Past Time

I (Adam) am both proud and nervous to say that this is an atypical Past Time episode, as we’re not talking about a new discovery nor a real scientific topic; it is a recap/review of Jurassic World 2. However, I think it is worth addressing whether or not particular elements of new movies, television, or books adhere to modern science. Dr. Elizabeth Jones taught us that science fiction can have a major impact on scientific advances, as Jurassic Park helped give rise to modern techniques that revealed all sorts of molecules in ancient fossil remains. Although it is far less…science-y…than the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom may one day have an impact on future paleontologists.

This also presented a great opportunity to get some scientific queries from a non-scientist. My partner for this episode is Tommy Dembeck, an old friend from my days as an undergraduate at McDaniel College with whom I discuss sci-fi endlessly. He is also endlessly curious. Of all the laypeople I know who have never worked in a university or museum setting, Tommy has the best questions about biology and prehistory. I would love to have him back for a future episode…there are always shark movies to talk about! I’ve uploaded the full audio of our discussion to this blog post if you want to hear more of our Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom thoughts in two parts!

Eighty million years ago, a wildly ornamented species of horned dinosaur roamed the southern half of North America’s western landmass, Laramidia. In 2016, paleontologist Eric Lund and his colleagues named it Machairoceratops cronusi, and we fell in love with this ceratopsian from Utah with hooks over its frill. In 2017, the site where Machairoceratops was found was cut from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, threatening our chances of making new discoveries about dinosaur evolution there. Join us on this episode to meet one of our favorite ceratopsian researchers, marvel at the grandeur of Machairoceratops, and mourn the loss of protections for some incredible vertebrate fossil sites.

We want to thank our guest on this episode, Eric Lund, for clearing up some of our ceratopsian confusion! Although we interviewed him while he was a student at Ohio University, he’ll be finishing up his PhD while he works in his new position in the Paleontology Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. You can follow him on Twitter at @Bwana_Lund. And be sure to check out the scientific article he led about Machairoceratops cronusi in the journal PLOS ONE!

On this episode, Eric Lund introduces us to the incredibly fossil-rich and scientifically significant Kaiparowits Plateau of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. You can learn more about it in this New York Times article from 2015 and download an awesome poster about the dinosaurs of the monument designed by Blue Aster Studio. Check out the original paper for free in the science journal Plos One!

The spectacular paleo-art featured in the promo image was painted by paleoartist Mark Witton. Check out his blog and art gallery.

We also touch on the idea of ownership of vertebrate fossils, which tell the story of the evolution of our planet, and the laws surrounding these shared resources in the United States. This How Stuff Works article explains the debate about fossil ownership, and this webpage from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology explains the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.

It may be confusing for a paleontology podcast to wade into politics, but when you’re talking about a fossil found in a national monument, it is impossible not to. Everyone you hear on this episode is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), and one of the goals of SVP is “To support and encourage the discover, conservation and protection of vertebrate fossils and fossil sites” (SVP Code of Ethics). In line with this Code of Ethics, SVP is taking legal action to prevent the cuts to two national monuments that would endanger significant vertebrate fossil sites. SVP explains its position with useful maps and graphics here, and this interview with Dr. P. David Polly, the outgoing President of SVP

This episode tells a story of one of Adam Pritchard’s favorite projects from Yale University, describing the skull of a teeny reptile from the early days of the Age of Reptiles. Hailing from the eastern coast of North America (present-day Connecticut), Colobops noviportensis had a skull only an inch long. However, intensive research and three-dimensional modeling revealed that it possessed cavities for its jaw muscles larger than any other reptile of that size—living OR extinct! Colobops likely nipped at the heels of some of the earliest dinosaurs and crocodile cousins in North America.

The original paper can be read for free in the journal Nature Communications! Adam’s co-author Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, professor of Geology at Yale University, helped produce a great video on the discovery with Yale University’s press office.

The brilliant reconstruction of Colobops was hand painted by paleoartist and Geology Ph.D. student at Yale Michael Z. Hanson. Mike will be appearing in an upcoming episode of Past Time on the early days of bird evolution.

If you want to see the original Colobops specimen, travel to the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut!

Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, dinosaurs were top dogs on every continent and in every sort of environment. The ceratosaurs were some of the classic predators that ruled the tops of the food chains for much of that time. Including classic predators such as Ceratosaurus, Carnotaurus, and Majungasaurus—as well as oddballs like Masiakasaurus, Limusaurus, and Elaphrosaurus—ceratosaurs included top-of-the-food-chain carnivores and slender, fleet-footed herbivores. For this episode, I delve into a cool new paper summing up the current knowledge on these awesome beasts!

Read the original paper by paleontologist Rafael Delcourt for free in the journal Scientific Reports!

For some awesome skeletal mounts of ceratosaurs, you can visit museums around the world. See Ceratosaurus at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City and Carnotaurus at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales B. Rivadiva in Buenos Aires! The great traveling exhibit Ultimate Dinosaurs-Giants of Gondwana has a number of ceratosaur skeletons too! Please add a comment if you have another ceratosaur museum to suggest!

Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have been discovered in Egypt since the beginning of the twentieth century, work that continues to this day. However, fossils from the Age of Reptiles are much harder to come by. Indeed, most of the fossils record of Cretaceous dinosaurs and their contemporaries were collected during a small number of expeditions in the early twentieth century by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer.

Stromer’s work focused on the “middle” part of the Cretaceous Period: between ~100–90 million years ago. Most of those discoveries—including the original type specimens of dinosaurs like Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Aegyptosaurus—were destroyed in bombings during World War II. For over sixty years, no substantive further discoveries of Mesozoic Egyptian fossils occurred. In the early 2000s, American paleontologists Matthew Lamanna and an international team returned to the Bahariya Oasis and discovered a variety of new dinosaurs, including a supergiant titanosaur Paralititan stromeri now housed in the Cairo Geological Museum.

The Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology project highlighted in this episode extends those efforts into new fossil deposits into the Quseir Formation of the Western Desert of Egypt, preserving fossils from much later in time than those of the Bahariya Oasis. The Quseir fossils are some of the best records of terrestrial backboned animals from the end of the Cretaceous Period from the whole of Africa. This was also at a time when Africa was an island continent, isolated without land connections with other continents. That makes Africa prime real estate for finding unique fossil ecosystems.

Dr. Heham Sallam leads the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP) team to the new frontier of vertebrate paleontology in Egypt. Educated at Oxford University, Hesham is one of the first native Egyptians to lead a scientific paleo project. He is training a large number of students in the science of vertebrate paleontology and Mansoura University. His current graduate students include Sana El-Sayed, Eman Abd El Aziz, and Sara Saber. Ms. El-Sayed holds the distinction of being the first woman paleontologist from the Middle East to lead a scientific publication, which described a giant catfish from the early Cenozoic. Sara Saber published the most recent MUVP paper describing the Cretaceous crocodile relative Wahasuchus, which is featured in this paper.