Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 110: Digging Deep with a Paleontologist | Ear Biscuits Ep. 110

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

Rhett & Link sit down with Dr. Emily Lindsey, a paleontologist working at the La Brea Tar Pits, to discuss that dig site, how Rhett would do in the field, her continuing work on Ice Age animals, and more on this week's Ear Biscuits. SUBSCRIBE to This Is Mythical: https://goo.gl/UMXvuW Listen to Ear Biscuits at:  Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/29PTWTM Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2oIaAwp Art19: https://art19.com/shows/ear-biscuits SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/earbiscuits Follow This Is Mythical: Facebook: http://facebook.com/ThisIsMythical Instagram: http://instagram.com/ThisIsMythical Twitter: http://twitter.com/ThisIsMythical Other Mythical Channels: Good Mythical Morning: https://www.youtube.com/user/rhettandlink2 Good Mythical MORE: https://youtube.com/user/rhettandlink3 Rhett & Link: https://youtube.com/rhettandlink Hosted By: Rhett & Link Executive Producer: Stevie Wynne Levine Managing Producer: Cody D'Ambrosio Production Manager: Jacob Moncrief Technical Director / Editor: Meggie Malloy Graphics: Matthew Dwyer Set Design/Construction: Cassie Cobb Content Manager: Becca Canote Logo Design: Carra Sykes Featuring: Dr. Emily Lindsey http://www.emilylindsey.org/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. I did add a syllable. Rhett, you wanted to stretch it out. Why you gotta notice? Joining us this week at the round table of dim lighting, Link, I'm so excited, I'm so excited. We have a bonafide, real life paleontologist.

Bone digger. We did it, man. We're gonna real life paleontologist. Bone digger. We did it, man. We're gonna meet a paleontologist. He's so excited. I mean, this is at your request. Yeah. And I'm excited to just be here and watch your bubble be burst.

No, we haven't talked to her yet. But you know, it's my dream job, it's my backup job. Have you said who she is? Dr. Emily Lindsey, she is currently stationed at the La Brea Tar Pits, local. I don't mean burst in your, when I say burst your bubble, I just think your expectations of like,

this is the best job on earth. Don't tell me anything, don't ruin it for me. I just don't want her to bring you back down to excavation level. It is the best job on earth. By the end of our conversation, we don't know yet because we haven't had it, the operative question is how are you gonna feel about it?

Are you abandoning our efforts here in order to tag along with her without pay or are you gonna just say, all right, I'm happy for you, but I realize it's not my calling anymore. It isn't unknown at this point. We'll see. We'll see how it pans out. We have already talked to the person, to the guest,

and then we record the intro. We're mixing it up. We're recording the intro before we talk to the guest. I am so mixed up. We carpooled into work today and as happens many times, we begin a conversation that then, nope, I'm not gonna tell you about that. I'll tell you about that during the podcast.

Yeah. Because we keep it real for you guys. We don't like to have conversations we've already had. We don't recreate conversations. Who does that? We're moving at the speed of real conversation here. So what was the first, oh this is what you said. You were like, there was a lull in our convo

and then all of a sudden you threw out there, I almost got in a fight with somebody on the street. And before I could perk fully up and be like, what, what? You were like, but, but. Save it for later. So let me have it. Because, I mean, loyal Ear Biscuit-eer, we discussed this and we discussed how we would approach

any type of road rage situation moving forward. I definitely believe that. It factored in? If you were the one that this happened to. Oh gosh. That you may not be standing, you're sitting here with me today. Oh really?

Yeah, it got that intense. What? Okay. Where was I? I was driving by myself as I like to do. That explains why I don't remember this. And I was on the west side. Don't make it over there that often.

But I am driving along and I'm on Hollywood Boulevard for some reason like it was sending me, I was going to the west side like around UCLA area but. That's highfalutin area. It was sending me not on the 405, like the 101 to the 405 but it was sending me to Hollywood Boulevard.

You sounded like an episode of the Californians. And then like through town, like basically if you're gonna take Hollywood. Trust it, just trust it. Yeah, I mean I'm trusting the navigational system. But that's what they call the surface streets. Surface streets, there's a lot to see. But there's also a lot more decisions to be made

about like oh, LA is one of those places where you'll get up to this intersection and all of a sudden there'll be like four options as opposed to just like a left and a right and a straight. There's also like another road that's kind of like, oh, look, they connected that road too. So it was that intersection like on Sunset somewhere where there's like... Oh, are you talking about the like... No, no, no. There's that really famous one. Not the one with like eight roads that come into it and there's like. Oh are you talking about the like. No no no. There's that really famous one.

Not the one with like eight roads that come into it and there's no stop light or anything. The bird's eye view of that intersection and basically residential Beverly Hills, a bird's eye view of that is it looks like a daggone asterisk within, everybody has a stop sign. But there's no lights or anything. There's no lights.

You just go and navigate. It wasn't that. But there's no lights or anything. There's no lights. You just go and navigate. It wasn't that. But it's literally that many rows coming together. It was a normal light, but I get up there and I realize that I'm in the turn lane to go left, which would send me down one of those squirrely roads, and I actually wanted to go. Not like left, left, or left, but just half left.

I wanted to go left left but it was technically straight because it was a left turn but it wasn't as left as the, it's one of those weird intersections. Yeah, yeah. So I'm in the left turn lane and I'm already like, I feel like I'm gonna be late to where I'm going which is another story for another time where I'm going. Well this makes, that statement right there

makes you wrong. This is all your fault now. You've just admitted to that just by saying I was late. I think that means this is your fault, but don't tell me. It's just now I'm predicting that no matter what happens in this story, it was your fault because you were late. I think we're both at fault for the initial incident. So I have my left.

How many incidents is this? My left blinker on to turn left but then the people going straight get the green light. Okay, so they start going and I'm thinking, is there gonna be an opening where I can pull out of the left lane and get back into the straight lane and go through the intersection? And I'm like looking in my rear view mirror,

side mirror, and I see, dude, that dude's totally lagging. Like that dude's texting or something. He left me like a five car gap. Oh. It wasn't even like. That is nice. It wasn't even pulling out, it was like, he was asking me, oh come on, come on,

because I had my blinker on. To go to the right. It's like even pulling out, it was like, he was asking me, like, oh, come on, come on. Because I had my blinker on. To go to the right. It's like on a platter. So. Oh, you switched your blinker over? I switched my blinker to the right to let people know that I'm trying to get over. This guy, Tex Boy, is giving me this big gap.

Tex Boy gives you a big gap, you take advantage of the gap. Oh yeah. So, I pull in, and I'm like, home free. Are you like, skrrt? What I did not see was a motorcycle. Oh no! Ooh, ooh. No, no, no, but because he was behind Tex Boy.

And he saw the gap. And he was splitting lanes, as is legal to do that in California. As is done. So basically, I get out there and he's making up the difference behind Tex Boy and this is kind of. Coming around Tex Boy. Yeah, what ends up happening is as I basically

get completely into the lane and up to speed, he gets right beside me, like continuing to split the lane, but he's mad. On the passenger side. On the passenger side, but he's mad because I just did what I did, right? Because I pulled back into the, I don't think I did anything illegal.

I just did something that was kind of unexpected and quick. And when you're on a motorcycle, you're sensitive to those things, which I recognize. But he was so mad that I had done this. Did he have, how did recognize. But he was so mad that I had done this. Did he have, how did you tell that he was so mad? Well, just wait. So as I'm going, he comes up next to me and is like, literally like, it felt like

what he was trying to do was like trying to tap me with his leg, like with his bike, like trying to initiate contact with me to like basically say like, you did that and then you hit me, but actually I really hit you, but I'm trying to make it look like you hit me. Oh really? You thought he was taking a fall?

