I agree with them, but in a good way, in

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Speaker 1: a five star way. A lot of these one star

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Speaker 1: reviews featured lots of direct quotes from the books, like

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Speaker 1: lists of words ripping, slicing, slashing, tearing, and thieving. I'm sorry, whoever,

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Speaker 1: I just quoted from the internet, but uh, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean there there is a certain way in which

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Speaker 1: I understand how dinosaur violence can seem different than violence

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Speaker 1: the it's taking place in the present. I mean, for

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Speaker 1: one thing, we definitely do have a time desensitization mechanism

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Speaker 1: in our brains. And in the same way that if

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Speaker 1: you hear about how yesterday a thousand people were massacred,

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Speaker 1: that is a heartbreaking tragedy. But if you hear about

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Speaker 1: how a thousand years ago a thousand people were massacred,

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Speaker 1: it's fodder for jokes. It just doesn't it just doesn't

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Speaker 1: resonate in the same way. I guess it was no

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Speaker 1: less tragic then, but it just really doesn't hit you.

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Speaker 1: And dinosaurs may suffer from that, but I think they

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Speaker 1: also are subject to a kind of conditioning in the

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Speaker 1: brain that comes from dinosaur illustrations, which is that, at

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Speaker 1: least in my mind. Maybe maybe this is not true

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Speaker 1: across the board, but when I scan my memory of

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Speaker 1: dinosaur illustrations from my childhood, they're always action scenes. Something

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Speaker 1: violent is happening or is about to happen. It's not

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Speaker 1: just lots of pictures of you know, some herbivore standing

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Speaker 1: around in the water, drinking water, eating leaves, maybe a

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Speaker 1: carnivore just basking in the sun. There's always feeding imminent

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Speaker 1: or or fighting taking place. Something's leaping at something else,

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Speaker 1: mouth open, claws extended, they're wrestling. I think of that, Uh, well,

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Speaker 1: this wouldn't be dinosaurs, but it would be prehistoric animals.

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Speaker 1: I think of that iconic image of the saber tooth cat,

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Speaker 1: and it's some other scavenger I don't remember what, maybe

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Speaker 1: a dire wolf fighting over a mammoth carcass. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean paleo art is rich. There's there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of just wonderful works there. I mean, especially when you're

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Speaker 1: dealing with with actual painted paleo art and and not

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Speaker 1: some of the c g I stuff. You find a

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Speaker 1: lot of the times now and you do have scenes

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Speaker 1: of like peaceful duck built dinosaurs out in the water.

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Speaker 1: But the ones that stick with us, and the certainly

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Speaker 1: the ones that I remember from dinosaur books to chin

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Speaker 1: and then I'm rediscovering now with my almost five year old,

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Speaker 1: are these scenes, like you say, I'm drum attic encounters

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Speaker 1: of a one dinosaur battling another herbivore versus predator duking

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Speaker 1: it out in a prehistoric landscape. I mean, that's the

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Speaker 1: stuff that draws us in usually also there's like a

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Speaker 1: volcano or roughing in the background. Why is that, Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I guess tying in like the whole extinct,

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Speaker 1: like the the extinction of the dinosaurs is wrapped up

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Speaker 1: in them. They're like the Norse gods, of of of

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Speaker 1: prehistoric creatures. True, yeah, they existed for like tens of

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Speaker 1: millions of years, and yet in our minds they're constantly

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Speaker 1: going extinct. But but you're right, there's almost always a volcano.

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Speaker 1: It's like two animals fighting volcano in the background. Crazy

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Speaker 1: like the fight scenes you see for dinosaurs, Like how

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Speaker 1: often do you encounter something that climactic even in our

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Speaker 1: biggest blockbusters, like two to combatants battling killing each other

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Speaker 1: as a volcano erupts in the background. Um, it's crazy stuff.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's how it's got to be. And you

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Speaker 1: know what, it's probably not the fact or not the

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Speaker 1: case that that's really what the dominant art is is.

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Speaker 1: Just that's what I remember. I think you it makes

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Speaker 1: an impact. You know, you've probably called that out right.

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Speaker 1: But one thing that's kind of cool is that you

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Speaker 1: don't have to go to fiction to find a few

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Speaker 1: of these crazy action scenes from the prehistoric world, and

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Speaker 1: this brings us to our topic today. Robert, you suggested

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Speaker 1: this episode and the idea is fossil action scenes. Now,

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Speaker 1: what made you want to do this? Was it just

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Speaker 1: reading these books? Yeah? It was really um. I mean

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Speaker 1: I encountered stories about some of the some of these

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Speaker 1: major finds before. But when I read to my son

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Speaker 1: about dinosaurs, I I read some of these kids books.

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Speaker 1: But we also go through the Macmillian Illustrated Encyclopedia of

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Speaker 1: Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals, which is an older book, and

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Speaker 1: certainly as we read through it, we have I have

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Speaker 1: to remind myself that I'm not dealing with a recent text.

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Speaker 1: It's like twenty or maybe thirty years old at this point,

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Speaker 1: so it's probably got some outdated info. But man, those

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Speaker 1: illustrations make up for that is gorgeous. Us. I'm looking

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Speaker 1: at it right now. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Imagine

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Speaker 1: some of you listening and grew up with it as well.

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Speaker 1: But it makes mention of some of these As we

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Speaker 1: read the more in depth discussions on these these different

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Speaker 1: fossil finds, it'll mention. Oh yeah, there is an encounter

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Speaker 1: between protoceratops and this particular predator. Uh and and and

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Speaker 1: we've learned a lot from what this creature consisted of

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Speaker 1: based on this fossil find. Now you might be wondering, well,

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Speaker 1: why why would that be such a special thing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: these animals live for millions of years and they get fossilized.

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Speaker 1: So why wouldn't we see all kinds of action scenes

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Speaker 1: in the fossil record? Why is that a rare and

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Speaker 1: wonderful thing to come across? Well, you have to think

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Speaker 1: a little bit about the conditions under which fossils arise

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Speaker 1: to understand why this really shouldn't happen all that often. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and really it makes it makes these encounters all the

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Speaker 1: more amazing. So so yeah, stick stick with us here

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Speaker 1: as we dive into just how fossilization occurs. Right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So when we think of fossils, were usually thinking of bones,

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Speaker 1: But that's actually a little bit narrow because a fossil,

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Speaker 1: in reality, as the term would be used by somebody

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Speaker 1: who works in paleontology or biology, is a physical remnant

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Speaker 1: of any kind left behind by an organism that lived

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Speaker 1: in a previous geological age. So these could be things

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Speaker 1: like preserved footprints or eggs or nest sites, burrows, things

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Speaker 1: like that are sometimes fossilized. Or of course it could

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Speaker 1: be the things were more familiar with body parts themselves.

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Speaker 1: If it's more recent, it might even include maybe uh,

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Speaker 1: soft tissue encased in ice or resin and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: But more often with the much longer extinct animals we're

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Speaker 1: talking about, uh, fossilized bones, these geological entities that come

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Speaker 1: up from the bedrock. Now, the vast majority of animals

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Speaker 1: that die don't get fossilized. And you can probably figure

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Speaker 1: this out if you just do a little mental math

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Speaker 1: about how many organisms have ever existed and how you're

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Speaker 1: not constantly wading through fossils on planet Earth. Um, there

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Speaker 1: are a bunch of hurdles you have to pass through

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Speaker 1: to turn from a regular dead animal into a fossil.

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Speaker 1: First of all, fossilization is going to strongly prefer animals

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Speaker 1: with hard body parts, right, you want to have bones, teeth, shells,

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Speaker 1: animals that don't have hard body parts. If you're a

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Speaker 1: jelly fish or a slug or something like that, you're

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Speaker 1: almost always going to decompose entirely and just disappear into history. Also,

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Speaker 1: fossilization depends very much on the environment. It's much more

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Speaker 1: likely to happen in an environment that promotes rapid burial,

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Speaker 1: because you can think about it, it's pretty intuitive. Actually,

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Speaker 1: the longer a dead organism lies exposed to the open environment,

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Speaker 1: the you know, the seafloor or the air or whatever

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Speaker 1: it might be, the more vulnerable it is to all

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Speaker 1: kinds of pressures that would destroy it. So this could

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Speaker 1: be scavenging, scavenging by animals, decomposition by microbial life, erosion

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Speaker 1: by forces like wind and tidal action and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: and just general destruction. If you're sitting out in the open,

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Speaker 1: the parts of your body, even the hard parts of

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Speaker 1: your body, you're gonna get worn down and destroyed over time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I always think that too. When I when

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Speaker 1: I was a kid and I lived in a rural area,

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Speaker 1: we'd go the same way to school every day or

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Speaker 1: into town every day, and there was a dead fox

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Speaker 1: at one point, and every maybe it was a coyote,

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Speaker 1: I can't remember, but every time you pass, there'd be

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Speaker 1: a little less of it, would be a little more scattered, because, yeah,

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Speaker 1: a body is going in a natural environment, it's just

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Speaker 1: gonna be scavenged and torn apart, and then it's going

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Speaker 1: to break down like that. That coyote is never going

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Speaker 1: to be a fossil. Uh. The route where I walk

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Speaker 1: my dog Charlie has of late had a slowly settling

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Speaker 1: pile of fur with a couple of visible jawbones and

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Speaker 1: teeth and stuff. Not sure what that was. At some

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Speaker 1: point it was something mammalian. Uh. And yeah, you you

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Speaker 1: just watch it over time disappear. So, yeah, that's what

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Speaker 1: happens out in the open. So for this reason, if

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Speaker 1: you want to turn into a fossil, if you want

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Speaker 1: to be preserved, you want to be in a sediment

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Speaker 1: forming environment. That would be an area like the bottom

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Speaker 1: of the sea floor, where there's a good deposition of

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Speaker 1: sediment on top of you. And this is one reason

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Speaker 1: you're going to see way more fossils of water dwelling

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Speaker 1: animals than you do of land dwelling animals. But rapid

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Speaker 1: burial can also happen in some other situations, for example,

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Speaker 1: on land where there are sand dunes and the desert

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Speaker 1: that might quickly bury an animal body that you know,

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Speaker 1: if a sand dune collapses or gets blown by wind

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Speaker 1: over the body or in an area where some kind

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Speaker 1: of moving water flow. Alluvial areas can wash sediment over

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Speaker 1: the body and bury it that way. Of course, over time,

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Speaker 1: we know what happens to sediment under pressure. It gets

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Speaker 1: turned into rocks and solidified in various ways. But even

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Speaker 1: if an organism is quickly buried, that doesn't necessarily mean

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Speaker 1: it's going to turn into a fossil. Then you you've

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Speaker 1: still got a few hurdles, one of which is that

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Speaker 1: it has to undergo some geological transformation. When you come

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Speaker 1: across dinosaur bones in the museum, they're not really the

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Speaker 1: bones of the dinosaur that you're looking at. What what

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Speaker 1: you're looking at as a kind of geological photocopy in

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Speaker 1: a sense. Uh So. One of the processes by which

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Speaker 1: this happens is known as per mineralization. And this is

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Speaker 1: when you've got groundwater that trickles around and through a dead,

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Speaker 1: buried organism, and as it trickles through the organism, it

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Speaker 1: carries these minerals with it, dissolved minerals in the water

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Speaker 1: and leave some of them behind. So the mineral laden

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Speaker 1: water fills all these little microscopic gaps and pores in

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Speaker 1: your bones, and it deposits some of those minerals that

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Speaker 1: it carries in those empty spaces, and then over time

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Speaker 1: these minerals accumulate and crystallize throughout the structure of the bone,

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Speaker 1: essentially turning the bone into a rock in the shape

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Speaker 1: of the original bone. I have to admit, like looking

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Speaker 1: back on my own history of dinosaurs, I think I

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Speaker 1: had a sense of sadness when I learned for the

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Speaker 1: first time that dinosaur bones are not actual dinosaur bones,

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Speaker 1: that they are their fossils. Of course, it's it's still amazing,

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Speaker 1: but but I think I feel like there's there's a

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Speaker 1: certain sadness that can sink in when you when you

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Speaker 1: first have to realize, oh, this is it's not as

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Speaker 1: simple as the bones of the creature that I'm trying

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Speaker 1: to imagine. Well, while these processes do go on, I

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Speaker 1: can't say for sure that it's like none of the

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Speaker 1: original bone is left. I'm not actually sure about that.

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Speaker 1: You know, some part of it may remain in in

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Speaker 1: the process like per mineralization. Of course, I also have

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Speaker 1: to add that when you're at the museum, you're also

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Speaker 1: looking at you might be looking at a specimen for

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Speaker 1: which and there there is no complete skeleton, and they're like,

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Speaker 1: you know, casts created based on projections. And in some

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Speaker 1: museums you might go to, especially smaller museums, you might

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Speaker 1: be looking at an entire replica as opposed to actual fossls,

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Speaker 1: and a good museum will tell you the difference. I mean,

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Speaker 1: for example, the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

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Speaker 1: I remember going through their big fossil exhibits. They would

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Speaker 1: have illustrations alongside the reconstructions that would show you sometimes

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Speaker 1: like what part was original and what part was recast.

