Dinosaur discoveries and a Berlin Wall treehouse

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear about a prehistoric discovery in India - a nest full of dinosaur eggs found in 1982. Plus, why a Mongolian dinosaur skeleton became the centre of a 2012 court battle in a case known as United States V One Tyrannosaurus Bataar.

Our guest, palaeobiologist Neil Gostling reveals how newly-uncovered dinosaurs are named, and tells us which fossilised beast was the first to be christened.

José Mujica recounts his journey from young revolutionary in the 1960s and 70s to becoming Uruguay's president in 2009. Plus, we learn more about the deaf children in Nicaragua who invented their own sign language. And find out why a treehouse built beside the Berlin Wall during the Cold War became a symbol of resistance.

Contributors: Professor Ashok Sahni - palaeontologist Associate Professor Neil Gostling - palaeobiologist Dr Bolortsetseg Minjin - paleontologist José Mujica - former president of Uruguay Professor Judy Shepard-Kegl - linguist Mehmet Kahlin – son of Osman Kahlin

(Photo: Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton, 2016. Credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Hannah, and I'm very excited to be hosting What in the World, a new daily
0:05.5	podcast from the BBC World Service, where we try to help you make sense of the world
0:10.6	around you, of the big things that are happening, the small things that are happening and everything in between.
0:16.0	Just search for what in the world wherever you get your BBC podcasts and hit subscribe. subscribe. Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:32.4	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:35.2	This week a young revolutionary who survived prison to become Uruguay's president.
0:39.7	There was a lot of torture related to long periods of standing up.
0:46.0	I had my hands tied with wire behind my back for six months.
0:51.2	We've got deaf children who invented a new language in Nicaragua,
0:54.6	plus a tree house beside the Berlin Wall that became a symbol of resistance.
0:58.9	They started the question, why is this Mandar right next to the wall planting a garden?
1:04.0	Does he have clandestine plants about this place?
1:07.0	He was in a potentially dangerous station.
1:10.0	And how a dinosaur won a court case in the US.
1:14.0	And first, we're going to begin with a dino story.
1:17.0	In 1982, nests of dinosaur eggs were identified for the first time in India. The eggs were from titanesors
1:25.3	and were found on a historic fossil site by an Indian paleontologist who's been
1:29.7	speaking to Laura Jones. So this is actually the rock in Jabalpur where the first dinosaur
1:38.6	eggshells were recorded. Straight away I didn't recognize them for what they were, but then suddenly I was able to see that there were a number of rounded structures in a block of stone it occurred to me that these have to be
1:56.0	dinosaur eggs. The joy of discovery is just for that. So you don't forget that easily and you like to share it.
2:09.5	Born in Calcutta, India in 1941, Ashak-Sani moved around a lot. But one thing was consistent, and that was
2:17.7	being surrounded by a family of fossil enthusiasts. His grandfather, uncle and father, were all working in paleontology.
	...

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