The biggest news in palaeontology this year dropped just in time for us to miss it with last month's episode but we're giving it the full hour this time. The idea that there's a miniature tyrannosaur running around in the Late Cretaceous alongside Tyrannosaurus has long been a contentious one, with most palaeontologists favouring the interpretation that the specimens represented juvenile rexes. But a huge new paper presents a brand-new specimen that shows various unique features and importantly, is an adult animal while still small. Join Dave and Iszi into a deep dive on the history of these ideas ad why people are switching sides to support the idea that Nanotyrannus is real. One of the better articles from the media storm:

 Nanotyrannus isn't a 'mini T. Rex' after all — it's a new species, 'dueling dinosaurs' fossil reveals | Live Science:

https://www.livescience.com/animals/dinosaurs/i-was-wrong-dinosaur-scientists-agree-that-small-tyrannosaur-nanotyrannus-was-real-pivotal-new-study-finds

Please support the podcast and submit questions for our end of year megasode: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Dave has *another* book coming out and so of course he wants to talk about it a bit on the pod. Happily for the listeners, this time out he has a coauthor and so we get to have palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton on as well so that Iszi has some support for once. The new book is on that most controversial of dinosaurs, Spinosaurus and its allies, and what we know, and what we don't, and where the research is taking us. Given its insane media profile and the attention it attracts, as well as the back-and-forth in the scientific literature over its bizarre features, this is an animal well overdue a proper popular science book. So here it is, written by Dave and Mark, and with Mark's extensive illustrations throughout. But for now you can enjoy the chat about this animal and how the work came to be.

Links:

For Bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Mark's website with links to his blog and other pages

Home | MarkWitton.co.uk

An old blogpost of Dave's which looks at the main controversies of Spinosaurus swimming

The evidence for Spinosaurus being a specialist aquatic predator and good swimmer is weak | Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings

Series 11, eh? We don't think we, or anyone else reading this, expected that.

Nor did we expect issues with Dave's microphone (apologies)… Still, here we are and with more dinosaur goodness coming. We say 'coming' because this episode is far less about dinosaurs and pterosaurs than usual, but more about the mechanisms of science. In this case it's really about Dave's experiences as a science communicator and how things like this are increasingly important for science, but in the UK at least, this can be monitored and measured and so having ways to do that becomes important. And this is the central point of today's show, a call to arms for all those who are involved in sci comms and delight in sharing new knowledge to understand why it's important to credit your sources when new discoveries are made.

Links:

For extra content: patreon.com/terriblelizards

If you want to know a bit more about REF in the UK, here's the main pages for it: https://2029.ref.ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/

And if we're talking communication, it seems a good time to say that Iszi and Dave are both now on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/davehone.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/iszi.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

This time out it's another iconic dinosaur and the beautiful Triceratops. These huge animals with their famous three horns and large frill are a major part of so many documentaries and films, if only so they can be seen to be battling with Tyrannosaurus. As with so many of the most famous dinosaurs, Triceratops is actually quite unusual and not really representative of the group to which it belongs. It is the largest of the ceratopsians (or horned dinosaurs) and the only one with a solid frill, and was also probably rather less gregarious than many of its near relatives. We talk about these features and the possible functions of its amazing headgear, before we are joined by this week's guest - TV's cake-maker and podcaster Ralph Attanasia. He has a specific and challenging question for Dave about dinosaur faces and their cheeks (or lack thereof).

CakeBossRalph

An old blogpost of Dave's looking at the details of a Triceratops skull on display in Oxford: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/triceratops-skull-in-detail/

A photo of a huge Triceratops skull taken by palaeontologists Matt Wedel and Mike Taylor: https://svpow.com/2016/05/06/sv-pow-endorses-triceratops/

A blogpost on some research led by Dave's PhD student (now Dr) Andy Knapp on  ceratopsian frills and their evolution: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/ceratopsian-horns-and-frills-what-drove-their-evolution/ and the full research paper is here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0312

