Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #2: DINOSAURS with Paleontologist Michael Habib

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Yes, a double dose of short, all-ages episodes to launch Smologies! We cleaned up the full version and polished it into a safe-for-work digest of dinosaur facts and tales from a paleontologist with Dr. Michael Habib. Learn about the economics of a dino dig, his favorite beasts, cloning from amber samples, which museum dinos are real vs. fakes, Jurassic Park flimflam and more. (And for the full version with NSFW stories, the link is below.)New full-length episodes of Ologies drop Tuesdays, and new Smologies come out every other Thursday.More Smologies episodesFull, uncut, NSFW episode on PaleontologyFollow Dr. Michael Habib on Twitter and InstagramA donation went to nhm.orgSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Zeke Thomas Rodrigues & Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media and Steven Ray MorrisSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hi, it's your internet uncle, Ali Ward, back with facts and science and stories and the second-ever episode of Smologies, which is a new spin-off of quick, distilled oligies episodes that we've shrunk down and defilthed. So you can listen in a classroom or on a road trip with your in-laws. I don't know what your in-laws' vibes are, but maybe you need a clean version.

Also, if you want the full version of this episode, it's linked in the show notes, and there are also bleeped full versions available, but Smologies are small, and they'll show up right in this feed every other Thursday. Now, as usual, regular, brand-new, full-length episodes of oligies come out on Tuesdays. We're just launching this double on a Tuesday

because I got married to your pod mom, Jared Sleeper, last Saturday, and I'm taking this week off to go see family in Montana. My first vacation in nine years, I'm very excited. Okay, this intro's already too long. Let's get to fossils, dino digs, brontosaurus, titanosauri, flimflam, Jurassic Park. What does a dinosaur taste like?

Museum secrets and more in this episode, too, of Smologies with paleontologist Michael Habib. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies. Smologies.

Now, you study movement of animals, and that's kind of how you got into paleontology? What is... Is paleontology only about fossils or is it just about living things of that era? So, paleontology, it doesn't necessarily have to be about fossils, but it historically kind of was. It was considered to be the study of fossils, essentially, although, more literally, it's just the study of life in the past.

And you mostly do that through fossils. I'm one of those paleontologists who does play with fossils. Before we go much further, let's define super quick what a fossil actually is. I didn't know this until just now. Fossils are any trace or remains, like a cast or an impression or a substitution with rock or even the thing itself of something that was once alive.

They have to be at least 10,000 years old to be considered a fossil. I don't know what they're called if they're younger than that, to be honest. And the word fossil comes from the Latin for obtained by digging, which is that kind of adorable. I just picture people digging around, being like, I obtained this by digging. It's a fossil. What amount of time do you spend in the field as a paleontologist

and how much of that is back in a lab or looking at spreadsheets or measuring fossil densities and stuff? So, in terms of the amount of time, like, how much of the year I'm in the field, it's a good chunk of the summer. That's usually when I do all my field work. So, basically, July and August, a good bit of it. I'll be in the field. Mosey, New Mexico.

Was that a titanosaur? That's the titanosaur project, yeah. Can you reveal what you're working on with that? Sure, sure. Obviously, UXB, basically, whatever you find, it's not like you went out there and went, we're going to find a titanosaur. Actually, we kind of went out there going,

I really kind of hope we don't find a titanosaur because... Well, I mean, not we were being flip about it, which is what makes it funny, but there was a part of us that was like, I really hope we don't find things super huge because then we feel compelled to excavate it and it's going to take forever. And, of course, what we found was two individuals of the group that includes the largest land animals of all time.

In fact, one of our specimens may be the largest dinosaur from North America. That's huge, literally. Yeah, so it's just, I mean, these are animals that have mid-sized titanosaurs like 30 tons plus. Oh, my God. And a big one is like 60 tons plus. How many feet?

The big guys, you're looking at 100 feet-ish. Wow. How many times bigger than an elephant are these guys? A big bull African elephant, which would be the largest living land animal. I think the record is like 6.2 tons or something like that. Oh, really? The average is more like five in change.

Okay. So if a big titanosaur is regularly hitting 60, that's 12 times. So these titanosaurs are like if 12 elephants stacked under one giant overcoat and pretended to be a person. So his work is kind of a big deal in every way possible. Who gets to name it? Well, that depends.

