This is a transcript of Episode 47.
Travis (00:24)
Hey Alyssa, I have some good news.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:26)
Good news? What’s that?
Travis (00:28)
Yeah.
The good news is that I think we have a whole bunch of new listeners who we should say welcome to because our last episode with Mark Whitten is the highest rated episode or the most listens that we’ve so far gotten on Fossil & Fiction. So it’s shot right to the top, which means there is a whole bunch of new listeners coming in. So hi everybody.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:49)
Thanks for listening. I’m so happy you’re here. We’ve got more Mark coming up for you in this episode and some awesome interviews lined up for the next couple of episodes.
Travis (00:57)
Absolutely, and I believe you are going to do your best to stump me on some fossils. Is that right?
Alyssa Fjeld (01:04)
I’ve been talking with some of my lab mates recently about their frustrations with the world of partial and fragmentary fossils. And I’m taking it out on you by introducing you to the fantastic world of paleontology that’s done with incredibly partial material. I’m gonna show you some pieces of that partial material and you’re gonna do your best to guess which animal this even came from.
Travis (01:24)
Entirely fair, entirely fair. But let’s start with our Paleo Pulse, our news for the week where we look at a recent paper in paleontology. This one is by Haridy et al. And it is ‘The origin of vertebrate teeth and evolution of sensory exoskeletons’. I know you’re very excited about this paper.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:44)
I’m I’m frustrated, I many feelings about this paper. ⁓ This was a little bit like how everyone was so excited for the return of Walking with Dinosaurs. It’s a series from their childhood that they have very fond memories of that really taught them something new that’s coming back in a new and bigger way. And for me, guess, you know, like…
Travis (01:47)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (02:05)
Empire, the thing I’m always thinking about is outside teeth. So for those of you who are not super familiar with the evolutionary history of teeth, I have horrible news for you. And it starts with this book that I’ve held upside down. This is Your Inner Fish by Neal Shubin. When I was going through my undergraduate degree in the 2010s, so you know, a hundred years ago for the young people.
I remember this being required reading for us and it is a book that talks about the evolutionary history that leads to our current day hominid lineage and talks about some of the different anatomical features and leftovers and where these things have come from. And one of the most fascinating chapters is about teeth. Neil Shubin in this book and in many other scientific publications has postulated that teeth began as an external sort of protection for animals to have, which is
usually something that’s kind of backed up by fossil evidence from slightly later in life history. theodonts and astracoderms are a group of animals that evolved first in the Ordovician and lasted through to the Devonian.
And these are animals that were making external ornament with something called denticles. And as Neil Shubin writes in his original work, this is identical in makeup to the teeth we have in our mouth. So these are outside components that have dentine and enamel, all of these characteristic tooth compartments, tooth components. And this is evidence that comes in kind of late in the game when we think about evolutionary history.
The question that most people who study vertebrates and notochords and other animals within that classification want to ask is what’s happening during the Cambrian? Is there evidence that teeth have an earlier origin? And if so, does it support this outside in hypothesis? There’s lots of other evidence that we could look at supporting that either way. Things like the fact that our teeth are sensitive to things like hot and cold doesn’t make a lot of sense for something that just chews, but makes lots of sense if it’s on the outside.
Travis (03:49)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (03:53)
And this is the first publication to come out, and it’s come out in nature, which means it’s quite a big deal. It’s a very strong argument saying that, yes, we do see evidence of early tooth-like structures, teeth-like structures, and bone-like structures in these early animals evolving during the Cambrian period.
what we’re looking at here is evidence of this fragmentary fossil of an animal called Anatolepis heintzi which I’m hoping is the correct pronunciation. And it’s looking at exoskeletal tissue that seems to resemble dentine. So dentine is one of the layers in your tooth. The other is enamel. The enamel is the outside part that you typically wear down and that your dentist gets mad at you about. And the dentine is the stuff underneath that, is between the enamel and the pulp.
in our teeth. And when we look at animals later in this lineage that are better understood, we can see both dentin and enamel. What this paper is suggesting is that by looking at the surface of what they found, so these little tiny, I don’t think they call them sclerites, but the tiny fossils that they, tubules, yes. So they’re looking at the tubules and they are doing both and like,
Travis (04:51)
tubules
Alyssa Fjeld (04:58)
microscopic examination of the surface as well as this kind of scanning and analysis. I don’t think it’s elemental analysis that they’re doing, but it’s a CT scanning. Yeah. And then comparing it to different species of better known arthropods and other animals saying, well, it doesn’t have the characteristic structures of an arthropods exoskeleton. It doesn’t look like it’s made of that kind of material or built in that way. It doesn’t look like
later material in different lineages that we would recognize as belonging to those groups. So it’s likely to be dentine because we’ve ruled a lot of other things out.
think it’s an interesting argument.
I think figure five is presenting some interesting evidence for the kind of surface patterns you would expect between these different groups. It’s comparing what’s called an agnathan or an early jawless fish that we know had those denticles, those outside teeth and two different types of arthropods. So looking at an early trilobite relative and a crab and showing the differences in the way that the venation
and microstructures within these exoskeletons look. And it’s saying, well, what we have out of these categories is most similar to what we would see in the later denticles on an agnathin. And I think that’s a pretty strong argument. I think that’s pretty well done.
Travis (06:12)
So what do we take away from this paper? What does it contribute to the discussion on the origin of, I guess, dentine?
Alyssa Fjeld (06:19)
Well, think, I mean, the thing that I’m very fond of saying that I might have to stop saying is that we don’t have any bone in the Cambrian because it makes it very simple for people to understand what we’re doing. And it’s an easy way to envision the invertebrate assemblages that are dominant during this period. But now what we have is this piece of evidence saying that the origin for this important structure that defines vertebrates and our lineage in particular is showing up way earlier than we thought.
and it’s suggesting that this inside, or sorry, outside in speculation about the origin of teeth is most likely correct because what we’re seeing is the external surface developing this protodentene structure. And if it’s on the outside when it’s first showing up in our lineage, then that’s a pretty definitive clue that that’s where teeth get their start.
Travis (07:07)
Okay, so that’s really exciting. mean, life on earth would be very different if we didn’t have teeth, I guess. And you know, the equivalent feature in birds and whatnot, which is obviously beaks and things like that. yeah, life would be really different if we didn’t have teeth. So it’s important to figure out where it got started.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:25)
And teeth were some of the first ever bones. So, you know, pretty important to have bones in general. We wouldn’t like being flopsy little hominids. That would be gross.
