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0:35

Hello and welcome to I Know Dino. Keep

0:38

up with the latest dinosaur discoveries and science

0:40

with us. I'm Garrett. And

0:42

I'm Sabrina. And today in our

0:44

519th episode… We're

0:47

celebrating a hundred years of

0:49

velociraptor! Ah, nice. Also, it's Dino-vember.

0:52

And with velociraptor, you kind of have

0:55

to talk about Henry Fairfield Osborn, who

0:57

named velociraptor. So, we'll talk

0:59

about him a little bit. There's a lot going

1:01

on. There is. Velociraptor

1:03

is definitely a top ten, maybe

1:05

top five most popular dinosaur. Yes,

1:08

and very famous thanks to Jurassic Park.

1:11

We could have done the hundred year anniversary

1:13

of… I forget what the other dinosaur

1:15

was named in the same paper. Sittacosaurus,

1:18

I want to say? Sauronathoides?

1:21

It's Sauronathoides. There we

1:23

go. Second tries the charm. Sauronathoides

1:25

is named in that paper. But

1:28

there's also oviraptor. Oh,

1:30

yeah. Oviraptor is another pretty

1:32

popular one. It's a big day. This

1:35

paper came out November 7th of 1924. It's

1:38

pretty good. We don't always know the exact date.

1:40

Sometimes it's just the month. We

1:43

also have a fun fact,

1:45

which is that paleobiologist Zofia

1:48

Kielin Yavarosky not only found

1:50

the fighting dinosaurs, which includes

1:52

Velociraptor and Protoceratops, she

1:55

also discovered Dinocyrus and Galomimus.

1:58

Yeah, she's got a lot of greatest hits there. Yes,

2:00

and if you want to learn more about her, don't

2:02

worry. We'll have an upcoming episode all about her soon.

2:06

Which reminds me, I know that because

2:08

we're on parental leave. We're

2:11

expecting our second baby any day now, so

2:13

it seemed like a good idea to record

2:15

some episodes ahead of time. And

2:17

with a toddler and now a baby on

2:19

the way, it was a little bit too

2:22

difficult for us to prep weekly episodes ahead

2:24

of time, like we did last parental

2:26

leave. So we're going to

2:29

be experimenting with a biweekly format while

2:31

we're away. I hope you

2:33

enjoy our first parental leave episode. Yes.

2:36

Yeah, we did a survey last year, or at

2:39

some point, asking what people thought about

2:41

if we switched to biweekly. And

2:44

a lot of people, most people, said they would

2:46

be OK with it. So we're

2:48

going to see just how true that is. But

2:51

also, like Sabrina was saying, it

2:54

just wasn't practical for us to

2:56

prerecord months worth of weekly episodes.

2:59

Biweekly is still hard to prerecord because

3:01

we're basically recording two or three episodes

3:03

a week right now. Yes. Because we

3:05

are doing the I Know Paleo episodes,

3:08

getting ahead on the episodes as well as the

3:10

currently, in our time, weekly

3:15

episodes that are coming out. But if

3:17

you want dinosaur content

3:19

every week, make sure you sign up

3:21

for our newsletter because we were able

3:23

to write some stuff to fill in

3:25

the weeks in between. And

3:28

you can do that at inodino.com.

3:30

If you go to inodino.com/bonus, you'll

3:32

also get access to our bonus

3:35

I Know Paleo episode all

3:37

about terror birds. Yeah. And if

3:39

you want more I Know Paleo episodes and you're not

3:41

already a patron, you can sign up there and you'll

3:43

have plenty of episodes to fill in

3:45

those missing weeks. As

3:48

well as extended interviews, which I sometimes go back

3:50

and listen to because I forget what all people

3:52

told me. And it's kind of

3:54

fun to go back years and see what the

3:56

state of the science was when we were talking

3:58

to an expert on something. and also

4:01

just fun to revisit

4:03

those conversations. Yeah. So

4:06

that's all at patreon.com/ino dino.

4:09

And speaking of Patreon, we have some

4:11

patrons to thank this week. And

4:13

they are Toon Rex, Dr.

4:15

Eric Nefarious, Big Sheep, Daniel

4:18

McGill, Joao, Sti

4:20

Jackasaurus, Ryan the Biochemist,

4:23

Sorapod Susan, Sonia,

4:25

and Katie. Thank you

4:27

so much for being a dino at all in

4:29

our community. Seriously, your support is why

4:31

we're able to keep the show going, especially when

4:33

we need to take time off because we're having

4:35

a baby. Yes. Yes,

4:38

thank you all very much. All

4:40

right, jumping in, it's the beginning

4:42

of November, which means

4:44

it's dino-vember. I think we

4:47

usually talk about dino-vember, but kind of dove in

4:49

for this year. Basically an

4:51

art month, right? Drawing dinosaurs is the

4:53

idea. It's kind of like Elf on

4:55

a Shelf, but with dinosaurs? Oh,

4:58

that's right, I forgot. Yeah, it

5:00

started in 2012 with Susan

5:02

and Rafe Tuma. They made

5:05

their toy dinosaurs come to life and be up

5:07

to no good. So there's your Elf

5:09

on a Shelf thing. And they did

5:11

it for their kids so that they'd have

5:13

a sense of wonder and imagination, and so

5:16

they could all have fun together. Their website

5:18

says it's a month-long imagination invasion. It

5:20

kind of started because their youngest kid didn't

5:23

sleep through the night, so Susan started setting

5:25

up scenes with the dino toys to pass

5:27

the time, and they wanted something fun

5:29

for their older kids because they were too

5:31

tired to take the older kids out every day. In

5:33

the first year that they did it, the kids woke up

5:35

to find dinosaurs that got into some cereal and made a

5:37

mess in the kitchen, and they really liked it, so kind

5:40

of snowballed from there. Now they even have a book about

5:42

it that came out a few years ago. There's

5:44

one scene that involved 600 pounds

5:47

of ice cubes strewn across the

5:49

kitchen floor. So it got pretty

5:52

intense, it sounds like. Yeah,

5:54

that sounds like a mess. Those are brave

5:56

parents making that big of a mess for

5:58

themselves to clean up. Yeah, maybe their

6:01

kids helped maybe yeah, you

6:03

gotta clean up the mess after the dinos So

6:07

now a lot of people celebrate dinovember, I

6:10

know libraries schools and museums often make

6:12

announcements about it Am

6:14

I just completely mixing it up with something else

6:16

where a lot of people draw a dinosaur a

6:18

day? Yes for dinovember That's a

6:21

different month. I believe April. Okay Which

6:24

the name is escaping me Apparently

6:27

there's national draw dinosaur day, which

6:29

is January 30th Hmm,

6:31

it's just any excuse to draw dinosaurs.

6:33

You could draw dinosaurs all year.

