Smologies #2: DINOSAURS with Paleontologist Michael Habib

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Oh hi, it's your Internet Uncle Ali Ward back with facts and science and stories and the second ever episode of Somologies, which is a new spin off of Quick Distilled Ologies episodes that we've shrunk down and de filthed so you can listen in a classroom or on a road trip with your in laws. I don't know what your in laws vibes are, but maybe you need a

Blogies smologies.

Small jeez. Now you study movement of animals, and that's kind of how you got into paleontology. What is is paleontology only about fossils or is it just about living things of that era?

So paleontology it doesn't necessarily have to be about fossils, but it historically it kind of was. It was considered to be the study of fossils essentially, although it more literally is just the study of life in the past, and you mostly do that through fossils. I'm one of those paleontologists who does play a fossils.

Before we go much further, let's define super quick what a fossil actually is. I didn't know this until just now. Fossils are any trace or remains like a cast or an impression or a substitution with rock, or even the thing itself of something that was once alive. They have to be at least ten thousand years old to be considered a fossil. I don't know what they're called if

So in terms of the amount of time, like how much of the year I'm in the field, it's a good chunk of the summer. That's that's usually when I do all my field work, So basically July and August a good bit of it, I'll be in the field, mostly New Mexico.

Was that a titanosaur?

That's the Titanosaur project? Yeah?

Can you can you reveal what you're working on with that?

Sure?

Sure?

Obviously you actually basically whatever you find, it's not like you went out there and we're gonna find its. Actually we kind of went out there going I really kind of hope we don't find a titanosaur because really well, I mean not we were being BLib about it, which is what makes it funny, but like there was a part of us it was like, I really hope we won't find things super huge because then we feel compelled

Wow?

How many times bigger than an elephant? Are these guys big?

A big bull African elephant, which would be the largest living land animal. I think the record is like six point two tons or something that really averages more like five and change. Okay, So if a big titanosaur is regularly hitting sixty, that's twelve times.

So these titanosaurs are like if twelve elephants stacked under one giant overcoat and pretended to be a person. So his work is kind of a big deal in every way possible.

Who gets to name it, Well, that depends. We don't know whether or not we will be naming it because we don't know if it's a new species yet or not. There is a type of titanosaur from North America that is named just one, which is interesting because the rest of the world there's a ton of these things, like like what are the hot groups of dinosaurs to work on these days? Like we went from not knowing much about them twenty years ago, that's only this has been this explosion.

So sauropods are those really long necked, kind of round bellied plant munch in cutie. Even if you don't get to name the species, you get to actually be like this one's Gary or whatever.

Oh sure, so yes, so you can get nicknames. So yeah, so they're naming process. So if this thing's up being a new species, we will give a new technical name in a publication and I'll be myself and my colleagues will name it. But in terms of nicknames, in terms of nicknames, those kind of just happen organically, okay, and archie titanosaurs actually have nicknames. Oh whatever, they are Daisy and Duke. A look at that, and it's usually the students didn't naming these things.

Where did they come up with Daisi and dukes? It's not It has nothing to do with shorts, does it? Like Daisy dukes? Daisy dukes, for those unfamiliar, are a type of micropant fashioned from truncated denim trousers. They are beneficial in warm climates. So when might Daisy and Duke make their museum debut, please put shorts on them. Here's the deal with museums. It's actually like the shoe department

Let's let's have fun with this. How long? How much do you think a field season for us costs?

Oh? Gosh, Well, it depends on if you have interns.

We have a combination of paid employees for the museum as well as volunteers. Okay, let's just look at just the field season. Let's assume that salaries for the museum employees is part of their yearly bark and everything. So just the additional money for the supplies, the trucks to get people out there, to feed them and keep them safe, make the jackets, get transport the specimens.

I would say eight hundred thousand dollars, four million dollars, a billion dollars.

I' less than ten thousand year.

You're kidding me?

No?

Are you kidding me? So you can't you could buy a Toyota camri used or a dinosaur expedition.

That's right.

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

Do I have a favorite dinosaur? Yes? I have a couple of favorite dinosaurs, depending on what kind of favoritism. Right one has in mind?

