Ron: 0:15

hello everyone and welcome back to the uncannery. I am ron and I am joined here with my two good friends. Oh, I'm Don.

Doug: 0:26

I didn't forget.

Ron: 0:27

I'm Doug. It's Ron, don and Doug together. Again, thank you all for joining us. You could be anywhere in the world right now, but you are and you're listening to us, which is cool. I wanted to open up by asking you guys have you ever had, did you ever learn something that shook you to your core? Did you ever? Have you ever had? Did you ever learn something that shook you to your core? Did you ever? You grew up you thought the world operated one way and then at some point probably some rapscallion, real, low-life, quote-unquote scientist suddenly tells you that's wrong actually.

Doug: 0:59

That's not how the world works.

Ron: 1:01

You ever been incensed in this way or had your heart broken in this way? Specifically a scientist. I guess it doesn't need to be a scientist. Maybe it could be a quote-unquote teacher or a quote-unquote parent yeah, quote-unquote former lover, or a quote-unquote lawyer who is writing on behalf of that former lover. I don't.

Doug: 1:24

I was just thinking about some terrible junior high relationships, yeah, and those were some of the worst.

Ron: 1:35

Any instances of I guess what, maybe what we could call almost like Galileo moments, right? Where the whole world thought at one point we're the center of the universe. Right where the whole world thought at one point we're the center of the universe. And then some boring old italian guy has to show up and be like actually he has to push his glasses up his nose and then we kill him I can't recall a particular moment that I had like that, but I feel like I was often the deliverer of that news to others I am not surprised in the slightest, yeah, not surprised at all.

Doug: 2:04

What?

Ron: 2:04

about the big pluto controversy of 10 or 15 years ago. Did any of you have stakes in that or care at all?

Doug: 2:11

didn't necessarily have stakes, but it did remind me of how many things that you do take in and are subject to change. That loosey-goosiness that you need with you never know see how did it change?

Don: 2:22

pluto has been there our whole lives. It couldn't have changed it. Just it always was one thing or the other so it's a planet oh, no don hate to be the bearer and I remember I had one of these moments.

Ron: 2:38

I don't remember caring that much about the pluto thing, but I do remember in around in 2010, there was an article I read. It was a big popular article. Maybe you guys read this one too. Did you guys do? Where were you when you found out that Triceratops, the probably the most famous dinosaur bar Tyrannosaurus Rex, actually does not exist? Do you remember this?

Don: 3:01

None of the dinosaurs exist. They're all dead. None of the dinosaurs exist, they're all dead.

Ron: 3:09

Damn your dedication to the hard-coded meanings of words I do recall that I don't.

Don: 3:17

I never read the article, I think, I just dismissed it as nonsense. But I had the similar uh experience with brontosaurus oh yeah, yeah, brontosaurus was a long time before that, I think brontosaurus is back he is just recently yeah, yeah, the theory of the triceratops.

Ron: 3:30

Were you here, doug, do you?

Doug: 3:31

remember this. Can I just tell you that I never read that article and I'm still reeling a little bit, it's because walk us through.

Ron: 3:40

What are you feeling right now? Not good.

Doug: 3:42

Just poor feelings all around. I cannot believe that. Yeah, the young Jurassic Park watcher in me just fell a bit to the wayside. That is such a bummer.

Ron: 3:56

Everything you grew up believing turned out to be a lie, and the world's a little less magical for you now Very much Because dinosaurs are a magical part of childhood.

Doug: 4:05

I can't explain why.

Ron: 4:08

Yeah, I want to talk today a lot about dinosaurs. I want to talk about their magic nature.

Ron: 4:12

And I want to talk about why we feel the way we feel about dinosaurs as a sort of and I guess just like how we view the world and the way we've been taught to view it and, when that's challenged, why we feel the way we feel, through today's kind of case study, as it were.

Ron: 4:27

But going back to the Triceratops, I was being a little bit dramatic and so were the articles in 2010. Triceratops did exist, don, we're back, but there was a debate about whether or not to take it out of the sort of dinosaur taxonomy, whether or not to take it out of the sort of dinosaur taxonomy, because around 2010, a lot of paleontologists two in particular, jack horner, who's probably like one of the most, if you, if you've heard of a paleontologist, you've probably heard of jack horner, he's like the most famous paleontologist of the 20th century, probably um, and another guy who's less famous, his name is john scanella. They were looking at and they're like we sure have a lot of dinosaur species, but you know what we don't have? We don't have a lot of juvenile dinosaurs, right, anytime. Someone found a fossil, they made it a new species and they started thinking there's a problem with that methodology. We're probably finding dinosaurs in different stages of development and we're calling them new species.

