Terrible Lizards

It's commonly known that Tyrannosaurus carnivorous, but this is perhaps as far as most people would be prepared to go. Other than the most obvious points (the ones in its mouth for starters) though, what do we actually know about dinosaur diets and how do we know it? In this episode Dave and Iszi dive into the guts of dinosaurs and look at their teeth, jaws, stomachs and yes, coprolites are back again. From microscopic scratches on the enamel of their teeth through to the last meals that they ate, dinosaur fossils provide a surprising range of information on what they ate, and how. After digesting this gastronomic information, we are joined by Robin Ince for an aperitif of dinosaur cannibalism and egg thievery.

An old blogpost by Dave on an early herbivorous theropod he helped to name and describe https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/a-last-bit-of-limusaurus-–-theropod-diets-and-herbivory/

One of Dave's blogposts on the feeding behaviour of giant Mongolian tyrannosaurs:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/selective-feeding-by-tyrannosaurs/

A piece on a baby Diplodocus getting chewed up: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/non-tyrannosaurs-biting-like-tyrannosaurs/

Find out more about Robin Ince here: http://robinince.com/mainpage/ and buy his books.

If there's one thing that everyone knows about dinosaurs it is that they are extinct. And of course this is to a degree quite wrong since birds are dinosaurs and are very much alive. Still, that Tyrannosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and the rest are long gone is well known but the scientific (and often very unscientific) arguments about exactly what killed them off have been a source of discussion for over a century. Here we have a quick stroll through some of those ideas and deal with the prime suspect of the last 30 years an impact from outer space. Happily, we have the Bad Astronomer himself, Phil Plait, as our guest so the questions go both ways on dinosaurs and asteroids.

We hope you enjoy the cold open.

A short National Geographic article on the issue of asteroids vs volcanoes: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/dinosaur-extinction/

A piece by Professor Mike Benton on mass extinctions: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiKnrO6tKDsAhVHTsAKHe0OCPwQFjABegQIDBAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbenton.blogs.bristol.ac.uk%2Ffiles%2F2019%2F07%2F2013Princeton.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0-67nK9sjE7cWteYZ5Usal

The American Museum of Natural History goes through some of the wonkier ideas for dinosaur extinction: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs-ancient-fossils/extinction/discarded-theories

Phil's Blog is here syfy.com/badastronomy @badastronomer

In this episode we finally fulfil a promise from before and talk more about the physiology dinosaurs – how 'hot' or 'cold' they were and what that might mean for their levels of activity, growth, behaviour and even where they could live given local climates. It's a horribly complex subject and so come and listen to us grossly oversimplify things and not make things as clear as we'd like. Also on this show we end up at the end of the digestive system as our guest, the Skep-Chick herself, Rebecca Watson asks about the second most famous bit of Jurassic Park and just how much waste would be coming out of a dinosaur. Don't say we never tackle the critical questions.

A recent paper on the possibility of feathers in some of the earliest dinosaurs https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223872

A very recent paper on the growth rate and maturity of one of the abelisaurs https://peerj.com/articles/9771/

Rebecca Watson's patreon with links to all her videos: patreon.com/rebecca

This week we tackle a small dinosaur that should be much better known, a classic contemporary of Velociraptor and the other half of the fighting dinosaurs, Protoceratops. While nothing like as famous as its (much) larger cousin Triceratops, Protoceratops is an interesting and important dinosaur. Thanks to a multitude of fossils, including animals of all different ages, we have a fantastic set of data to work from and as a result a lot of research has been done on this fascinating frilled dinosaur. This week our guest is singer Faith Child who wants to know just how close (or indeed far) humans are to dinosaurs evolutionarily. Things rapidly descend into developmental biology (not Dave's forte) but happily we have an excerpt from Faith's new track "Near Era, feat. Faith Child and KB and Ty Brasel" to play us out.

Links:

A link to Dave's paper on Protoceratops forming groups including the specimen of four juveniles https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0113306

Photos of a wonderful Protoceratops on display in the Carnegie Museum https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/protoceratops-2/

A link to Dave's paper on social and sexual signalling in Protoceratops https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2016/1369-sexual-selection-in-ceratopsia

A link to Faith Child's Official Site https://www.faithchildmusic.com/

It is appropriate to kick off the second series of Terrible Lizards with an animal famous for its dangerous feet. Few people had heard of Velociraptor before Jurassic Park, but it is now an A-lister alongside Tyrannosaurus as one of the few dinosaurs almost anyone can name. With fame though has come huge misconceptions about its size, appearance, capabilities and behaviour. The large, scaly, super-intelligent pack-hunter of large prey is likely none of these things and Dave and Iszi work their way through the myths and realities of this little Mongolian predator. Our first guest of the season is half of Penn & Teller, the juggler and magician Penn Jillette, who wants to know about the longevity of dinosaur lineages and how common they were in the Mesozoic.

Links:

Photos of a famous Velociraptor specimen locked on (possible) mortal combat with a Protoceratops: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/a-bit-on-the-'fighting-dinosaurs'/

A description of Dave's work on a specimen of Velociraptor that swallowed a large pterosaur bone https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/velociraptor-scavenging-azhdarchid/

Link to the original paper describing quill knobs in Velociraptor that prove the presence of feathers https://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5845/1721

The new series will be starting on Wednesday 16th September 2020. We have a plethora of guests and interesting dinosaur subjects to explore!

Guest this series include Penn Jillette, Phil Plait, Robin Ince, Rebecca Watson, Esther Odekunde, Faith Child and Lucy Eckersley.

