WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.480 OK, let's let's unpack this. Welcome to today's 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:05.700 deep dive. I'm your host. And sitting across 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:08.859 from me is our resident paleontology expert. 00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:11.820 Hello. Glad to be here for this one. Yeah, I 00:00:11.820 --> 00:00:13.939 am, too, because usually, you know, when we talk 00:00:13.939 --> 00:00:17.309 about dinosaurs, we are talking about. The absolute 00:00:17.309 --> 00:00:19.750 superstars. Oh, absolutely. The heavy hitters. 00:00:19.750 --> 00:00:22.809 Right. The T -Rex, the Triceratops, Stegosaurus, 00:00:23.050 --> 00:00:25.870 the ones that end up on lunchboxes, pajama sets, 00:00:26.089 --> 00:00:29.489 and billion -dollar movie franchises. They have 00:00:29.489 --> 00:00:32.570 very clear brands. Exactly. You know exactly 00:00:32.570 --> 00:00:35.149 what you're getting. But today, we are doing 00:00:35.149 --> 00:00:37.369 something a little different. We certainly are. 00:00:37.469 --> 00:00:39.969 We are leaving those superstars completely behind. 00:00:40.250 --> 00:00:42.409 Yeah, we're looking at a dinosaur that is... 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:46.060 Less of a movie star and more of a, well, I guess 00:00:46.060 --> 00:00:48.020 you could call it a cold case file. A cold case 00:00:48.020 --> 00:00:49.939 file. I like that. It's a detective story that's 00:00:49.939 --> 00:00:52.380 been running for over a century now. That is 00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:55.039 a very apt way to put it, honestly. It's a story 00:00:55.039 --> 00:00:58.079 about... A fossil with a massive identity crisis. 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:00.759 A dinosaur so confused about its own identity 00:01:00.759 --> 00:01:03.159 that its current scientific name is literally 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:06.239 written inside quotation marks, like ironic air 00:01:06.239 --> 00:01:08.980 quotes on an official government form. Right. 00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:10.439 And those quotation marks are actually quite 00:01:10.439 --> 00:01:12.680 important here. They aren't just there for emphasis. 00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:15.879 No. No, they signal that we know the name is 00:01:15.879 --> 00:01:17.980 wrong. We just don't have a better one for it 00:01:17.980 --> 00:01:21.439 yet. That is wild to me. So today we are doing 00:01:21.439 --> 00:01:25.659 a deep dive into the creature known. provisionally 00:01:25.659 --> 00:01:29.480 as Dryosaurus Grandus. Dryosaurus Grandus. Even 00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:31.959 saying it out loud sounds a bit tentative. It 00:01:31.959 --> 00:01:34.760 is tentative. And honestly, this isn't just a 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:36.879 story about a lizard from the Cretaceous period. 00:01:37.019 --> 00:01:40.739 It's really a story about us. How so? It's about 00:01:40.739 --> 00:01:43.260 how we categorize the natural world, how we make 00:01:43.260 --> 00:01:45.819 mistakes, and how science is basically a century 00:01:45.819 --> 00:01:48.579 -long argument over, well, a handful of broken 00:01:48.579 --> 00:01:51.159 bones. I love that. I really do. So let's set 00:01:51.159 --> 00:01:52.879 the scene for the listener before we get into 00:01:52.879 --> 00:01:55.340 the crazy beer. bureaucracy of it all. Where 00:01:55.340 --> 00:01:58.000 are we and when are we? Okay, so we are in the 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:00.719 early Cretaceous period, which is roughly 112 00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:04.700 million years ago. Okay, got it. And geographically, 00:02:04.700 --> 00:02:07.299 we are standing in what is now known as the Arundel 00:02:07.299 --> 00:02:10.740 Formation in Maryland, USA. Maryland? See, okay, 00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:12.719 I grew up thinking all dinosaurs came from out 00:02:12.719 --> 00:02:15.590 west. Most people do. You know, Montana, Utah, 00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:19.710 the Badlands. Maryland is not exactly the first 00:02:19.710 --> 00:02:21.629 place you picture when you think of a Jurassic 00:02:21.629 --> 00:02:24.430 Park scenario. True. The American West usually 00:02:24.430 --> 00:02:27.330 gets all the glory. Formations like Hell Creek, 00:02:27.449 --> 00:02:29.490 because the preservation conditions out there 00:02:29.490 --> 00:02:31.789 were just perfect for whole skeletons. Right, 00:02:31.870 --> 00:02:34.009 the classic complete skeletons you see in museums. 