The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 301: It Ain’t Just Chickens That Are Dinosaurs

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Jack Horner, Ryan Callaghan, Spencer Neuharth, Seth Morris, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.Topics discussed: Is Jack Horner sick of hearing about Jurassic Park?; subscribe to MeatEater's Youtube channel and watch all of our video content, like Sourced, B-Side of Fishing, and One Week in November; Steve one-upping Spencer with his own fabulous rock story; Gordon Lightfoot's muse; the Squirrel Doc's signed book, dinner at Kevin Gillespie's Gunshow restaurant, and other things you ought to bid on in MeatEater's Auction House of Oddities; Corinne's first mule deer buck; Chester's hoo-yip song calling in bears; Jack's dyslexia and finding the baby dinosaurs of the world; all birds are equally dinosaurs; hypothesizing T-Rex as an opportunist; eating your prey alive; endothermic homeotherms and ectothermic heterotherms; 20-inch high velociraptors taking down a T-Rex; how did birds survive that very bad day?; the accoutrements, armor, and sex lives of dinosaurs; and more.Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt.

First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Alright everybody, joined today by a super special guest. Been talking about this one for a long time. Jack Horner. John R. Jack Horner. How sick are you hearing about the How sick are you hearing

about Jurassic Park? A little bit, not at all? Well, I think I've had enough of it, if that's what you mean. That's what I mean, like, because here I am sitting here, like, as a host, right? I'm in a real bind. Because I'm like, everyone on the planet, everyone on the planet knows about that. And you've got to be pretty. When did that movie come out? 1993.

You have to be, either you love it or you hate it. The people are like, you know, Jack Horner, Jurassic Park. You burned out on it. I don't know. You know, I've seen it, but I don't know. I've seen it. I don't know. It was fun to make. It was fun to work with Steven Spielberg. It was fun to work with everybody.

But I like my science better. You're saying it's not representative? Teach their own. So you weren't tempted after doing that. You weren't tempted to be like, you know what, piss on this science. I'm going to go into the movie consultant business. No, I wouldn't have traded my job for any of theirs for anything in this world.

Hmm. All right, so you know what I'm going to do? This is just by way of introduction. I'm not going to mention that shit at all. Okay. Anymore. Excellent. I just had to get it out of the way listen you know how uh who's the guy that wrote all the songs that uh eric clapton made famous jj kale

right jj kale would write a song he'd do it no one care and then captain clapping to do it and it'd be a big hit so after a while you'd you'd start to think that J.J. Cale either hates Eric Clapton or likes Eric Clapton. And someone put it to him, and he's basically like, that shit made me a lot of money. Oh, yeah. Right? All the Clapton songs.

Not that one about his kid in the window and all that, but most of the Clapton songs were J.J. Cale tunes. Moving on. Jack jack we're going to talk about of some stuff that has nothing to do with your groove but okay but please because there might be some things you might want to weigh in because we're talking about some disease things i don't know if you have a gen if you're like interested in mammology at all i I like all ologies. Oh, that's good. Except astro. Ology. Astrology. Oh, like the kind where you

use it to, the planets to pick your fate? I was just about to ask what your sign was, but I'll hold back. That is some, dude, have we covered off on astrology before? I'm not buying it. I'm gonna go, I know it's a rare opinion, but I'm not buying it. It has gonna go like i know it's a it's a rare opinion but i'm not buying it it has to do with the moon steve yeah it does that's right do you like the moon

but here's the thing man if i was gonna make if i was gonna break the people of the planet into 12 groups and these groups would help them figure out how their day was gonna go i would have groups like this you'd be like there'd be a group called your father was an alcoholic and beat you. Okay. And then your, your thing for the day would be like today, you'll probably have some trust issues. Right. And I would like have it go like that.

Like you're extraordinarily wealthy. And then it might be like today, you'll probably have some existential crisis, but you probably won't be too worried about finances. And it'd be like, and it would just be like so much more helpful. Yes, I would. Than some crazy shit about, you know what I mean? You should write a self-help book because that seems so accurate. I'm going to break the world's population into 12 groups.

Every day those people will wake up, look, and they'll be like, oh, that's how today will go. Right? Yeah. It'd be like, you suffer from debilitating depression would be one of the signs and then it'd be like today's gonna be rough today's gonna be rough uh but it will end someday it'll all be over uh oh we're gonna promo we're going to promo our tremendous proliferation of YouTube content. Where should we start?

Sourced with Danielle Pruitt is just wrapping up. Dude, I just found out a thing about Danielle today that I want to talk about so bad, but I didn't check with her if it has to do with the very pugnacious, very sensitive German hunting dog community. Oh, is this something we've already tackled? No. It's new news about just how fussy,

how fussy and feisty. Yeah. Like if her dog sneezed and lost its facial hair, it would be called a totally different dog and highly regarded by another set of very pugnacious German hunting dog aficionados. Yeah. Yeah. Like what happened to Snort? How Snort lost hair on its ear? They would come and they'd be like, they, they'd want to come execute snort.

Right. They're like, can you put her in a bag and put her in a river? She no longer represents, you know, you think those people would have got over that kind of thinking in the thirties. That's a hell of a retrieve, but look at that tooth. But I won't talk about it until Danielle says we can talk about it, but holy cow, it trumps all other crazy, fussy, feisty German hunting dog stuff we've covered.

That's a tall order. Well, it's a rich story, but she might be a little pissed if we talk about it. Yeah, so Sourced with Danielle Pruitt is just wrapping up. Cal explained, you were on an episode of Sourced. Talk about that, explain. You were on an episode of Source. Talk about that, please. So, you know, Danielle is very food first oriented, very great at asking questions and finding out the why on what makes food good and interesting. And I actually watched the last couple episodes last night and, um, yeah, yeah.

Super fun and, and pick up. It's entertaining, but it's also educational if you, if you like to play around with, with cooking wild game. So like, uh, one of my favorite episodes is the episode with, uh, leeway and it's on dry age fish dry age fish and um there's it was hilarious because i was pulling out some reef fish from hawaii that had been marinating in their own juices and that was very high on the list of things not to do in the episode. He wasn't real crazy about that. No. No. No.

Dry fish, um, as fast as possible. He doesn't like it when you catch fish, put it in a Ziploc bag and then it kind of thaws a couple of times. Right. Yeah. And then later you have your kids, you eat it with your kids with ketchup. That would, that would, that would be listed

as not the way. Um, but yeah, great, great series, entertaining, really pretty, like very pretty food. And then, you know, plenty of very pretty getting outside and getting you in the mindset of how you get that food. Yep. We also got B-Side Fishing with our very own

Joe Cermelli. So Joe hosts the Bent Podcast and season two, season two of B-side fishing is out. Um, episode one was on shad. Episode two is on snakehead, uh, snakehead fish, which Joe's like a big snakehead apologist. Um, dude's funnier than hell. Love that guy. Check that one out. And then right now, which is, which is, uh, I'm super high on is the one week in November

series. You boys, listen, you boys could have messed that whole thing up, but you didn't. How could have we messed it up? By all of you going out and not getting anything. You guys toured a new one. Yeah. You guys like almost mess it up. Cause you got shit too quick.

Too many deer. Too, they get too many deer. Right. I mean, not too many deer because it's just like a deer per person, but still. It is just white tails, though. Yeah, yeah. Just white tails. I did encounter some mule deer on my hunt,

so you got that. Give everybody the premise of one week in November. We have four hunters that kill five bucks across seven different states for one week in November. And Meat Eater hasn't done anything like this before where they wrap up filming something and 10 days later it's on YouTube and available. So this was really like targeting the seasonality of November and being excited about the rut. By the time this episode comes out, episode one and two of

One Weekend in November will be available. On the first episode, Tony gets us started by killing a mega eight-point buck in Minnesota. Really exciting encounter. Tony Peterson. That's correct. The other hunters on the show were me, Mark Kenyon, and Clay Newcomb. You know what we should have done is hired that dude that reads like at a time. Right.

And it would have been one week. In a world. Yeah. One week. Four states. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't think he did a good job laying out just the whole premise, though.

Okay. Like a C grade. Okay. I'll take another stab at it here. Okay. Everyone likes to hunt whitetails. They live for the first week of November, right? America's most popular big game animal.

America's most popular big game animal. If you're going to do it one week out of the year, you do it first week of November. For most of the country. You know, I know there's like some, yeah, there's some fluctuations and all that, and there's some variations, and the weather could impact it, blah, blah, blah. But generally, if you had to like throw a, pick a calendar date range, that's the date range. Correct.

Is there data out there that shows like the one week out of the year where there's the most hunters in the woods? Yeah. So roadkill fertility studies have been done on does that were like smashed on the side of the road. And then they can date back to like when the fetus was conceived or whatever. And I think in the Midwest, they on average saw

like November 13th as being the average. So we're hunting a little bit ahead of what would be like peak breeding. Oh, that's when most does get bred. When do most mule deer does get bred? Do you know? I don't know. I don't know.

And I surveyed 10 big buck killers like five years ago. I asked them what their favorite day of the rut is. And I think seven out of 10 picked a day between November 7 and November 10. So those first two weeks in November are the best two weeks for most whitetail hunters. November 13 is the main day they get fertilized. That was in like Indiana, which was pretty well representative of, you know, anything from New England to the West.

You know, I think that uh with humans i think that the summer solstice score is real high if you remove like holiday stuff no i think it does i think the summer solstice is a high score it's when we're running if you were doing yeah if you were doing one about people you'd call it one day in june one day in late june that's good um so we have we have me hunting in Montana, Wyoming. But it all plays out real time. That's right. There's like the day, right?

So you got four dudes in four different places and like episode one is that day. That's right. Episode two is that day. That's right. And in like episode one, day one. Why am I doing better at explaining? Watch later. I'll be like talking about dinosaurs and Jack.

I'll be like, no shit. On day one, you're going to see me in Montana. You're going to see Clay Newcomb in Arkansas. You're going to see Tony Peterson in Minnesota and Mark Kenyon in Iowa. There you go. It's getting better now. That's right. You guys got deer crawling all over the place.

We do. I really liked it. Me and Chester watched it together. Oh, great. New episodes every Tuesday through the end of the place. We do. I really liked it. Me and Chester watched it together. Oh, great. New episodes every Tuesday through the end of the year. And in those seven episodes, I'll tell you this, we kill five bucks.

So there's action to be had. I would also be a bad member of the production team if I didn't mention how awesome it is that this show is airing as quickly as it is. Oh, yeah.

Quick turnaround. But it doesn't lose its production value. Not at all. No. I mean, Jack can tell you all about making movies. Oh, yeah. Like, quick turnaround. But it doesn't lose its production value. Not at all, no. I mean, Jack can tell you all about making movies. He loves it. But normally, you shoot something, you sit on it for a few months, years sometimes.

That's right. But, I mean, it's getting turned around in a week or two. Very talented crew. Every minute mattered to the point where, like, when we would get done filming November 1, memory cards were, like, getting overnighted back to the office so those folks could have them by the morning of November 2.

The long and short of it, really, all the stuff we're talking about, is subscribe to our YouTube channel. And all this stuff will just get hand-delivered to you. And, hold up, when I'm in Montana, Wyoming, I find some really special rocks and petrified wood and agates that are going to enter the Auction House of Oddities as a one week in November giveaway. One rock that I find in Wyoming is one of the coolest pieces of petrified wood I've ever found. It's like almost 100% opalized. It's about the size of a softball.

That's going to be in our auction house coming up later this year. Wait, can you describe the opalized? Because I know what an opal looks like. So does it look like iridescent? And maybe Jack Jack is not. And there's common opal and there's uncommon opal, right?

Well, I don't know. I don't know my opal. I don't know opal, but I know opalize, you know, wood and sometimes even, you know, dinosaur bones can be opalized. Oh, that'd make a hell of an earring. The rock that I have, the piece of petrified wood is common opal.

So it's not very iridescent, but it still has like this very nice waxy, ambery look to it. That sounds amazing. It's going to be in our auction house. There's opalized, there's opalized wood right here in the valley. Spencer's going to find it now. That's right. Oh, yeah.

After this podcast wraps, you're going to have to tell us what your opalized rock hunting spots are. I got it by the dump. I got a rock story that will titillate you, Spencer. I got it. Dump by the dump. I got a rock story. I got a rock story that'll titillate you, Spencer. I'm in. I happen to be in a place where there was a big outcropping of green rock. There's a spring flowing out. Seth can back me up on this. There's a spring flowing out.