The one that really has a place in your heart, Like, you know which one it is? There's one that you really like the most.

Sure so growing up? So the one that makes me think, ah childhood is s thingus okay, which is very similar to Velociraptor of Draassic Park fame. Incidentally, the real velociraptor was about coyote sized and feathered, not giant and scaly.

Dinoh enthusiasts love to note that the velociraptors in Jurassic Park were not historically Accurateicus, which means terrible Law was much closer to what was portrayed as a velociraptor, and I thought this was just someone sleeping on the job, but the confusion is said to have originated Fromicus originally being labeled as a subspecies of velociraptors. Either way, these things should have had feathers. So imagine a giant claude

Some of them are. I've seen some people get really upset about it. I just I don't get that upset about it. But yeah, I mean, it's essentially if they're sentially fancy creatures. Buticus was particularly interested. It was particularly important historically because it was one of the first dinosaurs that was specifically used in some of the what would some of the original hypotheses about the origes of birds and specially being dinosaurs.

So, by the way, all birds are technically dinosaurs. And that may be a thing that you've accepted and you've processed in your heart or mind, but it still weirs me.

Out Now these days, I might very well say and have said that my favorite might be changu.

Raptor changa raptor. Now, who what a weird thing? First off, it's C. H. A n G y u raptor. To find it Google it. It took me a while. So this was a non bird flying dinosaur. It has four wings, four wings, and a tail that was like a foot long, big claws and.

Teeth, which is not something you hear a lot about. Now.

Now, Michael was on the team that first analyzed and published the paper naming this a new species, so you know, so.

That one has a special place in my heart for that reason.

Now, a little background on this. A paleontologist was trolling some amber markets in me and mar and saw this apricot sized piece of plant resin for sale. Is like a jewelry piece whatever the seller said there was like maybe a plant stuck in it. Yeah, no, it was actually a whole baby dinosaur tail feathered like the best episode of Antiques Roadshow ever. They named it Eva. Eva is ninety nine million years old and probably got her tail stuck in tree sap and died there, which is

It's a really neat find. It is the beginning of what'll probably you'll be seeing more more things like that in the future, are we going to be cloning anything. No, you're not going to be cloning anything from this because while it while it more or less looks exactly like it just was preserved yesterday because the soft tissue is there. Wow, that doesn't mean that them like, their structure is completely unaltered. And DNA has a reasonably short half life, so you

So we can't blue bloop resurrect the Brontosaurus with fragments of a broken code. But wait, what is going on with Bronosaurus? What's the hot goss.

On Bronosaurus aronosaurs? So so the short answer is Bronosaurus is a valid name. Again. The original material that was named brought Tosaurus was then later found that have been comprised of multiple animals of different species whoops. And so it was decided that brought the Saurus was not a valid name because well, it's all known stuff. You can't combine them and say that's a new animal.

Right.

Researchers recently went through that material again with better knowl and more data than we now have, because over time we get better and better knowledge of what's out there. The cross compared a bunch of stuff and what they found was that, yes, a lot of that material was already known species, but some of it didn't match anything and therefore was in fact new. So and that means the original name holds.

That's some good breaking news on the bronosaurus front.

Yes, this is why.

It's always a good idea to ask smart people seemingly silly questions. Right now, the more the merrier. Also, before we get to your questions, we will be donating to a related charity, and this week it's going to the Naturalistory Museum of La County, one of my favorite places in the world. Definitely stop in and wander next time you're near downtown, so a donation was made possible by some sponsors of the get value.

You can't argue with Optesco with their amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our finest mail deal for two starring one main two sites and deserved for only sixteen yeu row like succulent board be approved by I were shining to strip looid steaks with pepper corn butter or delicious firous chicken parmegama served with creamy potato gretam under a mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop in

Oh, okay, you're listener questions. I have some rapid fire questions for you for listeners. David wants to know any new thoughts on what color dinosaurs were, any.

New thoughts of n It depends on how new you're looking at. But within the last handful of years, yes, there was a significant breakthrough in It's still a little bit controversial, but seems to be accurate in looking at the impressions of feathers in particular, because feathers store their pigments, some of their pigments in these little kind of little capsules basically that do preserve in some of these fossils. And these really well preserved fossils. You need a microscope

Ooh, what is microscopy. It's just looking at things with a microscope. Okay.