6:35

It's only fine. Yeah So

6:38

if anyone celebrates dinovember, let us

6:40

know we would love to hear

6:42

some details You can send

6:45

that along via our feedback format

6:47

bit.ly slash dino questions Bonus

6:49

points if you also use 600 pounds of ice cubes

6:53

Was it 600 pounds I

6:55

was thinking it was 600 individual ice cubes

6:57

600 pounds of ice cubes Yes,

7:00

I read something about they used up 600

7:02

pounds of ice cubes Maybe it took them

7:04

a few tries to get what they were going

7:06

for so much ice There's

7:09

a lot of ice. So now that

7:11

we've covered dinovember. Let's talk about Henry

7:15

Fairfield Osborn Because

7:17

again on November 7th of 1924

7:19

so almost exactly a hundred years

7:21

ago from when this episodes airing

7:24

He named velociraptor and sworn

7:27

authorities and over raptor. But again, we're

7:29

focusing on velociraptor So

7:31

Henry Fairfield Osborn senior was

7:34

known for a lot of things He

7:36

was the president of the American Museum of

7:38

Natural History in New York for 25 years

7:40

and he named a number of dinosaurs He

7:43

became president of the American Museum of Natural History's Board of

7:45

Trustees in 1908 and served until 1933 He

7:49

also served as president of the New York Zoological Society

7:51

from 1909 to 1925 He

7:55

had a lot of paleontology awards and

7:57

he described and named multiple dinosaurs including

8:00

Ornitholestes in 1903, Tyrannosaurus rex in 1905, Albertosaurus

8:05

in 1905, Pentiseratops in 1923, and

8:10

then of course Velociraptor in 1924. And

8:13

Overraptor and Sornithoides. We can say that

8:15

every time? Maybe. I

8:18

don't know. I just

8:20

think it's so cool that especially Overraptor and Velociraptor

8:22

are both very common dinosaurs and the fact that

8:25

they were both named in the same paper, which

8:27

is only a few pages long is

8:29

pretty interesting. Yeah, they're just a few paragraphs apart.

8:32

As a curator, he worked with a

8:34

lot of fossil hunters and preparators, including

8:36

William King Gregory, Roy Chapman Andrews, Barnum

8:39

Brown, and Charles Knight. I

8:41

think we've talked about most of those people on our show.

8:43

Oh, definitely, yeah. He was

8:45

also senior vertebrate paleontologist of the US

8:47

Geological Survey in 1924. His

8:50

focus was on exhibits at the

8:53

American Museum of Natural History, murals,

8:55

dioramas, dinosaur mounts, and

8:58

he got a lot of visitors to the museum,

9:00

but not all scientists and researchers appreciated it at

9:02

the time. Yeah, some

9:04

people thought that the scientific study

9:07

wasn't meant for the public, and

9:09

it should be reserved for people that are

9:11

studying the science. They didn't want it to

9:13

be a big spectacle, which I

9:16

thought was really funny because Barnum Brown was

9:18

part of it, and he's literally named after

9:20

a guy who created the

9:22

circus. Yes. But

9:25

that's not why he got into it. Yeah.

9:28

Now, Osborne did have

9:30

racist and eugenic beliefs, which

9:33

did appear in the museum's exhibits and

9:36

educational programs. It's worth noting many of

9:38

his peers or contemporaries disagreed with his

9:40

beliefs, so that's nice. It is, yeah.

9:43

Usually people sort of do a wide

9:45

paintbrush and say, you know, everybody was

9:47

doing it at the time, but I

9:49

guess it wasn't everyone at the time.

9:52

It was common because they

9:54

even did a convention

9:56

on basically eugenics at AMNH while

9:58

he was doing it. was the

10:00

director there. He

10:03

was also the co-founder of the American Eugenics Society

10:05

in 1922, and he said that heredity

10:09

was superior to influences from the

10:11

environment. He

10:14

believed in progressive evolution and didn't think

10:16

that mutations and natural selection played a

10:18

role in evolution. He was a little

10:20

behind the time, and those a lot

10:23

behind the time in some ways, a little behind the

10:25

time in others. Yes. He

10:28

also had a theory on human origins called

10:30

the Dawn Man theory. It's based

10:32

on the discovery of the Piltdown Man, a bone

10:35

fragment said to be a previously unknown

10:37

early human before it was exposed as

10:39

a hoax. It took 41

10:41

years to be exposed as a forgery that

10:43

it came from three different species. Yeah, that's

10:45

a really famous case of critical

10:48

thinking missing. Yeah. They

10:51

got there. He also

10:53

argued that humans had a common ancestor

10:55

with apes, and all apes evolved parallel

10:57

to ancestors of humans. He

10:59

denied that the common ancestor was ape-like

11:01

and said it was more like a

11:03

human. Yeah, it doesn't work well with

11:06

eugenics if you descended from an

11:08

ape and you're trying to talk about how

11:10

superior people are or certain

11:12

people are. Yes. So

11:15

there are definitely things to be

11:17

aware of when studying Henry Fairfield

11:19

Osborne. Yeah, and unfortunately, the exhibits

11:23

that he created while he was there had

11:25

a lasting impact. Mm-hmm. For

11:27

example, part of the reason that a lot of

11:29

the early ape dioramas have

11:31

dark skin is because of his eugenics

11:33

beliefs. Yes. But

11:36

going back to his life in

11:38

general, he was born in 1857 in

11:40

Fairfield, Connecticut, four

11:43

years before the Civil War, which

11:45

sometimes I forget about putting it

11:47

in these historical perspectives. Yeah. Being

11:50

born during the time of slavery, I'm sure,

11:53

did not help with his

11:55

few different races. Yes.

11:58

He lived until 1935. and he

12:00

came from a wealthy family. He

12:02

was the eldest son of shipping

12:04

magnet and railroad tycoon William Henry Osborne

12:07

and Virginia Reed Sturgis. His

12:09

younger brother was William Church Osborne who

12:11

was president of the Metropolitan Museum of

12:14

Art. He had another brother

12:16

who drowned in the Hudson River when they were young.

12:19

That brother had a collection of local birds which were

12:21

later presented to the AMNH. Osborne

12:24

studied at Princeton University. He got a

12:26

BA in geology and archaeology. He

12:28

was mentored by Edward Drinker Cope, so you can imagine

12:31

which side of the Bone Wars he was on. He

12:35

also studied embryology and comparative anatomy

12:37

under Thomas Huxley and Francis Maylin

12:40

Balfour. It's interesting though because he

12:42

is from Connecticut. So you'd think maybe he was

12:44

a Marsh guy since that's where Marsh was from.

12:48

Well, he and Marsh had some clashes. He

12:51

married his wife Lucretia Thatcher Perry in 1881.

12:53

They had five children including

12:56

Henry Fairfield Osborne Jr. who was

12:59

a naturalist and conservationist. And

13:01

then of course Henry Osborne Sr.