Travis (07:33)
It would be quite strange. Okay. So we will link to that paper led by Yara Haridy. ‘The origin of vertebrate teeth and evolution of sensory exoskeletons’ in the show notes. Now we are going to turn to part two of our interview with Mark Witton This interview you conducted superbly in my absence. And it was all about Mark’s wonderful book.
King Tyrant, which is being released here in Australia in August, but is already out in other parts of the world is beautifully illustrated. he also got into his thoughts on science communication, his general career, his work in paleo art. It’s a fascinating interview. had to hold half of it over for this episode. So here it is.
Alyssa Fjeld (08:18)
guess one of the questions that I had about kind of the commercialisation of dinosaurs and the propagation of certain ideas about dinosaurs, the question that’s been on a lot of people’s minds would be how the rise of AI has impacted these different
areas of paleo media and paleo research, because we are seeing, I think, an influx of AI art that is being used for things like publications, but also public talks, promotions. What is your feeling about the way that AI is being used in palaeoart and paleo science communication currently?
Mark Witton (08:49)
I mean, I don’t think my view will be too different from that of most people, which is when you see AI artwork being used for, I hesitate to call it AI artwork. We’ll stick with that because it’s the accepted term, not necessarily because it’s descriptive of what it actually is. When people are using sort of AI imagery in press releases, it frequently looks nothing like the animal it’s meant to be because AI has yet to learn to do prehistoric animals.
Alyssa Fjeld (09:03)
Mm.
Mark Witton (09:13)
well, which in one respect is good for palaeo artists like myself, because it means that people are going to still need to employ us, but only if they care about what they’re actually doing. And this is, think what we’re seeing with AI in general is that in many cases, people just really don’t care. And it is just about making content and shoving out. I mean, when you look at AI pictures of dinosaurs, it’s clear that they’re
Alyssa Fjeld (09:22)
Mm.
Mark Witton (09:39)
Everything is Jurassic Park inspired. So that kind of blocky headed T. rex that the Jurassic Park has used for, for, um, you know, 25 years or how long it is now, um, that, um, no, 30 years even, isn’t it? Um, that, that, that look, you know, the, kind of the hooded eye, et cetera, it’s all over AI artwork and it doesn’t matter what it’s doing. It doesn’t matter what dinosaur is doing or what prehistoric animal is doing. It takes that look from, from, from that design.
in Jurassic Park and puts it everywhere. And yeah, obviously as someone who cares about what the accuracy of what we’re doing in science communication and in our artwork, I can’t see this as good thing at all. I suppose related to question is, do I think that AI is out for my job? And in some cases it may be
we know that there are book publishers, we know there are media outlets who just really don’t care about getting accurate pictures of prehistoric animals. So yeah, for things like licensing images, which is one way that the artists make our living, you we create an image and then a book company will say, hey, can we put that in our book? And we’ll say, yes, and it’s this much money to do so. You know, things like that might start to be be curbed by AI imagery.
So yeah, you know, there are those kinds of problems. don’t think AI is going to take over, you know, when a museum or a university says, we’ve got a cool new dinosaur, can you, or a cool new prehistoric animal, can you draw it for us? I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere, but yeah, it is going to be nibbling at the edges of our industry, of our discipline. And of course the thing is, is that saying that
A lot of AI imagery of prehistoric animals is, is at the minute, it’s pretty wobbly. Over time, it might only get better. I was reading something at the weekend about AI actually starting to eat itself now because there’s so much AI content out there that is now just starting to recycle its own, you know, its own content. So, so maybe it won’t, who knows if it will get better or not, but certainly the trajectory so far has been of one of, you know, of, of improvement. So who knows what we’ll be in in five, 10 years time with when it comes to.
restoring extinct animals. yeah, it’s definitely something that I like, you any sort of creative person, I’ve got my eye on and, you know, have that question in the back of my head going, is this actually a useful thing that we’re doing with AI or is it something which is just, you know, going to ruin our creative industries?
Alyssa Fjeld (11:54)
Yeah, I mean, I think my big concern with AI art is that there is no, there’s no one at the helm making decisions about the balance of creativity versus authenticity or accuracy. Whereas anytime you have a human artist, they are making small decisions every time they draw something and often very large decisions, as you’ve pointed out with some of the behaviour about how an animal should be posed, what its musculature should be like.
And these are decisions that the AI simply is not making. It is generating images based on other images. And if you have this profligation of, as you say, depictions of T. rex that are a little bit behind the science, you’re not necessarily going to get accurate images of T. rex no matter what you do, because that’s what the AI is using as a basis. And I guess the moral here is please support your local palaeo artists and your museums and
public institutions because they are of course trying their best to support actual artists and actual scientists who are interested in this research. But my question is, do you have any recommendations for pieces of science communication? Of course, King Tyrant, everybody should absolutely check that out. It’s a gorgeously illustrated book with a ton of cool facts, but I’m wondering if there are any other recommendations that you’d have for pieces of science communication or documentaries that you think
Our viewers would especially enjoy checking out if realistic depictions of dinosaurs and other animals are up their alley.
Mark Witton (13:13)
gosh, that’s a good question. I I think your sentiment about supporting real people, think at the minute is that is a very valid one. And I think there’s so many of us who are approaching things like palaeoart with real genuine interest in doing this correctly. I think whoever you like as an artist, whoever you like as an author,
you know, support them. That would be my main thing is actually if you can support them even in a very small way, that would be great. Because as we’ve alluded to, as we alluded to with research around extinct organisms, the palaeoart community itself is also not big. We’ve mentioned how specialized it is. And, you know, it is one of these things where there’s lots of us trying to do this.
and, you know, in many cases, the, the, the, the ability for us to sustain ourselves, you know, from a financial perspective, we’re all normal people. We’ve all got to keep a roof over our head. We’ve got bills to pay. you know, all the normal sort of stuff that you have, to, to make your way through life. We have to do all that as well. and yeah, if you can support people, then that’s, that’s really useful. There are a whole heap of palaeo artists on Patreon.
which is a subscription-based website for anyone who hasn’t heard of it. It’s a website you can sign up to people’s feeds and you give them as much or as little money as you want every month. It’ll be like a dollar in some cases and you’ll get access to their like an exclusive feed that isn’t available to non-subscribers. And so Patreon’s a really good way of supporting palaeo artists. And you can find, as I say, many of your favorite artists on there, including myself.
In terms of documentaries, where should people go to see the best, most realistic takes on extinct life? We’ve really been spoiled for documentaries recently. We’ve had things like Prehistoric Planet, we’ve had Life on our Planet, Walking with Dinosaurs has just come back. And there’s lots of specials, like David Attenborough specials, this sort of thing. So there’s tons and tons and tons of this stuff. If you’re gonna watch one of them, I would have to say Prehistoric Planet.
