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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus
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from Gimlet. We are hard at work cooking up a
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brand new season of Science Versus. We're really excited about it.
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We'll be back in September to answer all of your
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burning questions about 5G, sleep, and even magic mushrooms. It's
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going to be a wild ride. But in the meantime,
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we heard this wonderful episode from another podcast that we
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really wanted to share with you. The podcast is called
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Some of All Parts and this episode was inspired by
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the host, Joel Werner's son, who is obsessed with dinosaurs.
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Joel takes it from here.
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Like a lot of three-year-olds, my boy Finn is kind
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of into dinosaurs.
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I love dinosaurs.
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OK, like he's really into dinosaurs.
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I love dinosaurs!
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If you look around our place, excuse the mess, it's
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been a busy week, there's dinosaurs everywhere. From pyjamas to
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t-shirts to hoodies. I'm super jealous of the T-Rex hoodie,
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just quietly. There's a lot of dinosaurs. And who is this?
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T-Rex.
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And books. So many dinosaur books. Like this one that
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we're reading now, DinoBlock.
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I just need that page where those are.
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DinoBlock is a cartoon dinosaur catalogue. But don't let that
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fool you, it's super comprehensive.
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Dinosaur leaves.
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With their long necks, huh?
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Yeah, they're pretty tall. I'll be off to it.
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You know this one.
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Spinosaurus!
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Do you like Spinosaurus?
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Yeah.
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There's all these different species of dinosaur, each with its
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own anatomically accurate diagram set in an appropriate habitat. There's
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even a pronunciation guide. Oh, what's this one? What's this one?
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I know this one.
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T-Rexes.
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Do you like T-Rex?
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Yeah, I like dinosaur teeth.
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And at three, Finn and his friends can name pretty
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much all these dinosaurs. But the thing is, I can't.
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What's this one? Wait, back here. Cryolophus. Cryolophus. Cryolophosaurus? Cryolophosaurus?
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I don't even... I don't think I've seen that one before.
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There's heaps of dinosaurs that I just don't recognise, that
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I've never seen before.
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Eoraptor? Like, really? Well, there's lots of different dinosaurs.
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Back in my day, we had old favourites like T-Rex, Stegosaurus,
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Triceratops and Brontosaurus. And like Finn, I was dino-obsessed as
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a kid. So what's going on? Why does my three-year-old
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know so much more about dinosaurs than I ever did? Well, look,
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for all us parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, friends of people
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with kids, for anyone feeling maybe just a little intimidated
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by a small human's encyclopedic dinosaur knowledge, I'm here to
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get to the bottom of this. What's the one question
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you're guaranteed to hear when you put a paleontologist in
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a room full of school kids?
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You know, there's always at least one kid who asks
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me what my favorite dinosaur is.
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Steve Brassati and I grew up around the same time.
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And like him, I agree.
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It's got to be T-Rex. You know, I'm a product
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of that generation that's just fascinated with T-Rex. And a
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lot of times these kids look at me and sometimes
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they even say it and they say, really, T-Rex? I mean,
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come on, you know, isn't that a little bit cliched?
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And so kids now, yeah, they have all these amazing
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feathered raptors from China. They have these earth-shaking dinosaurs bigger
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than we ever thought. Things like Dreadnoughtus and and Patagotitan.
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These were just dinosaurs I didn't have as a kid.
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You didn't have as a kid.
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You see, Steve and I were of a particular era.
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And when it comes to dinosaurs, it kind of shows.
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It's not so much that kids these days know more
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than we did. It's just that there's so much more
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to know. Over the past couple of decades, there's been
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an explosion in the discovery of new dinosaur species.
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Yeah, hi, my name's Dr. Jonathan Tennant, but you can
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just call me John, and I'm an independent paleontologist or
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rogue scientist.
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John's PhD put numbers to this explosion in dinosaur knowledge,
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and it wasn't even the main focus of his work.
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We assembled this huge data set in a place called
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the Paleobiology Database, which is a documentation of every single
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published fossil record that we've ever discovered. Every sort of
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dinosaur species that we know is recorded in this database.
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So, you wanted to know how many dinosaurs had been
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discovered recently. And when did this dino explosion really begin?