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Speaker 1: So you have this per mineralization process, but then you've

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Speaker 1: also got this process known as replacement, and this is

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Speaker 1: similar but sort of more more total, more holistic, and

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Speaker 1: organism's body is buried and then it disappears because it

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Speaker 1: gets decomposed, maybe my microbial life or gets dissolved through

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Speaker 1: chemical reactions with the soil or the groundwater gets washed

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Speaker 1: away and eroded, and what you're left with is a

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Speaker 1: cavity in the ground in the shape of the original structure.

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Speaker 1: So you might have like a cavity in the shape

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Speaker 1: of a skeleton or a shell or a bone, and

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Speaker 1: then this cavity gets filled in with some other mineral,

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Speaker 1: creating a sort of mineral cast in the same shape

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Speaker 1: as the original organ in structure. Then, of course there

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Speaker 1: are other ways. There is for example, carbonization where organisms

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Speaker 1: get squeezed between layers of sediment and leave this carbon

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Speaker 1: imprint that sometimes happens to like plants and insects. Then

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Speaker 1: there would also be resin in casing, which we all

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Speaker 1: know from Jurassic Parks seeing the mosquito and the amber.

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Speaker 1: Things can be frozen and ice, of course, like we

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Speaker 1: see from the previous ice age. You might see a

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Speaker 1: mammoth frozen and ice. And then things can be for example,

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Speaker 1: buried in tar, like in the tar pits. So there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of ways things can be preserved across

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Speaker 1: the geological eons. But despite all these different ways that

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Speaker 1: it can happen, it doesn't happen that much. Only a

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Speaker 1: very small portion of the animals that exist get preserved,

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Speaker 1: and then only a small portion of those that get

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Speaker 1: preserved actually get found by us. So we have a

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Speaker 1: have a very limited sampling of what there once was

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Speaker 1: on planet Earth. But another thing to think about is

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Speaker 1: not just the scarcity of fossiles, but the process by

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Speaker 1: which they're created. It doesn't tend to favor action. You know,

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Speaker 1: you're you're not likely to catch a fossil of an

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Speaker 1: animal in mid behavior where it's clear what was happening.

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Speaker 1: Something was dead, was probably very very often moved around

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Speaker 1: by some water currents or something like that, so you

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Speaker 1: don't really necessarily get a sense of what was going

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Speaker 1: on in this animal's life. Yeah, fossil evidence of feeding

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Speaker 1: behavior or any kind of like really key life moments

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Speaker 1: are exceedingly rare. And it's that it's always worth remembering

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Speaker 1: that the fossil record itself is inherently incomplete. You're not

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Speaker 1: gonna never gonna have a complete fossil record because, as

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Speaker 1: we've discussed, like the limits of fossilization, that all the

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Speaker 1: criteria that have to be met a stand in the

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Speaker 1: way of that um And I don't mention this to

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Speaker 1: cast doubt on what we have or the you know,

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Speaker 1: the visions of the past that we derive from our fossils.

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Speaker 1: It's just that we're left to figure out the shape

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Speaker 1: of what came before with an in complete jigsaw puzzle

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Speaker 1: that has no box right heart of the cover. And

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Speaker 1: it's Joe discussed here to begin with, sediment has to

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Speaker 1: cover in organisms remains in order for the long fossilization

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Speaker 1: process to begin. Most organisms decomposed before this can happen.

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Speaker 1: Fossilization odds increase if the organism happens to exist in

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Speaker 1: large numbers or lived in and around a sediment. So,

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Speaker 1: for instance, trilobytes meet both criteria. Tons of them, they're

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Speaker 1: on the ocean floor, They're very well represented in the

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Speaker 1: fossil record. Not so great for a lot of these

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Speaker 1: great wonderful land predators you'd want to see, Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: something like a t rex that that would have been

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Speaker 1: an apex predator. I always think of a pyramid, a

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Speaker 1: pyramid of bones, okay, and your apex predator is seated

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Speaker 1: on a throne at the top of this pyramid. So

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Speaker 1: you can only have so many pyramids based on the

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Speaker 1: bones and the bodies and the life force of the creatures.

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Speaker 1: And so your apex predator that's gonna be a really

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Speaker 1: rare fined. Yeah, I mean, the ecology can't support lots

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Speaker 1: of them in the place, so there's not that many

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Speaker 1: to choose from. And then it's also existing in circumstances

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Speaker 1: that make it less likely to get fossilized when it dies,

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Speaker 1: right and then you know, and that's why we have

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Speaker 1: we have a number of species out there where we're

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Speaker 1: basing the entire species on me maybe even just a

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Speaker 1: few different bones, you know, or at least an incomplete skeleton.

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Speaker 1: And then plus fossils might be set in stone, but

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Speaker 1: they're far from impervious. Like all rocks, they can erode,

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Speaker 1: they can melt, they can fragment. So even once fossilization occurs,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're gonna last. It also doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: that somebody didn't build a church over it at some point.

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Speaker 1: And it's now and so you know, it's a UNESCO

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Speaker 1: World Heritage Site now, and you'll never get that juicy

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Speaker 1: like you know, three t rex of feeding fossil extravaganza

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Speaker 1: that's trapped underneath it. You know, there's so even if

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Speaker 1: fossilization happens, we might never see it. So even when

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Speaker 1: you do wind up with the fossil jigsaw puzzle pieces

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Speaker 1: you need, you still have to figure out how they

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Speaker 1: fit together. You have to imagine the missing pieces. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's been a long process in which we've continually refined

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Speaker 1: our understanding of the form of these dinosaurs. We're still

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Speaker 1: continuing to refine our understanding of what they looked like,

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Speaker 1: how they behaved. I mean, you look at something like

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Speaker 1: the iguanadon the spike thumbed creature, one of the earliest

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Speaker 1: dinosaur finds who's got two thumbs and got illustrated in

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Speaker 1: a very weird way. Yeah, you look that guy, because

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Speaker 1: if you look at those illustrations, the body just changes rapidly.

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Speaker 1: T Rex is another one where we've we've had some

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Speaker 1: some distinct changes over time and how we interpret its

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Speaker 1: bodily positioning and uh, you know, so a lot of

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Speaker 1: the time we can only guess at the shape. We

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Speaker 1: can form theories about the shape, and the same goes.

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Speaker 1: The same holds true for how different prehistoric species would

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Speaker 1: have interacted with each other based on their forms and

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Speaker 1: the behavior of existing animals. Evidence of dinosaurs feeding, as

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Speaker 1: we said, is exceedingly rare, but every so often the

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Speaker 1: fossil records record throws us a real hum dinger. They

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Speaker 1: give us an action scene preserved in stone. So that

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Speaker 1: is what we're gonna be looking at for the rest

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Speaker 1: of the episode. But I think we should take a

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Speaker 1: quick break first, and when we come back we will

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Speaker 1: get into some of these amazing fossil action scenes. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back now, Robert. Before we actually take a look

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Speaker 1: at these fossil action scenes, one thing we should keep

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Speaker 1: in mind is that we should say again, you can't

396
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Speaker 1: always look at a fossil and know how and where

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Speaker 1: an organism died, right because a lot of remains are,

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Speaker 1: for example, moved around by water currents before they get

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Speaker 1: buried and fossilized. Uh, it might call to mind you

400
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Speaker 1: can imagine like a big alluvial floodwater deposit where a

401
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:49,000
Speaker 1: bunch of bones get washed into the same place, and

402
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 1: then you could come along as a future archaeologist and

403
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:54,520
Speaker 1: dig this up and look like, oh, there was an

404
00:22:54,560 --> 00:22:57,959
Speaker 1: ancient monster battle here, this is where the battlefield was

405
00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:00,760
Speaker 1: and all the creatures fell. But really what you're looking

406
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Speaker 1: at as a place where the bones were moved to

407
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:04,840
Speaker 1: along a you know, a path, the path of a

408
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:07,679
Speaker 1: river or or a flood deposit or something like that.

409
00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: So we do need to keep in mind that you

410
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 1: always have to approach a fossil site with skepticism to

411
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,960
Speaker 1: look at the surroundings, to look for clues to figure

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Speaker 1: out if what you're looking at is a true, you know,

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Speaker 1: institute scene or if it's some something that has been

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Speaker 1: altered by the environment or by the behavior of animals

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Speaker 1: or something like that. Indeed, keep that in mind at

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Speaker 1: all time. So let's go ahead and launch into it here. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of fun to think of this as a

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Speaker 1: as a big fight card, like a you know, like

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Speaker 1: a like a sort of wrestling term or you know,

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00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 1: you know, like a boxing wrestling and then a type

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00:23:44,320 --> 00:23:47,720
Speaker 1: of situation where you you have the card right the

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00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:51,879
Speaker 1: opening matches, the mid card, and then finally the main event. Robert,

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Speaker 1: I think you're more into the fighting arts than I am. Well,

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Speaker 1: probably some of the fighting arts, but here we're talking

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Speaker 1: about the dinosaurs were fighting arts, and with our first case,

426
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 1: we're actually gonna we're gonna kick off with just prehistoric

427
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: mammal fighting arts. So it's time to look at the

428
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:13,639
Speaker 1: showdown of the Colombian mammoths. So these were placed to

429
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,639
Speaker 1: scene epic animals. Colombian mammoths about one point five million

430
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 1: years ago until around ten to thirteen thousand years ago.

431
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,160
Speaker 1: They lived in North America, stretching down into ice Age

432
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:28,040
Speaker 1: Central America. And Uh, these things were big. They were

433
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: bigger than their cousins, the wooly mammoths we know about

434
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 1: the Colombian mammoths could grow up to about thirteen feet

435
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: tall way maybe eight to ten tons or so. And

436
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:40,360
Speaker 1: so I want to set the scene for how these

437
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 1: fossils are discovered. In nineteen sixty two, there's some workers

438
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: who are, according to one account I read, installing some

439
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: electric lines, and another account I read they were doing

440
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: some surveying. So I'm not sure what's the true story there,

441
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 1: but they were out working on a ranch in the

442
00:24:55,920 --> 00:25:00,679
Speaker 1: Nebraska Panhandle. So that's western Nebraska. It's a sparsely populated

443
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:03,160
Speaker 1: part of the state, but it is a place where

444
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:06,400
Speaker 1: you can come across some ancient fossils. And near this

445
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: tiny town of Crawford in western Nebraska, they came across

446
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:15,920
Speaker 1: the leg bone of an extremely large animal, and they

447
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: took this leg bone wrapped in some feedsack to a

448
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:24,400
Speaker 1: paleontology student named Mike Vorhees who was brought in for excavation.

449
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: Why are you Why are you grinning? Well, and I'm

450
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,360
Speaker 1: just certainly wondering if there's a connection to Jason Vorhees. Yeah,

451
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:34,239
Speaker 1: well it's spelled differently. This is I e s all right,

452
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,239
Speaker 1: all right, I'll try and force the mental image out

453
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 1: of my mind. Yeah, but I mean both bone kings

454
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: of a sort. Now vorhes Is brought in and he

455
00:25:43,640 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: discovered that there was not one, but two male Colombian

456
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: mammoths fossilized together in the same site. Why together, Well,

457
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:58,399
Speaker 1: it looks like they died fighting each other. As I

458
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:01,160
Speaker 1: said a minute ago, the columbia In mammoths are related

459
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: to the smaller, more northern dwelling wooly mammoth, and mammoth's

460
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: lived in Europe and Asia since about two point five

461
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: million years ago or so, and they are not the

462
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: ancestors of existing elephants. I think that might be a

463
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:16,679
Speaker 1: common misconception, but instead their cousins of elephants along a

464
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: different line of elephant like creatures. They're more closely related

465
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: to Asian elephants than to African elephants. And Asian mammoths

466
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: are believed to have migrated to North America over the

467
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: Bearing Straight Land Bridge about one and a half million

468
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: years ago or so, and they had evolved into the

469
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: form we recognize as the Colombian mammoth by about one

470
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: point one million years ago. So they occupied North America,

471
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: stretching down into Central America up to about the southern

472
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 1: border of Canada, so you can think about them all

473
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 1: throughout the the United States area on all in the plains.

474
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:52,440
Speaker 1: I've heard that they've been found, uh, pretty pretty far

475
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 1: east and pretty far west. Wooly mammoth's tended to live

476
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 1: farther up north in like Canadia. Canadia, I said it

477
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: you Canada and Alaska. Now, the Columbian mammoths could live

478
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 1: about seventy or eighty years, so that's a nice lifespan.

479
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: And once they were adults, they really had no natural predators.

480
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:14,920
Speaker 1: They're huge now. When they were children, of course children.

481
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:19,360
Speaker 1: The that is that the term for mammoth's juvenile mammoths

482
00:27:19,520 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: were preyed upon by the standard carnivores of the time,

483
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: maybe sabretooth cats and things like that. I guess it

484
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: would be a calf, right, calf, an elephant calf? Is

485
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: that right? I think that's probably right. We'll go with it. Now,

486
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: mammoths show sexual dimorphism in the tusks, with the males

487
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: having these longer, heavier tusks than the females, and sometimes

488
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: the Columbia tusks could grow up to about sixteen feet long.

