Advisory Opinions - 12 Angry Dinosaurs

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Rewind millions of years and a dinosaur-killing asteroid is racing toward Earth at breakneck speed. But what exactly happened in the immediate aftermath of this event? Which species survived and which ones were met with instantaneous extinction? In a much-needed break from today’s partisan political climate, David and Sarah are joined by Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh, for some in-the-field expertise on the dinosaur age. “When the dinosaurs died,” Steve Brusatte explains on today’s podcast, “they died literally because a six-mile wide rock fell out of the sky, traveling faster than a speeding bullet.” Fast forward to 2020, and paleontology is in high demand. “We’re in this golden age right now,” Brusatte tells David and Sarah. “There’s fifty-something new species of dinosaurs being found every single year.” But realistically speaking, most people have a limited knowledge base about dinosaurs. Was the Tyrannosaurus rex an intelligent dinosaur? Are pterodactyls birds? What are the personality traits that make a good paleontologist? Steve Brusatte has answers. Tune in for some fun facts about pinocchio dinosaurs, banana-sized T-rex teeth, and birds (which are dinosaurs, by the way). For all you Jurassic Park fans out there, you won’t want to miss this one (especially since Brusatte is now a science consultant for the series.) Show Notes: -Steve Brusatte’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, and She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to a very special edition of the Advisory Opinions Podcast. We promised August would be nerd month and we deliver on our promises. So today we're going to very briefly, not very briefly, but briefly discuss the question, can the president actually ban TikTok from the United States of America? A question that many people have asked and the public really wants to know, Sarah, because they've grown to love my dance videos. Oh gosh. I have an alternative ego as an alternate ego as a TikTok influencer. And I wouldn't doubt it. I really wouldn't. Yeah. It's just look it up. A host of videos

to early dance videos to early Taylor Swift. It's just great stuff. But can we eliminate me from the Internet? And can we eliminate, can the president eliminate TikTok? But that's the side, that's the opening act. One of the greatest concerts I ever went to in my life was the U2 Joshua Tree Tour in 1987 in Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky. And so the opening act was a group called the Bodines. So the Bodines is the TikTok question, but you too

is Steve Brussati, a professor, Steve Brussati from University of Edinburgh in Scotland. And we're going to talk dinosaurs. And it's a great conversation, Sarah. It's just awesome. Can I also relate dinosaurs to the law? Because there was a great legal battle in the 90s. Have you ever been, you've gone to Chicago. Have you been to the Field Museum there? Yes, I have. Have you seen Sue the T-Rex? I have indeed seen Sue the T-Rex. Sue the T-Rex is the source of one of the most fascinating legal battles really to ever hit dinosaur world. And back in the 90eties, uh, like these guys find it. They think they have this contract, yada,

yada, yada. The FBI shows up with the national guard to seize Sue. She ends up on auction. The, uh, the guy makes the one guy makes $17.6 million from the auction of Sue. And the other guy serves 18 months in federal prison.

I mean, Sue, the T-Rex living quite the life. She now is at Chicago's Field Museum. And so like you can see like dinosaur to law. And then of course you have Jurassic Park. There's a lawyer in that. So I mean, I'm just saying it's not so off topic. I mean, there's a lawyer in there for in Jurassic Park for a brief period of time.

I think he plays an important cautionary role. And to be clear, the T-Rex is named Sue. They did not literally sue the T-Rex. Correct. Although, as we've discussed, you could. We do have, you know, you'll see lawsuits all the time that are like the United States versus 27 Chevy Malibus.

It's true enough. Yeah. United States versus 1987 Chevy Silverado. I mean mean yeah it's yeah it happens uh okay let's first i answer the tiktok question as best as we can um because we've gotten this question quite a bit for on email i've had it tweeted at me uh can president, by executive order, ban TikTok? Sarah, the short answer is it's complicated. No, I mean, I think the short answer is yes. The very short answer.

Yes, he could. In theory, with all these things lining up and the evidence he would need and all of that. Like, yes, a president could ban an app like TikTok. And by ban, we mean for you to be able to get it from the app store on your phone in the United States. Yeah, the actual question really is, can the Trump administration use legal means to prevent, for example, Apple or Google from carrying TikTok on the app store?

Correct. That's what ban means in this case. So yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter. That's what ban means in this case. So, yeah, I mean. Exactly. It's already the case that, you know, members of the military are not permitted to have TikTok on their phones. So that's.

Real quick, David, do you have TikTok on your phone? I do not have TikTok on my phone. Have you ever? I did it one time. You did, same. I did it one time. And then the more I read into, you know, there's just the very idea that an entity,

and there's no real, there's just the very idea that an entity, and there's no real separation between Chinese corporations and the Chinese government in the same way that there is in the United States. But, you know, on the one hand, for me, Sarah, my information is already in the hands of the People's Republic of China because I was already subject to that giant data breach during the Obama administration where the security clearance files. So what did you enjoy about TikTok? What did you end up looking at the most and what did you find interesting about it? I would say I didn't enjoy TikTok because I barely looked at it.

Okay. My kids, my older two kids will send us TikToks that they think are funny. And I enjoy the TikToks my kids send me. But I think the number of times in my entire life since I downloaded TikTok that I just intentionally went to the app and sort of scrolled through it was two or three. And I think at most I had a little bit of a, like, huh, interesting. Okay. Funny. Yeah.