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Every dinosaur species and every occurrence, so every individual fossil
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that we've ever sort of discovered that has been published,
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has a certain date associated with it. And what you
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can do is just simply chart that through time.
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Okay, so I wouldn't usually describe a graph on this show.
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But the graphs that John produced based on his analyses
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are super elegant. So here we go. Imagine two axes,
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a side-to-side or horizontal line that crosses an up-down or
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vertical line. Now, along the horizontal line are years, starting
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way back before 1850 over on the left and running
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right up to the present, to the 2000s on the right.
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On the vertical axis is what's called the cumulative number
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of new fossil discoveries. So what that actually means is
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that as new discoveries are made, they're allocated a date,
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they're assigned a year on the horizontal axis, and over time,
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as you move from one year to the next, new
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discoveries are added to old discoveries. So the line that's
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produced represents the increase in fossil discoveries over time. Starting
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way over on the left, back before 1850, the line
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kind of just bubbles along, increasing from the 1850s through
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the 1900s. New discoveries here and there, to the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s.
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Just a slight, shallow, gradual increase. A line that's slowly,
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almost imperceptibly building.
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But then, around the 1990s, something strange happened. and we
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see this huge explosive growth in the number of discoveries
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being made and being published.
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Just before the marker for the year 2000, the trend shifts.
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The graph line suddenly gets steeper, like way steeper. It
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stops bubbling and just shoots skywards, like the neck of
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a brachiosaurus. If you're familiar with the idea of an
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exponential curve where things grow more and more quickly over time,
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that's what this looks like. From the late 1990s, there's
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been a massive, unprecedented increase in the number of new
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dinosaur discoveries. So, what happened in the late 90s to
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cause this rapid and massive increase in the number of
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new dinosaur discoveries?
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Welcome to Jurassic Park.
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No, seriously. The paleontologists that I spoke to, they all
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told me... What do they got in there, King Kong?
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Jurassic Park was a big deal.
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In the mid-1990s, there was a certain film published called
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Jurassic Park.
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That was a big thing for the field.
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That's paleontologist Steve Brassati again.
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It was a little over 25 years ago that that
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film came out, and that changed everything. It really did.
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It really did. It brought dinosaurs into pop culture in
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a way they had never been before.
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And because of this huge sort of public interest, there
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was a resurgence in paleontology again. So, you know, people
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actually used Jurassic Park as leverage to get funding to
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conduct more dinosaur research in North America because it had
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such a huge public sway.
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You can meet people all over the world. I have
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colleagues all over the world, people that are roughly my age,
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the generation of paleontologists in their 30s, that say.
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Jurassic Park is what got them into dinosaurs. And it's
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not just kids like me growing up in the U.S.
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It's people all over the world. You know, I have
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colleagues from China, from South America that say Jurassic Park
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got me into dinosaurs. That is wonderful. I just think
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that's a magical thing that a film, a piece of entertainment,
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had that much impact on science.
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But According to Steve, it's not just Jeff Goldblum we
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have to thank for all the cool new dinosaurs that
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we're finding. Another big reason for the dino explosion is
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because new countries bursting with fossils have started investing in
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dino hunting. It used to.
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Be really a game that was just played by a
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few posh old professors and a few universities and a
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few places in Europe and North America mostly.
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So, you know, if you think about the most well-known or,
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you know, most loved dinosaurs, it's things like Tyrannosaurus rex
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or Triceratops. And these are animals that come from North America.
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But that's not the case anymore. The field is growing.
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It's diversifying. There are paleontologists, particularly young paleontologists all over
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the world, people in China, in Brazil, in Argentina, in
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these enormous developing countries that are full of wide open spaces,
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full of rocks bursting with dinosaur bones.
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China in particular has become a treasure trove. for new
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and cool dinosaurs. They pop up like prehistoric Pop-Tarts over there.
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And what's been so amazing about all these new discoveries
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is that they're changing a lot of our ideas about dinosaurs.
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And this opened up the sort of bonanza effect in
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China and around Asia in particular. where once something's been discovered,
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people go there and they want to discover more and
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more and more. And all of a sudden now, they
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had these huge dig sites being revealed, and particularly farmers
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were discovering, you know, hundreds of fossils all the time
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on their land. And there were these crazy new discoveries
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that completely shook up, you know, our understanding of dinosaurs.
