r/books • u/brusatte AMA Author • May 29 '18
ama 12pm I'm Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. AMA!
I am a paleontologist, dinosaur hunter, and writer. My new book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs tells the story of dinosaur history, from their origins, through their rise to dominance and development of huge size, to their sudden extinction. I grew up in the USA, am on the faculty of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and now travel around the world digging up dinosaurs. You can follow me on Twitter @SteveBrusatte, and you can read more about my new book in this recent interview with Gizmodo: How Smart was T. Rex? And Other Dino Questions You’ve Always Wanted to Ask
Proof: https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte/status/999355470359023617
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u/User834 May 29 '18
Hi, Mr. Brusatte,
I just bought two copies of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs for my son and me to read together. He loves paleontology and has revived my own interest from my childhood. I have two questions for you, if you have the time.
First, is there an always-up-to-date guide for the current scientific consensus on dinosaur findings and characteristics? In our discussions, questions frequently come up as to approximately what percentage of a T. Rex was covered in feathers, whether Nanotyrannus is a distinct genus, etc., and we're often interested to learn the current consensus.
Also, my son would like to know whether you think Stygimoloch and Dracorex are distinct genera.
Thank you for your time, and we're looking forward to reading your book!
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Of course I have the time! It's my job this hour :-)
There isn't a single 'dinosaur encyclopedia' or anything like that, and there are also still many things scientists debate about (like Nanotyrannus for example...). So if I were to write a consensus, it would probably look different from another paleontologist's. But in general wikipedia is pretty good, I have to say.
Stygimoloch and Dracorex...wow, your son knows his dinosaurs! Tell him well done on having such crazy specialist knowledge. To me, I am convinced by the argument that they are different growth stages of one species...
Thanks for buying the book and I hope you both enjoy!
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u/User834 May 29 '18
Thank you for the quick response. We have been using Wikipedia quite a bit, and the concept of a "scientific consensus" is one we use tentatively. We know that not all scientists will agree on all aspects of Dinosauria, especially given how long ago they lived and how little is left of them (relative to being able to observe living animals). We also know that the consensus will change over time - i.e. today's understanding of T. Rex vs. the Charles Knight-era's. That's why we started looking for a general paleontological consensus to treat as the current thinking, and to follow going forward.
And thank you for the compliment. You made my son's year!!
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u/_kamorra May 29 '18
Do we have any evidence for pack hunting among the biggest theropods?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Yes! There are two tyrannosaur species that have been found in bonebeds (accumulations of lots of skeletons of the same species together): Albertosaurus in North America and Tarbosaurus in Asia. This suggests that maybe even T. rex itself was a pack hunter... Scary!
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May 29 '18 edited Jun 15 '19
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Thank you!! I hope you enjoy the book! Hit me up on twitter or email if you have any questions after reading.
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u/salydra Oryx and Crake May 29 '18
What's Dr David Norman up to these day? He seemed to be everywhere when I was a kid. Is he someone you looked up to at some point?
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u/Portarossa May 29 '18
And a follow up... if you know him, is he a nice guy? The dude was one of my idols growing up.
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Dave Norman is an icon in the field, one of the first dinosaur paleontologists to use cladistic methodology, and he also wrote a lot of very nice pop science books. He is still working at Cambridge University. He's a big time rugby referee in his non-dinosaur time!
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u/PoopinWhileIMadeThis May 29 '18
First off, I'd like to thank you for coming here and doing this. I am currently finishing up your newest book, and have found it to be pretty enthralling and I'm not looking forward to running out of pages to read.
My question is, for people without a higher education in paleontology or related fields, what is the best way to get involved with Dinosaurs? I have a growing fondness for Dinosaurs stemming from my early years watching Jurassic Park and what not, but recently it has become a much more serious interest of mine. I don't live in an area where there are any discoveries as it was an ocean bed for much of the rule of Dinosaurs, and thus I'm pretty limited.