But I had no idea that, I mean I didn't feel anything. He just got really close to me. Then he pulls out in front of me and turns around and like waves and says, pull over. Pull over. Like this dude in like a leather jacket. What kind of bike? He's on like a crotch rocket,

but he looked like he was like ready to race, you know? Full helmet. Full helmet, but glasses that I could see, clear glasses. He didn't have a visor. Like glasses, not what you have on, but glasses, I could see his eyes. Spectacles.

And he's turning around and he's like, pull over. And he gets so slow, he gets down to like one mile an hour, and I'm right up on him and all these people start honking. He's like trying to take me down and take me off of the road. Are you kidding me? Yeah, and so I'm thinking lots of things. I'm thinking, I'm a lover, not a fighter.

I'm a big guy, but I probably don't actually want this to come to blows. How do I defuse this situation? At the time, I had no idea what he was thinking. I think he was just mad and he wanted to like pull me over and tell me off. What are you thinking? So this goes on for a couple of minutes, like slowing down traffic and getting me to pull over

and I'm just like, just continuing, I got my sunglasses on, I'm just like continuing to go like one mile an hour, not stopping. Oh gosh, this is crazy. And I'm not thinking like, oh I'm gonna pull, I'm gonna try to get around him or something like that. I didn't wanna do anything rash that would suddenly like hit him, you know?

So I'm giving him space. So then. You're giving him a gap. He. Did you shake your head no like, no. No, then we come to a stop sign, a stoplight. Oh yeah. And at that point, I come to a stop and he comes up. He backed up? He didn't, I come to a stop, and he comes up. He backed up?

He didn't back up, I was like, I don't care, I ain't scared. So he like stops and I had to like pull up right beside him and I roll my window down. Yeah. Because I was like, I'm going to engage in a human way here. A human way? I'm so nervous right now.

And so I roll down the window and I just kind of look at him. I know you lived. And he says, you hit my leg. You hit my leg. He had an accent that I couldn't place. You hit my leg. Well that's irrelevant.

And I'm just giving you full pictures here. And then he said, you hit my leg when you pulled out or something like that and I was like, how am I gonna play this because I definitely did not hit his leg. If anything, he hit me and he's trying to, it's like one of these insurance things where he's, oh, totally left out.

The whole time he got behind me, he took all these pictures of my car and my license plate and then he got in front of me and turned around and took pictures of me. With his phone? He's got lots of pictures of me car and my license plate and then he got in front of me and turned around and took pictures of me. With his phone? Lots of, he took, he's got lots of pictures of me with his phone. And then when I stopped and he said that thing,

you hit my leg, he was taking a bunch of pictures, he said, you hit my leg, I'm taking pictures. I've taken pictures, I've got pictures of you. As you're saying, as you're talking to him? Yeah, but then I was like, what am I gonna say? Because I'm not gonna admit that I hit his leg because I didn't. You should have been like, dude, take video.

Let's put this on record. But then I said, hey man. You're gonna like piece the pictures together to form like a stop motion animation of your defense. Yeah, I said, hey man, I am really, really sorry about this. About what, hitting his leg? Mm-hmm. You admitted to it.

I said, I'm really sorry that I pulled out into that lane. I didn't see you because I was just like, what am I gonna do? Because he wasn't doing video or anything. I was like, what can I do to just get out of this situation? Yeah. And he was like, but you hit my leg. And then I was like, you know, I don't,

I don't think I hit your leg. I think you ran into me. But listen. But you had already apologized. But I was like, but listen. For something. I'm really, really sorry that this had to happen, that this happened. But it did have to happen. And then he looked at me and he was just like,

shook his head and sped off. Oh, you got him! Got him. Were you thinking about our podcast conversation for a split second at all? You were like, I can't, I can't, after lecturing the linkster about this road rage. I can't match his level. I can't match his level.

I brought it down, I brought it down. Did you think that at the time, actively? No, I just naturally knew that that was how I was going to engage. You gotta give me a little credit that you learned from me. I brought it down and I came in apologizing, not admitting guilt and it. Apology guns blazing.

And also basically calling him out and saying, I think you hit me. So I was letting him know that I had a difference of opinion about this. Was he ever yelling? Did he give you a level that you could have matched? He was very mad but it was, he was talking aggressively. Man, I would have matched? He was very mad, but it was, he was talking aggressively.

Man, I would have matched his level. I would have not, I have not learned the lesson. I felt it as you were telling the story. And I think that he. It would have been like, he'd be like, why are you yelling? I'd be like, I'm just matching your level! And then I would be like, oh, did I just say that again?

I would have been worried about you. I would have been worried about you because he seemed. I wish I was there. He seemed a little off. I wish I was there because it would've been what I needed. It's like the one time I'm not there is the time I needed to be there so that we could've tested.

Like you didn't need to be tested. This was, I mean. No but it just proves that my. Just like you're telling the story. I don't, I know. We don't need to prove that you're right. It proves that my theory works in action. Well, I agree with it.

What I'm trying to prove is that I'm a different person based on the conversation. So I can see this right now. It's like he's up there and I'll be like, man, pull up beside him, roll the window. Or you'd be like, all right, here, I'm gonna pull up beside him. I ain't scared.

You shouldn't be scared, but don't match his level. I'm gonna roll the window down. Here's't scared, you shouldn't be scared, but don't match his level. I'm gonna roll the window down. Here's your chance, Link. Go in apologizing. Apology guns a-blazin'. You disarmed him. Yeah, but I still don't know if I'm gonna get some sort of like letter from the cops.

I don't know, can you like take a picture of somebody's car and be like, this person. Well, if you didn't do it, they can't prove that you did it, I don't think. I have that much faith in. Oh, I have my whole story ready. Well, he probably. I'll tell you what happened. They usually have it, I don't think. I have that much faith in. Oh I have my whole story ready. Well he probably. I'll tell you what happened.

They usually have video, these motorcyclists. I didn't do anything illegal and he ran, he came up and ran into me and then said I ran into him. And first of all, no one ran into anybody because he didn't do, there was no contact. He may have brushed my car with his pant leg but that's not hitting his leg. But anyway, wherever you're at motorcycle man,

you know, I'm sorry we couldn't work things out. You've already apologized, don't apologize again. Yeah, I didn't hit you man. Don't grovel. You hit me if anything. This episode of Ear Biscuits is supported by Audible. That's right, Audible, the official home of our book of mythicality in audio form,

a distinct experience from just the reading form, which is a book. It's the audio form that you can listen to us read the book to you. We actually read it. We can read, and we did it. And we sang a song, so that's available for pre-order right now,

and we are very excited about that. Yeah, and I'm just excited, because I listen to so many things on Audible, so many books that it's cool that we're gonna have one on there. You feel legit now. Yeah, I'm like, oh, I can listen to my own book. But if there's one that's available right now

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Audible.com slash Ear Biscuits. Ear Biscuits is also supported by NatureBox. Now if you are like us, you like to eat right, but sometimes when it comes to snacks, it can be difficult to make the right choice, but now you can enjoy what you're eating and also feel good about it thanks to NatureBox. Mm-hmm, they got over 100 in snacks.

100 in snacks. 100 in snacks. It's like you add the word snack after a number. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, well you said- 100 in snacks. 100 in snacks means at least 100 snacks. That's what I was trying to say. Are you a sweet man with an affinity for cookies?

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for your first order when you go to NatureBox.com slash ear. NatureBox.com slash ear. Naturebox.com slash ear. Three free snacks. Let me clarify that that is not the official jingle of Naturebox, that is Link's official jingle for Naturebox. Naturebox.com slash ear. And Naturebox may or may not approve of it, but I approve of it.

