The T-Rex Files

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

T-Rex is having an identity crisis. Rocking the world of paleontology is the claim that Rex was not one species, but actually three. It’s not the first time that this particular dino has forced us to revise our understanding of the past. The discovery of the first T-Rex fossil in the 19th century taught humanity a scary lesson: species eventually go extinct. If it happened to this seemingly invincible apex predator, it could happen to us too. Hear how the amateur fossil hunter Barnum Brown’s discovery of T-Rex changed our understanding of ourselves, and the epilogue to the dinosaur era: how our mammalian relatives survived the potential extinction bottleneck of an asteroid impact. Guests: Thomas Carr - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of Biology, Carthage College Peter Makovicky - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of paleontology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota David Randall - Author of “The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T Rex and How It Shook Our World” Steve Brusatte - Personal Chair of Paleontology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh. Author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” and, most recently, “The Rise and Reign of The Mammals” Originally aired October 17, 2022 Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:04.2	I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Safeguarding Sound Science, Evolution Edition.
0:09.6	Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century
0:15.3	and a half after Charles Darwin.
0:17.7	Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators who are expanding our knowledge
0:23.0	and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics. Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound
0:29.3	Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you like to listen.
0:49.3	It's fair to say that children's fascination, if not obsession, with dinosaurs, begins when they first encounter the rows of fearsome teeth that line the jaw of a
0:53.8	tyrannosaurus rex. Similarly, the discovery of fearsome teeth that lined the jaw of a Tyrannosaurus rex.
0:55.9	Similarly, the discovery of the first T-Rex skeleton more than 100 years ago ignited public fascination with the beasts.
1:03.3	It also revealed a disquieting fact.
1:05.9	These strange bones weren't something out of mythology, that they were the remnants of species that once walked
1:12.4	this earth. And that's where the idea of dinosaurs is this revolutionary idea that the earth
1:17.9	has not always looked like it does now, really took hold. But surely mammals, which we are,
1:22.8	that made it through that extinction bottleneck 66 million years ago, Well, it won't go down a similar road.
1:28.6	We're here to stay, right?
1:30.5	I'm Seth Shostak, and this is Big Picture Science
1:33.6	from the SETI Institute.
1:35.3	I'm Molly Bentley.
1:36.2	In this episode, T-Rex dinosaurs
1:38.4	and the brutal truth of extinction.
1:41.4	We dive into the T-Rex files.
	...

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