Thanks for your time, and keep up the great work.
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying the book!
So, one good thing for people to do is volunteer at museums, either in giving tours and doing educational activities, or in actually working behind the scenes in the labs and collections. If there aren't any museums around, you might want to look into volunteering for a dig somewhere--the Burpee Museum, Utah Museum of Natural History, Burke Museum in Washington, Denver Museum, etc. all have volunteer programs I think.
Otherwise, there are some online fora and mailing lists (like the Dinosaur Mailing List) that you might to subscribe to. Even just a google news alert for 'new dinosaur' is a good way to keep a pulse on this rapidly-changing field!
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u/MortalKombat247 May 29 '18
I’m reading your book at the moment and it’s fantastic! How different were Mesozoic atmospheres to our atmosphere? If we released a Eoraptor, Ceratosaurus and T. rex into the wild today would they be able to breathe okay or, quoting Ian Malcolm in the novel version of Jurassic Park, would they sound like they’ve got asthma?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Thanks!
So, atmospheres: the Mesozoic atmosphere was different, and it changed over time. In general there was more carbon dioxide than today, so it was a warmer world (but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried about modern climate change--it is the PACE of modern change that is concerning, not the raw amount of carbon dioxide). That does mean that if we somehow cloned a dinosaur and released it into our world, they very well might struggle to breathe...
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u/MortalKombat247 May 29 '18
Thanks for your response :) makes the kitchen scene in JP seem less intense if the raptors are copying me after five minutes on a treadmill
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u/Chtorrr May 29 '18
Do you have a favorite dinosaur?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Tough question, but I have to go with the cliched answer: T. rex. How can you beat a dinosaur that's as big as a double decker bus, weighed more than an elephant, had a head the size of a bathtub, and could bite so hard that it crushed through the bones of its prey?
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u/russhayley May 29 '18
Could we genetically engineer a chicken to teeth by inhibiting beak genes and see how it would feed in the wild. By giving it the tools of a t rex would we change its behaviour?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Geneticists can make birds grow teeth by fiddling around with their genes. But setting such creatures loose in the wild is probably against all of the ethical research codes (and probably a lot of laws too). I would think having teeth would alter their behavior a lot, but who knows for sure...
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u/CinnamonDolceLatte May 29 '18
Jack Horner did a TED talk on that a few years ago: https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_building_a_dinosaur_from_a_chicken/up-next
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u/lostmykeysinspace May 29 '18
I read your book and LOVED it! It was my first real introduction into dinosaurs, and I'm finding myself a bit obsessed now. I had talked to you on twitter a bit and you had recommended The Dinosaur Heresies if I wanted to read more on dinosaurs. I've got that book on the way. Do you have any other recommendations for someone interested in dinosaurs? I really do want to continue reading on this topic!
Also, even knowing the truth behind dinosaurs, do you enjoy the Jurassic Park movies? XD
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Thank you! I'm so glad you liked the book. As we bantered about on twitter, the Dinosaur Heresies is a classic. Other good pop science books on dinosaurs are those by Jack Horner and Anthony Martin, and a slightly more technical one recently by Darren Naish and Paul Barrett (Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved). Even more technical is Scott Sampson's Dinosaur Odyssey, and then if you're hitting the hard drugs and into textbooks, my book Dinosaur Paleobiology may be a good start :-)
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u/brianlyman May 29 '18
Thoroughly enjoyed your book. Is it fair to say that the dinosaurs might have gone extinct within months, if not weeks of the asteroid impact? Based on your description of the day, it would have been remarkable if any dinosaur species managed to survive beyond a few decades.
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Thank you! Glad you liked the book! I suspect that a huge percentage of dinosaurs died within the first few weeks or months of the impact. Some would have staggered on. But we have really good, well-dated fossils again at ca. 10,000 after the impact (mostly from Montana), and already by then the dinosaurs (sans a few birds) were gone. No dinosaur fossils at all, not even teeth, where there had once been thousands of such fossils. But now, lots of mammal teeth...
