Crimes of Paleontology

on there. They're selling bogus fossils. I mean, it's it's like every time you turn a corner here, somebody with trying to sell some sort of like diplodocus uh um, vertebrae, iguana, don femur, and you know it's all fake, but you still still people gullible enough to buy, I know, And I'm always like, don't do that. That's just a buffalo

wing from Bojangles. Yeah, and the remnants of it. Yeah, yeah, that because if you go by just what these guys are selling, most of the fossil record was very bojanglesh yeah. And it's and it's warm um and we just know that that's not how how China source looked. That wasn't their morphology. So no, yeah, you know, and I didn't help matters that they threw on like an iguana tail on the buffalo wing and then tried to say, yeah, it's it's the missing link. Yeah, it's a shame in

the sham. But you know, shim sham. It's a it's a shim sham indeed, but it's a shim sham that goes far beyond made up encounters on on on Martha Um.

Fake fossils are have been going on as long as we've had real fossils, and it's it's an interesting history because to a certain degree, you have well meaning people who just make mistakes, UM, who get caught up in their passions or or in you know, there the various timeline they have to meet their ambitions, yeah, their ambitions, and then you have people who just want to make a quick buck and you've got rogues. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is a spotty history. Yeah, there there are

some is we're gonna explore in this this episode. There are some real characters in uh in fossil history, UM, who have been just completely without scruples, that have been UH pompous beyond belief and have been willing to take more than a few shortcuts to get their name in the history books. Yeah, and not to just throw stones at glasshouses here, because I've have to mention a couple of modern day hoaxes that we have all fallen under

the spell at one time or another. One is crystal schools, right the Yeah, the pre Columbian Mesoamerican like crystal schools not real at all. So if you bought one, you know, you should be proud and display it, but just know

that it's it's not an artifact from yesteryear. And in the shroud of turrent and that one is a little bit controversial in well I know, but it's been carbon carbon dated back to the thirteenth century, right, and recently there was some Italian scientists who was able to uh, the face imprint, was able to do that with another piece of cloth and sort of they look, there's the there, there's the explanation for the facial print there. So it happens,

it continues to happen. I think you might get letters on that one. But but we'll be all right. But the carbon dating, yes, that is a key tool. But but then there are other like more We're not gonna spend a lot of time on these. But then you have stuff like the the old Circus mermaid. Yeah, so the monkey, the dead monkey to the the back half of the fish, and like a cinnamon tail, right, and

then orangutan jaw. Yeah. I mean it's it's complete, it's very creative, but it does it does correct me because back in that day, though, how would you know, right if it wasn't that circulating I don't know, early nineteenth century or something. Um, you don't have the other nut, you know, you don't have people that are well traveled. Um, you may even not have wide access to books to reference materials. So if that were to be displayed, then

you might think, wow, that creature is really out there. Yeah. And as we've discussed before, fossils, the fossil record is incomplete, and fossils alone do not tell us what the past was like. And in fact, I mean we we cannot know with any uh you know, strong degree of certainty of what the past was like, what Brettist dark days consisted of. We we make very educated guesses and and and theorize what it was like. And we based those

theories on the fossils. We based it on on our use of basically large family trees and filling in the blanks. A lot of it just we just put a lot of logic into it and a lot of deduction. It's like solving a crime where you go in and you look at a lot of evidence and you put it together and try to form a complete picture of what happened. Right, you're extrapolating to some degree. Right, So early on there were though there were fewer tools there was there were,

especially if you're trying to build a family tree. Like ideally, if you build a family tree, you want to just continue building something that's already been created, but to build one from stress from scratch, uh, there there's room for a lot of air, So we can keep that in mind.

