Terrible Lizards

Long time listener and second time guest Darren Naish joins us to talk about marine reptiles. While Darren is best known for his work on dinosaurs and pterosaurs, he has fingers in a huge number of vertebrate pies, and he has a new edition out of his book on all of the Mesozoic monsters that lived in the sea. So, strap in for an incredibly being tour of mosasaurs, mesosaurs, placodonts, ichthyosaurs, plesionsaurs, thalattosaurs, thalattosuchians and we even manage to sneak in a reference to certain allegedly semi-aquatic large theropods.   Support us on www.patreon.com/terriblelizards   Check out iszi’s NEW podcast about Egyptology www.talklikeanegyptian.com   A link to Darren’s Home page which combines links to the blog, podcast, con and other resources. https://tetzoo.com/   A link to Darren’s post on the launch of the first edition: https://tetzoo.com/blog/2023/2/27/ancient-sea-reptiles-is-out-now   A link to the Natural History Museum shop for the book: https://www.nhmshop.co.uk/ancient-sea-reptiles-plesiosaurs-ichthyosaurs-mosasaurs-more.html?srsltid=AfmBOorc2zt792sWSVYdef8-O5zKci9w2Fiu6FhLlpX_lEATiWy1Gsn0

Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up! Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up!  Listeners may remember that Dave went to Utah a couple of years back to try and help with a sauropod excavation. That trip was with sauropod supremo Matt Wedel who was recently in London, and so we scooped him up to get him onto Terrible Lizards. Unfortunately there were real technical issues, so the sound quality is not the best, but hopefully you can enjoy it. So sit back for an hour for deep sauropod nerdery, covering the air sac system, giant sauropods, their evolution, ecology, and follow Matt’s career from a chance start on a new giant to bird physiology.     A link to Matt’s blog SV-POW! which he writes with Mike Taylor (and in theory, Darren Naish) https://svpow.com/   A link to an old post from Matt on Dave’s blog about his favourite work: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/buried-treasure-matt-wedel/ Iszi's book The Time Machine Next Door: inventors and dinosaurs is out on 28th August in the UK: https://amzn.eu/d/dqPr6bo  

Pterosaur soft tissues It’s a double new paper episode this time as thanks to the magic of almost random review and publication times, Dave has two papers out on the same subject in the same month! So strap in for some absolute minutiae on pterosaur hands, feet, scales, and the oddly overlooked wing membrane that sits between their legs. Pterosaurs in general are not very common fossils and so it should be no surprise that we don’t have a great many examples of their soft tissues, from skin, to beaks and claws and other bits. So, having new examples, and synthesising the limited information we have, is really important for building an understanding of these incredible animals. It’s deep dive time.       A link to Dave’s blogpost on the new hand and foot scale papers: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/new-data-on-pterosaurian-soft-tissues/   A link to a very old blogpost about pterosaur soft tissues generally: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/pterosaur-soft-tissues/   Iszi'a new book - featuring a pterosaur and perfect for 6-9 year olds is out on 28th August in the UK: https://amzn.eu/d/9kFiniD (message her on iszi.com if you want international posting).

June, rather incredibly, marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of series 1, episode 1 of the podcast. As a rather fortuitous bit of timing, we were invited to host a live Terrible Lizards event at Lyme Regis (home of Mary Anning) for their Fossil Festival. We could hardly say ‘no’, so here is a recording of that hour long session where we fielded a ton of questions from the audience (that was overflowing out of the room!) and even included a few professional palaeontologists in the audience to put a bit more pressure on Dave’s answers. A good time was apparently had by all, maybe this will happen again next year?   A link to the Fossil Festival website. Stay tuned for next year’s details: https://fossilfestival.com/   For extra content go to patreon.com/terriblelizards