Ron: 5:22

So they started going through and trying to pick out species that they thought probably weren't distinct species, and triceratops was one of them, because triceratops looks very similar to another ceratopsid dinosaur called taurosaurus, and taurosaurus and triceratops lived at the same time and they lived in the same geographical area of north america or prehistoric North America, and they thought, oh, taurosaurus just has a much larger frill than the Triceratops. Maybe Triceratops is an adolescent Taurosaurus.

Doug: 5:54

Okay.

Ron: 5:55

There is currently still debate about whether or not that is correct. There are scientists who ascribe to that theory. There are scientists who think they were still two distinct species. Either way, the scientific kind of news media ran with this in 2010 and all the articles were triceratops is dead. Kill your local scientist he was like pluto for dinosaur people, right?

Ron: 6:16

so, anyways, though it was all kind of overgrown or overblown, and whether or not you think triceratops was a juvenile version of some other dinosaur, he's still there. He was still there. You can still love triceratops the triceratops.

Doug: 6:30

Correct me if I'm wrong. Was that the first one that, like laura dern, went up?

Ron: 6:33

to put her hand on?

Doug: 6:35

yeah, I definitely whether. Tara. What was it? Taurosaurus, taurosaurus. Now we're getting into pokemon terms yeah, yeah taurosaurus that's a whole other thing right there, taurosaurus yeah, I definitely have a connection with that one, I think for that memory especially.

Ron: 6:51

Yeah, and in case you are a listener who is a complete rube and you don't know what a Triceratops is, it's a four-legged herbivorous dinosaur that has a giant frail on its head and three horns coming out of its face.

Don: 7:03

It does, yes I haven't heard this story with triceratops, but I have heard the story with tyrannosaurus.

Ron: 7:09

The same thing that that, that there's a possibility that some of smaller species were actually juvenile tyrannosaurus that that hadn't grown up yet, yeah, there's a lot of them like albertosaurus, I think, is maybe one of those or something like that albertosaurus oh, there's a you name a state in Canada and there's a dinosaur name. That's exciting, but that's not today's case study. I'm just saying this frequently happens.

Don: 7:31

So you just wanted to destroy Doug's dreams of trichotops? I?

Ron: 7:34

wanted us all to watch a man melt in podcast.

Doug: 7:39

Why do you like doing that so much to me specifically?

Ron: 7:43

But like this is something that happens frequently regarding scientific topics and issues. Right, because science is supposedly evolving, right it's our ideas and observations about the world are supposed to change as scientists receive new data and amend old theories and things like that. I want to do that again, but again, in the dinosaur realm we need to now, on a much larger scale than the Triceratops existing or not existing. We need to actually rethink everything we know about dinosaurs. Doug, I'm taking it, based on the fact that you didn't know Triceratops didn't exist in 2010, that you are not super up to date with paleontology. Is that correct?

Doug: 8:23

You are not super up to date with paleontology, is that correct? Let's call me a guy who really likes Jurassic Park, and maybe it's as far as it goes, but I really enjoy it Don?

Ron: 8:34

have you been a dino head for any part of your life, or do you like cruise enough scientific popular news outlets?

Don: 8:43

to keep up to date with this stuff the mr baldwin shout out to mr baldwin, my third grade teacher. We had a pretty intensive dinosaur unit back in the third grade so I I learned a bunch of stuff back then and I wouldn't say I stay on top of dinosaur news, but but every once in a while things pop up in my rather eclectic news feed that the algorithm hasn't figured out yet.

Ron: 9:05

Okay, so then, it wouldn't be shocking to any of you to learn that we now believe many dinosaurs were feathered.

Doug: 9:12

That is not shocking, that is shocking what I wasn't ready for that we're talking Barn Owl feathers.

Ron: 9:27

Yes, a spectrum of feathers, from fully feathered, like a barn owl, to proto feathered, like maybe having, I think, what they call filaments right, which would be like the spine of a feather without all the other kind of if you took a folks at home, you might be excited for this podcast, but, trust me, this is definitely the one I'm most excited for up to this point, because you're dropping, you start this off.

Doug: 9:50

You ever had your whole world changed and you're doing it constantly.

Ron: 9:54

We're gonna change doug's world as many times as possible tonight, do you know?

Don: 9:57

the closest living ancestor of a tyrannosaurus no wrong.

Ron: 10:03

Yeah, well, it's a chicken, it's a chicken. Yeah, I'm glad you said I'm a jurassic park guy, because a lot of this I think this is actually I'm also. I love jurassic park. If I would still probably say jurassic park is probably my favorite movie to watch if I want to have a fun time, that first jurassic park it's. It's a flawless film, I think for entertainment. But I think one of the reasons that film was so landmark was it was pushing a lot of, at the time, very progressive ideas about dinosaurs the whole. Dinosaurs are birds and dinosaurs can move and dinosaurs are hot.

Doug: 10:36

I don't know who does this Life finds a way.