Flowing with. It looked like St. Paddy's Day. The water flowing out from under that thing St. Paddy's Day. The water flowing out from under that thing was green. Seth? Yeah, I even asked Steve, I was like, because that was going to be our water

source for the night. Remember? Because we were playing on camp. Yeah, he was a little nervous about drinking that green water. And we were already calling that, remember that old ad? Seth doesn't remember. There used to be an ad for Irish spring soap. I remember that. Where this dude in this old ratty wool sweater, he's got a jackknife out, and he cuts into the...

He's standing out by a spring, apparently in Ireland, and he takes his jackknife and cuts a hunk of the shaving of the soap off to show that it's apparently the soap's uniform color. And he's like, who can do an Irish accent? I can't do any accents. Phil? Come on, Phil. Oh, it's a chunk of soap.

Okay. Do say, clean as a whistle. That's Irish spring. Clean as a whistle. That's Irish spring. That was great. whistle that's irish spring clean as a whistle that's irish spring we found a spring that was a dead ringer that like you could have filmed that soap commercial at the spring we were on in what part of the continent were you north america upper so upper north america so

the head one of the headwaters of this was this green rock with green water oozing out of the hillside. I'm not lying on top of it. Well, I don't want to get too many details. Anyways, I pick up a hunk of this green rock and I'm thinking, I don't know what it is,

but I take up a little chunk and then I got sick of carrying that chunk and busted that chunk and had a littler chunk to take home. is it like copper no okay listen okay so i give it to a buddy of mine who's kind of tied into the arts world sculpture and whatnot he gives it to a former student of his who's a jeweler and i said i wanted a piece for my wife and i wanted a piece for my daughter made out of that rock. He comes back all excited because it's a green jasper. Green jasper. And now I'm having necklaces made. One of them

is, Seth was going to too, but now Seth can't because he's like a homeowner and a cabin owner and can't be blowing all his money. But half elk ivory, half jasper. My daughter doesn't want a tooth in hers, she said. So she's just getting straight up jasper. What do you think about that rock story, Spencer?

I dig it. Good on you. All right, moving on to our recurring meat eater auction house of oddities, which we're on number? Group five. Group five. Yep. Group five, people.

So here's the lineup on group five. Remember we had Dr. John Kropowski, the squirrel researcher on the podcast? His book, which is like, if you're a squirrel enthusiast, Clay Newcomb, North American Tree Squirrels. We have that book signed by Dr. John Kapowski. If you're not obsessed with tree squirrels, this is going to get you that way. I don't know why anyone would hope that they became obsessed with tree squirrels. Do you know what I mean?

It's like when you read about people, real quick, think about this. If you read about things that are meant to increase one's sexual appetite, if you don't have one, do you wish you did? Here's a pill that makes if you don't have one, do you wish you did? It'd be like,

here's a pill that makes you want something you don't want now. I think there's kind of a social pressure to want to have sex, but I don't think there's a social pressure to want to love tree squirrels. You hear what I'm saying?

If I said, no, no, let's say I said, Phil, do you wish you had a red sports car? Not particularly, no. Oh, take this pill, and you'll want a red sports card. I gotcha. Would you take the pill? No. Because you're not going to get a red sports card.

So here's the deal. So I'm saying if someone's not obsessed with squirrel hunting, I don't know that they want to go get a book to make them such. Right. So this is more, what I'm speaking to here is people that are already yeah this is for people that are already obsessed with squirrel information but it could maybe convert you like i wasn't previously obsessed with squirrels and now i'm obsessed with squirrels but did you want to be obsessed with squirrels or was it an affliction it i fell into it i fell into it

yeah okay so back to what I was saying. If you don't love squirrels, but wish you did, here's a great book for you. More appropriately, if you love squirrels and want to know everything about them, this is the one you want. Also, another meat crafter. Now, we learned about the meat crafter, the Steve Murinella meat crafter, addition meat crafter from Benchmade. When we sold them. We had a bunch. They sold.

People loved them. Some people were like, that's a lot of money. And it was. But... Then some guy on eBay sells one for like $1,200. Feels so damn bad

he wants to donate money to conservation when we called him out on it. Anyways, now they're super valuable. Real value. People are selling the damn things for $1,200 on eBay and getting 36 bids. It's like an NFT you can hold in your hand.

Yeah, it's like an NFT that you can cut your finger off with. So, dude, when I was with Jordan Budd the other day, she saw mine. Now she really wants one. But we're putting them up on the auction house. Very valuable. They go for good money. Hybrid hunting fixed blade knife, like a

boning knife. Currently out of stock on Benchmade's website, but you can find one here at the auction house of oddities. Beautiful knife. We got a one week in November package. This is pretty sweet. It's a collection of gear and memorabilia that comes straight from the first season of our latest YouTube

series, One Week in November. Featuring our very own Mark Kenyon, our very own Spencer Newharth, our very own Tony Peterson, our very own Clay Newcomb. Spent seven days hunting in seven different states. Pieces include Mark's tethered phantom tree saddle and predator platform. Tony's prime bow, a bloodied arrow from clay's whitetail buck and a collection of goods from Spencer, including some wood and agates he found during the hunt, his blaze orange meat eater vest, his bench made hidden hidden Canyon hunter knife, his first light,

large dirt bag duffel and a bullet he extracted from his whitetail buck. I'm going to bid on that sucker, man. Then we got Blue Hour, which is a ram painting. Inspired by the beauty, intensity, and undeniable presence of bighorn sheep residing in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Artist, the Flip-Flop Flesher's fiancé. That's some serious F alliteration, even though fiancé. No, Flip-Flop Flesher's Fiance. That's some serious F alliteration, even though Fiance. No. Flip-Flop Flesher's Fiance.

Man, she should start out. She should change her from Instagram. She's like K. Ray Johns. She should be the F, F, F's F. Quadruple F. The F, F, F's F. Or just Quad F. She should rebrand. The FFF stuff. Or just Quad F.

She should rebrand. So, Seth Morse, our beloved Seth Morse, the flip-flop flasher, he's getting married to the wildlife artist Kelsey Johnson. Takes beautiful pictures, uses that to base paintings off of. Anyways, Blue Hour. Beautiful one from hers. 12 by 16. Oil on canvas board beautiful then check this one out polished petrified wood bookends spencer new hearth and his wife shelby hoober found some pieces of

petrified wood near the yellowstone river 50 50 million years ago, these things were formed. Spencer and Shelby picked them. They hand cut them. They hand polished them into perfection. There are only two other sets of bookends like these in existence. One belongs to Spencer. The other belongs to me. So we usually say these are one of a kind items.

It's one of three.encer has a set i complained about him having a set and i didn't have a set he gave me a set set number three is here pedestals of petrified wood cut flat on the bottom that you use as like bookends they are choice from our very own spencer the rock hound new Newhart. Check this one out. This is for you folks down in Atlanta, or thereabouts, or headed to Atlanta. A night for four at Kevin Gillespie's Gun Show restaurant in Atlanta. Enjoy a decadent dinner for four at Chef Kevin Gillespie's famed Atlanta restaurant, Gun Show. During this interactive dining experience, chefs prepare meals in an open air kitchen and present them directly to patrons and cocktails are crafted table side

on a rolling bar cart the value of the dinner roughly estimates to 150 bucks per person but it's like worth a ton more than. Got a deer leg bottle opener. You heard that right. Brody Henderson won this impressive bottle opener from Spencer Newhouse during a highly competitive, uncomfortably heated white elephant gift exchange at the 2019

Knee Heater Holiday Party. I was just holding this thing in my hand. This thing's hefty. You could beat an intruder. And then if you had a bottle of is, you could beat an intruder. Yeah. And then if you had a bottle of beer, you'd open it. Spencer bought it online from an unnamed taxidermist for the occasion of our holiday party. It has opened many a beer at many a meat-eater function.

The hoof, dew claws, and fur are in perfect condition, and the opener is made of sturdy metal for even the toughest bottle opening jobs it's got a warning though don't let your dog get a hold of it not that it has any smell to it you know dogs are finally we got the giveaway so the at the auction house the way the giveaways work is there's stuff you bid on like with money and you bid it and buy it there's stuff you just sign up and win for free. The Whitetail Gear giveaway. So we did a giveaway with the DOS Boat 2 boat. We did a giveaway with me and Seth's bottle of skunk essence. This is the giveaway now.

Get yourself completely rigged up while you're waiting. Check out one week in November to see this gear in action. Someone wrote in. We were covering off pretty heavy when Durkin was on about Gordon Lightfoot and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. You familiar with that song, Jack? I am.

I got to humming some lines from Sundown. A guy wrote in. I don't know if Gordon Lightfoot historians know this about Gordon Lightfoot. A guy wrote in about who Sundown is. Sundown, you better... Did you keep playing a little quick lick of that whenever, Phil?

Sure. Sundown, you better take care If I find you've been creeping round my back stairs So this guy writes this. Recently on the podcast, Gordon Lightfoot has been a subject on some of the podcasts. That sentence could have been cleaned up. And as someone who is from Aurelia Gordon's hometown,

I feel like I can shed some light on who Sundown likely is. Paul Donnelly, who has now passed away, was the local big drug dealer. One of the biggest in the province, or so he claimed. Paul was responsible for the import and export of illegal goods into the country direct from Central and South America. This is important to note because Paul and Gordon were friends of sorts. I always thought Gordon was a wholesome feller, but wait till what comes next.

This guy says it very matter-of-factly. This is widely known. While Gordon was cheating on his wife with Kathy Smith. Now listen to this sentence. You want to talk about a sentence that makes its own gravy. While Gordon was cheating on his wife with Kathy Smith, who infamously killed John Belushi, and is thought to be Gordon's muse for Sundown,

Paul Donnelly, the drug dealer, was also cheating on his wife with Kathy Smith. Hmm. Think about that. You see how John Belushi got worked into this whole thing? He died of an overdose, right? So is this kind of a saying that Kathy Smith was maybe supplying him with his eight balls or whatever? Am I wrong?

No, no, you're right. You're right. Can you just do that in the Irish voice, please? I'd rather not. He goes on to say, I know this because paul was my grandparents neighbor for 40 years anyways thought you might like to know who sundown probably was corinne you want to tell everybody about your first uh your first mealy buck oh yeah yes so i got my first buck earlier this week i i went on my first solo hunt i'd been to this plot of public before it's really not far from town i wouldn't be giving i wouldn't be going

into a whole hell of a lot of detail personally oh okay fine i't going to say much more than that, except to say that it wasn't like in this area where I would be too afraid of bears, because then I probably wouldn't have gone by myself. Are you a little bit bear annoyed? I am very bear annoyed. I didn't know that about you. Yeah, I'm pretty bear annoyed. I feel like I would probably have a heart attack and die before being charged by the bear. Yeah. Really? I'm really that freaked out.

Like you don't want to die that way? No. But you don't mind driving around? And I always feel like if I'm out hiking, even if I'm in an area where that's wooded but that probably doesn't have bears, I have that sense of like maybe it's looking at me through the trees like maybe it's there i always have this like kind of yeah a little anxiety annie annie's very paranoid you guys can start like a paranoia support group yeah and then we should we should go out together and expose ourselves and um yeah so this was a place where... So I was familiar with this plot, and I pulled up.

There weren't any other cars. I was very happy. I was like, great choice, Corinne. You're going on Monday. Don't do this weekend thing anymore. And so to describe the area, it's like it is a little more than left, right. And from front to back, it's and you kind of have these. I got a question.

Left, right from traditionally we go north, north. You would go north, south, east, west. Okay. Because left, right would depend a hell of a lot on what way you walked into it from. There's really only one way to walk in. This is also like overly descriptive of your spot. Yeah. Also.

I would go in and edit out a lot of what you said. Yes. I've already found it on OnX. So, Corinne, you showed up to your spot. There was nobody there. Yeah. And then you found a deer. It doesn't matter.

I'm trying to describe. I'm trying to describe. Proximity to town, dimensions, what it's commonly used for. Okay, how many plots of public land are... All of them. The... Very near town. All of them, too.

Okay, fine. You're killing yourself. You showed up, there's nobody there, and you found deer. Phil, can you just do, because I want to keep this lesson in there, can you just make it be like beep, beep. I was already thinking that. Okay, lesson learned.

Good. Gracious. You know what? When I left my house, I checked my odometer. Went 2.7 miles down. Not to give it away. Well, okay. Put the onyx pin in the show notes. Well, okay. Put the onyx pin in the show notes.