We don't know whether or not we will be naming it because we don't know if it's a new species yet or not. There is a type of titanosaur from North America that is named, just one, which is interesting because the rest of the world, there's a ton of these things. They're like one of the hot groups of dinosaurs to work on these days. We went from not knowing much about them 20 years ago,

but suddenly this has been this explosion. So sauropods are those really long-necked, kind of round-bellied, plant-munchin' cuties. Even if you don't get to name the species, you get to actually be like this one's Gary or whatever. Oh, sure. So you get nicknames. So the naming process,

if this thing's up in a new species, we will give a new technical name in a publication and I'll be myself and my colleagues will name it. But in terms of nicknames, those kind of just happen organically. Okay. And archery titanosaurs actually have nicknames. Oh, what are they? They are Daisy and Duke.

Oh, look at that. And it's usually the students that are naming these things. Where do they come up with Daisy and Duke? It has nothing to do with gene shorts, does it? Like Daisy Dukes? Daisy Dukes, for those unfamiliar, are a type of micro-pant fashioned from truncated denim trousers. They are beneficial in warm climates.

So when might Daisy and Duke make their museum debut? Please put shorts on them. Here's the deal with museums. It's actually like the shoe department at JCPenney. What you see on the floor is a representative fraction of what they got in the back. So you may see a cool dinosaur or like a weird old knife or a clay jug,

but the museum has literally millions of specimens on site archived for research. The LA County Natural History Museum, for example, has 35 million artifacts in storage. How much money does it cost to dig up a dinosaur? This is the most fun game I've ever played. All right, let's have fun with this. How much do you think a field season for us costs?

Oh gosh, well, it depends on if you have interns. We have a combination of paid employees from the museum as well as volunteers. Okay. Let's just look at just the field season. Let's assume that salaries for the museum employees is just part of their yearly work and everything. So just the additional money for the supplies, the trucks.

To get people out there, to feed them, keep them safe, make the jackets, get transport the specimens. I would say $800,000, $4 million, $1 billion. Less than $10,000 a year. You're kidding me. No. Are you kidding me? So you could buy a Toyota Camry used or a dinosaur expedition?

That's right. What kind of a world is this? Why haven't we all done this? Side note, I got married last weekend and I can tell you should have folded it in with a dig. But yes, that's one of my favorite oligarchs facts maybe ever. Oh, speaking of faves. So do you have a favorite dinosaur?

Do I have a favorite dinosaur? Yes, I have a couple of favorite dinosaurs depending on what kind of favoritism one has in mind. The one that like really has a place in your heart. Like you know which one it is. There's one that you really like the most. Sure. So growing up, so the one that makes me think, ah, childhood is this thing, Denonicus,

which is very similar to Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame. Incidentally, the real Velociraptor was about coyote-sized and feathered, not giant and scaly. Dino enthusiasts love to note that the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were not historically accurate. Denonicus, which means terrible claw, was much closer to what was portrayed as a Velociraptor. And I thought this was just someone sleeping on the job.

But the confusion is said to have originated from Denonicus originally being labeled as a subspecies of Velociraptors. Either way, these things should have had feathers. So imagine a giant clawed bird wanting to murder you. It's upsetting. It's not as upsetting to some people, though, as a movie getting facts wrong. Some of them are.

I've seen some people get really upset about it. I don't get that upset about it. But yeah, I mean, they're essentially fancy creatures. But Denonicus was particularly important historically because it was one of the first dinosaurs that was specifically used in some of the original hypotheses about the origins of birds and specifically being dinosaurs. Really?

By the way, all birds are technically dinosaurs. And that may be a thing that you've accepted and you've processed in your heart or mind, but it still wears me out. Now, these days, I might very well say and have said that my favorite might be Chongeraptor. Chongeraptor. Now, what a weird thing.

First off, it's C-H-A-N-G-Y-U, raptor. You find it, Google it, it took me a while. So this was a non-bird flying dinosaur. It has four wings, four wings, and a tail that was like a foot long, big claws and teeth. Which is not something you hear a lot about. No. Now, Michael was on the team that first analyzed

and published the paper naming this a new species. So, you know. So that one has a special place in my heart for that reason. Now, a little background on this. A paleontologist was trolling some amber markets in Myanmar and saw this apricot-sized piece of plant resin for sale as like a jewelry piece, whatever. The seller said there was like maybe a plant stuck in it.