00:02:34.270 --> 00:02:37.110 Exactly. But the East Coast has a very deep fossil 00:02:37.110 --> 00:02:40.490 record, too. The problem is, it's much more fragmented. 00:02:40.729 --> 00:02:43.849 Why is that? Because it was wetter. It was swampier 00:02:43.849 --> 00:02:46.430 back then. Things washed away or degraded. So 00:02:46.430 --> 00:02:48.669 we aren't finding those pristine skeletons laid 00:02:48.669 --> 00:02:51.490 out nicely in the rock. No, definitely not. We 00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:54.289 are finding bits and pieces, foot elements, isolated 00:02:54.289 --> 00:02:56.770 teeth, maybe a vertebra here or there. And that 00:02:56.770 --> 00:02:58.949 scarcity of material is really the villain of 00:02:58.949 --> 00:03:01.430 our story today, isn't it? It absolutely is. 00:03:01.530 --> 00:03:03.889 Because the mission for this deep dive is to 00:03:03.889 --> 00:03:06.870 basically trace how a couple of foot bones found 00:03:06.870 --> 00:03:10.069 in that Maryland mud managed to confuse paleontologists 00:03:10.069 --> 00:03:14.039 for over 100 years. Exactly. We're going to look 00:03:14.039 --> 00:03:16.759 at the meshe, highly bureaucratic, and frankly 00:03:16.759 --> 00:03:20.539 fascinating world of dinosaur taxonomy. Taxonomy, 00:03:20.719 --> 00:03:23.580 which is the science of naming and classifying 00:03:23.580 --> 00:03:26.340 things. Right. I have to say, looking at the 00:03:26.340 --> 00:03:28.180 research notes you sent over for this, I was 00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:30.280 actually laughing out loud. It gets a bit ridiculous. 00:03:30.639 --> 00:03:33.360 It really does. It feels like every time a scientist 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:35.439 looked at these bones, they just gave it a completely 00:03:35.439 --> 00:03:37.740 different name. Pretty much. It's like the dinosaur 00:03:37.740 --> 00:03:40.240 entered a witness protection program every 20 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:43.669 years. It does feel that way. But it really highlights 00:03:43.669 --> 00:03:46.310 that science isn't about static, unchangeable 00:03:46.310 --> 00:03:49.349 facts. Right. It's an ongoing process of revision. 00:03:49.949 --> 00:03:52.150 As we learn more about the world, we have to 00:03:52.150 --> 00:03:54.870 constantly update the labels we put on it. So 00:03:54.870 --> 00:03:56.509 let's start at the very beginning, the origin 00:03:56.509 --> 00:03:59.349 story. What exactly did they pull out of the 00:03:59.349 --> 00:04:01.990 ground in Maryland? Well, you need to lower your 00:04:01.990 --> 00:04:04.289 expectations right now. Okay, expectations lowered. 00:04:04.469 --> 00:04:08.210 Do not picture a grand museum rotunda display. 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:11.379 We are dealing strictly with what are called 00:04:11.379 --> 00:04:13.939 foot elements. Foot elements. That sounds like 00:04:13.939 --> 00:04:17.019 a polite euphemism. It is. A little bit. Specifically, 00:04:17.019 --> 00:04:20.720 we are talking about a phalanx. A toe bone. Yes. 00:04:20.779 --> 00:04:23.819 A single toe bone. Yeah. And an estrogalus, which 00:04:23.819 --> 00:04:26.459 is a major ankle bone. Okay. And that's it. That 00:04:26.459 --> 00:04:28.600 is the entirety of the evidence for a very long 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:32.430 time. Wow. That is not a lot to go on. No, it's 00:04:32.430 --> 00:04:34.769 not. I mean, imagine finding a hubcap on the 00:04:34.769 --> 00:04:36.550 side of the highway and trying to describe the 00:04:36.550 --> 00:04:39.810 entire car, including the make, the model, and 00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:41.949 the year it was built. That is a perfect analogy. 00:04:42.350 --> 00:04:45.189 And that extreme scarcity of evidence is exactly 00:04:45.189 --> 00:04:48.110 why we have this century of confusion. The whole 00:04:48.110 --> 00:04:51.550 story starts back in 1888. 1888. So we're talking 00:04:51.550 --> 00:04:54.589 about the early, early days of American paleontology, 00:04:54.670 --> 00:04:57.089 sort of the Wild West era of dinosaur hunting. 