Ron: 10:40

Yeah, a lot of that was like new science at the time and the portrayal of dinosaurs was very contradictory to how they've been portrayed for a long time before that.

Ron: 10:49

But we now know that a lot of dinosaurs we sign paleontologists now group dinosaurs into bird-like and non-bird-like dinosaurs, and so your bird-like dinosaurs are predominantly the ones that kind of birds resemble most. Today you're're walking on two feet theropod dinosaurs, which are your T-Rexes and your velociraptors and those kinds of things. Right, we now think almost all of those had some form of feathers by the time the dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period. Did you also know that dinosaurs couldn't walk on land? No, the idea that dinosaurs are too big to walk on land was proposed first I get not first, but it was re-proposed in 2012 by an english independent researcher named brian j ford yeah, not t ford, brian j ford and he published an article in Laboratory News that I think he titled Prehistoric Revolution and basically posited this theory that dinosaurs actually mechanically do not function the way we have previously thought, and that they had to be aquatic creatures because their bones and their musculature could not support their massive weight if they were strictly terrestrial creatures.

Doug: 12:08

So there's a lot more validity in Nessie being a real thing.

Ron: 12:12

He distinguished Nessie, which is, of course, the Loch Ness monster, which has for a long time been hypothesized to be some sort of living plesiosaur, right, which is not a dinosaur. The plesiosaurs are marine reptiles and dinosaurs are not reptiles. This is also part of the what we call the dinosaur renaissance of the 1970s right, where these guys were like everything about dinosaurs is wrong. Um, marine reptiles are plesiosaurs and dinosaurs are dinosaurs. They live on land. But what ford has now informed us is that? No, in fact, they were dinosaurs. They were not marine reptiles, but they didn't live on land because they simply couldn't. It just wouldn't work that way.

Doug: 12:52

I think this has become a study in the power of how much a film narrative will shape. It's embarrassing, lisa, how much it will shape your perspective, to say the least, because, yeah, this is all mind blowing information.

Don: 13:06

So let's play this out though. So pick a dinosaur, and how much did the dinosaur weigh? So do we want to play with a two-legged dinosaur or with a sauropod?

Ron: 13:16

Let's start with a sauropod. Right, the sauropods are the largest dinosaurs. They're your brachiosaurus, your brontosaurus, your apatosaurus, the big long-necked dudes, godzilla. Godzilla is not a sauropod, okay.

Don: 13:28

Marine reptile, I think For folks at home Radioactive marine reptile.

Doug: 13:31

I'm not that ridiculous with this, but it was a little bit tempting. I had to go for the low-hanging fruit.

Ron: 13:36

Ford said sauropods and theropods, almost all dinosaurs. I think he said all dinosaurs, your Tyrannosaurus rex and your brontosaurus. None of them could walk on land. But he predominantly uses the sauropods as his big example because they're the biggest, the largest dinosaurs that ever existed, the largest land animals that ever existed sorry aquatic animals that ever existed. The largest land animals that ever existed sorry aquatic animals that ever existed were these giant, long-necked sauropod dinosaurs. How much does one of those puppies weigh? Don, 70 tons.

Don: 14:04

It says 120 feet long, 70 tons okay.

Ron: 14:08

So yeah, imagine you're on four, which he ford points out when we look at the fossils of sauropod legs and feet very narrow, very small right. They have, yeah, very narrow, very small right. They have very narrow little feet. They're walking up on their toes or tiptoeing around.

Don: 14:23

How could they do that? That's 70 tons.

Ron: 14:26

Couldn't do it right, Couldn't? No, of course they couldn't do it. Blue whales.

Doug: 14:32

My favorite dinosaur.

Don: 14:33

Blue whales average 110 tons. Okay.

Doug: 14:36

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Don: 14:38

So we're talking an animal smaller than the current largest animal.

Ron: 14:42

But blue whales also.

Don: 14:44

Don't have legs, yes, so why would they have legs if they weren't going to walk on them?

Ron: 14:49

Exactly, they did walk on them, but they walked on them in the shallow seas of the Mesozoic era. Okay, walked on them in the shallow seas of the mesozoic era. Okay, because that's why we find their footprints predominantly in muddy shoals, because they were obviously walking on these shallow waterways so 70 tons will float, but it can't walk, according to mr ford before dr ford uh, I don't think he's a doctor.

Ron: 15:17

Mr ford, yeah, uh, mr ford um, who is also a television personality and has written many books, and you can also hire him to lecture you on your cruise we could have brought him on as a special guest we could have, yeah, we could have flown him out from the uk. He charges fees which I think might have been outside of our yearly budget, Just assuming Okay.

Don: 15:43

So first of all, I think we need to decide if this makes sense so it sounds like it makes sense to you, Doug which part they're floating 70 tons tons.

