1 00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:06,960 You're listening to Weird and Dead, the paleontology podcast 2 00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:09,200 that tells evolution's most embarrassing and bizarre 3 00:00:09,200 --> 00:00:10,800 stories. I'm Megan Wetherell. 4 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:13,680 And I'm Amy Atwater, and we're two living scientists who are 5 00:00:13,680 --> 00:00:15,720 weirdly excited about dead things. 6 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:20,760 On this episode, we talk about the evidence for narcissism in 7 00:00:20,880 --> 00:00:23,840 deep time and relatedly, how bodies tend to float in the 8 00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:26,920 water when they die. We promise those are related. 9 00:00:27,040 --> 00:00:30,560 We also discuss how graceful you need to be or not to be to 10 00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:33,240 continue your species AKA get laid for. 11 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:36,280 Evolution As always this episode talks about gross things, in 12 00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:38,560 particular the things that happened to dead bodies post 13 00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:40,400 mortem. So please read the content 14 00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:44,360 warnings in the description. Also, this content is not for 15 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:47,880 children, unlike Amy's new book, which is great and you should go 16 00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:53,600 buy a copy. So we're going to start off 17 00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:58,000 today's story with a lovely conversation about Berlin 18 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,160 Ichthyosaur State Park, AKA the park in Nevada that despite 19 00:01:02,160 --> 00:01:04,920 having driven by it twice, even though it's in the middle of 20 00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:08,000 fucking nowhere, I have never actually been able to go into 21 00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:11,720 because it's been closed every single time that I've gone 22 00:01:11,720 --> 00:01:12,920 there. I'm so sorry. 23 00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:14,200 So. It's so cool. 24 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:15,720 I know. I've been there. 25 00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:19,200 I know you've been there. So if you're driving in the 26 00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:22,440 middle of nowhere Nevada, you might drive past this place and 27 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:24,720 it may or may not be open. But Berlin Ichthyosaurus State 28 00:01:24,720 --> 00:01:29,920 Park is a theoretically so I hear very cool sight in Nevada 29 00:01:29,920 --> 00:01:34,200 where you have a whole bunch of Shoni Asaurus which are these 30 00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:38,840 really big Ichthyosaurus like multiple meters long like. 31 00:01:38,840 --> 00:01:42,280 Biggest. Yeah, some some big daddy 32 00:01:42,280 --> 00:01:46,840 Ichthyosaurus and they are in the the lunning formation. 33 00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:48,960 And as it turns out, probably not big daddies. 34 00:01:48,960 --> 00:01:50,640 Probably Big Mommy Ichthyosaurus. 35 00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:57,120 I can relate. Big, beautiful mommies. 36 00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:01,960 That's right. And they, the actual State Park 37 00:02:02,040 --> 00:02:07,280 encapsulates Quarry 2, which is one of the many, many places 38 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:09,680 that you find these ichthyosaurs throughout the lunning 39 00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:12,200 formation. I guess there's something like, 40 00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:16,360 I think almost 100 ichthyosaur individuals throughout the 41 00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:20,080 lunning formation. And a recent study demonstrated 42 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:21,680 that they're actually kind of throughout time. 43 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:27,400 So this stuff in Quarry 2, there's 7 individuals I think 44 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:31,200 that are right next to each other and they all probably died 45 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:34,720 around the same time, which is exciting for a variety of 46 00:02:34,720 --> 00:02:36,280 reasons. Not for them. 47 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:37,920 It doesn't matter what they think is exciting. 48 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:38,880 They died. Yeah. 49 00:02:38,920 --> 00:02:41,280 Well, and so that is that has been kind of the historic 50 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:45,320 question, right? Is was it just a bad day? 51 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:48,520 Was it bad luck? Initially when these things were 52 00:02:48,520 --> 00:02:52,720 discovered, it was assumed to be strandings that basically these 53 00:02:52,720 --> 00:02:55,520 ichthyosaurs got stranded in shallow water. 54 00:02:56,120 --> 00:02:59,280 Turns out probably not that shallow of water. 55 00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:03,800 There's some arguments as to how deep it is, but it's probably it 56 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:06,200 was right at the bottom of what they call storm base. 57 00:03:06,200 --> 00:03:09,840 So if you look at the lending formation, all of the little 58 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:13,200 shells have been moved and imbricated. 59 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:15,520 So they're they're in line, they're all in the same 60 00:03:15,520 --> 00:03:19,200 orientation through water movement, which is important, as 61 00:03:19,200 --> 00:03:21,120 it turns out for this whole story. 62 00:03:21,440 --> 00:03:24,920 And the ichthyosaurs are in basically that section. 63 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:30,200 So probably not that shallow, probably around 500 meters to 64 00:03:30,560 --> 00:03:32,720 maybe a little more depending on where you talk to. 65 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:35,600 It's pretty deep. Pretty deep, yeah. 66 00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:39,040 That's deep to me. I know I don't want to go that 67 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:39,640 deep. Someone who's. 68 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:41,800 Afraid of the ocean? That's fucking terrifying. 69 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:43,960 Yeah, that's true. I don't want to not be able to 70 00:03:43,960 --> 00:03:47,880 touch the bottom. Snorkel has not gone well for me 71 00:03:47,880 --> 00:03:50,800 historically. It's always jellyfish stinging 72 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:54,360 me, fish attacking me or dead salmon. 73 00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:57,760 Yeah. Kelp just just disrespectful 74 00:03:57,760 --> 00:03:59,720 kelp. It's the only form of kelp is 75 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:01,400 disrespectful. Yeah, yeah. 76 00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:04,120 Anyway, yeah, snorkeling. Anyway, great out there, you 77 00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:05,960 guys go do it. We don't like it. 78 00:04:06,640 --> 00:04:11,840 Yeah, so the letting formation not shallow like we initially 79 00:04:11,840 --> 00:04:13,920 thought. So then the follow up thought 80 00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:17,120 for how do you get these dead ichthyosaurs, these massive 81 00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:20,000 mommies in the same spot? How do you get them dying 82 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:21,920 theoretically all around the same time? 83 00:04:22,280 --> 00:04:26,200 So the next thing was OK, the classic how do you kill lots of 84 00:04:26,200 --> 00:04:29,080 things in the water, poison their asses using algae. 85 00:04:29,080 --> 00:04:31,560 So algal blooms was the the next. 86 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:34,600 Kind of OK. I was like who is going to 87 00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:37,000 poison them if not mad dinosaurs? 88 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:42,960 Man was not there yet. No, it was, it was plants, 89 00:04:43,280 --> 00:04:44,840 algae, right? Yeah. 90 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:48,880 So the next idea was algae, although that has also been 91 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,480 overturned. There's not. 92 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:53,280 When you see an algae bloom in the water, there's a couple 93 00:04:53,280 --> 00:04:56,840 things that you expect to see in the geologic record, including 94 00:04:56,840 --> 00:05:00,920 like a thick organic layer and mercury spikes, I guess. 