Science Friday - Farmers’ Stress, Tiny Dino-Bird Discovery. March 13, 2020, Part 2

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

The Farm Crisis of the 1980s was a dark time for people working in food and agriculture. U.S. agricultural policies led to an oversupply of crops, price drops, and farms closures. At the same time, the rate of farmer suicide skyrocketed. The industry struggled, until organizations like Farm Aid and others popped up to give voice to the crisis. But farm advocates agree that farmers are in the middle of another period of hardship, one brought on by the same factors that caused the Farm Crisis in the 1980s. Farmers today are experiencing low crop prices, uncertain markets, and high farm debt. And this time around, there’s a greater awareness and stress about the impacts of climate change. So what will our response be to this latest crisis? How will farmers get the support they need—both economically and emotionally? State and regional organizations for farmers have been quick to restart the conversation around the importance of rural mental health, but funding has been slow to follow. In an unexpected twist, the Trump administration’s recent decision to move the U.S. Department of Agriculture from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City has been the source of some of this funding bottleneck. All the while, studies are reporting increasing rates of farmer suicides—mirroring the 1980s. Ira speaks with Katie Wedell, author of a recent article in USA Today on the latest farm crisis, as well as Roy Atkinson from the American Farm Bureau Federation about a recent poll looking at perceptions of rural mental health. They’re joined by Jennifer Fahy from Farm Aid, Brittney Schrick, assistant professor at University of Arkansas, and Jim Goodman, retired dairy farmer and farm advocate, to discuss the scope of the crisis and response. Today, the Isle of Sky in the west coast of Scotland is a lush island with towering sea cliffs and tourists taking in the picturesque landscape. But during the late Jurassic period 170 million years ago, there were diverse groups of dinosaurs roaming the land. In two different areas on the island, paleontologists were able to find footprints of three different types of dinosaurs. These tracks include the stegosaurus, which had not been previously found in this region. Their results were published in the journal PLOS ONE. Paleontologists Steve Brusatte and Paige Depolo, who are both authors on the study, describe why fossils and tracks from this period are difficult to find and what these footprints can tell us about the habitats of middle Jurassic dinosaurs and shed light on the evolution of the stegosaurus.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, we'll uncover the tracks of dinosaurs found in Scotland, dinosaurs that roamed the earth 170 million years ago. But first, if you're of a certain age or you work in the field of agriculture, then you may remember the farm crisis of the 1980s. U.S. agricultural policies led to an oversupply of crops, prices drop, farms started going under. At the same time, the rate of farmer suicides skyrocketed. It was a dark time for the industry until organizations like farm aid and others popped up to give voice to the crisis. Remember Willie Nelson and those fundraising concerts? Well, farm advocates say we may be in the middle of another dark time for farmers. One brought on by the same factors that caused the farm crisis of the 80s, low crop prices, uncertain markets.

but this time there is a new source of stress. Climate change. Robin from Austin called into the Science Friday Vox Pop app to tell us what her father, a farmer in South Texas, has been worried about. One thing that he's been worried about for quite some time is climate change. It seems to be getting more and more arid where we're at,

which means less grass, can't feed the cows, got to buy hay, et cetera, et cetera. Robin in Austin. If you're a farmer or you live, live in a farm family and you're worried about crop prices, unsteady markets, climate change. We'd like to hear your story. Please, give us a call.

844-724-8255-844-Sy-Tock. You can also tweet us at SciFri. And, you know, when a farmer faces bankruptcy, it goes without saying that the prospect can be a tremendous shock to their family, right? The farming family. So just like in the 1980s, rates of farmer suicide seem to be at another all-time high. State and regional organizations for farmers have been quick to jump on the issue of rural mental health, helping farmers get the help they need, both economically and emotionally.

But on the other hand, federal funding has been slow to follow suit. In a cynical twist, the Trump administration's recent decision to move the U.S. Department of Agriculture's staff and scientists from Washington to Kansas City has been the cause of some of this funding bottleneck. This hour, we're going to dive deep into this issue, covering the politics, the policies, and climate pressures that are putting stress on farmers. We'll talk about why there's so little data about farmer suicide and perceptions of rural mental health. And we'll talk to the people who are on the front lines providing farmers with tools to fight this latest crisis. But first, here to join me in kicking things off is Katie Waddell, investigative reporter for USA Today Network,

which this week published a story called Seeds of Despair on the latest farm crisis. She joins us by Skype from Columbus, Ohio. Welcome, Katie. Hi, thanks, Ira. I'm going to read the subheading of your Seeds of Despair story, and it says, more than 450 farmers killed themselves across nine Midwestern states from 2014 to 2018. Meanwhile, it calls to to farmates crisis hotline soar. How did you get wind of this story from the beginning? Well, we actually set out just to find out what occupation had the highest suicide rates and whether or not that industry was doing anything about mental health.

