Nick Longrich on discovering new dinosaurs from overlooked bones

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We are fascinated by dinosaurs. From blockbuster hits to bestselling video games, skeleton exhibitions to cuddly plushies, the creatures that once roamed the planet have fully captured our imagination, giving us a portal to a completely alternative Earth. And it’s likely new species are still out there, waiting to be found...

Dr Nick Longrich is a palaeontologist and senior lecturer at the University of Bath, and he studies the dinosaur bones that many have overlooked. By rummaging through the back rooms of museums, he finds traces of never-before-described dinosaurs and goes on the hunt for other specimens to confirm or deny his hunch. Through these adventures, he’s discovered over a dozen new species, painting a more detailed picture of our prehistoric world.

Nick is also fascinated by rare ‘one in a million year’ events – like asteroid collisions or mega volcanic eruptions – and investigates how the event that wiped out the dinosaurs created the world we live in today. From an Island off the coast of Alaska, Jim Al-Khalili discovers how Nicks early immersion in nature has trained his brain to spot the subtle differences in the world around us that many would overlook.

Produced by Julia Ravey.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.4	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable
0:14.3	experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC
0:20.4	makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	BBC Sounds.
0:38.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts.
0:41.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast edition of The Life Scientific.
0:44.3	I'm Jim Alkalele and this is the show where I get to talk with some of the world's leading
0:48.2	scientists and you get to find out what drives them.
0:51.6	So sit back, get comfortable and enjoy the episode.
0:54.4	Hello, do you think you could spot a dinosaur bone if you found one lying around?
0:59.4	From washed up remains on beach shorelines to eroded cliff faces and even some building sites in the
1:04.8	middle of towns and cities, the remains of prehistoric creatures that once roam the earth might
1:09.5	sometimes be right under our noses.
1:12.2	My guest today has fine-tuned his fossil hunting
1:14.9	abilities to not only detect prehistoric bones among rocks but to spot the
1:19.4	tiniest anomalies in them which can indicate that a specimen has come from a never before described
1:24.7	dinosaur.
1:25.7	Nick Longridge is able to see the extraordinary in what many perceive as ordinary, and through
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.