95 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:04,240 I don't know why, but apparently mercury spikes and neither of 96 00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:06,880 those things exists in the lending formation. 97 00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:09,880 And also turns out the ichthyosaurs and Cory too may 98 00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:12,680 have died together. Shit tons of other ichthyosaurs 99 00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:16,080 accumulated over 100,000 to 1,000,000 years in the lending 100 00:05:16,080 --> 00:05:18,680 formation. So lots and lots of time 101 00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:21,600 averaging. Lots of big ichthyosaurs dying 102 00:05:21,600 --> 00:05:25,720 in the same region for hundreds of thousands of years 103 00:05:25,720 --> 00:05:29,920 potentially. Probably not LG coming through. 104 00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:33,520 Time to kill every single one of them. 105 00:05:34,240 --> 00:05:40,800 So what is the next most natural and obvious theory? 106 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:46,680 Amy, these animals are dying. If you said well obviously it's 107 00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:50,560 a giant Kraken making a self-portrait with dead 108 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:55,920 ichthyosaurs, well you are right that that was the next theory. 109 00:05:58,720 --> 00:06:02,840 Next idea, parsimony out the fucking window. 110 00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:06,840 We're just, let's not talk about like the geographical 111 00:06:06,840 --> 00:06:10,360 reconstruction, right? Like or what physical 112 00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:13,800 constraints are happening to make it so this place is being 113 00:06:13,800 --> 00:06:20,520 selected for No no no vain Kraken, but Kraken was just like 114 00:06:20,520 --> 00:06:25,840 this song was written by me. Right, but not just vain Amy. 115 00:06:25,840 --> 00:06:28,120 Like this Kraken had a sense of self. 116 00:06:28,120 --> 00:06:31,320 This Kraken had artistic spirit and integrity. 117 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:35,200 You are describing every narcissist I know. 118 00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:40,080 That's true narcissistic giant Kraken. 119 00:06:41,400 --> 00:06:47,440 So this is this is a story today, both of real theories 120 00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:49,920 proposed by. Hypotheses. 121 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:53,000 I'm just. Suggested, sorry, a hypothesis 122 00:06:53,480 --> 00:06:57,880 does not mean that it makes sense, is a good idea, is valid 123 00:06:57,880 --> 00:07:00,560 in any way, shape or form. And we're also going to talk 124 00:07:00,560 --> 00:07:04,800 about how just because they wrote a paper on it does not 125 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:08,760 mean that that paper was peer reviewed or is in any way 126 00:07:08,760 --> 00:07:12,160 something you should consider more valid than just their 127 00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:14,720 words. Same with abstracts, because 128 00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:18,960 initially when this theory was brought to the public's eye, 129 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:24,360 this was in 2011 and it was at the Geological Society of 130 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:27,680 America. I remember where I was. 131 00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:30,520 Were you at this GSA, this this meeting? 132 00:07:30,880 --> 00:07:37,000 I wasn't at this GSA, but I just have such distinctive memories 133 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:41,920 of that abstract coming out and just the ridicule and the 134 00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:45,040 absurdity, and then the conversation about what I think 135 00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:47,800 you're going to talk about, which is about GSA and that they 136 00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:50,520 essentially accept everything. Yes. 137 00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:54,200 So a geological Society of America, if you want to go and 138 00:07:54,200 --> 00:07:59,360 present your theory, regardless of whether it's good or not. 139 00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:05,440 Young Earth flood creationism. Yeah, geology, that all of that 140 00:08:05,440 --> 00:08:10,000 stuff is accepted at GSA without any criteria. 141 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:13,720 So they don't reject anything as long as it's. 142 00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:15,880 They don't want to get sued y'all. 143 00:08:16,920 --> 00:08:19,720 They get money from the government, so you have. 144 00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:22,360 To pay, you have to pay to submit an abstract. 145 00:08:22,360 --> 00:08:26,600 So like there's literally no reason for them to reject your 146 00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:30,840 stuff because you give them money to publish your abstract 147 00:08:30,840 --> 00:08:33,640 and then you give them money to attend and talk about your 148 00:08:33,799 --> 00:08:37,120 science. So yeah, there's some financial 149 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:40,480 problems with the way that these meetings are run, but this is a 150 00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:45,120 reminder that just because it appears to be in a big 151 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:49,080 publication like GSA, that doesn't mean it's peer reviewed, 152 00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:50,880 right? That doesn't mean that it's 153 00:08:50,880 --> 00:08:53,120 something that you should just accept at face value. 154 00:08:53,920 --> 00:08:58,840 So in 2011, this this gentleman, I have read his name 1000 times. 155 00:08:58,840 --> 00:09:00,880 I'm going to just call him Mark McMenamins because I don't 156 00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:02,640 remember. I confused that. 157 00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:05,360 And Mark McMahon, which I know is a different person who I 158 00:09:05,360 --> 00:09:10,120 think is a real person. So Mark Mcmenamin might be 159 00:09:10,120 --> 00:09:12,520 McMenamins. Yeah, which is a restaurant 160 00:09:12,520 --> 00:09:17,120 sissing. Mcmenamin, how's his tater tots? 161 00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:20,560 Presumably really good sweet potato fries. 162 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:23,560 I fucking love their. I do love their tater tots. 163 00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:26,320 Screw their tater tots, their sweet potato fries are so good 164 00:09:26,960 --> 00:09:28,960 they should sponsor us. I would talk about their sweet 165 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:33,320 potato fries free. And like their beer, but 166 00:09:33,320 --> 00:09:34,960 whatever. Yeah, whatever. 167 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:41,600 So Mark Mcmenamin presented this in 2011 at GSA, and his theory 168 00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:48,360 was that these dead ichthyosaurs looked like the tentacles of a 169 00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:51,000 giant Kraken. It has to be giant, because 170 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,040 these ichthyosaurs are like short school bus size. 171 00:09:54,040 --> 00:09:55,800 Like, they're pretty. They're pretty fucking big. 172 00:09:55,800 --> 00:10:00,880 They're multiple meters long, so it has to be a giant Kraken let 173 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:05,600 me go ahead and before we move on any further I think I want to 174 00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:10,320 show you what he was seeing all right so we're going to take a 175 00:10:10,320 --> 00:10:13,800 look together the. Human brain is amazing at 176 00:10:13,800 --> 00:10:17,360 finding patterns and things, whether or not so true. 177 00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:20,840 They're there, Yeah. Amy, for the people who are 178 00:10:20,840 --> 00:10:24,360 still listening to this, can you describe what it is you're 179 00:10:24,360 --> 00:10:27,520 seeing? I'm looking at a picture of, I 180 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:30,320 mean, it just looks like wrinkly, rumply. 181 00:10:30,320 --> 00:10:33,160 I don't know where I'm going with this, like a texture to it. 182 00:10:33,160 --> 00:10:37,200 You can see that there are some distinctively round areas, which 183 00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:39,960 I know are the ichthyosaur vertebrae, so the backbones. 184 00:10:40,240 --> 00:10:42,920 And then there's kind of some like linear features coming out 185 00:10:42,920 --> 00:10:45,680 from that that might be ribs or something like that. 186 00:10:45,920 --> 00:10:48,480 And they're arranged in a way where, like, I don't know, 187 00:10:48,480 --> 00:10:51,000 they're next to each other. And like, it kind of looks like 188 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:54,120 a plesiosaur paddle, you know, on a smaller scale, like with 189 00:10:54,280 --> 00:10:55,960 those kind of bones next to each other. 