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And it's exceptionally exciting to watch.
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After the break, we're getting up close and personal with
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a new dinosaur discovery. And let me tell you, it's
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going to give T-Rex a run for its money. Hey,
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it's Wendy from Science Versus, and I want to tell
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you about a podcast that I love, Science Friday. They
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cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird and
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wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our brain
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to the inner secrets of a snake with a spider
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on its tail. It's a lot of news that you
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can use and some that you can't, but you're going
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to love anyway. It's hosted by Ira Flato and Phyllis.
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Flora Lichtman, who is an old friend of the show
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and loves a pun as much as we do. Science
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Friday is on every day wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back. We've just heard that we're in the midst
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of a massive dinosaur gold rush with new dino discoveries
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happening way more often than they used to. Now, that's
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a little thanks to the movie Jurassic Park, But it's
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also because countries like China have started investing more and
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more into paleontology. We're now going to dive right into
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this gold rush to see what it's like to discover
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a new dinosaur. This story comes to us from the
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podcast Some of All Paths by Joel Werner.
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Here's Joel.
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Steve Brassati has spent his career on the front lines
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of the global paleo resurgence. He's been involved in the
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discovery of a bunch of new dinosaur species, but just
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how many, he's kind of too humble to say.
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You know, I don't actually keep a list. I keep
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a list of my publications, you know, the journal articles
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and books and things. But it's somewhere around 15, I think.
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And it's not that I'm going out and finding 15
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dinosaurs myself. That's not how it works.
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How it works is that Steve's a part of a
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team that discovers a new fossil, or he's called into
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a museum to help identify a fossil that someone else
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has discovered, often a construction worker or a farmer. which
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was the case with one such new discovery he helped
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make during his time working in China.
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I'm there to work with some colleagues. I'm working with
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my good friend Junchang Liu, one of China's leading dinosaur hunters. Sadly,
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Junchang passed away a few months ago, a real giant
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in the field, somebody we're already missing tremendously. But Junchang
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and I, we've had a collaboration for a while, and
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I had come to China to work with him, and
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he said, we got something. Up in Liaoning, we gotta
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go see it.
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Liaoning province shares a border with North Korea in China's northeast.
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And it's a perfect example of how a place not
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traditionally associated with paleontology can quickly become a hotbed of discoveries.
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Discoveries that start to challenge everything we think we know
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about dinosaurs. Now, Liaoning's probably not a part of China
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you've heard about unless you're a paleontologist.
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It's not the sort of place that a lot of
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tourists get to, but this is nirvana for dinosaur hunters
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because in the mid-90s, you had some locals there, mostly farmers,
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starting to discover these amazingly preserved fossils of dinosaurs covered
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in feathers. And it turned out there wasn't just one
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or two feathered dinosaurs, but there were tons of these things.
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And there were lots of other fossils, too. There were fishes,
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there were mammals, mammals covered in hair. There were reptiles
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and amphibians and there were pterodactyls all found together because
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you had these ancient ecosystems that were buried by volcanoes.
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So these things were locked in place, almost Pompeii style.
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And so that means that people are still finding a
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lot of these fossils. And these fossils are really important
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because with each new feathered dinosaur, that's another clue to
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help us understand how evolution took one of these meat-eating,
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land-living T. rex-type dinosaurs and turned it into a bird.
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So when the call came through that a farmer in
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Liaoning had found a fossil in his field, Steve moved quickly.
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He arranged to meet Jun Chang at Beijing's central train
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station the very next morning.
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You know, that train crawled through the rural landscapes of China.
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And it was early in the morning. I was trying
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to sleep, but I couldn't. I was, you know, far
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too excited about what might be there.
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When they arrived in Liaoning, Steve and Jun Chang were
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greeted by some local dignitaries who escorted them to a
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black SUV.
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They sped us through town. They took us to this
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building in the outskirts of town and A really nondescript building.
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It looked just like most of the other buildings in
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the area.
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But this humble-looking building was the museum housing the fossil
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that they were there to examine.
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You know, it didn't look like the American Museum in
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New York or the Australian Museum or any of these
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grand museums. It almost seemed like a hospital or an
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office building or something in there, very sterile. But they
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led us through a hallway. There were these flickering lights
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and they led us into this room, into this small room.