We talked about this too, and even the Dinosaur Sex podcast, because we were trying to figure out whether what sort of um equipment dinosaurs had um to reproduce and you still have to extrapolate their right, we looked at alligators and basically figured out that this was probably the best

logical conclusion in terms of reproduction. You have to look at at modern examples of the modern descendants of dinosaurs and sort of work backwards and and again, so so little actually makes it into fossil into the fossil record because it has to be covered in mud, it has to undergo this fossilization process that does not happen to everything. And then the more of a creature there there happens to be, the more likely that creature is to wind

up in the fossil record. Whereas a like top tier predator um of which there are fewer, very unlikely that it will show up in the fossil record at all. So we have our challenges, and that that makes for more chiconry, I suppose out there in in the fossil world. But in speaking of the incompleteness of the fossil record, the other thing is that fossils themselves are You rarely

find a complete specimen. There are complete fossil specimens, and they're great, they're very important, but they're not that common. So if you see a guy on the train trying to sell a complete fossil skeleton, that's a good there's a good chance that that's a fake. Uh So, So that's sort of a red flag there when people are dealing with with fossils. Oh, well, this one's a complete fossil uh uh skeleton of this uh, this long departed creature. Well,

let's take a closer to look, right. Yeah, and it's very possible to you that that person went online and looked up how to make a fake fossil, which I'm not kidding. There's there's an article. It's like a wiki article or something. So I mean, you know, it's pretty it's obvious that this is stuff that's going on either for someone's own enjoyment or to pull a hoax or

to make a quick buck. Yeah. Now you know you get down with modern tools, you can get down and look at at them and like look at the chemical analysis. You can whip out a microscope uh uh. And and also you can just look for other things like evidence of sanding. Um. You can scratch uh scratch the actual supposed fossil to see if there's wax or glue and its constructor staining and uh. Of fakes. There are basically

three types of fossil fakes. There are, first, there are those that contain no original fossil material um, such as shapes, carved and rock. And then there are those that do contain original fossil material but are entirely or partially altered in order to give the appearance of a more complete specimen. Uh. So an example this would be a sculpted, uh carved

skull from a fragment of limb bone. And then there are Frankenstein specimens and these um uh these that are true fossils, but they're artificially combined with from multiple individuals. So you have a fossil, a little bit of fossil from creature A, a little bit from fossil from creature B. You want to get your name out there and uh, you know, and find your own dinosaurs, so you just build your own out of the available parts. Yeah, d

I y dinosaur fossil. Yeah, which that was again, this building your own dinosaur and trying to get named was a little more common previously, but not it's not as rare as you might think, even in today's world. Yeah. And you know, I talked about a little bit um that it's it was sort of like the wild West. It was very much to the extent that there were hostile groups of Native Americans around, hostile tribes that you

might have to contend with. Ye. Well, and that's the fact that this was a burgeoning field right back in the day, and that there are people who were competing to try to get their names out ahead of someone else and saying I've discovered this creature or that creature. Yeah, and and the it was the field itself. They were still learning how to do it. Uh, I mean, archaeology and paleontology both were kind of evolving films, evolving fields

throughout the the wild West period. Well, bronze source is a good example of that, right, because Epiporus is that the real name that was the first fossil of that was discovered. Then Bronosaurus was discovered and thought to be a different subspecies, right, um, and so then they realized later on that that that these were actually the same thing. Yeah. That was uh, due to a man by the name of Othaniel Charles Marsh, who I believe we're gonna get

to in just a little bit here. Yeah. Yeah, actually, yeah, let's let's talk about and get into that. Let's talk about Marsh all right. So you had Oathaniel Charles Marsh and then you had his counterpart, Edward Danker Cope. All right, these guys were somewhere in some respects both born to wealthy US families, a lot of money in the family, but they were both fascinated from an early age by natural sciences. What time period was again, this was this

was like you know, like late So you had Cope. Uh. Cope was brilliant interpreter of fossils, all right, he was. He was a hard worker, um Like during his life he ended up publishing like more than four papers and monographs on paleontology. Um. And he and he risked life and limb for science. I mean he was he was. He was out there, you know, risking attack from from hostile tribes, uh and uh in life and limb to

to get these these fossils. But he was also really arrogant. Uh. He was really hot tempered, and this would become a defining part of who he was. Marsh On the other hand, Marsha spent his entire career at Yale University, where he's Professor of Paleontology and curator of the Peabody Museum in Natural History. Now, he wasn't as uh as bright as Cope.