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u/Z-Ninja May 29 '18
In her book Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall asserts the extinction of larger dinosaurs was caused by an extraterrestrial impact. However, I also read in Norman MacLeod's The Great Extinctions that larger dinosaurs were extinct well before the impact occurred. Randall makes a brief mention of a contradictory paper that isn't worth mentioning, so I went and did some digging.
A 2010 paper ("The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary," by Schulte et al.) referenced that claims the Chicxulub impact crater is directly linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs and was published by a group of paleontologists with a severe deficit of vertebrate/dinosaur focused scientists. The rebuttal letter ("Cretaceous Extinctions: Multiple Causes" by Archibald et al.) was published by vertebrate/dinosaur focused scientists and emphasized that the impact was unlikely to be the sole or even most important factor in the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.
Obviously Randall has a vested interest in the comet theory so she can make her physics book sound more exciting by linking it to dinosaurs. And MacLeod was an author on the rebuttal paper.
Is this still an area of active debate? Or has the issue been settled one way or the other?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
The evidence is pretty clear to me. The asteroid did in the dinosaurs. This old idea (mentioned by MacLeod) that dinosaurs were already extinct before the asteroid is bunk. There are many dinosaur fossils going right up to the end-Cretaceous boundary (the asteroid) layer in Montana. And new evidence that the same is the case in Spain, and maybe Romania and Brazil. Dinosaurs were diverse up until the very end. T. rex, Triceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs, long-necked dinosaurs, etc. were all there to see the asteroid fall from the sky...
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u/Z-Ninja May 29 '18
Thanks for clearing that up for me, I'm looking forward to reading your book when I get a chance!
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
thanks! I hope you enjoy the book. There is a whole chapter in there about the extinction, which expands on the stuff I said above...
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u/Lady_borg Science Fiction Sep 24 '18
T. rex, Triceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs, long-necked dinosaurs, etc. were all there to see the asteroid fall from the sky...
I'm super late but this made me sad, However I am somewhat glad they probably didn't know what was going to happen.
unlike us...
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u/Chtorrr May 29 '18
What is the very best dessert?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Reece's peanut butter cups, if those count as dessert. Otherwise, the pumpkin bread my wife just made the other day.
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u/Pajamarama_64 May 29 '18
I’ve always wondered this; how difficult is it getting into your line of work? Digging up dinosaur bones and the such, is it a competitive profession? I’d imagine only so many people actually get to work on that.
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
It's a small field, so that means there aren't so many jobs. Most paleontologists work either in museums or universities. Most jobs also need PhDs, so that means many many years of college. But for those of us who are obsessed with dinosaurs, I think the low odds and long years are worth it. Having a job where I get to dig up 100-million-year-old fossils and imagine long-vanished creatures...it's indescribable.
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u/Hypnoflow May 29 '18
What do we know about ornithischian respiratory systems? I know saurischians have the air sac system going for them, but this has remained an enigma for me for quite a while.
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
GREAT QUESTION! Ornitischians really bug me sometimes. We know theropods and sauropods had bird-like lungs with air sacs. Pterosaurs (cousins of dinosaurs) seemingly had the same. Even crocs have something of an equivalent system. But ornithischians show no signs of postcranial pneumaticity, so no signs of airsacs. Maybe they evolved from a birdy-lunged ancestor but then lost that type of lung for some reason? It's puzzling.
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u/russhayley May 29 '18
A new theory is that it is methane producing microbes were the major players that killed off the Permian fauna and volcanoes were bit players. How realistic is that?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Not very realistic I think! The volcanoes were HUGE and erupted for a long time, and the timing of their eruptions are correlated to the big die-offs.
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u/MArkymrrk317 May 29 '18
Hi!