Um, because I think that’s, it, it, it, took that original walking with dinosaurs spirit. Um, and it, and it’s just done it a much bigger scale. And obviously the, the, the visuals are amazing. You know, it’s the sort of program you can watch and you can forget that you’re watching CGI. You can kind of forget you’ll forget watching CGI dinosaurs rather than actual creatures. Um, so yeah, series one of two on that it’s on, uh, I think it’s still only available on.
Apple TV plus, but it’s definitely worth subscribing for a month and watching the whole lot. And yeah, it’s such an amazing show. remember going to watch it in, because I got invited to the premiere on an IMAX screen. And yeah, just seeing, seeing that the detail on the animals on this enormous screen in front of me, I was sat quite close to the front too. So was like everything was enormous. And yeah, just seeing the amount of detail that was put into that world.
Uh, it was amazing. And it was particularly emotional for me because the, the designs for the pterosaurs are so close to what I, you know, what I, what I, uh, concepted for them. And so actually seeing people really take the, the colour schemes, the proportions, everything that I’d done and, and, and hold that as this is what they’re going to look like. Um, you don’t always get that as a, you know, as someone involved in one of these documentaries, as the paleontologist, the concept artist.
We’re early phase documentary development. Then the program grows through all sorts of production and editing and things get changed. And people will say, we don’t, that thing we had designed, that’s no longer going to be suitable. So the thing that comes out the other end is often really different to what you put in, in the early phase. So to see the prehistoric planet took the designs of not only myself, but from other people working on the program as well. And it kind of held them up as going, no, this is
This is what the paleontologist is what the palaeo artists are telling us to do. And this is what we’re going to do. And then seeing that on the big screen is like, Oh, wow. Someone actually had faith in, know, in, my abilities and the artist and my, my abilities as a researcher. And it was, you know, it’s a little bit emotional actually seeing that enormous scale on this, this big IMAX screen.
Alyssa Fjeld (17:12)
That must have been incredible. Gosh, I don’t know what I would do if somebody took a piece of any art that I’d created and done something that powerful with it. That must have been just incredibly moving.
Mark Witton (17:23)
When you think of how many people, to build a CGI asset, it has to go through people who do the digital sculpting. There’s people who simulate, if you’re looking at a hairy or a fuzzy animal of any kind, like a pterosaur, a dinosaur with proto feathers, et cetera. You’ve got people doing simulations on all of those bits of hair. You’ve got people doing the colour schemes. You’ve got people going in like a fine,
adding all the fine detail, et cetera. Every single level of that, think people can start to change this. People can start to vary what, you know, the original design. So to have that many people look at it and then also have all these, the executives, you know, watching it and going, I don’t know, we’ve got yellow on the beak. Let’s make it red. It’s like none of that was happening. So to actually see those come through, those like authentic original designs.
Um, yeah, it was really awesome. It was, it was nice to actually feel that it’s rare to feel that you’ve been paid attention to as a, as a consultant. Um, this is something that, that I think is often, often lost on people when a documentary comes out and people say, no, that wasn’t so great. And, and, and they sometimes say, why is the science so bad? And it’s very often, you know, the paleontologist say that you have to understand, we told them, we told them all this stuff. What they then do with it is up to them.
and, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of, you know, a we could talk about this. People need to remember that these are at the end of the day, entertainment. They’re not, you know, they’re, not a school lesson that have been done to a, an agreed curriculum, about what, what, what science they have to show and what species they have to feature, et cetera. so that this is because it’s entertainment, people feel that you can have a lot of liberty with the science. And that’s, you know, as far as we’re concerned, as scientists, we kind of wish they wouldn’t do that, but.
There’s all of these kind of different cogs in the machine, if you like. So yeah, it was really, and this is why I would stand up and say Prehistoric Planet was really good. It’s because it felt that we as consultants and artists were really being listened to and that they were doing their best to bring that to the final product.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:22)
I mean, yeah, it must have been how many hours of rendering and blending and doing all of these different things to rig the pterosaurs in that way. ⁓
Mark Witton (19:30)
Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. And for every animal as well, even something that, I mean, pterosaurs are particularly complicated to put into a documentary or into a feature film because they’ve got like stretchy membranes and things. And it’s really only in recent years that we’ve managed to get things like the membranes working properly. I remember doing pterosaur consultancy, you know, even, you know, sort of 10, 15 years ago and the moment the pterosaur would land.
the membranes would just go slack and that they would sort of be billowing about like a, like a set of curtains. And of course what they should be doing is they should be like shrinking up with some elasticity. And so it’s only in recent documentaries that that ability has become, know, sorry, only in recent documentaries that we’ve seen the technology really be able to render that properly. And all the other weirdness about terrors as well, like how their arms fold up is nothing is straightforward. Nothing’s intuitive. But
So something like a T. rex or a sauropod, as far as I’m concerned, that’s like easy compared to what you’re doing with a pterosaur. But, you know, saying that a T. rex is easy to do is, you know, it’s obviously not true at all. Every one of these assets has that same level of detail put into it in Prehistoric Planet. it’s, yeah, could talk about how good that show is, you know, for another hour.
Alyssa Fjeld (20:38)
But it sounds like one of the decisions that is getting made behind the scenes between the consultants and then the production team is how, I don’t know how to phrase this, how familiar the movements of the animal might need to look to an audience for them to kind of buy in versus what anatomically this animal was like, because I’m not totally sure, but I don’t think there are many modern analogs to animals like pterosaurs or T. rex that would move in the way that these animals would move.
Mark Witton (21:03)
Yeah. So this is, this is a challenge about general believability. and, yeah, you know, the interesting thing is when you have an animal like a pterosaur, it’s, we think we have data on how they move from things like footprints. you know, for getting a pterosaur walking, where you can say to an animator as well, here’s a set of trackways. You need to make sure that everything, you know, the foot goes down in the right place, the hand goes down the right place. And that will get you so far, but even then you still have to kind of refine it and make sure it all works.
And the interesting thing is that we can look at an animal like a pterosaur, which no one has ever seen. But you can tell when there’s something wrong with how it’s moving. You can tell when the step cycle is incorrect. it’s something that as consultants, it’s your job to be able to articulate what’s wrong with something. But as a general viewer, you might look at it and you may not, your conscious brain may not be going, look, the.
you know, that the hind limbs aren’t taking a long enough stride or you may not have that level of thought about it, but you will still recognize that something isn’t quite right. And that’s a big challenge for us. When we’re trying to animate pterosaurs and we’re looking at animals the size of small planes and saying, how much should it be flapping? We can base a lot of it on science and make predictions from that.