489
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:47,520
Speaker 1: I think about that. This is on an animal with

490
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:50,479
Speaker 1: a body length and maybe thirteen to fifteen feet. So

491
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:55,400
Speaker 1: the tusks are these gigantic weapons. And these animals wind

492
00:27:55,400 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: extinct sometime between thirteen thousand ten thousand years ago, probably

493
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: due to a combination of climate change in human hunting

494
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 1: that we don't really know for sure. Have you got

495
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: an illustration here? Oh? There it is. Man, look at

496
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: those massive tusks and they're they're kind of hooked in

497
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:13,719
Speaker 1: inward and they're not uh, not underhanded sloping up, but

498
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:18,919
Speaker 1: like hooked around like a grasping claw or something. And

499
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: now to get back to the fossil find that young

500
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 1: paleontologist Mike Vorhees who worked on the excavation in nineteen

501
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 1: sixty two, he stuck around with the project and there

502
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: was a two thousand six article on NPR News where

503
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,800
Speaker 1: they interviewed him and he was describing the original discovery

504
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, once we got to the skull,

505
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: it turned out, well, there's one tusk. There's two tusks. Oh,

506
00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 1: three tusks. What's going on here? Even a young student

507
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: realizes that an elephant only has two tusks. So it

508
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:53,560
Speaker 1: gradually dawned on us that we actually had two animals

509
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: locked in a death struggle and probably the most exciting

510
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: single fossil I've ever seen. Now, Robert, I have attack

511
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: for you a photo of this where you can kind

512
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 1: of see what's happening here. Now, scientists more recently believed

513
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: that the two mammoths that are fossilized in this scene

514
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: were very likely in this testosterone fueled bull elephant phase,

515
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 1: each about forty years old, fighting over mating opportunities, and

516
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: it appears they were well matched because the fight led

517
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: to this entanglement of the tusks, which somehow killed them both.

518
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:29,720
Speaker 1: So you've got the two skeletons locked face to face

519
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:34,240
Speaker 1: with tusks entwined. One of the mammoth's tusks is gouging

520
00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: into the eye socket of the other, so that that

521
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 1: would make a good what's her name, Wallace book right

522
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: his his eyes gouged. It hurts immensely. Yeah, you this

523
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 1: this illustration of the skulls and the tusks intertwined like

524
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 1: this would make a really gnarly tattoo. Yes, it would,

525
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: that would be. Yeah, it's like a metal band album

526
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 1: cover kind of thing. It's it's for real Now, the

527
00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: fight between these two mammoths was probably a lot more

528
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: dangerous than the average mammoth fight, and it's because both

529
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: of these mammoths had one of their tusks broken off

530
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:13,200
Speaker 1: and thus shortened. And this actually made it more lethal

531
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 1: than one of these would have normally been because it

532
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: allowed them to get in closer for fighting, and since

533
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: they got in closer than would normally be possible, it

534
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: led to this tangling of the tusks that killed them. Now,

535
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: it's probably the case that their deaths came slowly, or

536
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 1: at least one of their deaths came slowly, with one

537
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: of the two bowls dying before the other one and

538
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: then pinning into the ground by the face. And in

539
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: this state they would have been unable to reach food

540
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 1: or water, but also would have been vulnerable to opportunistic scavengers.

541
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 1: And this, this aggressive fighting between male mammoths can possibly

542
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 1: be chalked up to the glory of what's known as must.

543
00:30:50,520 --> 00:30:54,360
Speaker 1: There are you familiar with this concept, Robert Musk the

544
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: smell of the scent no, no, no, must, must with

545
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 1: a thh, not with a kill? A familiar with? Okay?

546
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: So must? Is this kind of this problem? This is

547
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: not the right way to say it, but I want

548
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: to characterize it this way. It's like a recurring murderous

549
00:31:10,080 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: puberty in male elephants. More literally, what it is is

550
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 1: a hormonal period lasting up to weeks and even months,

551
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: when a bull elephants body begins to produce about sixty

552
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: times the amount of testosterone normally found in male elephants,

553
00:31:26,760 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: and during this period, known as the must, bull elephants

554
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: secrete a substance called tempour in from the temporal glands

555
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 1: on the sides of their head. You can see pictures

556
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 1: of them where it looks like they're just using some

557
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: gross orange fluid from their temples. Uh. But it also

558
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: alters their regular behavior, so they become much more violent

559
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: and aggressive. Elephants that are that work with humans in

560
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 1: these periods become much more dangerous to work with. And

561
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 1: they also emit this noise known as a must the rumble,

562
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 1: and they can be seen I watched video of this

563
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: doing this display called tusking the ground where they will

564
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: stab their tusks into the soil um and I think

565
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 1: they're multiple theories on why exactly they do that, but

566
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: it looks pretty threatening. I'm not sure if it's meant

567
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,800
Speaker 1: to look threatening, you know. I I certainly watched the

568
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: number of documentaries detailing elephants, but but I feel like

569
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: most of them tend to focus on the female herds.

570
00:32:25,720 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: Ye in the matriarchal order there, because you have the

571
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: the elderly females, uh, leading and then you have the

572
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: younger females, and then you have the the young the

573
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: calf's following around. And in the males they live separately.

574
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 1: And now that you've described their behavior at times, you

575
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: understand why they have to live outside the house, right,

576
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: so when they go into a must period, you just

577
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 1: don't want to be around them. They're no good uh.

578
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 1: And so it's it's not unknown actually for for other

579
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: types of animals to engage in these than these mutually

580
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: deadly male dominance encounters. For example, stags sometimes go into

581
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: male dominance conflicts where they get their antlers hopelessly locked.

582
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: You might remember from last year there was the discovery

583
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: of these two bull moose in Una lucklyit Alaska. Oh yeah,

584
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 1: I think I remember this. Yes, So they're frozen in

585
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: ice with their antlers locked, and it looks like what

586
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: happened in this case was that the two moose were

587
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: in a fight over mating rights, and they got their

588
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,479
Speaker 1: antlers stuck together, and then they drowned, and then the

589
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: water that they drowned in froze. This also happened sometimes

590
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:32,960
Speaker 1: with male white tailed deer and elk who they have

591
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: these antlers and they locked them together in these dominance displays,

592
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: and sometimes they get their antlers entangled during fights over

593
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: mating and territory, and once they're stuck together, they can

594
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 1: become exhausted and die and sometimes even be eaten alive

595
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: by coyotes, and their vulnerable state even crazier. Here's another

596
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: thing I came across male dominance entanglement swans. Did you

597
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: see this video? It went viral a while back, but

598
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: there were the two photographers in Latvia named Alexander and

599
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 1: Vitali drov And in two thousand nine they filmed this

600
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 1: encounter where they had a pair of swans that were

601
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: just hopelessly entangled by the wings and necks, floating pathetically

602
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:20,160
Speaker 1: in a pond, just kind of paddling around randomly, looking

603
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: on the verge of death, and the two men came

604
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 1: up to them. I from what I've read, by the way,

605
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: don't don't try this because swans can actually be very

606
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:34,000
Speaker 1: aggressive and dangerous. Yeah, so don't try to mess with swans.

607
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 1: But the two men were unable to untie the knot

608
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:40,799
Speaker 1: of birdnecks and wings and the two swans, you would

609
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 1: you'd have to see it. It's crazy. They are in

610
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: a knot. They're just completely twisted around each other. And

611
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:48,839
Speaker 1: once they finally get all this stuff untangled, the two

612
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: swans just scramble away, and without this intervention, it looks

613
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: like they probably would have died. But in a National

614
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: Geographic article about this incident, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum

615
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,920
Speaker 1: bird expert Brian K. Schmidt says that they were probably

616
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,600
Speaker 1: also male swans who were fighting overbreeding territory. So with

617
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: all these animals, from swans to stags to mammoths, it

618
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 1: often probably doesn't come to a physical fight, right, and

619
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:17,440
Speaker 1: two males are going to be making threatening displays at

620
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:19,799
Speaker 1: one another and then the less dominant one is going

621
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: to run away. But sometimes this doesn't happen in the

622
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,600
Speaker 1: situation escalates into this genuine battle of strength, and I

623
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: just think it's kind of odds is a strange poeticism

624
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: to it that there's this tendency of male animals across

625
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: all these different classes of life to put up fighting

626
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: displays for the right to mate with females, only to

627
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 1: end up in an eternal death embrace with their enemy

628
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: and usurper. Yeah, to remove them from themselves from competition. Yeah,

629
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: for the for the thing that they're after feels somehow metaphorical.

630
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: Well that is, that is one heck of an encounter.

631
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: It's one of these where you can look at you

632
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 1: can look at the fossil evidence you can, and then

633
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: you can imagine conflict and and just just see these

634
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: behemoths locked up with each other and just battling to

635
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 1: the death. Yeah. It's also kind of sad though, to

636
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 1: imagine what they looked like once they were on the ground,

637
00:36:12,200 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: maybe once one of them has died and they're just stuck. Yeah,

638
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:18,719
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's an ignominious end for a for

639
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: a powerful beast. I agree. Well, you know, if that,

640
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:24,960
Speaker 1: if that's the story of an end, I think we

641
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,800
Speaker 1: should discuss the story of a beginning. So we're on

642
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:31,319
Speaker 1: the lower still on the lower card here, so it's

643
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,760
Speaker 1: time to you know, we can include some some fossil

644
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: action scenes that are less combative in nature. Well, I

645
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 1: should hope, so come on, yeah, because certainly bring the peace,

646
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 1: love and understanding. Yeah, because the animal interactions don't have

647
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: to include violence. They can of course include mating. They

648
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 1: can also include birth itself or or the the care

649
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 1: for young. Right, And that's why we turn now to

650
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 1: the it feels saurus all right, Yes, And what we're

651
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: dealing with here is it the osaurus live birth. And

652
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 1: this this now blew me away when I've heard about it.

653
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: Here's something that's interesting to me. I didn't know that

654
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 1: I theosaurs would have live offspring. I just would have

655
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,879
Speaker 1: assumed they laid eggs because it seems like they're sort

656
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: of half reptile half fish, both of which lay eggs. Right. Yeah,

657
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 1: And we and certainly when we think of aquatic reptiles,

658
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:26,480
Speaker 1: we think of existing examples that are the very sea turtles, who,

659
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: as as as I think most of us know, have

660
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: to return to shore to lay their eggs and then

661
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:35,759
Speaker 1: go back to sea. So what we're dealing with here

662
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: are are athosaurs, in many cases specifically the Ichthyosaurus. There

663
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: are several varieties. The time here is early Jurassic to

664
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 1: early Cretaceous. Location Europe Greenland and North America and these uh,

665
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:53,240
Speaker 1: these specimen. These organisms were generally up to six ft

666
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: six inches long or two ms long. So the athosaurs

667
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 1: were the fish lizards the name applies. They were indeed

668
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:05,839
Speaker 1: highly specialized marine reptiles. They ruled the seas, ranging far

669
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,359
Speaker 1: and wide throughout the early Triassic times for roughly one

670
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:13,279
Speaker 1: million years. I love these guys and I actually have

671
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,439
Speaker 1: a bumper sticker on my car of of one done

672
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 1: by the local Atlanta artists our land. Uh it I

673
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,800
Speaker 1: interpreted as an ichthiosaura. It might just be a funky dolphin.

674
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,239
Speaker 1: But but but I see it, and I think, knowing

675
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: our lands, I have googly eyes. It does have strange eyes.

676
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: But you know, the funky dolphin thing is is is

677
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: apt because indeed, when you look at a skeleton or

678
00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 1: certainly a work of paleo art, the Ichthyosaurus does look

679
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 1: very much like a weird dolphin, and paleontologists believed they

680
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 1: would have probably occupied the same ecological niche uh. The

681
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: origins are unclear, but they likely evolved from a land

682
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: reptile rather than another aquatic one. That is really interesting.

683
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 1: Of course, now we know that these these marine mammals

684
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,239
Speaker 1: evolved probably from land dwelling mammals. Right, They were land

685
00:39:02,280 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: dwelling mammals that moved back into the water. And now

686
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 1: we see the same thing happen with reptiles, but earlier. Yeah,

687
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: it's mind blowing to see the evolution of a basic

688
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 1: form across a different species. So you have, you know,

689
00:39:15,480 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: the shark, the tune of the dolphin, the athosaurs. It

690
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if you know, some distant water world

691
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 1: on another planet, Uh, you're gonna have creatures that are

692
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 1: very different in many respects but still end up taking

693
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:32,080
Speaker 1: the basic form of the athiosaur or the dolphin. Yeah,

694
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: it seems widely successful. So we talked earlier about you know,

695
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:40,360
Speaker 1: the what helps a creature become a fossil if it

696
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:42,320
Speaker 1: lives in the water, but it lives in a near sediment,

697
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:45,839
Speaker 1: and if it's around insufficient numbers and the ethos are

698
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: definitely lines up with this. It's an animal that we

699
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:51,640
Speaker 1: know very well from the fossil record, based on several

700
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:57,320
Speaker 1: hundred complete skeletons, many stemming from early Jurassic fossils recorded

701
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: in shallow waters now shale in southern Germany. And and

702
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: these are these are some excellent fossils because in many

703
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:09,360
Speaker 1: cases there's a thin film of carbon around them that

704
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:13,880
Speaker 1: indicates the exact shape of their bodies while they had flesh.