Doug: 15:59

Yeah, I'm thinking of the structure. Again, this is all Spielberg doing it for me. I'm thinking of the structure that I've seen up to this point and, yeah, it's not really making sense with how much, yeah, how top heavy that would be compared to the very small legs.

Ron: 16:10

Yeah, and when I tell you other things, like dinosaurs, massive tails were so huge that they would have been they would have required half of their metabolic energy just to keep them suspended in the air, and that they make much more sense as propulsion mechanisms through the water. And that many dinosaurs have very extended vertebrae fins on top of their vertebrae, and that would make sense if they actually had sails, much like marlins have sails, in order to help them navigate through the water. They actually had sails, much like marlins have sails, in order to help them navigate through the water. And then many dinosaurs are duck-billed and that would make sense for eating aquatic plants, much like modern-day waterfowl do.

Don: 16:44

And Tyrannosaurus has those little tiny arms which would make sense to hold on to a dinosaur life observer, so that way he could keep his head up.

Ron: 16:52

Ford addresses the arms, he says they're there to catch fish and to inspect them by pulling them up closer to the animal's face so that they can inspect the fish before they eat it.

Doug: 17:00

I can't even believe they get their arms close to their face, though those things are small.

Don: 17:04

Have you seen Toy Story? There's no way those arms. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. It's him.

Doug: 17:08

That's it. As long as you talk to me in films, I can figure all this out that's what I need. So, yeah, very by a believable uh, argument by mr ford though right, don you seem?

Ron: 17:23

skeptical, I'm skeptical. Why are you so skeptical, don? Why can't you just believe a scientist for once?

Don: 17:30

I'm skeptical because of mr ford's doubling down on his theory in 2019. So I don't know if you know about what happened in 2019.

Ron: 17:38

I don't think I know. Okay, I do know that he has doubled down on his argument, but go ahead and elucidate us all about what happened in 2019. So in 2019,.

Don: 17:47

He told the Sun, the newspaper, the British newspaper not the actual star in the sky that the reason the dinosaurs went extinct was not because of a comet or asteroid. That's right. It was because of the tectonic plates shifting and the dinosaurs would lose the shallow water in which they had sex. So it all comes back to dinosaur sex, because 70 tons wouldn't be able to complete the act without crushing the partner unless it was floating in water, according to mr ford. So when they sex lakes dry up, then no more little dinosaurs come and and and they're crushing each other. That's the theory is they had to have doug's face right now.

Ron: 18:30

It's like a man who's just found something very forbidden, but he's glad to have stumbled upon one.

Doug: 18:35

No, it's sad. His theory is they could only have had sex in water because otherwise they would crush each other, but I'm guessing the desire to procreate is greater and I'm imagining the crushing and it just makes me incredibly sad Just thinking of that's the way that they went.

Don: 18:54

I don't think they died from crushing injuries. I think they died from crushing injuries. I think they died from Sexual crushing injuries. What a terrible way to go.

Ron: 19:07

That's why all the dinosaurs are smiling in their face.

Don: 19:10

That's true, that's true. I hadn't thought of that. You can always see their teeth.

Ron: 19:15

Yeah, yes, don. What you're bringing up is that ford has several theories about dinosaurs that fly in the face of established paleontological science. Right, or you get it, but, don, how would you answer this claim that paleontologists actually are just slavishly devoted to a dogma that hasn't changed in decades and that really they're being incredibly hostile to new interpretations and theories of organisms that we have very scant evidence to back our knowledge of anyways?

Don: 19:54

Good for them of. Anyways, good for them. That's how I would respond, because it's got to be one of those sciences that does change slowly because the evidence and the record they're dealing with is so ancient. So the when you're talking about quantum computing or dna, like those things that we're learning about rapidly because it's present and we have samples to deal with that are current, but when you're digging in the mud to find something that's been buried for millions and millions of years, like, of course the evidence is going to come slowly and slowly. So I think it's one of those sciences that should be changing slowly.

Doug: 20:35

So, yeah, that's what I think all right and doug, you're here for whatever the paleontologists want to throw your way it's dangerous with me because I'm just having too much fun, and more because you're throwing so much stuff at me that I'm like just sitting with a funnel my mind is now a funnel of just fill me up with all the facts before I can even start to process okay, I think it's now time to reveal that dinosaurs almost assuredly did 100% did walk on land and that actually Brian Ford is a loser.

Don: 21:07

Allegedly, allegedly.

Doug: 21:10

Okay, yeah, I was having fun.

Ron: 21:11

I know I always say that and this is a big this was a big deal in 2012 for no one except a number of popular periodicals that thought this would be a really good.

Don: 21:24

This story will generate clicks and it'll grab eyes and it did the sun is known for its hard-cutting.