What about you? I found it super addictive. I never like signed up. I would just go on the app and like scroll through and it still knows, like it still creates kind of an algorithm for you. And so it will shock no one that my algorithm was in order. Dogs, cats, pregnant ladies

singing about doing their dance to the, I've been pregnant for way too long. Baby mama, this your song. And then probably fourth was like teenagers dancing to songs that like those like memeable TikTok moments. But really I went for the dog and cat videos. Let's be real. Yeah, I get that on Twitter. And if I'm going to go down a video

rabbit hole, it's YouTube. See, and I've never gotten into the YouTube rabbit holes, except this one night with Hamilton videos and then Lin-Manuel Miranda. And then that just like went off. That was like a 2 a.m. morning for no reason. Anyway, okay. So ways that the president can ban TikTok from making it to your app store. Well, one is, and this is, he can put the TikTok on the Commerce Department's list of foreign entities that quote, hang with me here,

the first part's not gonna apply. Second part is very broad. Present a greater risk of diversion to weapons of mass destruction programs. That's not applicable. Terrorism, not applicable. And here's the classic catch-all or other activities contrary to U.S. national security and or foreign policy interests. Okay. So then it's like rifle, rifle, large grenade. Yes, so that is, that's, now, the argument that TikTok would make is that, wait a minute, it's not really intended, that list, you're abusing the intent

of the list of foreign entities, but holy cow, that catch-all provision. Other activities contrary to U.S. national security and or foreign policy interests. And that's actually been used, the U.S. government added Hawaii to the entity list, which had real effects on their ability to work in the United States.

So that's one as well. And then there's also the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which would require him to declare an emergency. But that in the event of a, quote, unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or in substantial part out the side of the United States to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States, it seems to me the entity list is a little bit cleaner than that. But those are two mechanisms that the president can use.

So he has said that TikTok will cease to be available as of September 15th unless Microsoft buys it. Is there a way for him to ban it on September 15th based on those authorities? And then if they buy it on September 15th based on those authorities? And then if they buy it on September 20th,

it can be unbanned? The way he can declare it, can he undeclare it easily? Or if Microsoft doesn't find a way to buy this by September 15th, the ship kind of has sailed. I'm not going to hold myself out as an entity list expert lawyer here, Sarah.

But there is, in fact, it is, in fact, the case. My best assessment, and readers who may be entity list experts, please correct me if I'm wrong. Since this is an executive action, if placing an entity on the entity list is an executive action, removing an entity from the entity list can be an executive action as well. What about CFIUS? What about the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States? Is that like basically the committee would look at it, but then you'd still have to use one of those authorities or the committee, the CFIUS review could itself take action? the CFIUS review could itself take action.

Now, I don't think the CFIUS review can put it on the entity list, but the CFIUS review is a separate way that the CFIUS review can essentially force the divestment if it's going to continue to operate in the United States. Would that make it cheaper for Microsoft? Like, has this whole thing made TikTok cheaper for Microsoft, this last like 48 hours of TikTok kerfuffle? It would seem to me

to be that this is one of the best multi-billion dollar negotiating tools you could possibly imagine. Because that's what I was thinking all week. And I was like, man, if I were Microsoft, I'd be like, let's just put a pause on this review for a second because we think the price is about to plummet because it's going to be sell to us or lose the U.S. market entirely. it's going to be sell to us or lose the US market entirely. Yeah, it is really fascinating, the back and forth here. And now here's the other question. Does TikTok get less cool if it's owned by Bill Gates?

I've heard this theory. I think that TikTok is too substantial. The same way that when Facebook bought Instagram, there's plenty of people who think Facebook is evil and still don't know that Facebook owns Instagram. Oh, sure. Yeah, I think- I'm not on Facebook and I'm on Instagram. Like there's plenty of people who think Facebook is evil and still don't know that Facebook owns Instagram. Oh, sure. Yeah, I think... I'm not on Facebook and I'm on Instagram. You know, based on my focus group

of two older kids who have TikTok, they're rooting for Microsoft. Yeah, because they want to keep TikTok. Yeah, yeah. There is... I think in the Zoomer generation, there is no hangover

from the Microsoft-Apple wars that says that Microsoft is uncool. That's an interesting point because you're right. I very much remember the Microsoft wars. So yeah, I think Microsoft is the bad guy slash the old fuddy-duddy. But yeah, why would you think that if you're 15 years younger than me? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think the short answer on the TikTok question is, yeah, probably, probably. And the more substantive question is,

should he, should he do it? I think there's legitimate reasons to be concerned about a company affiliated with the People's Republic of China hoovering up so much personal information on American citizens. I mean. Yes, but then part of this is, yes, that is a good reason why an American president should consider putting TikTok on the entity list.

But that would have been true a year ago. So why now? Is it because of this, like, this, what do they call themselves? Anyway, the, like, TikTok kids who have been trolling the president got a lot of traction about three months ago. Yeah. TikTok helped foil one of the president's rallies. I think there is... Let's just put it this way.

Does the president have mixed motives here? I think it's quite probable, quite certainly possible, perhaps probable that he does. But legally, probably irrelevant. Yeah, legally, probably irrelevant. Absent some sort of like smoking gun sort of. But even then, I mean, even then it's going to be really hard. You know, does a foreign country, hey, let's talk about some of our recent Supreme Court authority. Foreign companies have a limited ability to assert constitutional rights. Yep. So, all right. Well, Sarah, should we move on from TikTok? Wait, really important. If Microsoft buys TikTok, will you put TikTok back on your phone?

Yes. Microsoft, Yeah, exactly. Because I want to see that Bill Gates content on TikTok. Maybe Bill Gates dancing to Renegade. Renegade. Now, here's a question for another time. Steve Jobs, it used to be conventional wisdom that in the battle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, Steve Jobs is sort of like the underdog, scrappy, good guy. Yeah.