Perhaps that's the or at least that's that's what some of the historians argue that he he maybe didn't have the natural intellectual gift for it, but he but what he lacked he made up for in uh is just just being a ruthless and masterful organizer. And he hit a real knack for the politics of the system too. But but again, he was this This guy was not just like, oh, I'm going to make some money off

of fossils. No, he was He was legitimately obsessed and interested in just in awe of of of these these wondrous relic of the past people we're finding in the in the earth. And tell me if I'm wrong on this, if I've got it backwards. But is it. Marsh who looked at Cops one of Cope's assemblage of fossil parts, pointed out that the head was on the opposite side of the vertebrae. Yeah. Now, these two and I mean this was like and these are fighting words, right, like

it's almost like dueling words. This was this was the incident that really kicked things off because they started off they kind of knew each other a little bit. You know, paleontology, especially in those days, was kind of a small tent, so so these two they knew who they each other were. But then Cope went on this expedition to Kansas and he lined up the fossils of an elasmosairos and published

a paper about it. All right, but Cope had placed the head on the wrong end, which sounds, you know, laughable, but again, this is an earlier age of paleontology piecing these things together. But so he placed the head on the wrong end um on the tail of the of

the spine. And when he found out, uh, Cope immediately begin you know, he realized he made a mistake, and he starts buying back all the papers that published his his incorrect illustration, you know, because he was a prideful dude and he made this error, and so and again, how many how many copies of this could have possibly been out there? You know? Yeah, I know, I mean it's self publishing, right or even like big publishing houses.

We're talking maybe like I don't know, fifty or something. Yeah, it's not like the Internet where once you pushed publish, it's out there somewhere. Yeah. And he's probably like, all my family members, give me back those copies right now. Yeah. So, so, yeah,

he did this. But then marsh like really started pointing the figure and finger and he just seemed really to delight in this as well, um, you know, saying that saying that Cope made made made made this error, and that he had and that you know that he had

always tried to cover up for his own mistakes. And so it's yeah, and so what would follow It would be two decades of feuding between these two um and during this time, and it's it's it's interesting because this feud because on one hand, this feud ended up fueling a lot of important discoveries in paleontology, well, right, because they were both racing to the finish line, right right.

It became a race who could just who could discover the most of fossils, who could discuss who could have name that the most specimens and uh and wind up as the bigger name in the history books. So so yeah, on one hand, it's fueling a lot of a lot

of discovery. But on the other hand, uh Cope winds up rushing and making more careless errors, such as the Bronosaurus um uh Apodosaurus incident that we we just mentioned, where he basedly in eighteen seventy seven, he um he found the the apodosaurus and publishes uh um you know, information on that, and then he hastily named and described another one the Bronosaurus based on incomplete materials. We'd later

find out that this was the same species. That's why then we revert from again from bronosaurs to a potosaurus because when he first discovered he was named apodosars, right, And this is all just the best his front of me you know which, Yeah, I mean, I do think it's the classic front of me example. Yeah, I get a front of me is such a weird term. I mean, these guys, really there's so much well, yes, but you know, vinegar in this relationship. There's a lot of vinegar. It's

very acidic. But you know, surely, like he said, it's a small group. And I'm sure that they were civil to each other, but their hatred for each other definitely fueled. They were civil for a while, but like at these twenty years of feuding and and like I said, cope, he made some mistakes. You get in a hurry and make some careless airs. Marsh was more careful in his work, but he was all he was more ready to resort to result to resort to bribery or bullying um in

in the pursuit of these specimens. Uh. And also they were also weren't they also driving out the price because before that they were actually getting the fossils for freight, right um mostly, But then when they started competing against each other, they were buying them off of people, and other people couldn't compete because they couldn't spend that much money on getting those fossils. And and they just continue to fight in the like first in the in the

in the scientific papers, but even in the news. It carries over the newspapers because every time one of them, you know, make some claim or publishes a paper, the other ones there to just you know, tear it apart and make all sorts of nasty, potentially libelous comments about about what they're doing their work, you know, just tearing

them to ribbons. Also, each scientist had hired a crew field crew to help them unearthed and ship back these fossils, right and the rival crews were known to spy in each other to dynamite their own and each other's secret locations to keep their opponents from digging there, and occasionally they'd steal other they steal each other's fossils um and uh and and and all the time, you know, they're they're working in harsh conditions there the Native American tribes

are are out there and aren't too happy about it, I mean with good reason of him. Yeah yeah, I mean Marsh particular was known to uh. I read an account of where he uh he was really interested by the way that one particular tribe would put their dead up on these, uh, the stilted platforms, and he was like, let's go take a look at those skulls. So they just you know, him and his career, just go and start digging around in the bones. And I liked it.