But there is also an element of just what looks right. And it’s trying to find that balance. And I think it’s easier for some animals than others. mean, for theropods and, know, bipedal dinosaurs, we’ve got birds to look at. And although the motion is not identical with things like the angle of the femur, birds give us a lot of really good insight into how they will be moving. For giant things like sauropods, you know, we can look at elephants and…
to a lesser extent rhinos and hippos to give us some insight. So yeah, it’s not necessarily the same challenge for everything, but it is trying to find that level of believability because we, even if you can look at an elephant for sauropod locomotion, what do you do with the neck? How much of the neck swaying do you have around? Do you have the neck doing this like a bird? For listens at home, I’m bobbing my hand like a pigeon when it walks.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:50)
Yeah.
Mark Witton (22:58)
Yeah, there’s all these kinds of questions and yeah, it’s about finding that sort of that sweet spot between, if we’re talking about a sweet spot, obviously all the science has to be taken into account. Once you’ve done all that, it’s then about, okay, how do we make that look real?
Alyssa Fjeld (23:10)
with Triceratops horn, what we have is the horn core and not necessarily the sheath that would have covered the remainder of the horn.
And there are so many different guesses as to what that keratin sheath would have looked like, the curvature of it. What is your opinion about the accuracy of being able to depict these different anatomical features that we maybe have a little bit less concrete evidence for? And how would you go about making those kinds of artistic choices and picking out how to represent something like a triceratops horn?
Mark Witton (23:36)
I’ve actually written about this in books and I also have a blog post if you want to specifically on triceratops horn shape. So if you want to know my detailed thoughts on this, then just Google Mark Witton triceratops horns and you’re gonna find out probably more words than you ever want to read on this. So the thing, as you say, the problem with horn sheaths is that they don’t preserve. the horn sheath of, we need to specify here,
we’re talking about sort of bovid style horns, because there’s lots of different ways to have horns on an animal. But we’re talking here specifically about those that have a bone core and then the, the cornified sheath over the top. like the, the, the densely keratinized skin that makes the, horn covering. Despite being really tough in life, those, those sheets are very rarely preserved. And we do get them.
sometimes, but not for things. I think there’s, there is meant to be a bit for triceratops, but I think it’s, I think the key word is bit, you know, we’re not talking about like the nice long horn or anything. And so how do we go about estimating the size of them, the, the shape of them, the shape and the size? Obviously the first thing to remember is that those horn, the horn sheets can be much, much longer than the underlying horn by something like a third. They can be way, way bigger. And that applies to anything with a horn sheath.
So like a claw as well. think we’re all familiar with the idea that if you find a particularly ferocious looking claw on, let’s say like a dromaeosaur you can then extend that even further in life with the claw sheath over it. So we know that they’re going to be much longer. What about shape? The thing to remember is that the extensions of horn sheaths are actually just the older bits of horn, so that the cornified sheath that grew initially,
just gets pushed off because it grows from the bone to horn interface is where the horn sheath grows from. So it’s always pushing that off. So when you look at something like a cow or a goat and you’ve got those long horns or spiraling horns, the tip of the horn is the oldest bit. So that has been there for, in some cases, for many years. And what that suggests to us is that if the horn has changed shape throughout life,
then the older part of the horn might reflect that shape. So in the case of triceratops, the ontogeny of that animal suggests that the horns go from being upward curved as juveniles, and then in later life, they flick forward. So if they retain the old part of the sheath, and that is then kind of shoved forward to become the extension of the horn throughout growth, then you would expect the upward curve
of the juvenile horn to be preserved at the end of the sheath. This is a slightly convoluted way of explaining it. I’ve written about this many times and it is always a little bit difficult to explain, but yeah, the older part of the horn should retain some of that juvenile upturn if that’s what the horn was like in a juvenile animal. So that is a hypothesis. It could be tested if we could find the…
complete horns of something like a triceratops. Yeah, it’s interesting. essentially what I’m arguing is that if we are to make predictions about the shapes of horns and extinct animals, we need to consider the ontogeny of the horn core and that will give us something to base it on. And we should be considering the, particularly for the extension of the horn, we need to be considering the shape of the horn core in juveniles.
The other side of this is that obviously horns can also get worn down. some, so there are some animals actually wear their horns down. Specifically it’s called, it’s called a brooming behaviour. so goats will actually blunt their horns so they don’t have a pointy bit at the end. have these sort of just these blocky stumpy ends to their horns. So of course we can’t rule out extinct animals doing that sort of thing as well. It’s difficult, but I think that there may be ways of doing it more accurately than we have done.
in the past, and that’s by considering ontogeny.
Alyssa Fjeld (27:09)
And this is for all, so triceratops horridus is the triceratops that comes to most people’s minds when we think about the animal triceratops. But of course, this was a larger group of animals like the ceratopsians. Do you think all ceratopsians behaved in this way or do you think this was something that might have been exclusive horn growth behaviour just to the triceratops?
Mark Witton (27:26)
So anything, the way these horns grow with the cornified sheath over the bony core, they all grow in the same way. So anytime you have a horn that changes its shape, so centrosaurus is another good example. So centrosaurus, some of those horns curve backwards, like they’re a curved in young specimens, then they might go straight for a bit, then they might curve forward. There’s a lot of variation in centrosaurus horn shape. Anything that’s got a horn that’s sort of
waggles about a bit as it grows, you might potentially start getting weird curves in it that you weren’t expecting from the, you know, from, from like a single specimen. So the thing to remember is that if you’ve got a centrosaurus and it’s got a horn that is straight upright, that the horn sheath at the end isn’t just going to be an extension. It’s not just a snapshot, if you like an exaggerated version of that, of that horn in that growth stage. It is going to also factor in
and earlier ontogenetic stage. And that’s what’s making the extension at the end. yeah, and any, so this would also apply to things like stegosaur plates, stegosaur spikes, the spikes at the end of the tail, anything that grows in this way is influenced by this. And you can see it today in cattle. there are, you know, there are, are cows that will have incredibly long horns, but at the end they’ll have little curves. And that’s because as juveniles, they have the curved horns and as the horns have grown and the extensions have grown,
they have kept the curved tips of juveniles, even as the horn core, the bony part of it straightens out. So there’s ample evidence of this today. We just don’t always factor into our artwork.
Alyssa Fjeld (28:52)
That’s really interesting. For those of you who are listening along at home, if you look up Mark’s blog post about this topic, you can see lot of illustrations that will help make all of these points a lot clearer. You can also look up pictures of cow ontogeny or cow growth and get a couple of ideas as well. But I think the really key point that I’m taking away from a lot of what you’re saying is that one of the biggest considerations that we should be making when we’re talking about the depiction of any
prehistoric animal is to take into account how that animal has grown into adulthood and when possible, informing that depiction by the juvenile stages that we do have evidence for. Would that be correct?