13:03

was professor of zoology at Columbia

13:05

University in 1891 and

13:08

curator of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at

13:10

the AMNH the same year. He's

13:12

also the author of over 12,000 printed

13:15

pages in his lifetime. Is that

13:17

a lot? I don't know. That's

13:19

a lot, especially for his lifetime,

13:21

I think. Yeah, I guess

13:23

that if you what's a typical book like 400, 500?

13:29

200? Okay. Yeah, that's a lot of books. Osborne

13:34

died suddenly in 1935. His

13:37

wife had died in 1930 after a

13:39

nearly year long illness. So

13:41

that's just to give you some background of his life. There's

13:44

several animals named after him. Serolophus

13:47

Osbornei, for example, was named by Barnum

13:49

Brown in 1912. Then

13:52

there's the crocodile Osteolamus

13:55

Osbornei, named by Carl

13:57

Patterson Schmidt in 1919. In

14:00

1937, so a couple years after

14:02

he died, William Gregory presented a

14:04

biographical memoir of Osborne, and

14:07

it's full of praise. There's

14:09

also some interesting tidbits about his life and

14:11

how he became a paleontologist. For

14:13

example, as a child, he didn't really collect things.

14:16

His father encouraged him to do scientific work and even

14:18

built him a lodge for his work. While

14:21

a student at Princeton, Osborne and

14:23

two other students, including W.B. Scott

14:25

and Francis Spear Jr. decided they

14:27

didn't want Yale University to, quote,

14:29

have a monopoly in fossil hunting

14:31

expeditions in the West, end

14:33

quote. That sounds like it might be

14:35

referencing Marsh. A little bit. But

14:39

I think, yeah, I think it all kind of came together.

14:41

So when he was 20, they went on an expedition. This

14:43

is in 1877. They

14:45

collected fossil fish and plants in Colorado and

14:48

fossil mammals in Wyoming. They

14:50

studied the fossils and made drawings

14:52

and wrote descriptions and expressed gratitude

14:54

to Lady and Cope. Both

14:56

helped him a lot throughout his early career.

14:59

And then the next summer, they led a second

15:01

Princeton expedition to Wyoming and they found mammals. Osborne

15:04

wrote, quote, in any event, the discovery

15:07

of new principles is the chief end

15:09

of research. As Darwin observed, the true

15:11

naturalist is not content with merely assembling

15:14

facts. His chief desire is to seek

15:16

interpretations and explanations. In other words, to

15:18

discover new principles. I

15:20

have myself always found the mere assemblage

15:22

of facts an extremely painful and self

15:24

denying process. And I've always been

15:26

animated by the hope that such dry work would

15:29

finally be rewarded by an interpretation or the discovery

15:31

of a new principle, end quote. That

15:33

might explain why he was into the exhibits. Yeah.

15:35

And possibly why he was sort of

15:38

rejecting some of the main scientific

15:40

theories of the time, because he's always

15:42

trying to find, sounds a little bit

15:44

contrarian in a way where it's like,

15:47

I'm looking for something new. I'm bored

15:49

with just collecting data and the status

15:51

quo. Yeah. So like

15:53

he said, he was on Cope's side of the bone wars.

15:56

When he described a new

15:58

animal, lurocephalus. He said, quote,

16:01

this may eventually prove to be a

16:03

species of telematherium, marsh, but the description

16:05

given by him is so brief and

16:07

uncharacteristic that it might apply to any

16:09

of the allied genera, end quote. A

16:12

little bit of shade there. A little

16:14

bit. Marsh did such a bad job

16:16

describing this animal that I might as

16:18

well just rename it anyway. Yeah. Yes.

16:22

He also implied that marsh followed Lady

16:24

in exploring the Bridger beds in Wyoming,

16:26

which marsh denied. So

16:28

Osborn and Marsh clashed over Mesozoic mammals and

16:30

they ended up writing mean reviews of each

16:33

other's work. I don't know how Marsh found

16:35

the time when he was writing all these

16:37

mean reviews of Cope's work, but there

16:39

you go. Maybe he hired ghostwriters to

16:41

throw shade for him because he was

16:43

so busy. Maybe. Or

16:46

he just spent a lot of his time on Grudges. It

16:49

could be. It sounds like he did. I

16:51

think everybody involved intimately

16:54

in the Bone Wars spent a lot of time

16:56

on Grudges. Yes. Which speaking of,

16:58

well, I don't know if this is probably

17:00

not because of a grudge, but the American

17:03

Museum of Natural History did purchase Cope's collection

17:05

of fossils, partly because of Osborn. Oh

17:08

yeah. He was very much on Cope's side.

17:10

Yeah. And Cope needed money late in life,

17:12

so that would have helped. And

17:14

that really worked out for AMNH. Some of

17:16

those fossils are hugely important. Oh yeah. I

17:19

mean, a lot of things worked out for a

17:21

lot of people because of Cope and Marsh. Yeah.

17:25

Yeah, Osborn, usually when

17:27

I hear his name, I think

17:30

of the eugenics, unfortunately. Me too.

17:32

Just because he had

17:34

such a big impact on it and really

17:37

emphasizing it with such a high

17:39

position in paleontology,

17:42

which is a real bummer because, like you

17:45

said, velociraptor, sore anathotes,

17:47

and oviraptor. Plus

17:50

Tyrannosaurus rex. Yeah. So

17:53

in dinosaur science, he is a really big name. And

17:56

I'm sure he helped popularize

17:58

dinosaurs. But yeah,

18:00

it's just so tainted. It's unfortunate. Mm-hmm.

18:03

Yeah, that happens sometimes with these

18:05

big figures in paleontology. But

18:08

we do have them to thank for Velociraptor. So

18:10

at least there's that. Yes.

18:12

And speaking of, we will get to our

18:14

Dinosaur of the Day Velociraptor in just a

18:16

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20:47

speaking of Velociraptor, we'll

20:49

now get onto our Dinosaur of the Day. I'm

20:52

going to say it's Velociraptor Revisited because it was

20:54

our Dinosaur of the Day in episode

20:56

83. It's

20:59

weird to hear a two-digit episode. It

21:02

is. We also discuss Velociraptor

21:04

quite a bit as part of our

21:06

Raptor Renaissance episode, episode 500. But

21:10

it's such a famous and cool dinosaur. It's kind

21:12

of like how could we not talk about it

21:14

on the 100-year anniversary? Sorry,

21:17

Sorenathoidis and overraptor. Yeah.