00:04:57.250 --> 00:04:59.750 Right. And the famous paleontologist O .C. Marsh 00:04:59.750 --> 00:05:02.629 gets his hands on these specific bones. Okay. 00:05:02.750 --> 00:05:06.110 Now, Marsh was a titan in the field. He was heavily 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:08.649 involved in the famous bone wars. But he was 00:05:08.649 --> 00:05:11.050 working with very limited comparative material 00:05:11.050 --> 00:05:12.730 back then. Right. They didn't have databases 00:05:12.730 --> 00:05:15.350 of thousands of skeletons to look at. Exactly. 00:05:16.079 --> 00:05:18.620 So he looks at these foot bones and he has to 00:05:18.620 --> 00:05:22.680 make a call. He assigns them to Allosaurus medius. 00:05:22.839 --> 00:05:26.370 Wait, hold on. Allosaurus? Yes. As in? The giant 00:05:26.370 --> 00:05:30.110 meat eating top of the food chain predator. The 00:05:30.110 --> 00:05:32.810 very same. So he looks at a single toe and an 00:05:32.810 --> 00:05:35.069 ankle and says, yep, this is a killer. This is 00:05:35.069 --> 00:05:37.910 a massive monster. He did. But to be fair to 00:05:37.910 --> 00:05:40.370 Marsh, Allosaurus was what we call a wastebasket 00:05:40.370 --> 00:05:43.110 taxon back in those days. A wastebasket taxon. 00:05:43.110 --> 00:05:45.170 I love that term. What does that mean? It's exactly 00:05:45.170 --> 00:05:47.829 what it sounds like. If you found a fossil that 00:05:47.829 --> 00:05:50.189 looked vaguely like a big meat eater. And you 00:05:50.189 --> 00:05:52.269 weren't quite sure what it was. You just tossed 00:05:52.269 --> 00:05:54.410 it in the allosaurus bin. Exactly. You threw 00:05:54.410 --> 00:05:56.170 it in the allosaurus wastebasket until proven 00:05:56.170 --> 00:06:00.009 otherwise. Marsh saw a theropod, a beast -footed 00:06:00.009 --> 00:06:03.189 dinosaur, and went with the default option. So 00:06:03.189 --> 00:06:05.910 for decades, the accepted scientific consensus 00:06:05.910 --> 00:06:08.470 was that there was a massive allosaurus stalking 00:06:08.470 --> 00:06:10.790 around the swamps of Maryland. Correct. That 00:06:10.790 --> 00:06:13.529 was the story until 1911. Enter Richard Swan 00:06:13.529 --> 00:06:16.110 Lull. Richard Swan Lull. He was a very thorough, 00:06:16.269 --> 00:06:20.149 very careful researcher. And he is doing a comprehensive, 00:06:20.370 --> 00:06:22.730 systematic review of all the fossils from Maryland. 00:06:23.329 --> 00:06:26.689 He takes a much closer look at these quote -unquote 00:06:26.689 --> 00:06:29.750 allosaurus bones and decides, no, this doesn't 00:06:29.750 --> 00:06:32.629 fit at all. What does he see that Marsh missed? 00:06:33.199 --> 00:06:35.040 He sees something structurally different enough 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:38.100 to erect an entirely new species, and he calls 00:06:38.100 --> 00:06:40.699 it Dryosaurus grandus. Okay, here's where it 00:06:40.699 --> 00:06:42.879 gets really interesting to me. I did a quick 00:06:42.879 --> 00:06:44.879 search on Dryosaurus before we started recording 00:06:44.879 --> 00:06:47.500 today. And what did you find? Dryosaurus is not 00:06:47.500 --> 00:06:50.439 a scary apex predator. Not at all. It's a plant 00:06:50.439 --> 00:06:53.839 eater. It's a relatively small bipedal herbivore. 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:56.839 Precisely. It's an ornithopod. So within roughly 00:06:56.839 --> 00:07:00.339 20 years, this animal went from being a terrifying 00:07:00.339 --> 00:07:04.079 allosaurus, a major predator, to a dryosaurus, 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:07.180 which is essentially a relatively harmless vegetarian 00:07:07.180 --> 00:07:10.139 gazelle thing. Yeah. That is a massive shift 00:07:10.139 --> 00:07:12.639 in perspective. It is huge. It completely changes 00:07:12.639 --> 00:07:14.439 the ecosystem you're imagining in your head. 00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:16.639 Instead of a heavy hunter stalking the Maryland 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:19.899 swamps, you have a light runner, a browser. That's 00:07:19.899 --> 00:07:22.939 a completely different animal. It is. Lowell 00:07:22.939 --> 00:07:26.290 was looking at the morphology. the specific shape 00:07:26.290 --> 00:07:29.350 of the bones. He was seeing similarities to the 00:07:29.350 --> 00:07:32.009 bird -footed plant eaters. He thought the ankle 00:07:32.009 --> 00:07:34.189 looked like it was built for fleeing, not for 00:07:34.189 --> 00:07:36.529 fighting. Okay, so problem solved, right? It's 00:07:36.529 --> 00:07:38.889 a dryosaurus. Case closed. Let's print the new 00:07:38.889 --> 00:07:41.370 textbooks. Oh, not even close. We are just getting 00:07:41.370 --> 00:07:44.290 started here. Really? Yes, because this is where 00:07:44.290 --> 00:07:46.930 we hit the great naming collision of 1920. 