705
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:15,719
Speaker 1: So so it's not just a matter of you know,

706
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 1: when you look at some of the dinosaurs uh skeletons,

707
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: you'll see varying theories about like, well, maybe this one

708
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 1: had some sort of um like an inflatable growth on

709
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 1: its head, especially with the duck build dinosaurs, or just

710
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,359
Speaker 1: stuff about skin texture and feathers and things like that. Yeah,

711
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,240
Speaker 1: we don't always have enough fossil events to really fully

712
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,920
Speaker 1: imagine the flesh, but with the atheosaurs we do. We

713
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,879
Speaker 1: have this carnibon outline that tells us the shape they

714
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: had in life. We also have a fossilized poop or

715
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 1: corporate lights. We have the stomach contents in some cases,

716
00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: so we know what they ate, mostly fish and some cephalopods,

717
00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: and we even have remnants of pigment cells to suggest

718
00:40:55,600 --> 00:41:00,319
Speaker 1: a dark reddish brown colorization. Now you might be well,

719
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: whine with an animal that lives in the water or

720
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: want to have like a dark ruddy, you know, kind

721
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 1: of color, And there there's a theory that they may

722
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:11,240
Speaker 1: have used this dark colouration to to heat up rapidly

723
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 1: between deep dives into the cool depths for fish. Whoa, yeah,

724
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: so again, they basically had the same role as a

725
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: modern dolphin, and paleontologist believed they may have become extinct

726
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: due to later competition with the increasingly advanced sharks of

727
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: the cretation. Now that's funny because I love sharks, but

728
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to think of sharks as advanced. Well,

729
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: this was a time when they were. They were the

730
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,600
Speaker 1: hot new model. Yeah, I mean, it seems like they

731
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:41,720
Speaker 1: are the dinosaurs now, I mean so yeah, it's certainly

732
00:41:41,800 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: we do have these amazing prehistoric sharks, right, I mean

733
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: the Megalodon, krotoxy Ryan and all these. But this was

734
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:52,720
Speaker 1: a time when the atostars ruled the world, the world

735
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,880
Speaker 1: the seas for for this long stretch of time. But

736
00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: then the sharks got more advanced and they likely outcompete

737
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: them for resources. Now, one cool thing about the ichthyosaur

738
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:05,920
Speaker 1: is that if it's occupying a similar to the dolphin

739
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: and it evolved for the same way, it's probably not

740
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 1: going to be a gill breathing organism, right, but it's

741
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 1: an air breathing organism. Right. Yeah, everyone agrees they were

742
00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: air breathers, there's no getting around that. But they seem

743
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: to get around the necessity of returning to shore to

744
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,680
Speaker 1: lay their eggs as other uh you know, extinct and

745
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:26,719
Speaker 1: existing marine animals, marine reptiles must And that's where the

746
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: action packed fossil comes into play. Not a fossilized bit

747
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: of combat, but a seemingly fossilized live birth whole, or

748
00:42:34,560 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: at least that's what the fossil evidence suggests. So there's

749
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,359
Speaker 1: there's been some debate in the past on whether this

750
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: might have been near stomach contents. Uh. You run into

751
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,720
Speaker 1: similar cases of interpretation, like you have some some bodies

752
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: grouped together. Is there just it's just just some accidental

753
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,920
Speaker 1: overlay here, Um, what's going on when we look at

754
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:56,759
Speaker 1: these But the consensus now seems to be that that

755
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: we do have fossil evidence of embryos and live earth

756
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:04,120
Speaker 1: sometimes scattered outside of the body. And there's some discussion

757
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: over whether this was due to explosion after death, like

758
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: the body bloats up and then burst right. Um. Early

759
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:13,920
Speaker 1: arguments that they might have given birth on land gave

760
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 1: way to uh an aquatic consensus at least with the

761
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,520
Speaker 1: with with with many of the athios are species, evidence

762
00:43:21,560 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: shows that they were born tail first to prevent drowning

763
00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:29,880
Speaker 1: breach by nature. Now this being said, In two thousand fourteen,

764
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: uh Ryosuki Motani of the University of California Davis and

765
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:39,319
Speaker 1: colleagues published research concluding that a fossil i specimen of

766
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: the athiosaur Chao Hu sais this is the oldest of

767
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: Mesozoic marine reptiles that lived approximately two forty eight million

768
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,919
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh They showed that the partial skeleton which

769
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: was recovered in China may show a live birth. It

770
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: features three embryos and neonates, one inside the mother, another

771
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:02,320
Speaker 1: exiting the pell us, with half the body still inside

772
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 1: the mother, and the third outside. Interestingly enough to study

773
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,320
Speaker 1: concluded that these specimens might have given birth on dry

774
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 1: land due to the head first positioning of the emerging

775
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: young So this would have been an older example. So

776
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: we can imagine how how this might have developed into

777
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: the full uh at sea live birth that the majority

778
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:28,280
Speaker 1: of the atheosaurs engaged in. God, it's crazy to imagine

779
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 1: that this must not be all that weird for the

780
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:35,400
Speaker 1: majority of life on Earth. But but I don't know.

781
00:44:35,719 --> 00:44:39,800
Speaker 1: All doing all of the life stuff, mating, giving birth,

782
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: all in this marine environment with nothing to grab a

783
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,399
Speaker 1: hold of. I mean, and it's crazy to think too,

784
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 1: that this is a form that evolved from a terrestrial creature.

785
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: You basically encounted the same, the same blocks, the same,

786
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 1: the same struggle to try and imagine, uh, just the

787
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:03,560
Speaker 1: the scope of evolution over the course of time periods

788
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:06,760
Speaker 1: that humans just simply did not evolve to fathom totally.

789
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 1: Now I've got another one for you, Robert, in the

790
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:12,200
Speaker 1: same scope, getting away from the fighting more towards the

791
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 1: reproduction and nurture. Uh, this one's gonna be short, but

792
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: in a group of German scientists reported, I thought this

793
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: was amazing, the first known find of a pair of

794
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: vertebrate animals fossilized in the active mating. So it's a

795
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: pair of turtles from about fifty million years ago or so.

796
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 1: It's described in the article Caught in the Act, the

797
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: first record of copulating fossil vertebrates by Walter G. Joyce

798
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 1: at All in Biology Letters in and these turtles were

799
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: discovered in the Eocene Messil Pit fossil site in Germany,

800
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: which is a site of an ancient lake that's produced

801
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: tons of fossils, and the turtles in question were Aliachellis

802
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: crassus sculpta, an example of what's known as the pig

803
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 1: nosed turtle, and the authors used the fact that the

804
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: two turtles died in the coital position to infer something

805
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:10,279
Speaker 1: interesting about the lake, or at least this was their

806
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: their conclusion. Not everybody agrees with it. But when these

807
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:17,360
Speaker 1: types of turtles mate, the smaller male mounts up on

808
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:21,359
Speaker 1: top of the back of the larger female, and once

809
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: they're in the copulation position, they tend to sort of freeze.

810
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 1: They just sort of stopped moving around and they do

811
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: their thing and they're frozen in position. Now, of course,

812
00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:34,080
Speaker 1: if they're frozen in position and it happens out in

813
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 1: open water, the couple of turtles will tend to sink

814
00:46:37,880 --> 00:46:42,279
Speaker 1: down into the water during the mating process. And what

815
00:46:42,360 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 1: the authors de do is is that the mating began

816
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: on the surface waters which were inhabitable fine, and then

817
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:52,919
Speaker 1: sank down into the abyss hole section of the lake,

818
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 1: which they hypothesized was toxic. And this is their explanation

819
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 1: for why this lake has produced so many fossils. That

820
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: that the abyssle section of the lake is has some

821
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:06,760
Speaker 1: kind of dissolved I think they were talking about dissolved

822
00:47:06,760 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 1: CEO two that would be toxic to animals that have

823
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 1: some kind of respiration quality in their skin. And so

824
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,520
Speaker 1: as the mating pair sank lower during mating, their skin

825
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:19,800
Speaker 1: absorbed poisons and they died in the act, only to

826
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:22,919
Speaker 1: be buried and fossilized in the sediment below and now

827
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: pointed and then laughed at by everyone. Well, I like

828
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:29,280
Speaker 1: how this this story starts out feeling like a James

829
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 1: Bond love sequence, like from Russia with love needs to

830
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:34,799
Speaker 1: be playing over, you know, Da da da da da,

831
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: and then it turns deadly. Yeah, as it always does. Uh,

832
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 1: But yeah, I thought that's kind of interesting. You can

833
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 1: look up the picture of the two turtles. They are

834
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:50,239
Speaker 1: joined in their fossilized state, uh, and it's kind of

835
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to look at. So yeah, as turtles

836
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:56,200
Speaker 1: mating always always are. If you ever go to the zoo,

837
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: you you may encounter mating turtles, and it's all it's

838
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 1: always worth gazing at and listening to because it's generally

839
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:06,239
Speaker 1: there's a lot of grunting involved. I'm not sure have

840
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 1: you seen the YouTube videos of turtles trying to mate

841
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: with various objects such as shoes and bowls. No, I

842
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 1: have not. Yeah, they tend to make a kind of

843
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: squeaking sound that's cute. I will have to look those up.

844
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when

845
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:30,720
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to get back into the combat. Alright,

846
00:48:30,719 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: we're back, So we're finally going to get back into

847
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:37,120
Speaker 1: the combat, and we're going to get back to the

848
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: to some of the dinosaurs that everyone's properly familiar with.

849
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:42,399
Speaker 1: You've been itching for a fight, haven't you. Yes, I have.

850
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: And enough enough of this love, enough of this reproduction

851
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: and birth. Yeah, and we're definitely in terms of the

852
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: big fight card. We're into the upper mid card now,

853
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: so it's time for some really hard hitting action. And

854
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 1: when you when you think about dinosaur combat, there are

855
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 1: a few names that are gonna be on that list,

856
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,320
Speaker 1: and I guarantee for most people, I mean, for modern listeners,

857
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 1: this one might even be up at the top, but

858
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 1: I think it's probably two or three, maybe four, and

859
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: that is the Velociraptor. Now, I wonder if wasn't there

860
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:18,799
Speaker 1: some TV show that does these historical matchups where it's

861
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:21,800
Speaker 1: like who would win in a fight between a velociraptor

862
00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 1: and a medieval night Probably there was some show like

863
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: this wasn't there, so it sounds like something that would

864
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:34,919
Speaker 1: be on that I didn't watch. Samurai versus Velociraptor. Well,

865
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:39,960
Speaker 1: advantage probably goes to the velociraptor. Just just off the

866
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: top of my head without really crunching with data. Uh,

867
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 1: these will tell me why these were pretty terrifying creatures.

868
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: So late Cretaceous is the time period the location asia

869
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:56,240
Speaker 1: modern day Mongolian parts of China. These guys were six

870
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: ft long or one point eight meters long, so there

871
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: an growth the family Dromeo Saraday and they look pretty

872
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 1: much like the creatures you know and love from the

873
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:11,560
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park movies, but with three major differing factors here.

874
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 1: So first of all, we know now that they had feathers,

875
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: likely iridescent feathers, Okay, So I don't think that takes

876
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 1: away from the terrifying nature of the velociraptor. I know

877
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't like it. I love it.

878
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:27,799
Speaker 1: I think that's even better. But birds are scarier than lizards. Yeah,

879
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 1: birds are scary. And you know what, you don't have

880
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: to like it. That's what the science says. Uh. They

881
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: had feathers and they were terrifying. You don't have to

882
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 1: like it to be eaten. They don't care. The velociraptor

883
00:50:38,120 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: doesn't care if you're if you approve, if it's uh,

884
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 1: if it's plumage. And second, the head is all wrong

885
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: in the movies. Okay, so the actual velociraptor probably had

886
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: a head that was you know, it is a long, low,

887
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:55,799
Speaker 1: flat snouted head. It looked more like an alligator. And

888
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 1: a third it was it was This was a smaller

889
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: creature than you see in them, of vise. It was

890
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:04,719
Speaker 1: about the size of a large dog, not as tall. Yeah, yeah,

891
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: a bit longer. So the creature you see in Jurassic

892
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:13,000
Speaker 1: Park is actually patterned after Udnonicus, which is a close

893
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:17,240
Speaker 1: relative in the same family. So Michael Crichton basically wrote

894
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:22,919
Speaker 1: about Dnonicus, but thought, hey, velass velociraptor sounds cooler. We'll

895
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 1: just make it be Adnonicus and then we'll call it

896
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:27,279
Speaker 1: of a loci raptor. Now I don't know if this

897
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: theory is correct, but I have read that people essentially

898
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: figured out why Crichton chose the name of velociraptor, and

899
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: it's that they think he was using as a major

900
00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:43,959
Speaker 1: research resource for Jurassic Park, this one particular book by

901
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:48,279
Speaker 1: this author who had an idiosyncratic view of Dinonicus and

902
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 1: thought that it was a velociraptor of a different type.