And as we learn more about sort of Steve Jobs and his hold and rule over Apple, and we learn more about Bill Gates as one of the world's great philanthropists. Yeah. It's really casting the old Microsoft versus Apple wars differently in my mind. No, I mean, 1995, how we thought history was going to remember these two men is very different in

2020. No question. And, you know, as the great musical told us, um, who lives, who dies, who tells your story will become very important for these two guys. And Bill Gates's longevity has worked very much to his benefit for his memory and posterity. True, and his actions. So I'll put me on record. If Microsoft buys TikTok, I will download the Gates app

and I will take the Gates vaccine. All right, I'm so excited for what's coming next. Let's go, let's go. Yes, let's go. Let's talk paleontology. All right. So let's do it. With us today, we have Steve Brussate. No, I mispronounced it already. Oh, that's good enough. He is a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh. And here's how I came to find and know Steve, Professor Steve, we'll call you. One of the best books, no, sorry, the best book I read last year

was The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, which he wrote. And then I wrote on the books that I had read last year of like which ones I sort of recommended and why. And this was number one. And so then he on Twitter was like, hey, glad you liked my book. And I melted into a puddle of excitement because this book is for nerds who haven't really gotten to read about dinosaurs since they were a kid, but really wish they could still read about dinosaurs, but maybe not in like a pop-up book. So this is a book for adults who are still pretty into dinosaurs. And it's amazing because I feel like you got to grow up and be the thing that kids want to grow up and be. How did that happen? Well, first of all, thanks for having me and thanks for the kind words on the book and the initial tweet and everything. I really do

appreciate the support and you're absolutely right. I wrote the book not for fellow scientists, but for people in general and really specifically for people that haven't thought much about science or evolution or fossils since they were in school, but maybe have seen Jurassic Park and maybe want to learn more about dinosaurs. And I am one of those very, very fortunate people to get to do this thing for a career. I get to pick up dinosaurs and travel around the world, or at least I used to get to travel around the world back before the current situation. Although, isn't it social distancing if you're only with dinosaurs? I think that qualifies, whether it fits the Scottish laws here and the U.S. laws, if there are any U.S. laws. I don't know what's going on in the U.S., but anyway, you know, it is a dream job for a lot of people. It was not my dream job when I was really young.

My dad was a lawyer and a judge, and he's retired now. But I think like most kids, I wanted to do what my parents did. And that's what I thought I'd be doing. And it was my youngest brother, Chris, who was the dinosaur geek for quite a long time when we were growing up. And then somehow, in some weird, inexplicable way, he started to kind of grow out of the dinosaur stuff and it rubbed off on me and we kind of switched places. And so when I was in high school is when I really got into dinosaurs and fossils. And I think what made me so enthralled with it at that time, as I was getting a bit older and taking more advanced classes beyond just elementary school classes, was evolution and prehistory and the history of the earth. These

big questions that we can only get at by looking at fossils. And dinosaurs are the quintessential fossils. And I was just swept up in it. And I decided to go to college, study geology. And I went from there and I got my first experience digging up dinosaurs. I had some amazing mentors along the way. And here I am now. I never thought it would take me to Scotland, but you move where the jobs are as a researcher and an academic scientist. And I'm here now, but it's a wonderful place to study. Okay. First of all, I'm super pumped because I think this means there's hope for my son to not be a lawyer. Awesome.

Yes. There he is. Yeah. He can grow up to be like you. And two, you have discovered now, is it 13 or 15 dinosaurs? You personally. You know, I don't actually keep track of these things. He's lost count.

Yeah. So, you know, most of us don't keep a keep a list oh my gosh but i have to say i mean i haven't discovered all those myself i like to say i've described them and i've named them it's usually been somebody else that's made the physical act of discovery um you know and believe it or not a lot of fossils are not found by the professors and by the academic scientists, but they're found by construction workers, they're found by farmers, they're found by hikers. where, you know, museums have been delivered these fossils essentially. And in some cases, I've been invited to work on them. Other times I've visited museums, I've seen things in the collections, I've recognized them as a new species. So... Who's your favorite of the ones that you have discovered, described? There's a few that really stand. I mean, the first one, of course, is always the most memorable. And that's one as an undergrad that I worked with a very famous paleontologist in Chicago

named Paul Serino, who was my first big mentor in the field. And he's done a lot of fieldwork in Africa over the years and many other places around the world. And my first research project, it was right after my sophomore year of college. He asked me if I could stick around for the summer and help him describe some bones that he found in Niger and in the Sahara and Africa. And, of course, I said, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. And we worked together and we figured out that those were a new species. Those bones belonged to a new species of giant, I mean, really giant, bus-sized, meat-eating dinosaur.

This super predator, basically a T. rex-sized animal, but it lived before T. rex. It was at the top of the food chain before T. rex. And this thing is called Carcharodontosaurus. And so that's probably the most special. But more recently, there have been some fossils in China, things like Pinocchio Rex. That's the nickname we called it. It's like a tyrannosaur with a really stretched nose. So we gave it the Pinocchio nickname because the formal name is Chonjasaurus, and that's

a tough one to pronounce. Even for me, I don't even know if I'm saying it correctly. So we called it Pinocchio Rex. And there was another one in China. That one was found by a construction worker, by the way. And there was another one in China found by a farmer, this little raptor dinosaur that had not only feathers, but wings. And this one we call Zhenwan Long.

And there have been some great ones from Romania that have been found by colleagues of mine that I've got to work on, too, like this little velociraptor cousin called Balur. So I know that's not one. I know that's a complete kind of cop out of the answer, but those are my handful of favorites. And of course, the next one is always the other favorite. It's whatever we have that we're working on now. And we do have some stuff from Scotland, believe it or not, some new dinosaurs, a new pterodactyl also, and from Romania and from some other places. So there's

always new stuff. And that's a great thing about this field right now. So I have a question. I've been doing some research to get ready for this podcast and been actually reading a ton over the last couple of days. Fascinating stuff. So I didn't realize that there was, you know, I, of course, I should have because in every academic field, there are arguments, but I didn't realize like there was a fight over, for example, is T-Rex a scavenger or a predator? How do you, how do you, what kind of evidence do you accumulate for species that existed millions of years ago to begin to participate

and hopefully kind of resolve those kinds of disputes because it seems like you're working from, I mean, you don't have any written records of what T-Rex was doing. You just got these bones. Dear diary, today I ate a stegosaurus. It's arms were far too short to write, and it only had two fingers. It couldn't hold a pencil, so we're out of luck there.