Ron: 21:31

When we got to there, and went oh yeah places like uh um, daily motion and fox news and sky news and all these kinds of more sensational news outlets really had a field day running this theory and publishing it with very few sort of dissenting opinions, just saying, hey, did you know? Actually dinosaurs couldn't walk. This was immediately received with a lot of actual dissent and evidence by the paleontological community that immediately in their separate kind of periodicals wrote to say this is all complete. This is just not true and probably the captain of that kind of dissent is a paleontologist who's another english paleontologist named darren nash and he's he's like the leading paleontologist right now. He's like the. He's the big guy at. Currently there's a. There's an apple tv show called prehistoric planet which is like his baby. It's like the new walking with dinosaurs. It's got richard attenborough and a bunch of cgi dinosaurs. We now know that this dinosaur could swim.

Ron: 22:30

He and a bunch of other people have addressed brian ford's kind of argument there. There have been debates hosted by universities in which Brian Ford has. When Brian Ford debates I've seen one of these on YouTube he goes up, he's got a slideshow and he says everyone's being a complete ass to me and he gets so incensed and acts like he's got this beautiful and dangerous view of paleontology and that the establishment is holding him back and won't let him change and that he's being attacked needlessly. And then he says that dinosaurs can't walk on land and he gives very poor evidence for this, and then the paleontologists lambast him and make fun of him and then it kind of fuels this cycle where then he can say see, look, they hate me, but it's like. It's like walking into a party and calling everyone a racial slur and then being like I told you they'd hate me.

Doug: 23:29

Absolutely Good analogy yeah.

Ron: 23:31

So, for instance, let's address some of the claims real quick. So like the idea that dinosaurs are too heavy to walk, that their bones just won't support that Most dinosaurs have very like hollow bones they have. They're predominantly air, like a lot of the sauropod bones-.

Don: 23:45

So they would float? Yeah, they would float.

Ron: 23:48

That is the theory that even if a sauropod was in the water, it wouldn't really be able to maneuver because it would float and its center of gravity.

Don: 24:02

Yes, they did it first the Jesusaur.

Ron: 24:06

Yeah, there is the lizard. There's the Jesus lizard.

Doug: 24:10

You guys ever seen the Jesus? It's got really long feet.

Ron: 24:13

It does walk on water, it runs across the water, anyway. But yeah, it's like up to 89% of dinosaur bones is air usually right. So they're very heavy right, but their bones are designed to reduce that weight as much as possible.

Ron: 24:28

Some bird bones are like that right yeah, exactly and this is something people have known about dinosaurs forever his big. He goes on and on about the tail. The tail is too big, it's a waste of metabolic energy. But, like the paleontologists say, like dinosaurs have giant hip bones right and they have interlocking vertebrae and they have. They have muscles. Much like dinosaurs have giant hip bones right and they have interlocking vertebrae and they have. They have muscles, much like we have muscles in our neck that can hold up a lot of weight but they're non-tiring right right like they don't actually expend that much energy.

Ron: 24:54

They're just designed in such a way to spend things without actually having to use all that much metabolic energy. Sure, and so this has all been proven for like 100 years now. Almost like this is like bizarre to go back and make. And then also, dinosaur tails aren't shaped like the tails of an animal that would move through the water are right, water tails are very vertical rather than like horizontal. Dinosaur tails can be very round and whip, like it's not gonna generate that much force. Right, he picks on one dinosaur in particular. Doug, did you watch jurassic park 3?

Doug: 25:26

I did. I probably have the least memories of that one yeah, it's not, it's like the worst one it's not the one to remember is that the one where that they go to attack san diego, or is that two?

Ron: 25:35

that's, that's two jurassic park yeah in jurassic park 3, they bring a new bad, mean dinosaur yeah to kill the t-rex and it's spinosaurus. Yeah, it has a big giant frill on its back.

Doug: 25:46

I just remember unbelievably long scenes of. I want to say that they were like rope, bridges and fog, and that was what they were really selling is like he could be anywhere and I watched it in the front of the theater and just was craning my neck like trying to see where is the sucker, where, where is he?

Ron: 26:05

The Spinosaurus is a real dinosaur. It lived in Egypt and at the time of Jurassic Park 3, it was basically portrayed as like a big T-Rex.

Ron: 26:12

that just had a frill on its back and like a crocodile face. We've changed our view of the Spinosaurus a lot based on new fossil evidence in the last 15 years and we now think it was like had really short legs, it mostly, it was mostly aquatic. It had a really long kind of crocodilian tail and it had a big sail and then it lived in marshes and mostly swam through the water. And then this is the dinosaur. That that Ford takes is like his poster dinosaurs. See, I told them the Spinosaurus swam and look now they all say it swims and so they were saying it swam before you were. He's piggybacking off of actual research that real paleontologists have done. Also important to note Ford has no history, no paleontological background. He does have degrees in like botany and zoology and he's predominantly like a microscope guy. He's like very important in the microscope community. He says everyone should have a microscope in their house, the same way they have a tv, which I guess is cool.