1920. 00:07:47.410 --> 00:07:50.129 This is where C .W. Gilmore comes into the picture. 00:07:50.350 --> 00:07:54.420 Yes. Charles Whitney Gilmore. He was a curator 00:07:54.420 --> 00:07:57.899 at the Smithsonian. Very meticulous guy. Naturally. 00:07:57.939 --> 00:08:01.139 He reexamines the bones yet again. And he strongly 00:08:01.139 --> 00:08:03.259 disagrees with Lowell. Of course he does. Why 00:08:03.259 --> 00:08:05.199 would anyone agree with anyone else in this story? 00:08:05.399 --> 00:08:07.860 Gilmore decides that this animal isn't a dryosaurus, 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:11.639 so not a herbivore. And it's not an allosaurus, 00:08:11.980 --> 00:08:14.560 so not a big carnivore. So what's left? He thinks 00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:18.000 it belongs to the genus Ornithomimus. Ornithomimus. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:20.019 Let's see, ornitho means bird, so that means 00:08:20.019 --> 00:08:22.879 bird mimic, right? Correct. These are the ostrich 00:08:22.879 --> 00:08:25.459 dinosaurs. Ostrich dinosaurs. Picture an ostrich, 00:08:25.480 --> 00:08:28.060 strip off the feathers, or maybe keep them, they 00:08:28.060 --> 00:08:30.540 likely actually had feathers, add a long tail 00:08:30.540 --> 00:08:33.100 to it for balance, and give it arms with sharp 00:08:33.100 --> 00:08:35.940 claws instead of wings. So structurally, they 00:08:35.940 --> 00:08:39.740 are theropods, the same broad group as a T. rex. 00:08:40.399 --> 00:08:43.399 But they behave and look more like giant, weird 00:08:43.399 --> 00:08:46.500 ground birds. Exactly. Long legs, fast runners, 00:08:46.779 --> 00:08:49.460 likely omnivores or herbivores, depending on 00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:51.980 the species. Okay. Gilmore looks at those foot 00:08:51.980 --> 00:08:54.399 bones from Maryland and sees clear parallels 00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:57.700 with these ostrich mimics. So logically, he wants 00:08:57.700 --> 00:09:00.740 to move our Maryland friend into the Ornithomimus 00:09:00.740 --> 00:09:03.080 family. Okay, so he wants to call it Ornithomimus 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:06.259 grandus. He takes the species name Lul gave it, 00:09:06.279 --> 00:09:09.080 grandus, and attaches it to his new genus. Or 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:11.480 Nethomimus grandus. That sounds dignified. It 00:09:11.480 --> 00:09:13.159 does sound dignified. It sounds authoritative. 00:09:13.279 --> 00:09:15.779 But there was a massive bureaucratic nightmare 00:09:15.779 --> 00:09:18.220 waiting for him. Ah, the rules of nomenclature. 00:09:18.320 --> 00:09:20.500 The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, 00:09:20.539 --> 00:09:22.919 to be precise. Right. In taxonomy, you simply 00:09:22.919 --> 00:09:24.899 cannot have two different species with the exact 00:09:24.899 --> 00:09:27.379 same name. Which makes sense. It's a hard rule 00:09:27.379 --> 00:09:30.759 to prevent absolute chaos. And it turns out our 00:09:30.759 --> 00:09:33.659 old friend O .C. Marsh, the guy who first called 00:09:33.659 --> 00:09:37.440 it an allosaurus back in 1888, had named a completely 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:40.909 different fossil. Ornithomimus grandus back in 00:09:40.909 --> 00:09:43.690 1890. Oh, wow. So the name was quite literally 00:09:43.690 --> 00:09:46.149 taken. It was preoccupied in scientific terms. 00:09:46.490 --> 00:09:48.950 Marsh beat them to the punch by 30 years with 00:09:48.950 --> 00:09:51.590 a specimen he found out in Montana. Right. So 00:09:51.590 --> 00:09:54.230 even though Gilmore was entirely sure this Maryland 00:09:54.230 --> 00:09:57.789 dinosaur wasn't Ornithomimus, he was legally 00:09:57.789 --> 00:10:00.649 scientifically forbidden from calling it Ornithomimus 00:10:00.649 --> 00:10:03.009 grandus. It's like trying to register a username 00:10:03.009 --> 00:10:05.110 on a website and getting the error message that 00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:08.070 says this user ID is already taken. Try again. 