In this episode we take a look at dinosaur skin and talk about the changing appearances of dinosaurs over the last 150 years. Scientists have been constantly updating their ideas about the look of various species and new evidence unfolds and our understanding improves, from their earliest depictions as lumbering lizards, though to the discovery of feathers in dinosaurs at the close of the 20th Century. We now know that many dinosaurs, and not just those closes to birds, had feathers and some very distantly related groups also had filamentous structures which could even be true feathers. However, gaps in the fossil record means that for many lineages it is uncertain quite what species had in terms of scales, feathers or both. On the upside, the discovery of many exceptionally preserved fossils has now allowed palaeontologists to being to investigate some incredible details of dinosaur appearances, including their patterns and even colours. We are joined by historian (and dinosaur aficionado) Tom Holland, who wants to know more about the dinosaur-bird link and whether or not the study of living birds can tell us something about dinosaurs.

Dave's Guardian article on which dinosaurs had feathers https://www.theguardian.com/science/lost-worlds/2013/jun/10/dinosaurs-fossils

A paper Dave co-authored on feathers and 'dandruff' in dinosaurs https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04443-x.

For our second episode we take a look at the archetypal big dinosaur, Diplodocus. It has an important place in dinosaur history as one of the first very complete animals found, and the first to be cast with copies shipped around the world. As a result, Diplodocus had become lodged in the public mind as a 'typical' sauropod but it has plenty of features that make it unique and unusual. We cover its name which relates to its unusual whip-tail, and discuss how these huge animals held their tails and what they used them for. At the other end we talk about their long necks and remarkably little heads with their ususual feeding strategy. Then we dive into their amazing air-filled skeletons and discuss how even these 25 m and 30 m long animals are much lighter than you might think. Finally, we are joined by special guest comedian Jo Caulfield, who asks Dave about why dinosaurs like Diplodocus got so big.

Dave's Guardian article about the removal of 'Dippy' from the Natural History Museum in London https://www.theguardian.com/science/lost-worlds/2015/jan/30/diplodocus-starts-a-long-goodbye

Dave's blogpost on the original specimen on display at the Carnegie Museum. https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/a-pair-of-giants/

If you want to get ultra-nerdy about sauropods, check out this blog dedicated to sauropod vertebrae: https://svpow.com/

For our first ever episode of Terrible Lizards we start, perhaps inevitably, with the most famous and iconic dinosaur ever – Tyrannosaurus. (Actually I wanted to do Nqwebasaurus but Iszi wouldn't let me). The king is an absolute cultural icon and appears in pretty much every dinosaur movie and documentary of the last 50 years. As science progresses though, that mostly means that the public perception of this animal has got more and more out of tune with our modern understanding. So in this episode we talk about their giant heads and weird teeth, famously small arms, super-senses and tackle the vexed question of were they predators or scavengers? We round off with the issues of the mystery dwarf tyrannosaur Nanotyrannus and whether it is, or isn't just a juvenile rex. Then the brilliant natural history broadcaster Chris Packham joins us to share his love of Tyrannosaurus and to ask Dave what he thinks a Tyrannosaurus would look like in real life.

Links:

Dave's Royal Institution lecture on the evolution of tyrannosaurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-jD7kQvyPs

Guardian article by Dave & Chris Packham on the making of their Tyrannosaurus documentary: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/02/the-real-t-rex-with-chris-packham-an-attempt-at-a-truthful-tyrannosaurus-bbc

Series of blogposts by Dave on the wonderful collection of Tyrannosaurus specimens at the Carnegie Museum: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/carnegie-tyrannosaurus-pt-1/

Thanks to Kyle, Tom, Ashley, Aurous, Wayne, Paleo Pete, Tyler, Will, Israel, Charles, James and Edward

Support us on patreon.com/terriblelizards and be rewarded with extra content!

We are planning on going live on isztube at 16:00 GMT on Friday 26th December. (Time may change)

A peak at the upcoming series of Terrible Lizards, a podcast about dinosaurs with Dr David Hone and Iszi Lawrence. Guest this series include Chris Packham, Jo Caulfield, Alice Fraser, Richard Herring, Tom Holland and Ralph Attanasia.