Mark Witton (29:27)
Yeah, certainly for long, for tissues that hang around for a long time, like horn sheaths yeah, you definitely have to factor in that, you know, that the, can’t just look at a fossil and go, that’s, that’s exactly, you know, that’s like the snapshot of what the animal looked like. It’s like, no, no, there is some stuff which is carried over for years, not all the time, but certainly sometimes. And the other, I mean, the other side of this is that when you have an animal with lots of ornamentation on it or armour
you have to, if you want to draw a juvenile of that species, we have the adult, you have to remember that those things are also going to be present in the juvenile. So things like little, little bits of armour on the face of tyrannosaurs for instance, they are probably present in the juveniles as well. But we only start to see evidence for them in adults because that’s where the, the, the skin gets so gnarly that it starts to make impressions on the bone and give us the evidence for it. But it’s probably there in juveniles as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (30:15)
Right, and it’s obvious that they wouldn’t come out with all of the adult ornamentation because if you could imagine a toddler wearing a full suit of armour, it wouldn’t get very far. It would probably topple over from the weight. So it’s important, I think, as well to keep in mind that a lot of these animals would have had these features. But as you’re saying, they might have slightly different proportions to their limbs or their heads or that these features might be smaller in the juveniles. But I certainly think it’s a lot cuter. I’m sorry.
Mark Witton (30:39)
Really. Yeah,
just to speak to your point about armour. mean, that’s really fascinating because we have, we have juvenile armoured dinosaurs, which don’t have any bony armour on them. ⁓ so they’re, they almost certainly have the scales in the same position that the adults would have had the armour, but there’s no bony armour on them. so this is a case of if you are drawing, you want to draw a baby ankylosaurus.
Alyssa Fjeld (30:51)
Wow.
Mark Witton (31:04)
you don’t put bony armour on it, but you need to put the scales on it in the same position, because that’s what we would expect based on, on living animals. it’s like, you haven’t developed the osteoderms yet, doesn’t mean to say you don’t have the area where they’re going to develop. it’s a, yeah, I mean, this goes back to what we saying about, you know, T. rex and how varied that animal is, is that the, this is actually quite complicated and you can’t just take an adult.
yeah, and, adult individual of the fossil species and just make like the plush toy version of it, like the, the chubby cheeky little version. you know, they’re, they’re, they’re often, more different from the adults than, than we might assume. And I think that’s particularly so because, in, in, in fossil reptiles, because of course the way that they’re, that their whole parenting structure is just very different to what we do with mammals. You know, the, the hatchling dinosaurs are probably far more independent. So they have to be.
more like, you know, not exactly miniature versions of the adults in the sense of their proportions, but they have to be sort of fully functional animals that can feed themselves and walk and run and things from the moment they hatch. They’re not necessarily going to be the, you know, the helpless things that we are as juveniles or the baby, modern baby birds are. Yeah. So there’s a, it’s all about learning. It’s all about appreciating that the
Ancient worlds aren’t necessarily constructed in the same way that our modern worlds are, and that has ramifications for how everything looks.
Alyssa Fjeld (32:17)
Right, and it’s, think in some cases also very difficult as paleontologists to create what we would call an ontogenetic series where you move from the juvenile form to the adult form, especially when you don’t necessarily have the fossils in the same location or there is a lot of morphological variation. For example, there are some trace fossils that we can’t associate with the animal that made them because we simply don’t have enough evidence.
We have quite a few young people who are just getting started as palaeo artists. And the question that they seem to have that comes up for them a lot is this, what can I do to best prepare myself to have a career in this? How can I improve? What are some recommendations that you might have for them for getting started in their careers?
Mark Witton (32:58)
gosh. It’s
a difficult one because you as we said, you know, I got going in this field 20 years ago and I’m sure it’s a very different world today because the internet is a very different place. I think the internet is vital for a modern palaeoart career. If you’re not online, you don’t exist, but that’s basically it. So definitely the most important thing to do is if you want to be involved in palaeoart, and particularly if you want to do it professionally,
you have to start putting your things online. And that can be a little bit daunting, you know, but I would say that, you in my experience, the online palaeoart community is quite nice. You know, there’s lots of friendly people out there and, you know, as with anything online, you do get the awkward person, but just block them and forget about them. Don’t dwell on them. Don’t argue with them. Just like…
curate your own timeline and get rid of troublemakers. So definitely get online. The other thing I would strongly recommend to people is to read everything you can. Because one thing that really makes palaeoart stand out is when people do something different. If you’re just drawing the same picture that people have a thousand times already, it might get you so far, but it’s not gonna make people stop and go, ooh. The thing to remember is that the amount of time most people look at an image.
when they’re scrolling through their feed is like a couple of seconds. So if you want people to really stop and pay attention and go, wow, who drew that? You need to have something different. And so my tactic for that is to really put a lot of emphasis on research and to really think about what I’m drawing and try and come up with things that people have never drawn before. And I would encourage other people to do the same thing. And that’s not to say that there’s not other, know, tons of other important stuff where…
Uh, you know, we’re, we’re about, about developing your craft. And if you’re a digital artist, one thing I didn’t do that I should have done much earlier is really invest in good, um, in good art equipment, you know, as a digital art, digital artist, um, make sure that you’re using good software, that you’ve got a decent graphics tablet. You don’t have to spend much money on this stuff, but you certainly should, you know, a bit of investment goes a long way. Um, and that, that of course applies for any, whatever medium you’re using.
So yeah, all the normal stuff about being an artist, get lots of practice in, be open to constructive criticism, and all that stuff as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (35:14)
That’s really positive. And yeah, I think it’s just great to see so much development in the community, in the palaeoart community, especially, but just in general, at least in Australia, it seems like a really good time for up and coming early career researchers to be getting involved. And we would love to see more artists in that space. I think that
You know, being able to develop your skills as an artist and a communicator, even as a researcher is so vital, especially in the age when we all have to be advocates for ourselves in the online world. So my advice to anyone who’s not an artist is to rethink that and maybe have a second listen to Mark’s advice there. But Mark, thank you so much for joining us today and for coming on the show. And to all of our listeners at home, I hope that you guys will check out King Tyrant and give Mark a follow.
Where can our listeners find your art and support you? Do you have a Patreon name that they can look up?