Right. Where Corinne got her first book. Okay. So another way to do it would be like, there I was. There I was. So I was there. And I hiked up to one area. And, of course, when I got up to kind of this field area and a fence, all of the smart deer were on private land. So I decided to glass as far as I mile was one deer kind of close to the other side of

the fence which was private but I think it was basically one deer on this entire plot and I got very excited and it was kind of windy so it was hard for me to see if there were antlers or not. And there were. So I went down way before I probably needed to. I started, I got on my belly to start to crawl. And there was a whole lot of just crawling on my belly. And where I got to a spot where I felt like I was hidden enough lying on my belly and being able to see like part of its antlers and part of its ears is where I stopped. And I could tell that he could sense something like he kept kind of he seemed to be alert but couldn't see where I was. And at one point he moved such that I had maybe like a third broadside. And this is a lesson that I will take going forward.

The next time I go target shooting, I will not shoot bullseye targets. I called Cal and we talked about this, and I think it's so important for people to practice on deer targets to know where you need to aim based upon how you are positioned and how the animal is positioned. So everyone talks about broadside, but what if it's not broadside? And what if you can't get a broadside shot? What if it's nose to nose nose like where do you aim on the chest to get a heart or lung shot if it's kind of back to you backside is to you where do you so that that's really what i'll need you gotta you gotta crack open the complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game volume one big game i will do that i will do that got all that i got all yeah

that's that i think i will need at the shooting range. I will not just shoot bullseyes anymore. So I took a shot, and it ended up being a little bit low. So it was a gut shot, but I didn't know that because it went down immediately. And I was like, oh, my God. Really? Did I just do it? I was very excited, but I did not get up. And I just lay there and waited because I know that from working on this podcast, that if you approach a deer,

if you approach a buck or a bull and it's not dead, you may get... Gored. Gored. You might get totally gored by its antlers. So I just stayed lying down. And 30 seconds later, it stood up. And I was, it was, my heart sunk. I started to get very nervous. I didn't know where to take the next shot. It was nose to nose to me.

There was just all the, I didn't kill it. It's suffering. What am I supposed to do? And I ended up taking a not very good shot. Like another not very good shot. Another not very good shot. And I almost destroyed a little bit of back strap, but didn't. It was like a couple inches to the right of its spine.

And then I felt like an idiot and needed to take a third shot, or I just waited for a little bit and thought that I needed to take a thirdside to me on his opposite side. And I shot him again and he went down. And he eventually died, but he didn't die immediately. And while he was not dying immediately, I wondered if I needed to slit its throat. I've heard of people who, you know, to put the creature out of its misery sooner rather than later to do that. But I remembered, you know, because I was myself, I didn't feel like compromising my own safety to end its life sooner. I knew that it was going to die, but I made the choice. I was sitting there like, buddy, I'm really sorry, and I was upset about it, but I still stayed, you know, far away. Yeah, he's got two real sharp things on his head. Yeah, exactly. And he died a few minutes later, and that was it.

And then I gutted him and called my boyfriend, and we carried it out on our shoulders, and then I cried at 2 a.m. in the shower after. Oh, really? There was no, I hadn't, yeah, it was really funny. Like, it kind of hit me after I called Hayden. Like, we, you know, there was a kind of, you know, quartering party. And yeah, way later, I think when the smell of its scent gland was washing out of my hair is when I was...

Man. Which when it kind of hit me a little bit. But I think there were so many things that I did wrong that, you know, good learning experience. I ate in the freezer, yeah but i'd be like there's a lot of things you did right yeah it's hard to figure i mean it's hard to go figure stuff out and most people will never go do not most people a lot of people won't go do something by themselves they don't understand well because they're so paralyzed by the idea they're going to

do it wrong yeah i mean i was um there were certain things that I was like really proud of myself in the moment. Just how I was trying to like read where I needed to be to take a shot or how close I needed to be or, you know, being in the moment when your adrenaline is like coursing through your veins or stress hormones and trying to just get it done in one shot i mean it was close enough i could have i mean i you know i could have um but it didn't it didn't happen that way so definitely lessons for the next time that i do it corinne texted me yesterday because she's trying to figure out how to make a freedom mount and head cheese. Oh yeah. Which I told her they're not exclusive. You can head cheese it. You said low and slow.

Remember how they had to rebrand French fries because they didn't want us to invade Iraq? I rebranded Euro mounts. I like it. I don't know what the hell it has to do with Europe. That's totally doable. That's cool. That's totally, totally doable.

That's totally doable, yeah. Oh yeah. Low and slow. I feel like people, it seems like people waste so like the average, I mean, you guys have known this, but it's like the average person seems to waste so much meat and I'm like trying to pick every little bit of flesh out. Like it's going to go to my dog or it's going to go to soup. Like I don't.

Well, you stare deep enough into those ear and nose canals. Oh yeah, I did. No, I did. I cleaned out. What's this large pinky size larva? I actually, um, actually cleaned some of the earwax out of its ears. And there were like, even though I'm Euromounting it, I was just like so interested. So I was looking, I was looking in in it and then um they were still like there were a

number of mites you know crawling out you know another interesting place to find painful looking stuff on deer is in the corner of their eyes oh like a little like a little like eye poo yeah no they get like a pocket of of weird material in there. It looks like sawdust. I don't really understand what they get. Episode six of One Week in November, Tony Peterson kills a whitetail whose eyes are all messed up. Oh.

Is he packed full of stuff from rubbing his antlers or something? I don't know. I've only seen pictures of it, but I'm sure it'll be addressed on the episode. Cool. That's a good cliffhanger right there. That's good, man. I don't know.

You seem like all tore up about it, but I mean, look at it like this. I need to do better on hunting storytelling. Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't want to do it, but I could tell that story real quick. Here's what I'll say. Can you set a template for me?

Yeah, be like, okay, you really want me to to yeah seriously um because like i totally bored myself to death i got this little spot i hunt it's really small it's close to town um usually you go out there and you just see deer like on other people's properties but i went out there and like holy shit there's a deer like on the part i can hunt which really surprised me so I crept up on it, and it got a couple bad hits, but it died. That was so good. I will point out that when Corinne told me the story, I think we were at the 37-minute mark. Oh.

By the time we wrapped up that portion of the phone call. Was the hunt 37 minutes? No, the hunt was from the time I saw it to the time I got it was a little over an hour. I used to want to start a business. That was a brief version for you.

I wanted to start a business where people that are trying to rationalize something that doesn't make any sense would call you up and you'd help them rationalize it. Or that they want to buy a certain car, but they're already in debt and everything. And I'd be like, hey, listen, man, let's try this one on. You do best when you feel good about yourself, right? You'd like to feel like a winner. And that helps you perform like a winner.

So maybe you need this car to become a winner right i'll help you like rationalize shit oh man a better business might be people call them they're like dude i got a hunting story but i don't know how to tell it and then they tell it and then you're like okay let's work at it here what you do start like this good little business yep I'll be like, hit one for rationalizations. Hit two for lengthy hunts. But I think you did great, Corinne. I think you just, you know, it's, it's, uh, however you want to say it, time in the woods, time in the saddle, you know, you just need more repetition. Yeah.

And, uh, even with a lot of repetition, you can end up in a situation where you're like, yeah, a couple of bad hits and, but I got it. I know what I was going to tell you to make you feel better. Not make you feel better, but here's the thing. Let's say you're bow hunting and you hit a deer. It runs off and you got, okay, now we're going to wait an hour. Okay. So later you go trail it.

And as you're trailing it, you're like, oh, here's where it stopped for a while. And there's like a pie plate size pool of blood dried on the leaves. And you go a little bit like, oh, where it stopped for a while and there's like a pipate size pool of blood dried on the leaves and you go a little bit like oh it stopped here for a while and you go a little bit now you're 200 yards away from where you hit it and here it is dead uh that might not have happened that might have happened over an hour but it's out of sight so that person then finds the deer and they're nothing but happy they didn't have to witness what went on during that hour right the reason they're waiting an hour they're waiting an hour because it might not be dead if it was a foregone conclusion that was laying there dead you wouldn't need to wait an hour. Right. You're like letting it die.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you were witness to something that is, like, if you're not comfortable with that, then don't shoot at things. Yeah. You're witnessing something that is, like, people just assume it's happening. Right. Out of their view in thick country. Well, here's a question. After you maybe take a bad shot and it goes down and it comes up slowly and you think, like, it's just trying to gather itself, it might die if you just still watch it.

No, once it comes up, that ain't going to happen. Okay. Okay. If it's down, it comes back up. Yeah, you take another shot. Okay. raffler of sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts

this season the hunt app is a fully functioning functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the great white north can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.

That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. So a guy was listening to the podcast at his campfire,

and he was listening to Chester singing his hoo-yip-a-hoo-yip-a song, and it called in a black bear and two cubs. That song. Should put that on a Fox Pro or something. I know. Put it on a predator caller chester going called one in um oh dirt mist body shot a bear took it to get checked and they just had

tranquilized and relocated the bear which when someone gets a bear in the back of your mind you're thinking like hey it must be a good hunter but then when he gets a bear that's been recently relocated it paints this entirely different picture. Where it's like, what the hell is that bear doing there? Bear's figuring things out. So he got a bear that had recently been, had lived where he's lived for 10 days.

And, you know, kudos to him. The Fish and Game says, we just tranquilize that bear, don't eat it. To which I said, that's just someone trying to cover their ass. Like, there's no way that's going to make you sick. Then we talked about people we've known that have been hit by tranquilizer darts. And they were fine.

Kind of. Someone wrote in to say, someone from Minnesota's DNR, who anesthetizes bears. He says there isn't a lot of literature on this subject, but the 30-day window is usually derived from the retention time of drugs in the muscles of domestic animals or captive wildlife. The use of domestic animals is a good proxy for wild animals because getting a good replicated sample of wild critters to test on would be difficult.

Minnesota DNR utilizes the 30-day guideline. As such, here's where it gets interesting. We don't drug animals within a month of the bear season opener for research. But if a bear is anesthetized in that window by USDA Wildlife Services. It is marked with ear tags that say, do not eat by. Which is hilarious. Hilarious. It's like finding a bear with an expiration date on it.

Yeah. Heffelfinger weighed in. They have a 30-day rule of not eating tranquilized bears in Arizona. If we do have to drug a bear within 30 days of a hunting season we put ear tags on them that that that say call azgfd which is the state's fish and game department call azgfd do not consume let's say it's harvested

three years later still wearing this ear tag you call in they'll say go ahead and disregard the drug is metabolized out of their system in 10 to 14 days but agencies like to play it safe that was my i was like man i'd eat that bear but i can completely and totally understand why a state employee would tell you do not eat that bear. Oh, yeah. They're never going to be like, yeah, go ahead. Thanks for calling in. Of course, they're going to be like, no, no.

Can you tell me more about that? That's my official answer. No. So, Jack, you were born in Montana. According to my parents, yes. How long did you live here before you went away? Because then you came back and tried college here. No, I was born and raised in Shelby.

Okay. I graduated from high school there, and then I went to the University of Montana in Missoula and flunked out almost immediately and then got drafted. Can you – flunked out on what grounds? Like, you know what I mean? Like, what was going on? Well, unbeknownst to me – Like, you were bad?

Yeah, like, I think at the end of my first two semesters, I had a 0.06 grade average. Like that bad? That bad. You know, I had all Fs and one A in swimming. Are you serious? I'm serious. Yes. And, uh, yeah, I got drafted and, and I went to Vietnam and came back and I went back to college and flunked out six more times.

But why would they keep giving you more chances to go back? Well. You have to pay to go to school. Yeah, that's right. It's like, man, we're making a lot of money off this guy. All because of the science fair. They decided, you know, they, you know, I, when I was in high school, I,

I won three of the four science fairs. And my science teacher was, you know, I couldn't understand why I was flunking science classes and winning science fairs. That is a good question. It was a good question. You know,

it turns out I'm just severely dyslexic. And reading is the hardest thing that I do still. Anyway, my father just thought I was just a dumb shit. And so. Was he mean about it? end of his class. And so, you know, he just figured I was lazy. So when you're, okay, if you're dyslexic, like what's happening when you try to read? You know, it's pretty hard to explain since I don't know how, what's happening when you're reading. You know, it's just, I think most of it is just a lack of really short-term memory. I can't memorize anything. Okay. Not even like four letters or four numbers. And so when you can't retain, you know, I can sort of read along. I read letters rather than words.

Okay. And so it just takes a long time, but then you can't retain it. So, you know. But if you're, if you're listening to a book on tape, is that better? It's better, but it's still, the short-term memory thing is still there. So, you know, my learning, most of the

learning that I've done is just sort of on the job training, right? Experience. So walk through how you went from not being able to keep in school to being the foremost or one of the foremost dinosaur researchers on the planet. Like something had to happen. Well, nothing really happened. I, I was pretty lucky. The professors at U of M realized that, you know, that I had a real strong interest in paleontology. Finally fossils out of rock, and I was pretty good at it.