Now back to the biscuit. Now it's time to gear up for the conversation with the doctor of bone digging. Let's of it. Now back to the biscuit. Now it's time to gear up for the conversation with the doctor of bone digging. Let's have it. What did they tell you when they reached out to you and said that we wanted to talk to you? Was it like weird? Like hey, these guys wanna like question you

incessantly about paleontology. No, I get it all the time. like weird, like hey these guys wanna like question you incessantly about paleontology. No I get it all the time. You get it every day of the week. I get it all the time. I mean how many, so what you're saying is is that my personal interest in paleontology and my impression that it would be a dream job

is just something that is just, it's not that uncommon. A lot of people have that illusion, yeah. Illusion? No, I'm just kidding. It's romanticized. I mean, you should, go all the way. Give her the full context of your admiration.

Just in your brain, what is this like? When I think about. This is like a big moment for you. It is, because I don't think I've ever actually, besides like at a museum, had a legitimate conversation with a paleontologist, but I've spoken often about how much I want to be one. I have, now you tell me where I'm wrong.

I just have this picture in my mind. I'm in all khaki. Okay. Okay. Okay, first things first. Short sleeve. No, no, no. No. Rolled up sleeves.

Khaki shorts. Nice. Boots. Khaki socks for some reason in the picture that I'm in, and a hat. You've already said all khaki. Now you're just kind of saying the same thing but more specifically. And my beard is as big as it can get. And it's khaki?

And it has... because of the sun and being out there for the summer, it has turned blonde and my skin has turned red and I'm just out there patiently chipping or brushing and that's my happy place. I've never been to that place. I don't think I've ever worn a khaki top and bottom together. I don't know if that's what you wear. Is that your happy place?

And do you think it would be my happy place? And where am I wrong? It's pretty great. You probably wouldn't have shorts on. You'd probably have long pants. Okay. I knew that. Because you're going to be, you know, out in the field. It's rocky and sharp. As long as they're khaki. They can be any color you want. That works. It's, it can be hard. It can be hard. It can be boring. It takes a certain type of personality, I think, to want to sit in the dirt all day

and sort of very slowly chip away at the rock, but it can be very zen-like. I mean, I feel like people who surf kind of can get into that zone and people who dig up fossils can kind of get into that zone. I just pictured a surfer in all khaki. I've never pictured that before.

Oh, that'd be cool, we could start that. My fear is is that I have this picture, but then I would get bored and then be like, oh, we shouldn't have brought the tall guy. Like he thought he was gonna find a T-Rex on day one and look at him over there. Talking to himself. Now he wants a was gonna find a T-Rex on day one and look at him over there. Talking to himself. Now he wants a latte.

Khaki guy wants a latte. Like on his phone. You think that would happen? I don't think you'd be on your phone because you probably wouldn't have very good cell phone reception. Right, that's good. So the zen-like part of it.

Okay, so let's attach the theory to some practical reality here. Like when's the first time you did this? When did it click into place for you? Like, how do you know that this is what you want to do? Were you a hole digger as a child? No, so I actually, I explicitly was pretty sure I didn't want to be a paleontologist

for most of my educational career. I was interested in archaeology, but I sort of came to the conclusion that that was maybe people were a little too messy. So I didn't want to do archaeology. I completely fell in love with ecology when I was in college and decided that that was what I wanted to do, the direction I wanted to go, because it works with systems. And I really liked that sort of integrative system level nature of like,

oh, here are all these things that are living together and here's how they're interacting with each other and with their environment. And if you change one aspect of that, if you take away a species, you add a new species, you change the temperature, you change the precipitation, what does that do to that whole system? I found that really compelling.

And I actually became a marine biologist for a while. That's like everybody else's dream job. How you just like going from one dream job to the next. So every kid wants to be. You're picturing like, riding dolphins. No, I'm not talking about SeaWorld, man. I'm talking about like, if you pull a class of first graders. Animal, ocean life.

56% of the class will want to be a marine biologist. 28% of the class will want to be a paleontologist. But none of them follow through with it except you and the other people who did, which is pretty awesome, because most people don't. And then what did you end up doing as a marine biologist? She wrote on the office, you did, didn't you? I didn't, I actually, I studied invertebrates, like squishy little things you can barely see

that live underwater, but I got to scuba dive for a living for a few years, and that was great, and I got to go to Antarctica and work there, which was great. So I had some great experiences. You scuba diving in Antarctica. How thick is a wetsuit in order to be able to- It's a dry suit, man.

It is a dry suit. It's a dry suit? Yeah, that's right. Look at that. I just dry suited you. I know a thing or two about scuba diving in Antarctica. He can't pronounce the continent. I can't pronounce it, but I know I've seen it.

I've watched Discovery Channel a few times. Well how cold do you get in your dry suit? So full disclosure, I actually wasn't scuba diving in Antarctica, I scuba dove in New England. But I did get to work in Antarctica off of a boat. So you're going in and getting a picture of the way things are at the time that you're there. You may not necessarily know exactly what you're contributing,

but you're bringing this data back that then someone is running it against this over this 30-year period and being like, well, they're finding this many whatchamacallits in this area, and that's how it's changing. Pretty much, yeah. And this is what they're eating, and this is how fast they're growing, and how many babies they're having, and all of those different things. And so, you know, I was there for this small time slice of this much larger picture.

And then somebody's like, well, the birth rate of whatchamacallits has gone down with every degree that the Earth has heated up. Things like, see, I could do this, man. I just, you just throw in, you put something instead of Whatchamacallits, right? It's that easy. I'm staying out of this.

So, but how did you move from marine biology to paleontology? Was there something that made you jump tracks? Like, was there a moment of inspiration? Yeah, there were a couple of moments. One was I sort of became a little bit disenchanted with marine biology, not as a discipline, but I felt like the type of research I was doing was a little bit narrower than what I wanted. It was, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it. It was really important research, but I have a lot of interests. I'm a really integrative person, and I wanted

something a little bit broader. Throughout college, people had been telling me, hey, you like dead things because you go on all these archaeological digs, but you also like animals. You should be a paleontologist. And I would say, no, that's just people describing new species of dinosaurs. I don't think that's really interesting. That's not where I want to go. But then I was working at this site in Patagonia in southern Chile, and it was a cave site,

and it had some of the earliest human skeletons in South America. It had like 11 human skeletons buried in this cave that were around 10,000 years old. And we also had bones of extinct giant mammals in the cave. The coolest one being one of my favorites, the giant sloth. So there were all these, all these giant sloth bones in the cave. And coolest one being one of my favorites, the giant sloth. So there are all these giant sloth bones in the cave. And there's this question of, were the humans at this cave site at the same time the megafauna were living there, these big extinct animals? They were eating giant sloths? Maybe. That was one of the questions. And also, you know, it's this- Were you there when they discovered it? Or did you show up?

I showed up later. Which is still exciting just to see that. I mean, some of the oldest humans in South America, you said? Some of the earliest skeletons in that region, yeah. Because people didn't get down there to that part of the

world until like 10,000 years ago or so? Actually, some of the earliest sites we have in the Americas are in South America, the oldest one being about 14,500. But we don't have skeletons there. We just have sort of evidence that people were living there. But there's been this like debate in paleontology and archaeology for more than half a century now of why don't we have any of these cool big animals around anymore. So, you know, if you think about like the African savanna, right?

Like, what do you think of? You think of the giraffes and you think of elephants and rhinos. Khaki. Think of the zoo. Right. So what most people don't realize is that until about between 10 and 50,000 years ago, pretty much every continent on Earth looked like Africa, right? So for 50 million years, there have been a lot of big animals on all the continents on Earth.

So not that it all looked like savannah, but that it all had big animals crawling around. Can I throw out a layman's theory and then you tell me if I'm right or wrong? You bet. So the reason that those animals are still in Africa is because they co-evolved with the people there. But all these other big animals that you find in North America,

they evolved and then modern man showed up and killed them all. That is one of the theories. Good job. Yeah, dry suit. Let's just pipe down a little bit. Dry suit boys, back. I won't keep doing, I'll keep doing that. If I have an idea, I'll throw it out.