When we were discussing it before earlier, you were talking about how like if they had made a movie out of it would probably be more in the spirit of their will be blood. Yeah, yeah, because because it's that level of just like all these guys are so unhappy and nasty to each other. It's they just his ruble people and so calculating. Yeah. Um. And it reminds me too of the Baringer hoax, because it's in the same sort of spirit. It's perhaps not as um as involved

as this. In fact, were you going to talk about like the last sort of kicking the teeth? Oh you mean with the skull Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was yeah. So again twenty years of feuding. By the end of it, both of them are financially ruined, um, because they end up financing their own expeditions because to get ahead, got to get ahead, and like, oh I gotta put my own money into it. Fine. Eventually Cope dies, he dies in after he's just you know, he's had to like

sell part of his fossil collection just against me. But he has his skull donated to science so that his brain can be measured, um, and he's he's a big hope here is that his brain will be found larger than that of Marsh. But Marsh Marsh didn't actually pony after this challenge, which is of course silly anyway, because the size of brain doesn't really have anything to do with with how smart the individual, right right right, which they didn't know them, but um, but the arrogance, the

sheer arrogance, and it's like that's your defining thing. It's like like, clearly these guys were like the hatred that they have for each other becomes more important than the science, even though they both contributed a lot to science and we're both scientifically great men, even if they were both kind of jerks. This presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. And that does seem to be a theme like the jerk thing, Like if you're a jerk,

you will suffer in this particular scenario. And that's when that's when we'll turn and look at Barringer hoax or Barringer hoax. And this is Dr Johan Barthelomew Adam Berenger or Barner. I'm just gonna say five different ways. Um. He was professor and the dean of medicine University of Horsebrook in Germany in the seventeen hundreds, and he collected fossils and UM. He wasn't an expert, but he was

certainly very interested in the in the burgeoning field. UM. But one day he was completely thunderstruck when students of his delivered hundreds of carvings, and over time, I think it was numbered like in the two thousands. UM. And these carvings, they they figured they had all sorts of animals. Um. There was one that had frogs mating, which should have raised the red flag. Um. Birds flying. Some of the rocks had birds flying birds. Would a flying bird become fossil?

As you know? Yeah, I know, I mean in the act of flag. Yeah, um. And then some of the rocks had Syrian, Hebrew, and Babylonian inscriptions, and Baringer came to believe that these stones were created by God as a test of human faith, and he really struggled. Or possibly just for God's pleasure, that was another one. That's right, God was either trying to teach us, or maybe he was just doing it for fun. He's got he can do what he wants, he can write words all over.

He didn't come to this conclusion right away, and he actually started with the more logical conclusions, like perhaps this could have been like an ancient society that um carved these things. And then he started to think that they

were actual, you know, uh, possible fossil records. And then you know, as they became more and more elaborate, especially with the Hebrew running song, that's when he began to link it with the existence of of um, some sort of like godlike material um that was brought down right when when when really it was just he was kind of a pompous dude, and some of his his co workers decided to mess with him. Yeah, two of his colleagues.

They spent all of this time. Oh this was another reason why he thought that it couldn't have been anything but but God, because he thought, how who would go to the trouble of carving and polishing two thousand stones? Well, two colleagues that hit your guts, that's um. They actually planned them for for Bearinger students to find and then delivered to Bearinger. Um because they said, because Baringer was so arrogant and despised them all. And this was j

j Ignantes Roderick and yourge von Eckhart. So Eckhart and Roderick sounds like a musical cool group, but yes, um. So they actually did try to put a quasi stop to it because they found out that Benger was about to publish a book about these stones, which would have made him the laughing stock. Yeah, I mean it was so excited about this, right, But so they started to we've gone too far. Yeah, we've gone too far. You need to kill this. This guy is about to ruin

his career. Uh. So they started saying, okay, well, we don't actually think there's a real fossils and spreading rumors, and he thought they were just trying to discredit him at that point he's like, He's like, though they were jealousy and but this is so funny because this is where like the whole confirmation bias cognitive dissonance comes into play, where you know, you believe something so itally that you can't help but now take all this mounting evidence and

continue to believe that what might be a lie, you know. Um. But so anyway that that he does actually publish this book and um, and he does not come to the realization that these are fakes until the last stone arrives and it actually has his name carved on it, and then he finally says, Okay, I've been had, but by this time it's too late, and Inshel takes legal action against those colleagues and uh, it's not pretty. And then they actually kind of looked like jerked for doing it.