Please subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Please support the show via our Patreon and find us on Facebook.

Skiphosoura – the pterosaur of the gaps

So last week Dave had a new paper out and this time it's a new pterosaur, named Skiphosoura bavarica (the sword tail of Bavaria) and it is both really interesting and really important for pterosaur research. It tells us a lot about the key transition of pterosaurs from the early forms through to the derived pterodactyloids, which has been a major subject of research for the last 15 years. Skiphosaura also shows us that the Scottish Dearc (that we covered a couple of years back) is much more important than previously thought and helps create a fantastic series of species where we can now track a whole series of evolutionary steps for pterosaurs. This transition really is now a great example of being able to see an evolutionary change over time in the fossil record. So strap in for some overly-detailed anatomical descriptions of bits of obscure pterosaurs!

Links:

Support us on patreon and get extra content https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Here's a link to the full paper – it's open access so anyone can read it: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(24)01377-0

And here's Dave's blog post about the specimen and it's significance: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2024/11/18/skiphosoura-solving-the-transition-to-pterodactyloids/

Link to the website of the Lauer Foundation: https://www.lauerfoundationpse.org/

The bonus episode we did on Dearc: https://terriblelizards.libsyn.com/tls06-bonus-jurassic-pterosaur-dearc-sgiathanach

Dave has a new book out next week and it's the culmination of several years work. Longtime listeners will know the major themes already from the episode title – a lot of stuff in the literature on dinosaur behaviour is badly framed, overstated, contradictory or contains major over extrapolations. Happily, you can listen to all of this again as Dave goes into all of this and more, what's in the book, who it's aimed at and what he's trying to achieve with it. It's not out till next week, so this is a bit a of a sneak preview, even if various copies have snuck out the door and some (un?)lucky people have their hands on it already. Next month will be far less sycophantic and self publicising, honest.

Support us on patreon and unlock extra content

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Special offer! Get 30% off Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior by Dave Hone. Use code UDB30 when you buy direct from Princeton University Press. (Postage costs will be added at point of purchase. Offer available until 31 December 2024.) 

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691215914/uncovering-dinosaur-behavior

Last month we mentioned that legendary palaeontologist Mike Benton had announced his retirement, but with a few quick emails, Dave was able to grab him for this month's episode. So, join Dave and Iszi as we have celebration of Mike's career and take him through his early interest in palaeontology, how he got his PhD, the death of Al Romer, rhynchosaurs, the rise of dinosaurs, mass extinctions, fieldwork in Russia, endless books, and his work on the colours of dinosaurs. It's a whirlwind dash through an entire so strap in for the deluge of facts and fables and enjoy. And congratulations to Mike!

Links:

patreon.com/terriblelizards

Mike's webpage at Bristol which covers his career and achievements:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Mike-Benton-e41eaef1-135d-40db-9b7f-e81f7d290f72/

A link to the Amazon page of (most of) Mike's books:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Michael-Benton/s?rh=n%3A266239%2Cp_27%3AMichael+Benton

We've made plenty of jokes over the years about the general lack of sauropod skulls and the frustrations of trying to work out what these animals were doing when it came to things like feeding when the most important bit is missing. Happily, this week we are joined by David Button who has done a ton of work in this area and is happy to chat to Dave and Iszi about how their heads and teeth were built and what this can (and can't) tell us about their diets and habits. While we have him trapped, we also quiz him on his recent work on the behaviour of the thescelosaurs, an odd branch of dinosaurs we've taken till series 10 to even mention!

Links:

Extra content on patreon: www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

And old post of Dave's on the sauropod skeletons in Berlin, that really show off the issue of different feeding heights in these animals: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/berlin-sauropods/

David's webpage at the University of Bristol: https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/david-j-button

The spinosaurs get all the love (OK, mostly hate) and attention when it comes to the megalosauroids, but they are but one weird branch of this group of theropods. Sadly they have a similar problem to the spinosaurs in that there are annoyingly few fossils of them, and there's very few people working on these animals. Happily, today Iszi and Dave are joined by one of them, Cass Morrison who is doing his PhD on these unusual animals and is here to give us the lowdown on their evolution, diversity, biogeography and ecology and generally fill us in on these much under-appreciated animals.