Don: 27:08

Yeah I don't you ever like actually look at a microscope and you're like I don't want to know what's living in my house at the microscopic level.

Ron: 27:14

I think I'm happy imagining that it's not I used to teach science to elementary school kids and we had a couple really nice microscopes and every year I'd put some slides in there and the kids would be like, oh, I can't wait to see this flea under this microscope. And then they'd see it and be like, oh, it's a bug. Yeah.

Don: 27:29

Yeah, it's not that cool Blood is, though Blood is very.

Doug: 27:34

I would show them blood.

Ron: 27:35

They didn't care about blood, there's just circles, yeah, yeah.

Doug: 27:38

But the fresh check it out Wow.

Ron: 27:41

It's all squirming around. Yeah, these are like yeah, maybe I need it to stab myself in class and be like check it out.

Doug: 27:48

Smear the lens of a microscope. You do that. They're not focused on the microscope, they're like this is already a spectacle.

Ron: 27:55

Yeah, they now just have trauma. My science teacher stabbed himself in front of me once. So, anyways, this is like just a number of things that he says. He focuses on duck bill dinosaurs, but it's like the shape of the bill. It looks like a duck if you're looking at it from above, but if you looked at it like from the side, it's clearly hooked so as to assist with grazing. We find terrestrial plants and dinosaur stomachs all the time. There's just it sounds cool, right? I could tell you hey, did you know? You were wrong? Actually, dinosaurs are really heavy, bro. How could they walk on land? Right? And you could be like, yeah, you're right, I've never thought about it Because you haven't right. Who would think about it? Most of the time, if someone tells us something and we say there's a scientist who said it, we're inclined to believe them. Right, because again, they have a position of authority. We are schmucks. What do we know? Okay, we're still.

Ron: 28:49

We're so wrapped up talking with the lawyer of our former lover that we don't have time to actually piece these things together and it's like this kind of went further than a lot of paleontologists would have liked it to have. In fact, when I was trying to get back into dinosaurs a few years ago, I was like I need to go find a dinosaur book, I need to read what's up with dinosaurs now? And the first book I saw at like Barnes and Noble, with its cover turned outward so that you could see it, was Brian Ford's book, which was called Too Big to Walk and it just has a picture of a dinosaur with like water up to his chest and I was like what?

Doug: 29:27

Is that?

Ron: 29:27

what we think now. And I was smart and I went online. I was like, is this real? And then I saw all the paleontologists being like no, this is a terrible book. This is not backed up by any science. But if I didn't know that I could have just bought that book?

Don: 29:40

How do you know those paleontologists were telling the truth?

Ron: 29:49

And they're not just part of the paleontology deep state. Trying to keep the truth from you, because paleontology does change all the time.

Doug: 29:53

Actually, paleontology is always evolving. The feather thing is real right.

Ron: 29:54

And god, you said something I've been wondering the whole time we've found yes, the other thing you can believe in, because we found fossils and they got feathers and they have filaments and they have these pores, large holes in their skin where feathers would have gone, and so, like, these kinds of new discoveries do happen and they do change and even our understanding of dinosaurs, like in the 20th century, changed a lot from our understanding of them. Brontosaurus in the swamp right he's sitting there submerged in the lake, he's eating the moss. And the dinosaurs at the disneyland train, all that kind of swampy where their tails are like laying on the ground and being dragged behind them because they're too heavy.

Ron: 30:36

All that stuff changed in the 20th century and then ford's kind of being like no, actually that was right, but it's yeah, but we have science, we have like computer models and we have physics and we have microscopes to check the density of bones, like all that evidence has been done, all these people have put in that work. So that's why Don.

Doug: 30:58

I do like thinking about the paleontological, paleontology deep state. That's very funny to think about.

Ron: 31:05

And that's the other thing, which is, this is a safe topic to say that kind of stuff, because, you're right, paleontology doesn't matter, right it's wow man, we just alienated our whole paleontology following. Sorry guys, I'm sorry, I love you guys keep digging in the mud but unlike that you brought up what were you talking about earlier?

Ron: 31:24

algorithms or ai or quantum mechanics yeah unlike those things which, like, do have a lot of immediate people are putting money into those because they're going to be what churns out the next wave of technological advancements. Right, both commercially and militarily and whatnot. Dinosaurs aren't right, it just doesn't.

Ron: 31:42

It doesn't matter, but it is always fascinating because people love dinosaurs, right it'll always sell a newsweek magazine, but it doesn't have a lot of I don't know, am I wrong? It doesn't have a lot of real bearing on how people behave or act or change or sure things like that I've never been moved by a dinosaur.