And he actually he continues to have an academic career something for like fourteen years afterward. But man, so that's a serious commitment to a hoax. They in court, they didn't own up to it. They they said that they had devised the suit the scheme quote because Barringer was so arrogant and despised them. All. Yeah, I mean, there you go. I mean that it's so funny what what makes us do the things that we do as humans and the energy that we expand on it. So there

you go. I mean that those are some really good examples of that time period and that sort of ambition, the raw ambition that's fueling this UM. But then I think we should probably talk a little bit about one of the most famous hoaxes, which is the Piltdown Man. Oh yes, yes, uh, this is in China. Correct, Actually Piltdown was in Britain. Oh wait, I have a confused with something. I think. I think you're thinking about the pilt Nan chicken. Oh yes, I have the pitt Down

chicken in mind. Which is which is Chinese? We'll get

to that, Okay, So Piltdown Man. Nineteen eleven, there's a laborer who found a piece of skull that he passed on to a man named Charles Dawson, who was an amateur archaeologist, and along with a guy named Sir Anthony Smith Woodward, who was a more esteemed UM scientist, Dawson presented the reconstructed skull to the public as the missing link because at this time, obviously Darwin's UM all of his information has been out there, there's been linked this

big brew haha to find the missing link right, um, the human kind's earliest ancestor. And the discovery actually eclipsed the discovery of the Neanderthal Man in Germany, which is this is important r Yeah, because the Neanderthal man was is a very important fossil that actually is is real, wasn't made up? Yeah, And to talk about the conditions a little bit to it's nineteen eleven. There's a rival

going on between Germany and Britain. At this point. Britain is the only country I believe that France, Span and Germany all have um, some fossil record of earlier man and uh, Britain doesn't. Nothing. So in terms of national pride, I think that they were definitely in a position to believe this or want to believe this and put this forward. Um. But then more remains show up, including another partial school

and what actually looked look like a cricket bat. Okay, so honestly it's getting someone is getting a little bit more brazen and and trying to to mess them up. But again they try to say, oh no, this cricket that is is probably some bone or femur or something. They're they're trying to explain it away. Um. But then in scientific tests revealed that the school was actually an amalgamation of a human school and orangutinan's jaw with a canine tooth. Um. This school had been staying the canone

tooth had been painted and filed. So it becomes a mystery of who done it really, because Dawson by this time he's long passed. I mean he passed actually nineteen fift so whatever secrets he has about it, he's taken to the grave with them. Um. And then there's this theory that it just gets even weirder. There's this theory that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is actually perpetrating this hoax

against the scientific community. One because he was made fun of mercilessly when he was talking about spiritualism, right, the scientific community was like, seriously, like you you're believing in uh in something that is not happening here. Plasma is not hitting you in the face, and the table is

not actually rising. And so he was pretty mortified by that, and he was mad, and he lived think like thirty miles from the excavation site, and he would have had the financial means to pull off this hoax, so you know, the jury is still out. And he had he had a little a little history with contemplating how people would pull on over on the authority, right, mystery right, all right? So um, yeah, it's very possible that he was just

doing this for his own fun and amusement. But then, I mean a lot of people point to Dawson perhaps is doing this, and even Woodward, who was the scientist that helped Dawson ford the pilt down Man. So again it's not really clear who actually did it, why they did it. But again you've got those conditions. You've got Britain not having any sort of uh example of early man. You've got this rivalry between them. You know, you're gearing up toward War one, and you know it's obvious that

something like this could happen. It's it's ironic that we just recorded an EPI so on the Polcebo effect and about our willingness to believe in something that it isn't so and uh and we're we encounter a similar thing with with it with these A fossil remains supposed fossil remains. Yeah, I mean you cannot help it. I mean if the person is, if they're that excited about it, especially if it's a matter of national pride, then they probably are going to overlook a lot of those red flags and it.

