Terrible Lizards

Dinosaur jaws and feeding with Ali Nabavizadeh

We started with theropod feeding but what about the herbivores? This week we're joined by Ali Nabavizadeh who specialises in the jaws and teeth of the ornithischian dinosaurs and how these work and how this plays into their feeding ecology. This gives Dave ample opportunity to ask vexing questions about their jaws and elicit the same response he gives whenever asked about T. rex being a scavenger, but it does mean that Ali talks about how the hadrosaur dental battery works, how similar they are to ceratopsians and whether or not these animals have cheeks.

Links:

Ali on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vert_Anatomist

Ali's webpages: https://www.vet.upenn.edu/people/faculty-clinician-search/aliNabavizadeh

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Although we looked at some biomechanical work earlier this series, this time we get into the real depths of how dinosaurs moved. John Hutchinson joins us with tales of galloping crocodiles and white dots on elephants in an effort to understand how these animals move as part of his work on dinosaur locomotion. We talk about how Jurassic Park cheated to make the T. rex look faster and just how you can build a model of such huge animals from their bones and how reliable such an exercise really is. We also return to the subject of disability in science and look at how John's work has been affected by epilepsy over the last few years.

Links:

John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnRHutchinson

John's Blog: https://whatsinjohnsfreezer.com

Our Twitters

@iszi_lawrence and @dave_hone

Please support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Some dinosaurs haven't had enough love on here (though some get what they deserve, I mean, who even likes Stegosaurus?) and chief among them are the sauropodomorphs. However, this week we make a belated and desperate attempt to correct that by talking to Paul Upchurch for an hour. One of the world's leading experts on these herbivorous giants, he takes us through a whole bunch of his research history from obscure British sauropods to the long necked mamenchisaurs and other oddities. We also talk about disability in science as Paul has a severe visual impairment and he talks about how this has affected him during his career.

Links:

Paul's research pages: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/earth-sciences/people/academic/prof-paul-upchurch

Support the show on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs with Mark Witton

We have covered palaeoart here from time to time and the process of producing images of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life (as both technical illustrations and more creative life reconstructions) but one of the most important of these gets far too little attention. In the 1800s life size replicas of dozens of ancient animals were put up in a park in south London and are still there today. Palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton joins us to talk about this history, their importance, why they are falling apart and the efforts to conserve them. Happily he's put out a book on this very subject, the research for which has revealed surprising and important new details about these first models of dinosaurs.

Links:

Mark on Twitter

https://twitter.com/MarkWitton

Mark's webpages:

https://www.markwitton.co.uk

Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs website

https://linktr.ee/cpdinosaurs

British iguanodontids with Joe Bonsor

We have touched on Iguanodon before as one of the earliest named dinosaurs and an animal with some interesting relatives and famously spiky thumbs but they never really got the attention that they should have done (from us at least). Enter Joe Bonsor who is finishing off his PhD on these very animals and trying to sort out the utter mess that is the taxonomy of the iguanodontians in the UK. We dive into this with some surprising conclusions and interesting news about what Joe has found (no spoilers, you'll have to listen) and we go through some of the earliest dinosaur history and give some well-deserved coverage of the great Gideon Mantell.

Links:

Joe on Twitter

https://twitter.com/palaeojoe

Joe's blogpost on his PhD

https://palaeojoe.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/yes-but-what-do-you-actually-do/

To support the show please write a review, share this with your friends and join us on Patreon.

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Following up on the previous series where pterosaurs dominated, we had to sneak in a bit more of them here. Dave has always had an aversion to the toothy ornithocheirids as while so many of them turn up in 3D (unlike pretty much all other pterosaurs) they also have a horrific taxonomic history and they are a nightmare to deal with. Happily, Taissa Rodrigues is here to talk all about them and she has done more than anyone else to sort out these species and their relationships in recent years as well as working on their biology and that of other pterosaurs in her native Brazil. We also get onto the tricky subject of fossil laws, poaching, exports and differing rules and histories around the world and the damage it can do to research.

Links:

Taissa on Twitter

https://twitter.com/paleotaissa

A report on one of her recent papers on pterosaur pneumaticity

https://paleontologia.ufes.br/en/conteudo/vertebral-air-cavities-large-pterosaurs-disclose-key-adaptations-flight

To support the show please write a review, share this with your friends and join us on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Theropod jaw biomechanics with Manabu Sakamoto

We are still going! We are back and like last series, we're taking a bit of a different tack to the previous ones and here we are having experts on every episode in a desperate attempt to make up for Dave's quite profound lack of knowledge in numerous areas of dinosaur biology. With that in mind, we start off with Manabu Sakamoto who works primarily on the biomechanics of theropods jaws – what they could and couldn't bite and how hard and what this means. This is obviously of huge importance for figuring out their general biology, behaviour and diet and so it's great to get some real insight into this area of their lives.

Links:

Manabu on Twitter

https://twitter.com/drmambobob

Manabu's online lecture on dinosaur evolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9KFj5msp28

To support the show please write a review, share this with your friends and join us on Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

The new series will start on the 12th of October! If you would like to support us and get our bonus episodes sooner - please consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/terriblelizards.

Pterosaurs living during the Jurassic period were thought to have been relatively small, but a stunning new skeleton shows otherwise. Natalia Jagielska has helped describe the new find in Scotland which has changed our understanding of Flappy Flaps.

Natalia Jagielska is a PhD in Palaeontology at University of Edinburgh Studying Jurassic Pterosaurs and a Illustrator Dino Consultant for @paleopines

(Spoilers) The spectacularly preserved three-dimensional skeleton from the Middle Jurassic of Scotland, is a new genus and species: Dearc sgiathanach with a wingspan >2.5 m, and bone histology shows it was a juvenile-subadult still actively growing when it died, making it the largest known Jurassic pterosaur represented by a well-preserved skeleton.

If you could give the paleontology field NASA's budget what would you do with it? Ever used laser-stimulated fluorescence? How do pterosaurs sleep? Was was Irritator challengeri? When did birds wiggle their hips? How can you tell if species shared an environment? Is there any evidence for intra-specific fighting amongst Pterosaurs?

PLUS MORE!

We've gotten a plethora of questions this series - Dr David Hone tries to get through them all - with a little help from Iszi Lawrence.

Thank you to our Patrons! Join them patreon.com/terriblelizards

Dave's Book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09PTDQJG1/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Iszi's other podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0c142b0

Iszi's new book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackbeards-Treasure-Flashbacks-Iszi-Lawrence/dp/1801990964/ref=zg_bsnr_15512140031_3/260-4119745-8285309?pd_rd_i=1801990964&psc=1

How science works

In another in the increasingly long line of topics we probably should have covered quite a few series ago, this week we are addressing some of the fundamentals of what science actually IS. How does it all work really, and what is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory, and how confident can we be about dinosaur research when so much is unknown and difficult to put to the test? All this and some other bits (that I can't really remember because we recorded this 2 months ago and I've not listened to the edit yet) are covered and hopefully it's a case of 'better late than never' in informing our listeners of the basis of scientific studies.

Thank you for listening and do consider supporting us on patreon:

patreon.com/terriblelizards

Links:

A short but simple definition of science by the UK Science Council: https://sciencecouncil.org/about-science/our-definition-of-science/