And I went to college for seven years, and at the end of it, I had taken all the classes that I thought were necessary to be a paleontologist. I didn't think I'd ever really be one, but I took all the classes. And then I just started applying for jobs all over the world where they spoke English, you know, in museums. And there was a guy that had just come to the University of Montana from New Jersey, Rutgers University, and he saw some of the stuff I did. And so he put a word in for me at Princeton University. And I got a job as a technician at Princeton University. So I went there, which was culture shock, as you can imagine, Shelby to New Jersey. Well, then I started working there in 1975. And two years later, I found one of the first dinosaur

eggs in North America. And then, you know, we found baby dinosaurs the year later and I published my first paper in Nature magazine. And they, like Nature didn't, they didn't have a thing that you can't publish in here if you don't have a doctorate. You can't publish in here if you don't have a degree.

They just, you know, they're just looking for good data. But how did you know to make your, like, how did you know to make your findings conform to what it takes to be in a peer-reviewed journal? Well, my boss at Princeton University, the curator there, helped me out. Helped you write it up? He didn't help me write it. He gave me a lot of pointers.

And I had learned a lot of things when I was at the University of Montana. My professors there had taught me a lot about how to write a paper too. So, yeah. So what was that paper? It was the family structure of dinosaurs. And I realized early on that if I studied something that no one else had ever studied, I didn't have to read very much. Yeah. So no one had found baby dinosaurs before that,

and no one had even gone looking for them because they, at that time, didn't even think they could find them. And so dinosaur behavior was sort of something that I was interested in doing, and fortunately, through a whole bunch of weird circumstances found baby dinosaurs and, and it basically launched my career. And you didn't have to go read everybody else's stuff about baby dinosaurs?

I didn't have to read anything. How did you find the, the dinosaurs? Like what, were you looking for something specific, a different, like a type of soil or? No, um, it's sort of a history to it. There were two paleontology groups. There was a group from the Smithsonian and a group from the American Museum in New York that back in the early 1900s had found some dinosaurs in Montana and very close to Shelby,

where I grew up. In fact, some of them were found where I found my first dinosaur bones as a kid. And a lot of the dinosaurs that they found, they named new species, but they were little. And in 1975, the year that I got a job at Princeton, a paper came out showing that those were juvenile dinosaurs. It showed that juvenile dinosaurs look different than adult dinosaurs, even though they looked really different, even though the juveniles were pretty big. I mean, they weren't babies. They were pretty big. And it's kind of, you know, it's like a deer, right? I mean, a young buck looks different than an older buck, right? They get up, their antlers continue to get

bigger each year. And so with dinosaurs, the same sort of thing, the juveniles look different than the adults and, you know, they can be pretty big. So they're retaining their juvenile characteristics. And this person published this paper, but then nobody paid any attention. I mean, they did pay attention, but every time somebody would find a new dinosaur that looked different, they'd still name it something different, not realizing it could be just a juvenile of something else. And that was where I started realizing that, you know, that's what they're probably doing. And so I was out looking in that same area and didn't find what I was looking for.

But one day a friend of mine said there's a lady in Bynum, Montana that has some dinosaurs. She'd found a dinosaur and she wanted to identify it. And that was really close to where i'd found my first dinosaurs and so i said you know i'll go identify it for her and i did and as i was leaving her rock shop she said oh by the way do you have any idea what these little things are and in her hand were the first baby dinosaurs from north amer. And eggs are hatched? No, they were just tiny little fragments of skeleton.

Huh. And I said, you know, I was almost fell over. Did she just find them like on her, on her property or something? She found them on a ranch near Choteau. Oh, okay. And, and I said, yes, I, I know what those are. They're really important.

She gave them to me. I later talked to the landowners and got permission to go back out there and excavate. My friend Bob and I, who was a high school science teacher, he and I went out, excavated this thing, and it turned out to be a nest full of baby dinosaurs. Wow. And they were the first baby dinosaurs in the world. How many were in the nest? That's cool. 15.

Like they were hanging out in the nest already hatched. And they were, yeah, they were three feet long. And as an adult, the adults are 35 feet long. Wow. So a little nest of 15 three foot long dinosaurs hanging out in the nest together. Yep. What happened to them?

How'd they get killed? Well, they were probably abandoned by the parents because they couldn't walk on their own. So just like baby birds. So they weren't like engulfed in ash or something like that? No, they probably were just abandoned. Could you tell like what the nest was made out of? Like was that kind of stuff? Made out of sediment.

Oh, really? They made a pile of dirt or something and carved it out. Oh, okay. What was the circumference of the nest? About six feet. That's pretty tight. Yeah. That was really cool.

And was that the myosaur? Yep. Cool. Myosaur. I got to ask you one of my hot dinosaur questions okay this has a lot to do with your research all right i got a coat to have a lot to do with your research all right nowadays i'm gonna i'm gonna nowadays anytime someone that i hang out with is looking at a chicken or looking at a turkey, they go like, ah, you can't pull the wool over my eyes. I got his number. That's a dinosaur. Right?

Yeah. Why don't they say that when they're looking at chickadees? Well, they should. But why does everybody just do it for turkeys and chickens? I don't know. That's a, that's a good question, but it might have something to do with, you know, the fact that I keep saying chickens are dinosaurs. I know. I feel like you created the problem.

I probably did. You know? Well, I could see like, I'll start talking about chickadees as dinosaurs. I could see a turkey or a chicken, like with the longer neck and just the way they run around looks more like a dinosaur than a chickadee. I know, but it's starting to annoy me. I know what you mean. Because, I don't know, why isn't any bird a chickadee, an eagle? Yeah.

They all are. All birds have a common ancestor. Yeah, this is what I want to get into. And so, they're all equally a dinosaur. So, and this is like, this is pretty bad. This is pretty one-on-one stuff. You can do that as a launch pad to talk about this whole thing. They did like, the idea that dinosaurs went extinct is sort of like most of them.

Basically all of the dinosaurs that we think of as dinosaurs went extinct. The dinosaurs that gave rise to birds were little, they were like a little velociraptor thing. I mean, they're called salurosaurus. We don't even, you know, it's just one tiny branch of dinosauria. Is it a genus or a family or? It was a, it was a family, but it, but, but

the, you know, the branch that led to birds, you know, branched off during the Jurassic period. I mean, it was, so birds and dinosaur, birds and extinct, the ones that would go extinct, lived together. And so, and, and they were a relatively small bipedal meat eaters, um, that gave rise to birds.

And so, yeah. Uh, walk through the steps in through the steps in figuring that out. Like what were the clues along the way that let someone be like, huh, that must, was just because there was an absence of an other explanation or were there like little concrete things that would happen? Well, you know, to determine be, you know, to

determine relatedness, we look at similarities, right? You can't look. So for a long time, people, you know, looked at dinosaurs and they looked at birds and they said, you know, they, they, a lot of people thought they couldn't be related because there's so many differences between them, right? You know, I mean, they just don't look at all alike right a robin and a tyrannosaurus or a robin and a stegosaurus just have so many differences between them that nobody thought about the fact that you know that we determine relatedness by similarities and differences don't matter at all right if you're going to determine whether you're related to your brother or your sister, you can't do it by looking at the differences between you.

You only do it by looking at the similarities. And so when people started actually looking for similarities, they found that extinct dinosaurs have more similarities with birds than they have with any other group of animals. And so, you know. Hit me with a couple of the similarities. Feathers, hollow bones, hard-shelled eggs.

I mean, you just, they're just lots and lots of characters. Wasn't there a big like aha moment with the lungs of dinosaurs and how they're similar, like they're more similar to birds than they are to like crocodiles. Well, that's, but that's a hypothesis. We don't really have the lungs of dinosaurs. So, so we, we do know that, that a lot of dinosaurs like long neck dinosaurs, the sauropods and the mediating dinosaurs have a lot of hollow spaces in their bones. And that's similar to birds because birds, you know, birds actually breathe through their lungs into these air sacs that are in their skeleton.

Much more efficient than mammals. They do that. That happens in an immediate sense. Huh? Like, I mean, when he, when a bird takes a breath, that breath is immediately moving into hollows in their bones. It goes right through their lungs into, into

air sacs and then the air in the air sacs comes back out. Basically the way birds breathe, they have fresh air in their lungs, whether they're breathing in or breathing out. It is really efficient. We breathe in and, you know, into our lungs, and we've got dead air space from our lungs to our nose, right?

Yeah. And then we just breathe it back out again. But birds, like I say, whether they're breathing in or breathing out, there's this sort of double passageway that allows fresh air to always be in their lungs. Huh. Very efficient. That's right. And there's a hypothesis that the dinosaurs had that characteristic. At least the Sariskyan dinosaurs, which include all the meat eaters and all of the sauropods, the long neck dinosaurs.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. The others, um, Triceratops, the horn dinosaurs and the duckbill dinosaurs, they don't have, they don't seem to have those characteristics. But had something similar. Yeah. The similarity like thought process is, is really amazing to grasp because, uh, just like one example,

like sandhill cranes, right? The sandhill crane that we have flying around today that, uh, we're starting to be able to hunt again. And in a lot of these States, um,

in very, very, very, very very very similar to the degree of it is the same bird as the ones that's in the fossil record going back two and a half million years ago uh and then there's this community that says but that fossil is so similar to this fossil from 17 million years ago? Is it all just one bird? Well, it's not all just one bird. I mean, you know, evolution is an accumulation of characteristics over time. And so it depends on where you start comparing, all right? We'll take individual A, all right?

And its offspring is different than it is. And then its offspring is more different, right? And you just keep looking every generation after generation after generation, comparing back to the first one, right? The difference gets greater and greater and greater and greater. So at what point do you define a similarity, right? The difference gets greater and greater and greater and greater. So at what point do you define a similarity, right? And so that's why, you know, it's, it, it's, you can't pin down where a species, the greatest change that ever occurs in evolution is the difference between your parents and you, and you, you know, that's the biggest change that ever happens in evolution

there's never a point when something just pops up and one day is all of a sudden i can fly different right so so it is just an accumulation of characteristics over long periods of time so so you know two million years it it's possible that the Sand Hill Crane of today theoretically could mate with a Sand Hill Crane from 2.5 million years ago. That's theoretically possible. But the characteristics would be very different because the ecosystem has changed so much. This is the thing that I find confuses people all the time, regardless of what they're talking about.

Like I was having a conversation the other day with Clay Newcomb about he's doing a series on the Folsom site where Ice Age hunters killed an animal called bison antiquus. And Clay was saying it's an extinct bison species. They're like, it's not an extinct bison species. It's if you went back 12,000 years, that's what they looked like. It's ours. It's the one we have now.

It's just they look different. They were 25% bigger. Their horns sweeped in a different their horns sweeped in a different direction but it wasn't like they all ceased to exist and then all of a sudden the kind we know today sprang from like zeus's brow right now like it's it is just it's a continuum but how do you how do you decide where to like how do people decide where to go like and that ended and this began? We don't do that.

You guys quit doing that? Yeah. Got together over coffee one morning. Well, no. A guy in 1859 published a book called The Origin of Species. That's when they stopped doing that. Pretty good circulation on that one. Yeah, yeah.

So that was when they, I mean, it basically, before that, you know, before Darwin published that book, I mean, most people just, you know, it was sort of the Linnaean way of thinking that fish and amphibians and reptiles and birds and mammals were completely different from each other. And you could easily identify them. And they'd all been put on Earth on one day. Right? Yeah. And so what Darwin did, we showed that they actually were related. And they're related through their, you know, going back generations and generations. And not talking about 500 generations, but thousands of generations, right?

And so you can just, you can start linking them together. And we can do it, you know, now we can determine relatedness with DNA, right? From a working sense, the, your example of could this breed with that? Uh-huh. Is that a pretty good like working man's definition of? Unfortunately, that is the species definition. The biologic species definition is two animals that can mate and have viable offspring. There lies the hook, right? Because.

Right, you can't do it with fossils. Yeah, mule deer and white tails can breed, but they don't have a viable offspring. Right. And, you know, the same goes for lions and tigers and, and, and, you know. Horses and donkeys. Well, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Oh yeah, they don't have a live wall. Yeah, they have a mule. Yeah. Clay Newcomb. Clay Newcomb. But it depends on, it depends on, it depends on what the male is and what the female is because

if you do it opposite of making a mule, you get a hiney. Oh yeah. An animal called a hiney. Oh yeah. So. Oh. So.