Barringer is another good example, right, I mean, even his writings in his book about the stones, he would talk about the degree that the stones were polished and wonder about them and never even think to himself, well, perhaps you know, man, did that? You know, uh, you know it's not such a great mystery. Yeah. Well, then there's a like I mentioned. There's also the pit down chicken, which has no connection to the flanky chicken. Well or to to the example we just discussed. Yes, yes, pit

down chicken. This involves a national geographic society. Uh go back to all the way back to October. So so this one's fairly recent. Um. They announced a major discovery. They said they found a five million year old fossil in northeastern China and that it appeared to be the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. Um. For over twenty years, you know, Palin talks have debated whether birds were descended from dinosaur. Did you get to that that whole debate

of of did birds come from dinosaurs? And then this other idea that dinosaurs became birds. Yeah, you know, et cetera. So here we go conclusive proof. Um, a bird with a tail, yeah, bird with the tail. But then you had this, uh, this scientist, Chinese scientists by the name of zoo Zing And what did he find? Oh, he found the archaeo raptor's tail or. He he was the first person to to identify the archaeo raptor right the pit down chicken. Yeah. And then but then he found

found the exact same tail, only attached to a different body. Uh. He was like something, it was a miss here. Yes, some thing has been put together and it's uh and and they're trying to pull one over on us. Someone had had taken one of the slabs bearing the tail fossil and attached it to a fossil of a bird, thereby producing this marvelous hybrid of the dinosaur in the bird creature, the frank and bird dinosaur. Yeah. Yeah, well and it wasn't. National Geographic then published a mission of

its mistaken two thousand. Right like a year later, they owned up to it. They didn't, you know, no, yeah, and they saided they said, one of the reasons for the dupe was that they were rushing for publication before

scholar scholarly journals had a chance to peer review it. Yeah, so here you end up with the dragging science journalism into the mix, which is which which becomes the push, like you said, to to to get something out to to go ahead and name it, to to to get the get the TV show started, the get the news releases out there. I mean, seriously, it seems like any big paleontal, logical or or or archaeological discovery nowadays comes with a TV deal already in place. Well, and it's

not even just a paleontology. I mean you think about the arsenic um, the life forms the arsenic that that recently was talked about, you know, other than Carmen based life forms, that there's this possibility of arsenic based life forms, and of course that information was released and then people say, whoa this this, let's look at this a little bit closer. This is really overstating this, this one part of this study. Um, so it's not just it's everywhere right, everybody wants to

scoop and how you mean we're information junk piece. We can't help it, and then we're part of the information. Um, I mean we're I mean, we're basically science writers, science journalists, so we're kind of a part of the system. But it is what it is. It's true, that's true. We try to we try to inform into light within reason. Yeah. That being said, you know you had talked about the Fiji mermaid. Yes, yeah, yeah, the the the ape and the fish Zony gether to look like a mermaid, very

grotesque and the non sexy mermaid totally non sexy. But I mean, isn't it funny that we think about that and we we scoff at it, And then you've got the pit dawn chicken, right, which is really a more elaborate form. Yeah, the same thing really, just you know, take two things, put it together, and you've got something new. Um. Another example that I really like that we won't go into a lot of detail about was the Hide the Hydros.

This was and it was quote unquote found by quote unquote doctor Albert cotch Um quote unquote coch Yeah, and he um he He's miraculously found this gigantic fossil of a reptile hundred and fourteen feet long. You know, it looks like the Locknous monster is some sort of big sea serpent. But what he actually did is he just pieced together the bones of five fossil whales and then

chose the specimen, you know, throughout the u s in England. Um. The hoax was later exposed, but for a brief period of time he gets to uh to you know, to to wallow in the aim of having found this miraculous fossil specimen. Yeah, and this is certainly the circus side of it, right. And another good example which is fairly recent.