You're right. So how do you resolve these kinds of arguments? And then also, correct me if I'm wrong, but you were also, I was reading in the New York Times that the T-Rex may have been actually reasonably intelligent by the standards of the animal world. So, yeah, how do you accumulate this kind of evidence? How do you fight this out? And was the T-Rex really actually smart? The T-Rex was smart.

I'll get to that one in a second. Okay. But in general, yeah, when people read about a new dinosaur discovery or some new skeleton goes viral online, a lot of people probably do wonder, you know, how do we actually know this stuff? And as paleontologists, a lot of us like to consider ourselves as a sort of detective. And I think real detectives would laugh at us. But it's not a bad analogy, because ultimately, we're dealing with trying to understand stuff that's happened in the past. And a detective might want to understand a murder or another crime, something that's happened in the past. They want to know what happened, when it happened, how it happened. And for us, we try to do that with the clues that we have, which in our

case are not fingerprints and hair samples and DNA samples and that kind of stuff, but it's fossils. It's the bones and teeth and footprints and other things that these ancient animals left behind. So we do have actual evidence, but like detectives, that evidence is limited. That evidence, sometimes there's a lot of evidence. Other times we might just find one little bone or one little tooth. So each case is different. And like detectives, we have to interpret that evidence in order to make a reasonable guess or reasonable inference about what happened in the past. So for the predator scavenger thing about T-Rex, there is a debate about this. And it's not, it used to be a bigger debate. We're pretty certain now that T-Rex was a predator,

at least most of the time. Although any animal would be stupid to turn down a free lunch. Think of anything, you know, a lion, a cheetah, a jaguar, you know, these things are all great predators. But of course, they're going to scavenge a free meal if they can. But when it comes to T. rex, there's a lot of clues. First of all, we know that it ate meat. And we know that it ate meat because it had 50 some teeth in its mouth. Each one's the size of a banana. And they're sharp and serrated like knives.

So if you have teeth like that, you're not eating broccoli, you're not eating lettuce, you're eating Triceratops, you're eating other dinosaurs. So we know it was a meteor. And we know in some cases what dinosaurs it actually ate because there are bones of Triceratops, there are bones of a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus, which have bite marks on them. They have marks that were left behind by teeth, and those bite marks perfectly match the size and the spacing of the enormous teeth of T. rex. And in some cases, those bite marks show regrowth. The bone is grown back around them. So those victims must have survived the attack. So that's the sort of line of inference that we take from the very general

down to the more specific to address that very particular question of whether T. rex was a hunter. And yes, it was. And one of the reasons why it was a successful hunter, of course, it had those 50 some banana sized steak knife teeth, but also it had brains in addition to its brawn. It did have a big brain. It was kind of the reptile equivalent of a chimp. And I talk about this in the book. And as a part of the book, I wish I could actually rewrite because I wrote about it in an awkward way that was a little bit misleading. But I talk about this in the book and it's a part of the book I wish I could actually rewrite because I wrote about it in a in an awkward way that was a little bit misleading but I talk about T-Rex being chimp-like in its intelligence I don't mean it's as smart as a chimp because chimps are really really really smart but T-Rex was to reptiles what a chimp is to a mammal so it was

one of the very smartest reptiles that ever lived. It had a much bigger brain in proportion to its body size than most other dinosaurs. And it also had really keen senses of smell, really keen senses of hearing. You might ask, how do we know that? We don't find fossilized brains, but the brain, it sits in a cavity inside the head, just like our brain. So if we find a skull of T-Rex, we can CAT scan it. We can use software to build digital models by filling in that brain cavity. That tells us what the brain looked like. It tells us the shape of the brain. We can measure the volume of it. It tells us the size of the brain and the ear and the olfactory part of the brain, the controlled smell, and all of that stuff we can get from the CAT

scans. And we can compare the CAT scans to CAT scans of other dinosaurs and, very importantly, to modern-day animals, to crocodiles, to birds, to things that we can actually observe. And that all tells us that T.Rex had a very big brain, keen intelligence, and really good senses compared not only to other dinosaurs, but also to things like crocodiles that are still alive today. So you're saying that Jurassic Park

understated the T-Rex's deadliness. It did, shockingly. You would think that a film like that would just go all out for the hyperbole. But, you know, the film, and it does a great job of showing it, you know, shows the brute force of a T-Rex. And it makes it a bit too oafish, a bit too brutish. And there's that one scene, that very famous scene where, you know, the little kid is told that stay still, stand still. If you don't move, it can't sense you. In real life, that poor kid would have been popcorn for that T-Rex. It would have gone the way of the lawyer. It would have gone the way of the lawyer who was eaten by the T-Rex because T-Rex had great eyesight. T-Rex had huge eyes. We can see from the spaces in the skull where the eyes were. The eyes faced forward, like our eyes, not as forward,

but partially forward. So it could see in 3D like we could. And its brain had such a big region for smell, the olfactory region. So even if T. rex was closing its eyes, it could still smell anything around it. So it was a super predator in every possible way. It was the biggest predator, at least pure predator that's ever lived on land in the entire history of the earth. And I know it's really cliched to say, but like 95% of kindergartners everywhere, T-Rex is my favorite dinosaur. But like that sort of fits with what like we've talked about our, you know, favorite presidents and like it's cliche, but like George Washington kind of has to be your favorite. George Washington, T-Rex, they're kind of the same idea. So, I mean, where to even go

from here? So many questions. Okay. You mentioned birds and you mentioned T-Rex's eyes. And I was, of course, last night on my Daily Owl Twitter feed. And David Sibley has a new great book on birds. His initial North American Guide to Birds is fabulous as my bird book. But then he has a new one that's just like bird facts per page, which is fun. And The Genius of Birds is another great book that I read right after yours because it's a perfect transition because you end with birds and then she picks up on literally where you end. She's like, okay, the death of the dinosaurs. Now we have birds. Okay. First question on T-Rex's eyes. So a lot of birds have eyes on the side of their head, which is one of the reasons why owls have to move their head around in a circle, which is to get that depth perception, everything else, be able to see what they're looking at.