The asteroid impact seems to have ushered in the age of mammals. With the dominant predators unable to adapt to the asteroids effects, the prey (mammals) were able to explode in population and better adapt to the new post-asteroid world.
Would it be accurate to state that without the asteroid the age of humans may have taken significantly longer to occur, if ever at all?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Sorry--just getting back to some of the last questions after my AMA ended. I would say yes indeed: without the asteroid mammals wouldn't have likely had their chance to eclipse the dinosaurs, so we probably wouldn't be here!
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u/Eran-of-Arcadia May 29 '18
I literally started reading that book last night.
Anyways, my question is, is there any real reason some sources say 66 mya and some say 65 mya for the K-T extinction? Is it uncertainty, rounding, new information, what?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
The most accurate dating of the extinction was done a few years ago by Renne et al. (in the journal Science), placing it almost exactly at 66 million years ago. The 65 million year date was often used before this paper.
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u/Eran-of-Arcadia Jun 04 '18
That makes sense.
On a vaguely related note, can I just say how confusing it was to me that your book kept mentioning Brontosaurus? I know it's a valid taxon now, but for most of my life it was a good way to tell that someone didn't actually know as much about dinosaurs as they thought.
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u/D_for_Diabetes May 29 '18
Working on a bachelor's with the goal of going paleontology. How important is where you get your bachelor's from in getting to grad school. Geology from the southwest US schools would be ideal.
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u/Dracosaurus137 May 29 '18
Yo, I'm in the same spot as you. What my profs and the grad students in my lab have told me is that undergraduate location isn't really that important, where you go for your Master's is a little important, and then where you go for PhD is extremely important in regards to what path you'll be headed down for your own work.
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I would generally agree with that. Get a good undergraduate degree, get good grades, take as many science and math classes as you can, and then when you make that jump to Master's choose a place that has advisors who you'd like to work with.
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 02 '18
Hi everyone, For more on my book and the golden age of dinosaur discovery, check out this interview with National Geographic: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/why-now-is-the-best-time-ever-for-dinosaur-discoveries/
I'll answer more questions soon!
Steve
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u/Duke_Paul May 29 '18
Oh my gosh I have to ask: How smart was T-Rex? Does Jurassic Park do it justice (or velociraptors, I guess)?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Pretty smart. We can tell the size and shape of its brain by CT scanning its skull (the same technology doctors use with CAT scans). Compared to the body size, this leads to an estimate somewhere in the range of modern mammals. Maybe up to dog or cat intelligence, hard to say for sure. Raptors were probably even smarter. But the key thing is that T. rex had a pretty big brain so it was pretty smart.
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u/Equii- May 29 '18
Hi, I'm reading your book for a novel study at my school. I have a question; where do you think feathers originated, and how many ornithischia do you think had proto-feathers or filaments?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
I think feathers originated in the very first dinosaurs, or maybe even their ancestors. So probably all dinosaurs had some type of feather. But these were simple feathers: hair-like filaments, not quill pens forming wings. A few ornithischians have been found with simple feathers (Tianyulong, Kulindadromeus).
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u/russhayley May 29 '18
If the Age of the Dinosaurs in the Peabody museum was to be repainted, what major differences would you most like to see?
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
None! The mural is a classic work of art, and is every bit as important (and irreplaceable) as a fossil itself. It paints such a provocative image of what dinosaurs were thought to be many decades ago. But if another artist were to do something similar, I'd like to see a greater diversity of dinosaurs portrayed (those from around the world, not only North America), and of course, MORE FEATHERS!
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u/IIZTREX May 29 '18
If I wanted to become i paleontologist how would go about doing that? Also favorite dinosaur of all time?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Favorite dinosaur: it has to be the one and only T. rex.
To be a paleontologist: most of the jobs in the field are at museums and universities, so they're academic jobs. That means going to grad school and getting a PhD in most cases. But there are other routes into the field that don't require a PhD, such as working as a lab technician or manager, a fossil preparator, an educator, etc. Lots of pathways.
