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Discovery

What’s the Tiniest Dinosaur?

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.31.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two small creatures are at the heart of today’s questions, sent in to [email protected]. The Tiniest Dinosaur "What is the tiniest dinosaur?" asks young listener Ellie Cook, aged 11. Our hunt takes us from the discovery of dinosaurs right up to the present day, which is being hailed as a 'golden age' for palaeontology. Currently, one new species of dinosaur is unearthed on average every single week. But what's the smallest dino? And what can size reveal about the life of extinct animals? Hannah Fry goes underground at the Natural History Museum in London to look through their vaults in search of the tiniest dinosaur with palaeontologist Susie Maidment. Meanwhile Adam Rutherford chats to dinosaur expert Steve Brusatte from Edinburgh University about why size really does matter, especially when it comes to fossils. The Baffled Bat "Why don't thousands of bats in a cave get confused? How do they differentiate their own location echoes from those of other bats?" This puzzling problem was sent in by Tim Beard from Hamburg in Germany. Since eco-location was first discovered, this question has perplexed biologists. Hannah turns bat detective to try and track down these elusive creatures at The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London. This is where zoologist Kate Jones from University College London is using a network of smart sensors to find, identify and track wild bats. Bat researcher and impressionist John Ratcliffe from Toronto University explains how bats use sonar to find their way around, and the clever tricks they’ve developed along the way. It's an unlikely tale involving gruesome early experiments, cunning electric fish and some surprising bat maths. (Image: Dinosaurs and a meteor falling from the sky in back background. Credit: ugurhan/Getty Images) Producer: Michelle Martin

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the BBC.

0:03.0

It's the fifth episode of the Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry

0:07.0

and the last in our current series,

0:09.0

the series where we try and take your everyday mysteries

0:12.0

and solve them using the power of science.

0:15.6

Yes and last week we covered the whole of time and space all of cosmology and the

0:21.2

universe and the speed of light and things like that and so this week we thought we'd go

0:24.1

entirely in the other direction and focus on two very small animals.

0:29.4

First of all we're going to be talking about dinosaurs which is obviously one of my

0:33.8

favorite subjects and then we're going to be talking about bats which is also one of my

0:38.9

favorite subjects you're quite happy about this entire thing, aren't you?

0:42.8

Absolutely delighted.

0:44.6

So first of all, let's deal with a grand and the epic but today's question is small and

1:00.6

perfectly formed.

1:01.6

Ellie Cook aged 11, what is the tiniest dinosaur?

1:06.1

Okay, so at first glance, this may seem like a bit of a sort of top Trump's question,

1:10.4

but it turns out that size is one of the very first things that

1:14.0

paleontologists try to work out when they find a new fossil and we are currently

1:17.5

living in a golden age of dinosaur discovery on average one new species of dinosaur is discovered every week.

1:25.0

That is right. And another thing that many people don't realize is just how incredibly successful

1:29.8

dinosaurs were in an evolutionary sense. It's something that really gets under the

1:34.1

skin of paleontologist Steve Brusati. It pains me every time you know I see on the

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