So T-Rex is looking more or less straight ahead. So it probably had pretty good depth perception. But yet T-Rex is not maybe a direct relation to the crow that's outside my door right now. A, you spent a lot of time talking about birds and the current dinosaurs that we have living with us. Discuss that because I find it so interesting and the evolutionary side about how we know that feathers were not originally there for flying and even wings. I mean, that just blew my mind. And then I want to know which bird that I go look at is the closest related and my, like, I want to say it's an ostrich, but I know it's not going to be. Well, first of all, Jennifer Ackerman's book, The Genius of Birds is a great book. I recommend that

to anybody out there who's interested in birds, interested in animal intelligence. There's so many really wonderful pop science books these days, and that one's one of the best. Okay, birds. Yeah, boy, I could talk for hours about birds. The most important thing to say about birds right off the bat is that they are dinosaurs. Birds, modern day birds, the pigeons and seagulls and crows and sparrows and all these things we look at outside of our window, those things are dinosaurs in the same way that a T-Rex is a dinosaur or a Triceratops is a dinosaur. And I know that sounds weird. So there's no caveat. They're just dinosaurs. They're just dinosaurs because they're part of the dinosaur family tree. They evolved from other

dinosaurs. Now they're very different from a T-Rex or a brontosaurus. Yes, they look a lot different. I'll grant you that. That's obvious. I don't know. An ostrich looks to me like a dinosaur. You look at those feet, that's a dinosaur. And I agree.

I agree. And we can get to that one in a second. But in general, I understand. You know, people are skeptical. You say that hummingbird that's sucking up that nectar, that thing's a dinosaur. People, come on. This thing is like the size of a bumblebee. Like that's not a T-Rex. It's not a T-Rex, but it is a dinosaur. It's part of the dinosaur family tree. Birds are just one of many groups of dinosaurs. They happen to be the only dinosaurs that survive today because they survived

the extinction that killed off all the other dinosaurs because they had, at least in part, that superpower of flying. And side note, by the way, we think of crocodiles as being dinosaurs, but actually they're not dinosaurs. They're cousins, but birds are dinosaurs. And the way to think about it, the best way to think about it is think about bats. Bats are mammals. Of course, bats are mammals. Nobody would ever argue with that. Bats have hair. Bats have mammary glands. They feed their babies with milk. Bats have molars and premolars and that standard lineup of mammal teeth and so many other features. They have live birth and placentas and all those things. Bats just happened to be a really unusual group

of mammals that got small and evolved wings and developed the ability to fly. And birds are the dinosaur equivalent of that. They are a strange group of dinosaurs that in a world of giant dinosaurs way back 160 some million years ago, they got smaller, they evolved wings, they developed the ability to fly. And just because they look different from other dinosaurs, it doesn't make them any less of a dinosaur. The same way a bat is no less of a mammal because it doesn't look like us or look like a monkey or a dog or whatever. So birds are dinosaurs. That's the most important thing. We know from fossils that so many of the features of today's birds, the things that define birds today, their trademarks, actually first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors.

So we know, for instance, feathers, wings, wishbones, all of those things evolved first in dinosaurs. And even dinosaurs like T. rex probably had feathers. And this isn't a guess. We don't know for sure about T. rex itself, but we do know that other Tyrannosaurs, members of the T. rex group, had feathers. We know that Velociraptor had feathers. We know that countless other dinosaurs had feathers. And I keep saying we know that because we do know that. It's not a guess. It's not a crime scene detective inference. But we actually have the real fossils of skeletons covered in coats of feathers to prove it. Because in a few places around the world, these entire ecosystems in the Cretaceous period, 125 million years ago, had the great misfortune to be

buried by volcanic eruptions just like Pompeii. And so you've got these dinosaurs preserved, covered in ash, going about their everyday business. And that's why the feathers are locked in. And that's why we know so many of them did have feathers. But a lot of them couldn't fly. It's obvious, especially some of these Tyrannosaurus feathers, they were far too big and the feathers were too simple. They looked more like hair. So that tells us that dinosaurs first evolved feathers, not so they could fly, but probably for the same reason mammals evolved hair. And that was to stay warm. It's a coat, insulation. And then later on, some dinosaurs turned those simple feathers into bigger flat feathers that branch out and could line up and form wings the same way that bats modified their mammal blueprints from their ancestors and evolved

flight from that. Okay, so which bird is most a dinosaur and most closely related back to a dinosaur? And also, fun fact, the pterodactyls are not really directly related to birds. That's right. That's right. So there have been three groups of animals with bones that have evolved flight in the entire history of life. And by flight now, I mean flapping flight, being able to to actually not gliding not gliding because lots of things can glide flying squirrels and flying lemurs there's fishes that can glide um if i throw david french off a building with a sheet he could maybe glide you know that's not plummeting animals yeah that would be a plummeting mammal plenty plenty

do that too but but yeah so only three things have ever evolved to a point where they have wings that they can actively flap to generate the lift and the thrust they need to move in the air. And we talked about two of them already, birds, which are a type of dinosaur, and bats, which are a type of mammal. And the third one, and actually the one to do it first, were the pterodactyls. And this was way back over 230 million years ago. They figured it out. And they had a big wing made of skin that attached to a single long finger.

And it was the ring finger. The ring finger got super long on each of their hands to anchor this wing. So they were not dinosaurs. They were not birds. They were not bats. They were not birds, they were not bats, they were a different group to do it. But as far as your question about birds, this might not make sense, but it's true, that all of today's birds are equally closely related to T. rex or Triceratops, the same way that like me and my two brothers are equally related to

my grandparents. It's just kind of a quirk of family trees. But if you want to look at birds today and say, which bird today looks most like a dinosaur, which really means which birds today retain the most kind of primitive features or ancestral features that they inherited from their dinosaur ancestors. I'm right with you. It's things like ostriches, cassowaries, those kind of birds, the big ground running birds that don't fly anymore. And if you see an ostrich at a zoo, or do an image search online for ostrich or cassowary. You look at those. I mean, they really do look like a raptor. And you look at the feet.