And we didn't know that farming was going to rise to the top until we looked at the numbers. So when it did, we started calling around and found out that indeed the industry was saying this is a huge problem they're facing. Did that catch everybody by surprise? I think it surprised people that aren't in farming. I mean, I'm not in farming. It wasn't something I was aware of until I started delving into it. But I think people in the industry have known that this has been a problem and have been trying to find ways to help. The CDC's numbers were off in 2016, but they published a new study this year that your article cites.

What were they able to conclude this time around? Yes, so their newer study looked at, I believe, 32 states and found that the farming industry was fourth in terms of overall suicide rates for men of all occupations. But there's a little bit of weirdness in the numbers because some farmers get classified as managers if you own your own farm. So those folks also, if you looked at farm management as an occupation category, the CDC's numbers showed that that would. was also a group that was more likely than the average to commit suicide. And there are figures are showing that the suicide, the rate is even higher than service men. Yeah, I think that's something that a lot of people, if you asked what occupation would be the highest, they would think it would be first responders.

But that was not the case when you actually look at the numbers. And when you talk to the farmers in your story, did they say things feel as bad as what's being reported? Yeah, definitely. You know, we would talk to people really just calling for their expertise in the industry, and they would say immediately, oh, I know someone who's died. I have a friend who died. I have a family member who died. So that was really, really shocking to see how far it really did permeate in these communities. All right. Now that you've written this story and you have followed it, tell me your takeaway from this in terms of what farmers need to get through this crisis. Yeah, I mean, it's really a couple of things. Obviously, mental.

mental health resources is a topic we talk about across the country, all different communities need more mental health resources, and these rural communities do. But then there's also an issue of the stigma and the convincing the farmers that even if the help is there, that they need to take advantage of it. And that's something a lot of grassroots groups are starting to work on is trying to destigmatize getting help, that, hey, we know you're stressed, and it's okay to ask for help, and it's okay to reach out to someone and talk to them. And the majority of help is coming locally?

Yeah, I believe so. I mean, the resources really do have to come from the community, because, again, those are the people that these farmers are going to trust to go to and that they know that they're going to understand their problems. Well, thank you for bringing this story to our attention, Katie. Thank you. Great story. Katie Waddell, investigative reporter for USA Today Network, based in Columbus, Ohio. Her story is called Seeds of Despair. I want to move on now to dig a little deeper into the numbers with this. A recent poll conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Morning Consult was especially revealing a farmer's attitudes toward mental health.

And for that, I want to bring on Roy Atkinson, Director of Communications for American Farm Bureau Federation. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira, and it's Ray. Ray, I'm sorry. Can't read my own typewritten handwriting. Sorry. Your organization commissioned the survey of 2,200 rural adults looking at farmer stress. What were you looking for? Well, I think you set a very good backdrop for the kind of the issue of all the things that are compounding farmers, all the challenges.

You know, you mentioned prices and markets and trade issues, ag labor. We know weather events are more and more severe. And so, you know, looking with the 80s as a backdrop for what we saw the farm economy heading toward, we wanted to really get a good grasp of what farmers were hearing and feeling and what kind of things contributed to mental health challenges, their impressions of mental health. And I think, and Katie made a very good point about stigma. That's one of the things that we asked about in this survey because we know, anecdotally, that it's a big problem and a barrier to people getting treatment and help.

And the polling results say that 91% of rural adults think mental health is an important issue for them and their families, right? That's absolutely right. That's an improvement from years path? Well, I don't have the – we didn't do a survey previously to get a baseline on this, but I would say that that's very significant because – because, you know, from a personal standpoint, I would not have guessed that number to be that high, particularly because of the amount of stigma that surrounds this issue.