21:23

Velociraptor was a Dromaeosaurid theropod that

21:26

lived in the Late Cretaceous in

21:28

what is now Mongolia and China,

21:30

found in the Jadokda Formation and Bayan-Mandahu

21:33

Formation. Again, it was named

21:36

November 7, 1924 by Henry Fairfield Osborn. 100-year

21:40

anniversary. Dromaeosaurs were

21:42

closely related to birds, their sister

21:44

group. They're small to

21:46

medium in size and feathered. They

21:48

lived in the Cretaceous, though some isolated teeth had

21:51

been found from the Middle Jurassic and

21:53

they lived all over the world. They

21:55

were very bird-like and smart. They

21:57

had long arms with sharp claws, which were good

21:59

for birds. grasping their best known

22:01

though for those sickle like claws on their

22:03

second toes, which they would

22:06

hold their second toes off the ground while walking and

22:09

only their third and fourth toe bones

22:11

would bear their weight. So they were

22:13

functionally didactyl. Yes, because the first toe

22:15

also is way up off

22:17

the ground. Mm hmm. Barely even.

22:19

Small, very small. Kind of like

22:22

a duclon, a dog or something. So

22:24

if you see a track of a velociraptor, it's literally

22:26

just two toes and a little tiny

22:28

bump at the base for where that

22:30

like kind of first foot bone

22:32

is. Yeah. And

22:35

they might have used those second toe claws for

22:37

going after prey and climbing trees. So it was

22:39

important to keep them sharp. Yeah. And

22:41

not necessarily the same throughout their whole life too. When they were

22:44

younger, maybe it was more important to be able to climb a

22:46

tree or something. And when they're older, might've been more for attacking

22:49

things. Mm hmm. Of

22:51

course, velociraptor is iconic in Jurassic

22:53

Park and Jurassic World, but we'll

22:55

start with Jurassic Park because that's

22:57

what made it iconic. Yeah. Because

23:00

you've got Timmy and Lex, then you've got Blue.

23:03

It's a toss up, I guess. Because, yeah, Jurassic

23:05

World, it's definitely more of a character. It

23:07

depends on your age. I think

23:09

for people that were alive and

23:12

watching movies when Jurassic Park came

23:14

out, it's definitely a Jurassic Park

23:16

dinosaur. But for the

23:18

younger generations. It's all about

23:20

Blue. I think so. It's more of a Jurassic World

23:23

phenomenon. Yeah. Plus

23:25

Jurassic Park focused, I think, a little bit more on

23:27

T-Rex and a little bit less on the raptors. I

23:30

think you're right. But then they kept popping up.

23:32

They did. Subsequent films.

23:34

Yeah. Well, we talk about this a

23:36

lot on the show. Velociraptor in Jurassic Park was modeled

23:38

after Deinonychus, but then they also

23:41

made it the size of Utahraptor. And

23:43

Utahraptor was discovered right around the time the

23:45

movie was coming out. So it worked out.

23:48

It was quite a coincidence. Yes. There's

23:51

two paleontologists, Jim Kirkland, about this in episode 34.

23:54

And the way he puts it, Utahraptor is the star of

23:57

the movie. So he's on team raptor is where

23:59

the importance of the movie is. part of Jurassic Park,

24:01

not T-Rex. Well, he found Utah

24:03

Raptor, so that makes sense. I

24:06

remember he pointed out too that the

24:08

claw of Utah Raptor is way bigger

24:10

than the Velociraptor claw is in the

24:12

movie. It's one of the few cases

24:14

of things in Jurassic Park that look

24:16

kind of puny and not scary compared

24:18

to the real life animal. Yeah. So

24:22

Velociraptor looked bird-like, but it had a

24:24

very long tail and very big claws

24:26

and teeth. Well, regular size teeth, big

24:29

claws and sharp teeth. Yeah.

24:31

Big teeth for a bird. Yeah.

24:34

Birds don't have teeth. Yeah. Velociraptor

24:37

has been compared to eagles. You could

24:39

think of it like a land eagle.

24:42

It walked on two legs. It

24:44

had a long, low skull. It

24:46

was estimated to be up to almost seven feet

24:48

or over two meters long and weight up to

24:51

a 43 pounds or almost

24:53

20 kilograms. It had an upturned

24:55

snout and a triangular

24:57

jawbone. Its skull grew up

25:00

to over nine inches or about 23 centimeters

25:02

long. Its snout

25:04

was about 60% the length of the skull

25:06

and it was narrow. I feel like

25:08

I should mention too, even though it's

25:10

seven feet or about two meters long,

25:13

that means it's about a third of

25:15

that in height. So right

25:18

around two feet tall, maybe

25:20

two thirds of a meter tall. So

25:22

that's why I think dog sized is

25:24

a good way to describe it. Sometimes

25:27

they say turkey sized if

25:29

you're talking about it by weight because 43 pounds

25:31

is sort of the upper estimate of what it might

25:33

weigh. The long tail really

25:35

makes a difference for length. Yeah.

25:38

There's no good modern animal to compare these

25:40

animals to because they're so lightweight for their

25:42

size and they're also really long and skinny.

25:44

So they're sort of weird. They're almost like

25:47

a snake with legs or something in terms

25:49

of proportions, super weird, but sort

25:52

of dog or turkey. Like you're

25:55

saying the lightweight too, it's because it had

25:57

hollow bones. It also had a

25:59

wishbone. It had large hands with

26:01

three fingers on each hand and

26:03

claws on the hands. The tail

26:05

was stiff. The one specimen was

26:08

found with tail bones that curved sideways, so there's

26:10

some flexibility to move side to side. Not

26:12

too much though, because the vertebrae

26:15

on the tail really interlocked with

26:17

these extremely long processes sticking off

26:19

them that would link a dozen

26:21

vertebrae together. Right. And

26:24

again, it had the sickle-shaped claw on each of its

26:26

second toes. The sickle claws could

26:28

grow to over six and a half centimeters or

26:30

2.6 inches long. And

26:32

that's just the fossilized part. That's

26:35

just the bone, not the keratin sheath over

26:37

the top. Yeah. Yeah. So

26:40

you are really talking about like eagle talons

26:42

on this turkey. Eagle

26:44

talons on it too. Like

26:47

we said, it had four toes, but it only walked

26:49

on its third and fourth toes because that first toe

26:52

had a small dew claw and was a

26:54

small toe. And then the second one, it

26:56

held off the ground because it had that

26:58

large sickle-shaped claw. Want to keep

27:00

it sharp? Mm-hmm. Can't be dragging it on

27:02

the ground. Yes. It had a large

27:05

brain in proportion to its body size, so it's

27:07

probably intelligent. It was agile,

27:09

probably a fast runner. And

27:11

based on the scleral rings in the eyes, it

27:14

might have been nocturnal. Yeah,

27:16

maybe. Maybe. There

27:18

was a study from 2024 earlier this year by Yuan

27:21

Tingtze and others that found velociraptor

27:23

may be in between modern

27:25

diurnal and nocturnal animals. So somewhere

27:27

in between night and day. Yeah.