Their feet are big and scaly. I mean, it looks like somebody's found a T. rex foot. And it's like, no, that's just the foot of an ostrich that's alive right now. So, you know, that can drive home this idea. I know it's abstract to talk about fossils and family trees. But go and look at the foot of an ostrich or a cassowary. Think about it for a couple minutes, and I think you'll be convinced that, yes, birds are actually dinosaurs. So I'm assuming, I don't want to assume because I was going to ask this question initially, but I was remembering, I was assuming you'd seen the movies.

But have you seen at least one or more of the Jurassic Park movies? I haven't. I'm the science consultant now for the franchise. No, there you go. And so the next one's in development right now. Oh my God, David has never been more excited than this moment. Okay, so not on any of the movies you've consulted on. Yeah, because I have NDAs there, and my goodness, I would be the best lawyer in the world

if I spilled any food. They're not on this podcast. Wait, I was going to say, you've got two right here. You work pro bono, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, if I'm a nerd about evolutionary stuff, like David is the biggest movie nerd ever. So this is huge.

So when you saw the original, what was the moment that you said yes to and what was the moment you said no to? I do remember seeing the original. I was nine years old. So I just remember the basics. I remember being there in the theater with my dad and with my brothers. And this was before I became obsessed with dinosaurs.

But it was right in the middle of when my brother Chris was in his dinosaur phase. But even so, I do remember being just blown away by the dinosaurs on the screen. And I remember the T-Rex. I remember a few scenes. I mean, I remember the scene of the T-Rex chasing the sheep. I think that's a wild scene. I remember the scene with the brachiosauruses, the giant long-necked dinosaurs, the first ones you see, that famous scene where Sam Neill takes off his glasses. And then, of course, the scene where Laura Dern is with the sick Triceratops and kind

of with it as it's breathing and she's monitoring his breathing. She's trying to figure out what poison plant today. Those are the scenes. I think those are some of the greatest scenes in movie history. I don't know if David, if you would agree as a movie buff, but I mean, those are the ones that for me, there's not much that compares in any film.

I'm obviously the oldest person on this podcast as I am always the oldest person on this podcast, as I am always the oldest person on this podcast. So I was a lawyer, or no, wait, 93 is when it came out, I think. So I was just about to graduate from law school and I remember the brachiosaurus scene and just on the big screen being blown away. But now that you're a full-grown paleontologist,

is there a scene in Jurassic Park park that you go no no that is that is dramatic license that is too far for me well when the t-rex killed the lawyer i was going no no the world needs that lawyer the world needs that but other than that scene which proved by the way that T-Rex was a predator. But I'll go back to the Jeep scene, which is a beautiful scene cinematically. And I love it. And I'm not going to nitpick about it, but you know, since you asked, that scene is not that realistic because T-Rex could not move that fast. That's one of the things that T- rex couldn't do. I mean, we've already heaped praises and heaped hyperbole on T. rex, but one thing it could not do was run

particularly fast. It could probably run about 10, maybe 15 miles an hour max. Now that's fast, and that would outrun us. So we'd be in trouble if we were on foot. It was enough to at least be able to ambush things like Triceratopses, but if you're talking about chasing down a jeep, once that jeep got into third gear, it would be able to lose the T-Rex. comic book guy style reading of that scene to ruin it for anybody. Because on the whole, what that scene does well is just convey the sheer size and power of the team. Right. I do want to point out a pet peeve I have in the new Jurassic parks. I can run pretty fast in heels,

not as fast as she's running. And then she takes off her shoes barefoot. If you're used to wearing high heels, like your feet are also not going to be great's running. And then she takes off her shoes barefoot. If you're used to wearing high heels, like your feet are also not going to be great at running barefoot because you're going to step on sticks and stuff and that's going to hurt. So, you know, women heels, like there's a whole foot, you know, shoe relationship there that maybe they're not asking you specifically for your advice on, but I think you should feel free to weigh in. I'm not the high heel consultant. I have to say. I'll leave that to Bryce Dallas Howard

to do her whole scenes. I thought that that was an amazing scene, by the way, just the way that it was. And I don't know for sure, but what I was told and what I remember that she wanted to do that, she decided to do that. She thought that would be a really neat scene, a powerful scene to show the ferocity of her character.

Whether that's biomechanically feasible scene, you know, a powerful scene to show the ferocity of her character, whether it's better than, yeah. Yeah. Whether that's biomechanically feasible in the same way we're talking about T-Rex running. I don't know. I'm a big fan of hers. So, um, all right. I read in one of the reviews of your book that at your office in Edinburgh, there is a sign that says, this is a Velociraptor-free workplace. And then below it, it says, days since the last incident, 23,923,875,288 days. Are you updating that sign? Well, I haven't for the last six months or so since we've been on lockdown. I haven't been in my office. I would assume there hasn't been any Velociraptor incidents during the time we've been locked down, great things about my job is that I get to mentor a lot of students. And I run a lab in Edinburgh where right now I have six PhD students. I have three postdocs

that work with me. So people that have finished their PhD and are in that intermediate phase of jumping to a permanent job. And then I have a lot of master's students. We run a master's course here, one year master's course. So I was one of those students that put that on my door. But it maybe sounds a little trite, really, but since we brought this up and since students have come into the picture, we're in this golden age right now. It really is a golden age. There's 50-some new species of dinosaurs being found every single year. Once a week, on average, somebody's

finding something new somewhere around the world, even in Scotland. It's incredible. And it's all because of young people going into the field. And it's young people all over the world, in China, in Argentina, in Brazil. It's young women, too. It's not just the little boys anymore that go into the field. The vast majority of my students are young women.. It's not just the little boys anymore that go into the field. The vast majority of my students are young women. So this whole thing has just boomed over the last few decades in large part because of Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park made dinosaurs cool. They made dinosaurs relevant. They let a lot of people of my generation to go into the field.