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And inside this room, there was this big slab of
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rock that was perched on a quite small table. And
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it really looked to me like the legs of that
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table were buckling. I was a little bit worried that
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this thing was going to fall onto the floor. And
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so Jin Chung and I were called up. And we
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walked up and we looked at this thing. And that is,
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you know, one of those awesome moments of my life
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where I was face to face with this incredible fossil.
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Clearly a dinosaur. All the bones were there. Beautiful chocolate
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brown bones sticking out from this tan colored limestone. Clearly
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a raptor. Sharp teeth, sharp claws. Looks so much like Velociraptor.
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About the size of, well, a large dog. Something like
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a Saint Bernard. But covered in feathers, feathers everywhere, feathers
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on the tail, feathers on the body, feathers on the head,
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feathers on the arms, and not just any feathers on
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the arms, but actual quill feathers forming wings. So this
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was a raptor dinosaur with wings. And the preservation was
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so gorgeous that you could see all the fine details
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of these feathers. You could see the individual feathers. You
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could see how they were anchored to the bones, how
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they were overlapping each other to form the wing. And
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this looked basically like the same sort of structure that
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we see in modern birds. And, you know, it's hard
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to really convey in words just how magical that was
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to be led into this room, you know, after this
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long journey to see this object, this thing that's over
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a hundred million years old, that's, you know, like a
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piece of fine art, you know, that object just conveys
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this powerful message that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
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This dinosaur turned out to be a new species. A
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cousin of Velociraptor, it was called Shen Wan Long. But
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with so many people realising that they may have found
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some invaluable part of dino history, new dinosaurs aren't necessarily
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ending up in museums.
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There are folks out there. you know, wealthy folks that
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want to have a T-Rex in their living room. And
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who doesn't want to have a T-Rex in their living room, right?
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I mean, I don't blame people for wanting a dinosaur.
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But it means that there is a bit of a market,
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and it's similar in some ways to the art market.
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Some of these amazing fossils are these unique, one-of-a-kind pieces
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that high-end collectors really want. And that breeds a black
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market today.
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And Steve says, whenever a tycoon with a penchant for
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dinosaurs snatches up a special fossil, science gets a bum deal.
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As a scientist, I can see how every fossil is important,
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but some fossils are really important. They're unique. They're a
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new species. It's a complete skeleton that shows details that
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no other fossils show. Those kind of fossils really do
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need to be in museums so they can be studied,
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so they can be conserved. so they can be made
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available to future generations, so they can be put on display,
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so they can be accessible to the public, so people
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can see them and be inspired by them.
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Okay, so there's one final question that I've got to ask.
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Will this dino explosion ever end? Or could the brontosaurus
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bonanza just keep going forever?
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I think we're just getting started. And I tell this
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to all the young kids, you know, when I do talks,
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I say... People are finding more dinosaurs than ever before.
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But don't worry, we're not running out of dinosaurs because
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as people explore more of the earth, as more people
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go out and look for fossils, the more they find.
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We are still finding new dinosaurs all over the place.
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And even if we stopped finding dinosaur fossils today, the
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rest of science is going to keep moving on. And
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there's going to be new techniques, new technologies, new types
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of experiments and instruments and ways of thinking that that
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will help us study the dinosaurs we already have in
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ways that we never would have thought possible. So who
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knows what's going to be found next?
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Or who's going to find it?
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Well, there's lots of different dinosaurs.
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Wow!
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Wow!
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This story came from the podcast Some of All Parts,
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which is produced and hosted by Joel Werner. Jonathan Webb
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is their science editor, sound design by Joel Werner and
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00:20:02.109 --> 00:20:06.269
Mark Don. Additional fact-checking by Lexi Krupp and additional music
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and engineering by Peter Leonard. And Some of All Parts
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00:20:10.140 --> 00:20:13.440
is one of our favourite podcasts. You really should check
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00:20:13.480 --> 00:20:17.289
it out. Some of All Parts. There's a link in
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the show notes. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Science Versus will be
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back in September.
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Back to you then.
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Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus
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00:00:03.169 --> 00:00:05.929
from Gimlet. We are hard at work cooking up a
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00:00:06.049 --> 00:00:09.279
brand new season of Science Versus. We're really excited about it.