903
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: So I have read that. I don't know if that's correct,

904
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:57,000
Speaker 1: and I guess I guess Michael Crichton has passed on

905
00:51:57,080 --> 00:51:59,600
Speaker 1: and we can't ask him, but but I have heard

906
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: that's jested as how that mix up happened. Okay, so

907
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: he might have had a little more excuse there as

908
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: opposed to just it sounds cooler. But regardless, we know

909
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:11,840
Speaker 1: better now, and we're still depicting these Jurassic Park movies.

910
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 1: They're still making more, aren't they. Yeah, they're still making more,

911
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:18,520
Speaker 1: and they're still depicting the velociraptor as Adnonicus without feathers,

912
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 1: which I think they have a responsibility to to fix that.

913
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, nobody's going in and watching Jurassic Park

914
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:29,440
Speaker 1: or Jurassic World or whatever. The next one is going

915
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:33,719
Speaker 1: to be called as their hopefully as their primary educational

916
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: dinosaur documentary. Hopefully that's not also where you get your

917
00:52:39,239 --> 00:52:42,719
Speaker 1: info about chaos theory, right. But but on the other hand,

918
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 1: like this is still like a prime visualization of dinosaur life.

919
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:49,479
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a it's amazing footage. They're putting

920
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 1: all this money into it. Why not make it match

921
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 1: up with our current understanding of the fossil record. I

922
00:52:55,600 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 1: why not have some some feathered dnonicus or just go ahead,

923
00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: have feathered velociraptors. Because the thing is, even though they

924
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 1: were smaller than what you see in the movie, they

925
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: still would have been deadly, especially if they were hunting

926
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,320
Speaker 1: in a pack. Yeah. Yeah, I mean think how scary

927
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,439
Speaker 1: that would be to get get attacked by these tiny things? Yeah,

928
00:53:11,520 --> 00:53:13,319
Speaker 1: or you know, dog size thing. Nobody wants to get

929
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 1: eaten by a pack of dogs as tiny as a

930
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: relative word or a tiny relative to what they were.

931
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 1: And it's certainly in the dinosaurs seen a scheme of things.

932
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: So no matter how you shake it, the raptor was

933
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:29,399
Speaker 1: indeed a member of the terrible cloud lizards group here,

934
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:33,880
Speaker 1: all of which were swift, fearsome hunters, probably pack hunters

935
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 1: in many cases. Uh, there's controversy about that we can

936
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 1: get into it, get back to especially concerning Denona, because

937
00:53:40,280 --> 00:53:44,560
Speaker 1: they would have had large brains, elongated sickle shaped claws

938
00:53:44,560 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: on the second toe of each foot, and uh as

939
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,360
Speaker 1: the as Jurassic Park indicates. They would have been clever girls.

940
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: But they were probably not as smart as cats or

941
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 1: dogs are today, so don't get too excited about that.

942
00:53:56,680 --> 00:54:00,400
Speaker 1: They couldn't have, you know, piloted a helicopter, so you

943
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:03,359
Speaker 1: think maybe smart for dinosaurs, but not as smart as

944
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:09,320
Speaker 1: the movies would have you believe. Probably mean that's probably

945
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: a larger conversation, right, because I've seen my car to

946
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: try to open a door, So who's to say that

947
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:18,600
Speaker 1: a dinosaur couldn't open a door. We'll leave that one

948
00:54:18,640 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 1: for another another episode. But will your cat run with

949
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 1: your motorcycle gang? Oh well no, probably not. I think

950
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: she would. She would flatly refuse to do that. Okay,

951
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 1: we'll leave Jurassic World out of this now. Now tell

952
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: us about the other contender here, Robert, all right, the

953
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: other contender is Protoceratops. This one you've seen many pictures

954
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: of this one before. It was a common dinosaur, and

955
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 1: it's essentially a smaller tri Serratops. Smaller horned dinosaur, but

956
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,959
Speaker 1: without any of the without any of the horns, say

957
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:50,879
Speaker 1: for a sort of nose bulge. Okay, now it does

958
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:53,600
Speaker 1: have like a frill, right, yes, it does have a

959
00:54:53,719 --> 00:54:56,880
Speaker 1: broad neck frill. And this was primarily to to anchor

960
00:54:57,000 --> 00:55:01,359
Speaker 1: muscles for the heavy toothed beak and aw, so it

961
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 1: was and it and its one horn was more of

962
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:05,600
Speaker 1: a crest, and this crest was larger and older males,

963
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:08,760
Speaker 1: suggesting it was probably used in mating battles. It walked

964
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 1: on all fours, though it may have been able to

965
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:14,759
Speaker 1: run on its back legs when needed. So this is

966
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: where we get a really important dinosaur combat fossil, also

967
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:25,040
Speaker 1: known as the fighting dinosaurs. Uh and this was This

968
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:29,279
Speaker 1: was a nine find in Mongolia, and it seems to

969
00:55:29,280 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 1: show a deadly battle between a velociraptor and a protoceratops

970
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:36,839
Speaker 1: roughly seventy four million years old. One interpretation is that

971
00:55:36,880 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 1: the raptor is eviscerating its prey with its claws, while

972
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: the protoceratops is caving in the predator's chest with its

973
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: horned beak. Another interpretation is that the raptor is slicing

974
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 1: open the throat and the Protoceratops is biting down on

975
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: the raptor's right arm with its beak. Either way, it's

976
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:57,440
Speaker 1: a deadly tableau that indicates they died at the same time.

977
00:55:58,160 --> 00:56:01,839
Speaker 1: UM A Polish Mongolian team discovered it in the White

978
00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:05,439
Speaker 1: stand Zone cliffs of the Southern Gobi Desert and it's

979
00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:08,880
Speaker 1: considered a national treasure of Mongolia and you can you

980
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: can see it on display in the Mongolian Dinosaur Museum

981
00:56:11,840 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: in ulm Pitar. I've never heard of that museum before,

982
00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:18,359
Speaker 1: but Mongolia is a treasure trove of fossils. I bet

983
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:20,840
Speaker 1: that place is awesome. Yeah. I tried to go to

984
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:23,440
Speaker 1: the website but it was down. I would certainly love

985
00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone who's actually been there. So interpretations

986
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:30,800
Speaker 1: vary on this encounter, Like you know, certainly it's an encounter.

987
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,640
Speaker 1: Nobody seems to be doubting that, but some look to

988
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 1: it as a preserved example of a common encounter like these.

989
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: This was the common predator and this was the common prey,

990
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 1: and this kind of thing went down all the time

991
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:43,799
Speaker 1: in the past. Others have argued that it might have

992
00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,239
Speaker 1: been a chance encounter between two species that didn't have

993
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,920
Speaker 1: much to do with each other. Um this, and this

994
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: illustrates some of the problems with basing everything you know

995
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 1: about prehistoric species interaction on a single bit of evidence totally.

996
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:03,000
Speaker 1: But that's not all. Luckily so, a two thousand ten

997
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:09,400
Speaker 1: study published in the journal paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology revealed

998
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,919
Speaker 1: some corroborating fossil evidence uh so that we're talking about

999
00:57:13,960 --> 00:57:18,960
Speaker 1: Upper Cretaceous deposits uh in inner Mongolia UH that features

1000
00:57:19,080 --> 00:57:23,640
Speaker 1: a mass of badly eroded Protoceratops bones. Among them, they

1001
00:57:23,640 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 1: found two velociraptor like teeth and bite marks, So the

1002
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: paleontologists stressed that this uh, this raptor in this case

1003
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:36,400
Speaker 1: likely scavenged its meal. But this find and the fighting

1004
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 1: dinosaurs of find indicate that the creatures probably regularly fed

1005
00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:45,360
Speaker 1: on Protoceratops, both as hunters and scavengers. And they point

1006
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:48,880
Speaker 1: out that almost all living carnivores do the exact same

1007
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:53,600
Speaker 1: thing with their core prey species. You would rather just

1008
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: come across a dead one and eat that without having

1009
00:57:56,560 --> 00:58:01,240
Speaker 1: to struggle, But if you're starving, you'll yeah, or or

1010
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:04,840
Speaker 1: likewise that maybe you know, maybe you prefer the thrill

1011
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: of the kill that the fresh meat. Though of course,

1012
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 1: any interaction like that is going to bring the risk

1013
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:13,080
Speaker 1: of injury or death. Uh, and injury for a predator

1014
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 1: can be a major thing. Like I remember researching these

1015
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 1: these cases where male cheetahs develop a strategy for bringing

1016
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: down an ostrich, which generally isn't on the menu. And

1017
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is taking down an ostrich is dangerous.

1018
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:31,560
Speaker 1: And if you're a cheetah that depends on high speed,

1019
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 1: an injury can mean starvation because it's not like you

1020
00:58:34,640 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 1: can just go on the shelf and recoup and then

1021
00:58:36,560 --> 00:58:38,200
Speaker 1: get back in the game. Now that that could be

1022
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Um, So yeah, taking on dangerous prey

1023
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:47,120
Speaker 1: is dangerous. Well, that is a perfect segue into our

1024
00:58:47,160 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: next conflict, which is the showdown between Tanantasaurus and Dynonicus.

1025
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 1: So now we're gonna be looking at what are assumed

1026
00:58:56,320 --> 00:59:00,320
Speaker 1: to be a standard predator and prey species of North America.

1027
00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: So Tanantasaurus, which is uh that means sinew lizard lived

1028
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 1: in the early Cretaceous a little more than a hundred

1029
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 1: million years ago in North America, especially western regions, and

1030
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:14,640
Speaker 1: it's about six to eight meters long, up to around

1031
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:19,320
Speaker 1: two ms high, about two thousand to hundred pounds, and

1032
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 1: then we're back to Denonicus. Uh. That's the genus that

1033
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 1: includes the species Denonicus and tirapists. That's also Early Cretaceous,

1034
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 1: same same time period, pretty much a hundred million years ago,

1035
00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:36,000
Speaker 1: roughly uh, North America, United States, and Denonicus is up

1036
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:38,040
Speaker 1: to about three and a half ms long, maybe a

1037
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:40,600
Speaker 1: little more than a meter high, usually about a hundred

1038
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds, so also not huge. You know, we

1039
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: were just talking about the smallness of the raptor um.

1040
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: There is a great story about this fossil tableau I'm

1041
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 1: about I'm about to explain. But the story is by

1042
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: Desmond Maxwell and the December nine to January two thousand

1043
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:01,800
Speaker 1: issue of Natural History magazine, which I think that's the

1044
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 1: magazine put out by the American Museum and Natural History,

1045
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: I think UM. And it's describing the work of the

1046
01:00:07,800 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 1: Yale Peabody Museum paleontologist John Ostrom and others in understanding

1047
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:20,000
Speaker 1: Dononicus largely through its relationship with its supposed prey to Nontosaurus.

1048
01:00:20,000 --> 01:00:22,560
Speaker 1: So John Ostrom is now known as this really important

1049
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: very influential twentieth century paleontologist, and he's widely associated with

1050
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: our current understanding of dinosaurs as the ancestors of modern birds.

1051
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:35,400
Speaker 1: People had gone back and forth in the paleontology community

1052
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: about the relationship between dinosaurs and birds. I think during

1053
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:42,600
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds people associated dinosaurs with birds, but then

1054
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:46,000
Speaker 1: a lizard model seemed to take over, and then the

1055
01:00:46,040 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: bird model started coming back. So in the mid nineteen sixties,

1056
01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:55,640
Speaker 1: Ostrom was working on fossil fossil excavations in the Cloverlely

1057
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: Formation in Montana and Wyoming. I think this was southern Montana,

1058
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:02,680
Speaker 1: and on the last day of the digging season in

1059
01:01:02,800 --> 01:01:07,680
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, Ostrom discovered a composed scene of fossil

1060
01:01:07,720 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: bones that was totally unlike anything he had encountered in

1061
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:14,720
Speaker 1: his work before, where there were five specimens in total

1062
01:01:14,800 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 1: at this site. Four were small therapods. Now, when you

1063
01:01:18,680 --> 01:01:23,520
Speaker 1: think therapod, that's sort of the velociraptor or tyrannosaurus kind

1064
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 1: of model, you know, two legs, the that that kind

1065
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 1: of thing, and then pieces of one large ornithopod. Her

1066
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:34,440
Speaker 1: before in the site where these were discovered came to

1067
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:39,280
Speaker 1: be known by the Yale excavation crew as the shrine site. Yeah,

1068
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 1: it evokes this kind of holy mystery. Neither of these

1069
01:01:42,800 --> 01:01:45,680
Speaker 1: species had been described in the scientific literature before, though

1070
01:01:45,720 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: I think denonicas skeletons had been found, They hadn't just

1071
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:52,320
Speaker 1: they just hadn't really been described by scientists. And the

1072
01:01:52,360 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 1: small therapods were most noticeable for this one huge hook

1073
01:01:56,680 --> 01:02:00,360
Speaker 1: shaped claw found on each foot, and this in them

1074
01:02:00,360 --> 01:02:05,160
Speaker 1: their name Denonicus, also of course means terrible claw. Meanwhile,

1075
01:02:05,240 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 1: this one large herbivore was called Tanantosaurus, meaning sinew lizard.