Links:

For extra content go to our Patreon https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Apiece with Cass about his work on dinosaur brains: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/behind-the-science-cassius-morrison.html

Find Cass on Twitter https://x.com/casscretaceous and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cretaceous.cass/?hl=en-gb

We have touched on the extinction that killed the dinosaurs plenty of times before over the various seasons of TL, but we have never really tackled it fully before. Finally, we are joined by a real expert on this subject, Melanie During who is in the process of finishing her PhD on this very subject. So prepare for not actually really any dinosaurs, but quite a lot of geology and geochemistry to learn how the impact was so utterly devastating and how we know. It turns out that they never stood a chance and that the damage was even worse than even Dave had realised.

Links:

support us on patreon and access extra content: 

www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

A link to Melanie's YouTube series which is on long term hiatus but full of cool videos to watch (even if it notably fails to include a certain silver-haired pterosaur and tyrannosaur researcher): https://www.youtube.com/c/GenuineRockstars/videos

Here's a link to Melanie's press stuff for her papers but it includes some videos and graphs of that we talk about https://uppsala.app.box.com/s/ikmlwtb0vui7zn5k74jfokbhysla8ck1

Live edited recording at The Oxford Fire Station on 25/05/2024.

Live Anniversary Q&A for the Oxford Podcast Festival

It's the 4th (!) anniversary of the launch of Terrible Lizards and this came at a perfect time as Iszi and Dave got invited to do the recent podcast festival in Oxford. So, while we have our usual end of series Q&QA episode in a few months, here we have an early one with questions from out live audience. We thought that was more appropriate then for us to just rabbit on (or dinosaur on) in front of people and it made for a pretty compelling exchange, the time simply flew by. An obviously thanks to the organisers for hosting us and especially to all the people who actually trekked there (from Edinburgh! From Germany!) and then spent actual time to just listen to us. It's still all rather confusing and unsettling, but they say it takes all sorts to make a world. Anyway, here it all and happy birthday to us, and thanks for listening.

Links:

Podcast festival link: https://www.saintaudiopodcastfestival.com/

Support us on Patreon for extra content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

We all know about how common dinosaurs can be in places like Europe, Argentina, the US, China and Mongolia, but they have turned up in dozens and dozens of countries and on every continent, including Antarctica. Unsurprisingly, it's a very tough place to work, it costs a ton of money, and there are not that many dinosaurs to be found, but they are there. Today we are joined by Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum who has spent multiple field seasons on the chilly continent and he tells us about lush forests, tiny dinosaurs, ancient birds and modern penguins. So join us to learn about what is perhaps the last great unexplored area of dinosaurs, the bottom of the world.

Links:

SEE TERRIBLE LIZARDS LIVE! https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/terrible-lizards-podcast/

Matt's website on the project: https://antarcticdinos.org/

Matt's profile at the Carnegie: https://carnegiemnh.org/research/matthew-lamanna/

A short post of Dave's on the Carnegie sauropods, click through the next few posts if you want to see all of their dinosaurs: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/cargenie-dinosaurs/

Long time listener and second time guest Darren Naish joins us to talk about marine reptiles. While Darren is best known for his work on dinosaurs and pterosaurs, he has fingers in a huge number of vertebrate pies, and he has a new edition out of his book on all of the Mesozoic monsters that lived in the sea. So, strap in for an incredibly being tour of mosasaurs, mesosaurs, placodonts, ichthyosaurs, plesionsaurs, thalattosaurs, thalattosuchians and we even manage to sneak in a reference to certain allegedly semi-aquatic large theropods.