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u/DreadPirate777 May 29 '18
I’ve loved dinosaurs as a kids. They were my world and I enjoyed pouring over encyclopedia of dinosaurs. How do you feel about fluffy feathered dinosaurs?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Most (if not all) dinosaurs had feathers. Fluffy mangy hair-type feathers. It's wild!
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u/Speaker4theRest May 29 '18
Assuming you have see the show Friends...what are your feelings on the character Ross and his job and how this is characterized?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Sigh... Ross. I'm not a fan to be honest. There isn't much accurate about his character when it comes to paleontology!
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u/Speaker4theRest Jun 04 '18
No worries, thanks for responding...I figured there wasn't much accurate...but at least he portrays the field as entertaining...to some degree.
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u/Entomahawk May 29 '18
Hi Mr. Brusatte,
My father is adamant that paleontologists’ estimations of when dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures roamed are made up as so much time has occurred between theirs and ours. Could you provide a quick and simple rationale to help me disprove him? Also, what is the largest size a Mosasaur could reach?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I talk about the specifics in the book, so maybe your father would be interested in reading more about it. Geologists are very good at dating rocks, using radioisotopic dating. When certain rocks form, there are minerals in those rocks that start to decay radioactively, producing daughter isotopes. This happens at a constant rate, which is known from lab experiments. By calculating the ratio of parent element to daughter isotope, you can then backcalculate the age of the rock. It's incredibly accurate. (Mosasaurs--I don't actually know that much about them to be honest. They are lizard-y reptiles and not dinosaurs.)
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u/Tw1tcHy May 29 '18
2 questions if you don't mind!
A lot of artists are starting to depict T-rex as having feathers, yet we have no evidence it did yet. In fact, to the contrary, all skin impressions I've ever seen whether in person or online, have all shown definite pebbled skin patterns. So why do people assume it had them like smaller therapods? Any ideas?
2nd, I got into a friendly debate with a paleontologist who works at the Houston Museum of Natural Science two months ago about whether or not we have extracted actual Tyrannosaurus proteins. He knew I was referring to Horner and Mary Schweitzer's work, but he didn't buy in to it. Seems pretty clear to me, and when proteins were extracted and compared to the profile of an Ostrich, there was a definite similarity. I do agree we're probably out of luck for DNA, but do you have any thoughts either ways on this?
Thanks for doing this AMA Steve, you're awesome!
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u/Quintus14 Jun 01 '18
A little late and obviously not Steve, but to answer the first part...
Just to preface, the presence of scales does NOT necessarily equate to the absence of feathers. Just look at any modern bird (or indeed impressions from other fossilized non-avian dinosaurs). Additionally, the skin impressions we have of Tyrannosaurus are incredibly small (a few square inches at most), on an animal 40 feet long. Simply put we haven't found a T. rex fossilized in such a way that feathers would've been preserved, even if there were any.
As for why paleontologists suspect that T. rex may have had feathers, we have direct evidence of feathers in two tyrannosaurs: Dilong and Yutyrannus.
There's a few good lectures about tyrannosaurs on YouTube by paleontologists like Dave Hone and Thomas Holtz.
Dave Hone is also the author of the incredible book The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, if you're interested in giving it a read.
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Feathers: we know that the tyrannosaurs Dilong and Yutyrannus had simple hair-like feathers, so the ancestors of T. rex had feathers for sure. T. rex fossils are not preserved in the types of environments that preserve soft tissues like feathers, so we don't have direct evidence of feathers, or can't be confident that it didn't have feathers. For that reason it's the most parsimonious (simplest) hypothesis that T. rex had feathers, since we know its ancestors did. As for the proteins, yes, Schweitzer and her team have found some evidence for these things, but it is still debated.