27:30

And it's also possible that all dinosaurs had the

27:32

scleral rings, which would mean the ones

27:36

that were nocturnal and diurnal. Yeah, they both

27:38

had them. There was

27:40

a study from 2023 by Sichiro

27:42

Tada and others that reconstructed the

27:44

nasal cavity of velociraptor mongoliensis and

27:47

compared it to modern endotherms and

27:49

ectotherms. And they found

27:51

that velociraptor probably couldn't cool its brain like

27:53

modern birds. It's possible

27:56

non-aving dinosaurs without a large nasal cavity didn't

27:58

need them because weren't as developed as birds

28:00

and didn't need to be as cooled down.

28:03

But the nasal cavity of Velociraptor was

28:05

not large enough to regulate heat for

28:07

a bird-like large brain. It

28:10

didn't need energy to hunt. It was warm-blooded

28:12

to some extent, but based on raptor growth

28:14

rates, it may have had a more moderate

28:17

metabolism. Quill knobs

28:19

have been found on Velociraptor arms,

28:22

their attachment points for feathers, which means

28:24

that Velociraptor had feathers. Its

28:26

arms, though, were too short to fly or glide,

28:29

so it may have used feathers to attract mates,

28:31

or help for brooding, or help it run faster

28:33

up slopes. Six quill knobs

28:35

have been found on a specimen, this was

28:37

in 2007, from the Jadokde Formation,

28:40

but it may have had 14 quill knobs on its arms. However,

28:43

that specimen with the quill knobs

28:45

may need to be reevaluated and

28:47

confirmed that it is actually Velociraptor.

28:50

Yeah, quill knobs are so cool

28:52

because they show that it had

28:54

large primary feathers attaching directly to

28:56

the bone, which still every time

28:58

I think about it, it sort

29:00

of makes me cringe a little

29:03

bit that they had feathers that went through

29:05

their skin and connected to the bone. But

29:09

it shows you how strong those feathers were

29:11

and that potentially they were using them for

29:13

flight. Yes, or brooding. Yeah,

29:15

or something more than

29:17

just insulation. So the reason

29:19

they need to confirm and reevaluate is

29:21

because there was another Dromaeosaur that was

29:23

found in that locality, Soggin, so

29:26

they just need to make sure that this one

29:28

with the quill knobs is Velociraptor. But

29:31

based on other Dromaeosaurs with feathers

29:34

like Genuanlong, Velociraptor probably did have

29:36

feathers. There's two

29:38

valid species of Velociraptor. There's Mongoliancis,

29:40

which is the type species, and

29:42

Osmulske, which was named in 2008.

29:46

There was a skull found in Inner Mongolia. The

29:49

genus named Velociraptor means swift Caesar,

29:51

and the species named

29:53

Mongoliancis refers to Mongolia where the fossils were

29:55

found. I've also heard it

29:57

called like rapid thief set of

29:59

spiders. Swift Caesar. Oh, yes. Yeah,

30:03

raptors often, it means thief or something

30:05

like that, so it just depends. The

30:08

species name Mongoliancis refers to Mongolia,

30:10

where the fossils were found, and

30:12

the species name Osmulske is in

30:14

honor of Polish paleontologist Halska Osmulske.

30:17

The first fossil of Velociraptor was found

30:19

in 1923 as part of an American

30:21

Museum of Natural History expedition to the

30:24

Gobi Desert in Mongolia. They

30:26

were found at the Flaming Cliff Site,

30:28

which is where Roy Chapman anders went

30:30

and we talked all about his expeditions

30:32

in episode 402, the indirect

30:35

inspiration to Indiana Jones. Yep, and

30:37

then Osborne, I guess, followed him

30:39

there a few years later.

30:42

Osborne did not follow him. Roy Chapman anders

30:44

was exploring for Osborne and would ship the

30:46

fossils back. Oh, I see. Okay.

30:48

And that's how Osborne ended up naming all

30:50

these dinosaurs, including Sauronathoidi is an oviraptor, because

30:52

we have to keep bringing that up. So

30:56

he named it, but he did not discover it.

30:59

Yes. All three of those dinosaurs he named in 1924

31:01

had skulls. Yeah.

31:04

They have really nice drawings to accompany the paper. As

31:07

Osborne put it, quote, the skulls

31:10

are entirely dissimilar and extraordinarily interesting.

31:12

True. It's kind of

31:14

hard to think of dinosaurs that

31:16

are more different than oviraptor and

31:18

Velociraptor. Yes. The

31:22

Velociraptor skull was found in

31:24

soft sandstone lying alongside a

31:26

protoceratops skull. It's

31:28

like a precursor to the fighting dinosaurs. Oh,

31:30

there was a protoceratops there, although I think

31:32

I said cetacosaurus earlier. You did. Osborne

31:35

described Velociraptor as a, quote, typical megalosaurian type,

31:37

because a lot of dinosaurs were thought to

31:40

be megalosaurs for a while. I didn't realize

31:42

that was still going on in the 1920s.

31:45

Yeah. It took a while.

31:47

Osborne also thought that the claw, the

31:49

sickle-like claw on the foot was on

31:51

its hand at first. But

31:54

then, John Ostrom recognized in

31:56

1969 that Velociraptor was closely

31:58

related to Dromaeosaurus Anacos and

32:01

assigned it to Dromaeosauridae. So

32:03

that's how it's known as a raptor. Well,

32:05

I guess it always had raptor in its name.

32:07

Yeah, because it was seizing whether or not it

32:09

was with its foot or its hands. It's

32:12

usually a good guess that if you have big

32:14

claws, they're on hands. There aren't

32:17

that many animals that have bigger, more impressive

32:19

claws on their feet. Right. Although,

32:21

was it Megaraptor where the opposite happened? Yeah, exactly. They

32:23

thought the big claw was on the foot, but it

32:25

was actually on the hand. Yeah, because it's got a

32:27

little bit of a similar shape to what Velociraptor has

32:30

going on. Yeah. In 2008, Pascal,

32:33

Godfroy, and others named

32:35

bones found in 1999 by the Sino-Belgian Dinosaur

32:39

Expeditions, they named

32:41

Velociraptor alsmolsky based on

32:43

a jawbone and part of the eye socket. Velociraptor

32:46

alsmolsky had robust teeth, a

32:49

tear drop shaped finestra or opening

32:51

near the snout, the

32:54

pro-maxillary finestra, that

32:56

was as large as the opening in the

32:58

maxillary finestra. But a 2013 study

33:01

found that the shape of the

33:03

jawbone was more similar to Linnharaptor,

33:06

so maybe Velociraptor alsmolsky isn't

33:08

Velociraptor and needs to be

33:10

reassessed. Yeah, that's always the

33:12

thing. When you have two different species

33:14

within a genus, there's a good chance

33:16

that as more dinosaurs get named, you're

33:19

going to find some that squeeze between

33:21

them that have different genus names. And

33:23

then one of those, I guess

33:26

the newer name for the species in the existing

33:28

genus is going to have to get split out,

33:30

which is what would happen here. Alsmolsky

33:32

would get split out into a new genus

33:35

and you'd just be left with Velociraptor mongoliensis.