Yeah, no, that's good. That's one of the ideas. Are you on the same page as that? She's not gonna hire you. This is not a job interview. You don't know, man. The internet is a fickle freaking place. Oh, well, I mean, if you wanna,

if this ends with you tail between legs following her into the digs, then so be it. I'm not threatened. Tail in between my khaki legs. Yeah. Okay. But what's the other idea? So there were two things happening at that time, right? So one of them, you're absolutely right,

humans were spreading out across the world, evolved in Africa. And then, you know, somewhere around 60,000 years ago, maybe a bit earlier, started heading out of Africa into Eurasia and then down to Australia and eventually over to the Americas. And you do see on a lot of these continents, those extinctions often coinciding with the arrival of humans on those continents and on major islands, too. So like Madagascar until about 3,000 years ago had giant lemurs on it and then humans show up and they all go extinct. Why we gotta just kill big stuff? It's like the big sloth like 20 feet tall, wasn't it like that big? There were some that big, yeah.

Like, I mean, I understand looking at something and thinking like, I wanna eat that, man. But then why doesn't the other guy be like, yeah, but don't we also wanna have it? Like, to see? Like, okay, let's eat that one, but let's not eat that man, but then why doesn't the other guy be like, yeah, but don't we also want to have it? Like, just see? Like okay, let's eat that one, but let's not eat that one. Like why can't they just not eat them all?

Why we gotta eat everything? You know, there's this idea that people have that like in order to drive a species to extinction, humans have to go out and like hunt down every single one. And we don't actually have to do that, right? Like you just have to kill a little bit more than are being born. Right, and then they just die off.

And then they just die off, it doesn't take that long. Right, so these people did not, they weren't thinking about ecology at the time. That was not an area of thought. Probably not. Until pretty recently. But to bring it back to this cave, which really sparked your paleontology shift,

I mean, what's the conclusion or the prevailing theory at this point with, why are all these, was it a burial ground? All these people dying and falling in a cave? Yeah, it was a burial ground. Oh, 11 of them, huh? Right. And when you got there, like how excavated was it?

Are we talking like, oh, I can see like an arm sticking out there. Let's dust it, whatever you do. You know, there had been some excavations there, I think, back in the 60s. And then Chile had a dictatorship for a while. And the guy that was in charge of the excavations, like a lot of the sort of academics and intellectuals, ended up fleeing the country during the dictatorship. And so this was kind of the second round of excavations. They had decided to go back and do some more work there. It was like half done. Yeah, it was partly done. And then we went in and did some more work there. It was like half done. Yeah, it was partly done, and then we went in and did some more.

But where are the people? Like when you show up, is it, I mean, is it you walk up to the edge or you go down in the cave and then there's still, you're still dusting and chipping and pulling out people? Because that seems pretty exciting. Yeah, and occasionally we'd find, you know, new skeletons. But this is, you know, because they're underground. I mean, they died, what, 8,000, 10,000 years ago.

And so it's been, you know, dust blowing into the cave and dirt washing into the cave over thousands of years. How intact? A couple feet underground. How intact are the skeletons? They were complete, pretty complete. Complete. Yeah. But I guess what I'm after is the most euphoric moment,

I assume, is when you discover a new person. Like for you joining that excavation, like what's the most memorable moment? Well so for me, I think, you know, I mean. Everybody come over here! I don't know what, is it like a party? I don't know what it's like. Oh yeah, no, it's very exciting.

Yeah, air horn, right? You hit the air horn when you hit the new. There are only like eight of us, so we didn't really need the bull horn. I'm gonna bring an air horn i'm sorry i'm gonna draw a lot of attention to myself when i find something new because i feel like i want to make a big moment out of it okay i'll think of other options maybe they do make a big moment that's my question well so for me i mean you know you we got to this because you were wondering when

my aha moment was and that cave was really my aha moment was sort of realizing that you could ask these ecology style questions that i liked in ecosystems that didn't exist anymore and give me an example of that well so this question like how did humans and these big animals and the environment they were living in interact, and what does that tell us about why there aren't that many big animals around in North or South America anymore, and what might be happening today when we have a lot more big animals being kind of threatened with extinction? Because the other factor, you know, we talked about sort of this hypothesis

of humans coming and kind of killing off the animals because they were big and tasty and slow. But the other thing that was happening at that time was climate change. So we were coming out of the last ice age and the world was getting warmer. You know, it was the last major episode of global warming. You had these sort of open, drier savanna ecosystems being encroached on by forests, which may not have been as hospitable to some of these animals that were there. And so there's been this kind of like debate and some cases kind of acrimonious antagonistic debate between these two camps, like the climate camp and

the human hunting camp, and sort of trying to figure out, okay, well, we're in a situation today where we've got, you know, increasing human populations, industrializing societies, increasing pressures on the remaining wild lands, and we're in the middle of another major climatic warming event. So what can we learn from this past event that happened that might help us to not have a whole bunch more big animals go extinct so are you are you engaging in those kinds of questions today like um and you can just make kind of you may get into like what you're doing at the tar pits here but um i mean how much how much of your time is spent looking at these things from the past? Are you always making that connection to the present day? Is that actually, is that just a personal thing? Or

is that like, no, that's actually part of your discipline is making these connections to today's situation? So that is a big part of my research program. And an increasing number of paleontologists, I would say, are sort of trying to use this deeper time perspective of these really long-term ecological changes we have the record of essentially an entire ecosystem going from you know 50,000 years ago through the peak of the last glacial so major global cooling and then major global warming and the arrival of humans in the Americas and this big extinction event where 70 percent of the big mammals in North America disappeared. Right. And so we've both been to the tar pits and took the tour. I don't know if we took the tour together. No.

I've been a couple of times, though. But kind of explain just the dynamics of why it's such a good spot and why there are so many animals and so many intact fossils there. Well, and first of all, I mean, just for the passing experience, it's like, okay, I'm just gonna visit for just a few minutes. You don't even have to go inside. And you're like, whoa, there's... The thing that shocked me at first was like, these aren't like ancient tar pits that like now,

there's no evidence of that that I could see with the naked eye. It's like, no, there's a pond out there that's got tar, like, black asphalt bubbling up out of it. Yeah. There's also some fake woolly mammoths in it. Oh, yeah. Which is really cool. They'll catch you the first time you go.

Yeah, I was like, real? Hey, guys. Air horn. There's a mammoth emerging right now. But it's basically asphalt coming up out of the depths to this day that animals were falling into and dying so that you could dig them up later and analyze them. Yeah, pretty much. So that being said, you can go there and it smells like someone's

paving a road. Yeah. It literally smells exactly like that. Do you still smell that? All the time, yeah, I do. You haven't adjusted yet? No, no, in fact. I don't know if you can.

So I used to work, when I was in graduate school, I spent three years excavating a tar pit site down in Ecuador. And when I started working at the tar pits, I would walk through the park and be like, it smells like home, smells like Ecuador. I'm excited, I'm in the field. Even though I spend most of my days these days inside my windowless office in front of a computer,

whenever I'm out at the site, I just get that kind of sense of excitement, like I'm in the field now. What is the process of getting something out of a tar pit though? I mean, that's, I mean, that's not like just going up to a, you know, a cave and digging, right? I mean, this is, you're like,

are you like digging through the tar? Yeah,, this is, you're, you're like, are you like digging through the tar? Yeah. So it depends, you know, we have more than a hundred tar pit deposits that have been found in the park and, and, you know, they're all a little bit different. So some of them are super gooey. Like there's this big one you can look down into called pit 91. That's like 59 or like 15 feet deep now. And, um, and that's just that's just very sort of liquid and viscous. And you can't actually step in it or you would, you know, sink into and so anyone excavating and it has to be on these kind of catwalks that we build over the top of it and they have to either sit or lie on their stomachs and dig the asphalt out and measure the bones out that way. On the other hand, we have another set of excavations that are in these giant wooden boxes that we brought up when LACMA, the art museum next door, was digging their parking garage.