190 00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:57,280 Yeah. They're kind of spooning hanging 191 00:10:57,280 --> 00:10:59,280 out. Mark Mcmenamin presented 192 00:10:59,920 --> 00:11:02,600 basically this picture and a couple of other pictures because 193 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:08,160 if you look at the vertebrae of the ichthyosaurs in Quarry 2, so 194 00:11:08,160 --> 00:11:11,080 ichthyosaur vertebrae, if you're not familiar with them, they 195 00:11:11,240 --> 00:11:13,480 basically look like little hockey pucks. 196 00:11:13,760 --> 00:11:17,800 They don't have a lot of it's increased flexibility. 197 00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,080 They're in the water. They don't need to be able to be 198 00:11:20,080 --> 00:11:23,280 real stiff and rigid. So they have just hockey pucks 199 00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:25,120 for vertebrae. Yeah. 200 00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:30,400 And instead of being in like a domino series of hockey pucks. 201 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:34,160 Like a sleeve of Oreos. They don't look like that. 202 00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:36,920 Yeah, they look like what would happen if you took a sleeve of 203 00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:40,800 Oreos and left them on a table, which is that some of them would 204 00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:43,000 roll and then land on their back. 205 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:46,640 So every single one of these hockey pucks is facing upwards, 206 00:11:46,640 --> 00:11:51,240 and there's two separate rows where they're alternating 207 00:11:51,360 --> 00:11:56,560 because as most people think, probably they just rolled out of 208 00:11:56,560 --> 00:11:58,880 a sequence and rolled next to one another. 209 00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:03,240 But if you're Mark Mcmenamin, you think that this looks so 210 00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:08,200 much like the suckers on a tentacle of a Kraken that. 211 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:12,760 My God. This is a self-portrait. 212 00:12:12,920 --> 00:12:19,480 But of just their tentacles. Of yes, and it gets worse. 213 00:12:19,720 --> 00:12:24,520 I want to also give you what is the the real reason that these 214 00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:27,160 ichthyosaurs look like this so I'm going to stop sharing now. 215 00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:31,480 So very recently there was a paper published where they 216 00:12:31,480 --> 00:12:34,680 looked at the sedimentology of the lunning formation. 217 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:40,280 They looked at the the quarry 2 stuff they looked at all of this 218 00:12:40,280 --> 00:12:42,760 different stuff. They figured out that probably 219 00:12:42,760 --> 00:12:44,560 the water depth was around 500 meters. 220 00:12:44,560 --> 00:12:46,960 They were the people who said that OK well everything is 221 00:12:46,960 --> 00:12:50,400 oriented so it's right at about storm base. 222 00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:54,200 It's like you have some water moving it, but not a ton. 223 00:12:55,080 --> 00:12:57,800 And they went through and they looked at all of these 224 00:12:57,800 --> 00:13:02,320 ichthyosaurs and they found that even though they're kind of 225 00:13:02,320 --> 00:13:05,440 deposited throughout time, so this is clearly like a long term 226 00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:09,040 process that is happening. You don't find a whole lot of 227 00:13:09,080 --> 00:13:12,320 other shit with them. So it's pretty much just 228 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:15,840 ichthyosaurs and things that these ichthyosaurs probably 229 00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:19,960 weren't eating like ammonites, and not very many of those 230 00:13:19,960 --> 00:13:22,560 either. It's really mostly ichthyosaurs, 231 00:13:22,880 --> 00:13:28,520 which is kind of odd, but you don't find sub adult 232 00:13:28,640 --> 00:13:34,160 ichthyosaurs, you only find fully adult ichthyosaurs and 233 00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:40,280 like babies or embryos so. Oh, with mom? 234 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:41,200 With. Mama. 235 00:13:41,200 --> 00:13:44,520 Yes, with Mama Slash coming out of Mama. 236 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:49,240 Double stuffed Oreo. Oh God. 237 00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:58,280 These researchers theorized that probably what happened was that 238 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:03,440 this was a like, not a breeding ground, but a having babies 239 00:14:03,440 --> 00:14:06,680 ground. This was where Shoneysaurus came 240 00:14:07,080 --> 00:14:08,720 to a nursery. Basically, this is where they 241 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:11,040 came to have their babies because there's no real reason 242 00:14:11,040 --> 00:14:14,920 for them to go into low productivity waters. 243 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:18,840 Like why would you go someplace that has no food and why would 244 00:14:18,960 --> 00:14:21,120 these animals be going there consistently? 245 00:14:21,440 --> 00:14:24,640 Well, if you look at modern whales, this is something that 246 00:14:24,760 --> 00:14:27,240 mother whales will do when they're about to give birth. 247 00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:31,280 They go to low productivity areas that are relatively warm 248 00:14:31,280 --> 00:14:34,360 still so that they can give birth without having to deal 249 00:14:34,360 --> 00:14:37,240 with fucking sharks, basically. Right? 250 00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:40,720 Like there's no other predators because there's nothing for them 251 00:14:40,720 --> 00:14:44,440 to eat, so they're more likely to be able to give birth in 252 00:14:44,440 --> 00:14:47,840 peace, which would explain why all of these animals were there. 253 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:53,360 As for the animals in Quarry 2, they took a look at them and 254 00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:58,280 they decided that like everybody else has decided except for Mark 255 00:14:58,280 --> 00:15:01,440 Mcmenamin, probably what happened was that these animals 256 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:05,320 were not buried right away, that these animals died. 257 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:10,560 They went to the bottom and then they probably bloated a little 258 00:15:10,560 --> 00:15:13,120 bit and then floated a little bit. 259 00:15:14,360 --> 00:15:18,680 So for a period of time you probably had six or seven 260 00:15:18,680 --> 00:15:25,720 ichthyosaurs bobbing around dead in the water, rotting. 261 00:15:26,400 --> 00:15:30,680 It's like fucking salmon. Yes, basically. 262 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:34,800 Rotting recently. Yeah. 263 00:15:35,120 --> 00:15:39,040 So they think that for whatever reason, this group of, I keep 264 00:15:39,040 --> 00:15:41,440 saying six or seven, I should just go and look, but whatever. 265 00:15:41,560 --> 00:15:45,360 This group of ichthyosaurs in particular, probably maybe there 266 00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:48,760 was an illness or something, they they died for whatever 267 00:15:48,760 --> 00:15:53,520 reason, it was just a bad year and they didn't get covered up 268 00:15:53,520 --> 00:15:55,720 right away. They probably were decomposing a 269 00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:59,200 little bit, maybe floating a little bit, which is why they 270 00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:01,560 are kind of in the same orientation. 271 00:16:02,040 --> 00:16:05,720 So all of them are kind of facing the same direction 272 00:16:06,560 --> 00:16:10,000 imbricated just the same way as the shells are in the sediments. 273 00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:13,920 And when they deposited as they rotted, there were probably some 274 00:16:13,920 --> 00:16:16,840 cross currents that just knocked their vertebrae out of 275 00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:20,680 alignment. And that's that's their 276 00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:23,200 explanation, which, yeah, that makes sense. 277 00:16:23,480 --> 00:16:27,480 Other than the horrifying nightmare image of 6, yes, dead 278 00:16:27,480 --> 00:16:30,440 ichthyosaurs bobbing at the bottom of the sea. 279 00:16:30,560 --> 00:16:33,400 And other studies have demonstrated that ichthyosaurs 280 00:16:33,400 --> 00:16:36,800 will lose articulation before they lose completeness. 281 00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:40,720 So when ichthyosaurs are rotting, they have a tendency 282 00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:44,600 for their bones to come apart before they kind of just 283 00:16:44,600 --> 00:16:46,400 disappear. So most these ichthyosaurs 284 00:16:46,400 --> 00:16:49,720 aren't perfectly complete, but most of their body parts are 285 00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:53,320 there, which suggests that they probably were somewhere in that 286 00:16:53,320 --> 00:16:55,800 rotting phase when they were actually covered. 