But certainly it gives us an opportunity when you looked at, you know, nine out of ten farmers and rural adults say that mental health is important to them, then that means that they are open and receptive and listening and understand the seriousness of the issue. But the poll also showed that rural adults are more likely to say mental health is a major problem in urban and suburban communities rather than the rural communities. What does that tell us? Well, I think it's the perception that this is a problem in big cities and it's not really happening in my community. And I think, you know, farmers deal with a lot of isolation. Many of them are out on the farm alone, working all day.

and they sort of, I think, what we kind of understand is they get on these, they're in this island of feeling like they're very much by themselves and isolated. I think that may be a reflection of that where people think, well, I may be experiencing these issues, but my neighbor probably isn't, and it's probably more of a big city problem. Ray, do farmers know where to go for mental health services? One of the things that we heard in the survey is that they knew where to go, but there was also not enough resources in their communities. Obviously, we know that the problem or one of the challenges in rural communities is, you know, even if you can get past the stigma and you go looking for help, it's not always, right in your own town. And, you know, also farmers don't really get to take time off to go to get counseling or to talk to someone because the farm is, you know, 24-7-365 operation. Yeah. So what are you hoping to be able to do with this data now?

Well, we've done a number of things. You know, first, it was just really important to understand where farmers were coming from. I mean, we, we instinctively. or we hear anecdotally things. And so we said, let's get, you know, the data behind that. And I think the number one takeaway from this was that farmers and farm workers think that financial issues, farm or business problems, and fear of losing the farm impacted their mental health. So when we look at those things, we know that's what's going on in the farm economy

today and it's not getting really a lot better. So what we wanted to do with this, and I think Katie, outlined this very well. She was talking about stigma and how the grassroots organizations are turning to try and destigmatize this issue and to get people to talk about it. So we have, that's really one of the things that we've been doing. We launched our rural resilience initiative, and it's really about just awareness and getting people to understand that not only is it okay to talk about stress and mental health issues, but it's really, it's necessary. All right, Ray, thank you very much for your work.

and for taking time to be with us today. Ray Atkinson, Director of Communications for the American Farm Bureau Federation. We're going to talk lots more farming when we come back. Stay with it. You're listening to Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato.

We're talking this hour about farmer stress and the factors that are influencing it. Have things gotten as bad as the farm crisis of the 1980s? Well, we're going to ask my next guest. Jennifer Fahey is Communications Director for Farm Aid. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you, Ira. Brittany Schrick is Assistant Professor and Family Life Specialist, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. Welcome to you. Thank you. And Jim Goodman. I'd be here. Oh, nice to have you. Jim Goodman is a retired organic dairy farmer and farm activist from Southwest Wisconsin.

Welcome to Science Friday, Jim. Thank you, Iro. And we still want to hear from you in our audience. If you're a farmer and you're worried about crop prices, unsteady markets, or climate change, and if you're really in a funk, and give us a call. Our number is 844-8255. We're happy to talk about it with you and share your experiences. 844-724-8255.

You can also tweet us at SciFRI. Jennifer, let's start with you. I mentioned the current crisis could be as bad as the one in the 1980s. And for those of us who weren't around or don't remember what was going on back then, give us a little history lesson of that crisis. Well, farmers had been encouraged by farm policies that exist to this day that say they should produce as much product as possible. And in that case, we had a market collapse similar to what we're seeing now with our trade wars. And we also had the bottom dropout of the values for land.

and farmers had produced all of these commodities that no longer had a market, and they were left with them, and they had no cash to pay off their loans. So the loans were called in, and we saw hundreds of thousands of farms declare bankruptcy across the country. But producing that much as much as they could. Was that a change of policy by the Agriculture Department? I think we've been scaling up for a long time, but at that time, yes, it was. There was a crop failure in the USSR, and we were encouraged to produce as much as possible for that market, and then there was an embargo on getting that product to them.

Jim Goodman, you're a retired dairy farmer. You must remember the crisis of the 80s. Yes, I do. I farmed through it. How do things feel now compared to back then? I think it's worse, and that's not just my opinion. It's other farmers of my generation that I've talked to. And while we may not be losing numerically as many farmers, percentage-wise, I think we're losing more.

Wow. Why is that? I think farming has changed to the point where small farming is not that viable anymore, and we lost so many farms, you know, in the last several decades that there just aren't that many left, but the small farms that are still trying to hang on just really can't do it because the prices they get just don't reflect the amount of money. money it costs them to keep farming. And if you're not making money, in fact, farmers are losing money, they eventually just have to hang it up and hope that they can pay their debts off when they sell their farm. Dr. Shrick, how have Ag Extension Services been responding to this crisis

this time around? Are they any quicker to it? Well, it seems like to some degree we're responding, where we began responding with the CDC report that was since amended because it just sounded so scary, right? So we had lots of farmers who were told that their profession was the most dangerous, and it gave them a reason and a way to discuss it in in the open in ways that maybe hadn't been available to them in the past. And it also gave us an end for them in the community. So in Arkansas, we've been trying to be on the forefront of making sure that we have these connections with the community and lots of other state extension services around the