Oh my God. And it's like a liger, a ligon or whatever they call them. You know, it depends on who the father is and who the mother. Which species or which organism the male or female is. Oh, that's the origin of the word hiney. Yeah. I feel like I've heard that when I was a kid, like my grandmother or something. Like, you know. They're an ass and a hiney. Yeah. I feel like I've heard that when I was a kid, like my grandmother or something,

like, you know. They're an ass and a hiney. Cover your hiney or something like that. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Let me hit with the population demographics question. What?

Okay. Let's say you were back in time. Okay. I'm always back in time. You're back in time and you're gonna go out and hunt for a trans horse rex okay well i can i can tell you right from the get-go it's not as difficult as corinne's story about hunting this deer okay Okay. I mean, the story was difficult. Maybe the hunt wasn't too difficult. You block off 10 days.

Uh-huh. Okay. You go to, I don't know, you go to the shore of the Great Inland Sea. Okay. You block off a 10-day hunt at the height of T-Rex-ness. Yep.

You find a good trail. No, you find a good overlook. You find a good trail. No, you find a good overlook. You find a good overlook where you're commanding. You can see your glass in 180 degrees, three miles out. Okay. Okay. And you just work this glass and knob. How many do you see?

And it turns out it's a mediocre trip over a 10 day period 10 days a hard glass and the edge of the great inland sea how many t-rexes do i pick off with my binoculars quite a few you think so yeah yeah I I'm I would hypothesize that the number

of T-Rexes on the coastal plain at the height of of the Cretaceous

the late latest Cretaceous would have been similar to hyenas on no yes on on the latest Cretaceous would have been similar to hyenas on.

No. Yes. On, on the, uh, Serengeti. Huh. Steve's like, I want to have been alive. Okay. So, I mean, that, that would, that would mean that the food for T-Rex would have to be.

Well, let, we're going to, we might have, I might have to give you a little bit of a lesson in T-Rex would have to be. Well, we're going to, we might have, I might have to give you a little bit of a lesson in T-Rex that is really controversial. That's one of the reasons. Is it? Who would win? I already know this.

I already know this controversy. Hate mail from sixth graders. That it was like a, it was like a bald eagle. It would, no, it was like a hyena. Yeah. So they, you know, hyenas hunt. I mean, they'll take down sick animal. They just take what's easy, right?

I mean, they're opportunists. And that's what we think. That's what I think T. rex was, was an opportunist. Because it has bone-crushing teeth. And it had to evolve. It had to select for having bone-crushing teeth, which means that its ancestors had meat-slicing teeth, right? And its ancestors could run faster than T. rex could. And its ancestors had longer grasping arms.

And so T. rex selected for having bone crushing teeth, having a, uh, if you compare your femur to your tibia, you'll notice, I mean, just think about us. We are half legs, right? And, and yet we can't outrun anything our size. We are adapted for long distance walking. We can probably out walk a deer. But, and a T-Rex is the same thing. I mean, it's got the same proportion. It's not a runner. And a bipedal animal that is a runner has a short femur and a long tibia.

Like a chicken or any of the birds you want to pick out. I mean, they run fast because of that proportion. And so T. rex has selected for, you know, being able to walk long distances. It has bone crushing teeth. It's losing its arms and it's got this enormous olfactory lobe. And if you take, if you CAT scan like a bloodhound, the nose of a bloodhound, it has relatively small olfactory lobes, but it has this huge bunch of olfactory septa in its big nose. And it can, you know, can come in tomorrow and determine whether all of us were in this room, right? I mean, that's how good to know it, but it can't smell things at long distances. Whereas a turkey vulture, if you CAT scan it, it has huge olfactory lobes and relatively small olfactory septa.

And it can smell carcass, you know, it can smell something 25 miles away. So does that mean it's good at smelling like, it's good at smelling a thing very far away rather than a lot of detail up close? Exactly. Yeah. And so those, that set of characters, the bone crushing teeth and the large olfactory lobes and the walking all suggest that it's, that it is an opportunistic animal. And what it smells is stank. Plus the, exactly. And plus the fact that in the fossil record, we go out to Eastern Montana and we find Tyrannosaurus rex pretty commonly. I mean, you know, the Museum of the Rockies has 12 T-Rexes. I mean, you know,

we hardly have any of the little, we've got one or two of the little, little meat eaters, you know, the, the kind that, that have recurve claws and, and, and blade teeth and, and short femurs and long tibias, I mean, that could run fast and good grasping arms. They are rare, just like cheetahs are rare in the ecosystem. I got you. So, so the number of specimens of, of T-Rex that we find is way above what it would be if it was an apex predator, suggesting it's an opportunist. Now, you know, like I said, little kids just hate that idea.

Cause they want to be hunting you down and chasing you down and killing you. All right. So, uh, my, my little buddy, Finn Harrington was want to be hunting you down and chasing you down and killing you. Alright, so my little buddy Finn Harrington was going to be in here today. Where's the kid you're supposed to have with you? Oh, he got sick. Fortunately, he doesn't know this is going on. So he doesn't know he missed out.

Right, but we're going to give him a little shout out. And if you can, hypothesize who would win in a fight. Between? T-Rex and Velociraptor. One T-Rex and a Velociraptor? Yes.

Well. I have like six more of these, so just shoot for me. Okay, well. First off, the Velociraptor probably would come as a couple of, a few individuals. And I think they scaled their prey. So they would just climb up and start eating. They would climb their prey? I think so.

I think they scaled their prey. They've got recurved claws like cats. So they could climb. And they're not climbing trees, I don't think. So I think they just scaled their prey. And didn't Jurassic Park get their size pretty wrong? Weren't they really small? Well, yeah.

But, you know, it was a movie. But what was the reality of the size? In the show, you see them like... A velociraptor is about this tall. They are now kids' favorite. They're like kids' favorite dinosaur. When I was a kid,

you liked T-Rex. Now kids like velociraptors. They're how tall? Like 20 inches? No, they're like this tall off the table. In the movie, they're like 7 feet tall. Yeah. It's harrowing to think they'd climb up the animal.

Oh. So when I, when I was working on Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg asked me to bring a cast of, of, of, of, of Deinonychus, which is closely related to Velociraptor, but bigger. And so I brought, you know, our, a cast of one of our specimens down to the set and, and people, you know, our, a cast of one of our specimens down to the set. And, and people, you know, if you remember the, the scene where they're sweeping sand off of a, off a skeleton, we had a cast of a, of a Deinonychus there.

And, and, and I signed off on it. I said, this is, you know, this is perfect. And, and that, and it's even bigger than a velociraptor, but Spielberg came along and he said, it's just not big enough. And so I got rid of that and carved one out of styrofoam. Throw out the styrofoam. There you go. Thank you. That's why it's big. So he, but, but, but, okay.

So what would be a better fight? Is your little buddy going to accept that he wouldn't show up alone? I really, really wish he was here. Cause he's great, great at asking questions. How many velociraptors you think? But you know, if T-Rex, if T-Rex happened to just bite him, you know, he's going to bite him

and he's going to just swallow him all at once. So, so. What would be a better dino matchup? T-Rex and who? Well, you know. Clash of the Titans, so. What would be a better dino matchup? T-Rex and who? Well, you know. Clash of the Titans, obviously. Have you ever seen like pictures of, of hyenas and lions fighting? No.

Yeah. That, I mean, so, you know, a lion is, a lion has some advantages over a hyena because it's just more, you know, it can just move around better, right? But a hyena has the strongest bite of almost any animal. I mean, it's got a, so if it, so if any piece of the lion gets into the hyena's mouth, it's gone. I mean, it just crushes it because it has bone crushing teeth. So, you know, it just, if you stay out of the T-Rex's mouth, you're fine. If you don't, whatever piece is in there is gone. So how many velociraptors to take down a T-Rex?

Like 10, 100, 1,000? Well, that's a good question. But, you know, I, it's hard to say, but, you know, even three or four would be fine. Really? Of 20-inch dinosaurs could take down a T-Rex. Yeah, because they're climbing on it. That's great. That is great.

Thank you, Spencer. You've seen, you know, most raptorial birds, right, come out of the sky, they hit their prey, right, on the ground, and then they just stand on it and they start eating it. And the animal is usually still alive. Oh, that's like the crows and the ravens. Yeah.

I mean, they, you know, they're dinosaurs' ancestors. They, they eat their prey alive. So it makes sense. You hear that, Corinne? He didn't do that, that poor deer. Yeah, you could have just climbed up on it and started eating. When I was a kid, Pluto was a planet, and now it's not.

And similarly, I felt like you always heard that dinosaurs were cold-blooded. And then like five years ago, I felt like there were headlines. They're like, no, now they were cold-blooded. And then like five years ago, I felt like there were headlines like, no, now they're warm-blooded. And then recently, it's like, no, they're neither. So in November of 2021, where do we stand? They're definitely warm-blooded. Definitely warm-blooded. But they're not warm-blooded like us. So they're warm-blooded like birds.

We are endothermic homeotherms. That means we generate heat internally and we keep a constant body temperature. And we, a lot of our food goes into actually keeping our constant body temperature. And the reason that we are homeothermic that keep this is because mammals evolved as nocturnal creatures. And so they had to have a system to keep, otherwise they'd have just froze to death, right? So they had to be able to eat, generate heat internally, and then keep it at a constant body temperature.

And so our, you know, we now could utilize the sun because we're diurnal, but we've still have this leftover physiology from being from our ancestors when we were nocturnal. Birds have always been diurnal and other reptiles. And so, so reptiles are,-blooded, right? They're ectothermic heterotherms or ectothermic poikyotherms. In other words, they don't generate heat internally. They get it from the sun and they can move around to alter that, to adjust it. Birds are endothermic heterotherms, which means that they generate heat internally, but they can fluctuate their temperature because they can also utilize the sun, right? And so there are birds that can, you know, turkey vultures can fluctuate their temperature by 40 degrees.

You know, if we are four degrees, we have to go to the hospital. And so imagine just being able to drop your temperature by 40 degrees. They do that to sit there. They do that to save energy? Well, I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you can go into a short-term torpor, you don't need to eat as much. And so that's why birds can sit on the wire and watch cows just eat all day long, right?

And they're like, wow, what's wrong with those cows? Yeah. Would they drop their temperature, their internal body temperature when the sun is out in order to use. Exactly. So, okay. It's just like opportunistic. Just like turning your thermometer down when it's hot outside. Right.

Interesting. So, translate this for me with, because you're using diurnal and nocturnal. So, go back to my hypothetical hunting trip. hunting trip where I'm just like glassing good dinosaur country. Okay. Am I seeing evidence at that time? Am I seeing evidence of like, oh, there's a species that's, that's seems to be nocturnal. That one seems to be diurnal.

There's a crepuscular one that hunts in low light. Or is it like dead at night and in the daytime everybody's out yeah mostly like that there there may have been some dinosaurs that could hunt you know near dusk or near dawn i mean there there probably were some but for the most part they were diurnal hmm and the mammals at the time were nocturnal so the you know the all little fuzzy mammals that lived at the same time as dinosaurs they were out at night hunting for insects or whatever and that's how they could keep safe well that's what i would certainly do to keep safe yeah Big old dinosaurs walking around.

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handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Not too long ago, and I haven't seen your name get rolled into this a little bit.

Not too long ago, a guy, maybe in the Dakotas, I can't remember his name. A guy came out and there was a lot of hoopla and he had said, hey, I found evidence

from not only the day that all the dinosaurs died from that big asteroid collision off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. I found it from the seconds that that happened. Well, that's controversial. Can you explain this to people though? Well, you know, Like what he found. So according to that hypothesis, which is pretty cool, and I have to say, for many years, I didn't think they had enough evidence for it. But I think they do now.

For the Great Die-Off. For the impact of a meteor or whatever it was that hit the Yucatan Peninsula. And I think they have very good evidence for it now, and I would agree with it. But if you can imagine, I mean, this gigantic thing hits the Yucatan and, you know, the devastation, first off, think of the tidal wave, right? I mean, it hits water, basically. What was its circumference? I'm sorry, it's whatever.

I think it varies anywhere from two miles to 10 miles. Okay, because I had heard eight miles, which is hard to imagine. Eight-mile-wide rock, whop, into the earth. Yeah. And, and, and so, you know, it creates, um, nine on the Richter scale earthquakes, basically worldwide. It, it, it, uh, it throws, you know, trees and dinosaurs and water and dirt and everything into literally into the stratosphere.