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00:00:09.330 --> 00:00:12.070
We'll be back in September to answer all of your
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00:00:12.130 --> 00:00:17.250
burning questions about 5G, sleep, and even magic mushrooms. It's
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00:00:17.289 --> 00:00:21.179
going to be a wild ride. But in the meantime,
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00:00:21.559 --> 00:00:24.820
we heard this wonderful episode from another podcast that we
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00:00:24.839 --> 00:00:27.690
really wanted to share with you. The podcast is called
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Some of All Parts and this episode was inspired by
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00:00:30.829 --> 00:00:35.369
the host, Joel Werner's son, who is obsessed with dinosaurs.
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00:00:36.090 --> 00:00:37.030
Joel takes it from here.
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Like a lot of three-year-olds, my boy Finn is kind
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of into dinosaurs.
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I love dinosaurs.
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OK, like he's really into dinosaurs.
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I love dinosaurs!
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If you look around our place, excuse the mess, it's
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been a busy week, there's dinosaurs everywhere. From pyjamas to
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t-shirts to hoodies. I'm super jealous of the T-Rex hoodie,
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just quietly. There's a lot of dinosaurs. And who is this?
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T-Rex.
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And books. So many dinosaur books. Like this one that
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we're reading now, DinoBlock.
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I just need that page where those are.
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DinoBlock is a cartoon dinosaur catalogue. But don't let that
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fool you, it's super comprehensive.
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Dinosaur leaves.
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With their long necks, huh?
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Yeah, they're pretty tall. I'll be off to it.
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You know this one.
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Spinosaurus!
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Do you like Spinosaurus?
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Yeah.
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There's all these different species of dinosaur, each with its
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own anatomically accurate diagram set in an appropriate habitat. There's
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even a pronunciation guide. Oh, what's this one? What's this one?
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I know this one.
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T-Rexes.
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Do you like T-Rex?
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Yeah, I like dinosaur teeth.
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And at three, Finn and his friends can name pretty
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much all these dinosaurs. But the thing is, I can't.
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What's this one? Wait, back here. Cryolophus. Cryolophus. Cryolophosaurus? Cryolophosaurus?
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I don't even... I don't think I've seen that one before.
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There's heaps of dinosaurs that I just don't recognise, that
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I've never seen before.
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Eoraptor? Like, really? Well, there's lots of different dinosaurs.
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Back in my day, we had old favourites like T-Rex, Stegosaurus,
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Triceratops and Brontosaurus. And like Finn, I was dino-obsessed as
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a kid. So what's going on? Why does my three-year-old
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know so much more about dinosaurs than I ever did? Well, look,
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for all us parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, friends of people
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with kids, for anyone feeling maybe just a little intimidated
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by a small human's encyclopedic dinosaur knowledge, I'm here to
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get to the bottom of this. What's the one question
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you're guaranteed to hear when you put a paleontologist in
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a room full of school kids?
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You know, there's always at least one kid who asks
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me what my favorite dinosaur is.
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Steve Brassati and I grew up around the same time.
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And like him, I agree.
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It's got to be T-Rex. You know, I'm a product
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of that generation that's just fascinated with T-Rex. And a
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lot of times these kids look at me and sometimes
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they even say it and they say, really, T-Rex? I mean,
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come on, you know, isn't that a little bit cliched?
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And so kids now, yeah, they have all these amazing
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feathered raptors from China. They have these earth-shaking dinosaurs bigger
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than we ever thought. Things like Dreadnoughtus and and Patagotitan.
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These were just dinosaurs I didn't have as a kid.
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You didn't have as a kid.
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You see, Steve and I were of a particular era.
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And when it comes to dinosaurs, it kind of shows.
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It's not so much that kids these days know more
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than we did. It's just that there's so much more
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to know. Over the past couple of decades, there's been
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an explosion in the discovery of new dinosaur species.
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Yeah, hi, my name's Dr. Jonathan Tennant, but you can
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just call me John, and I'm an independent paleontologist or
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rogue scientist.
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John's PhD put numbers to this explosion in dinosaur knowledge,
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and it wasn't even the main focus of his work.
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We assembled this huge data set in a place called
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the Paleobiology Database, which is a documentation of every single
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published fossil record that we've ever discovered. Every sort of
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dinosaur species that we know is recorded in this database.