country have been doing the same. Let's go to the phones, 844724-8255. John in Sturgis, Michigan. Hi. Hi there. Go ahead. Yeah, so I'm a small organic farm in Michigan, and I've been going for about nine years, and it's just really tough, and I've gotten to the point where your guest said before, where I have to charge, you know,

exorbitant prices in order, or, you know, the true cost of the vegetable, because I'm doing it the right way, you know, biodiversity and all that kind of stuff. And it's just, it's really hard because I can only sell to places that are able to afford those type of vegetables. And over, you know, the last eight years that I've been doing this, you know, just making paper thin margins without, you know, basically paying myself. It just warned on me to last fall, well, you know, things got worse three years ago with the climate changing a lot. And so last fall, I actually had a panic. attack and I had to be put on an SSRI because I was just, you know, out alone in the field bottling up all the thoughts and having employees and trying to, you know, give them money

and keep them on. And it's just been really a struggle for years. Let me bring on Jennifer of Fahey of Farmy. Jennifer, are there places that John can call for help, for stress help, of what he's going through? There are. And first, John, let me say thank you for sharing your story and also thank you for prioritizing your health. That is something that farmers do struggle with as has been mentioned. So it's really important. Farm Aid has actually operated a farmer hotline since 1985. It wasn't initially intended or understood to be a need, but when Willie Nelson and John

Mellencamp and Neil Young held that first concert event, farmers started calling the number that had been set up to receive donations. And quickly, we staffed that number and worked with folks across the countryside to, you know, figure out how do we respond to farmers and what works best. Luckily, we had raised $7 million from that first concert, and we could fund resources across the country. We're still funding those resources across the country so that when a farmer calls our hotline, we can direct them to a local resource, hopefully, at least in their own state, that can address their particular issue. And in terms of a farmer calling with mental health, as has been mentioned,

typically the root cause is a financial cause or a legal cause. And so we think of our referral service as a three-legged stool that is full of resources for mental health, legal, and financial assistance. John, have you ever thought about calling the hotline? I haven't before. I didn't really know about it, though. Well, now you do. Now I do.

Hope we helped you out, and good luck to you. Yeah, thanks. Jim, have you known farmers in your community who have committed suicide? Yeah, I've known several farmers, not just in my community, but, you know, various parts of the country who've been tragic farmers because it doesn't take a lot. for us to see ourselves in their shoes. And when the despair gets so bad that you would consider yourself better off being dead, I think that's very hard for anyone to swallow. Jennifer, these farmers are on the edge.

Are you getting calls? I mean, I know Jim, maybe he'll call you now. Well, Jim, we have luckily known Jim for a long time. He's part of the farm aid movement. but we are receiving calls from farmers all across the country. And, you know, we do receive those crisis calls. Hopefully we're meeting farmers before they get to that point. Right now we're hearing from a lot of farmers who are concerned

they won't get their operating loans this spring and they won't be able to plant. We're hearing from farmers who are maxing out their credit cards asking to extend their limits, who are turning to non-farm loan sources, which are higher interest rates and with less protections, should they get into trouble. And we're helping farmers with emergency grants to cover household expenses just to keep the heat on, the lights on, and food in the refrigerator.

Brittany, why is it so difficult to get an accurate count of the number of farmer suicides we've been so far in this latest crisis that we're into now? Well, it seems to be partially because the states all kind of collect data differently, and they all report data differently. And some states keep a tighter lock-on data. So some is more public than other. And it's also talking about the stigma related to mental health, there's also a stigma related to kind of accurately describing a death as a death by suicide. So if a family might miss out on benefits or there's some other reason why it wouldn't be reported as a suicide, even by a local medical examiner who might know the family or something like that, there are reasons why sometimes suicides aren't accurately reported. And sometimes it might look like an accident.

So farming is a dangerous profession just generally. and there are lots of ways that suicide might look like an accident. So it's just hard to get a handle on the data. Thank you. Brittany, the Trump administration moved to research agencies of the USDA from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City. They lost a lot of veteran research scientists and staff members who just couldn't make the move. Has this impacted things? It has.