I mean, basically into orbit for a while. You've heard the theory about there being dinosaur bones on the moon? No, I haven't heard that one. It's about, it was in a book I read about how when the asteroid- And that's how it happened? It blasted them up out of the moon? When the asteroid hit, it put a vacuum in the atmosphere for like seconds where it just sent shrapnel into outer space.

And based on rocks that they had found on the moon, they could hypothesize that there would be dinosaur bones that also made it there. I believe anything anybody tells me. I was envisioning more of a hypothesis based around using like a port-a-potty. No. Or a little splashback, put it on the moon.

I picture a T-Rex just still floating around on there somewhere. Yeah. Well, there has been dinosaur bones in space. Myosora bones, baby, those baby dinosaur, some of those baby dinosaur bones that, that we found in Shoto were taken up on the, on one of the shuttles one time,

just so we could say that baby dino, that bones, that dinosaurs had been in space. Hold on. That warranted the expenditure of money? Somebody just took it. One of the astronauts just took it with him. Just, it was, what's his name? The astronaut that works at MSU.

I don't know. I can only name a handful of them. I'll tell you one thing about it in a similar vein. I did a story years ago on freeze-dried food, like explaining all about freeze-dried food, the history, how it's made, and all that, and I learned unsettling truth.

No astronaut has ever eaten space ice cream in space. It went up. They didn't touch it. Space ice cream is so good. They don't eat it in space. Why? I don't know why. It just wasn't appealing to them.

They think that they brought some up. It was never consumed. Space ice cream has yet to be eaten in space. A shrimp cocktail has. So what's the new evidence that supports the asteroid making everything die? Well. I want to hear more about how bad it was that day.

It was a bad day. I can tell you it was a bad day. Did it whop the earth off its axis? No, I don't think so. No? No. No, I don't think so. No? No, but the tidal wave would have washed over most of the United States, all the way up into Illinois. And at the time, there was a part of a seaway that kind of went up almost to Montana. That's my hunting spot. And that, that, that tidal wave is what this

guy is saying is, has, has washed a bunch of stuff into this area in North Dakota or South Dakota, wherever it is. And, and that it is a result of the tidal wave. Like it was the, the, the, the, the, the like depository end of the tidal wave created this great collection of junk. Right, exactly. Don't they also think volcanoes were setting off like crazy that day?

And that was on the opposite side of the world. So India, there's a big volcanism event that seems to coincide with with you know about the same time so like that thing cold cocked the earth so hard that it caused volcanoes on the other side of the earth yes yeah yeah damn that's a hit yeah so there was you know there was there would have been it's like me hitting john and pooping his pants there would have been wildfires all over. I mean, it just, it would have, it would have been pretty devastating. And then blocked out the sun, all the debris,

right? And it blocked out the sun, created like a nuclear winter, killed off the plants, killed off the plant eaters, and apparently the meat eaters as well. And, and what we don't understand is why the birds survived. Did you not buy it because it was too tidy?

It was too convenient? Well, it's the birds I'm still a little concerned about. How, you know, birds are pretty fragile in the ecosystem, and I just. Like, why them? Why, how did they manage to survive? I don't quite figure out where they could be to survive. Because, you know, they have to eat the same old things that everyone else has eaten. But the little mammals, maybe they had seed stashes.

But, you know, they're nocturnal. They're probably hibernating anyway. I don't know. It's just, you know, it's an interesting story. I actually really don't care what killed the dinosaurs. Well, let me invite you to care for a minute. Oh, okay. Give me another plausible.

Give me another plausible. Well, you know. Theory B. The only theory B is that, I mean, it's not very good. It's environmental, you know, it's basically, um, an environmental change where, where, um, where the seaways retract off of the continents that had been there most of the time, which changes the, the, uh, the climates and changes, you know, air passages and all sorts. I mean, it's just basically a pretty rapid change in the climate.

Mm-hmm. Which, in many cases, could do sort of a similar thing. But you would still expect some of the dinosaurs to have made it through that. And they didn't. So when you say that you don't, but I'm just curious, the meteor theory makes more sense. But when you say you don't care what happened to him, how can you afford not to care what happened to him? That's like the burning deal, right?

Well, not for me. It isn't. What is the burning deal for you? Well, I'm just, I'm curious to know how they were so successful for 155 million years. Oh, people are focusing on the wrong thing. I think so. Yeah.

And I think with like the asteroid thing, people who side of that were closer in time to T-Rex than T-Rex was to like Stegosaurus. Right. And so what people are missing with the asteroid thing is it's not like every dinosaur died that day or that week or that month. By the time T-Rex came around, Stegosaurus fossils had been in the ground for 80 million years. Yep. So dinosaurs. That's a good, that's a good, I like that one.

They had like an insane run. Humans will never approach what they accomplished. No, and we'll never approach what Neanderthal accomplished. No. That's right. And people think about the asteroid like it doesn't give them credit. Like they just died in one day and they just like blinked out. But they had been around forever.

That's interesting that we're as separated from. We're closer. We're closer to T-Rex as T-Rex was to the Stegosaurus. Yep. I got those two lumped together like they had lunch together. Yeah. And that's, I think like people would really appreciate, they would have like a sixth grade level of appreciation if they realize that,

that they had quite a run. Yeah. So, you know, their success is pretty interesting. You had said how you, you don't particularly care about how they died off.

Um, and I imagine that there's some differences in paleontology when it comes to like different cultures or different countries. And I remember recently that like, it was a big deal when Canada and I think China agreed to let each other look at what fossils they had or something like that. So how, how is that like different between like, I assume what Japan cares about and Canada cares about or what Australia cares about and France cares about? You mean paleontologically? With dinosaurs, yes.

Well, you know, it really, it's not by country really, it's by researcher. I mean, you know, I study dinosaur behavior and dinosaur growth. And my colleague in Canada studies, you know, he likes to find new species. And, you know, he likes to find new species and, you know, other people like other things. So, you know, we, I, there's not, not really any competition between us because there's lots of stuff. I can't imagine.

Anthropologists on the other hand, you know, where there's just a few human fossils. Oh, they tend to do, they tend to duke it out more. They are, they really duke it out because there's more researchers than there are fossils. They tend to duke it out more? They really duke it out because there's more researchers than there are fossils. It's good career advice. I imagine though you had to really burn some folks' conclusions

when you determined that a new species is in fact not a new species but a juvenile of a known species. Yeah, there's a few people that were irritated by that. I imagine. Especially the ones that named them. Yeah, talk through that story a little bit.

Well, just, you know, it goes back to the paper that was published in 1975. You know, this guy named Peter Dotson had published this. And then people after that sort of forgot about it and forgot that, you know, sort of put that in the back of their mind that, that dinosaurs change the way they look through, through their growth, just like mammals do. I mean, you know, baby dinosaurs were probably really cute, you know, and, and it's kind of that, you know, it's a releasing mechanism. Just like with us, we will care for our kids

as long as they're, you know, adorable looking, right? As soon as they reach 18, out the door they go, right? They have to go get a job. But dinosaurs sort of do the same thing. So they retain their juvenile characteristics and then go through this pretty rapid change and take on their adult characteristics. And he wrote about that. And so it was fodder for the dyslexic guy to bring that up again and start sinking all these species that people had named without thinking about whether they were juveniles or not. Yeah, it'd be like analogous to if you, in some future where there's no no humans and someone went and excavated a household and they're like there's three kinds of people yep there's three species you had these little teensy ones yep and a medium one and a big one yeah because their face looks different right very different those those people that named those dinosaurs are do they look at what you found and they're like, bullshit?

Or are they like, yeah, he's right? They're a little of both. Some buy into it, some don't. Right. Gotcha. How many dinosaurs, or at a certain time, how many dinosaurs were there as kind of the main groups? And then after more of your work in publishing, how many dinosaurs were there as kind of the main groups? And then after more of your work and publishing, how many went away? Well, that's, yeah, it's hard to say. The Hell Creek

Formation, which is basically where T. rex comes from and Triceratops in eastern Montana, there were 12 major dinosaurs. I mean, there were more than that, but 12 that we find quite a bit. And I think I took away four of them or five of them. So, I don't know. But, you know, we're still arguing about some of those. Jack the Ripper would be a good nickname for you. In a college class I took, it was an anthropology class, the first day the professor was like,

I'm going to tell you all the things that you think you know about what we do but aren't true. Like we're not all Indiana Jones, and we're not all looking at dinosaur stuff. And he had said something that stuck with me. He was like, you don't go out looking for noah's ark and then find noah's ark you go out looking for noah's ark and then you find the holy grail or like uh whoever discovers bigfoot someday if he's real it's not going to be a guy on animal planet looking for bigfoot it's going to be like some rancher in texas that found one

stuck in his fence because he's looking for he's looking for a lost cow yeah so what's what's an example like in your field of work where people are looking for A, but they found B and B was really cool? Yeah. We don't, we paleontologists don't really go out looking for anything.

We just hope that our mind is open enough and that we're observant enough to find anything cool or anything new. I mean, you just, you can't, there's, fossils are so rare. I mean, you know, interesting fossils that are going to give us information, new information, are so rare

that you just can't expect to go out and find whatever you want. I mean, I put together this thing called the Hell Creek Project back in 1999, I guess. And it was the largest paleontological expedition in history worldwide. I mean, we had 100 people. We had all these donors putting money into it. And the idea was, you know, we were trying to figure out how much information we could actually get from one of these ecosystems. And the Hell Creek Formation has produced so much stuff for so long. But, you know, people had 30 triceratops skulls

and they were trying to sort out, you know, dinosaur triceratops growth, for example. But in all of the triceratops skulls that had been found, none of them were juveniles, right? Museums had gone out and selectively collected the biggest ones because every museum wanted a big thing in their museum and so in the end they ended up with none none of the little ones and so our project really was to collect everything and we went out and collected just enormous collections of stuff i was hoping we would find a bunch of duck-billed dinosaurs

because that was what I was interested in studying. And we hardly found any, but we found a bunch of those damn T. rexes. And so now the Museum of the Rockies has the largest T. rex collection in the world. So I ended up studying T. rex, which was not my favorite, but it's what we found, you know, and that's basically how the science works.

You just, you know, I went out to find duck bells and found T-Rexes and Triceratops. We found, you know, a hundred specimens of T-Rex, of Triceratops. So we learned an awful lot about Triceratops. Is there just parts of Triceratops. So we learned an awful lot about Triceratops. Is there just parts of Triceratops that preserve well? Well, it, yeah. So, well, it looks like their skulls preserve pretty well because almost all the specimens we have are just skulls and very few skeletons. But we realized when we were actually excavating them that, you know, the skull is gigantic and it's easy to find. And the leg bones could be scattered around by water, right? And so we realized late in this project that if we made our excavation a lot bigger, we probably would

have found the skeletons of these things. But we, we pretty much after we dug up the skull, we were like, oh, let's go find another one. I can understand that. Yeah. How do you find them? You just find pieces sticking out of the

ground? Yep. So most of Eastern Montana is the right age rock. Yeah. So you just have to find a place where rivers have cut through. So wherever the Missouri river is cut through, there's breaks and those breaks are, you know,

form badlands. Yep. And so those are good places because the rock is exposed there. But if you're up on top of the hills, the right age rock is still there. It's just covered with soil and usually somebody's wheat field and they don't like you digging in those. Is there like one thing that you can, like, is there, is there like one certain thing where you're like, that is a hundred percent a dinosaur bone because of this thing? Like I, I spent a lot of time out in like the breaks, Hell Creek formation, and I'm like

looking at stuff all day long and I have no clue what it is. Like, is there one thing that's like. They, they look like bones. They do. Yeah. If you find one. Call him.

Like I, I've found stuff. I'll bet you have found, I'll bet you found a lot of them. Yeah. I found stuff that looks like, or I'm like, that looks like. A piece of bone. Just a big bone them. Yeah, I found stuff that looks like, I'm like, that looks like. A piece of bone. Just a big bone, but I don't know.

It looks like a rock too. Well, they're both actually. Can you explain brachialites? Eastern Montana. Baculites. Baculites. Right. They're.

Full of them. They're everywhere out there. Yeah, they are an animal related to squid and octopus. So it's a mollusk and, and what you're, what you're finding is the shell. So have you ever seen a nautilus? The shell.

Sure. Nautilus. That's, that's what they're closely related to. Like a cone, ice cream cone on the back and a squid coming out the front. Right, exactly. And so you're finding the shell. Got it. And, and they were prolific in the, in the intercontinental seaway that, that is now black shale in Montana.