287 00:16:56,120 --> 00:17:00,240 So it makes sense with other ichthyosaurs as well. 288 00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:04,720 And yeah, there probably was a little bit of bloat and float, 289 00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:09,640 which is how this whole thing is shoehorn into this episode. 290 00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:13,520 And I would not say that the Berlin icosaurs aren't the 291 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:17,920 classic bloat and float example. But Amy, you're going to tell us 292 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,079 about that classic bloat and float example. 293 00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:24,040 Are you looking for the best possible dinosaur or fossil 294 00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:25,560 related book for a kid in your life? 295 00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:27,720 Amy wrote one. It's got these amazing touchable 296 00:17:27,720 --> 00:17:30,240 illustrations. And while it is completely child 297 00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:33,440 friendly, some of our favorite not so appropriate animals are 298 00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:35,160 hidden throughout. Get your copy of The Fossil 299 00:17:35,240 --> 00:17:37,640 Keeper's Treasure today wherever you buy books. 300 00:17:39,080 --> 00:17:42,000 Want more weird and dead content and you don't want to wait? 301 00:17:42,120 --> 00:17:44,680 Or maybe you don't want to hear ads like this? 302 00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:48,640 Head on over to our Patreon for exclusive content, early ad free 303 00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:52,320 episodes, and so much more. For only $5 a month, you too can 304 00:17:52,320 --> 00:17:55,360 hear our outtakes, exclusive episodes, and the stuff we cut 305 00:17:55,360 --> 00:17:58,480 for time. And also just because it was too 306 00:17:58,480 --> 00:18:01,040 much. Too much for the general public. 307 00:18:03,240 --> 00:18:08,120 That's that's right, Megan doing my best newscaster voice. 308 00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:11,600 Yeah, I got stuck with dinosaurs this week, but it was so much 309 00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:13,360 fun. It was super worth it. 310 00:18:13,560 --> 00:18:14,680 I did. I did, yes. 311 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:17,240 So the classic, you know, we want to talk about bloat and 312 00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:20,840 float because it's fucking weird and dead like it's perfect for 313 00:18:20,840 --> 00:18:23,040 us. It's a natural pairing. 314 00:18:23,040 --> 00:18:28,560 Also, I can relate. Who can't like I get I would say 315 00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:29,640 it. I was like, yeah, there's bloat 316 00:18:29,640 --> 00:18:31,280 and float. No, it's not like a bunch of 317 00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:34,360 like pregnant ladies like Bob and down a river, but apparently 318 00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:38,320 a bunch of dead pregnant ichthyosaurs Bob. 319 00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:40,280 And because that's what I was thinking is really funny. 320 00:18:40,280 --> 00:18:42,760 Is like you get so bloated when you're pregnant to be bloated 321 00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:45,200 and death is kind of rude. It's like, come on, have I not 322 00:18:45,200 --> 00:18:48,160 like paid my dues? Has my body not already been 323 00:18:48,160 --> 00:18:50,080 disgusting? I don't know why. 324 00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:53,520 Can you guess here? Well, yeah, why are we going to 325 00:18:53,520 --> 00:18:57,040 really test that? So one of the best examples of 326 00:18:57,040 --> 00:19:02,080 bloat and float is with ankylosaur dinosaurs, and that's 327 00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:04,520 what we're going to talk about today for most of my time. 328 00:19:04,560 --> 00:19:07,480 So ankylosaurs are the armored dinosaurs. 329 00:19:07,480 --> 00:19:10,840 They're on all fours. They had all the protective 330 00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:14,400 plates and armor on their back. They kind of looked like a weird 331 00:19:14,520 --> 00:19:17,280 glyptodont turtle kind of thing, but a dinosaur. 332 00:19:17,600 --> 00:19:20,520 I call them pissed off coffee tables. 333 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:25,560 They're at the right height to just do mad damage to the shoes. 334 00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:28,680 Not that not that any of like humans or coffee tables 335 00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:31,640 coexisted with Ankyla, sorry. So don't get it twisted. 336 00:19:31,960 --> 00:19:37,600 So should probably clarify so that Mark Mcmenamini men man 337 00:19:37,840 --> 00:19:41,840 doesn't try to try to come for me. 338 00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:47,920 OK, So what is below and flow. I really liked their definition 339 00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:49,960 of this. So I read this incredible paper 340 00:19:50,240 --> 00:19:55,160 that was looking at this long term, long time kind of known 341 00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:58,760 idea, like Sternberg, who's a classic paleontologist from 342 00:19:59,040 --> 00:20:03,720 1900s, and even Nobska, our guy from like the early 1900s. 343 00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:07,240 Like they were like, you know, we find ankylosaur's belly up a 344 00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:09,120 lot. We find their bums like this. 345 00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:10,800 So it just became a part of the literature. 346 00:20:10,800 --> 00:20:14,200 But it was really anecdotal. And so this paper, which is by 347 00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:17,360 Mallon at all, we've talked about one of Jordan Mallon's 348 00:20:17,360 --> 00:20:20,720 papers before. This one was just as satisfying, 349 00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:25,320 if not way fucking funnier. It was clearly written with joy, 350 00:20:25,600 --> 00:20:30,040 like you could tell that they enjoyed this project. 351 00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:37,520 It is so stupid what they did. It's freaking great. 352 00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:41,040 So they were like, okay, ankylosaurs are thought to be 353 00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:44,080 preserved belly up on their backs more often than not. 354 00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,720 And it's oftentimes pointed to. So the paper first was, does 355 00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:50,520 this actually show? Does this hold up statistically? 356 00:20:50,520 --> 00:20:53,720 Do ankylosaurs preserve better on their backs? 357 00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:58,400 And then the second part is why, with an emphasis on testing this 358 00:20:58,440 --> 00:21:01,560 is it the bloat and float hypothesis, which folks have 359 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:03,360 just been like, oh, it's in Kyla Sores. 360 00:21:03,360 --> 00:21:06,360 They just like toppled over and we're like, help me and went out 361 00:21:06,360 --> 00:21:08,960 to sea. And it was just like a total 362 00:21:08,960 --> 00:21:12,200 disaster. And that's kind of what bloat 363 00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:15,960 and float has to do with. So it's like if an animal dies, 364 00:21:15,960 --> 00:21:18,480 maybe it was attacked by a predator, maybe it just died of 365 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:21,400 old age, maybe it died from who the fuck knows what. 366 00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:25,640 Something collapsed around it, like it's maybe it's Burrow. 367 00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:33,520 And then perhaps that carc, that carcass would have been washed 368 00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:37,600 into an adjacent river or stream or some sort of water source. 369 00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:41,240 And a lot of what they're called Thuluvial deltaic environment. 370 00:21:41,240 --> 00:21:43,920 So we're talking about river systems that are shooting out 371 00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:46,120 into the ocean. So like think of the Mississippi 372 00:21:46,120 --> 00:21:48,400 coming out of New Orleans and Louisiana. 373 00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:51,640 So when you're close enough to the ocean, sometimes when you 374 00:21:51,640 --> 00:21:54,640 get your dead body gets into a stream, it will go all the way 375 00:21:54,640 --> 00:21:58,680 out to the ocean, especially if you're nice and bloated from 376 00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:02,360 your decomposition of your internal organs. 