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Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brainstuff, Lauren Boglebaum here.

Today, the late 1960s through the 70s are fondly remembered as the dinosaur renaissance. There was a sudden surge of

exciting new discourse about our favorite prehistoric beasts. The idea that birds descend from

dinosaurs, now a scientific consensus, gained new traction. At the same time, old beliefs

regarding dinosaur metabolic rates came into question.

Aware previously, our best scientific guess was that dinosaurs would have been big, cold-blooded lizards,

and therefore mostly slow and lethargic. During this time, we started to understand that some

might have been active hunters, and it was all thanks to one species

unearthed in Montana that also became the basis of Jurassic Parks velociraptors.

Today, let's talk about Diononicus.

Back in 1931, while exploring southern Montana, paleontologist Barnum Brown found the incomplete skeleton of a dinosaur

that would have measured some eight feet, that's two and a half meters, in length.

It was clearly a theropod, a member of the same group as allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.

This one had an agile build. Not only was it light-boned, but there were long, wiry extensions

on the tail vertebra. Brown guessed these stiffened the appendage as a whole, helping the tail

act as a better counterweight to the rest of the body. Though Brown planned to write a manuscript

about this intriguing new dinosaur, he was unable to finish

before his death in 1963. But in his later years, Brown showed the skeleton to a young researcher

named John Ostrom. August of 1964 found Ostrom hunting for early Cretaceous dinosaurs around

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