Got it. Uh, my sister-in-law's father has one of those he picked up decades ago. It was sitting on a shelf. I was like, the hell's that? And he's like, I've never been able to find out. I took a photo of it, put it on

Instagram. He works horses and stuff. He doesn't pay much attention to a lot of phones and whatnot but i put it on instagram and like 30 seconds later i was like that's a what's the word bacula then i went to i typed into google baculite and hit like images and there's like loads of these things he has the next day he calls me he He's like, what was that? Was that Google?

Because he was with a body and wanted to show up. Well, a lot of people call me when I was working at the museum and say, I found a rattlesnake, a fossil rattlesnake. And that's usually what they were. Sure. Obaculites. Yeah. rattlesnake and that's usually what they were sure or baculites yeah uh my kids recently found the out it was kind of staggering actually they recently found a giant fossilized clam bed okay where i could show you well i mean in the in the in this area in this state of the state yeah well there are probably a lot of those, you know?

When were the, like. I've found those before. Yeah. I mean, full, yeah, like, like, like a layers thick, broad clam bed. All right. Well, if you tell me the area, I can tell you what formation they're in and, and how old they are. I'll show you exactly later.

But we are up to something. Just give me you exactly later. But we were up to something. We were up to something when we ran into it. Just give me a general idea. I found them. Give me the county. I found them along the Missouri River. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah, well. In the breaks. Right. So that is most likely that same, same shell, shell that the, that the baculites come out of. And were those clams walking around or like doing whatever they do? Were they like siphoning at the time of dinosaurs?

Oh yeah. Really? Yeah. And some of them are big. I mean, there are, there are, it's, there's a clam called Inoceramus that, you know, is like the size of that wall, a clam. Yeah.

Way back when Steve and I were taking a couple of LA comedians out on a mule deer hunt in the Missouri breaks and I stopped and bent over and picked up a fossilized clam and showed it to Brian Callen. Oh, I love this. I said, hey, check that out. And he said, yeah, so?

I said, well, it's a fossilized clam. It's a fossil. And he said, yeah, so? And I put it back down and kept walking. How, if you look at kids' books, kids' books about about dinosaurs of which we have more than a few um the dinosaur the more recent the book is the more colorful the dinosaurs are and the old books when i was a boy they were all green army green all your dinosaurs were army green now they're like holy shit they look like parrots.

Wow. Where's that coming from? Well, I hope a lot of it's coming from me. Okay, but like what? Because the fossils aren't red. No. So, like I'm saying, how do we deter? Yeah, like walk me through the idea that they were brilliantly colored.

All right. And not army green. Okay, well. Or battleship gray. Right. Which is what you have to admit. They used to be when we were kids. And they are in Jurassic Park.

Oh, they're battleship gray and army green? Well, they're not very colorful in Jurassic Park. Okay. And I pointed that out to Steven and he says, well, he said, Technicolor dinosaurs aren't scary enough. He thought they'd be more scary in Battleship Gray? Yeah. Dude, if something to me, if something the color of a parrot, 30 feet long or whatever ran out to me, that's plenty scary. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so the idea is that we know now that dinosaurs were feathered, at least the meat eating dinosaurs were feathered. We actually have the impression of the feathers. We find the impression of feathers on dinosaurs. Meat eating dinosaurs, we don't know about T-Rex yet, but some of the bigger dinosaurs, meat-eating dinosaurs. We don't know about T. rex yet, but some of the bigger dinosaurs, some of the bigger meat-eating dinosaurs

were completely feathered. Oh, wow. Like chickens. No. I thought of... And, you know, they gave rise to birds, and birds got their vivid coloration from their ancestors, and dinosaurs are their ancestors.

So that's the sort of the logic there. That birds are bright. Birds have iridescence. I'll have to show you my NFTs. Did you look up my NFTs? No, I didn't. I thought there was, I want to say France, which shouldn't be a catch-all, but maybe it is for fossils. But I want to say that they were able to like isolate a pigment in fossil.

Yeah. And they determined it to be blue or purple. We're starting to get the melanosomes out of dinosaur feathers. And we are determining some of the colors, and they are vivid. Because there are feathers. Like they had iridescence. Yeah, yeah.

Just like birds. There are feather fossils, correct, but it's an imprint or. Yeah, they're imprints of the feathers, right? Yeah. But you can, I mean, it's just like your image.

I mean, the feathers are feathers. I mean, you can, I mean, you know, it's just like, just like your image. I mean, they're, you know, the feathers are feathers. I mean, they're, you can tell, you can look at the veins, you can look at all sorts of things and you can find the melanosomes in them. Hold off. I want to look at the NFT, but I got, I got another, then we'll get into that NFT situation. I want to see what you think they look like.

But first I got, I got a time machine question. Okay. I bet you no one's ever hit you with a time machine question. You get one time machine token for you. I bet you no one's ever hit you with a time machine question. You get one time machine token. Okay. Okay. All right. And it's like for an hour long, you get an hour long, day long visit.

Where are you setting yours for? You get to spend one day. Like give me location and like time. And why that? Hmm. Well. and like time and why that? Well, 1982. You wanted to see me being born? That's it. I had a girlfriend then.

Okay. In your professional, in the head of your professional decision. Oh, okay. It's a great answer though, in a professional capacity. You know, I've thought about this a lot. First off, you know,

there's a huge problem with time machines. I won't go into that. You know, it's a terrible thing. You know, time machines pretty I won't go into that. You know, it's, it's a terrible thing. You, you know, time machines pretty much have to orbit the earth. Otherwise you're in trouble when you go back in time. But that aside, that aside, um, you know, I just have this terrible feeling that, you know, at basically any time you pick to go back, you know, something's going to eat you just as soon as you open the door, right? So, you know, of all the things I'd like to see,

I guess, Myasaura. I would like to see, you know, the first dinosaur I named. And I don't know what that one's, what's his group? Dinosaur. It's a duckbill dinosaur. You don't want to go back in time and see a duckbill dinosaur? Yep.

That's because, because then, you know, it, first off, it's a friendly dinosaur, right? I mean, it's not going to eat me. Okay. And so, you know, I might be able to do some, some pretty cool research with it and actually determine what its blood temperature is and, and, and, and look at its behavior and get something about its growth. Okay. You know, you go back with little meat eaters and they're just going to eat you. Yeah. You know, then you're not going to be able to tell your story.

So that, uh, would you go back to that show dough area? Yep. Uh, would you bring knee to that Choteau area? Yep. Uh, would you bring knee high boots or not necessary? Nope. Things can be high and dry? Yep. What would the temperature be?

Well, it was probably, you know, depends on whether it's winter or summer, right? Oh, okay. So there was like defined seasons back then? Oh, yeah. Especially at that latitude. I mean, it's a relatively high latitude even then. Give me the hottest day of the year.

Probably not as hot as it is now. Really? The temperatures would have been, the lower temperatures would have been higher and the higher temperatures would have been lower. So it had been, but probably, you know, still in the seventies, eighties. Oh, really?

But not in the hundreds. I just envision everything being hot and sticky. No, no. Well, it, it would be sticky for sure. Okay. Because of the inland seaway. So all of that, you know, all the moisture that builds up in the Gulf of Mexico, it was pumped

really north all the way into the Arctic. So we get alligators and crocodiles living in Alberta. Hmm. Were dinosaurs having offspring in the spring of the year? We don't know. You don't know.

That's like a clue. Most likely. I mean, that's what most animals do. Yeah. So there would have been like a hatching season or a breeding season. Yep. You know how, you might know the term for this. This is my last question before we talk about your NFTs.

My last question for the NFTs. What is the term for when we have the two different, there's two different strategies, parenting strategies for animals. One, they're letters and I can't remember the letters, but one would be like best exemplified by an elephant who has their offspring are greatly spaced apart. They put enormous resources into their offspring are greatly spaced apart. They put enormous resources into their offspring. Is it P and Y or something like that? N and K. N and K. And then the other extreme

would be, might be exemplified by, let's say a cottontail rabbit, where high fecundity, big litters, often very little investment into the young. And these are like two strategies. Do you feel that with dinosaurs, like is it likely that there were dinosaurs

that would spend years with their mother? And there was like a family group that hung out? Probably, yeah. They probably did. We find them preserved in groups, and they probably are family groups. So they raise their babies in nests, right? So they're putting a lot of effort into that. And when we find like a herd that has died catastrophically, we find, you know, young ones, not babies, but, you know, young like yearlings together with older adults. Which suggests like family groups.

Where they're staying pretty much together, yeah. Take a wild ass guess at what like the biggest herd of dinosaurs might have been. Well, here in Montana, we have the largest that's been recorded so far. It is a catastrophic event that is related to a volcano. And, and we have at least 125,000 carcasses. No. Yeah. That is wild. I wouldn't think there's that many carcasses in the whole world ever been found to dinosaurs.

We haven't, we haven't found them all. We've, we've, we've sampled over this huge area and we get 30 bones per square meter. And that's from one volcanic event. From one event. Wow. Yeah. Really? 25,000.

So it could have been like, you were like looking at a herd of care where you could have seen like dinosaurs and numbers like that. Yep. Yep. Man, blows the mind, man. How, uh, how have things changed for paleontologists when – wasn't it within like the last decade where Montana declared that dinosaur fossils are minerals, which changed some things? No, they didn't do that.

They didn't do that? No. So how – They were talking about doing that. And how would have that changed things if that happened? That's hard to say. It would have had implications for picking them up, right? Yeah.

And who owns the rights to them? Yeah. That was what the argument was. Uh-huh. Does the person with mineral rights own them or does the person with surface rights own them? And they maintained it with surface rights. Yeah. rights on them and and it they maintained it with surface rights yeah I know it's hard to imagine what it would have been like if they didn't change that rule I guess all the oil companies would all own all right oh was that kind

of like a financial play when people wanted to do that yeah it was we had there it was a dinosaur specimen that was found in Eastern Montana on a ranch. And one of the relatives owned the land, the surface rights and another relative owned the mineral rights and the dinosaur was up for sale and they knew they were going to get somewhere around $10 million for it. Was that the dueling dinosaurs? Yes. Okay. And so what's the status of the dueling dinosaurs? It was bought by North Carolina State University's museum or a donor for that museum.

So it is now in North Carolina. Have you seen them? I haven't. No. Um, I commercially collected dinosaur remains are, are, well, I don't really want to go into all this, but well, you could tick off Leonardo DiCaprio. We know, we know he listens. So, but you know, the thing is, is, is that when we go to get a fossil, we don't go to get just a fossil. We go to get data.

You know, we're trying to learn something. And so a specimen is, for us, is we learn a lot while it's still in the ground. And so we don't dig them up very fast. We dig them up relatively slow, trying to get all this information. And people that are actually buying, you know, that are selling fossils are trying to get them, you know, out of the ground as quick as they can with the least amount of overhead, right? So that data that we're interested in is basically overhead for them. And so they don't always keep all that information or even take all that information that we need. And so a lot of those specimens just end up as pretty things in some museums that just show pretty things that aren't into research. And it's not always clear.

I mean, you know, there's varying degrees of commercial collectors, right? Some may be, you know, more apt to collect data, and some may be, you know, wandering on to BLM. I mean, you just never know. You never know where they're getting their stuff. And they don't like to share that information with others because they don't want their competition in some of those areas. So we never know whether the information they are sharing is actually accurate.

And so it's controversial. So when the dueling dinosaurs were first found, nobody was saying where it was from. And so people were asking me, well, they show me a picture and they say, you know, how important is this? And I would say, it's not important to science at all because we don't know anything about where it came from. And, and the, of course the landowners were really mad at me for saying things like that because they were trying to sell it. And, you know, it caused a big ruckus.

But, you know, it just until they actually released the information and let scientists into the site to get the data, it was useless. Yeah, that was kind of when I became aware of like the politics of gathering stuff like that. I know what happened with Sue in South Dakota, but then when the dueling dinosaurs happened and you were quoted saying like, they're meaningless, like they're not special unless we can look at them. That was when I became more aware of that and the mineral rights thing why why did mongolia why is mongolia emerged as as sort of like the hot spot for the trade in dinosaur skeletons is just because is it because of a lack of

oversight or is there like a shitload of dinosaur bones there? Both. Okay. Um, you know, I, I do a lot of work there and, and, and I have actually Mongolian students that have come and been trained at MSU and then gone back to work in museums there. Um, they, you know, Mongolia has, is one of the poorest countries in the world and they, they have nothing. I mean, they don't, they hardly have any exports. They export cashmere and, and charcoal briquettes. I mean, you know, they hardly have anything. And, and, and so their treasures are their fossils and, and their historical, um, stuff. And so, but they don't have enough people. I mean, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a country

with 3 million people. That's a third the size of the United States. I mean, it's a huge area and hardly anybody lives there. And the, and, and so poachers go into Mongolia and steal those fossils, take them into China and then ship them to the United States and sell them.