377 00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:07,080 And if you just swell up like a cute little rotting disgusting 378 00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:11,600 balloon, you're like floating around and it's and you're just 379 00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:13,320 bobbing around like we've been saying. 380 00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:17,200 And they think a lot of this too because of the heavy osteoderms 381 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,000 or armor on the back of these that's like, once you're 382 00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,720 flipped, you're fucked. Like you're done, like you're 383 00:22:23,280 --> 00:22:28,440 dead or alive, you're fucked. And so then again, so bloating, 384 00:22:28,440 --> 00:22:30,960 right? All these gases and whatnot, 385 00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:34,080 which also causes you to be more unstable and more likely to 386 00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:38,680 float or and flip supposedly. And then once that degassing 387 00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:42,440 occurs either by natural processes or something punctures 388 00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:46,440 you, if you will, then actually get sync to the bottom of a 389 00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:50,160 channel, maybe a river channel or again, an marine sediments. 390 00:22:50,440 --> 00:22:52,880 And part of this is they're like, we find so many fucking 391 00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:57,280 ankylosaurs in marine sediments. Were they just like really into 392 00:22:57,280 --> 00:23:02,160 an ocean view or is this a tafanomic process that their 393 00:23:02,160 --> 00:23:08,000 bodies are just more inclined to just be whoop out to sea because 394 00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:11,040 they're already kind of like this little upside down boat, 395 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:13,800 like ready to go. So that was the setup. 396 00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:18,880 That was just the setup, let alone any of their. 397 00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:26,040 It was freaking amazing. So they decided to focus on. 1st 398 00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:29,480 off, I should probably also define we're going to talk about 399 00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:33,560 two types of ankylosaurs. Ankylosaur is a more general 400 00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:36,920 group. Ankylosaur Rids are the ones 401 00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:39,520 that are like the classic whackety whack with like a tail 402 00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:41,000 club. They're the ones that have the 403 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:43,320 junk on the tail that smackety smacks. 404 00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,800 And then we also have the notosaurids and those are 405 00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:49,800 Ankylosaurus that just had a basic bitch dinosaur tail. 406 00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:51,840 No frills, no whistles, none of that. 407 00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:54,280 And it actually matters. It matters. 408 00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:58,760 They talk about this a lot, go really into the tail, like a 409 00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:00,640 lot. Love to hear Carrie Weber's 410 00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:03,480 thoughts on these tails Heart. That I would have assumed 411 00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:07,720 mattered for this, but OK, sure. It comes up a lot. 412 00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,080 Yeah, it is. Anyway, so they focus on these 413 00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:14,680 Alberta dinosaurs and Kyla sores, partly because that's 414 00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,280 where Sternberg and others made this observation. 415 00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:21,080 Also because the ones that we find in Asia are more inland 416 00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:24,160 deposits and they don't seem to be found belly up as much. 417 00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:27,280 They're preserved upright. So that's another reason that 418 00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,040 they wanted to be looking at North American deposits where 419 00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:33,480 they have been found upside down so much so they were able to 420 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:38,560 actually determine the original oriented presentation for 36 421 00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,000 specimens and came out with that. 422 00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:47,720 Yes, 70% of them were found upside down with which is 423 00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:50,280 statistically significant. Turns out. 424 00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,040 Yeah, yeah. So they they looked at the 425 00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:56,360 entire Organism, but sometimes they'd also just use skulls, the 426 00:24:56,360 --> 00:25:00,240 hips and tail clubs because all of these, these are some chunky 427 00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:04,040 motherfucking dinosaurs. And so these larger parts of 428 00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,840 their bodies are going to be, they were the least subject to 429 00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:11,840 being overturned just by like river flow and channel. 430 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:16,120 And so they, if they, if these elements are flipped, they're 431 00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:19,640 saying that that's how they were deposited and not flipped later 432 00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:22,760 by like the flow or something like that of water. 433 00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:24,720 You know, they know what I'm saying. 434 00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,240 Whereas if it was like a rib, that could have just been. 435 00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:31,880 Like you have a streamlining issue here where the the 436 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,920 question has to be, did they flip upside down because they 437 00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,520 were floating or is that how water would naturally flip 438 00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:42,360 things because water likes to sort things like ichthyosaur. 439 00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:50,880 Right, yes, bodies matter what your body looks like during life 440 00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:53,600 and death really can affect this shit. 441 00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:57,040 So we're going to go into some of that because the way they 442 00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:00,520 tested the bloat and float like again, fucking tears. 443 00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,840 Like I was so entertained. So they decide they're like, OK, 444 00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:08,320 we have shown first, first part we've we have support that 445 00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,640 ankylosaurs in North America preserve on their backs. 446 00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:15,120 OK, So why? So they had four hypothesis 447 00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,640 hypotheses that they were testing around this. 448 00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,440 And the first two, well, what the first one is just so stupid. 449 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,800 OK, so the first actually, I don't think it's that stupid. 450 00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,600 I think there's, I think it's actually kind of hard to measure 451 00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,920 this, which they kind of they just they avoided it. 452 00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:34,560 So the first hypothesis is the clumsy ankylosaur model. 453 00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,120 Oops, I tripped and I fell on my back. 454 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:43,080 OK. I tripped and I fell into the 455 00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:47,280 ocean and I can't turn right myself because I'm shaped like a 456 00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:54,480 boat and I can't flip back up. So this is they've maintained. 457 00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,560 So there is a hypothesis from Nabska, who we've talked about. 