I actually work with the Farm and Ranch. stress assistance network that's in the southern region, which there was a research call or a grant call put out and Agrosafe was granted the funds. However, those funds haven't been released because there isn't anyone to administer the grants at NIFA at the moment, which is the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. And basically, because of that, people who are working in this area who were kind of relying on that funding to be able to either start or continue their work or having to either rely on other funds or not hire people who were, who they had slated to be able to do the outreach or to gather, to gather data or to analyze data or to do whatever other

pieces were necessary. They've had to put the breaks on those things. Jim, we always see, you know, we're in an election year. We always see how crucial the farm vote is because they're in the swing states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, places like that. Why can't farmers, what is holding back farmers for exercising their power to get the funding for the kind of aid they need? You know, we've talked about some of the stigmas that are related to farmers not wanting to make their situation public. I think that there's a lot of politics, obviously involved in elections. And as crises deepen, farmers may decide. that, yeah, we need to try and elect people that are actually going to implement front handouts.

They just want fair price. I think until they realize they need to elect people that will put farm programs in place that ensure fair farm prices, this crisis is just going to continue. And I understand, Brittany, that you've been doing some outreach through programs offered by the University of Arkansas. How do you successfully approach farmers? We've been talking about how difficult it is for them to, you know, admit problems. you successfully approach them about these services? Are they willing to listen? Well, it's been a little tricky and we've had to do some trial and error. But generally, we are still a state, Arkansas is still

a state that has a county extension system. So we have a county extension agent in every county, where some states have moved more toward a regional system. So we still have lots of folks out in the field who can do that in-person outreach that are embedded in the community and that people know. And so since they are people that they recognize and that they're already dealing with for other things, they typically are a little bit more open to discuss things with their county extension agent, or at least to ask them, hey, have you heard of anything that we can do? We've had our county agents have done things like put up displays at the courthouse or the extension office that they can just kind of walk by without having to be noticed so they can pick up things.

And one other tool that we've been able to utilize is to do these sorts of exhibits at county production meetings. And so they're already there for another purpose, which seems to be one of the most successful ways that we've done outreach so far. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking about stress on the farming community. Jennifer, how much has climate change? We had one listener calling in on our box pop app talking about climate change. It's just another stressor to be added to what we have already. It is indeed.

And last year really illustrated that with the record floods that occurred throughout the Midwest and stayed throughout the summer and then came back in the fall. And we know now that the soils there are wet. And they're not going to absorb as much water as they have the capacity to do in a normal year. So we already know we're going to have flooding issues again. The thing about climate change is it's also an opportunity. And as far as shifting our policy that has put us in this position of farmers earning negative incomes and producing too much and creating the cycle of, you know, making their own prices go down, climate change is an answer

to that. And if we shifted our policies to incentivize farmers to do regenerative agriculture methods like no tilling and reduced tilling and cover crops and diversification of crops and livestock grazing, then we could change not just the agricultural system and our food system, but the future of our climate. And farmers can't do that alone, they need investment that needs to come from policy, and they can't be responsible on their own for pushing that policy. All of us who eat need to be involved in that fight. You know, years ago, we did a show on electrification, and I had a rancher in Oklahoma calling in and saying, you know, I make more money out of the wind farms on my ranch than I do out of the

cattle. Can the farmers adopt a green electricity, grow electricity like that, maybe change jobs a little bit, Jim? Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Was that Jim or Jen? That's you, Jim. I have about a minute. I think they certainly can, but, you know, it's a certain amount of monetary investment if you're

going to put up solar panels, for example, and until farmers get a fair price, they're more worried about putting food in their table, and they are adapting to green energy. All right, that's about all the time we have. Certainly an interesting topic. Always trying to talk about farm and land

issues. I want to thank Jennifer Fahey, Communications Director for Farm Aid, Brittany Schrick, who is Assistant Professor and Family Life Specialist, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, Jim Goodman, a retired organic dairy farmer and farm activist from southwest Wisconsin. And I also want to recommend the documentary, Homeplace Under Fire, really great documentary, a short documentary about all these problems. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. After the break, we're going to walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs in Scotland. We'll talk about Scotland. It was a busy crosswalk for dinosaurs.

We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato, the Isle of Sky in Scotland. Oh, sounds like a nice place, doesn't it, just from the name? There are emerald green coastlines that drop off into dramatic waterfalls, rock formations that look like giants off in the distance. And every now and then a former castle dots the landscape.

And in the past, there were also dinosaurs. Scientists have uncovered the footprints of three different types of dinosaurs that roamed the area 170 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic period. And these tracks can lead to clues about the habitats and evolution of these dinosaurs. The results were published in the journal PLOS 1. My next guess are both authors on that study. Steve Brousotti is a paleontologist at the University of Bentonboro in Scotland. He joins us by Skype.