I believe it's two thousand and three recent Ish lochness Monster, which is obviously that is a huge tourist destination because of old NeSSI purported to be swimming around in the lake Um. But in two thousand three a man found the remains of a creature when he tripped and fell into the lochness Um. What were the chances that ript and fell in the what is that I just tripped on? This, of course was thought to be the fossil of NeSSI

or one of Nessie's ancestors, I don't know. Uh. And it was actually Um that people thought was proof that the monster had existed or did exist. But it turns out that the fossils belonged to apply a Sore, which is a dinosaur that measured thirty five ft long and had a long serpentine neck. Uh. And what the fossil was doing in fresh water lake isn't really known because it's obvious that this fall usole had um then exposed

to the elements of the sea for very long. But like somebody who really wanted to believe, when out I bought some fossils, wrote out in like a picture in a rowboat and just dumped them. Absolutely they did, and they just waited for someone to I guess, fall into the Lochness and discover them. Um. But you know you have to wonder, like you know, it's the Scottish tourist industry. Are they like up to Shenanigans there? What's going on? Or is this just some well meaning local person um?

And I wouldn't really be interested if there's anybody from Scotland it's listening to this podcast to what degree the Lochness Monster. Um, it's felt like people to exist or perhaps have existed, because it's very intriguing. I'm intrigued by

the Lockness Monster. Do I think it exists. Now. What's kind of like in our own state of Georgia when when those two guys claimed to have found the big foot in the in the they didn't claim to find a big foot in a dead big foot in the cooler, but they had the picture of the dead big foot in the cooler, which was by the time the picture came out, was clearly like a gorilla costume in apler in the styrofoam cooler. But for a brief period of time,

they're like less than an afternoon. It seemed it seemed possible that, oh, my goodness, maybe the age of the bigfoot mystery is over and we're entering a new age in which we we know what's up. Yeah, we finally found the proof. And it was the equal parts um exhilarating and and and disappointing, because you didn't want the mystery to go away, but you also wanted to find out and luckily we didn't have to do either. But

you know, there's always the Chepicabra, right. If you can't have your big Foot, you've got the Chepicabra Mexican goat sucker, Yeah, are right, So there are plenty of other zero ific characters out there. Yeah, unicorns, yeah, cryptids, Yeah. Crypto zoology,

that's what I was struggling for. Well, in crypto zoology, when you get into a lot of these uh, a lot of some of the the mythic creatures, you're actually getting into a situation where where people were interpreting fossils at some point, like in the you know, in the ancient past, you had people who are much more inclined to say, you know, cut up all the animals around them, uh,

to eat or the process in the clothing. So they find some sort of weird fossil remains these you know, it looks like a skeleton of something, and this they're saying, hmmm, that doesn't look like the insides of the cat that I had for breakfast that I cut up, or the dog that I cut up and had last night, or the cow that I just finished cutting on this afternoon. So what is that? And then they have to sort of do this kind of without you know, the aative science,

their actual paleontology. We have to do some sort of primitive building in their mind and imagining what it might have looked like and then imagining that it either did or does exist yeah, and again there's that thing we talked about this in the placebo effect. This this the mind having to tell itself a piece of fiction to make sense of the world. Right, Um, so we can't help it. We have to make up these these cool creatures. Um.

It actually reminds me too. There's a uh This American Life episode and they were talking about uh, beliefs that we've held that aren't true or proved not to be true. In there, there was one woman they interviewed, and she's perfectly smart. You know then when I'm talking about very smart woman, educated, so on and so forth, saying um.

But she was sitting around one day talking to some coworkers and people were making a joke I think about unicorns, and she said very innocently like, yeah, I wonder what was that, something like do you think we'll ever be able to bring them back? Or yeah, yeah. It was some comment that was just kind of like there was along the lines of I'd love to see one some day, or yeah, don't you think they were really cool? Or

they went extinct or something like that. Through no fault of her own, she existed in a in a world in her head where the unicorn existed like she nobody had ever told her explicitly, Like the other example that they brought up in that with somebody who thought that the like children like the children were like the deer crossing sign. The deer exing sign was that you pronounce that. You pronounced the crossing, the exing, you pounced zo. So

she just grew up always mispronouncing it. So this is like a different version of the lifelong misprint pronunciation issue. But I always think about that moment she had, how horrified shose to them because she said, you know, yeah, when extinct, and then everybody laughed. And then when they saw her face and that she was completely earnest, there was like the crickets and the sad looks towards her way, and that's when her dreams were dashed. Yeah, they had

