Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska with History Dispatches
I Know Dino: The Big Dinosaur Podcast
I KNOW DINO, LLC
4.7 • 653 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska was a Polish scientist and the first woman to lead a dinosaur excavation expedition. On her explorations of the Gobi Desert, she discovered many famous animals, including Deinocheirus—a dinosaur that, for decades, was known only by its enormous, terrifying arms & claws. But when we finally found the rest of its body, it turned out to look more like Jar Jar Binks. This is the story of Zofia, and the dinosaur that surprised us all - as told originally aired on the History Dispatches podcast with Matt and McKinley Breen.
History Dispatches Podcast: https://historydispatches.com/
The Explorers Podcast: https://explorerspodcast.com/
History Dispatches & Explorers Podcast are part of the Airwave Media Network: www.airwavemedia.com
I Know Dino Website: https://iknowdino.com
I Know Dino Book: https://books.disney.com/book/i-know-dino/
Sources:
https://archive.org/details/inpursuitofearly0000kiel/page/n5/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/huntingfordinosa00kiel
https://iknowdino.com/deinocheirus-episode-527/
https://www.nature.com/articles/520158a
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.16203
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13874
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13930
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to I Know Dino. I'm Garrett. And I'm Sabrina. And today we've got a special episode. A bonus episode. A feed drop, one might say, from a podcast we really like called history dispatches. |
| 0:22.5 | Sabrina has been meeting with Matt, who's one of the co-hosts, for many years discussing |
| 0:26.7 | different aspects of podcasting. |
| 0:29.8 | He is another podcast called The Explorer's podcast, which has been going for a long time. |
| 0:34.5 | It is a history podcast, as you might be able to guess from history dispatches. |
| 0:39.7 | And it's kind of funny because if you think about it, our show is basically a history podcast. |
| 0:45.1 | A prehistory. |
| 0:46.3 | It is. |
| 0:47.2 | And there's a lot of history in other ways with our podcast because we talk about the history of science and the history of these dinosaur discoveries. |
| 0:54.3 | So in addition to science, I think the next category is probably history. And I know you always have a lot in |
| 0:59.5 | common with these history podcasters when you're talking to them. But recently Matt started a new |
| 1:04.4 | podcast, the History Dispatches podcast with his son. And I feel like the father's son element has a lot in common with our |
| 1:11.9 | husband, wife, family dynamic. So if you like our show, you'll probably like theirs. |
| 1:17.9 | For this episode, we talked all about Zofia, who is one of the all-time greatest paleontologists. |
| 1:24.2 | Her stories are inspiring and fascinating. And she was a bona fide explorer. |
| 1:29.4 | So she is a great topic for their podcast as well as ours because a lot of those discoveries were dinosaurs. |
| 1:36.4 | Yes. And you may have heard this episode before because it did drop on history dispatches a while back, but we had so much fun chatting with Matt |
| 1:46.2 | and McKinley that we wanted to put it on our own feed. Yeah. So we hope you enjoy. We might be |
| 1:52.1 | popping in very briefly for introducing an ad break, but otherwise, here is history dispatches. |
| 1:59.9 | World War II and the Cold War were not an easy time or place for a person to be interested in dinosaurs. |
| 2:05.6 | It was even more daunting for a woman, but that did not stop Sophia Kielan Yavarowska, |
| 2:11.6 | who would go on to be the first woman to ever lead a dinosaur excavation. |
... |
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