33:37

Yes. You'd probably

33:39

still have something, alsmolsky. It

33:42

could be like Halskiraptor. Oh no, it

33:44

can't be. That already exists. That's

33:47

some other raptor. Lelsmolsky.

33:51

Well, we'll see what happens if it ever gets reassessed.

33:54

Multiple Velociraptor skeletons have been

33:56

found. One was found in 1995 at the

34:00

the flaming cliffs and it has a well-preserved

34:02

skull and body with limbs, missing only part

34:04

of the tail and ends of the long

34:06

bones, and there's some small elements

34:09

that probably happen from being scavenged. There

34:12

was a skeleton found in 1993, found in

34:14

a death pose with its legs tucked up

34:16

under the body. The skeleton

34:18

was eroded but parts of the skull, arms, ribs,

34:20

and vertebrae were found. And

34:22

based on this specimen, scientists found that

34:25

the big toe, the hallux, wasn't

34:27

reversed in raptors so we only see

34:29

this full reversal in archeopteryx and

34:32

some birds, including in antiornithines.

34:35

Dromaeosaur skeletons previously thought to belong

34:37

to Velociraptor have been renamed. One

34:40

was Ichabod Crayosaurus. It's

34:43

a skeleton without a

34:45

skull. That's how you got that nickname.

34:48

It was found in a 1990 joint Mongolian-American

34:50

expedition in the Gobi Desert. But

34:53

now that one is known as Sri Devai. It was named

34:55

in 2021. If

34:57

it sounds familiar, we talked about that in episode 328. It's

35:00

a cool one. I think I

35:03

was saying it's Sri Devai but

35:05

I'm not sure exactly. And I

35:07

think Ichabod Cray-nionsaurus was an

35:10

informal name, right? That's like in quotes. Oh

35:12

yeah, the nickname. Yeah. It's a

35:14

fun nickname. It would be pretty funny

35:17

if somebody officially named a dinosaur Ichabod

35:19

Cray-niosaurus because it was basically a skull.

35:21

Yeah. That would be pretty enjoyable.

35:23

That would be. In

35:26

2020, Mark Powers described a Velociraptor

35:28

specimen in his master's thesis, which

35:31

he found was a third new species

35:33

of Velociraptor based on having a shallow

35:35

jawbone. And later studies found

35:37

it to be distinct as well, but it

35:39

hasn't been named yet. So

35:42

we'll see how that goes. There might be some new

35:45

Velociraptor news. Yeah. Velociraptor

35:47

is, in addition to Jurassic

35:49

Park, famous for battling a

35:51

protoceratops in the fighting dinosaurs.

35:53

And that was found in

35:55

1971 by Zofia Kielin Javerowski

35:57

and a Polish-Mongolian team. One

36:00

of the coolest finds of all time by

36:02

far. Yes. Although, Dinachiras

36:04

is up there for me too.

36:06

Yeah. The fighting dinosaurs

36:09

probably were quickly buried in sand

36:11

from a sandstorm or collapsing dune.

36:14

The Velociraptor has a sickle-like claw on

36:16

the Protoceratops throat, and then the Protoceratops

36:18

beak is clamped onto the raptor's right

36:20

arm. So we don't know who was

36:22

winning. They both lost. Well, yes.

36:25

In the end, they both ended up fossils in the

36:28

middle of a fight. And

36:30

in the fighting dinosaurs, the Protoceratops was

36:32

much bulkier than Velociraptor, but

36:34

it was relatively small. It may have been a

36:37

juvenile. So it could be that there was an

36:39

adult Velociraptor trying to prey

36:41

on a juvenile Protoceratops. But

36:43

it's unclear if this happened a lot. The

36:45

fighting dinosaurs is the only direct fossil

36:48

evidence we have of two dinosaurs interacting,

36:50

at least so far. Well,

36:52

there's the dueling dinosaurs now.

36:56

That's currently being prepared, so we

36:58

don't know what to expect yet.

37:00

Yeah. How directly interacting they are.

37:02

Yes. I guess it depends how

37:04

you phrase it too, because we

37:06

have tooth marks that have healed

37:08

on dinosaurs and thagomizer holes that

37:11

seem to have healed slightly too.

37:13

So that's evidence of them interacting

37:15

too. Yeah, but not right in

37:17

the middle of a battle. It

37:20

might not count as direct fossil

37:22

evidence, like two animals literally interacting,

37:24

fossilized interacting together. Yes. Unless you

37:26

include a dinosaur sitting on a

37:29

clutch of eggs or

37:31

a dinosaur hanging out with others

37:33

of its same species fossilizing

37:36

together. Yeah. I'm not sure

37:38

how you define that. Yeah. If

37:40

you're a fan of the fighting dinosaurs, you probably

37:43

brush those to the side. Well,

37:45

with the fighting dinosaurs, it could have been

37:47

a chance encounter between the two of them

37:50

rather than a predator-prey interaction too. We

37:53

don't know. It's hard to say. We'll

37:56

get more into Velociraptor and how it

37:59

went out. after pray, so that

38:01

includes a sickle claw, in just a moment.

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39:33

So at one point the sickle claw and

39:35

blast raptor was thought to disembowel prey, but

39:38

with the fighting dinosaurs, the

39:41

claws is on the throat of

39:43

protoceratops. So rather than going

39:45

for the bowels, like

39:48

stomach area, it seemed to go for

39:51

the jugular. Yeah. So

39:53

maybe velociraptor pierced vital parts of

39:55

the throat like the jugular or

39:57

windpipe. Oh yeah, that's true. windpipe

40:00

would also probably get the job

40:02

done. Yeah. A 2011

40:05

study by Denver Fowler and others suggested

40:07

the raptor prey restraint or the RPR

40:09

model. And that's what modern birds

40:11

of prey do. They proposed

40:13

this model after comparing raptor

40:15

feet and legs to modern birds of prey

40:17

like eagles and hawks. So

40:20

maybe Velociraptor used

40:23

the RPR where it leapt onto prey, pinned

40:25

it and held it with the sickle claws,

40:27

then would eat the prey and the prey

40:29

would die from organ failure and blood loss,

40:31

which sounds terrible. Yeah.

40:34

Yeah, animals aren't usually super interested in

40:36

killing their prey quickly as much as

40:38

they are in immobilizing it. Yeah.

40:41

This stabbing is also supported by how

40:43

Velociraptor was found with the fighting dinosaurs.