458 00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:02,160 He's the incredibly bipolar Romanian Albanian paleontologist 459 00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:06,640 that I, like, lose my shit for. He said that Ankylosaurus were 460 00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,320 subject to accidental overturning, perhaps as a result 461 00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,080 of tumbling down a hill where they lay to die. 462 00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:19,640 So this whole part is, it's not like the bloating that's causing 463 00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:23,240 them to flip necessarily. It's that they're dumb and they 464 00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,280 have stupid bodies. And so this is kind of like when 465 00:27:26,280 --> 00:27:28,280 we talked about if they were migrating or not. 466 00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:30,240 You look at it at Kyla Serge, you're like, that motherfucker 467 00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:34,720 is not migrating anywhere. Like it's just not happening. 468 00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:39,600 Like it's just like stupid fucking coffee table body. 469 00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:43,080 So they discounted this which I think I don't know if I buy 470 00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:45,880 this. It just seems hard to roll over, 471 00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,640 like they're wide. Well, it's just hard to get it 472 00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:50,840 to roll over in the 1st place so. 473 00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:55,200 But if it did from, you know, tripping down a hill as. 474 00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:58,720 Oh yeah, Scott observed. Right. 475 00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:00,520 And it's and so they compare it to turtles. 476 00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:03,680 But turtles are able to write themselves more often than not. 477 00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,320 So they were like no. This implies that Ankylosaurus 478 00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:10,480 were especially clumsy, which goes against their Long live 479 00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:13,800 success of over a period of 100 million years. 480 00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,000 So they can't be so clumsy, because they're evidently. 481 00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,880 Clumsy and just fuck a lot. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 482 00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:25,440 You could totally get your fuck out and be a total. 483 00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,480 Weirdo, as long as you have a lot of babies it doesn't matter. 484 00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:31,720 Like I'm like, who says clumsiness is a deterrent to 485 00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:34,680 fucking right? You could what if you were too 486 00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:36,840 clumsy? And kylosaurs, if you just fell, 487 00:28:37,040 --> 00:28:42,240 you just fell into each other. It was like, Oh no, bam babies. 488 00:28:42,280 --> 00:28:44,560 That's how sex works from a woman who's had a baby. 489 00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:49,160 I tripped and fell. Then it happened. 490 00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:51,480 I don't know. I don't know. 491 00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,120 I wasn't there. I'd like to be. 492 00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,240 I'd like to watch this. This would be fucking hilarious. 493 00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:58,840 Yeah, right. So anyway, I also like, as you 494 00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,320 know, hate pandas. And like, if we want to talk 495 00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,360 about worthless animals that are still alive that can't even 496 00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:07,240 figure out how to have sex, look no further than the fucking 497 00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:10,520 panda pandas. So to just be like, oh, you 498 00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:14,720 can't be if you're clumsy, that means you can't be evolutionary 499 00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:17,360 successful, I think is a non starter. 500 00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:19,120 I think that's a logical fallacy. 501 00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,960 And I agree that it's very hard to be able to test this model. 502 00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,560 And I wasn't super happy with how they tried to just be like, 503 00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:28,720 Nah, they live for too long to have been that clumsy. 504 00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:30,080 I'm like, have you watched Teen Mom? 505 00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:32,680 Have you seen 16 year olds raising babies? 506 00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:37,560 You don't have to be like sophisticated and intelligent to 507 00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:43,640 have offspring. So I'm also I am also evidence 508 00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:48,000 of this. I am foxy how Tracy was born. 509 00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:54,920 Okay, so they discount that we just fell down this hill one 510 00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,760 day. Yeah, fell down a hill. 511 00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:01,080 OK, so the second one is carnivore activity. 512 00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,440 So essentially that this is also a Nobska idea that they were 513 00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,400 flipped over by big carnivores and that then because they 514 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,360 needed to expose their little tender underbellies to be eaten. 515 00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:14,760 So they went and they looked for carnivore bite Marks and they 516 00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:18,480 were not found on a significant number of the specimens. 517 00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:22,440 So that one got discounted. And the main one that they 518 00:30:22,440 --> 00:30:24,360 focused on today is bloat and float. 519 00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,520 So the bloat and float hypothesis again means that they 520 00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:33,240 died, they get bloated from that degassing of their death and 521 00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,880 then they fall into or get associated into some sort of 522 00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:41,280 river waterway that takes them either to a Deep River or a big 523 00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:44,680 ocean kind of thing where they then are deposited with either 524 00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:48,320 thaluvial so river deposits or like marine deposits. 525 00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:52,280 And so they think that they predicted that an ankylosar 526 00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,040 carcass in particular would be incredibly unstable in water as 527 00:30:56,040 --> 00:31:01,280 well, particularly when bloated, reflected by an increased offset 528 00:31:01,280 --> 00:31:04,080 between the centers of mass and buoyancy. 529 00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:10,480 And then they decided to do computer modeling to show this. 530 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:14,680 Oh God. It is so great. 531 00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:17,280 Like essentially. Ankylosaurs. 532 00:31:17,280 --> 00:31:20,120 They're putting big armor things on turtles. 533 00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:22,240 How are they determining this? But OK. 534 00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:28,160 I really, really, really wanted them to make a ankylosaur model 535 00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:31,760 and throw it into a river. Like I really wanted that. 536 00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:36,800 I think it's calling for that because even they say at the end 537 00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:40,320 that sure, we got some significant results from this. 538 00:31:40,320 --> 00:31:45,040 However, it's based on estimates for reconstructing a body that 539 00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,760 we don't actually know and we don't have like all we have our 540 00:31:48,760 --> 00:31:50,960 bones. That doesn't necessarily tell 541 00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,800 you how an animal's musculature was or where it was a chunky 542 00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:58,080 badonkadonk versus not. And they acknowledge that 543 00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,680 there's only so much you can do with this computer modeling. 