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So, you wanted to know how many dinosaurs had been
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discovered recently. And when did this dino explosion really begin?
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Every dinosaur species and every occurrence, so every individual fossil
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that we've ever sort of discovered that has been published,
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has a certain date associated with it. And what you
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can do is just simply chart that through time.
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Okay, so I wouldn't usually describe a graph on this show.
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But the graphs that John produced based on his analyses
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are super elegant. So here we go. Imagine two axes,
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a side-to-side or horizontal line that crosses an up-down or
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vertical line. Now, along the horizontal line are years, starting
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way back before 1850 over on the left and running
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right up to the present, to the 2000s on the right.
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On the vertical axis is what's called the cumulative number
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of new fossil discoveries. So what that actually means is
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that as new discoveries are made, they're allocated a date,
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they're assigned a year on the horizontal axis, and over time,
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as you move from one year to the next, new
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discoveries are added to old discoveries. So the line that's
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produced represents the increase in fossil discoveries over time. Starting
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way over on the left, back before 1850, the line
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kind of just bubbles along, increasing from the 1850s through
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the 1900s. New discoveries here and there, to the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s.
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Just a slight, shallow, gradual increase. A line that's slowly,
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almost imperceptibly building.
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But then, around the 1990s, something strange happened. and we
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see this huge explosive growth in the number of discoveries
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being made and being published.
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Just before the marker for the year 2000, the trend shifts.
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The graph line suddenly gets steeper, like way steeper. It
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stops bubbling and just shoots skywards, like the neck of
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a brachiosaurus. If you're familiar with the idea of an
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exponential curve where things grow more and more quickly over time,
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that's what this looks like. From the late 1990s, there's
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been a massive, unprecedented increase in the number of new
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dinosaur discoveries. So, what happened in the late 90s to
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cause this rapid and massive increase in the number of
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new dinosaur discoveries?
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Welcome to Jurassic Park.
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No, seriously. The paleontologists that I spoke to, they all
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told me... What do they got in there, King Kong?
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Jurassic Park was a big deal.
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In the mid-1990s, there was a certain film published called
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Jurassic Park.
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That was a big thing for the field.
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That's paleontologist Steve Brassati again.
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It was a little over 25 years ago that that
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film came out, and that changed everything. It really did.
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It really did. It brought dinosaurs into pop culture in
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a way they had never been before.
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And because of this huge sort of public interest, there
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was a resurgence in paleontology again. So, you know, people
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actually used Jurassic Park as leverage to get funding to
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conduct more dinosaur research in North America because it had
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such a huge public sway.
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You can meet people all over the world. I have
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colleagues all over the world, people that are roughly my age,
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the generation of paleontologists in their 30s, that say.
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Jurassic Park is what got them into dinosaurs. And it's
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not just kids like me growing up in the U.S.
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It's people all over the world. You know, I have
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colleagues from China, from South America that say Jurassic Park
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got me into dinosaurs. That is wonderful. I just think
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that's a magical thing that a film, a piece of entertainment,
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had that much impact on science.
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But According to Steve, it's not just Jeff Goldblum we
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have to thank for all the cool new dinosaurs that
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we're finding. Another big reason for the dino explosion is
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because new countries bursting with fossils have started investing in
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dino hunting. It used to.
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Be really a game that was just played by a
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few posh old professors and a few universities and a
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few places in Europe and North America mostly.
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So, you know, if you think about the most well-known or,
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you know, most loved dinosaurs, it's things like Tyrannosaurus rex
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or Triceratops. And these are animals that come from North America.
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But that's not the case anymore. The field is growing.
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It's diversifying. There are paleontologists, particularly young paleontologists all over
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the world, people in China, in Brazil, in Argentina, in
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these enormous developing countries that are full of wide open spaces,
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full of rocks bursting with dinosaur bones.
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China in particular has become a treasure trove. for new
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and cool dinosaurs. They pop up like prehistoric Pop-Tarts over there.
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And what's been so amazing about all these new discoveries
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is that they're changing a lot of our ideas about dinosaurs.
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And this opened up the sort of bonanza effect in
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China and around Asia in particular. where once something's been discovered,
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people go there and they want to discover more and
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more and more. And all of a sudden now, they
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had these huge dig sites being revealed, and particularly farmers
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were discovering, you know, hundreds of fossils all the time
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on their land. And there were these crazy new discoveries
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that completely shook up, you know, our understanding of dinosaurs.