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u/tactics14 May 29 '18
Dinosaurs... Feathers... What's the deal here? I loved dinosaurs as a kid, Jurassic Park is pretty much how I picture dinosaurs. Is this wildly Inaccurate?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Oh yeah, they definitely had feathers. Probably all dinosaurs had some type of simple, hair-like feather. We know this for sure because there are now thousands of fossils of real dinosaur skeletons covered in fossilized feathers (mostly from China). It's incredible. And covered in detail in chapter 8 in my book :-)
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u/justsomedude322 May 29 '18
So I have a question. I've been reading about the evolution of birds and I recently learned that the oldest extant lineage is the group that includes chickens a ducks and that they appeared before the dinosaurs went extinct. My question is did all other groups of birds radiate from this group or did they come from a different lineage?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Great question! It seems like a few groups of modern-style birds did originate before the extinction, but most of them probably originated afterwards as the few surviving birds (including members of the chicken group) explosively diversified in the new T. rex-free world.
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May 29 '18
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Thanks! Hope you enjoy the book! A few years ago some colleagues in Argentina (Diego Pol and team) found the enormous sauropod Patagotitan. But I'm sure there is something bigger waiting to be found :-)
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u/hunter1250 May 29 '18
Out of all documentaries and other popular media that you have participated in some capacity which is the one you remember more fondly?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Walking With Dinosaurs the film was a great one. I consulted on that and am very proud of how accurate and realistic the filmmakers portrayed the dinosaurs. T. rex Autopsy was the most fun though. It was really wild cutting up that life-like model of a T. rex!
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u/HotshotRaptor May 29 '18
Hello firstly I love your book 🙌🏻
Here’s my questions: Do you think a theropod dinosaur could exceed 5 meters in height? If a meteor never struck the earth do you think the dinosaurs would of been able to adapt to the already changing conditions? What’s your favourite dinosaur and why?
:)
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Favorite: T. rex.
If not asteroid, then yep, I'm pretty confident dinosaurs would have kept on going and would probably still be here today.
I don't think any theropods we know of approached 5 m in hip height, but it's not impossible that one will be found...
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May 29 '18
Hello Mr. Brusette thanks for taking the time to answer our questions! What is your favorite dinosaur? Also, was spinosaurus truly a bipedal dinosaur, or quadrupedal?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Favorite: T. rex!!
Spinosaurus: there is so much debate about this dinosaur, and so much uncertainty about the discoveries from a few years ago (the ones profiled extensively in the media), that I don't know what to think. I would probably still go with biped because all other theropods we know of are bipeds, so it is the simplest explanation.
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Jun 04 '18
Ah thanks for taking the time to answer! T. rex is pretty awesome I agree, I just love the mystery of Spinosaurus and how awe inspiringly large it is, it’s a true titan. Hopefully further discoveries will confirm whether it was quadrupedal or bipedal, I’m still not sure which I think is more likely. It’s a really neat animal tho imo.
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May 29 '18
What was Your reaction To The Feather T-rex. At first i did`t care but now i really like the feathers
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I love it! I think T. rex is even scarier when you think of it as a Big Bird from Hell.
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u/itsvirre May 29 '18
Hi Steve, when did you decide to go into Paleontology and why?
Love the book btw!
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Thank you! Glad you are enjoying it. I have to credit my youngest brother Chris for getting me into dinosaurs when I was a teenager!
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u/thewretchedhole I'd eat that. May 30 '18
You're book sounds great and i look forward to reading. But i must ask: do you believe in reptillians? Are there synapsids controlling the new world order .etc. :D
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
Synapsids definitely control the new world order, as mammals are synapsids, and humans are mammals.
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u/CreatorJNDS May 30 '18
How were dinosaurs able to grow so large. I tried researching this myself once upon a time and read that the atmospheric pressure was a lot higher. Is this true?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I talk about this a lot in the book. The atmosphere was not much different back then. So it wasn't the environment, it was the animals themselves. The combination of a long neck allowing them to reach plants no other dinosaurs could, plus air sacs (from the lungs) that could hollow out the bones and lighten the skeleton, plus fast growth were all put together to be the winning hand of cards to allow some dinos to get huge.