Support us on www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Check out iszi's NEW podcast about Egyptology www.talklikeanegyptian.com

A link to Darren's Home page which combines links to the blog, podcast, con and other resources.

https://tetzoo.com/

A link to Darren's post on the launch of the first edition:

https://tetzoo.com/blog/2023/2/27/ancient-sea-reptiles-is-out-now

A link to the Natural History Museum shop for the book:

https://www.nhmshop.co.uk/ancient-sea-reptiles-plesiosaurs-ichthyosaurs-mosasaurs-more.html?srsltid=AfmBOorc2zt792sWSVYdef8-O5zKci9w2Fiu6FhLlpX_lEATiWy1Gsn0

Dinosaur footprints with Peter Falkingham

Footprints and trackways are an amazing source of data on how dinosaurs moved and what they did. But interpreting these can be a real nightmare since it's hard to work out the interactions between a moving foot and the actual surface, or work out which species might have made which tracks. At the forefront of solving some of these issues and working out what we can and can't meaningfully day about dinosaur tracks is Professor Peter Falkingham at Liverpool John Moores University. So today he joins us to talk about chasing birds across mud, literal books made of fossil dinosaur footprints and using X-rays to work out how dinosaurs moved. There's so much in here and you'll never walk across a beach again without looking back at your own tracks.

Links:

COME SEE US LIVE!: https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/terrible-lizards-podcast/

Pete's website: peterfalkingham.com

An article based on Pete's work with a load of videos of his stuff

https://www.aws.amherst.edu/museums/naturalhistory/dinosaur-tracks

Pete's YouTube channel with loads of videos of his projects

https://www.youtube.com/@PeterFalkingham

Please do support us by giving us a review and you can unlock extra content on patreon https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

We don't often delve into the Triassic since Dave is not well versed in that time and the animals that were around then, but there were some very important animals that we've unduly overlooked across the last 9 series. Happily, today we can redress a large part of that with this episode on Coelophysis. Known from hundreds of skeletons, it's one of the best represented dinosaurs in the fossil record and yet it remains criminally understudied despite the available data. As one of the earliest theropods, it is perhaps archetypal of the lineages came later, but as so often happens, a bunch of questionable taxonomic decisions and referrals over the decades has left the animal in a bit of a mess. Here to help clear that up is Skye McDavid, scientific illustrator and independent researcher who has put far more time into sorting out the problems of Coelophysis than most would deem wise and joins us to share her wealth of knowledge.

Links:

Skye's hub on her website with links to her art, socials etc. https://www.skyemcdavid.com/links

Please support us on patreon and unlock extra content!

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

The year 2024 is the 200th anniversary of the naming of the first dinosaur, Megalosaurus. While 'Dinosauria' wouldn't be coined till 1842 (so we have a fair wait before that anniversary kicks in, and doubtless will be marked with another major celebration) it is a great time to take stock of where we are in dinosaur palaeontology. So obviously a good idea is this, that the Natural History Museum in London organised a major international meeting for this, and Dave went along. So in this episode of our (yes, really) 12th series, Dave reports back to Iszi on what was going down at the conference and looks back on 200 years of dinosaur-ing and forwards to what's coming soon of the back of the meeting.

Thank you for your support:  www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Link to our live show on 25/05/2024 at Oxford's Old Fire Station https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/terrible-lizards-podcast/

Links:

A shot of the original Megalosaurus jaw and some skull bits: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/more-of-megalosaurus/

And the famous Crystal Palace reconstructions of the first dinosaurs:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/crystal-palace-dinosaurs/

Stegosaurus with Dr Susie Maidment

THE TIME HAS COME. For ages Dave, for very Dave reasons refused to cover one dinosaur. Now, we find out all about it with an expert in the field. 

Last year's mystery xmas present to all of you who support us now for everyone. Patrons will get an video bonus episode.

You can follow Susie Maidment https://twitter.com/Tweetisaurus.

Longtime listeners will be familiar with the fact that Dave has spent a lot of time looking at and working on various bites marks on dinosaur bones left by the carnivorous theropods. These can tell us an enormous amount about who was doing what to whom and what it can mean for the ecology and behaviour of both the herbivores that were bitten and the carnivores that bit them. However, to date work on this for dinosaurs has almost exclusively focused on the tyrannosaurs with their tendency to bite on bones. But they weren't the only ones doing this. As Dave explains to Iszi in this episode, he's got a big new paper out with a plethora of authors assessing what was going on in the famous Morrison Formation that was teeming with giant sauropods but had plenty of theropods around too. What were they up to and can we learn more about their biology from a few bites?