00:10:08.570 --> 00:10:11.289 That is a perfect analogy. User Ornithomimus 00:10:11.289 --> 00:10:13.750 underscore Grandus is already active. So what 00:10:13.750 --> 00:10:15.669 did he do? Well, Gilmore had to come up with 00:10:15.669 --> 00:10:19.049 Patch. A quick fix. He renamed Lull's Maryland 00:10:19.049 --> 00:10:22.889 Dinosaur to Ornithomimus Affinis. Affinis. Which 00:10:22.889 --> 00:10:25.250 basically just means related to or akin to, right? 00:10:25.389 --> 00:10:27.389 Yes. It was a workaround. It's basically him 00:10:27.389 --> 00:10:29.870 saying, this is the Ornithomimus that is related 00:10:29.870 --> 00:10:32.309 to the other ones. But... And here's the irony. 00:10:32.409 --> 00:10:34.610 And this is the twist that really makes you shake 00:10:34.610 --> 00:10:36.690 your head at this whole academic process. I know 00:10:36.690 --> 00:10:38.129 exactly where you're going with this. I love 00:10:38.129 --> 00:10:40.409 this part. Tell the listener about those original 00:10:40.409 --> 00:10:44.409 bones from Montana. So Marsha's original Ornithomimus 00:10:44.409 --> 00:10:47.389 grandus, the one from Montana that blocked Gilmore 00:10:47.389 --> 00:10:50.129 from using the name. Yeah. The primary holotype 00:10:50.129 --> 00:10:53.460 specimen. Yeah. It is presumed lost. It's just 00:10:53.460 --> 00:10:55.940 gone. Completely vanished. No one knows where 00:10:55.940 --> 00:10:57.899 it is today. It might have been misplaced in 00:10:57.899 --> 00:11:00.480 a museum move or it crumbled to dust or it was 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:03.340 just lost in the shuffle of 19th century cataloging. 00:11:03.340 --> 00:11:05.720 So let me get this straight. Gilmore had to completely 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:08.600 change the name of the Maryland dinosaur to avoid 00:11:08.600 --> 00:11:10.700 a conflict with a bone that basically doesn't 00:11:10.700 --> 00:11:14.000 even exist anymore. Technically, yes. Marsha's 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.039 Grandus is a ghost. It's a phantom fossil. But 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:19.600 the rules are the rules. Because the name was 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:22.259 published in a recognized journal back in 1890. 00:11:23.370 --> 00:11:26.669 It held the trademark, so to speak. That is wildly 00:11:26.669 --> 00:11:30.110 frustrating. It's paperwork over actual paleontology. 00:11:30.289 --> 00:11:32.929 We are literally letting a ghost dictate the 00:11:32.929 --> 00:11:36.110 science. Welcome to the academic world. But don't 00:11:36.110 --> 00:11:38.549 worry, it didn't stop there. Gilmore's rename 00:11:38.549 --> 00:11:41.429 to Ornithomimus Affinis was just a pit stop. 00:11:41.629 --> 00:11:44.009 Right, because now we move into what you called 00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:47.789 the mid -century identity crisis. 1922, just 00:11:47.789 --> 00:11:50.330 two years later. Matthew and Brown. Two other 00:11:50.330 --> 00:11:53.429 major heavy hitters in the field of paleontology. 00:11:53.529 --> 00:11:56.169 Okay. They looked at the Maryland dinosaur and 00:11:56.169 --> 00:12:00.049 assigned it to yet another genus entirely. Cholosaurus. 00:12:00.830 --> 00:12:03.029 Cholosaurus. I actually haven't heard that name 00:12:03.029 --> 00:12:05.090 much. It's really not commonly used today, but 00:12:05.090 --> 00:12:07.429 they called it Cholosaurus affinis. They kept 00:12:07.429 --> 00:12:10.990 Gilmore's specific species name affinis, but 00:12:10.990 --> 00:12:13.539 they changed the genus again. Why? They thought 00:12:13.539 --> 00:12:15.539 it was more closely related to this other group 00:12:15.539 --> 00:12:17.779 of hollow bone dinosaurs that were being found 00:12:17.779 --> 00:12:20.019 in New Jersey around that time. It honestly seems 00:12:20.019 --> 00:12:22.600 like everyone who walked past that specific drawer 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:25.200 in the museum just felt the uncontrollable urge 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:28.139 to slap a new sticky note on it. Like, I think 00:12:28.139 --> 00:12:30.919 it's a colosaurus. No, I think it's an ornithomimus. 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.100 It does seem that way. But you have to remember, 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:35.059 they were trying to make sense of incredibly 00:12:35.059 --> 00:12:37.539 limited data. Just a toe and an ankle. Right. 00:12:37.620 --> 00:12:40.519 They were comparing a toe and an ankle to whatever 00:12:40.519 --> 00:12:42.419 brand new discoveries were coming out of the 00:12:42.419 --> 00:12:44.759 ground that exact year. It was a moving target. 