just killed unicorns for one individual. I know, I know. So yeah, I don't know. You can see how these uh, these beliefs, misheld miscon misconceptions kind of bloom in our mind. Yeah, you are not immune. So there you have it. We have we have a couple of listeners males I want to get to here. We have one from Trevor. Trevor writes in and says, I listened to the podcast and enjoyed it thoroughly, always talking about the dog podcast so well played. You now have a loyal subscriber. I've always

pondered my dog's love for me. Some background infol I have always had canines and currently have a beagle name Reginald Reggie for short. I got redged, then he short shorts of the more. I got redged when he was a year old from a shelter, which was when I truly began to contemplate the man dog relationship. I eventually derived that he loves me only out of necessity. I will explain. When I first got him, he did everything in his power to escape to no avail thanks Satan

okay Um. He then became more comfortable and loyal when he was content in his surroundings. Though through this transformation, I concluded that I had, in a fact Stockholm to my pop with Stockholm syndrome, of course, where um a kidnapped individual falls in love with it kidnappers um out of necessity for his happiness. He resigned to the fact that he was stuck with me, just like a captive human. Eventually, his will was broken and became a good dog. I

wonder if this correlation has been thought up previously. It's an interesting notion and can be translated to all domesticated animals. Any thoughts. I think it's an excellent point, and it's something that actually floated through my head when we are doing the research. But you know, you know how it is whenever we sit down and do a podcast. You know, whatever comes out of our mouth and our brains comes out. So I think it's a really great point to bring up.

I mean, yeah, I mean that the dog is wholly dependent on you. Why wouldn't they all of a sudden you know, you're the person who give them my food. I will cozy up to you. Yeah. So interesting thoughts there, Trevor. I love I love it when people, uh you know, it's kind of answering a question with a question kind of thing. But but but I really enjoy when people write in uh like, harder questions based on what we've talked about and extract late more involved ponderings we do.

We get so many of those notes. It's pretty awesome to see. That makes up, you know, tickling our brains a little bit. We also heard from a listener by the name of Brooke, who is a PhD candidate and evolutionary biology. Oh this is a good brain take. Yeah. Hi, Robert and Julie. After listening to a recent podcast on the evolution of our five fingers, I am sorry to report a disappointing fact for you. Stylist fingers are an

unlive play future human appendage exclamation point. It's a creative idea that might even be useful to future humans, but suffers from a common misunderstanding of evolutionary adaptations. Living creatures don't just evolve new features because they are useful, or our ancestors would have evolved matches for fingers and nails. All new features have to arrive through the random process

of mutation. And even assuming we've got mutant humans with stylish fingers, the stylist fingers would have to increase their chances of surviving and having babies in order to spread through all of humanity. I don't know about you, but I don't think i'd want a mate with stylist fingers. Add add to all of that evolutionary constraints. As you reported,

we've had five fingers for a long time. Evolutionary speaking, and a likely he of human extinction before the mutation occurs and stylist fingers seemed very improbable, unless, of course, we figure out how to metically engineer ourselves, which we

could maybe do question marks. So I don't know. I was thinking about that nists thinking about the gene plasticity of dogs, right, the ability for us to to breathe them and breathe the traits that we want, But I don't know that we would be able to do that in humans. Yeah, um, that means to be seen as suppose. But we we thank Brooke for writing that because she does make an important important point that evolution is about mutations occurring in those mutations being advantageous for the for

the continuation of the species. Like if for some reason humans evolved a horn on their head like a rhinoceros, and I'm and I'm really and this is not gonna happen, but this is just an outrageous example to illustrate. Suddenly some people off horns, some don't, and the ones with horns are able to stab the potential mates that don't have horns. Therefore, only the horns males gets to get

to a mate with the females. There's there, yeah somewhere run wild with it then, so hey, if you have anything to share with us, particularly if you have anything to add about the bone wars or archaeology or curious incidents from paleontology. I feel like I left one or two really interesting stories out, so I may have to

unclose down myself. But anyway, you can find us on Twitter and Facebook as blow the Mind will Blow the Mind and both of those to just do a quick search for that, And we really do love to hear from you, so please drop us a note at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.

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