544 00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,040 But they did 3 dimensional digital models of both a 545 00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:08,680 noticeaurid and an ankylosaurid to look at the stability of 546 00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,560 Ankylosaurus floating in water. And they did all of this by 547 00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:15,800 basing it on a variety of floating and sometimes sinking 548 00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:19,200 models of living forms, including American alligators, 549 00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:24,000 elephants, horses, giraffes, sea turtles and Penguins, which they 550 00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:25,920 were. And then they chose those two 551 00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:30,120 particular Ankylosaurus species because they are their bowel 552 00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,200 plans are relatively representative of their 553 00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:37,040 respective families. So then they went ahead and they 554 00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,240 plugged all this into these different computer models with 555 00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,880 different density of fresh water versus saltwater and like 556 00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:48,960 different just current flows and different body size dimensions, 557 00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:53,640 tail club versus a naked tail. And we're able to determine 558 00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:57,240 that, yes, they flipped much faster when they were bloated. 559 00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:01,240 And that means I'm actually going to show you my picture. 560 00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,760 Isn't it fucking awesome computer modeling? 561 00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:09,520 Like they went, they literally were measuring like the density 562 00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,480 of Osicone or not Osicone. Sorry, osicles like their 563 00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:17,360 osteoderms like to be able to, to, to measure this and to play 564 00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:19,400 with these models. So would you like to describe 565 00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:20,680 what you're seeing? Sure. 566 00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,440 All right. So what I'm seeing is A4 paneled 567 00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:29,320 figure, and on the top we have an Ankylosor with a name that 568 00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:31,440 I'm not even going to. There's so many vowels. 569 00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:34,320 Absolutely not. Starts with an E and on the. 570 00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:37,240 Bottom of cephalus? Yeah, something like that. 571 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:38,920 There's no close Cephalus, I think. 572 00:33:39,680 --> 00:33:41,880 Yeah, OK. It's like URL, but if you just 573 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:45,560 got rid of the R and then you have sorta on the bottom, which 574 00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:48,960 is a notice or and has no armor on its tail. 575 00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:53,000 And so on the left hand side, they have both profiles from 576 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:58,360 above and from the side. These animals on the left hand 577 00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:00,880 side as if they're not bloated and then on the right hand side 578 00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:03,760 as if they are bloated where they looks like they've just 579 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:09,600 stretched the model out, which is pretty funny, especially 580 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:14,199 since they basically just they become more the the art style is 581 00:34:14,199 --> 00:34:18,440 low Poly where you have polygons making up your 3 dimensional 582 00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:21,560 body and then your body gets bigger and then just has fewer 583 00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,000 polygons. That's kind of it's a bloated is 584 00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:27,199 just a fat low Poly version of Yep. 585 00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:34,280 The original version it is 115% of the body. 586 00:34:34,679 --> 00:34:38,480 Local circumferences were of the for the bloated versus non 587 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,159 bloated and the factor of 15 comes from observations of that 588 00:34:42,159 --> 00:34:45,639 amount of distance. Distention observed in dead 589 00:34:45,639 --> 00:34:48,520 African elephant elephants. Wow sorry not elephants. 590 00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,920 Elephants, yes. So I mean, again, subjective 591 00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:55,639 based on a mammal that doesn't have a shit ton of body armor 592 00:34:55,639 --> 00:35:00,000 all over it. Also just, you know, a reptile 593 00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,520 versus a mammal. Regardless though, they found 594 00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:06,320 pretty strong support that a ankylosaurs are uncomfortable, 595 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:09,320 uncomfortable, unstable in the water. 596 00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:11,360 I mean, I me too. I've relating again, I'm 597 00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:15,440 projecting, projecting. I'm just, yeah. 598 00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:22,280 Which ankylosaur are you today? Sometimes you're the bloated 599 00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:25,040 ankylosaur, sometimes you're the non bloated ankylosaur. 600 00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:31,040 And so it turns out that the notice sores end up flipping way 601 00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,280 more. They are more prone to. 602 00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:38,840 Flipping, which is. Reflected in the yes, exactly 603 00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,800 it's fucking with again, just how this ship sails through the 604 00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:46,600 water and not having this heavy dragging it down thing that 605 00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,160 helps keep it lowered. And and so yeah, they they found 606 00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:54,320 that the both bloated and non bloated ankylosaurs are pretty 607 00:35:54,320 --> 00:35:58,120 unstable in water, which does make me go back to the clumsy 608 00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:00,200 hypothesis. So you're telling me that they 609 00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:04,320 could just fall into the water alive and still flip over and 610 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:06,240 die without like the bloating part of it? 611 00:36:06,240 --> 00:36:09,840 It's does seem like they don't need to be bloated to flip it 612 00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:13,000 certainly helps. So I do think that there's still 613 00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,480 some room for some clumsy motherfucking ankylosaurs, but 614 00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,440 that's just me. And then again, yeah, they found 615 00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:24,200 statistical evidence support for the notosaurids flipping a lot 616 00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,320 more and being found in that position again, because they're 617 00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:31,360 essentially just clasts being moving through a substrate, and 618 00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:35,040 they're at the whim and the will of the constraints of that water 619 00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:37,080 in their bodies. Yeah, exactly. 620 00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:41,280 So if you want to be preserved, belly up, put on a backpack, put 621 00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:45,200 on a nice big backpack, and then jump into the ocean just. 622 00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:50,520 Specific want OK, but make sure. You don't have. 623 00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:58,520 Shoes. Or a tail or a tail. 624 00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:02,560 So they found quite a bit of support for this computer 625 00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:05,240 simulated cow tipping, which is what I'm calling it. 626 00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,720 And they did have one other hypothesis that they also 627 00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:12,880 investigated that is just super unhinged. 