00:12:44.879 --> 00:12:48.519 But then in 1972, the comparison went global. 00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:51.639 And this is the part of the story that feels 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:54.419 like a massive stretch to me. Yes. This is Dale 00:12:54.419 --> 00:12:58.039 Russell's review. Russell was a Canadian paleontologist. 00:12:58.059 --> 00:13:00.980 Brilliant guy. Okay. He was systematically reviewing 00:13:00.980 --> 00:13:04.179 North American ornithomimosaurs, and he looked 00:13:04.179 --> 00:13:07.360 at our strange little Maryland foot bones. And 00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:10.340 he saw something highly specific. He did. He 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:12.679 noticed the petal unwiles. Which means the toe 00:13:12.679 --> 00:13:15.340 claws. Right. He noticed that the toe claws were 00:13:15.340 --> 00:13:19.220 curved. Now, usually... Ornithomimosaurs, the 00:13:19.220 --> 00:13:21.960 ostrich mimics, have fairly straight, flat claws. 00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:24.340 Because they run on flat ground. Exactly, like 00:13:24.340 --> 00:13:26.740 an ostrich. But these Maryland claws were distinctly 00:13:26.740 --> 00:13:28.639 curved. And he thought, wait a minute, I've seen 00:13:28.639 --> 00:13:31.960 this exact curve before. In Asia? Correct. He 00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:34.399 thought they looked exactly like Archaeornithomimus, 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:36.559 which is a dinosaur found all the way over in 00:13:36.559 --> 00:13:46.639 China. That is such a massive leap. It is a very 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:49.779 bold claim. Yeah. Biogeographically, it's fascinating 00:13:49.779 --> 00:13:52.840 because it implies... a major physical connection 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:55.460 between the continents, potentially a land bridge, 00:13:55.659 --> 00:13:58.159 allowing these animals to migrate back and forth 00:13:58.159 --> 00:14:00.820 across the globe. Wow. So Russell renamed it 00:14:00.820 --> 00:14:03.799 again. Now it officially became Archaeornithomimus 00:14:03.799 --> 00:14:06.980 affinis. Archaeornithomimus affinis. That is 00:14:06.980 --> 00:14:09.700 a real mouthful. It is. But it fundamentally 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:13.279 linked our mysterious Maryland fossil to a specific 00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:16.740 distinct lineage of Asian dinosaurs. So surely 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:18.960 that finally settled it. It's an Asian immigrant. 00:14:19.279 --> 00:14:21.200 Mystery solved. Let's go home. You would think 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:24.659 so. But science is a pendulum. It swings wildly 00:14:24.659 --> 00:14:27.039 towards these bold, grand theories, and then 00:14:27.039 --> 00:14:28.980 eventually it swings right back towards extreme 00:14:28.980 --> 00:14:31.539 caution. Which brings us to the 1990s, and the 00:14:31.539 --> 00:14:35.299 skeptics arrive. The 1990s. The grunge era of 00:14:35.299 --> 00:14:39.279 paleontology. In a way, yeah. Smith and Galton 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:42.399 enter the scene in 1990. They looked at this 00:14:42.399 --> 00:14:46.350 entire exhausting history. Allosaurus, Triosaurus, 00:14:46.830 --> 00:14:50.750 Ornithomimus, Coasaurus, Archeornithomimus. And 00:14:50.750 --> 00:14:53.409 they basically just said, stop. What was their 00:14:53.409 --> 00:14:56.169 argument against all this? They argued that the 00:14:56.169 --> 00:14:58.929 material, remember, we are still just talking 00:14:58.929 --> 00:15:02.169 about a few foot bones, was just too scanty. 