Always good to talk to you, Steve. Ira, always a pleasure. You're welcome, and Paige DePollo is a Ph.D. student in the School of Geosciences, also at the University of Edinburgh. I heard you're recovering from losing your voice after leading too many lectures. That's correct, yeah. Well, we'll talk to Steve a little bit more, so you don't have to feel hurt by all of this. Steve, let's talk about these prints dating back to the Middle Jurassic period. Can you describe what was happening during this time in terms of dinosaurs?

And what was it like in Scotland at that time? Well, if I can, I'd love to throw the first question to Paige because Paige led the project. You know, Paige is a PhD student, and she's done tremendous work. So I think it's only fair. She gets to give you the big picture, if that's okay, Paige. I actually just got, the engineer was telling me what to do. So I need the question repeated. Let me give it to page.

That's my job. Page. Can you describe what was happening during this time in the terms of the dinosaurs that you have found? What was it like in Scotland at that time? Sure. So the Middle Jurassic in Scotland, basically the only similarity is that we're kind of looking at an island just like today. But otherwise, it's much warmer. We're closer to the equator.

And we've kind of got a thriving ecosystem of rivers flowing into showers. hollow lagoons and a wide variety of dinosaurs living in these coastal systems near the rivers and in the mud flats adjacent to the lagoons and in the lagoons themselves. And the new track sites we're describing are kind of from these mud flats adjacent to the lagoons. And, yeah, wild, vibrant, lots of cool things happening. Steve, let me, you have to answer this question, Steve. Why is it so exciting to find evidence from the middle Jurassic period?

Well, I think for people like Paige and me who go out and look for fossils, I mean, anytime we find new dinosaurs, it's always exciting no matter what and no matter where you are. But when it comes to the Middle Jurassic in particular, this is one of the big black holes really in our understanding of dinosaur evolution. It's a dark spot because we don't have many fossils from anywhere in the world. And that's really just down to the dumb luck of geology of what kind of rocks and fossils get preserved in what places and what time. And the Middle Jurassic was really bad. And that's really unfortunate, though, because we can tell from the meager clues that we have that this was a really fascinating time in dinosaur evolution. This is when the supercontinent of Pangaea was splitting apart. This is when dinosaurs were along for the ride.

They were spreading around the world. They were diversifying. They were getting bigger. Birds were evolving around that time, too. Some of the giant long-neck dinosaurs were evolving. And we just don't know much about it. So Sky is one of the few windows that we have into that time. And that means any fossil, even, you know, one bone, one tooth is very important.

But these new track sites that Page and our team described, we have about 50 new tracks. And so these are a lot of new clues. and they tell us that there were some new dinosaurs there that we never knew about before. Paige, tell us about these new dinosaurs. Yeah, well, the coolest dinosaurs that we've got from these track sites are probable remains of stegosaurs, evidence that they were there. So stegosaurs are plate-backed dinosaurs

that are kind of evocative in many children's play sets. And on sky, we've got some of the earliest sort of evidence of stegasors in the form of a type of track called Delta Potus. and these Delta Potus tracks are cool. They're quite small. So we've got a small stegosaur wandering around, and those are unknown from Sky before. They're novel for the island.

And do you have bigger ones there, too? You have a lot of tracks. We do have a lot of tracks. So the other type of tracks from these track sites, they're all tridactal tracks, which means they have three toes, and that is a little bit of a challenge for dinosaur workers, because tridactal footprints could be formed by a variety of different types of dinosaurs.

And so there's some from these track sites that are pretty clearly made by our meat-eating theropods. So cousins of things like T-Rex. Then there's some that are a bit more mysterious, and they could be made by some of our bipedal plant eaters, dinosaurs called ornithopods. And these would be quite primitive, but a little bit of an if there, because tridactal tracks are hard to match to a track maker.

Why would we see so many, so many different tracks. It's like the, it's like, you know, the time square of dinosaur tracks, Steve. It's true. Paige, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Paige. Oh, sorry. Sorry.