Don: 32:02

That's true. Yeah, to change my behavior, but does mr ford? How is it just him? Was he just like solo, going out on stage saying they all hate me? Or does he have a following?

Ron: 32:13

to the best of my knowledge, he has no following. This is and I think this is part of what I find so interesting about this is because and a lot of his of his Darren Nash points out in an article that, like the mere fact that Brian Ford is alone is what sells the story, is what makes the story. It's a story of one man defying, you know, expectation, defying a structure, defying a deep state right, we love that kind of underdog story. He's the one man railing against truth. It creates a Galileo framework. That we're all we've been taught to some degree, right. Sometimes the establishment is really bad and dumb and you need someone with a big telescope to figure out what the world is really right, and I think that's why it got picked up and ran with right and because it also who who stands to benefit whenever some of these like paradigm shifting theories get made, darren nash well, the so apple tv plus I think it's not.

Ron: 33:16

Darren nash represents the. He's the establishment, he's the machine they got to keep churning out new stuff to keep the relevancy of dinosaurs at the surface of modern consciousness but if you look at like dinosaur articles that get published by like real scientists, it's usually like they found a new dinosaur and there's maybe an artist sketch and it looks like the other dinosaurs.

Ron: 33:37

There's not that much new. Like the feather thing I think was the last really big thing there's also. I think a couple years ago they figured out the color of a dinosaur's feathers they were actually able to like based on the size of the skin cells or whatever cells create the structure.

Ron: 33:54

It was red, right, yeah the sinusoropteryx I think it was just this dinosaur with the big red raccoon-like tail. It had rings of like red and white right and so, based on a single discovery like that, then like that reshapes how we view dinosaurs, instead of being like brown and green now they can be any color right, yeah, it could be like really vibrant and cool but, like a story like that comes along very rarely.

Ron: 34:18

Rest of the time it's like hey, they found another half of a skull of a something that my sandra said yeah, so is that why, like this, seems like a safe scandal?

Doug: 34:29

if that makes sense.

Don: 34:30

Yeah, I agree brian ford can pitch what he's pitching and someone can believe it for a minute or not, or until, dare nature, his cronies come along and say it's not. But at the end of the day, like whether or not you believe that Patasaurus was swimming or walking like you say, it doesn't change what I'm doing tomorrow at work. It doesn't change what I'm having for dinner. It doesn't change the politics of our nation. This one man is standing against an establishment and the one man has been proven wrong over and over again. But everyone who follows that one man wants to believe him so badly that they don't care that the evidence says one thing or the other. How, that sounds like a familiar story to me where it's not as simple as just one crazy guy. He's harmless.

Ron: 35:23

Yeah, I agree, and I think that's why I think it's fun to see enough.

Ron: 35:27

it's interesting because you find this kind of archetype of a figure even in something as inconsequential as paleontology right and I think there's always been con men and people who set themselves up as anti-establishment or contrarian for their own personal benefit and the benefit of the publishers who will publish them and make a book off of their crazy theory and whatnot like that. But it is definitely something I think we see more of now and it is inconsequential when it occurs in the field of paleontology and it's obviously much more consequential when it takes place in national politics or even universities, right.

Ron: 36:02

You always have some sort of a celebrity professor who's not really someone who should probably be listened to, but he sure does bring attention to the university and things like that.

Don: 36:12

I'm sure the scandal is consequential to those in paleontology. I'm sure it's just not consequential to those of us who are not in paleontology. No, no.

Ron: 36:23

And I'm sure an actual paleontologist would be like no, actually, this is really dangerous because I think dinosaurs are so interesting culturally and Doug and I, we consider dinosaurs magical. Were dinosaurs ever magical for you as a kid, Don? Were you ever a dinosaur kid? No, or were you just always a Shakespeare kid?

Don: 36:43

No, I remember making my dinosaur diorama for my third grade class. That hung on the wall but but no, I wouldn't say they were magical, they were just cool, yeah.

Ron: 36:53

But I feel like dinosaurs frequently get dragged into I don't know for lack of a better word like culture wars, right, cause I remember when I was a kid, dinosaurs were under attack again, right, and it was very much. The creation museum was opening up in Alabama or Missouri or wherever that was, and it was like, oh, the dinosaurs either didn't exist or they did, but they were with people and there was again. People wanted to attach a certain ideology to dinosaurs and dinosaurs were key to that. Right, dinosaurs were key to either drawing people's attention to those theories, or wrestling with dinosaurs was key to disproving counter claims against their theories, or whatever it was, I don't know. Dinosaurs always wind up in this kind of weird space and I think it is actually a little bit important what people think and believe about dinosaurs, because I think it's almost like the canary in the coal mine what people are willing to believe about dinosaurs, right. Then what else are they going to believe about Extrapolates?