And they had to – we had to get the fossils out so they could finish building their parking garage. Quickly. So you couldn't sit there and meticulously do it. Right. They took it out in huge cubes, right? Right. So they were found 10 years ago. We're less than halfway done with the fossils.

So you can imagine how annoyed LACMA would be if we were down there ourselves doing it. So, yeah, we hired a tree boxing company and they brought them up in these big wooden boxes, just like if you were transplanting like a big oak tree or a big palm tree. And so we have these like big takeout boxes of bones that are all exactly in the same position that they were when they were deposited underground underground, only were excavating them above ground. And that, those are older deposits, and they're much harder. The asphalt is more oxidized and stuff. So that it's more like, you know,

sort of a typical paleontological, say, dinosaur dig, where you're, you know, hammering and chiseling away the hard matrix to get the bones out. But they basically just arbitrarily decided, like, okay, this is the grid. We're going to, like, hack through this stuff. How did they know where to cut? Because it's basically like cubes.

So you're not cutting half of a major find and, you know, cutting it in half or something. So they'd come down on it. I mean, you know, they were digging, and you'd come down on it either from the side or the top, and then you'd sort of feel around and figure out where the extent of the deposit was, like how far did the bone deposit go, and then add some extra buffer zone around that, and that's where you build your box. Oh, and then they take that, they put, and then the dirt all around that that's not a deposit,

they just excavate it normally. But then they, oh, we found another thing. Let's box this thing up. Yeah. So you get fully intact deposits. That's crazy. Now, what's the craziest thing that's been found in the box? I don't know that we found anything particularly crazy

or unexpected in the box. So people have been excavating the La Brea Tar Pits for more than 100 years. Another mammoth, another saber-toothed tiger, another what? Yeah, we get a lot of those direwolves, camels. We found some cool things. So like Zed, one of our more famous mammoths, he was found in one of these deposits. And he's one of the only articulated specimens we have. That's to say we actually have almost all of his bones.

And they're all kind of together in the places they should be. You don't usually get that in a tar pit because in the tar you have those methane bubbles coming up. And the tar is sort of oozy and gooey. And you have the bones churning around. Zed wasn't like that. Zed died and was washed into a stream. And then later the asphalt came up and preserved his bones. So you've actually got him sort of laid out pretty nice.

So that's a cool one that we're able to, you know, really identify, oh, this is all one animal. you know, really identify, oh, this is all one animal and we can ask questions about that animal and how he lived and how he died and what he ate and the environment he lived in that you can't when you just have, you know, one piece of bone, one element. And what about getting DNA from these fossils? Like what's the, how old or how young does it have to be before you can actually get DNA? So people have gotten DNA out of fossils this old, but nobody has ever gotten DNA out of fossils from a tar pit. And we don't completely know why. It could be that the asphalt itself destroys the DNA, or it could be that the types of chemicals and processes we have to use to get the asphalt out destroys the DNA.

But we've tried. We have an active project working on it, but no luck so far. But the places that they've gotten, like the mammoth DNA, do they have like the whole sequence? No, I don't think anybody has the whole sequence. But a lot of the mammoth DNA is coming out not of bones per se, but out of actual flesh of mammoths that have been preserved in the Arctic that are now thawing out. Right. Yeah.

Okay, so you're not going to typically get that out of a, you're going to get it when a frozen mammoth section. Right. Yeah. What about, this isn't your field, but you think that they're going to make the mammoth again? They're going to bring it back because that dude said he was going to do it like three years ago. That dude?

Yeah, that dude was like, I got the stuff, man. I can do it. And then he made a big deal about it. I did hear. Where's that mammoth? Where's the mammoth park? Where's the mammoth zoo? So that's being worked on.

There's a couple of different groups, I think, that are working on it. The question is, you know, at what point do you call something a mammoth? You know, I mean, we have, so we have a partially complete mammoth genome that we can sort of splice with an elephant genome that we can put into an elephant egg that we can grow inside an elephant and raised by humans in a world with no other mammoths and with an environment and plant community that's very different from where mammoths live. So is that a mammoth? Is it a mammoth? I mean, we can, you know, raise fuzzy elephants.

Right. Is that where you land on the topic? You don't want them to do it? How do you feel? You know, I mean, of course there's like this gee whiz factor, right? Like all of us that go into this field, you know, that don't sort of grow out of it when we're four, right? Like we were in it partly because of that inspiration and sort of cool factor of like wanting to be transported back to this other time. So that's super compelling.

And from a scientific standpoint, I mean, there are certainly things to be learned. The justification that most people cite for wanting to bring back a mammoth is that it's going to serve some sort of ecological function. Like, you know, there used to be mammoths. Humans went and ate them all. And so now there are no more mammoths in the Arctic and the Arctic has lost all these important biological functions. And so that's that we're not in the ice age anymore and and third for all of those resources that you're going to be putting into trying to bring back the mammoths maybe it would be better to put those into conserving the elephant so we don't have to be trying to de-extinct the elephants in another 20 years. Right. I bet there's a justification, you know, when you're talking about,

let's keep the elephants here instead of bringing the mammoths back. Well, if you brought a few mammoths back, there's a lot of people who pay a lot of money to visit, see, or own, maybe ride, a woolly mammoth. That's a lot of money you could then put into, you gotta, you know, saving the elephants. You could charge 500 bucks for a mammoth ride, probably.

Now, I don't advocate the exploitation of mammoths. I'm just saying this is a, it's probably an argument that's been made. Like, a lot more hair to grab onto. Well, I think what you're getting at is the, The capitalist conservationist. The irony of, you know, you have to conduct your science in the context of our culture, right? So you've gotta do it in a place where a lot of people

don't even really care about science or are ignorant of it, believe things that are completely counter to it. But you still, but you gotta somehow get the funding that you need to do the science that we all need, right? But there's all kinds of ironies. There's the fact that, you know, most of, I would assume that most of like the excavations that you're a part of or a lot of

them are these oil and gas companies because they're the ones that are digging all over the world right and so you've got these guys who are doing all kinds of horrible things for our environment but they're all it's also like your opportunity to learn things about the environment like how do you engage with that sort of irony I don don't know. That's a tough question. But yeah, I mean, you're right, especially in sort of more rural places. Like I do a lot of work in South America, a lot of fossils are found in the extractive industries, right? They're found in mines, they're found on oil land, they're found, I was on a project in Guyana where they were finding bones while they were washing away basically the entire rainforest substrate and looking for gold. So they do find a lot of fossils for us.

And they call you in? Sometimes. Sometimes they'll let you get stuff out. Do they do that because they're obligated? Are there like local laws that obligate them to like, okay, we found a dinosaur. We can't just, you know, throw it in the other truck. We have to like call a scientist.

In a lot of places there are. What about the black market? Like, is there like, are there like completely just shady outfits out there like fossil hunting and like you kind of like run in you can like run up on them and like at a site and stuff is that does that happen um i haven't encountered it at any sites uh certainly not at tar pit sites because those bones smell bad nobody wants them in their house. But yeah, I mean, fossil hunting, private collecting can be, you know, certainly a problem for science. It can also be a boon for science. It's a complicated topic. So I come out of a school

of thought that, you know, any kind of support of the fossil collecting industry is ultimately more bad than good for science because it encourages people who don't necessarily know what they're doing, don't necessarily have the best interests of the scientific community or the fossils at heart to go out and find stuff and then sell it for money. Right. And we lose a lot of information that way. We don't know necessarily exactly where that fossil came from. We don't know what else it was found with. So we lose a lot of the important information that you would usually get for a fossil. Oh, I got something to help with this. Oh, I think I know what he's gonna go get.