40:46

Velociraptor may have used its arms to help flap

40:48

and balance while on top of the struggling prey

40:50

and then the tail would have helped

40:52

with counterbalancing as well. You do

40:55

see that a lot with things like eagles

40:57

and hawks and other raptors as they use

40:59

their wings for that balance, sometimes like pressing

41:01

down to get better grip and things like

41:03

that. You can definitely see how that'd

41:05

be useful on Velociraptor even if it couldn't use its

41:07

wings to actually fly. Yes. Help

41:10

flap, keep it in place. It

41:12

also helped too because its jaws were relatively weak so

41:14

it had a weak bite. It

41:16

was estimated to have a bite force of 304 newtons and

41:19

that's lower than other Dromaeosaurids. Deinonychus

41:21

as an example had over 700

41:23

newtons. For the

41:25

record, 304 newtons is about 68 pounds

41:27

force if you need a comparison. Not

41:30

as strong as weak and bite but not

41:32

far off. Yeah. They had sharper teeth.

41:35

There was a study from 2024 earlier this

41:37

year that did find Velociraptor had a high

41:39

bite force compared to other raptors like Dromaeosaurus

41:42

and Deinonychus though. Seems

41:45

like bite force is a hard thing to estimate. That's

41:47

true. It's not a good thing to put

41:49

a lot of assumptions into your models when you're estimating bite forces.

41:52

Mm-hmm. In 2020, there

41:54

was a study that reconstructed the

41:56

endocranium of Velociraptor and

41:59

they compared it to non-85. Therapods, modern

42:01

birds, and other modern Arca-sores. They

42:04

found that Velociraptor Mongoliances could detect a

42:06

wide and high range of sound frequencies,

42:08

so it had good hearing. And it

42:10

was also agile and could probably track

42:12

its prey easily. So that

42:14

suggests that Velociraptor was an active predator that

42:17

would scavenge if the prey was older and

42:19

bad health, or maybe

42:21

during droughts or other prolonged climatic

42:23

events. The thinking is

42:25

that Velociraptor probably ate small mammals

42:27

and reptiles, and probably scavenged and

42:29

hunted, which a lot of

42:31

dinosaurs did, a lot of animals do.

42:33

Yeah, I'm a little bit surprised that

42:35

given their scavenging and some of their

42:38

adaptability, that none of these Velociraptor, you

42:40

know, basically flightless

42:42

bird-type dinosaurs survived the incretaceous

42:44

mass extinction. They seemed like

42:46

they were in pretty good

42:48

position for that. They're just

42:50

unlucky. Yeah. There's a

42:52

few scavenging examples of Velociraptor. There's

42:54

a 2010 study that found evidence

42:57

of Velociraptor feeding on protoceratops They

43:00

found bite marks on what was probably

43:02

protoceratops bones near some shed teeth that

43:04

were thought to belong to Velociraptor. They

43:07

found over 60 pieces of bone, including a

43:09

partial jaw and four teeth. The

43:11

teeth belonged to definitely a Velociraptorine based

43:14

on the shape of the teeth and

43:16

the size of the denticles, and the

43:18

only Velociraptor known from that time at

43:20

that area, which is the

43:23

Bayan Mandahu, is Velociraptor. At

43:25

least, that's what was known

43:27

until Lintaraptor was named also in 2010, but

43:29

the Lintaraptor paper came after this study was

43:31

published, even though they were published in the

43:34

same year. So they added a

43:36

note at the end of this 2010 study

43:38

that said Lintaraptor's description complicated their

43:40

referral of the teeth to Velociraptor,

43:43

but the poor condition of the known Lintaraptor teeth

43:45

made it hard to compare. And

43:47

they also said, well, there's also lots of Velociraptor

43:49

fossils in the area, so it still seems more

43:52

likely it belonged to Velociraptor. Yeah. That's

43:54

hard to say. Yes. And also you get

43:56

that thing where even

43:58

though you might say... Well, there's

44:01

such similar animals, maybe they both

44:03

hunted protoceratops. You get

44:05

that niche partitioning where sometimes there's two very

44:07

similar looking species and they do pretty different

44:09

things. Yes. The teeth, we

44:12

do know, they were small, were curved and

44:14

serrated. And the pattern of

44:16

bite marks are similar to other tooth marks from

44:18

theropop bites, which were interpreted

44:20

as accidental marks made while feeding,

44:22

so not deliberate bone biting. Just

44:25

kind of scraping them while it was eating. One

44:28

tooth was broken. Velociraptor skull

44:30

and teeth don't seem like it'd be

44:33

able to eat bone and they're small

44:35

compared to protoceratops. So

44:37

the bite marks on the jaw bone might show that

44:40

this animal was eaten at a

44:42

late stage because the taste of your bits

44:44

are in the legs or the abdomen area. Yeah,

44:47

typically, like if you go to the butcher

44:49

and you get a slice of cow,

44:52

you don't ask for the jaw meat. Pretty

44:55

far down the list. That's true. You

44:59

get that. Those are the animals that are scavenging. They

45:01

get that usually. There were also a

45:03

lot of bite marks on this animal, which might mean

45:05

that a lot of the meat was already stripped off

45:07

and the raptor was eating close to the bone. It's

45:11

possible there was a group hunting or

45:13

feeding situation, because it doesn't seem likely

45:15

that a single Velociraptor, even an adult

45:17

could eat all the flesh of an

45:19

adult protoceratops in one sitting, and

45:21

that protoceratops was about adult sized. However,

45:25

the fact that there's only two shed

45:27

crowns may mean that there was just one scavenging

45:29

individual and not a group of predators. Oh,

45:31

I see. Because it wasn't just like a whole

45:33

field of Velociraptor teeth scattered everywhere

45:36

where it looked like a whole bunch of

45:38

a protruding on it. Just a

45:40

couple. So the scavenging also might be

45:43

more likely for the late stage feeding. Either

45:46

way, this study supports the idea that

45:48

Velociraptor, if it is in fact Velociraptor,

45:50

which it seems likely, is

45:53

a great protoceratops either has prey or it's

45:55

scavenged it. It's always so hard to know.

45:57

Especially in cases like this, you don't know if maybe there

45:59

were. a whole bunch of teeth and just

46:01

only a few of them fossilized. Yeah. There's

46:04

no evidence for velociraptor hunting in packs, but

46:06

there are raptor trackways that may show they

46:08

walk together. So they suggested

46:10

that either way, velociraptor feeding on

46:12

protoceratops was probably relatively common. We

46:15

have two good pieces of evidence already. It's

46:18

more than we have for a lot of other dinosaurs.

46:20

Yeah, seriously. In 2012, David Hohn

46:22

and others described a pterosaur long bone, a

46:24

leg or arm bone, that was

46:27

found in the gut contents of a velociraptor.

46:29

The pterosaur would have been too big

46:31

and dangerous for velociraptor when it was

46:34

alive, so it seems likely that the

46:36

velociraptor scavenged it. This velociraptor was

46:38

largely complete and articulated. It was only missing

46:40

its right arm and most of the tail.