Mark Witton (36:04)
so looking me up online is just, just look up my name and, yeah, everything’s under that. So there’s no sort of, you know, handle or anything, just, just Mark Witton, Mark Witton, Paleo Art, Mark Witton dinosaurs will get you to where you need to be. so yeah, I’m on, on Patreon. I’m also on, in terms of my, my social media, sites I’m on, most active on, on Blue Sky. have a Facebook page as well. and, and,
Yeah, do some things on Instagram, but yeah, Blue Sky is probably the best place to look me up and you don’t, you can see it all on there as well without an account or anything. So that’s a good place to go.
Alyssa Fjeld (36:35)
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time and we hope that our listeners enjoy your interview. Thank you so much.
Mark Witton (36:41)
Well, thanks very much for having me. It’s been a lot of fun.
Alyssa Fjeld (36:45)
Well welcome back guys, thank you so much for sticking around for Mark’s interview. Huge thank you to Mark and also if you are going to be attending this year’s Society for Vertebrate Paleontology conference in the UK, be sure to check out Mark’s panel on the history of paleo art. There’s going to be some absolutely incredible guests helping him out, including the Friends of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs who could really use your help. Those dinosaurs are not in great shape at present and all donations can help.
Travis (37:11)
Yeah, they definitely need some work, but they are amazing and fantastic pieces of important cultural heritage.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:19)
Speaking of things that are maybe a little bit in need of some love and care, let’s turn to the wonderful world of fragmentary fossils.
Travis (37:27)
Okay. So here is where Alyssa tries to really stump me.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:27)
So, in this game…
In this game, we’ll be looking at fossils that are known from only one or two fragments or whose holotypes were described based on only one fragment, even if later evidence has come to light. Holotyping, by the way, huge deal. Holotypes are the reference point from which new taxonomic categories get made. Usually this refers to like new species or genera, but it can lead up the chain to higher taxonomic classifications, which means that the fossil material has to have distinct diagnostic features.
Travis (37:41)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:57)
It also means that anything you later discover that you think might be part of the same animal has to get compared against it. Which is really exciting if you’ve just unearthed the Lord’s chunkiest, most complete big boy dinosaur, because you have lots of bits to compare, or like a frozen mammoth, but it’s not great when you only have one bone that you hope will be diagnostic. So to illustrate some of the limits that we can run across in the fossil record, because obviously we do not often find
the Lord’s Chunkiest Most Complete Big Boy Dinosaur. We often just find animals like this. So I’m just gonna quickly pull up an image for you and I would like you to see if you can guess which animal this is from. I’m gonna give you a little bit of a clue as well.
Tell me what you think this might be. This is a fragment of an animal that is associated with a group of dinosaurs that are typically considered predatory. It is also considered part of the lineage that we would call para-avian. So related to the group of dinosaurs that would later become bird. Do you want any further clues or do you want to start guessing?
Travis (39:04)
Okay, well, so to describe the image, you have given me an image of a fossil, which is curved thicker at one end with two protrusions at that end. There looks to be a channel running down the length of the fossil from the end to towards the tip, I guess. It’s kind of, I guess, banana shaped and
We have a view of the left side, the right side, the top and the bottom is what I can, what I can see.
Alyssa Fjeld (39:40)
Yes, so
this photograph is part of the research paper describing the species of late Cretaceous animal found in southern France. Would you like to guess what kind of dinosaur this is?
Travis (39:53)
I don’t know what the bone is, but I think it’s a baryonyx.
Alyssa Fjeld (39:57)
All right. It’s close. It’s a close guess. Do you want to try another guess? It starts with P.
Travis (40:04)
Okay, well…
P. Well, let me see if I can, let me see if I can figure out what the bone, the bone actually is. Now, for those who don’t know, I have done a little bit of, a little bit of study in addition to being a kind of enthusiast for the field, but perhaps not at this level of detail. I think that this bone is a toe bone.
Alyssa Fjeld (40:33)
It is, it is the second toe claw of the left foot.
Travis (40:37)
⁓ right. So I’m not, I’m not that far wrong. And you did say predatory. then I figured it had to be a theraPod and then baryonyx is from that kind of part of Europe. So that’s where I got the baryonyx from, but I’m really stalling here. Cause I cannot think of one that starts with a P and I’m going to be ⁓ embarrassed when you tell me what it is.
Alyssa Fjeld (40:41)
Pretty good.
So this animal is known as Pyroraptor.
Travis (41:01)
Pyroraptor which of course was in Jurassic World Dominion as in that bright flame colored feathering and downy downy kind of coat. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay. So, so that’s the holotype of pyroraptor right? Just the toe.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:18)
Yeah.
So Pyroraptor, which means fire thief, is ⁓ known as, this is known as Pyroraptor Olympius. It’s the only species within the group. And the holotype from which all other material has been referred to in order to confirm whether or not it’s part of this genera or this species is a single second toe claw.
Travis (41:22)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:39)
So we have since been able to confirm more bits of this animal based on other bits that we found in similar deposits in the same area or even very close to where the initial claw was found. The difficulty as always with theropod dinosaurs and partial material is that these comparisons between the new bits that we find are being referred back to one single diagnostic bit
that is different from the other bits we’ve just found, ⁓ which from what Jake tells me is an incredibly frustrating experience and very common in theropod dinosaur studies.
Travis (42:07)
Mmm.
This is an interesting part of what happens in paleontology though, because sometimes we do diagnose or stand up species based on very small amounts of information. so members of the public then, you know, rightly ask, well, how do we know what it was actually like? And I guess the comparison there is, you know, in this case, while we don’t didn’t have anything of that species previously,
There are a lot of Dromaeosaur. I’m assuming it’s a Dromaeosaur. There are a lot of Dromaeosaur. ⁓ Unenlagiid Dromaeosaur. Yeah. We’ve talked about the Ununlaggids with Jake previously. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a Dromaeosaur. And we have a lot of those from around the world. And so generally you can say, well, this is what a Dromaeosaur toe bone looks like. It’s.
Alyssa Fjeld (42:40)
Yes, yes, it’s an Unenlagiid
Travis (43:00)
found in a new part of the world, perhaps at a new time. And so therefore it’s unlikely to be one of the pre-existing species and it doesn’t look exactly like one of the pre-existing species, but it still fits within the group. So here it is. Is that how you would agree with things?
Alyssa Fjeld (43:15)
Yes, so my understanding of how it works with dinosaur necromancers like Jake is that you have very diagnostic pieces of dinosaur and if you have one of those very diagnostic pieces you are then able to compare it and make a lot of conclusions based on that. And some of the most diagnostic bits are the bits that are very specialized to certain tasks. So obviously any part of the dinosaur skull
is gonna be relatively diagnostic compared to like, you know, a finger bone that is isolated. And a claw or a tooth are both two very specialized areas of the dinosaur body that are gonna tell you a lot about how this dinosaur was eating, what it was eating, and how it relates to other dinosaurs. So when we have claws, like we do here in Australia with lightning claw, it can be super helpful and super diagnostic, but other times we might only find like a femur, which is very frustrating.