Yeah, no. It was actually a whole baby dinosaur tail feathered. Like the best episode of Antiques Roadshow ever. They named it Eva. Eva is 99 million years old and probably got her tail stuck in TreeSap and died there, which is currently making me want to cry. So, RIP, little feathered buddy.

And thank you for not ending up as a random, chunky pendant. That's a really neat find. It is the beginning of what you'll probably see more things like that in the future. Are we going to be cloning anything? No, you're not going to be cloning anything from this because while it more or less looks exactly like it just was preserved yesterday because the soft tissue is there.

Wow. That doesn't mean that the molecular structure is completely unaltered. And DNA has a reasonably short half-life, so you would just get gobbled a gook out. Like you probably get DNA, but not, it wouldn't mean anything. OK. DNA doesn't have to break down much

and it would be very broken down and stuff. You might not even get any, but you might be able to get a small amount, but it wouldn't matter. DNA becomes incomprehensible very quickly because it only has a four-letter alphabet. So, if you only have four letters in your alphabet, your words, if you will, have to be very lengthy. Right.

So, if you break them even a few times, it means nothing. So, we can't bloop, bloop, bloop, resurrect the brontosaurus with fragments of a broken code. But wait, what is going on with the brontosaurus? What's the hot gauze on a brontosaurus? A brontosaurus. So, the short answer is a brontosaurus is a valid name again. The original material that was named brontosaurus

was then later found to have been comprised of multiple animals of different species. Whoops. So, it was decided that brontosaurus was not a valid name because, well, it's all known stuff. You can't combine them and say it's a new animal. Right. Researchers recently went through that material again

with better knowledge, more data than we now have, because over time, you get better and better knowledge of what's out there. They cross-compared a bunch of stuff, and what they found was that, yes, a lot of that material was already known species, but some of it didn't match anything and therefore was, in fact, new.

Don't. And that means the original name holds. That's some good breaking news on the brontosaurus front. Yes. This is why it's always a good idea to ask smart people seemingly silly questions. Right now, the more the merrier. Also, before we get to your questions,

we will be donating to a related charity. And this week, it's going to the Natural History Museum of LA County, one of my favorite places in the world. Definitely stop in and wander next time you're near downtown. So, a donation was made possible by some sponsors of the show. Okay, your listener questions. I have some rapid-fire questions for you from listeners. Let's do it.

David wants to know any thoughts on what color dinosaurs were? Any new thoughts on what color dinosaurs were? It depends on how new you're looking at, but within the last handful of years, yes, there was a significant breakthrough in... It's still a little bit controversial, but seems to be accurate in looking at the impressions of feathers in particular, because feathers store their pigments,

some of their pigments in these little, kind of little capsules, basically, that do preserve in some of these fossils, some of these really well-preserved fossils. You need a microscope to see them, but they're there. They're called melanosomes, and they store melanin, or melanins, I should say, which is a family of different pigments. And of course, the original pigment isn't in them anymore,

but the shape and size of the melanosome tells you what kind of melanin it had in it. So, they can use microscopy, advanced microscopy and imaging techniques, to... on those feathers to determine where certain melanins were located. Ooh, what is microscopy? It's just looking at things with a microscope.

Okay. That means they can get some of the blacks, grays, dark browns, and reddish browns, but they can't get other colors. So, we have some idea that some of these things at least had bold patterns, but we don't know how bold the colors were. Interesting, okay.

Tony wants to know, if dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds, does that mean that dinosaurs tasted like chicken? They probably did taste like chicken. Yeah, so, you know, the way they're putting it is birds are just weird dinosaurs. Yeah. And they probably did.

I mean, keep in mind, the closest living relatives of birds are crocodilians. And if you've ever had alligator, it tastes a little bit like chicken, too. So, there you go. So, there's what we call a phylogenetic bracket of tastiness there in the technical about it. And, yeah, so, I imagine it would taste

pretty much like chicken. Your typical dinosaur would probably be mostly more dark meat than white meat. Because they had more hemoglobin for moving? Sort of. It's very close. What turns the dark meat dark is something called myoglobin, which means for storing oxygen in muscle.