Curating Dinosaurs II Curate Harder! On this episode we welcome Jordan Mallon, a long-time collaborator of Dave’s and, against the odds, a long-time listener of Terrible Lizards. While we talk about Jordan’s research and career in this pod, and his work on dinosaur sizes and ecology, this one also serves as something of a sequel to our previous episode. That’s because he is also the curator of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the national natural history museum of Canada. It’s a much more typical collection than the one we talked about last time out, so join us to learn more about how museum’s work, the importance of the behind-the-scenes jobs that people do, and   Links:   Support us and get extra content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards   A short interview Jordan did with Dave years ago: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/buried-treasure-jordan-mallon/   A blogpost by Dave on his paper with Jordan on giant T. rex. https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/on-the-trail-of-giant-tyrannosaurus-rex/   Jordan’s webpage at the Canadian Museum of Nature https://nature.ca/en/our-science/science-experts/jordan-mallon/

We have talked about all manner of fundamentals of research on fossils over the years here on Terrible Lizards, including finding and excavating fossils, writing and publishing papers, reconstructing animals from fragments and more. But we’ve somehow really glossed over the role of museums that store and protect fossils and make them available for research, as well as carrying out their own work too. In order to correct this oversight, today we welcome ReBecca Hunt-Foster who is the curator on the legendary Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Here she takes us through her background and research and the challenges of looking after one of the most famous and important dinosaur sites in the world.   Links:   https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards ReBecca on Bluesky: @dinochick.bsky.social Here’s the link to the US National Parks website about Dinosaur National Monument: https://www.nps.gov/dino/index.htm An old blogpost of Dave’s about the bitten baby Diplodocus femur: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/non-tyrannosaurs-biting-like-tyrannosaurs/

This time out we are joined by palaeontologist Andre Rowe to talk about his research into the skulls of giant carnivorous dinosaurs and what this means for their biology. This turns into a debate with Dave about how evidence can be interpreted in different ways and trying to piece together the often limited data we have to work out what these animals might have been doing. Though with her media-trained eye, Iszi wants to badge this as a heated fight over just how awesome Tyrannosaurus was (see previous episode for details). Andre takes us through the process of scanning skulls, restoring the bits and then testing ideas about bite force and skull strength and how the different giant theropod differed in their habits. Links: Support us on patreon and get extra content: www.patreon.com/terriblelizards Here’s an article Andre wrote on his T. rex bite research: https://theconversation.com/tyrannosaurus-rex-didnt-get-its-ferocious-bite-until-it-was-an-adult-new-research-156668 Here is Andre’s Instagram handle: @tyrannosaurrowe

This month’s episode is a sort of follow-up to that from the start of the year, looking at some of the more problematic areas of dinosaurs and palaeontology when it comes to online discussions. There is an online fandom of dinosaurs that treats them like monsters or superheroes, and can fixate on what is and isn’t the biggest / strongest / fastest dinosaur and who could beat up who. Joining us to discuss this is Dr Mike O’Sullivan, a palaeontologist and self-professed member of several fandoms. We talk about how this community works and what it means for scientists talking about research.   Links: Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/terriblelizards   Mike is part of Palaeogames, a company of professional palaeontologists making accurate books and games: https://palaeogames.com/   And here’s their latest Kickstarter, a Dungeons & Dragons companion book: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/palaeogames/professor-primulas-portfolio-of-palaeontology

Series 11, eh? We don’t think we, or anyone else reading this, expected that. Nor did we expect issues with Dave’s microphone (apologies)… Still, here we are and with more dinosaur goodness coming. We say ‘coming’ because this episode is far less about dinosaurs and pterosaurs than usual, but more about the mechanisms of science. In this case it’s really about Dave’s experiences as a science communicator and how things like this are increasingly important for science, but in the UK at least, this can be monitored and measured and so having ways to do that becomes important. And this is the central point of today’s show, a call to arms for all those who are involved in sci comms and delight in sharing new knowledge to understand why it’s important to credit your sources when new discoveries are made.   Links: For extra content: patreon.com/terriblelizards If you want to know a bit more about REF in the UK, here’s the main pages for it: https://2029.ref.ac.uk/about/what-is-the-ref/ And if we’re talking communication, it seems a good time to say that Iszi and Dave are both now on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/davehone.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/iszi.com  

Thanks to Kyle, Tom, Ashley, Aurous, Wayne, Paleo Pete, Tyler, Will, Israel, Charles, James and Edward Support us on patreon.com/terriblelizards and be rewarded with extra content! We are planning on going live on isztube at 16:00 GMT on Friday 26th December. (Time may change)