And then we started realizing, and like I said, their national treasure is against the law to do that. And so we started reporting the fact that we were seeing some of these Mongolian treasures in the United States. And so, so Homeland Security actually stepped in and helped go out and retrieve these things from people like Leonardo. Hold on, he had a dinosaur get taken away from him? Oh, I don't know.

I don't think it was Leonardo. I know he's a major collector. I was thinking Nick Cage. Nick Cage was. Yeah. Yeah. It was just shocking. I mean, you can't imagine a guy like that doing, you know, I mean, what is the world coming to?

That would make for a good heist movie. Instead of gems or money, they were stealing like dinosaur heads. I'm sure there is one, man. Yeah. So, you know, so they, so they, I think they've pretty much shut that, that down now. But, you know, there's still, there's a market and people like to have dinosaurs on their, you know, living room table or whatever.

You wouldn't? Or you don't? I, I, you know, a museum. I put them all in the museum. My, when I was young, my mother was always irritated that I was filling up the basement with, you know, dinosaur bones. Did you have some good stuff down there? I had some pretty darn good stuff.

She told me I had to get rid of them. You said you found your first at age five. I found my first fossil at age five, and I found my first dinosaur bone at age eight, and my first dinosaur skeleton when I was 13. Huh? What was the first fossil? It was, uh, it was a baculite. Oh. And then what was the first dinosaur?

It's a piece of a duckbill dinosaur. Oh, man. There you go. Nice. I mean, with all due respect, it's hard to get out of just sitting where I'm at. It's hard to get Excited about dog-reel dinosaurs A lot of people Tell them how big they were Yeah they're

Pretty cool and they've got big crests On their heads 30, 40 feet long 40 feet long Some of them 50 feet long Are you familiar with that cartoon Was it Dino Train or Are you familiar with that cartoon? Was it Dino Train?

What the hell is that cartoon? Dinosaur Train. Dinosaur Train. Dinosaur Train. Did you watch that? My kids, yeah. I watched it. Did you see Dr. Scott?

Yeah. Yeah, he was one of my students. Oh, he'd come on in the end, kind of shuck the corn on whatever they were talking about. Yeah. Well, on the Duckville episode, maybe you found this out. On the duck bill episode, they got those things doing like a hoot. Yes. Hooting, yeah.

Like they could hoot and call to one another. Yeah. You buying that? Well, I, if. That was your idea? I, well, no. I think it's a general consensus. That they had a large hooting noise they could make. Yeah, it's the dusky grouse of the dinosaur world.

You like it now, Steve? Now I'm into dog bites, too. Get Phelps on one of those calls. Yeah, what would make you appreciate them, Steve, is if you looked at the NFTs. I'm looking at the damn NFTs. Well, some of them make noise. The NFTs are on OpenSea.

OpenSea. OpenSea. Explain what... Bust it, break it down. I actually, well, I can break down Dinosaur. I can't break down Blockchain. Okay. I don't understand NFTs. But you are selling a non-fungible token of what you feel like dinosaurs should look like.

What you feel they look like. All right. Yep. And the audience can, one of the ways to see some of the images of the NFTs is on Instagram at Jack Horners with an S, dinosaurs. And there people can look at what you think dinosaurs look like. Right. Far scarier than what Spielberg did.

Well, they're prettier anyway. Oh, I just went to Jack Horner's dino vision, and it popped up that Spencer Newhart follows it. I do. Yes, I do. Okay, so hold on. I want to see. So where do I want to go?

So Jack Horner's dinosaurs. I go go? So Jack Horner's dinosaurs. I go to Instagram. Jack Horner's dinosaurs. The real life inspiration for Jurassic Park's. There he is again. The real life inspiration for Jurassic Park's lead character, Dr. Alan Grant. Jack Horner is a world-renowned vertebra paleontologist and researcher. And in here are videos and images of what you think these buggers look like.

Yep. Huh. Are they different? It's different than what I thought they looked like. Who's this guy? That's a T-Rex. Oh, he looked like a big old turkey. Yes, he does.

Big old gobbler. Oh, he looked like a big old turkey. Yes, he does. Big old gobbler. Oh, and then you also have on Instagram... With a feathery base of his neck. Oh, you can see some of this at Jack Horner's... Yeah, DinoVision. At Jack Horner's DinoVision. That one's cute. Huh. Man, the Triceratops.

Your take on it is a crazy ass looking dinosaur. Yeah. Huh? What are you gonna do with the money from the NFTs? You gonna like donate it to museums and stuff like that?

I have a, yeah, I have a 501c3 educational foundation that it goes into and then we distributed the money to paleontologists in the field or science education. And talk about how it's a little bit controversial that you're doing this. We've covered this controversy heavy duty. Have you? The NFTs?

Not your particular. The NFTs. Yeah, just like cryptocurrencies and nfts yeah i something i i don't really totally understand it but i understand that you know that that the so-called mining of karen why don't you why don't you talk about yeah we've covered it it's you're running enormous amounts of calculations and it sucks a lot of energy and i and i'm sure it does for a lot of nfts are released like by the thousands they're talking about crypto it's it's it's doing the computations necessary for cryptocurrencies it's taking up a lot of energy yeah yeah i i know and i people have been you know not very friendly about it. Is that right?

Your students said you were anti-environment and all this. Because of getting into NFTs? Yeah. What'd you say to them? Well, I, you know, I told them to explain to me what it was that, you know, was so bad about them. And they did. And I said, well, it's done. What can I do about it?

And they said, don't do it again. And so, you know, but it's how I'm generating money for research. So, you know, and I understand that there's some concern, but I know also that there's a lot of, you know, people working on reducing the, the environmental impact as well. So, you know. Can I tell you a little something you might not have turned up in all your research? Okay. No one is pure enough.

No one's pure enough, buddy. Yeah. Boy, I'll tell you, not on Twitter, that's for sure. I got one last question. How does like some guy in his 20s that lives in Bozeman say and works at a media company get to go on one of these dinosaur digs? Oh, is that you?

Maybe. I'm just like a hypothetical. Just keep in touch. Still technically in his 20s. Keep in touch with you? Yeah. Oh, okay. You're going to take Spencer out digging dinosaurs? Oh, take me too. Oh, my God. If you send these guys home with a big triceratops You're going to take Spencer out digging dinosaurs? Oh, take me too. Yeah, field trip.

If you send these guys home with a big triceratops going, I'm going to be pissed. I'll be out in July. I'll be back up in Montana, and I will have excavation up in northern Montana. And you're going to let them volunteer. Is this a real invite? Because don't put it out there. Listen, he's a rock hunt some bitch, man. You bring him out, he'll find something real good. You all have a standing invitation.

All right. All right. I got my own paintbrushes and everything. Spencer will find a living dinosaur. July. Yeah, good. Nothing happens in July. You're seriously going to go?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to. Spencer's a hardcore rock hunt. I didn't know this about, I'm going to. Spencer's hardcore rock hound. I didn't know this about Seth. Yeah, Northern Minds. Seth's a rock hound poser because we spend a lot of time together. He hasn't brought this up to me.

No, listen, Spencer. What are you doing? I'm here, man. I'm oftentimes sending Spencer shit like, what the hell is this? He's trying to establish his bona fides as a rock hound. Yeah, I'm not Spencer for sure, but. Well, one of the areas. Well, if Jack comes to me and he says, which of these boys is actually serious?

Where we're, where we look, we can sit on the hill, look for dinosaurs and then look out at, at the, at the modern river and see herds of elk. So you're scouting. That's fun. I like that. That's fun. You're scouting too. I'm going to start marking spots where I find stuff and taking pictures and sending them to you.

Excellent. Let me ask you this real quick. This is my last question. I don't. You know the clam bed? Yeah. It's on federal land. But let's just say a feller owned a clam bed is that of any significance or those things just everywhere they're yeah they're mostly everywhere okay tried to explain that to my kids

to reduce the heartbreak of them not being able to haul off all those clams well you know they could haul off quite a few of them and that's okay. Everywhere to the point where BLM says that like you can take invertebrate fossils. Yeah, invertebrates are fine. Oh, they could have hauled off a clam. Yeah, like I have baculites that I took from BLM land. Oh, shit. It's vertebrate fossils.

Man, they're going to kill me. Because here's the thing. I was just trying to be like instilling them like uh you know yeah how you do when you have kids and uh well i told him can't take those clams well you know kids can fill up a basement pretty quick they could have kept the clams not knowing where you were there are certain places around fort peck where you can't be taking stuff. Nothing at all. Yeah, CMR. Yeah. I could walk right back up. I could walk right back up to this thing and pass my kid's deer's gut pile on the way. And in order to do that, you'd have to drive past a lot of clams.

Oh, the spot where I found the big clam bed is right where you guys were hunting. Hmm. Nah. Not the same. I said it was my last question, but here's my last question. This is a closer. This gives you a chance to close her out. Oh, okay.

What's the next, when you crystal ball, okay, in your field, what's the next big thing that people need to find out, right? I don't have a clue. Really? We chunk out like this whole bird shit that's interesting the feathers and the colors that's interesting you don't have any like that that that they could blank or you know no no i just i just hope we don't overlook it so you don't have a you don't have a hunch? Nope, not a clue.

What are you working on right now? I'm interested in how dinosaur accoutrements, how they grow. It's like looking at deer antlers. Do you know anything about deer antlers? Not as much as Spencer does. it's like looking at deer antlers. Do you know anything about deer antlers? I mean, they are. Not as much Spencer does. They are made of, I mean, the animal, just, you know, just imagine. I mean, the animal puts a huge amount of energy into growing these things and then drops them and then starts over the next year, right?

I mean, a lot of accoutrements are kept year after year. I mean, it's less expensive that way. And the big shield on a Triceratops, I mean, it's an enormous structure. I mean, on an adult Triceratops, their skull is nine feet long and six feet wide. I mean, it's just huge. God, I'd love to have one of those.

And, you know, and their parts of them are paper thin, and yet you never find them broken or, I mean, or healed, rehealed. I mean, so it's just interesting. We just don't know very much about them. Do you think that there was probably sexual display? Yes. And there was probably sexual display. Yes. And there was probably protection. No, I don't think any of those accoutrements were for protection.

I think they were all for display. Just look like a bad mofo to the ladies. Because, you know, mammals are really, because mammals evolved as nocturnal creatures, most mammals display physically, right? I mean, crashing into each other, butting each other. I mean, there are a lot of physical actions.

And the communication between them is usually olfactory, right? They're sniffing one another. Birds and other diurnal animals reptiles and and birds and probably dinosaurs were all visual a lot of show so it was all show you know and and we see that in birds i mean yes birds male birds do fight sometimes but mostly it's the males displaying to the females. And that wild thing of a dinosaur doing like a dinosaur lek. Like a lek. And they're like displaying and strutting.

Strutting and dancing and singing. And, you know, I think the whole works. I think everything we see in birds. And they're 60, 80, 120 feet long. Yeah. Wouldn't that be cool? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, next time someone asks you the old time machine question, why don't you put that be cool? Yeah. Yeah. Well, next time someone asks you the old time machine question, why don't you put that one down? Breeding season. Breeding season. Yeah. There you go. Now you got a good answer.

Yeah. I think no matter where, no matter what dinosaur you went to see, I think one thing it would be is stinky. You think so? Yeah. I think, I think those plant-eating dinosaurs and the meat eating, I just think it was pretty nasty.

Like they smelled. Especially the sorop of the big long-necked dinosaurs. I mean, they were, those big giant stomachs were fermenting. Oh. Oh my God. They were gaseous. Yeah, that was, that's when there really was a lot of.

Methane. Methane in the atmosphere. Yeah. Huh. All right, man. All right. So I'll see some of you. That's right.

Six months. Thank you so much. Let me ask you though. Do you just take any old Tom, Dick and Harry or are these guys getting like a special deal to be able to volunteer? Well, they look like they could work the jackhammer pretty well. Yeah. All right. I'm excited to hear about this.

Yeah, I got my hours on the jackhammer. Not doing that though. No, but breaking stuff. Breaking old jackhammer. Breaking doing that, though. No, but breaking stuff. Breaking old jackhammer. Breaking rocks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to hear a report back when you fellas get back.

We're in pockets full of looted stuff. You'll come over to my house, the big Triceratops skull sitting on the table. Where'd you get this? What? All right, thanks so much for coming on, man. We've been get this? What? All right. Thanks so much for coming on, man. We've been looking forward to it.

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