Links:

Matt Wedel's blog post about the project: https://svpow.com/2023/11/14/new-paper-theropod-bite-marks-on-morrison-sauropod-bones/

Dave's post about it: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2023/11/14/theropods-bit-sauropods-too/

And the paper itself: https://peerj.com/articles/16327/

Dinosaur documentaries are booming again so it's time to blow the lid on some insider secrets of how these get made. (Alternative description: Dave complains for an hour about being messed around by TV companies and ignored by the very producers and directors who hired him for his advice on the models and scrip they are working on). Dave and Iszi share their stories from behind and in front of the camera and the steps that go into getting a dinosaur doc made and what goes on behind the scenes.

Links:

Dave has a fair old history with the more traditional media and you can see the fury coming out here too: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/linheraptor-vs-the-international-media/

Some great stuff can come from good documentaries though, check out this interview with the man behind the Walking with Dinosaurs models (and Jabba the Hutt!).

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/interview-with-jez-gibson-harris/

Odd ideas in palaeontology

Palaeontology as a scientific field is beyond popular in the media and with the public but that also means it draws a lot of attention from those with, let's call them, questionable ideas. And no group gets more of this stuff than the dinosaurs and the animals of the Mesozoic. This time out, Iszi and Dave discuss the world of paleo cranks, people with outlandish and non-scientific ideas who present them as fully formed research. Rarely does any of this make it into the mainstream, but on occasion it leaks in and this can only cause confusion. So sit back and enjoy, or grind your teeth in quiet and cold fury, as we go over some of the issues that come with unscientific ideas trying to make their way into the mainstream.

Links:

It's not just palaeontology that gets these people, here's a neat blog on a physics crank, but the central themes are identical: https://www.skepticblog.org/2012/01/09/cranks-and-physics/

A nice article by Mark Witton on how to spot crankery in palaeontology: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-to-spot-palaeontological-crankery.html

Please do support the show on patreon.com/terriblelizards for extra content.

It is the mega questions episode! Due to Dave etch-a-sketching everything in his life, making things like access to the internet an unusual hurdle, we decided to do answer as many questions we could in an hour. We didn't manage to run out of questions. Big thanks to Trisha, Sophia, Matt, Roy, Harris, Marcus, Noah, Jay, Aurous Azhdarchid, Rachel, Richard and David. 

The mystery of allosaurus arms is still unanswered. It is sad. 

Do check out Dave's blog and books: https://www.davehone.co.uk/outreach/books/

Also check out all that Iszi does including her books: https://iszi.com/ and her very irregular TikTok is here: https://www.tiktok.com/@iszi_lawrence

If you don't already please do consider supporting the show on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Or get yourself merch here: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/54175858

Petrodactyle and Pterosaur Growth

Dave has had a productive year for pterosaur papers and now two are out in quick succession(!) so get ready for a double-whammy podcast of him rolling his eyes when Iszi mentions flappy-flaps and he's trying to be serious. Anyway, first up is a new large pterosaur from southern Germany with a massive bony crest on its head. The specimen is owned by the Lauer Foundation and Dave talks about them and their work with palaeontologists to bring some new fossils to science. From there we move onto a new paper on pterosaur growth. We have covered this before with the idea that at least some pterosaurs grew very evenly and were independent pretty much on hatching. But this is a wider study with more species and suggests that the bigger pterosaurs were engaging in parental care with adults looking after their offspring for some time and shows there was more variation than previously thought. 