Oh yeah, I know what he's gonna go get. Well, there's a couple of choices. There's a few things that he might get. Okay, okay. Now... Yeah, that's mine. Rhett brought this in, and we put it on a shelf, and you know what? What? I'm confiscating it, and I'm giving it to you. I want you to have it, and I want you to learn everything you can from it starting right now. Yeah, I feel bad about this. Got that on the black market.

Well, it looks like a cast of a saber-toothed cat skull. A cast? It is a saber-toothed cat. The people at Restoration Hardware, I knew that they were doing this to me. It is a cat of a saber-toothed cat. I don't know what that means. It's a cat of a cat? So tell us more. It's not... This is all the fossil hunting Rhett has... Well, it's not. I hunt a cat of a cat. So what, tell us more. It's not. This is all the fossil hunting Rhett has,

well it's not. I hunt a lot of times, every time we go out to Death Valley, I'll look around. But what, tell us about Betty. This is Betty. How do you know, first of all, can you look at the skull and tell us

if it was a male or a female? No. Tell us about our fake skull that's been on our shelf. So. Is it accurate? It's pretty accurate. It's, you know, it's sort of frozen in its mouth open position. Yeah. I mean, you can tell that it has these incredibly long teeth, which scientists have spent a lot of time mulling over and trying to figure

out the purpose of them. And the current thought is that it was used to slash the jugulars of prey. So we know that saber-toothed cats, these Smilodon, this species had extremely strong, like beefy forelimbs, and they would leap out and probably wrestle prey to the ground. And then they'd use these sabers to, to kill the animal. It's amazing. Now these come out of the tar pits, right? Yeah. We have more than 2000 saber tooth cats that we found at the tar pits so far. Is that the largest, I mean, are there more saber tooth cats at the tar pits than any other place? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like by far, right? By far. Why? Oh, because so the tar pits, the other place? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, like by far, right? By far. Why? Oh, because, so the tar pits, the way they worked was you have this asphalt bubbling out of the ground

because LA is on top of oil fields and it's tectonically active. So we have earthquakes and sometimes fissures open up and the oil seeps up to the ground. And when the lighter hydrocarbons evaporate from that, you end up with a sticky, dense asphalt that traps a bunch of things in it. So what appears happened at the La Brea Tar Pits is you would get, say, a sticky pool, and it tends to get covered pretty quick

with, you know, leaves and dirt. And you would see this, you know, I'm sure you guys noticed this, you know, when you were walking around the grounds of the Tar Pits, you have sort of these fenced off areas where we have active tar seeps. And a lot of it, you can't even see the tar seep that well because you've got plant material on top of it. So it seems that what happened was occasionally a big animal like a giant sloth or a mammoth or a bison or a horse or a camel would get stuck in one of these asphalt seeps. And when it was stuck, it would, of course, attract a lot of predators. And so we have two types of predators that are super abundant at the Tar Pits.

We have saber-toothed cats and we have dire wolves. And both of these were... Like from Game of Thrones. Like from Game of Thrones, but a lot smaller. Same name, though. How big were they? They were like a sort of bigger, beefier, linebacker version of a modern gray wolf. Okay.

Did you know that the Grateful Dead have a song called Dire Wolf that's about the Liberia Tar Pets? No. Is it good? It's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, you should check it out. I will. See them live and then stretch it out.

Could be 30 minutes live. Definitely. I just can't get off of it. Once you get caught in that tar pit, you can't get out of it. You just got to noodle your way. I'm trying to make a musical analogy. Yeah, I get it. But these dire wolves, I see where you're going, and the smilodons,

they cannot resist this pitiful, huge prey. It's like, why is it just sitting there? I can't, it smells funny, but I gotta bite it. I gotta get out there. Right, right. And so, you know, going back to the African ecosystem analogy. So normal African ecosystem, you've got, you know, like lots of elephant and zebras and wildebeest and impala and giraffes and the big herbivores walking around. Then you have a smaller number of like lions and cheetahs, like the bigger carnivores, right? Liberia tar pits is exactly the opposite. Like we have a much, much, much larger number of carnivores than we have of herbivores. It's like this inverted pyramid of an ecosystem. And we think that's why.

We think it was because one stuck herbivore would attract a ton of carnivores to eat it and a whole bunch of those guys would get stuck too. And they'd be like, man, Charlie's over there. Look, he's got in there. Oh, now Dale's going in there. Charlie and Dale are both over there. I definitely gotta get over there.

I'm gonna eat Charlie and Dale too if they're stuck. Yeah, you know, next thing you know, there's so many analogies. It's like, you need to take your kids to the tar pits and be like, And leave them. And be like, this is what, when one of your friends does something questionable, it's like, getting stuck in a tar pit.

And next thing you know, you go over and find out about that, you getting stuck in a tar pit and next thing you know, you go over and find out about that, you're stuck in the tar pit of life and you're gonna die and we're gonna find you years from now and put you on display in a museum, son. Don't do drugs. Is there, excellent. Is there an, like the evolution of the saber tooth,

I mean, I guess the saber tooth got bigger over time. So can you see that? Like if you go deep into the pit, you see like, oh, you got like really old. You got some normal non-saber tooth cats. Well, we do. We have all kinds of different cats. But the tar pits, they only go back like 50,000 years. So you're not going to see major evolutionary change in that.

But the saber-tooth morphology itself evolved a bunch of times. And we actually have two different kinds of saber-tooth cats in the tar pits. The main one is this one, Smilodon fatalis, or sometimes called Smilodon californis. It's californicus. Sounds like a Red Hot Chili Peppers album name. Smilodon californis. It's Californicus. Sounds like a Red Hot Chili Peppers album name. Smilodon californicus. But there's another one called Homotherium that's sometimes referred to as the scimitar cat

that had different shape sabers. But there's also, there's been other saber-tooth cats, saber-tooth other animals. There were saber-tooth salmon, like back in the Maya scene up in Oregon. Saber-tooth salmon. Whoa. It's crazy, right? I'd probably still eat it.

It's crazy. I would have thought that only the males had it or something, and it was some sort of mating thing, but both males and females have it. Both males and females have it. Yeah, and then in addition to those two saber-toothed cats and the tarpits, we've got the American lion, which is the biggest cat that's ever lived. There were these two lions, one in Europe and one in America, and they were like the biggest cats. They're just enormous. And we've got a species of jaguar, subspecies of jaguar that's now extinct in North America.

And then last but not least, we've got the mountain lion. That's the only one that made it. Yeah. And how public facing is your job? Are you, are you talking to people coming in there? Like, are you, are you in your office most of the time doing research or like, how often are you interacting with just the public coming to experience the tar pits? You know, it's on different occasions. So, I mean, I do public talks and things like that. And I sometimes drive to Burbank to do podcast interviews and things like that. But occasionally, you know, when I go out to the excavations to look at the site and talk to the excavators and stuff, you know, people are always coming by and asking questions. And I love that part of my job where I get to just sort of, you know, talk to people kind of informally in that way too.

And we do tours and we had a summer camp recently that we ran at the Tar Pits and I talked to the summer campers and that was fun. So there's a lot of kind of, it's a very diverse job. It's just, it's a lot. Right, so something I'm curious about as you deal with the public, you know, there's an interesting dynamic in America where you've got a very large percentage of people, I don't know, half or whatever, that don't even believe that evolution happened, right?

Or they, when you say, oh, these tar pits go back 50,000 years, and they're like, well, 50,000 years ago, there wasn't anything. Like, what is your, being in, it's such a crazy thing that we're at, we know so much about all the stuff that is happening. You're finding new information all the time, but there's a lot of people who just don't buy it. So what is your interaction with that? Like when you're interacting with the public, do you deal with that kind of thing? Do you run with that? Like when you're interacting with the public, do you deal with that kind of thing? Do you run into that?