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And it's exceptionally exciting to watch.
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After the break, we're getting up close and personal with
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a new dinosaur discovery. And let me tell you, it's
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going to give T-Rex a run for its money. Hey,
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it's Wendy from Science Versus, and I want to tell
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you about a podcast that I love, Science Friday. They
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cover all sorts of amazing things in the weird and
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wonderful world of science, from how concussions affect our brain
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to the inner secrets of a snake with a spider
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on its tail. It's a lot of news that you
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can use and some that you can't, but you're going
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to love anyway. It's hosted by Ira Flato and Phyllis.
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Flora Lichtman, who is an old friend of the show
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and loves a pun as much as we do. Science
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Friday is on every day wherever you get your podcasts.
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Welcome back. We've just heard that we're in the midst
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of a massive dinosaur gold rush with new dino discoveries
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happening way more often than they used to. Now, that's
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a little thanks to the movie Jurassic Park, But it's
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also because countries like China have started investing more and
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more into paleontology. We're now going to dive right into
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this gold rush to see what it's like to discover
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a new dinosaur. This story comes to us from the
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podcast Some of All Paths by Joel Werner.
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Here's Joel.
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Steve Brassati has spent his career on the front lines
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of the global paleo resurgence. He's been involved in the
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discovery of a bunch of new dinosaur species, but just
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how many, he's kind of too humble to say.
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You know, I don't actually keep a list. I keep
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a list of my publications, you know, the journal articles
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and books and things. But it's somewhere around 15, I think.
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And it's not that I'm going out and finding 15
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dinosaurs myself. That's not how it works.
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How it works is that Steve's a part of a
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team that discovers a new fossil, or he's called into
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a museum to help identify a fossil that someone else
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has discovered, often a construction worker or a farmer. which
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was the case with one such new discovery he helped
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make during his time working in China.
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I'm there to work with some colleagues. I'm working with
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my good friend Junchang Liu, one of China's leading dinosaur hunters. Sadly,
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Junchang passed away a few months ago, a real giant
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in the field, somebody we're already missing tremendously. But Junchang
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and I, we've had a collaboration for a while, and
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I had come to China to work with him, and
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he said, we got something. Up in Liaoning, we gotta
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go see it.
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Liaoning province shares a border with North Korea in China's northeast.
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And it's a perfect example of how a place not
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traditionally associated with paleontology can quickly become a hotbed of discoveries.
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Discoveries that start to challenge everything we think we know
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about dinosaurs. Now, Liaoning's probably not a part of China
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you've heard about unless you're a paleontologist.
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It's not the sort of place that a lot of
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tourists get to, but this is nirvana for dinosaur hunters
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because in the mid-90s, you had some locals there, mostly farmers,
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starting to discover these amazingly preserved fossils of dinosaurs covered
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in feathers. And it turned out there wasn't just one
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or two feathered dinosaurs, but there were tons of these things.
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And there were lots of other fossils, too. There were fishes,
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there were mammals, mammals covered in hair. There were reptiles
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and amphibians and there were pterodactyls all found together because
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you had these ancient ecosystems that were buried by volcanoes.
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So these things were locked in place, almost Pompeii style.
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And so that means that people are still finding a
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lot of these fossils. And these fossils are really important
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because with each new feathered dinosaur, that's another clue to
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help us understand how evolution took one of these meat-eating,
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land-living T. rex-type dinosaurs and turned it into a bird.
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So when the call came through that a farmer in
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Liaoning had found a fossil in his field, Steve moved quickly.
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He arranged to meet Jun Chang at Beijing's central train
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station the very next morning.
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You know, that train crawled through the rural landscapes of China.
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And it was early in the morning. I was trying
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to sleep, but I couldn't. I was, you know, far
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too excited about what might be there.
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When they arrived in Liaoning, Steve and Jun Chang were
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greeted by some local dignitaries who escorted them to a
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black SUV.
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They sped us through town. They took us to this
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building in the outskirts of town and A really nondescript building.
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It looked just like most of the other buildings in
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the area.
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But this humble-looking building was the museum housing the fossil
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that they were there to examine.