Links:

Here's a link to the Lauer Foundation where you can check out their work: https://www.lauerfoundationpse.org and here's their Facebook page with loads of photos of Petrodactyle: https://www.facebook.com/lauerfoundation 

A post of Dave's from a couple of years back on his last big foray into pterosaur growth: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/how-to-grow-your-dragon-pterosaur-onotgeny/ 

A link to I Know Dino which we mentioned at the top of the episode: https://iknowdino.com/

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

Artwork Credit: Lauer Foundation

This week a 'what I did on my holidays' from Dave, though it wasn't a holiday and he dug a hole in Utah and looked at a ton of museums and quarries. The Morrison Formation is a legendary slice of dinosaur history with a huge number of famous sites, important fossils, and features animals like Diplodocus, Allosaurus and Stegosaurus. After far too many years, Dave finally made it out to some of the best known and most important sites and in this episode reports back to Iszi on what he saw and learned and talks about digging a large hole with no dinosaurs in it while looking for a brachiosaur. It's all very palaeontological, but that seems to suit our audience so here we are.

Dave's new books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=dave+Hone+Smith+Wayland+dinosaur+book&crid=9EJAFZAAPNJV&sprefix=dave+hone+smith+wayland+dinosaur+book%2Caps%2C86&ref=nb_sb_noss

Dave's not got his act together yet for photos of the trip but here's some classic Morrison sauropods from the Morrison: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/a-pair-of-giants/

Please do support us on Patreon and unlock extra content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up! Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up! 

Listeners may remember that Dave went to Utah a couple of years back to try and help with a sauropod excavation. That trip was with sauropod supremo Matt Wedel who was recently in London, and so we scooped him up to get him onto Terrible Lizards. Unfortunately there were real technical issues, so the sound quality is not the best, but hopefully you can enjoy it. So sit back for an hour for deep sauropod nerdery, covering the air sac system, giant sauropods, their evolution, ecology, and follow Matt's career from a chance start on a new giant to bird physiology.

A link to Matt's blog SV-POW! which he writes with Mike Taylor (and in theory, Darren Naish)

https://svpow.com/

A link to an old post from Matt on Dave's blog about his favourite work:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/buried-treasure-matt-wedel/

Iszi's book The Time Machine Next Door: inventors and dinosaurs is out on 28th August in the UK: https://amzn.eu/d/dqPr6bo

Pterosaurs flew! No big shock there, but obviously flight places major constraints and selective pressures on the skeleton. This should mean all pterosaurs have standard, not-that-varied flight anatomy (in the same way most walking animals have similar leg anatomy).  It turns out an absolutely critical part of the pterosaur is both basically all but unstudied and wildly variable, yes, it's the sternum.

Dr Dave Hone (hello!) has just published a huge paper cataloguing and describing basically every sternum for every pterosaur out there and Iszi (hello!) gets to the bottom of why this is important for science and bad for Dave's mental health. 

Here is a link to Dave's blog: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2023/04/20/everything-you-didnt-think-to-ask-about-the-pterosaur-sternum-and-were-afraid-to-ask/?fbclid=IwAR3roJ1M-PgFO-53NZlPEXv--jkTo2xLTbh1okSC03QkeFY4nFnjZ_TELVw

As always do consider supporting us on Patreon and unlock extra content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Sauropods in general don't get the love they should on Terrible Lizards because, well, Dave doesn't know that much about them (and everyone knows theropods are best anyways). However, there's more than a couple that are both well-known enough in general and Dave know a bit about them that we can talk for a decent amount of time. Step forward the long-neckiest of the long-necked sauropods, Mamenchisaurus. This odd (even by sauropod standards) animal is found in a number of different sites from the Middle Jurassic of China but has not had all the research attention that it should for a such an interesting animal that's known from a good amount of material and a time where dinosaur remains are generally sparse. Happily, a major new study is out on these animals which adds some nice new information and potentially resolves some longstanding issues with this awesome genus so buckle up for some important tales of neck elongation in the Mesozoic. 

Links:

A very short blogpost by Dave with a photo of the mounted Bellusaurs skeleton:  https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/bellusaurus/

And a post on the insanely long Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum cervical rib: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/biggest-bones/ 

This is an area we have definitely covered before but it's one of perennial interest and keeps coming round with new studies, how can we tell what ancient animals were doing with weird features. More specifically, how do claims that this feather, or sail, or frill, or claw were used as a display feature stack up? Can we really work out what dinosaurs are doing with features like this and how can we test such ideas with such limited data when they've been gone for 65 million years? Well happily Dave is going to talk through some more of it again, with a side dabble into another bit of dinosaur behaviour and looking at predation vs scavenging.