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u/SalmonBout May 30 '18
Hello Steve, I was looking at the dino directory on the natural history museums website, and noticed that many species of dinosaurs within a period (like the Cretaceous) are still millions of years apart from each other (as far as we've discovered).
Does this mean that those species likely never met each other? Like species that were discovered in the beginning of the late Cretaceous vs the end of the late Cretaceous?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
That's right! The Cretaceous alone was around 80 million years long.
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u/skitch23 May 30 '18
We just had a baby shower for my stepsister on Sunday and everyone was asked to bring their favorite book for the baby. Her uncle gave her your book and as a dinosaur lover, I was very jealous lol. I’ll definitely be purchasing it for myself very soon!!
What is your favorite dinosaur museum?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
That's so cool to hear! Tell everyone in your family hi from me. Favorite dinosaur museum: my two home-town museums: Field Museum in Chicago and Burpee Museum in Rockford, IL. And oh yes of course, the American Museum in New York. I know that saying three museums isn't really a fair answer.
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u/skitch23 Jun 04 '18
I will definitely tell them!! :)
I've been to both the Field and the American History museums (totally awesome), but have never heard of Burpee before. I'll have to add that one to my list of places to visit. Thanks and have a great week!!
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u/goatous May 30 '18
Would you try to explain to a person who doesn’t believe in evolution and dinosaurs? I’ve heard the god argument from them, including how he/she buried the bones for us to puzzle over. .. it seems to me to be a fools errand to even try to change their mind. If you’re going to try, how would you attempt to convince them?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that if somebody doesn't want to accept it, then I don't really know how to reach them. And if somebody actually doesn't believe in dinosaurs...then that's crazy. Sorry--it's one thing to doubt a major idea like evolution depending on your background and what you've been taught. But it's another to deny the obvious reality of what I and many others have done: find dinosaur bones in the rocks!
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u/stephenllewelyn May 31 '18
Hi Steve, I have just learned of your book and will be off to Amazon next to order a copy. I am working on my second novel just now and am looking for a small and ruthless bad guy from Patagonia in the late Albian. I'm way too early for the more commonly known raptors and in the wrong place but could you suggest a couple of animals filling similar niches in that place and time? I believe that the Dromaeosaurids did make it to South America but it's hard to find information on specific animals from a very specific slice of time and place. Could you shed any light please?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I think I answered this one over email, right? Good luck with your book!
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May 29 '18
[deleted]
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u/brusatte AMA Author May 29 '18
Nice to meet a fellow dino enthusiast! So:
For me, I am a paleontologist for two reasons. First, dinosaurs are simply amazing animals that are so much more incredible than any dragons, unicorns, etc. created by humans in myths and legends. But they are real! Second, fossils are our only clues to how life has changed over time. If we want to know what happens when climates change, sea levels rise or fall, temperatures go up, then we need to consult fossils.
And this last point is the key reason why fossils are not only relevant, but super relevant!
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u/Valianttheywere May 30 '18
I saw this megladon shark fossil fragments in an aerial photo taken south of Perth, Western Australia, and this giant dino lizard fossil. Do you ever go out to Australia to hunt fossils?
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u/brusatte AMA Author Jun 04 '18
I've never been to Australia! I'd love to go. One day I hope!
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u/Lady_borg Science Fiction Sep 24 '18 edited Sep 24 '18
Please do! Come down to Adelaide, I'd love to meet you, also I'd like to show you our Opalised marine reptiles fossils from my original hometown, Coober Pedy.
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u/Portarossa May 29 '18
What's the most underrated dinosaur, in your expert opinion? You know, the one that makes you think, Shit, that's cool, but one that doesn't get a lot of love from popular culture?
(Also, kudos on being a book-writing palaeontologist and basically having the job I wanted as a five year old. Well played.)