00:15:02.210 --> 00:15:04.610 Not enough evidence. Right. They said you simply 00:15:04.610 --> 00:15:07.370 cannot identify it specifically enough to call 00:15:07.370 --> 00:15:10.129 it an Archeornithomimus. They claimed it could 00:15:10.129 --> 00:15:12.679 only be broadly classified as Theropoda. Ouch. 00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:14.700 That's like finding a single hair at a crime 00:15:14.700 --> 00:15:16.480 scene and the detective saying, well, it definitely 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:18.879 belongs to a mammal. Exactly. It's technically 00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:21.220 true, but it's not very helpful for closing the 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:23.779 case. It's what we call the dubious label. Gnome 00:15:23.779 --> 00:15:26.179 and dubium. If you look at the Wikipedia page 00:15:26.179 --> 00:15:28.639 title for this animal today, it clearly says 00:15:28.639 --> 00:15:31.580 Dryosaurus grandus is a dubious species. That's 00:15:31.580 --> 00:15:33.039 where this label comes from. Because they were 00:15:33.039 --> 00:15:34.759 saying, we don't really know what this is and 00:15:34.759 --> 00:15:36.980 we can't pretend we do. Yes. It was an admission 00:15:36.980 --> 00:15:40.169 of defeat in a way. So for a while. Our dinosaur 00:15:40.169 --> 00:15:42.990 was essentially stripped of its unique identity. 00:15:43.269 --> 00:15:46.190 It became just a generic meat eater from Maryland. 00:15:46.450 --> 00:15:49.870 Yes. It sat in taxonomic purgatory for decades. 00:15:50.009 --> 00:15:53.850 It was a wastebasket case all over again. Until 00:15:53.850 --> 00:15:57.549 2016. The redemption. The redemption. Enter Chase 00:15:57.549 --> 00:16:01.169 Brownstein. Chase Brownstein. A modern researcher 00:16:01.169 --> 00:16:04.110 looking at this with modern eyes. Yeah. He published 00:16:04.110 --> 00:16:07.110 a paper in 2016 that... finally brought some 00:16:07.110 --> 00:16:10.190 much -needed clarity to this entire mess. What 00:16:10.190 --> 00:16:12.169 did he actually find? Did someone finally go 00:16:12.169 --> 00:16:14.529 back to the Arundel Formation and dig up the 00:16:14.529 --> 00:16:17.129 rest of the skeleton? No, surprisingly. He looked 00:16:17.129 --> 00:16:19.269 at the exact same bones, the very same foot elements. 00:16:19.470 --> 00:16:22.470 But he had something that Marsh, Lull, and Gilmore 00:16:22.470 --> 00:16:25.169 simply didn't have. What's that? Context. He 00:16:25.169 --> 00:16:27.190 had a full century of other discoveries to compare 00:16:27.190 --> 00:16:29.529 them to. Right. And he confirmed what Gilmore 00:16:29.529 --> 00:16:32.529 had suspected way back in 1920, that this animal 00:16:32.529 --> 00:16:35.549 really does belong to Ornithomomasauria. The 00:16:35.549 --> 00:16:37.830 ostrich dinosaurs. So Gilmore is basically right 00:16:37.830 --> 00:16:41.549 all along. In the broad sense, yes, he was. Brownstein 00:16:41.549 --> 00:16:43.990 systematically compared the Arundel material 00:16:43.990 --> 00:16:46.769 to dinosaurs that hadn't even been discovered 00:16:46.769 --> 00:16:49.570 in Gilmore's time. Like what? Animals like Kinneramus 00:16:49.570 --> 00:16:52.809 from Thailand and Ned Colbertia from North America. 00:16:53.029 --> 00:16:55.870 Ned Colbertia? Named after Ned Colbert, I assume. 00:16:55.909 --> 00:16:57.990 That's another famous paleontologist. An absolute 00:16:57.990 --> 00:17:01.370 legend in the field, yes. Brownstein looked at 00:17:01.370 --> 00:17:04.150 the metatarsal interplay. Basically how the bones 00:17:04.150 --> 00:17:07.289 of the foot fit and lock together. And he looked 00:17:07.289 --> 00:17:09.829 at the specific shape of those curved claws again. 00:17:10.410 --> 00:17:13.869 He found that these very specific features linked 00:17:13.869 --> 00:17:17.009 our Maryland mystery directly to these other 00:17:17.009 --> 00:17:20.009 primitive ornithomimosaurs. Okay, so it's not 00:17:20.009 --> 00:17:22.329 an allosaurus. No. It's definitely not a plant 00:17:22.329 --> 00:17:24.349 -eating dryosaurus. Definitely not. It is an 00:17:24.349 --> 00:17:27.430 ostrich mimic. Yes. His work completely validates 00:17:27.430 --> 00:17:30.609 its place in that specific family tree. Even 00:17:30.609 --> 00:17:32.470 if the specific genus name is still a bit of 00:17:32.470 --> 00:17:34.789 a mess, which is exactly why we have the quotation 00:17:34.789 --> 00:17:37.049 marks around Dryosaurus, we now fundamentally 00:17:37.049 --> 00:17:39.349 know what kind of animal it was. It's just amazing 00:17:39.349 --> 00:17:43.369 to me that it took from 1888 all the way to 2016 00:17:43.369 --> 00:17:46.950 to simply arrive at it's an ostrich dinosaur. 00:17:47.009 --> 00:17:49.849 That is just the pace of science sometimes. Yeah. 00:17:49.950 --> 00:17:51.910 You often have to wait for the broader context 00:17:51.910 --> 00:17:54.109 to catch up to the initial discovery. Right. 00:17:54.190 --> 00:17:56.170 You can't solve your puzzle until you have enough. 