Bone of Contention
Kerning Cultures
Kerning Cultures Network
4.9 • 529 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2023
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2014, the palaeontologist Nizar Ibrahim went public with an astonishing discovery he’d made while studying a set of dinosaur bones from the Moroccan Sahara. But almost immediately, it caused a rift amongst his colleagues – forcing them to question everything they’d ever known about their work.
This is the strange and chaotic story of Nizar’s discovery – how it upended everything we know about dinosaurs – and the unlikely, devastating saga behind humankind’s pursuit of the truth about the Spinosaurus.
This episode was produced by Alex Atack and edited by Dana Ballout. Fact checking was by Deena Sabry and sound design by Youssef Douazou. Our team also includes Nadeen Shaker, Zeina Dowidar and Finbar Anderson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to be a street. |
| 0:03.8 | Old and it's predictable. |
| 0:04.6 | They've seen it happen. |
| 0:05.4 | And one story that always kind of captures my imagination. |
| 0:08.3 | It's fair. |
| 0:09.3 | The street's lost culture. |
| 0:13.4 | And you're listening to Kearning Cultures. |
| 0:19.4 | I'm Dana Balutz and this is Kernan Cultures. |
| 0:22.3 | Our story today is something of a mystery. |
| 0:24.8 | It's about a dinosaur called Spinosaurus. |
| 0:27.7 | Random, I know, but producer Alex A-Tag will explain. |
| 0:33.6 | So it starts with not long ago I went to meet this paleontologist called Nizar Ibrahim at his office. |
| 0:40.9 | So he's half Moroccan, half German. |
| 0:43.4 | He grew up in Germany, but he spent much of his like professional life working in Morocco. |
| 0:49.1 | He was wearing like a worn leather jacket and boots. |
| 0:52.3 | Like he'd come just straight from a dig site. |
| 0:54.2 | Oh yeah, you can see one here. |
| 0:56.0 | Oh wow. |
| 0:57.0 | And as we were walking upstairs, he was like pointing things out in his office. |
| 1:02.0 | He was walking me through these like alleyways of tall wooden archive drawers. |
| 1:07.0 | Snake skeletons and dinosaur bones and this is a marine reptile. |
| 1:11.1 | Basically, again, it looks sort of like how a sort of Hollywood director would imagine a paleontologist's office to look, |
... |
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