1076
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: It's kind of they should have called it like gristle lizard. Now,

1077
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:20,840
Speaker 1: because of the arrangement of the fossils, Ostrom came to

1078
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 1: a strange conclusion. These four predator carcasses lie, you know,

1079
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 1: they lay buried around the remains of one large prey animal,

1080
01:02:29,840 --> 01:02:32,440
Speaker 1: and because of the nature of the area. Looking at

1081
01:02:32,840 --> 01:02:36,400
Speaker 1: how the bodies were oriented and some stuff about the sediment,

1082
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: Ostrom didn't think the bones could have been washed into

1083
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,680
Speaker 1: the plate into that place by moving water. The fossils

1084
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 1: appeared to be lying in the place where the animals died,

1085
01:02:46,280 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: so he concluded that Denonicus was a pack hunter. Now

1086
01:02:50,960 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 1: you remember this from Jurassic Park, right, their pack hunters,

1087
01:02:54,520 --> 01:02:57,040
Speaker 1: you know all that. So the scene, as you should

1088
01:02:57,080 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 1: imagine it, is that a pack of around eight denonic

1089
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:05,080
Speaker 1: becus attacked, wore down, and killed this much larger prey animal,

1090
01:03:05,200 --> 01:03:08,560
Speaker 1: the Tanantosaurus, but not before about half of the hunting

1091
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:12,480
Speaker 1: pack was injured and killed in the struggle. And now

1092
01:03:12,520 --> 01:03:15,960
Speaker 1: this interpretation has remained very controversial. Scientists go back and

1093
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:18,880
Speaker 1: forth on it. In Jurassic Park, we do see the

1094
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:23,520
Speaker 1: stand in for the Denonicus executing these complex pack hunting behaviors,

1095
01:03:23,520 --> 01:03:26,640
Speaker 1: but real evidence for this kind of pack hunting behavior

1096
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:30,600
Speaker 1: has been kind of elusive. And the article basically mentions

1097
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:34,160
Speaker 1: three main lines of evidence that the Didonicus were pack hunters.

1098
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:37,680
Speaker 1: One of them is the arrangement of bones itself, the

1099
01:03:37,720 --> 01:03:41,080
Speaker 1: weird way the bones are laid out at the shrine. Now,

1100
01:03:41,200 --> 01:03:44,160
Speaker 1: it's fairly certain that the fossilized animals died in the

1101
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:46,680
Speaker 1: position where they were found. And here's one good piece

1102
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:51,520
Speaker 1: of evidence. After a dinosaur dies, tendons in the vertebrae

1103
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:54,720
Speaker 1: cause a curling up of the neck and the tail

1104
01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:58,480
Speaker 1: spine along the backbone essentially, and this is why you

1105
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 1: sometimes see dinosaur falls with their necks curled back in

1106
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 1: these crazy positions, as if screaming in pain. You know

1107
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:09,480
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Uh. This is generally thought to

1108
01:04:09,520 --> 01:04:14,560
Speaker 1: be called caused by this contraction of the vertebral tendons

1109
01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:18,520
Speaker 1: as the animal rots. Now, in the specimen the Tenantosaurus,

1110
01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: the tail and neck were heavily curved towards each other,

1111
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: making it almost impossible that the body had been moved

1112
01:04:24,360 --> 01:04:27,520
Speaker 1: around by water currents. It looked like this is where

1113
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:31,600
Speaker 1: it was when it died. So if multiple Denonicus died

1114
01:04:31,640 --> 01:04:36,160
Speaker 1: alongside this one large Tenantosaurus at the same time and

1115
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 1: in the same place, what would explain that other than

1116
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:43,880
Speaker 1: some deadly fight for survival? Uh? So, the Tenantosaurus is

1117
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:47,720
Speaker 1: certainly large enough to batter, crush, and kill the relatively

1118
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:52,120
Speaker 1: small predators. Right that it wouldn't be one Dnonicus versus

1119
01:04:52,160 --> 01:04:54,520
Speaker 1: a Tenanto sourus wouldn't be much of a fight. The

1120
01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:58,320
Speaker 1: prey animal is much bigger. Uh. Then again, if a

1121
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: pack of eight attacked the this one prey animal and

1122
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:04,360
Speaker 1: half of the pack died, that does not sound like

1123
01:05:04,400 --> 01:05:08,240
Speaker 1: a sustainable hunting strategy. That is that that that is

1124
01:05:08,280 --> 01:05:11,160
Speaker 1: that does not pay off for the hunters here, right,

1125
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 1: So was it a fluke? Are we seeing some incredibly weird,

1126
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 1: rare event where the predators desperate and starving? There's an

1127
01:05:19,720 --> 01:05:22,919
Speaker 1: alternate explanation of the site, which is that the denonicus

1128
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:27,160
Speaker 1: were scavenging. The ideas that a bunch of dnonicus came

1129
01:05:27,200 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 1: across the corpse of a dead tenanta sore and somehow

1130
01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:33,400
Speaker 1: died in the feeding process of scavenging on it. But

1131
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:36,600
Speaker 1: then you're faced with another odd question, what killed him? Like?

1132
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:40,080
Speaker 1: Why did all these different denonicus die while scavenging this

1133
01:05:40,120 --> 01:05:44,680
Speaker 1: one corpse? The scavenging interpretation that has been advocated by

1134
01:05:44,680 --> 01:05:47,880
Speaker 1: the prominent paleontologist Jack Horner, And I want to read

1135
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:50,360
Speaker 1: a quote from the article I described It said, quote

1136
01:05:50,640 --> 01:05:55,200
Speaker 1: Horner likens the idea of a Tenantasaurus killing four dinonicus

1137
01:05:55,200 --> 01:06:00,320
Speaker 1: to that of a lone willed to best dispatching four lions. True,

1138
01:06:00,320 --> 01:06:02,200
Speaker 1: the will to beast is bigger than the lions, right,

1139
01:06:02,240 --> 01:06:04,280
Speaker 1: but it just seems kind of crazy thinking it would

1140
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:08,000
Speaker 1: like kill all these predators. But back to the quote, Yet,

1141
01:06:08,440 --> 01:06:10,960
Speaker 1: an adult will to beast might weigh from fifty to

1142
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:14,240
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds more than an adult lion, compared with

1143
01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:17,760
Speaker 1: the difference of about a ton between the Tenantosaurus and

1144
01:06:17,800 --> 01:06:20,960
Speaker 1: the Dynonicus preserved at the shrine site. A will to

1145
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 1: beast falling on a lion would probably inflict little damage.

1146
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:29,800
Speaker 1: A Tenantosurus would crush at anonicus, So some evidence going

1147
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:31,680
Speaker 1: both ways there. It's hard to know what to think,

1148
01:06:32,080 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: but a couple other interesting lines of thought. One of

1149
01:06:34,640 --> 01:06:38,760
Speaker 1: them is teeth. Now, the Tanata source remains are associated

1150
01:06:38,800 --> 01:06:41,200
Speaker 1: with lots of Denonicus teeth. It seems like when you

1151
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:45,120
Speaker 1: find one of these prey animals dead, there's Denonicus teeth

1152
01:06:45,160 --> 01:06:50,080
Speaker 1: all around. That tells you something, right, It indicates a

1153
01:06:50,080 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: predator prey relationship um there. And there's so many Denonicus

1154
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:58,240
Speaker 1: teeth found with Tenantosurus remains, way more than you could

1155
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:01,520
Speaker 1: reasonably expect to be lost to a like by a

1156
01:07:01,640 --> 01:07:07,240
Speaker 1: soliditary scavenger. If one came across one Dnonicus was eating

1157
01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:10,400
Speaker 1: off of a dead corpse, it wouldn't leave eleven teeth

1158
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:13,000
Speaker 1: in it, right, That's just too many teeth to be

1159
01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:17,800
Speaker 1: lost to be sustainable. Also, the placement of the teeth

1160
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:21,960
Speaker 1: tends to concentrate in the abdomen and pelvis. Why is

1161
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 1: that interesting, Well, it's actually consistent with what you see

1162
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:30,080
Speaker 1: in predators today, where predators tend to feed on these areas,

1163
01:07:30,160 --> 01:07:33,240
Speaker 1: the abdomen and the pelvis first. When they kill an

1164
01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:35,800
Speaker 1: animal freshly, Uh, they tend to go for the parts

1165
01:07:35,800 --> 01:07:38,160
Speaker 1: while they're still sort of warm and moist, to be

1166
01:07:38,200 --> 01:07:41,640
Speaker 1: a little gross, to be a little wallace as children's

1167
01:07:41,720 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: children's book material, folks. So if the dnonicus were doing

1168
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:47,680
Speaker 1: the same, it looks like they were feeding on a

1169
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:51,480
Speaker 1: fresh kill, not scavenging piecemeal on some dead animal that

1170
01:07:51,600 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 1: came across. And then one final point, the anatomy of

1171
01:07:55,320 --> 01:07:58,320
Speaker 1: the dnonicus makes it look plausibly like a pack hunter.

1172
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 1: It's got this one terrible law that looks effective for

1173
01:08:01,360 --> 01:08:05,880
Speaker 1: both grasping and slashing. Uh. The the an tirapists part

1174
01:08:05,920 --> 01:08:10,040
Speaker 1: of the name the dnonicus and tirapists that means counterbalancing,

1175
01:08:10,400 --> 01:08:14,080
Speaker 1: referring to the bone structure of the tail. Now why

1176
01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: would that matter, Well, it means that the animal is

1177
01:08:17,080 --> 01:08:21,519
Speaker 1: capable of making its tail rigid and using it as

1178
01:08:21,560 --> 01:08:25,280
Speaker 1: a counterweight to balance and control the movement of its body,

1179
01:08:25,680 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 1: which suggests kind of quick graceful movement and the lightweight

1180
01:08:31,280 --> 01:08:33,799
Speaker 1: of the predator's body also kind of suggests a fast,

1181
01:08:33,880 --> 01:08:38,160
Speaker 1: active hunter rather than a passive scavenger. So we still

1182
01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:41,440
Speaker 1: don't know whether the pack hunting interpretation of the Dononicus

1183
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:45,080
Speaker 1: is correct, but some subsequent studies kind of try to

1184
01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:47,920
Speaker 1: endorse the idea. Others have some evidence against it. We

1185
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:51,000
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but this one site, with all

1186
01:08:51,040 --> 01:08:54,920
Speaker 1: these with these dead predators and dead prey together is

1187
01:08:54,920 --> 01:08:57,360
Speaker 1: still something that's really interesting to think about and how

1188
01:08:57,400 --> 01:09:01,439
Speaker 1: it informs our understanding of how these almost hunted. All Right,

1189
01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 1: it's main event time. And when it comes to main

1190
01:09:04,320 --> 01:09:07,479
Speaker 1: event to combat between dinosaurs, you know, what's what's the

1191
01:09:07,600 --> 01:09:11,480
Speaker 1: kirk Khan, What's the Flair steamboat, the Massawa Coba Kobashi,

1192
01:09:11,800 --> 01:09:15,960
Speaker 1: the batman joke, or the gandolf ball rog encounter. What's

1193
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,519
Speaker 1: the one that that is so prominently featured in so

1194
01:09:19,560 --> 01:09:23,160
Speaker 1: many dinosaur books for children, for adults, even like a

1195
01:09:23,240 --> 01:09:28,639
Speaker 1: paleontology textbooks. What is the what is the iconic battle? Well,

1196
01:09:28,640 --> 01:09:31,280
Speaker 1: it has to be everybody's favorite herbivore, which would be

1197
01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:34,880
Speaker 1: what tri saratops and everybody's favorite carnivore, which would be

1198
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:37,720
Speaker 1: turning the source Rex. That's correct. Now, I will say

1199
01:09:37,720 --> 01:09:43,240
Speaker 1: Stegasaurus is also a pretty awesome herbivore. People love those thagomizers. Yeah,

1200
01:09:43,280 --> 01:09:47,479
Speaker 1: the thagomizers named for Gary Larson cartoon. These are, of

1201
01:09:47,479 --> 01:09:51,040
Speaker 1: course the spikes and the tail of the Stegasaurus. Uh. Sadly,

1202
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:54,599
Speaker 1: Stegasaurus will have to wait for another episode to get

1203
01:09:54,600 --> 01:09:58,160
Speaker 1: his due. But in this case, yes, t Rex versus

1204
01:09:58,160 --> 01:10:02,880
Speaker 1: tri Sarah tops the cl pasic the paleo artists the

1205
01:10:03,000 --> 01:10:05,560
Speaker 1: favorite battle. So let's go into a rundown of the

1206
01:10:05,800 --> 01:10:09,760
Speaker 1: two combinants. Here we have Tarannosaurus rex t rex late

1207
01:10:09,760 --> 01:10:14,559
Speaker 1: Cretaceous North America and Asia as It's stomping grounds size

1208
01:10:14,960 --> 01:10:18,160
Speaker 1: up to forty nine feet fifteen meters long, so an

1209
01:10:18,160 --> 01:10:20,720
Speaker 1: adult human would would fall short of the knee. So

1210
01:10:20,800 --> 01:10:24,680
Speaker 1: this was one of the largest carnosaur dinosaurs uh and one,