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You know, it didn't look like the American Museum in
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New York or the Australian Museum or any of these
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grand museums. It almost seemed like a hospital or an
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office building or something in there, very sterile. But they
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led us through a hallway. There were these flickering lights
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and they led us into this room, into this small room.
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And inside this room, there was this big slab of
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rock that was perched on a quite small table. And
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it really looked to me like the legs of that
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table were buckling. I was a little bit worried that
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this thing was going to fall onto the floor. And
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so Jin Chung and I were called up. And we
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walked up and we looked at this thing. And that is,
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you know, one of those awesome moments of my life
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where I was face to face with this incredible fossil.
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Clearly a dinosaur. All the bones were there. Beautiful chocolate
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brown bones sticking out from this tan colored limestone. Clearly
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a raptor. Sharp teeth, sharp claws. Looks so much like Velociraptor.
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About the size of, well, a large dog. Something like
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a Saint Bernard. But covered in feathers, feathers everywhere, feathers
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on the tail, feathers on the body, feathers on the head,
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feathers on the arms, and not just any feathers on
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the arms, but actual quill feathers forming wings. So this
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was a raptor dinosaur with wings. And the preservation was
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so gorgeous that you could see all the fine details
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of these feathers. You could see the individual feathers. You
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could see how they were anchored to the bones, how
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they were overlapping each other to form the wing. And
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this looked basically like the same sort of structure that
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we see in modern birds. And, you know, it's hard
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to really convey in words just how magical that was
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to be led into this room, you know, after this
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long journey to see this object, this thing that's over
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a hundred million years old, that's, you know, like a
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piece of fine art, you know, that object just conveys
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this powerful message that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
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This dinosaur turned out to be a new species. A
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cousin of Velociraptor, it was called Shen Wan Long. But
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with so many people realising that they may have found
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some invaluable part of dino history, new dinosaurs aren't necessarily
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ending up in museums.
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There are folks out there. you know, wealthy folks that
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want to have a T-Rex in their living room. And
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who doesn't want to have a T-Rex in their living room, right?
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I mean, I don't blame people for wanting a dinosaur.
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But it means that there is a bit of a market,
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and it's similar in some ways to the art market.
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Some of these amazing fossils are these unique, one-of-a-kind pieces
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that high-end collectors really want. And that breeds a black
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market today.
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And Steve says, whenever a tycoon with a penchant for
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dinosaurs snatches up a special fossil, science gets a bum deal.
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As a scientist, I can see how every fossil is important,
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but some fossils are really important. They're unique. They're a
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new species. It's a complete skeleton that shows details that
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no other fossils show. Those kind of fossils really do
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need to be in museums so they can be studied,
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so they can be conserved. so they can be made
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available to future generations, so they can be put on display,
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so they can be accessible to the public, so people
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can see them and be inspired by them.
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Okay, so there's one final question that I've got to ask.
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Will this dino explosion ever end? Or could the brontosaurus
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bonanza just keep going forever?
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I think we're just getting started. And I tell this
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to all the young kids, you know, when I do talks,
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I say... People are finding more dinosaurs than ever before.
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But don't worry, we're not running out of dinosaurs because
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as people explore more of the earth, as more people
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go out and look for fossils, the more they find.
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We are still finding new dinosaurs all over the place.
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And even if we stopped finding dinosaur fossils today, the
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rest of science is going to keep moving on. And
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there's going to be new techniques, new technologies, new types
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of experiments and instruments and ways of thinking that that
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will help us study the dinosaurs we already have in
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ways that we never would have thought possible. So who
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knows what's going to be found next?
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Or who's going to find it?
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Well, there's lots of different dinosaurs.
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Wow!
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Wow!
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This story came from the podcast Some of All Parts,
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which is produced and hosted by Joel Werner. Jonathan Webb
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is their science editor, sound design by Joel Werner and
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Mark Don. Additional fact-checking by Lexi Krupp and additional music
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and engineering by Peter Leonard. And Some of All Parts
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is one of our favourite podcasts. You really should check
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it out. Some of All Parts. There's a link in
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the show notes. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Science Versus will be
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00:20:21.009 --> 00:20:22.329
back in September.
358
00:20:22.849 --> 00:20:23.339
Back to you then.