Don: 37:46

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was at a natural history museum in Lubbock, texas, of all places, at Texas Tech, and they have some dinosaur fossils on display and, quite literally, there was a family just ahead of me, walked into that room and turned around and left and tried to explain to their like probably seven, eight years old that we're not going in there because that's all just nonsense and and just the complete rejection of paleontology as a science, right, or that dinosaurs even existed ever. So I didn't, I didn't ask questions, I don't know what the actual issue was, and a lot of that is conjecture on my part, but I was just struck by that's not something that would have happened where I grew up. Right, I was not in a place that was home to me and I was a stranger in a strange land, and that was a behavior that was new. Was the? No? This can't be true. Because, yeah, because the Bible doesn't say that there are dinosaurs. Yeah, yeah.

Doug: 38:43

Because the Bible doesn't say that there are dinosaurs. Yeah, speaking of Jurassic, have either of you heard of the Museum of Jurassic Technology? Yeah, that's in Culver City, right Venice Boulevard.

Ron: 38:55

Yeah, yeah.

Doug: 38:59

I used to live very close to it and I think I never visited it. This is jumping ahead a bit.

Ron: 39:14

It would be interesting to do a little connection on. Maybe we take a trip there and have an interesting podcast talking about it. Ironically, almost nothing about dinosaurs there, but just putting a pin in that.

Doug: 39:19

Can you summarize the sort of project of that museum real quick? I will just say that it almost is.

Doug: 39:21

You'll be debating whether actually, if it is an actual museum or not, I can at least tell you that I'm sorry, I'm derailing us a bit no, but I do think there's a connection, right, because eventually, yeah, there's a little bit, because it talks about what the jurassic period is in general, and the reason I was thinking of that is because, yeah, this person basically created this institution, uh, based on misfounding on what we think is Jurassic, and it is that important that there's an entire place that's dedicated to this. That is almost a portal into another world and, yeah, there seems to be something in our brains and maybe this is everything that is ancient Jurassic that we don't have. I guess we're not in touch with, necessarily. That seems so ancient, but yeah, yeah, I think it's.

Ron: 40:09

I have no easy answer to why people love dinosaurs and, like you said, don, because it is such a slow moving field, relatively, because the evidence is so scant and it's scattered all over the world and it's frequently we have to make massive conclusions off of scrutinizing the same kind of pieces of bones over and over again. I think it's just part of they're just cool. Like it's cool. You, we love fantasy, we love monsters, we love beowulf and the green knight and all this stuff, and we have like evidence that something like that kind of happened actually once. There once was the world was once covered in big old lizards. Isn't that crazy?

Ron: 40:52

and in fact, you wouldn't be wrong for assuming the world was more of a dinosaur world than a human world, based on just the sheer time frame that they spent on it. Right, the dinosaurs were the main characters. Actually, we were like this fun addendum. There's something like always going to be thrilling and fascinating about that, whether you're a kid or an adult and it's the gateway for kids to science and to history and to literature, like dinosaurs fit a lot of those keyholes.

Doug: 41:20

Yeah, exactly exactly what is your favorite dinosaur literature? That's the one, because all I'm thinking is film again and cartoon. Land before time is just Jurassic Park. What do we have?

Don: 41:34

before time has a really important civil rights message um sure does, and the sequels are garbage, dinosaur property like it would be that, or jurassic park sound of thunder by bradbury? There's not. But I think what ron is saying it's the idea that it's this monstrous creature, and monsters pervade literature and that's very much so, in human form and in monstrous form, and that's yeah. That taps into the imagination of a kid. It's why we say them in the third grade. It makes science and history cool in the third grade because you get to learn about monsters.

Doug: 42:14

And I think I remember being fascinated as a kid with the idea of I instantly attributed, and again, probably Jurassic Park doing its business. But there are ones that are benevolent and eat plants, there are very scary ones that could eat you, and again, the Jurassic Park doing its business. But there are ones that are benevolent and eat plants. There are very scary ones that could eat you, and again, the monsters in the closet are the ones that can protect you. I thought about them that way. So, yeah, they're incredible.

Ron: 42:34

Yeah, that's dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are under attack. Folks, grab your pitchfork, grab your wife. It's time to move to high ground. But also, they're fine, they're doing fine. This is one attempt for what? I'm sure this has worked actually very well for ford. People know his name now and he sold books and sure, apparently, he's making a movie. So about his experiences and we'll have to revisit once the film comes out. Yeah, maybe we can do.

Don: 42:59

Uh, we can watch or a mystery science theater, yeah.

Doug: 43:05

All right everyone.

Ron: 43:08

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, don, thank you Doug, thank you, thank you, and we will see you next time in no other place than the uncannery.

Doug: 43:34

Thank you.