1211
01:10:24,800 --> 01:10:28,120
Speaker 1: and therefore one of the largest terrestrial carnivores ever to

1212
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:30,760
Speaker 1: walk the Earth. Yeah. I think it's just the Spinosaurus

1213
01:10:30,800 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 1: and the Gigantosaurus up there with it. Yeah, yeah, I

1214
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:37,519
Speaker 1: believe so. And it's a It's diet probably primarily dependent

1215
01:10:37,600 --> 01:10:42,479
Speaker 1: on duck build hadrosaurs and for a while paleontologists drifted

1216
01:10:42,520 --> 01:10:45,280
Speaker 1: towards uh, when I tend to think of as a

1217
01:10:45,360 --> 01:10:48,680
Speaker 1: bully scavenger view of the beast. So so, it's this

1218
01:10:48,920 --> 01:10:53,280
Speaker 1: enormous creature obviously, but there were there were theories about

1219
01:10:53,320 --> 01:10:56,599
Speaker 1: its its size and its speed that made the paleonta

1220
01:10:56,800 --> 01:10:58,640
Speaker 1: to say, well, maybe what this thing did is it

1221
01:10:58,760 --> 01:11:02,639
Speaker 1: just scared away the predators from an existing kill. That's

1222
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:04,639
Speaker 1: my corps get away from it. Yeah, And who's gonna

1223
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:07,639
Speaker 1: stop t rex? Because once in this theory, this view

1224
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:10,519
Speaker 1: of a of a slow t rex, once it ambles up,

1225
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:13,360
Speaker 1: you better eating all you can eat, because it's it's

1226
01:11:13,400 --> 01:11:16,840
Speaker 1: gonna get whatever it wants at that point. Now, opinions varied,

1227
01:11:16,960 --> 01:11:20,520
Speaker 1: but over time the consensus drifted back towards the apex

1228
01:11:20,560 --> 01:11:23,479
Speaker 1: predator model of the t rex, the saying that it

1229
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:26,759
Speaker 1: likely hit among the trees and then ran full force

1230
01:11:26,960 --> 01:11:30,160
Speaker 1: jaws open at its prey. Uh. And it's certainly had

1231
01:11:30,240 --> 01:11:33,320
Speaker 1: encounters with triceratops as well, which we'll get to. And

1232
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:35,839
Speaker 1: of course that's our our next combatant in this battle,

1233
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:38,640
Speaker 1: the triceratops. Now, you might put up for the stigasaur,

1234
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:44,040
Speaker 1: but I think triceratops is the most widely beloved herbivore dinosaur.

1235
01:11:45,000 --> 01:11:47,320
Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a very strong case for

1236
01:11:47,400 --> 01:11:50,200
Speaker 1: that being true. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's you

1237
01:11:50,280 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 1: just look at it and you can tell that this

1238
01:11:52,400 --> 01:11:55,960
Speaker 1: is this is an animal you're behind and to go

1239
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,080
Speaker 1: back to Jurassic Park. Uh. Stegosaurus I don't think made

1240
01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:03,679
Speaker 1: it into the film, but tri sarratops Is is prominently featured.

1241
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 1: All the human cast members, maybe except for Jeff Goldblum,

1242
01:12:07,280 --> 01:12:09,439
Speaker 1: I think, are hugging on it and touching it because

1243
01:12:09,439 --> 01:12:13,240
Speaker 1: it's laying there recovering from its illness. Surely getting some

1244
01:12:13,280 --> 01:12:17,080
Speaker 1: staff infections from that thing. Yeah. Meanwhile, Stegosaurus is off

1245
01:12:17,160 --> 01:12:20,720
Speaker 1: camera asking hey, what about my scene? Stephen? When when

1246
01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:23,080
Speaker 1: do I go on? And Steven Spielberg is like, uh,

1247
01:12:23,360 --> 01:12:25,720
Speaker 1: they did, well just a minute, we're we have to

1248
01:12:25,720 --> 01:12:27,559
Speaker 1: do this scene. I think they show up in the

1249
01:12:27,600 --> 01:12:31,439
Speaker 1: sequel in the Lost World, do they? Yeah, I remember correctly.

1250
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:33,960
Speaker 1: I think that they're somebody's taking a picture of one

1251
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:37,320
Speaker 1: and the Stegosaurus becomes disturbed by the loud noise that

1252
01:12:37,360 --> 01:12:41,120
Speaker 1: the camera makes while it's winding its film back. Okay, alright,

1253
01:12:41,160 --> 01:12:43,760
Speaker 1: good to know, good to know. So the tri Steratops

1254
01:12:43,920 --> 01:12:48,439
Speaker 1: late Cretaceous North American thirty ft nine meters long, the

1255
01:12:48,479 --> 01:12:51,680
Speaker 1: most famous of the horned dinosaurs, also the largest and

1256
01:12:51,720 --> 01:12:54,759
Speaker 1: the most abundant, so they lived in herds across North America.

1257
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:57,960
Speaker 1: And unlike the net frills of other horned dinosaurs, and

1258
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:01,600
Speaker 1: there are several varieties and even some sub varieties of

1259
01:13:01,640 --> 01:13:05,800
Speaker 1: Triceratops here, Unlike these others, though, this frill was solid bone,

1260
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:08,920
Speaker 1: a defensive structure to protect the neck. And we have

1261
01:13:09,000 --> 01:13:12,879
Speaker 1: fossil evidence of encounters between Triceratops and t Rex, including

1262
01:13:12,880 --> 01:13:18,000
Speaker 1: evidence of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a triceratops

1263
01:13:18,000 --> 01:13:21,000
Speaker 1: brow horn. Whoa healed and now that means it it

1264
01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:24,679
Speaker 1: met a t Rex and went and lived to tell

1265
01:13:24,720 --> 01:13:27,760
Speaker 1: the tale exactly it either it at least drove the

1266
01:13:27,760 --> 01:13:32,880
Speaker 1: creature away or managed to escape and maybe even lethally interested,

1267
01:13:33,000 --> 01:13:36,760
Speaker 1: who knows, but either way the message seems to be Triceratops,

1268
01:13:36,880 --> 01:13:40,080
Speaker 1: when it encountered t Rex, it was capable of holding

1269
01:13:40,120 --> 01:13:42,639
Speaker 1: its own at least in some cases. Because of course,

1270
01:13:42,640 --> 01:13:46,680
Speaker 1: you're also gonna have varying situations of age and size, right,

1271
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:51,719
Speaker 1: like a young um, a young tristerotopes encountering older t rex,

1272
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:55,760
Speaker 1: which I understand plays into Karen Wallace's I Am a

1273
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:59,000
Speaker 1: Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I think that's why every That's one

1274
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:01,200
Speaker 1: of the reasons some of the the reviews were so

1275
01:14:02,320 --> 01:14:04,960
Speaker 1: critical is that I don't know for sure because I

1276
01:14:04,960 --> 01:14:07,080
Speaker 1: haven't read it, but I think the t rex kills

1277
01:14:07,200 --> 01:14:11,360
Speaker 1: try stereotops. This is like the grail legend king version

1278
01:14:11,400 --> 01:14:14,320
Speaker 1: of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the king whose strength is failing.

1279
01:14:15,280 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 1: Uh okay, So where's the fossil evidence? Where where do

1280
01:14:19,240 --> 01:14:24,200
Speaker 1: we actually have an encounter between these two creatures. Well,

1281
01:14:24,320 --> 01:14:27,000
Speaker 1: we do have what has been referred to as the

1282
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:31,559
Speaker 1: Montana dooling dinosaurs, and this is from about sixty eight

1283
01:14:31,600 --> 01:14:36,799
Speaker 1: million years ago. Now here's a little fine print. UM.

1284
01:14:36,840 --> 01:14:39,680
Speaker 1: Based on interpretation, seems like what we have here is

1285
01:14:39,680 --> 01:14:45,160
Speaker 1: an encounter between the smaller nano Tyrannis, which is a

1286
01:14:45,280 --> 01:14:48,960
Speaker 1: close relative of the t rex, though some people argue

1287
01:14:48,960 --> 01:14:51,479
Speaker 1: that this might be a juvenile t Rex tiny enough

1288
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:57,559
Speaker 1: to be injected into your bloodstream attack your DNA directly. Yeah,

1289
01:14:57,600 --> 01:14:59,960
Speaker 1: well not not that small. Don't let the nano foo,

1290
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,639
Speaker 1: will you? Um? Dino scale is still in play, but

1291
01:15:02,640 --> 01:15:06,000
Speaker 1: but certainly a smaller t Rex. And then the other

1292
01:15:06,080 --> 01:15:11,240
Speaker 1: creature uh is Casmio Sarine Saratopsian, and this would have

1293
01:15:11,280 --> 01:15:15,360
Speaker 1: been from the Triceratops family, but smaller. Though some people

1294
01:15:15,479 --> 01:15:17,559
Speaker 1: are commenting on this fossil, go ahead and call it

1295
01:15:17,640 --> 01:15:21,439
Speaker 1: a Triceratops based on what we've seen of this fossil,

1296
01:15:21,479 --> 01:15:24,160
Speaker 1: let's believe that the two dinos killed each other in battle.

1297
01:15:24,360 --> 01:15:27,519
Speaker 1: T Rex suffered a crushed skull and chest, and its

1298
01:15:27,520 --> 01:15:31,519
Speaker 1: teeth pierced the horned one's skull as well. They were buried,

1299
01:15:31,760 --> 01:15:36,120
Speaker 1: probably by an earthquake because the theories like an earthquake happen,

1300
01:15:36,320 --> 01:15:38,599
Speaker 1: So they died and their bodies were there and then

1301
01:15:38,640 --> 01:15:41,519
Speaker 1: an earthquake buried them. Or does it look like the

1302
01:15:41,520 --> 01:15:44,200
Speaker 1: earthquake was going on while they were fighting. I don't

1303
01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:47,400
Speaker 1: want it to be the last either. Interpretation is pretty amazing,

1304
01:15:47,520 --> 01:15:51,080
Speaker 1: like you think of your most cinematic battles between hero

1305
01:15:51,520 --> 01:15:55,559
Speaker 1: and villain. Does it ever end in both characters killing

1306
01:15:55,560 --> 01:15:58,280
Speaker 1: each other and then a volcano erupts and covers them,

1307
01:15:58,400 --> 01:16:02,240
Speaker 1: or or an earthquake swallows them hold or a mudslide

1308
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:04,679
Speaker 1: buries them like that kind of thing is rare even

1309
01:16:04,680 --> 01:16:10,200
Speaker 1: in our most uh you know, imagine fictional showdowns, modern

1310
01:16:10,360 --> 01:16:13,040
Speaker 1: modern stories. You don't want the hero to die usually.

1311
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:16,240
Speaker 1: I mean, what do they have, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty,

1312
01:16:16,360 --> 01:16:18,960
Speaker 1: like plunge to their death together or something that would

1313
01:16:18,960 --> 01:16:21,919
Speaker 1: be a pretty awesome fossil Can you imagine a future

1314
01:16:22,000 --> 01:16:26,080
Speaker 1: generation of intelligent squid creatures looking through the fossil record

1315
01:16:26,120 --> 01:16:28,120
Speaker 1: of humanity and they say, well, we don't have a

1316
01:16:28,160 --> 01:16:31,000
Speaker 1: lot to go on about human on human combat, but

1317
01:16:31,080 --> 01:16:34,960
Speaker 1: we do have the Sherlock Moriarty fossil fine and it's amazing,

1318
01:16:36,280 --> 01:16:39,439
Speaker 1: and it's got this opium pipe you know. Oh yeah,

1319
01:16:40,479 --> 01:16:43,960
Speaker 1: uh so um. This particular fine though, the Montana doling

1320
01:16:44,000 --> 01:16:48,960
Speaker 1: dinosaurs is is pretty controversial. So it was unearthed by

1321
01:16:49,160 --> 01:16:52,919
Speaker 1: fossil hunters. Fossil hunters that were not working on behalf

1322
01:16:53,000 --> 01:16:57,400
Speaker 1: of you know, scientific organization or a museum. They found

1323
01:16:57,400 --> 01:16:59,000
Speaker 1: this thing, They dug it up, and then they tried

1324
01:16:59,040 --> 01:17:02,960
Speaker 1: to sell the rock embedded fossils at auction for eight

1325
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:06,200
Speaker 1: to ten million dollars. Yeah. So the idea was to

1326
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:09,960
Speaker 1: snag a wealthy and fossil enthusiast who then might donate

1327
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:13,120
Speaker 1: it to a museum. Uh, it ended up failing to

1328
01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:17,400
Speaker 1: sell it auction into in and uh the thing was

1329
01:17:17,520 --> 01:17:20,880
Speaker 1: valued at seven to nine million dollars, but bidding only

1330
01:17:20,920 --> 01:17:24,519
Speaker 1: reached five point five million. So they just put it

1331
01:17:24,560 --> 01:17:28,360
Speaker 1: into into storage, into a vault. And that's that's where

1332
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:31,599
Speaker 1: it is today now to give all that's that's sad,

1333
01:17:31,760 --> 01:17:35,040
Speaker 1: that's junk. Yeah. Uh so how did this even come

1334
01:17:35,160 --> 01:17:38,320
Speaker 1: come to pass? Well, you have to look back a

1335
01:17:38,320 --> 01:17:44,160
Speaker 1: little to you know, the post Jurassic Park zeal for dinosaurs. Okay,

1336
01:17:44,520 --> 01:17:47,200
Speaker 1: uh and uh in particular, there was a t rex

1337
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:50,840
Speaker 1: skeleton uh named Sue this one moment up for bidding

1338
01:17:50,840 --> 01:17:53,040
Speaker 1: and it was valued about a million dollars, but the

1339
01:17:53,040 --> 01:17:55,800
Speaker 1: Field Museum of Natural History purchased it for eight point

1340
01:17:55,960 --> 01:17:59,280
Speaker 1: four million. And so critics have said, well, this was

1341
01:17:59,360 --> 01:18:02,960
Speaker 1: kind of the start of the dinosaur gold rush. You've

1342
01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:05,639
Speaker 1: got into people's mind if we find a really awesome fossil,

1343
01:18:05,680 --> 01:18:09,559
Speaker 1: so find we can sell it, you know, at high

1344
01:18:09,560 --> 01:18:12,040
Speaker 1: price to the highest bidder, and then they can they

1345
01:18:12,080 --> 01:18:14,160
Speaker 1: can do the science once we've done that. But first

1346
01:18:14,200 --> 01:18:16,919
Speaker 1: we're gonna get we're gonna get our our our payday.