So, some of it is just ideal preservation. So these track sites are mudflats, and we happen to get a really good snapshot, so the right time for dinosaurs to be walking on it to have their footprints preserved. What's cool about it is since we've got such a wide variety of Dirac's in such a limited geographic area. That means that the diversity of dinosaurs and the number of dinosaurs in the sky is probably quite high, which is a cool proxy

for things. And Steve's probably got more to say, I'm sorry, Steve. No, and not sorry, don't be sorry for anything. I mean, this is, sky is an incredible place when it comes to dinosaurs. Clearly there were lots of species living there at the same time. A few years

ago, another project, the first paper from Page's Masters was published two years ago, and I just want to say, aside just how cool this is to do this interview with page you know as page's supervisor to be doing this you know with my student i mean it's just such a touching thing to do and and to see her take off like this she's going to quote she's going to quote you years later she can and i think a lot of people listening here you know this is the first time you're probably here in page but you know she she's part of this generation of students that's doing amazing work this is why we're in the

golden age of dinosaurs by the way and i know I talk about this all the time. I think, goodness, two years ago or so, Ira, when we talked about my book, we were talking about the golden age. And, you know, it's because of students like Paige that are going out and discovering all these things. But I guess that's getting off on a tangent a bit. But, you know, a few years ago, Paige described tracks of giant long-neck dinosaurs, the sauropod dinosaurs from a different site in sky. And then we also have bones and teeth and so on. So there were lots of dinosaurs there.

And I think it has to do with the environment. This was a lush place. This was an island. There were mountains in the island. There were big rivers draining those mountains. Those rivers emptied into the ocean. They were fringed by beaches, by lagoons. And those were just havens for lots of different types of dinosaurs.

And they left their tracks and they left their bones. And so if we were there back then, I mean, it's the single most cliched thing I could possibly say. But, you know, this was a real Jurassic part. It really, really was. I'm glad you said it because it was on the tip of my tongue, and I didn't want to be the person to do the dad joke today. Well, now that I'm the science advisor for the franchise, I guess which actually applies to, you know, get the branding in everywhere.

I understand, Paige, that you said that you've lost sleep over the shape of these footprints. That exciting? Yeah, well, so some of these footprints, the ones that might have been made ornissopods. If they were, and that's a big if, right? There's a lot of things that influence the shape of a footprint from the consistency of the ground the dinosaur is walking on to what type of movement the dinosaur had. But if these footprints were made by ornithopods, then that's ornithopods with quite large feet quite early in time. We don't get ornithopod tracks of this size normally until the late Jurassic, which is, you know, a couple million years later.

And so, yeah, I've lost a bit of sleep trying to figure out what's going on with some of these footprints from sky. And I guess the best thing we can do is wait until we find some body fossils to try to confirm whether or not there are ornithopods on sky. It looks like to me just reading from it, and I'm certainly Steve will know I'm no expert. You have a stegosaurus, you have a three-toed footprint with claws like a carnivore. And then you have a big three-toed could be a meat eater or early duck build. Did they all live in the same period or in the same? layer there? I mean, were they all? Yeah. Yeah, so all these tracks are from the, for the most part, from the same betting plane, which means we're quite constrained in terms of time, particularly

like geologic time. So we can be pretty confident that we're snapshoting an ecosystem, that all of these things are living around the same time and doing the same things. Why was it so exciting and surprising to find a Stegosaurus? This is the first Stegosaurus, in Scotland, no? That's correct. Steve, do you want to jump in on this? Oh, now you throw it to Steve, I see. Sure.

I mean, yeah, I think it's cool. As Paige mentioned earlier, everybody knows Stegosaurus. You know, you see the clip art or the silhouette, you know, you see the plates on the back, the spikes on the tail. This is one of the most iconic dinosaurs of all. And until now, we did not know they lived in Scotland. So I think for those of us who live in Scotland now, that's, of course, cool thing. But more broadly, these tracks are some of the very oldest stegasors from the entire world. And there's tracks of similar age in England, and there's some bones as well. There's a really

interesting new discovery from Morocco last year of some bones of around the same age. But what this is telling us is that this famous group of dinosaurs was starting to prosper during the middle part of the Jurassic as Pangaea was breaking up. And this was a good 20 million years or so before Stegosaurus itself was living in North America. So what we're seeing here with these footprints, I mean, you know, they're, yes, they're footprints and handprints, they're marks, these animals left behind. These are traces of the very beginning of the blossoming of one of the most famous groups of dinosaurs of all. So you're saying that while we had this giant continent still intact, the Stegosaurus could have migrated through over the

what would later become with the water, but is now a land, over to North America? They must have migrated because they're found in so many places. And, you know, the supercontinent had started to break up about 30 million years earlier. I know 30 million years sounds like a lot, but, you know, for geologists like us, it's nothing. So, you know, there were still bridges between a lot of the land masses. The Atlantic Ocean was just opening up. You know, sky was part of this island that was in the middle of what was then a land. very narrow Atlantic Ocean.