As always, please support us on patreon and get extra content https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Links:

A blogpost by Dave on working out dinosaur displays: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/display-features-in-the-fossil-record/

And a post on bite marks and scavenging in dinosaurs: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/combat-and-cannibalism-in-tyrannosaurs/ 

Dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals have been a hit in the media for about as long as palaeontologists have been digging them up. But even in the modern age of digital communication, there is almost always an intermediate (and often several) between a palaeontologist and their audience when it comes to communicating about these animals. Whether it's journalists, reporters, documentaries and print, radio or TV, what you say, suggest, demand, advise or write as a palaeontologist often goes through editors, subeditors, producers, directors, animators and whole panels of discussion and you have very little control over it. That means that even the best communicators can have their message badly distorted by those who don't, or should, know better and has profound effects on the public understanding of science and where scientists fit into it.

So listen to Dave describe (OK, rant) about all the ways this goes wrong and what it means for the audience and palaeontologists alike. Iszi does get a word or two in as well. 

Links:

A blog post Dave forlornly wrote as a guide for journalists writing about science but serves as a useful guide for most people for spotting bad science journalism: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/traps-for-journalists-to-avoid/ 

A blogpost by palaeontologist Mark Witton about what can happen when a TV show tries to bring dinosaurs (on this case, pterosaurs) to life even when experts are involved: http://pterosaur-net.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-despair-pterosaurs-and-david.html 

We are into series 9 now and still going, though starting with this episode, in a bid to be more consistent and less panicked about completing series and the gaps between, we're moving to being a monthly podcast. So no end in sight yet for all you dinosaur (and sometimes pterosaur) lovers. 

Anyway, we're kicking off by talking about arguably the most common way that people encounter dinosaurs and that's museum displays and exhibits. Dave and Iszi talk through how these things get set up, the constraints and compromises necessary and how to try and cater for all. Unsurprisingly, it's rather complex to balance space, time, money, science, accessibility and protect the fossils on display. Hopefully, it gives some insight into how these things come to be and how they are supposed to work at least.

We also cover whether T Rex and other theropods had primate like numbers of telencephalic neurons and what this means. Were they really like baboons?

Links:

A blog post about the little exhibition on pterosaurs Dave put together way, way back in 2007: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/the-great-pterosaur-exhibition-of-2007/

A website covering the Titus exhibition that Dave helped to create: https://fourfamilyadventures.co.uk/titus-t-rex-is-king-wollaton-hall-nottingham/

The paper we discuss: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/cne.25453

The end of the series is our favourite - we answer your questions! 

A massive thank you to our patrons who contributed the questions. Go to patreon.com/terriblelizardds for a bonus episode out next week.

Do keep in touch #terriblelizards @iszi_lawrence @dave_hone

Buy Dave's Book - How fast did T.Rex Run/The future of Dinosaurs.

Look out for iszi's childrens books: Blackbeard's Treasure is out in January with Bloomsbury.

RAWR!

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

Support Terrible Lizards on Patreon

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

Pterosaur soft tissues

It's a double new paper episode this time as thanks to the magic of almost random review and publication times, Dave has two papers out on the same subject in the same month! So strap in for some absolute minutiae on pterosaur hands, feet, scales, and the oddly overlooked wing membrane that sits between their legs. Pterosaurs in general are not very common fossils and so it should be no surprise that we don't have a great many examples of their soft tissues, from skin, to beaks and claws and other bits. So, having new examples, and synthesising the limited information we have, is really important for building an understanding of these incredible animals. It's deep dive time.

A link to Dave's blogpost on the new hand and foot scale papers:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/new-data-on-pterosaurian-soft-tissues/

A link to a very old blogpost about pterosaur soft tissues generally:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/pterosaur-soft-tissues/

Iszi'a new book - featuring a pterosaur and perfect for 6-9 year olds is out on 28th August in the UK: https://amzn.eu/d/9kFiniD (message her on iszi.com if you want international posting).

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. 

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

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.