That has had direct consequence. Now we're finding so many dinosaurs because this generation has come of age. But at the same time, there's still a lot more to be found. We are far from exhausting all the dinosaurs out there. So for any younger listeners, I don't know how many younger folks listen to a legal podcast, but anybody out there who's younger, and you're thinking of going into this field, we are nowhere close to being done finding new dinosaurs. We get a surprising number of emails from high school students. And oftentimes they're asking me about going into campaign work.

And I think it's important to describe the, yes, there's a lot of fun and I like selling people on how much fun my career choices have been, but there's also certain types of personalities that are going to fit well and certain types of personalities that aren't going to fit well. Like, you know, I work for 18 months, 20 hours a day, and then I have six months of being unemployed where I sleep and loaf around like an anaconda who just, you know, ate a gazelle. Um, and so you have to be the type of person who's going to enjoy that and is okay missing birthday parties and weddings and things like that for that 18-month period. And then you're going to be the person who takes your friend to the dentist because you can during your six months of unemployment. What are the personality traits that make a good paleontologist

now that we are in this age of... I mean, you and I are within a year of the same age, and you're sort of the young, cool, hip paleontologist these days. But the stereotype is Henry Osborne, right? And the dinosaur wars of the 1870s, 1890s, whatever that was, of old rich guys as a hobby, basically fighting it out and then sort of being side racist as a hobby, I guess. Side racist. Yeah. Yeah, or full side racist as a hobby, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Or full frontal racist in his case, I have to say, but, I mean, Osborne had racism like as a hobby, but then it kind of became a career, I guess. Oh, big time. I mean, he sent out expeditions to certain parts of the world in the hopes that they

would find human fossils in some places and not other places so that he could prove humans evolved in certain areas and not in other areas. That's all I'll say about that. But, you know, Carl Zimmer's book, She Has Her Mother's Laugh, has some great Osborne anecdotes. Yeah. The personality traits, you're absolutely right. It used to be a field that was, for lack of a better term, kind of a cowboy. It was a field of adventurers. It was a field of roughnecks going out and finding the fossils, usually under contract or under orders from the posh guys out east at the big museums and big universities. That's what it was like in the late 1800s. That has thankfully changed. And so it's now a much more inclusive field, really all over the world. And a lot of paleontologists now don't even go out and dig up dinosaurs. Now, that's a lot of fun. And a lot of us love it. But not everybody loves camping. Not everybody loves hiking. Not everybody loves being

out of touch with civilization for weeks at a time. And not all people are able to do it. I mean, there are paleontologists who are blind, for instance. They can't do that kind of work. So a lot of paleontologists these days do all kinds of things. A lot of paleontology is lab-based. A lot of paleontologists are ace computer programmers. They're people that have maybe never dug up a

fossil themselves, but they have the technical and statistical know-how of a Wall Street analyst. And there's everything in between. So really, when it comes down to it, the personality traits you need now are curiosity and enthusiasm, I think. That's the biggest thing. And imagination, too, because we're trying to understand what life was like millions of years ago. And you have to find your niche. That's a part of any career, I think, but find your niche.

If you're somebody who is good at finding fossils, do that. If you're somebody who's a great computer programmer, do that. If you're really good at reading CAT scans, you can do that kind of work. And the other thing I'll say about that, as far as the discovery side of paleontology, anybody can do it if they want to find a fossil, there are not really many barriers. Anybody can go out with the rock hammer, with the pick, with your geological map, you can go out and look for fossils. You don't need a PhD to do it. You don't need to be a professor to do it. And as I mentioned earlier,

a lot of the best discoveries are made by people who are not academics or people who do not have great credentials. And I tell young people that ask me, what should I do if I want to start to become a paleontologist? And I say, go out and look for fossils, get a guidebook, get a geological map, do some research on the internet, see what is in your area. There might not be dinosaurs, but there's bound to be some type of rock somewhere that's full of fossils. And as long as you know the laws, as long as you know who the landowners are, you know, look into that stuff, of course, cover your backs. But otherwise, go out, see what you can find. That's not something you can do in most sciences.

It's very hard to be an amateur particle physicist. That's a tough thing. Guilty, guilty. I mean, it's been a side hobby of mine for a while. Let's thank our sponsor today, Gabby Insurance. We're all looking for ways to save money, especially now. When's the last time you looked at how much you're spending every month on car insurance, on homeowner's insurance?

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homeowner's insurance. Go to Gabi.com slash advisory. That's G-A-B-I.com slash advisory. Gabi.com slash advisory. So I have a question about the digs. So this is just my completely uninformed, from a distance, view of what it would be like on a dig. Super cool location, lots of really tedious work, accompanied by moments of delirium as you uncover something. Is that right? Wrong? Yeah, that's a really good description in general of field work. I'll say that sometimes they're not beautiful locations. We do go where the fossils are. So if there happen to be dinosaur bones that are falling out of a river cut or falling out of a rock outcrop behind a Walmart or, you know, in a garbage dump

or whatever. We're going to go there and dig those bones out. But most of the time we are out in the desert, in the badlands, in places where there's lots of rock, not a lot of buildings, not a lot of roads, not a lot of people, not a lot of plants and trees to cover up the fossils, which normally means those are very gorgeous places. And the thing about finding dinosaurs is there's not really any trick to it. We don't use any radar or sonar or any fancy equipment to shoot into the rocks to see what's in there because it doesn't work. People have tried. But fossils, whether they're bones or teeth or whatever, these are things that used to be bones, but they've been turned into rocks and they're now inside of other rocks. And you just can't use sonar to see that kind of stuff.