So these dinosaurs would have been able to spread around really widely. And, you know, that's probably what allowed them, not only Stegasors, but also the long-necked dinosaurs and the meat-eating dinosaurs and so on. That's probably what allowed them to conquer the world. They could move around quite easily. I'm Ira Plato. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios, talking with Paige DePolo and Steve Broussadie about some really fun, exciting discoveries in.

in Scotland of dinosaurs. Paige, I know you study a group of animals called the Pantadont. I'm not sure I've ever heard of that group before. They're mammals that didn't make it past the Paleocene Epoch? Why? Tell us about them. So, yeah, one of the cool things about studying Pantanonts, I guess, is nobody's heard of them, so no one has an opinion.

And they're a group of enigmatic Paleocene mammals, So mammals that lived after the dinosaurs went extinct, and they did make it into the Eocene, which is the time period immediately after the Paleocene. But at that point, they're quite big in kind of the cows of the Eocene, and they didn't make it out of the Eocene. And so they're interesting because they're the first animals to kind of grow to the truly large herbivore niche after the dinosaurs went extinct. And, yeah, they're interesting. They're what I lose sleepover now.

How would we recognize their descendants today, or as you say, they died out? They never made past. They died out, so they don't have any extant living relatives. But, I mean, kind of the most common pancadont probably in paleontologists' minds is carifidon. And if you kind of take a cow and put a hippo in a little bit and then make it real ugly, you kind of have carifidon. And so, yeah, like just big, like ton-sized animals wandering around eating vegetation, being the cows of the Eocene is the best way to think about them. Any idea why they didn't make it?

That's a really good question. One of the many that, so I'm working on a Ph.D. right now kind of trying to solve Pantadons. Many of the people who have worked on Pantadons before have worked on Pantadons during their PhDs and then run away screaming from them. never to work on them again. So, yeah, that's one of the questions, sort of when did Pantanons originate? Where did they originate? What are their family relationships?

And what might be some of the drivers in them getting so big and then going extinct are some of the big questions I'm trying to answer with my PhD? So why are you not running and screaming away from this topic? Because Steve's a really good supervisor and I like working with him. Thank you. Were you one of these, Paige, were you one of these Jurassic Park effect students, how the movie got you interested, possibly, in dinosaurs? You know, actually, no.

So I didn't have a lot of exposure to television growing up, but my parents made the mistake of buying me an encyclopedia of dinosaurs when I was about four. And that was the beginning of the end. And, yeah, so I just really liked reading about them and really liked looking at pictures of them. But I didn't see Jurassic Park until I was. in high school, actually. My biology class put it on, and I was like, ooh, dinosaurs can move.

Steve, what's your reaction to that? You must have known this. Well, I mean, first of all, Paige, I think you're underselling Pantadons, you know, this cow hippo-ugliness thing. Come on, come on, come on. No, I mean, we're doing a big project in my lab in Edinburgh now that Pages are part of and several other great students from all over the world are a part of. And we have colleagues in the U.S., including some who listen religiously.

So John Weibel, Tom Williams, and Sarah Shelley, if you're listening, hello. We're all trying to figure out how mammals evolved after the dinosaur extinction. And these are particularly the placental mammals like us. So we want to know how our own ancestry goes back to this time. It's a really exciting area of research now. and for people like Page and me that, you know, they've started off studying dinosaurs. We're now kind of making that natural progression to mammals.

All right. And when you find the answer, you'll come back and tell us, right? We will come back any time, Ira, because you guys, Science Friday's been great, and thank you for all the kind words you've said about my book over the last couple of years. I know you've mentioned it several times. Well, you deserve it.

I've got to say in branding, you know. You're a great popularizer, and I think you've sent Paige along that road, too. So congratulations to both of you, Stipersati, paleontologist, University of of Edinburgh, and Paige to Polo. I hope I got your name right, a PhD student, School of Geosciences, also

University of Edinburgh. Good luck on your PhD work, and come back and talk about those pentadons some more later. Have a great weekend. Thanks. You're welcome. If you missed any part of Science Friday, I'd like to hear it again. We have all kinds of ways for you to listen.

We have a smart speaker to play Science Friday, and on the Science Friday Vox Pop app, you know, you can go on there and we've got questions up on our website for you to answer. And so you can participate in a whole bunch of ways because every day now is Science Friday. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.

I'm Ira Plato in New York.