You know, I haven't so far, but I know that we do get, you know, those sorts of questions at the Tar Pits. The, you know, gallery interpreter staff and some of the lab and excavation staff certainly field those types of questions a lot. I certainly feel those types of questions a lot. I think, you know, one of the advantages is that museums are generally considered to be pretty trusted institutions. It's actually where a lot of Americans get their scientific information more than school, more than television shows. They actually trust museums to give, you know, accurate information about science. And so I think, you know, that's one of the big advantages we have being such a public and well-known institution is to try and do that in a really profound way and a really sort of welcoming and open way to try to explain concepts that some people are really uncomfortable with. to try to explain concepts that some people are really uncomfortable with. What are you maybe most excited about in terms of a compelling way to help people understand or, I don't know, feel climate change when they come in, if that's part of your plans? Like, how do you encapsulate that? You could turn the heat up.

You could bring them into a room and you could slowly turn the heat up and it could be like did you know that it raised two degrees centigrade in the time that you were here and they'd be like i didn't really notice it doesn't feel that much different i guess global warming is not really that big a deal you don't want to do that because people won't. Have you thought of that? Yeah, people won't, they'll think. I hear people say that all the time. They're like, one degree? I mean, it was like 90 degrees yesterday and then like 95 the next day

and it wasn't really that big of a deal. So don't do that idea. That was a bad one. It was just the first thing I thought of. Yeah, I mean the difference of like five degrees. Unless you're doing it, then maybe it's a good idea. The difference of five degrees average centigrade,

it doesn't sound like much, but that's the difference between having half of North America covered in ice and where we are today. Right, stuff like that, see? Put that on a t-shirt, make it a little catchier. But you are figuring out specific ways to present that information, the facts, in a compelling way. Absolutely. That compels people to change their minds or to appreciate or even take action.

So I guess what is the goal? What's the, how do you want to move the needle in like visitors' lives? What do you want them to change? That's the million dollar question. That's the sort of next three years of my job there, I guess. I mean- You don't give it all away, then you'll-

I think- You get laid off. You mean, you don't give it all away, then you get laid off. You know, I think at the Tar Pits, like, you know, we have the ability to tell a story because of what we have there. But the other thing that we have there that you don't find at most museums is we have the entire process of a scientific discipline happening in one place, right? So in one visit, I mean, you guys have been there, you know, you can come and you can see scientists, paleontologists out in the field, finding fossils and excavating them, you can see those fossils, same fossils in the lab being worked on by the by the lab preparators and being researched by people at our museum and visiting researchers from all over the world. And then you can see the presentation of what we've learned from that research in one place. So I think there's a real opportunity to sort of empower people to think about how the scientific process works, which seems to be something that's pretty mysterious to a lot of people and foreign and maybe even a little bit threatening and have people recognize, oh, this is just the same type of empirical inquiry that I do in my

life every day. Science is not that mysterious. Everybody can do it. I can do it. And now I have a better understanding of, you know, why this is important and why it is trustable. Yeah. And I mean, it's exciting that you're doing that because, I mean, I think the thing that you see quite a bit is you'll see somebody who could go to a place like the Tar Pits and they're like, oh, that's yeah, I get it. Mammoths fell in there and that's cool. And now their bones are here. are like, oh, yeah, I get it, mammoths fell in there and that's cool and now their bones are here, and saber tooth, that's a really cool, crazy animal that existed at some point, it doesn't exist now,

but then as soon as you suggest something like, well, and that happened 50,000 years ago, or this gives us this particular insight into climate change or climate change or evolution or whatever, and all of a sudden something that they hold sacred is threatened, they put a wall up and it's like, well I'm not gonna go down that trail. That's, now you're getting into some stuff

that makes me feel uncomfortable. So, and that's a very, very difficult battle to be fighting but a really, really important one, especially in this country. Right. So, we commend you. I also commend you. Well I said we. I'm part of the we.. So we commend you. I also commend you. Well I said we. I'm part of the we.

I said we, man. And I'm excited, yeah, as we go back and visit to see your work over the next few years as you, I mean, it was so exciting to see people at work, things happening, people wrestling with evidence and then presenting it. It was very cool. But you're not just there because you recently came off of a trip to, was it Utah and Texas?

Yeah, it was just- Both of those? Both of those. Actually, I visited every state in the American Southwest in two and a half weeks with two small children. Whoa. I feel pretty good about that. And you took two child scientists with you?

Yeah, I mean, all children are basically scientists, I think, I mean, you see- Your children. Your children too, I mean, you see someone like, you know- You didn't take his children. You took his children? No, but you took your children. I think if you see a child that like throws a spoon

off a table and wants to see if it happens every single time they do it, that's scientific. Okay. Right? Yeah, or lack of discipline. Need more discipline in their lives. So what'd you find? Well, so the trip to Utah was actually part of a natural history museum trip. It wasn't my research.

It was my first dinosaur excavation. It was really fun. It was a sau history museum trip. It wasn't my research, it was my first dinosaur excavation. It was really fun. It was a sauropod site, so sauropods are like the biggest dinosaurs, you know, like what we used to call brontosaurus back when I was a kid. So they had, yeah, I mean huge like leg bones and vertebral columns, like the spines going through.

The tale of that thing, we were just in the Natural History Museum in New York a couple weeks ago, and they had to revise the sauropod skeleton based on the posture of it. 2009 findings or whatever, and one of the things they did was extend the tail, and the thing, it's comical how long it is. It gets to a point where it definitely is like,

this would be a really long tail and you'd be like totally okay. And then it goes another 30 feet and to the point where it's just these little teeny vertebrae just in a line like toothpicks just right next to each other. And like, why'd you have to be so long, man? God, we get it, you got a long tail.

You helped dig one of these up? Yeah, I worked at that site. It was really fun. Wow. Was the head out yet? We had a couple of skull fragments, and it wasn't just sauropods. We actually had a jawbone from something, some sort of meat eater. So it might have been like an allosaurus or something.

We're not sure. Where is this? Is it like in the middle of nowhere, Utah? In like a state park? Or is it like beside a gas station? Are people coming up, moseying out of their hotel rooms, underdressed? No, no, La Brea Tar Pits is one of the only places, I think, where you're like right in the middle

of a major urban area. No, this is, it was a little bit middle of nowhere-ish. It was a couple hours south of Moab. Beautiful country, like big sky, crazy red rock formations, mesas, like really, really gorgeous area to be. Really hot. You got to take a helicopter in there? No.

Or you're like... No, we were able to drive in with a hardy pickup truck. And what are your kids thinking about this when they're seeing you brush around? So I wish my four-year-old was a little bit more excited about dinosaurs like most of his peers. I think I kind of spoiled it for him because by giving him sort of overly accurate scientific information from the beginning, because I asked him, you know, when we were going, I was like, are you excited to go, you know, dig up dinosaurs? You know what dinosaurs were? And he looked at me and said, yeah, they were birds.

Which is true, right? Which is true. Or rather birds are dinosaurs. Yeah. So, but, you know, he was a good sport about it. And the baby, you know, he's just happy as long as everything's, there are people around and things are changing and interesting. He couldn't be happier.

Right. And what about in Texas? What was coming out of the ground there? So that was actually related to my own research. It's back to the Ice Age. Remember I said we have these two species of saber-toothed cats of the Tar Pits? There's the one that everyone knows, the Smilodon,

and then there's this other one, the scimitar cat, Homotherium. This was a Homotherium den. So there were, like, saber-toothed kittens. There were baby mammoths that the mama saber-toothed had been dragging in for their kittens. It's got tons of fossils. It's actually, I found it referred to multiple times as the La Brea Tar Pits of Texas.

So that's a place that we're looking into maybe partnering with. And, you know, maybe I'll be doing some research there with some other scientists. So you're going to keep going back there, maybe? Maybe, yeah. So these were sort of my first like kind of scouting expeditions for it. And we'll see what comes of those two projects. Are you like taking into account like the nightlife in the area or like, oh, they got a good barbecue restaurant down here? Or is it all about the cave? It's pretty much all about the cave.