Travis (44:06)
Hmm, but in the case of lightning claw my understanding is that has never been assigned to a species as of yet
Alyssa Fjeld (44:13)
As of yet, hopefully Jake will be able to do more Dinosaur Necromancy and give us more leads on Lightning Claw. That’s my hope at least.
Travis (44:20)
And the Jake we’re referring to, I’ve just realized we haven’t used his full name is Jake Kotevsky, who is studying at Monash University, one of Australia’s leading theropod experts. and Jake is friend of the podcast has been on a couple of times and we’ve discussed his work as well. So that’s who we’re referring to and we’ll provide more information about Jake in the show notes as well. Okay. You have a couple more fossils for me.
Alyssa Fjeld (44:43)
This next specimen is from right here in Victoria. It was uncovered in one of the dinosaur dreaming digs at Flat Rocks in Wonthaggi and it hails from an early Cretaceous deposit. So like many of the Cretaceous deposits around this area, the jaw would have been deposited within the flow of this
really massive, very powerful river, which is one of the reasons it’s so unique and so destroyed. Tiny bones are quickly destroyed or lost before preservation can take place. And they’re really, really hard to intentionally spot and dig for. So when we find them, it’s a huge deal. And especially these types of animals showing up during this time period. So I’m going to put the bone on screen for you so you can describe it to the listeners and have a look.
But I’m just broadly looking for what kind of animal you think this might be. You don’t have to get the species. I wouldn’t be that cruel. All of… Well, if the listeners at home can guess this one, I don’t know how you would prove to me that you did that, but I guess just pat yourselves on the back because I’m proud of you. All right, hang on. We’re just pulling it up now and I’m gonna share my screen hopefully.
Travis Holland (45:26)
Okay. Okay. Well, that’s helpful.
⁓ so it’s really obscure.
Yeah, gold star.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:47)
it’s thinking about it. Okay, here we go. What do you think this is?
Travis Holland (45:51)
Okay, so this is a jawbone. It is a very fractured jawbone. ⁓ It hopefully has both, well, I’m guessing a scan actually, rather than a photograph of the bones and then a reconstruction drawing of them. So toward the back of the jaw, there is…
⁓ I never know what the shapes are, but there are like rounded teeth and then towards the front, it’s sharper. So I know that that is called heterodont teeth, right? That, and that is something that typically mammals have. it’s a mammal thing to have different types of teeth in your mouth compared to say reptiles, ⁓ or dinosaurs for the most part. So, and it’s.
and it’s small. There’s a, there’s a size bar there. So it’s only, ⁓ 25 to 30 mil, I want to say tip to tip to tail, which doesn’t make sense for a jawbone. End to end. okay. So it’s a very small jawbone that I think is a mammal. That’s all I got.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that’s very, very good.
So ⁓ the other clue for the listeners at home who might be trying to guess along with us, the shape of this jaw is very slender and narrows as you move towards the tip of the jawbone, which is a good indication that…
Travis Holland (47:16)
Ooh, I know
what this is. Is this the monotreme? Yes!
Alyssa Fjeld (47:18)
It is, this
is, Teinolophos trusleri also known by its fancy museum name of NMV-P208231, excuse me, which is set on its Wikipedia page, which I thought was really funny.
Travis Holland (47:22)
Yes. ⁓
Okay. So, so this
is the like, this is the supposed ancestor to platypus and echidna. Is that right? Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:44)
Yes, yes,
this is a tiny ancestral monotreme known only from this extremely crunched up little bit of jaw. It’s a great example of some true blue Aussie material. It’s just a little fragment, but it looks so different from all of the relatives that we would kind of know in this lineage.
And it was so unique that recent research in 2022 by Tim Flannery placed it in its own family. So not only does this jaw define its species and its genus, it’s actually enough to separate it off into its own family level classification. It’s a very early split off within the monitoring clade. And it’s a really important finding in understanding how this lineage of funky animals evolves.
Like many of early mammals that we find in this deposit, it’s named for someone near and dear to Victorian paleontology. You might know the artist Peter Trusler, Travis. And its first name means Teinolophos It means extended crest, which is very sweet. And then the Wikipedia description gave so many things about the bone and the number of things that would have connected to it that I’m just not going to attempt because I have no idea.
Travis Holland (48:33)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Okay. But
I’m actually really, I’m pleased with myself that I was like, wait, the teeth, the teeth vary, right? That was the thing that gave it away for me. Cause our friends at Common Descent always talk about this, they had the difference between heterodont teeth and what’s the other word, but teeth that don’t change.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And that’s also something fun for the world builders at home. If you want your dragons to be related to reptiles, they’re going to have way less complex teeth. I’m sorry, that’s just true.
Travis Holland (49:16)
That’s a really good point.
Yeah. Good to know.
Alyssa Fjeld (49:18)
So
the next thing I’m gonna show you is not dragons, unfortunately, it’s an even worse jawbone. And this time I want you to try and see how specific you can be with it. I’m going to read a little description and then show you the bone. So this jaw was deposited in the Ethiopian Rift Valley in a formation roughly 9.8 million years old. So the late Miocene.
Travis Holland (49:32)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (49:41)
It has three molars and combined with 11 isolated teeth found in kind of the same area by the same team at the same time. It is the only evidence for this early species in a lineage. What is this jawbone and who is it from? Hang on.
This is again, just the drawing because it was very hard to find photos of it that were like easy to understand.
Travis Holland (50:03)
my God.
This is so bad. This is an extremely fragmentary jawbone that’s, I don’t know, maybe eight, 10 centimetres long, according to the scale bar, with ⁓ three teeth, three molars at the back of the jawbone. So it’s from the Rift Valley, the only evidence of its species.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:06)
So bad.
Travis Holland (50:27)
Those look like human molars. this is a, this is a hominid. It’s wait, wait, wait, wait. It’s not australopithecus though. Cause that’s more complete. And it’s not the one that’s recently been talked about lately found in the caves in South Africa. Homo naledi?
Alyssa Fjeld (50:31)
This is.
I’m not even dipping a toe in that debate. Yeah, yeah, good, good.
Travis Holland (50:49)
Hell yeah, no, I’m definitely not. I’m just saying it’s not that. I’m ruling out the, I’ll show
the, the homo species that I know. ⁓ I don’t know. I don’t know, but it, it’s a hominid. Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:03)
Yep, okay, so this is Nakalipithecus nakayamai
Travis Holland (51:10)
I never gonna get that. I was never gonna get that.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:14)
did you do, I’m sorry!