46:42

And it looked like it was injured when

46:44

it died because there's one broken rib that

46:46

showed signs of regrowth. So it was either

46:48

injured or recovering from an injury. And it

46:51

was a young sub-adult individual. Part

46:54

of the pterosaur bone was in the velociraptor's

46:56

chest cavity, and it

46:58

belonged to an ajdarkid pterosaur,

47:01

which is the group with

47:03

some of the largest pterosaurs, if you think Hazzagopteryx

47:06

and Quetzalcoatlus. Yeah. And

47:08

then you compare that to the size of a

47:10

velociraptor and you think, yeah, scavenging seems like the

47:13

way to go here. Yeah, it seems more likely.

47:15

There's narrow spaces between the velociraptor's ribs,

47:18

so it was probably digested and probably

47:20

didn't just end up in

47:23

that cavity after the dinosaur died. Yeah,

47:25

because if its ribs are more or

47:27

less intact, there isn't an easy way

47:29

for that bone to get pushed

47:32

in there by water or something,

47:34

moving the bones around after

47:37

everything's fossilizing. But

47:39

it might not have been in its gut for

47:41

very long because the surface of the bone is

47:43

smooth. There's no signs of digestive acids. The

47:46

edges are broken and jagged and rough, which

47:49

may mean it was broken before or as

47:51

part of it being ingested. But

47:53

the rough edges not being smoothed out

47:56

may mean that the bone just wasn't

47:58

long in the gut. Yeah, usually you

48:00

get that acid. etching pretty quickly. Yeah.

48:02

So you would think this must have

48:04

died very shortly after swallowing it. Yep.

48:06

Maybe because of swallowing it. Oh no,

48:08

it choked on it. Maybe. Maybe. So

48:10

going back to why this was a

48:12

scavenging thing, that Velociraptor specimens estimated to

48:14

weigh 13 kilograms versus

48:17

pterosaurs that had large wingspans. So

48:19

they would have been dangerous unless

48:21

it was already sick or injured.

48:24

The Velociraptor probably ate the bone because

48:26

there wasn't much meat left on the

48:28

carcass, unless it needed the minerals. Yeah,

48:30

that's true. If it was laying some

48:32

eggs. Yeah. And large bones being

48:34

swallowed whole is not common, but it happens

48:36

when there's no alternative. So it's

48:38

probably challenging to eat. And yeah, like you said,

48:40

maybe it didn't choke on it. Yeah. One

48:44

more example of a Velociraptor specimen found was in

48:46

1985, Norrell and others found

48:48

a skull with two rows of small

48:51

punctures on it that matched the size

48:53

and spacing of Velociraptor teeth. So

48:56

those punctures might've been from another Velociraptor.

48:59

There's no signs of healing and the

49:01

specimen wasn't scavenged. So it probably died

49:03

from its wound. Interesting.

49:05

I wonder how they know it wasn't scavenged. There

49:08

must've been other evidence. Yeah. Must be the way the

49:10

skull looked. No scrape marks. Just

49:14

got straight up murdered. Maybe there

49:16

was a fight. Yeah.

49:18

Really hard to say. Velociraptor

49:21

lived in a semi-arid climate

49:24

with sand dunes and intermittent

49:26

streams. Some other dinosaurs that

49:28

lived around the same time and place included

49:30

in kylosaurs like panakasaurus, alvarosaurs

49:32

like lintanicus, protoceratopsids

49:34

like protoceratops, of course, troodontids

49:38

like linta venator, and

49:41

the dromaeosaur lintaraptor. And

49:43

some other animals that lived around the same

49:45

time and place included crocodiles, small lizards, and

49:47

mammals. And a lot of the

49:49

animals that have been found in the formations were

49:51

found in situ and they probably died during sandstorms.

49:54

Yeah. I've heard it described that

49:56

Mongolia in the Mesozoic, the

49:58

latest Mesozoic when a lot of the stuff

50:00

fossilized, was pretty similar to Mongolia

50:02

now, Sandy. Very

50:05

good for digging up fossils. Yeah,

50:07

and preparing the fossils. And

50:11

our fun fact is

50:13

that paleobiologist, Zofia Keelan

50:16

Yavaroski, not only

50:18

found the fighting dinosaurs, but

50:20

she also discovered dinochirus and

50:22

gallimimus. It took two

50:24

days to excavate dinochirus and load onto

50:26

a vehicle. They found

50:28

those gigantic arms, much later

50:31

than Velociraptor was named, they found them in 1965. And

50:35

it presented a mystery, because gallimimus

50:37

was the arm, so was it so ferocious

50:39

it could tear apart prey with its hands?

50:42

And it took about 50 years to find the answer,

50:44

and it was an unexpected answer, because dinochirus

50:46

was almost goofy. I

50:49

think we've put it before, Garrett, its giant

50:51

arms were more like salad tongs to scoop

50:54

up food, both plants and fish. The

50:57

year before that, in 1964, Zofia

50:59

found the largest skeleton and

51:02

holotype of gallimimus, the chicken

51:04

mimic theropod. It was

51:06

large with a small head, it had a beacon feathers,

51:08

it could run really fast. The skeleton

51:10

was found lying on its back and the skull was

51:12

under its pelvis. Zofia was

51:15

a Polish paleobiologist. She led a series

51:17

of expeditions to the Gobi Desert. Her

51:20

work didn't just include dinosaurs though, she had

51:22

a big influence on the origins and early

51:25

evolution of mammals. And she also

51:27

studied trilobites and she published a ton

51:29

of scientific articles and books. She

51:32

was born in Poland in 1925, she

51:34

lived through World War II, and she

51:37

accomplished a lot. Among her

51:39

many achievements, she was the first woman to

51:41

serve on the committee of the International Union

51:43

of Geological Sciences. We

51:45

will be doing a whole episode on her coming

51:48

up in a few weeks, so

51:50

I don't wanna give away too many details just yet,

51:53

but it was impressive reading about

51:55

her. Yes, yeah, her

51:57

and Hulska Asmulska, I think are... of

52:00

the earlier female paleontologists

52:03

who had the most impressive

52:06

discoveries. Also Teresa

52:08

and Marianska. Oh yeah. They work together.

52:11

They're a lot of cool women paleontologists.

52:14

Mm-hmm. Responsible for some of our favorite

52:16

dinosaur discoveries. Mm-hmm. Galomimus is also

52:19

cool. Oh, she found a lot of cool stuff.

52:21

I'll tell you about that later. Okay.

52:24

Well, thank you for listening. We hope

52:26

you enjoyed our first parental leave episode.

52:29

Don't forget, if you still want weekly content and

52:31

you don't mind it in the form of newsletters,

52:34

then head over to iknowdino.com/bonus. You

52:36

can sign up for our newsletter

52:38

and also get access to our

52:40

first I Know Paley episode, Terror

52:44

Birds. Stay tuned for some more

52:46

exciting topics. Thanks

52:48

again and until next time.