Okay. I respect that. Hey, yeah, I mean, that's why you're a scientist. I like a good barbecue restaurant. I'd be like, is there a good barbecue close? Eh, let's see if we can find another cave. That's my problem. I gotta learn to subsist on, like do you bring your own food in there?

Like what, are we talking like freeze-dried, R.E.I. food, like what's happening? Because I need to prepare because I know that I'm gonna go on one of these before I die. I got to. Well you know, most people, most paleontologists learn pretty quickly like, you know, it's like the old saying, an army runs on its stomach.

Right, so you've gotta, if you're gonna have people working for you for not a lot of money in harsh conditions, in uncertain weather. Oh, you got food trucks? We bring a lot of food and a fair amount of booze and we feed people well and people generally have a good time. It's almost like it's catered. Like is there somebody who's just there for the food?

Some digs run that way. Oh, maybe. You might wanna look into one of the boxes you wanna check. That's how you could get in on it. I want my dig to be catered. No. The only way you're gonna get in on it is to be the caterer. Well, I'd have to be able to cook really well. I could bring a bunch of packaged food.

You could be the snack guy. Snack guy? Yeah. I'll be the snack guy. Snack guy? Yeah. I'll be the snack guy. Snack guy coming around. Tall guy. All khakis. Coming around with granola. He definitely looks like he wants to be on the dig, but he's just bringing me Doritos right now. That's the only way you're getting in, huh? You gotta get a foot in the door, man.

Tail between his legs, delivering Doritos. I didn't know that the thing that was gonna burst your bubble was not having a barbecue restaurant nearby. I thought that was gonna burst your bubble was not having a barbecue restaurant nearby. I thought it was gonna be just the sheer... I know what my needs are. All the hours of just brushing and chipping away meticulously. I think that's it. It's just like, I would wanna be the guy that found something. But I understand that most of the time you're going to a place, you're just...

everything's... a lot of stuff is already found and you're kind of just like getting more, getting more of it out? Well, yeah, I mean, so there's two types of paleo projects, right? One is basically prospecting where you're somewhere where you know you should find fossils

because it's the rocks are the right age because people found fossils nearby. And so you're looking for a new site. And then other ones are people have found a site and you know, there's stuff there, but you don't know how far it goes. You don't know everything you're going to find. Maybe you need more of those specimens to kind of figure out what was going on at the site or learn more about those animals. And so those are the sites that I generally work at. And I mean, the tar pits being the quintessential one, right? Like people have been excavating there for more than a century. The gift that keeps on giving.

And we're still digging every day because we still feel like there's more that we can learn. Maybe there's a business idea here. So you got people like me who've just, you know, I've got this interest in this subject, but I'm probably not gonna, I'm obviously not gonna go back and get the education required to do this legitimately at this point. But I really want to experience

the feeling of finding something. So Easter egg hunt, think about how that works, right? You got these Easter eggs, you place them all over the backyard and kids find them and you can hide them a little more, make it a little more difficult to find for the older kids or whatever. Mm-hmm. What if you go to one of these prospecting sites and then you like you like find the thing that confirms that this is the site and then you you cover back up and you call me sell ticket and

you give me and you're like listen the t-rex is like over there you know like warmer yeah give me a matter give me a map give me a map that's not too difficult that has like 30 paces east. You want like an X at the treasure chest sort of map. Like a pirate map. I want the feeling. And I would pay good money for this. I think a lot of people would. Start at the barbecue restaurant.

Take 48,000 paces. Here's the cool part. North. Once I find the T-Rex, you cover it. Here's the cool part. North. Once I find the T-Rex, you cover it up and charge the next fool the same amount that you charge me. The T-Rex. You know what I'm saying? You could make a million bucks off of one T-Rex

that you never completely dig up. And it's not a lie. And fund everything with it. By the way, I'm in full agreement that this will work. Can we start this? I don't want to be involved. We need you to start a business I don't want to be involved. We need you to start a business like this.

Here's the thing. You don't have to lie to anybody. You can tell them you're covering it up every time. I know that it's just a cover. People don't care about that. Don't care. I want the satisfaction. They just want the experience. It's like Westworld, man. As long as everyone around plays along,

He discovered it! He did it! Let's all get back to the barbecue restaurant! You can charge an extra 20 bucks for the air horn rental, so that when I find it I'm like, and they're like, he's the tall, khaki found it! You know? Yeah. You know what, Rex? Rex? Rex, exactly!

And your name will be changed to Rex! T-Rex. You can call me T-Rex or Rex McLaughlin. You know, you could just come and volunteer at the Tar Pits. I guarantee you, you will find fossils every day, and we've got 150 restaurants probably within walking distance. There's a lot of really good eating in that area. Can I send him over there and you'll watch him for me? Yeah, if he passes the tests.

Okay. The tests? Okay, yeah. Well, I'll tell you right now. It's not a height test, is it? Sometimes I get kicked off of rides because I'm too tall. My seven-year-old, he bought the little Lego Statue of Liberty when we were in New York City, and he brings it back home,

and there's a little Lego flame that comes off of the Lego torch of Lady Liberty, which is a magnet. We get home, and he drops the flame into the big box of Legos. She lost it. And I'm like, he was upset. He was crying. And he comes to me, and I thought to myself,

I know how to find this Lego torch. I've seen the paleontologists grit it out, lay it all out, grit it all out, and meticulously, systematically, over time, pour over every piece of the Legos until they find the torch. You didn't actually do this with, like, string, did you? I thought this, and what I said was, it's gone, son. It's gone. You lied to him.

Well, he knew it was in there. If he wants to find it, he can do it. But I'm not gonna sit there and do it. I thought you were about to tell a wonderful story about putting them all out on a giant checkerboard and going meticulously through each square. But you told him it was gone. That's my point exactly, man.

You go off and have your fun. Or come to my house. I got a job for you. It's just. You want me to come and find your freaking Lego. There will be no satisfaction in that, but I will blow an air horn when I find it. So I respect what you do for that reason because as much as I love my son,

I couldn't even do it for him. I'll just come volunteer. I'll be there at some point. Just one day a week, that's all we ask. Okay, whoa, wow, that has got a lot more serious. For the rest of your life. Yeah, right. Khakis provided.

As long as I can name the thing after me. If there's a new species. How about that? Well. Just give it to him straight. You know, so we do, if you work in the fossil lab and you prepare a skull, which can take like months of effort, even years potentially, you prepare an entire skull, we let you name the skull. Oh, just that skull. We let you name like whatever animal was associated with that skull.

So we've got, you know, Fluffy. We've got Zed. We've you name whatever animal was associated with that skull. So we've got Fluffy. We've got Zed. We've got little Timmy. We've got all kinds of individuals. But no whole species. That's difficult. So we're sort of, again, once you've been working at the same site for, what, 120 years, you're not super likely to find new species. Except now we're starting to look at some of the smaller animals that we find at the tar pits.

So things like the rodents and the rabbits and the lizards and stuff. So it's possible that in there we could find a new species. The rat rat. You should name it something like totally profane so no one feels comfortable saying it. Just to test their limits. Okay, I'll do some thinking on that. Well Emily, thanks so much for coming and talking to us.

I still feel like this is something I wanna do. You haven't. You did it. You haven't ruined it, you haven't bursted my bubble. Burst it. You've just inflated it a little bit. Well it't... You did it. You haven't ruined it. You haven't bursted my bubble. Bursted. You've just inflated it a little bit. Well, it was a pleasure being here. I enjoyed talking to you guys. Yeah.

Yeah, that's success, man. Yeah. All right, run along. Thanks for... Not you, Rhett. You're telling me to leave. Run along to the tar pits. Okay.

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