Terrible Lizards

If you could give the paleontology field NASA's budget what would you do with it? Ever used laser-stimulated fluorescence? How do pterosaurs sleep? Was was Irritator challengeri? When did birds wiggle their hips? How can you tell if species shared an environment? Is there any evidence for intra-specific fighting amongst Pterosaurs? PLUS MORE! We've gotten a plethora of questions this series - Dr D...

How science works In another in the increasingly long line of topics we probably should have covered quite a few series ago, this week we are addressing some of the fundamentals of what science actually IS. How does it all work really, and what is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory, and how confident can we be about dinosaur research when so much is unknown and difficult to put to th...

This is perhaps the question that gets asked the most and so it's time to address it properly (well, we are 7 seasons in, we were going to get to it sooner or later). So this week we are talking about routes into palaeontology and all that involves, from 'classic' academic roles as a researcher at a university or museum, though to science writers, fossil preparators, illustrators and photographers...

Perhaps the best known, and most often misrepresented, pterosaur is Pteranodon . It has become the archetypal pterosaur and is always in the background of every Mesozoic scene (especially with T. rex ) to let you know that the pterosaurs are out there. But aside from being quite big and having a funky headcrest (like all the best pterosaurs do) it's an animal that is constantly overlooked even tho...

From the very biggest to the smallest, anurognathids were the little fuzz balls of pterosaurs that barely reached 1m wingspan as adults. They were bat-like hawkers, catching insects on the wing with their giant gapes and tiny teeth. Although rare, like the azhdarchids we have recently had a flurry of finds and accompanying research on them which means that they have gone from one of the least to o...

If most people know one thing about pterosaurs (well one correct thing rather than them being flying dinosaurs or bird ancestors) it's that they got really big. At the top end they hit over 10 m in wingspan and probably over 250 kg, massively bigger than the largest flying birds (living or extinct). And all the real giants belonged to one group – the azhdarchids. These long-necked monsters were a...

It's hopefully not a surprise at this point that pterosaurs were fully powered and capable fliers and that they were not passive gliders or could only get airbourne through jumping off of cliffs. While we do talk about flight here, it's not like that is all pterosaurs could do so we cover their abilities on the ground (and in trees) and take-off, and then whether or not they could dive, swim and h...

We've run out of dinosaurs (stega what now?) and so thanks to popular demand (well, Dave's demand) we're doing (almost) an entire series on pterosaurs! Everyone's favourite Mesozoic flying reptiles (well, Dave's favourite) are getting a series to spread their wings. We start with the namesake of the clade, Pterodactylus itself and something of the early history of pterosaur discoveries and researc...

This is a bonus episode previously released to our patrons on Patreon. If you want to support us, and get more content please visit patreon.com/terriblelizards .  Terrible Lizards is, at least in theory, there for dinosaur lovers of all ages and backgrounds, but podcasting is just one way to communicate with the public about dinosaurs and it's probably not the first one you would think of. Joining...

The Questions episode! Untapped fossils, bad evolution, therapod bites, spaniel ears, courtship dances and MORE! Big thanks to everyone who sent in their questions. Martin, Glen, Mathew, Sam, Kim ( https://kimralls.co.uk/ ), Gutza, Robbie, John, Marlon aaaand John. We will be back in the summer - please do support us on Patreon, where we will be adding some extra content. Also BUY DAVE'S BOOK - Th...

The Future of Dinosaurs No guest this week as Dave manages to ramble on for an entire hour on his own again (well, Ok, Iszi helps him ramble). To be fair, he's got a new book out and since its 80 000 words of dinosaur ideas we thought we should cover it and it was never easily going to fit into 40 minutes. What's this amazing [citation needed] new book on? Well it's all about what we don't know ab...

Alvarezsaurs From a micro dinosaur to the very smallest, this time out we're looking at the little alvarezsaurs which include the smallest of the non-avian dinosaurs and with several species that were the tiniest yet found in the Mesozoic. Dr Steve Cross joins us to analyse a popular work of dinosaur fiction. Dr Steve Cross is a an incredible consultant and STEM communicator. Find him, follow him,...