1347
01:18:18,439 --> 01:18:20,599
Speaker 1: And this area discussion reminds me a lot of the

1348
01:18:20,680 --> 01:18:25,400
Speaker 1: meteorite hunter debate. So when when profit chasing hunters are

1349
01:18:25,439 --> 01:18:29,560
Speaker 1: the ones finding scientifically significant rocks instead of the scientist,

1350
01:18:30,280 --> 01:18:34,559
Speaker 1: then all sorts of problems emerge. Proper identification, proper protection

1351
01:18:34,640 --> 01:18:37,640
Speaker 1: of the find, proper values placed on the rocks, not

1352
01:18:37,680 --> 01:18:41,400
Speaker 1: to mention, opening the door to fossil or meteorite theft,

1353
01:18:41,400 --> 01:18:45,240
Speaker 1: to black markets, to rock squatting, as we see with

1354
01:18:46,640 --> 01:18:48,679
Speaker 1: with the with the idea of this, this fossil find

1355
01:18:48,760 --> 01:18:52,439
Speaker 1: just landing in a vault until somebody ponies up enough money. Um.

1356
01:18:53,040 --> 01:18:56,479
Speaker 1: The falsification is pretty interesting to consider that Nicolas Cage,

1357
01:18:56,840 --> 01:19:00,360
Speaker 1: the actor, paid two hundred and seventy six thousand hours

1358
01:19:00,360 --> 01:19:03,240
Speaker 1: in an auction in twenty two seven for a t

1359
01:19:03,479 --> 01:19:06,160
Speaker 1: rex skull, a skull that turned out to have been

1360
01:19:06,200 --> 01:19:09,200
Speaker 1: illegally removed from Mongolia and he had to return it.

1361
01:19:10,320 --> 01:19:14,560
Speaker 1: That's Nick, you should be ashamed of yourself. Well, he

1362
01:19:15,080 --> 01:19:18,519
Speaker 1: turned he did the right thing, the Nick credit. Well,

1363
01:19:18,560 --> 01:19:21,560
Speaker 1: I guess so, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be vindictive,

1364
01:19:21,960 --> 01:19:24,960
Speaker 1: he I. I think when you first told me about this, Robert,

1365
01:19:25,000 --> 01:19:28,000
Speaker 1: I imagined him reading an apology letter in his can

1366
01:19:28,040 --> 01:19:31,840
Speaker 1: air accent as I just recently rewatched that movie. Well,

1367
01:19:31,880 --> 01:19:34,320
Speaker 1: the headline on the CNN piece that I sent about

1368
01:19:34,360 --> 01:19:39,880
Speaker 1: that um um the title was I think Nicholas Cage

1369
01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:43,120
Speaker 1: returns his t rex skull, which kind of implied that

1370
01:19:43,200 --> 01:19:45,519
Speaker 1: the skull inside his head was that of a t rex,

1371
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:48,480
Speaker 1: which I kind of like. By the way, that CNN

1372
01:19:48,560 --> 01:19:52,120
Speaker 1: article reported that quote, he bought the tyronos Are skull

1373
01:19:52,240 --> 01:19:56,040
Speaker 1: during a time when he also bought fifteen mansions, two castles,

1374
01:19:56,240 --> 01:20:00,759
Speaker 1: four yachts, and nine rolls royces. So you know, sometimes

1375
01:20:00,800 --> 01:20:03,840
Speaker 1: you go on a spending uh spree and you make

1376
01:20:03,880 --> 01:20:07,519
Speaker 1: a few questionable purchase in purchases, including maybe a stolen

1377
01:20:07,520 --> 01:20:10,520
Speaker 1: Mongolian t rex skull. Well, if you're going for opulence

1378
01:20:10,560 --> 01:20:15,439
Speaker 1: and violating the world's right to preservation of natural history,

1379
01:20:16,320 --> 01:20:18,479
Speaker 1: I think you should just go all out, not you know,

1380
01:20:18,520 --> 01:20:22,120
Speaker 1: skip fourteen in the mansions and instead have one castle

1381
01:20:22,400 --> 01:20:27,360
Speaker 1: made out of t rex skulls. Uh. Well, basically, I

1382
01:20:27,360 --> 01:20:30,040
Speaker 1: would say the big take home here is that sadly

1383
01:20:30,560 --> 01:20:35,679
Speaker 1: the Montana dueling dinosaurs uh find uh has not received

1384
01:20:35,680 --> 01:20:39,840
Speaker 1: the actual scrutiny that it deserves. And if there's a

1385
01:20:39,880 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 1: plus side though, the failure of of this and I

1386
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:45,960
Speaker 1: think there was a Stegasaurus find that also failed to

1387
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:49,439
Speaker 1: to to bring in the dough that the hunters wanted.

1388
01:20:50,040 --> 01:20:53,679
Speaker 1: These you could indicate that the fossil bubble has burst

1389
01:20:53,880 --> 01:20:55,880
Speaker 1: and you'll see less of this in the future, So

1390
01:20:56,120 --> 01:21:00,720
Speaker 1: fossil hunters will hopefully be more you influenced by the

1391
01:21:00,760 --> 01:21:05,720
Speaker 1: desire to to get these fines to two institutions and experts,

1392
01:21:05,960 --> 01:21:09,559
Speaker 1: as opposed to just making a massive payday off. Yeah.

1393
01:21:09,680 --> 01:21:12,760
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe I'm just not being sympathetic enough to

1394
01:21:12,840 --> 01:21:15,040
Speaker 1: see the other side of the coin. But to me,

1395
01:21:15,080 --> 01:21:18,280
Speaker 1: it seems like, I don't know, relics of past geological

1396
01:21:18,400 --> 01:21:21,360
Speaker 1: eras seem like the common heritage of humanity. Shouldn't they

1397
01:21:21,400 --> 01:21:23,439
Speaker 1: be in a place where open to the public, where

1398
01:21:23,439 --> 01:21:27,160
Speaker 1: people can come and see them. Yeah, but but then again,

1399
01:21:27,200 --> 01:21:28,839
Speaker 1: but of course they need to get down to the question.

1400
01:21:28,880 --> 01:21:32,360
Speaker 1: While if that fossil relic is in Mongolia at a museum,

1401
01:21:32,720 --> 01:21:35,320
Speaker 1: not everybody gets to see that. If that fossil relic

1402
01:21:35,439 --> 01:21:38,000
Speaker 1: is in Chicago, not everyone gets to see that. Yeah,

1403
01:21:38,120 --> 01:21:40,640
Speaker 1: but that's better than being in a private it's in

1404
01:21:40,680 --> 01:21:43,160
Speaker 1: a private vault, like virtually nobody gets to see that,

1405
01:21:43,240 --> 01:21:47,839
Speaker 1: and that doesn't benefit anyone. But still, this fossil exists

1406
01:21:47,960 --> 01:21:51,240
Speaker 1: and that that is exciting. So maybe one day, uh

1407
01:21:52,200 --> 01:21:53,920
Speaker 1: kids will get to see it in a museum and

1408
01:21:54,160 --> 01:21:58,519
Speaker 1: paleontologist will get to give it a lot more attention hopefully.

1409
01:21:58,520 --> 01:22:02,280
Speaker 1: So all right, Robert, you got anything else about fossil

1410
01:22:02,320 --> 01:22:05,280
Speaker 1: action scenes? No, I think that the card has concluded.

1411
01:22:05,320 --> 01:22:08,599
Speaker 1: The main event has concluded. Uh we we've people are

1412
01:22:08,680 --> 01:22:11,559
Speaker 1: throwing their beer cups down into the ring, right, everyone's

1413
01:22:11,840 --> 01:22:16,160
Speaker 1: piling out of the the the cretaceous thunder dome here,

1414
01:22:17,000 --> 01:22:19,120
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, we're left to just consider just the

1415
01:22:19,400 --> 01:22:22,120
Speaker 1: just how amazing it is. First of all that fossils exist,

1416
01:22:22,560 --> 01:22:25,000
Speaker 1: like the the the the string of events that have

1417
01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:28,920
Speaker 1: to take place to reach fossilization and and then recovery

1418
01:22:29,120 --> 01:22:32,760
Speaker 1: and appreciation by modern humans. But then to consider that, yes,

1419
01:22:32,800 --> 01:22:37,719
Speaker 1: we have these amazing moments from life, violent confrontations, mating,

1420
01:22:38,120 --> 01:22:41,760
Speaker 1: uh and even birth preserved in the fossil record. And

1421
01:22:42,000 --> 01:22:43,920
Speaker 1: I do I've said this on the podcast before, but

1422
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:45,840
Speaker 1: I do just want to say again, if you've never

1423
01:22:46,240 --> 01:22:48,599
Speaker 1: had the chance to go to a good natural history

1424
01:22:48,680 --> 01:22:52,160
Speaker 1: museum and look at fossil exhibits, you should find a

1425
01:22:52,200 --> 01:22:54,920
Speaker 1: way to do this. It it is worth it. It's

1426
01:22:54,960 --> 01:22:58,040
Speaker 1: so cool, it's it's a life changing experience to really

1427
01:22:58,080 --> 01:23:01,559
Speaker 1: see dinosaur fossils in person. Indeed, and if you want

1428
01:23:01,560 --> 01:23:03,360
Speaker 1: to check out those books that we read from at

1429
01:23:03,360 --> 01:23:07,000
Speaker 1: the beginning, again, those are by Karen Wallace. There's I

1430
01:23:07,080 --> 01:23:12,080
Speaker 1: Am a Diplodocus, I Am a quetzal Coatlas, and then

1431
01:23:12,080 --> 01:23:17,559
Speaker 1: she also has one on Ankleiosaurus Tyrannosaurus. Uh and uh yeah,

1432
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:19,960
Speaker 1: I think that's it. Yeah, yeah, they'll be prepared for

1433
01:23:20,000 --> 01:23:22,680
Speaker 1: the carnage. Be prepared for the carnage. Come for the carnage,

1434
01:23:23,479 --> 01:23:25,080
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you want to check

1435
01:23:25,120 --> 01:23:29,080
Speaker 1: out various other podcast episodes we've done, head a numbers

1436
01:23:29,120 --> 01:23:30,880
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind dot com. That's what you'll

1437
01:23:30,880 --> 01:23:33,360
Speaker 1: find the landing page with this episode, and we'll try

1438
01:23:33,360 --> 01:23:35,479
Speaker 1: to have some links on there that go out to

1439
01:23:35,479 --> 01:23:37,679
Speaker 1: some of the material we've talked about here, and maybe

1440
01:23:37,720 --> 01:23:42,120
Speaker 1: even a really awesome dinosaur battle illustration to cap it

1441
01:23:42,200 --> 01:23:45,840
Speaker 1: all off, I hope. So also, of course, if you

1442
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:47,960
Speaker 1: want to email us to get in touch directly with

1443
01:23:48,080 --> 01:23:50,519
Speaker 1: feedback about this episode or any other, if you have

1444
01:23:50,520 --> 01:23:53,600
Speaker 1: any questions, if you have any comments, if you have

1445
01:23:53,680 --> 01:23:56,000
Speaker 1: any weird ideas. If you want to tell us about

1446
01:23:56,040 --> 01:23:58,479
Speaker 1: some really cool fossil action scene you saw that we

1447
01:23:58,520 --> 01:24:01,120
Speaker 1: didn't even know about, or you just want to say hi,

1448
01:24:01,240 --> 01:24:04,200
Speaker 1: you can always email us at blow the Mind at

1449
01:24:04,240 --> 01:24:16,800
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and

1450
01:24:16,920 --> 01:24:19,400
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot

1451
01:24:19,479 --> 01:24:30,479
Speaker 1: com believe