628 00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:16,240 And I'm not entirely sure why they included it because, well, 629 00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:20,320 it's funny what they did. It's not super like it's not a 630 00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:22,720 classic experiment. So anyway, the the 4th 631 00:37:22,720 --> 00:37:25,680 hypothesis, the 4th and final is the armadillo roadkill 632 00:37:25,680 --> 00:37:29,640 hypothesis, which just is all about how, you know, a modern 633 00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:33,400 animal that is armored. The armadillo, when it dies, if 634 00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:35,760 it's on its side or whatever, it's going to roll over as it 635 00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:40,320 bloats from degassing on that perfect little tippy shell. 636 00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:43,240 You know, they wobble, but they don't fall down. 637 00:37:43,240 --> 00:37:47,400 And so they were like, OK, so is that what's going on, that it's 638 00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:51,800 because of this armor that once they get gassy as they're dead, 639 00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,720 their bodies just naturally go bloop, which again would then 640 00:37:55,720 --> 00:37:58,560 say, so maybe the reason they're in marine sediments is because 641 00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:01,400 they all had beach houses. So again, like the context still 642 00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:05,240 matters because the armadillo roadkill model does not need 643 00:38:05,240 --> 00:38:08,600 them to be transported by water in any way to explain why 644 00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:11,840 they're found belly up. And so they tested this 645 00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:17,240 prediction by the authors just over a couple of like 3 months 646 00:38:17,240 --> 00:38:20,360 in 2016. Anytime that they were driving 647 00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:24,880 around Georgia and they saw a dead armadillo, they got out and 648 00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:30,360 they looked at it. I love science. 649 00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:37,920 I break for armadillos for my research purposes. 650 00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:43,760 I have to hit this armadillo for my research purposes. 651 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,040 Obviously, you're gonna have some, you're gonna have some 652 00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,840 sampling bias when that's the way you're gathering your data. 653 00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:52,920 I wondered if you were in a rush. 654 00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:54,920 Did you stop? Like, I was on the way to a 655 00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:58,040 wedding and then I saw this armadillo dead on the road and I 656 00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:01,200 was like, I gotta stop and touch it and take pictures of it. 657 00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:03,720 No, you didn't do that, you sick psycho. 658 00:39:03,720 --> 00:39:06,120 So, like, how many times did you not? 659 00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:08,080 Did you stop when it was that night? 660 00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,320 Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I, I mean, it's like very 661 00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:11,600 funny. They were like, we don't really 662 00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:15,400 have too much strong evidence for the armadillo hypothesis. 663 00:39:15,400 --> 00:39:19,000 But again, I wasn't super happy with how they actually went 664 00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:21,560 about testing it. But they didn't find that 665 00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:25,240 armadillos it that they were seeing on the side of the road 666 00:39:25,240 --> 00:39:28,360 in Georgia were actually consistently found belly up. 667 00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:31,240 So that didn't have the same support that we see in Kyla 668 00:39:31,240 --> 00:39:33,080 sores. And the only thing I kind of 669 00:39:33,080 --> 00:39:35,760 want to say about it is it was really funny because they were 670 00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:39,640 like, you know, one of the reasons why this not this. 671 00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,920 Although armadillos and ankylosaurs are similar in 672 00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:47,240 sharing a rotund body, rude and heavily armored dorsum, the 673 00:39:47,240 --> 00:39:50,560 appreciable differences between them should nevertheless provide 674 00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,560 reason to doubt the whatever the comparison because ankylosaurs 675 00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:57,360 are so much bigger and heavier than armadillos. 676 00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:00,600 And since we don't have a giant like and so since you can't 677 00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:03,840 compare them body size wise if they're a bad proxy. 678 00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:05,640 But then at the end of the paper. 679 00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:11,600 The last part of the paper, the very final part of the paper is 680 00:40:11,600 --> 00:40:15,720 they go, hey, you might want to use this idea in glyptodonts 681 00:40:15,720 --> 00:40:18,960 because glyptodonts have also been hypothesized to be bloat 682 00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:20,960 and float. And I'm like, glyptodonts are 683 00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:27,760 giant fucking armadillos. You do have a giant armadillo. 684 00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:29,720 So that was my only, you know what? 685 00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,840 I'm glad they went down the armadillo rabbit hole. 686 00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:34,240 It was entertaining. Obviously. 687 00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:36,600 I think there's another research paper or two or three to be done 688 00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,240 from there. And obviously the the bulk of 689 00:40:39,240 --> 00:40:44,160 this literally was on these computer simulated tipping 690 00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,000 Ankylosaurus and it was so fucking funny. 691 00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,720 So yes, there is really strong support that Ankylosaurus did 692 00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:54,400 indeed get preserved on their back more often than not when 693 00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,120 they're found in watery environments and not like a 694 00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:59,880 fucking desert. And two, it seems that the 695 00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:03,600 process that is leading to this is that they are dying, getting 696 00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:07,520 really bloated and gross, flipping onto their back and 697 00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:09,680 then fucking sinking like a drop stone. 698 00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:14,160 And that is your classic bloat and float dinosaur edition. 699 00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,520 You're welcome. Amazing that is fucking. 700 00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:21,960 I mean this podcast subtitle. Fucking disgusting. 701 00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,880 Also if you don't want to sink get a tail club. 702 00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:29,080 I was just saying yeah or don't want to flip. 703 00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:30,560 A tip as much. Get a tail clock. 704 00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:31,800 Don't. Go into the ocean with a 705 00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:33,400 backpack. There's a lot of things you 706 00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,280 could do to avoid being preserved upside down, but you 707 00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:38,800 have to be really specific about it because you're not an 708 00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,200 ankylosaur. That's really interesting. 709 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,960 Just the idea of pulling over for roadkill to double check 710 00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:48,680 what side it was preserved on is yeah, top 10 science. 711 00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:52,480 Thank you for listening. 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