And that's used particularly in what we call aerobic muscle. So, muscle that uses a lot of oxygen is high endurance muscle. So, it's this oxygen storing protein, myoglobin, that makes dark meat dark, which is why legs, which move around more, are dark meat and chicken breast, which just sits there not flapping much as white. So, good luck ever looking at a roasted dinosaur the same. Adam has a question.

How do you know when to switch brushes when you're digging out a fossil? How do you know when to switch brushes? When the one you currently have is unusable. And then you just, do you have to get the finer and finer brushes when you're getting tiny grains of sand off? You don't usually have to reduce the brush size much, maybe a little bit.

It's more things like, anything sharp, chisel sizes, things like that. If you're doing some more detailed work, you have to go to a smaller tool. Brushes, any kind of broad soft paintbrush will kind of do. Certain brush types are better than others, but it's not like painting where you're going out to detail work. You're just not taking off each individual grain of sand.

You have some loose stuff and then you brush it out of the way and you have some more loose stuff and you brush it out of the way. The key thing is to not damage the fossil. I always picture you guys going down to like a watercolor, two hairs on the brush, like delicately. It's good to know that you guys are just like, no, just get the dust off. I've used dental tools to etch stuff around a fossil before.

That seems fun. It is for a while and then it starts to become tedious, but it's mostly fun. Yeah, I obviously love it. But yeah, we don't go to tiny brushes. TJ wants to know how many of the fossils on display at museums are actually replicas or casts? Right, right.

It depends on what museum you're at and it depends on the large part of what age the museum is in order to exhibit is in particular when it was built. If it's a really old exhibit, say it hasn't been changed since the 1920s, it's likely mostly original material. Oh. Because during that time, they didn't do as much casting.

They didn't mind drilling through some of these things to put them on exhibit. And then as you got into the mid to late 20th century, that fell out of favor because they didn't want to put holes in the research specimen. But now, if it's a really recent exhibit, ironically enough, you're going to see more original stuff on display again because we have better armatures now,

what we call cradle armatures. Armatures are the metal cradles that hold the bones in place externally. That lets you remove pieces for research, put them back, do whatever. Now, what percentage of each of those specimens is original is a whole other ballgame? You very rarely find a complete skeleton.

So there's a few different ways of ending up with a complete skeleton for exhibit. One is you create a composite from multiple originals of the same species that are all similar enough in age and size that it'll more or less work as an average individual. So your display isn't a single individual ever lived, but it's sort of an average of four or five individuals that were very similar.

So it's like a frankensaur? It's like a frankensaur. And then if the thing's really incomplete, and this happens quite often, like you found it, you do have enough to know what it is, you have enough to know it's a new animal or what have you, but you only have, say, 15% of the skeleton. You will then fill in the rest of the casts.

But the museums are trying their best. Yeah. So sometimes you don't have all the parts and pieces to a dead dino that you need, but that's why scientists and artists build it out for us. And that's why we love them. Well, what's your favorite thing about the job? Oh, that one's hard because,

just because the job actually is super fun. I love field work. I love opening drawers in new museums in the collections. When I go places, you know, travel to do research. I really do enjoy teaching. A friend's dad at a social gathering, he's got too many studies, give me a little bit of a hard time.

And he goes, so, you're an academic, right? I'm like, yeah. What do you actually make? Isn't like, what do you produce? What do you make? Like, what do you make? And I took a quick second and said, I make doctors. Face.

And thank you, Dr. Michael Habib, for teaching us so much about dinosaurs and paint brushes and mosquito bites and following your passions into a pit of dusty bones. And thank you to everyone who helped make this episode. Full credits are in the show notes, along with Dr. Michael Habib's handles to follow. We are at oligies and I'm at Allie Ward with 1L.

More info is at alleyward.com slash simologies. And one last thing before I go, some advice from old dad Ward. You know, sometimes it can be scary to start a project, but starting is always the very hardest part. It's all easier once you start. So be strong, start the thing, you're going to do great. Okay, for bye.

I'll use smart simologites. Simologies. Simologies. Simologies. Simologies. Simologies. Simologies.