So we do our homework. We choose places where there's rocks of the right age, the right type to have dinosaur bones in them, at least theoretically. And then we go and we walk around and we look. And sometimes we look and look and look and look. And there are many days where we find nothing. But then you see something and you follow it into the rock and you dig around it. Maybe a little bone is sticking out. You get your tools out, get down on your hands and knees. You go in carefully, you dig in, and then maybe that bone leads to another bone. And maybe that other bone leads to another bone. and maybe you have a skeleton.

And those are the moments we all live for. And those are the things that keep us going, either through the bad days in the field, or through the winter, or in this case, through the pandemic, when none of us are able to get out of the field. All right. Can I ask I mean, I, I, I, Can I have just one more question, Sarah? Yeah, okay. I mean, I have, I have one that I'm ending with, but yeah. Oh, okay. You, you, you end, but I have just one, one.

I'll do this for another five hours. If a dinosaur killing asteroid is heading to the world now, is it worth fighting to live? Or do I just, do I stand on the roof of my house and just let the fireball consume me? Or if I can live through the blast wave, do I have a chance? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, when the dinosaurs died, except for birds, of course, the T-Rexes and Triceratops, they died literally because the six-mile-wide rock fell out of the sky. It was traveling faster than a speeding bullet. It was, in all honesty.

And it smashed into the earth, the force of over a billion nuclear bombs put together. This was chaos, and this was destruction that happened instantaneously. And about 75% of species died out. And that's a catastrophe. That's a calamity. At the same time, 25% of things made it through. So you had a one in four shot. And so we see this throughout the history of life. There've been a lot of extinctions, and some have been bigger than others. And there've been a lot that have been caused by climate change, by warming events, greenhouse events, these kinds of things. And a lot dies, but things survive. And this happens all the time. Life is resilient. Life, as Jeff Goldblum says in the film, will find a way. And it always does. So you keep fighting, you keep fighting. That's what I think.

All I'm hearing, Sarahah is keep your guns your ammunition and your six months of food and you're in good shape that's what i heard you make the great point in the book that the the 25 was not spread out evenly it's not like 25 of triceratops make it through the 25 hit some species more than others and mammals are what you know these small little mammals that had been sort of living on the edges of life in dinosaur world for 150 million years,

all of a sudden have their moment. And but for the asteroid, we wouldn't be here. There'd still be dinosaurs, you know, doing their thing and we'd all still be

little ground mice and badger type little fellas. So, you know, you should thank the next asteroid that you see. That's what got you here. So here's my final question. I recently went on a mini road trip with a friend of mine who works for Caterpillar, like the construction company. And it was really

fun because as we drove down every freeway and highway, she would point to the construction equipment and tell me what it was, what it did, who made it. And like, it wouldn't matter. We were talking about like the most serious subjects and she'd be like, hold on, that's a digger. You know, like it was, it would be like a little kid's dream of, uh, if you're into construction equipment, what are you like on road trips? And are you like, that's the KT boundary? I see it. It's right there. Do you see that cliff right there? I see it. And like, does your wife find that endearing? Uh, yes and no. So yes, I am like that. If we are traveling somewhere, if we're driving somewhere along stretch, you know, I will point out if there's any fossil stuff nearby. Uh, but it's, it, it, I, I'm not, uh, considered endearing in those moments.

So my wife's a teacher and, you know, her students love dinosaurs. You know, they're seven, eight years old. They love dinosaurs. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah. She puts up with the dinosaurs, you know. And our little son now, of course, he has so much dinosaur clothing. Everybody gives us gifts of dinosaur clothes.

So she's going to be putting up with dinosaurs for a long time more. How about this? I'll trade you. I'll send lawyer clothing for your son, lawyer paraphernalia, little gavels. Yeah, little judicial robes. Yeah. The one I've seen that I like the most is uh a litigator but it's alligator and so there's an alligator that says a litigator yeah we can we can find that one yeah yeah well well

my dad would love that he would love that if he saw his grandson he's only briefly seen his grandsons and we're saying about this whole situation but if he showed up in a litigator shirt or a baby judicial robe or whatever this would be my son does have a little maraca though that this is his toy now so he swings it like a gavel he bangs it like a gavel i mean they always just being a judge just like pops so yeah so if i'm in virginia where like what's the closest i can go to see the kt boundary in like a nice way um kt boundaryT boundary, there are KT boundary sections, rock sections, outcrops up in New Jersey. Um, there are others down in the Caribbean, uh, in Haiti, uh, maybe a few other places there are in Texas and Big Bend in Texas. I know none of those

places are particularly close. Uh, this is just probably New Jersey's the closest. There are other, there are dinosaurs from Virginia. There's some footprints. There's even some footprints, believe it or not, in Gettysburg, in the boundaries of the park, which is crazy when you think about it. You think of just how cosmic that is, that all those different layers of history are converging there. But there are dinosaurs along the East Coast. And, you know, even in populous areas, there can be fossils in your own backyard. Well, David, for the first of our Nerd Out podcasts, I think this was pretty exceptional. Success. This was fantastic.

Professor, thank you so much. Again, can't recommend the book enough. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. It's such a fun read. I learned so much from it and am totally obsessed. Can't wait for my kiddo who we call the brisket to get old enough to be into this. So, and you know, let your son know if he needs to be into lawyer stuff, he can listen to this podcast. Oh yeah. We'll do some playdates down the line. Transatlantic play dates. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. This has been a lot of fun and, um, you know, keep fighting the good fight with all you're doing and, um, you know, keep in touch. And I look forward to anybody who's listening out there. If you've got any dinosaur questions or just want to say hi, just shoot me off an email.

Well, how can we, yeah, that's a great question. How can we follow you? I do, you know, Twitter and then I try to post new discoveries and new research and that kind of stuff on Twitter. Of course, always hawking books and stuff on Twitter. That was a big part of my life when the book came out. But otherwise, you know, I'm easy to find over email. Yeah, just say hi. And if you're if anybody's ever in Edinburgh, and especially if anybody's ever

interested in studying paleontology, give us a look at the University of Edinburgh. We have a great master's course, and also a very good undergraduate program. We get a lot of international students too. Fantastic.