Evolution In one way it's more than a bit late to only talk about evolution when we are 6 and a bit series into Terrible Lizards and this should arguably have been episode 1 in series 1 but here we are. Evolution is the foundation for modern biology and the understanding that species and lineages change over time and also how that happens allows us to interpret those changes patterns. While we bar...

We've already mentioned Gigantoraptor this series so let's get down to the other end of the etymological scale and look at Microraptor . This little dromaeosaur was one of the first fully feathered dinosaurs to be found and is famous for its 'four wings' with long flight feathers on the legs and the arms. There's loads of good specimens of this animal so it is perhaps no surprise that there has be...

At various times in previous episodes we have talked about what various dinosaurs ate and bits of data about diet, but this time we're going to take a more systematic look at how palaeontologists work out the diet of ancient animals. We go through the obvious ones like sharp teeth and finding bits of stuff inside them to microscopic traces of damage on the enamel, the structure of teeth and elemen...

Back to dinosaurs so you can relax (though the pterosaurs will return next series). This time out, we are going with the oviraptorosaurs - and note the long name, it's not just oviraptors we are covering. As is common, the one famous member of this group tends to hog the limelight and not everyone knows about the others even if these days Gigantoraptor tends to sneak in in the background. These fe...

Series 6? That can't be right. Surely this is 3 or 4 or something, 5 at the outside. Blimey. Anyway, we are back and we have new episodes though we are cheating already by starting with a pterosaur and talking about the greatly underappreciated Rhamphorhynchus . As the only vaguely well-known long-tailed pterosaur it is shown in the background of every Jurassic dinosaur painting to give scale the...

A slightly silly intro to series 6 of Terrible Lizards, a podcast about dinosaurs which will be starting on Wednesday 9th of February 2022. (The guest on this clip is Dr Steve Cross).

We talk to Yara Haridy who has just completed her PhD on the histology of dinosaurs and other reptiles. On the podcast we normally just talk about whole bones and skeletons (or at least the bits of them that are preserved) but there is an enormous amount of information that is preserved in the fossilised cellular structures of these. Fossil bones are those that have turned to rock but that means t...

Are there dinosaurs on the moon? What are digs in Antarctica like? Dave Hone and iszi Lawrence answer your dinosaur Questions! At the end of each series Iszi and Dave trawl through all the comments and messages from our listeners. We answer questions from Elaine, Michelle, Lee, Hunter, Sabina, Phil, David,  Leo & Quantum Robin (Kristjan), Russell, Shuyi, Steve, and Craig!  If you want to hear us a...

With every big new paper or museum exhibition there will be artwork depicting dinosaurs as actual living animals, as well as all kinds of other representations of these animals be it pop-art or cartoons. Today we have a special with an extended chat to two artists who specialise in dinosaurs and make their living from producing images of these animals. They are Danielle Dufault who works for the R...

Way back in the mists of time (last year) we did a whole podcast on Triceratops , one of the most famous dinosaurs of all. But is Triceratops not all it seems and is it in fact just part of a growth series which results in the largest and oldest animals becoming another dinosaur entirely in Torosaurus ? The answer is no, but the reasons why this was proposed and why it's not the case are interesti...

We've covered one small, unadorned and under-rated herbivorous ornithischian already this series in Psittacosaurus and here's another one in the remarkable little heterodonotosaurs. Another set of animals for which we have some superb skeletons and lots of interesting features that are potentially very revealing about the evolution of dinosaurs in general (and ornithischians in particular) and yet...

Iszi is in Dave's house! We have talked many times about the fact that birds are dinosaurs and we've covered some of the modern evidence that links them together, but how did we get to this point? In this edition we look at the historical arguments for the origins of birds and how they went from a groups that had no obvious evolutionary home to some early flirtations with dinosaurs, places around...

We have talked before about how large some of the giant sauropods were and how being big can really affect your biology, but just how do palaeontologists weight dinosaurs from incomplete skeletons and how accurate will these methods be? Well happily we have a podcast that will tackle those very questions and delve into the history and mystery of working out how heavy dinosaurs were, how we used to...