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

Interesting, Okay, Tony wants to know if dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds. Does that mean that dinosaurs tasted like chicken?

They probably did taste like chicken. Yeah, so you know, putting in it is birds are just weird dinosaurs, Yeah, and they probably did. I mean, keep in mind, the closest living relatives of birds are crocodilians. If you have a head alligator, it tastes a little bit like chicken too.

So there you go.

So there's what we call a phylogenetic bracket of tastiness there and technical about it. And yeah, so I imagine it would taste pretty much pretty much like chicken. Your typical dinosaur would probably be mostly more dark meat than white meat.

Because they have more hemoglobin for.

Moving, uh sort of. It's very close with what turns the dark meat dark is someone called myoglobin, which okays for storing oxygen in muscle, and that's used particularly in what we call aerobic muscle, so muscle that uses a lot of auction. It's high endurance muscle.

So it's this oxygen storing protein myoglobin that makes dark meat dark, which is why legs which move around more are dark meat and chicken breast which just sits there, not flapping. Much is white, so good luck ever looking at a roasted dinosaur the same Adam has a question, how do you know when to switch brushes when you're digging out a fossil?

How do you know when the switch brushes when the one you cur certainly have is unusable?

And then you just do you have to get the finer and finer brushes when you're getting tiny grains of sand off.

Uh, You don't usually have to reduce the brush size much, maybe a little bit. It's more things like chisel anything sharp, chisel sizes and things like that. If you're doing some more detailed work, you have to go to a smaller tool. Brushes any kind of broad soft paint brush will kind of do. Certain brissel types are better than others. But you know, it's you know, it's not You're not like it's not like painting. Where're going out to detail work.

I always picture you guys going down to like a water color two hairs on the brush, like delicately. It's good to know that you guys are just like, no, just get the dust up.

I've used dental tools to etch stuff around a fossil be for that seems fun. It is for a while, and then it starts to become tedious, but it's mostly fun. Yeah, iouly love it, but yeah, we don't go to tiny brushes.

TJ wants to know how many of the fossils on display museums are actual replicas casts.

Right, right, So it depends on what museum you're at, and it depends in a large part of what age the museum is, or that the exhibit is, in particular when it was built. If it's a really old exhibit, so you go say it hasn't been changed since the nineteen twenties, it's likely mostly original material. Oh, because during that time they didn't do as much casting. They didn't mind drilling through some of these things to put them

Armatures are the metal cradles that hold the bones in place externally, not lets you remove pieces of research and put them back do whatever.

Now, what percentage of each of the specimen's original is a whole nother ballgame. You very rarely find a complete skeleton. There's a few different ways of ending up with a complete skeleton. For exhibit one is you create a composite from multiple originals of the same species that are all similar enough in age and size that it'll more or

So it's like a frank consort.

It's like a Frank consort. Okay. And then if the thing's really incomplete, and this happens quite often, like you found that, you know, you do have enough to know what it is, you have enough to know it's a new animal, what have you. But you only have to say, fifteen percent of of the skeleton. You will then fill in the rest of casts.

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

That one's hard, just because the job actually is super fun. I love fieldwork. I love opening drawers and new museums and the collections right good places to you know, travel to do research. I really do enjoy teaching a friends data up a social gathering. Karo tou Men said, give me a little bit of a hard time. And you guess so you're you're an academic, right, Yeah, what do you actually make? Isn't like what do you what do

And thank you doctor Michael Habib for teaching us so much about dinosaurs and paintbrushes and mosquito bites and following your passions into a pit of dusty bones, and thank you to everyone who helped make this episode full credits or in the show notes, along with doctor Michael Habibe's handles to follow, we are at ologies and I'm at ali Ward with one l More info is at aliward dot com, slash smologies and one last thing before I

Smong juice, small juicee.

Smole juice, get value. You can't argue with that Tesco with their amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert for only sixteen EU row like succulent board, be approved Virushanger strip loin steaks with pepper, corn butter, or delicious Firous Chicken Parmeshama served with creamy potato gratam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Salder Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that