Travis Holland (51:17)
If it
was one of the well-known species.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:19)
So this is the part where I reveal that I don’t know anything about hominid evolution. I thought they were all famous.
Travis Holland (51:24)
you
I mean, you could have given me a Hobbit. I think I would have got, I’ve seen the Hobbit. ⁓ So it’s at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:29)
Hehehe!
So this is the area where it was found, Nakali’s ape, and the species name is honoring one of the members of the team that dug up this animal. While it’s not totally clear how it fits into the broader lineage of great apes, the original research team that uncovered the jaw in Kunimatsu et al. 2007 argues that the species could belong to a stem group of early great apes, possibly a close relative of the last common ancestor for great apes. So like Homonid’s great great granddaddy.
Which makes it really important for understanding how this group evolved. And somehow they got all that from like three molars, which is insane.
Travis Holland (52:06)
Well, the, molars do look rather human actually. surprisingly so like they look like human teeth. So, I’m guessing most of the great apes have similar, similar molars. It’s going to be my, going to be my guess.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:18)
Okay, and our last one, I’m gonna show you, this one was very frustrating because I know, so my lab has a couple of people in it that study the evolution of secondarily aquatic tetrapods. animals that have decided that land was a mistake and have gone back to the oceans, the cowards that they are.
And the thing about secondarily aquatic tetrapods, so we’re talking your cetaceans, your pinnipeds, ⁓ is that one of the bones that becomes incredibly important when you’re trying to make diagnoses of different taxa is the ear bone. the ear bone preserves really well because often for marine mammals, it’s very dense and it evolves in different shapes depending on which type of cowardly sea animal we’re talking about.
Travis Holland (52:42)
Yeah.
You
Alyssa Fjeld (53:03)
Well, it depends on how generous you want to be, but some species have been named from just an ear bone. So maybe this will be… I’m just going to ask you what kind of secondarily aquatic animal do you think this belongs to?
Here is the earphone.
Travis Holland (53:17)
From the contextual,
okay. From the contextual information, I feel like I know what this is without even getting to that point. ⁓ Because we have a guest coming up soon. ⁓ His name is Ben Francescelli. We’ve spoken about Ben before. Is this something that Ben discovered? Okay. Okay.
Alyssa Fjeld (53:41)
This is not one of Ben’s discoveries. However,
I would not do that to Ben and Ben would not do that to Ben, I hope. Ben, Ben, look at me. I know you’re listening to this. Please don’t do this. Please don’t name a whale after an ear bone. It’s just gonna make them fight more.
Travis Holland (53:54)
Okay. Okay. So,
so, okay. I was going to say it’s potentially Livyatan but if it’s not, if it’s not Ben’s then it’s not Livyatan. Although I don’t know if he named it, but I know it was named from a jawbone. So yeah, it’s not, not that. Okay. ⁓
Alyssa Fjeld (54:11)
Yes, yes.
Travis Holland (54:17)
But it is a cetacean
Alyssa Fjeld (54:19)
It is a cetacean, that is correct. Do you want to take a vague stab at where in the world this might be found? Or is cetacean where we would like to stop?
Travis Holland (54:29)
Is it, I mean, is it a cetacean from, from Victoria? Okay. Okay. Okay. ⁓ well in that case, I’m going to say Peru.
Alyssa Fjeld (54:35)
It is not from Victoria, no.
Hey, I am definitely not.
Travis Holland (54:45)
This is just totally guessing. I would not
even know this is an ear bone if you hadn’t said it. I mean, it looks like, I dunno, it just looks like a random, random shell almost or yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (55:01)
They do,
so these look a lot like, ⁓ I think they look like really chunky pasta, like ear-shaped pasta. ⁓ And this creature hails from the Half Moon Bay, Half Moon Bay deposits. it is found in Melbourne actually. I’m sorry, I was incorrect. So this actually is, I don’t think Ben has named this though, but it is from Victoria. ⁓ These guys are called Herpetocetus.
Travis Holland (55:09)
Yeah, that’s a good point actually.
Okay.
Alyssa Fjeld (55:29)
They are type of cetotheriid mysticete which I’m sure are words that are meaningful to people that are in this field. ⁓
Travis Holland (55:36)
You’re supposed
to be the one interpreting the paleontology for us.
Alyssa Fjeld (55:40)
So mysticete I’ll be kind.
Mysticet is referring to the lineage of whales that do not have teeth. So the ones that have teeth are called something else. We’re talking your orcas and ⁓ other whales with teeth. And then the baleen feeders that develop within mysticete ⁓ have a lineage. They’re called the mysticete and this guy is in there. He is a jolly looking fellow that appears to be three ladies long, according to the scale bar in the Wikipedia page.
Travis Holland (55:46)
Mm-hmm.
It’s good way to figure it.
Alyssa Fjeld (56:10)
And he was named for a holotypic tympanic bulla. So a little ear shaped pasta sort of wedge like this. This is not actually his ear bone because I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere and I could not find a picture of this freaking whale’s ear. It is.
Travis Holland (56:26)
Okay. ⁓ so
yeah, that’s like basically zero out of, I came pretty close with the monitoring, I think, but, yeah, based on just your explanations, I would never have just, just on the images, I would never have got that. Your, your explanations had to push me most of the way.
Alyssa Fjeld (56:44)
I think it’s also it speaks to the ways in which fragmentary fossils tend to like get used scientifically as well. Like some of these jaws are named after people that are very revered and used to establish like early beginnings to different lineages, while others like this whalebone. Well, when I asked about whale bones that were used to defined species, one of the members of my lab, Ruairidh Duncan wrote in with a
three paragraph response that is just an excerpt from one of his chapters talking about how much he hates this thing.
Travis Holland (57:13)
There it is. There it is.
Alyssa Fjeld (57:15)
If you also didn’t get them,
not your fault. Sorry Travis, we’ll play an easier game next time.
Travis Holland (57:21)
No, totally fine. I think that’s enough for this episode. We’ve covered an awful lot. We’ve had a great interview, Mark part two or Mark two even perhaps.
Alyssa Fjeld (57:31)
It’s a great way to ring in the 120th anniversary of Tyrannosaurus rex, one of our most beloved fossils in Paleo. If you have a chance to check out Mark’s newest book on T. rex, now is the time to go out and check that out.
Travis Holland (57:42)
Yep, absolutely. We’ve got links to the book in all of our show notes and also over on the website. So go and check it out and hit us up on social media and let us know what you think if you’ve managed to get your hands on a copy of King Tyrant. Thanks, Alyssa.
Alyssa Fjeld (57:56)
Thanks, Travis, and thank you to all of our listeners out there. We will see you soon.
