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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

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