Keep an eye out for our bonus content on Patreon and announcements on Twitter and Facebook.

www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

www.facebook.com/terriblelizardspodcast/

@iszi_lawrence @dave_hone #TerribleLizards

In this last episode of the first season we try to bring a few things up to date. There's more mistakes and miss-speaks from Dave to repair and correct, and a few things that have come up since shows were recorded or broadcast we want to give updates on. Mostly though, we are answering questions from our Patreons and other commenters that people have sent in. There's a lot of ground to cover quickly and lots of things that are still coming in future episodes so we don't always get into the greatest detail but among others, there's bits on Triassic dinosaurs, dinosaur diseases, evidence for dinosaur behaviour, and how can you support palaeontology.

There's no special guest this week and we'll now be taking a break for a while so we can recharge and come back stronger in September (ish). We do though plan to record one or two deep dive episodes during the break that will be available only to our Patreons for now, so if you want to help keep Terrible Lizards going and get some more goodness in advance then please sign up.

Iszi also goes on a massive rant about human brain evolution which is better discussed in her interview with Clive Gamble on The British Museum Membercast podcast: https://britishmuseummembercast.libsyn.com/episode-002

The film, The Lost world (1925) is available to watch on youtube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJaXxY3citM

A short blogpost with a nice photo of the unheralded Triassic Herrerasaurus: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/herrerasaurus/

A long post by Dave on the perenially asked 'how do I become a palaeontologist?': https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2018/07/04/how-do-i-become-a-palaeontologist/

A short post on a diseased sauropod in China: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/sauropod-caudal-pathology/

Please support us on patreon. www.terriblelizards.co.uk @iszi_lawrence @dave_hone #terriblelizards

In this episode, we take a look at the actual process of finding, excavating, preparing and then exhibiting dinosaur fossils. How do palaeontologists know where to find fossils, what do they look for, how do they get them out of the ground? From there we move onto safely transporting fossils out of the field and into the museum and discuss the process of preparing the bones free of the entombing rocks and then getting them arranged back into the form of a full skeleton to go on display in a museum. It's all an odd mix of techniques from the 21st and 18th centuries. To round us off, we are joined by podcaster and QI elf, Dan Schreiber who wants to ask about the best way to go about owning a dinosaur fossil.

Round up post of a huge series on Dave's blog about preparing a tyrannosaur fossil by Darren Tanke https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/darren-tanke%e2%80%99s-gorgosaurus-preparation-final-roundup/

And the resulting paper that Dave and Darren coauthored about using the blogposts as an educational tool https://www.geocurator.org/images/resources/geocurator/vol9/geocurator_9_8.pdf#page=17

A series of photos of the dig in China to excavate Dave's tyrannosaur https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/xinjiang-2011-fieldwork-report/

Please support us on patreon. www.terriblelizards.co.uk @iszi_lawrence @dave_hone @Schreiberland #terriblelizards

Dan is Host of No Such Thing As A Fish podcast / QI Elf/ Creator of BBC's Museum of Curiosity/ Watch 'Show Us Your Sh*t' live nightly at http://instagram.com/schreiberland

To most eyes, dinosaurs are unusual looking animals but on this week's show we take a look at some that are weird and wonderful even by the standards of dinosaurs. We start with the huge theropods of Late Cretaceous Mongolia, the sickle-clawed Theirizinosaurs and boat-faced Deinocheirus with a mention of the tiny ant-eating alvarezsaurs. From here, we move to Europe and ancient archipelagos that produced some dwarf species of huge animals and giant weird versions of small ones. We round off with some unusual and interesting adaptations that show up in multiple different dinosaurs and show the power of convergent evolution across tens of millions of years. Finally, we are joined by comedian Alice Fraser @aliterative who wants to ask about how dinosaurs might have done if alive today. (You should also check out her many podcasts and watch her special on Amazon Prime.)

An old article of Dave's on the astounding diversity of dinosaurs https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jun/11/dinosaurs-incredible-diverse

A blogpost on the wonderful arctometatarsal https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/what-is-an-acrtometatarsal/

Warning: Our guest Richard Herring (53 mins 50 secs) uses colloquialisms for dinosaur male bits - poss best check before letting kids listen.

Reproduction is a fundamental of life but it's an area of dinosaur biology rarely discussed at any length though this week we will tackle that area of ignorance. Part of the problem is inevitably the lack of data palaeontologists have of, ahem, certain dinosaur parts. However, it's not an area that has gone unstudied and thanks to the evidence of numerous fossils and in particular various nests and eggs, we do know quite a bit more about their reproductive biology than you may imagine. There's good evidence in various linages for parents looking after their young and for some complex nest structures, and in the right circumstances we can tell males from females. Our guest this week is the comedian Richard Herring who lends his unique approach to biology (OK, he says some faintly rude words about male dinosaur bits that you might not want the littlest ones to hear) and has an appropriately (for him) suitable question for Dave about dinosaurs.

An old blogpost of Dave's on dinosaur eggs in a dedicated museum for them in China: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/xixia-museum-of-dinosaur-fossil-eggs-of-china/

And a post on the famous brooding dinosaur on a nest known as 'big mama' https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/big-mama-%e2%80%93-nesting-dinosaurs/

An article by palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli on sexing animals in the fossil record https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/24/cloacae-sex-arms-and-penis-bones-the-tricky-art-of-fossil-sexing

Please support us on patreon. @iszi_lawrence @dave_hone @Herring1967 richardherring.com #terriblelizards