00:17:56.519 --> 00:17:59.359 pieces of the other puzzles around it to finally 00:17:59.359 --> 00:18:01.859 see the larger pattern. So let's do a quick deep 00:18:01.859 --> 00:18:04.859 dive into the classification as it stands today 00:18:04.859 --> 00:18:07.559 to really ground everyone listening in what this 00:18:07.559 --> 00:18:10.220 animal actually is. Sure. If you and I were standing 00:18:10.220 --> 00:18:13.900 in a Maryland swamp 112 million years ago, what 00:18:13.900 --> 00:18:16.720 are we looking at? Okay. So obviously starting 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:19.680 at the top, kingdom animalia, phylum chordata, 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:22.339 it's a vertebrate. Then down to clade dinosauria. 00:18:22.380 --> 00:18:24.539 Right. Then we go into seritia, which are the 00:18:24.539 --> 00:18:27.799 lizard hip dinosaurs. Yeah. Then Theropoda, the 00:18:27.799 --> 00:18:30.019 broad group that includes everything from a massive 00:18:30.019 --> 00:18:32.380 T -Rex down to the modern birds outside your 00:18:32.380 --> 00:18:35.299 window. And finally, Ornithomimisauria, the bird 00:18:35.299 --> 00:18:38.299 mimic lizards. So to visualize it, picture an 00:18:38.299 --> 00:18:41.440 animal maybe 10 to 15 feet long. Okay, pretty 00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:44.420 big. Bipedal, highly balanced by a stiff straight 00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:47.940 tail. Long, slender legs, perfectly built for 00:18:47.940 --> 00:18:51.759 high speed. Long arms with grasping hands. Absolutely 00:18:51.759 --> 00:18:54.579 not tiny little arms like a T -Rex. Right. Functional 00:18:54.579 --> 00:18:57.319 arms. Yes. And a small head with a toothless 00:18:57.319 --> 00:18:59.960 beak. possibly sporting a crest of feathers. 00:19:00.140 --> 00:19:02.299 Just darting around the floodplains. Exactly. 00:19:02.559 --> 00:19:04.940 Snatching up small lizards, maybe stealing eggs, 00:19:05.059 --> 00:19:07.599 maybe browsing on some plants. It was an omnivore 00:19:07.599 --> 00:19:09.880 and likely a very skittish, fast -moving one. 00:19:09.980 --> 00:19:12.200 It's a really vivid image. And just to recap 00:19:12.200 --> 00:19:14.259 the exhausting trail of names, because honestly, 00:19:14.420 --> 00:19:16.140 I think it's hilarious when you list them all 00:19:16.140 --> 00:19:18.000 at once. Take a deep breath before you do. Okay, 00:19:18.059 --> 00:19:21.180 here we go. It started as a monster, Allosaurus 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:24.519 medius. Right. Then it became a gazelle, Dryosaurus 00:19:24.519 --> 00:19:28.910 grandus. Then a bird mimic. Ornithomimus affinis. 00:19:29.369 --> 00:19:32.650 Then a hollow bone lizard. Colosaurus affinis. 00:19:32.809 --> 00:19:35.910 Keeping up. Then an Asian immigrant. Archeornithomimus 00:19:35.910 --> 00:19:38.650 affinis. And now today, we sort of vaguely circle 00:19:38.650 --> 00:19:41.650 back to Dryosaurus grandus, but with big skeptical 00:19:41.650 --> 00:19:44.329 quotation marks around the Dryosaurus part, fully 00:19:44.329 --> 00:19:46.650 knowing it's actually an ornithomimus. That is 00:19:46.650 --> 00:19:49.309 an identity crisis for the ages. It's the dinosaur 00:19:49.309 --> 00:19:51.509 equivalent of someone changing their major five 00:19:51.509 --> 00:19:53.789 times in college and still not knowing what they 00:19:53.789 --> 00:19:56.579 want to do. It really is. So... What does this 00:19:56.579 --> 00:19:58.960 all mean for us? Why should you, the listener, 00:19:59.180 --> 00:20:01.900 care about a few obscure foot bones in Maryland 00:20:01.900 --> 00:20:05.119 that basically can't decide on a name? I think 00:20:05.119 --> 00:20:07.839 it matters deeply because it breaks the illusion 00:20:07.839 --> 00:20:10.519 that science is a finished printed book. Yeah, 00:20:10.539 --> 00:20:12.480 that's a great point. We tend to think of dinosaurs 00:20:12.480 --> 00:20:16.220 as these rigid established facts. A T -Rex looks 00:20:16.220 --> 00:20:18.900 exactly like this. A Stegosaurus looks exactly 00:20:18.900 --> 00:20:20.740 like that. We see them mounted in the museum 00:20:20.740 --> 00:20:22.680 and we think, okay, that is the absolute truth. 00:20:22.900 --> 00:20:24.880 But in reality, paleontology is often working 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:27.599 with scraps. Exactly. It's not a flawless 4K 00:20:27.599 --> 00:20:30.359 photograph. Yeah. It's a blurry, messy sketch 00:20:30.359 --> 00:20:33.420 drawn on a napkin. And the quote unquote truth 00:20:33.420 --> 00:20:36.099 of what Dryosaurus Grandus actually is changed 00:20:36.099 --> 00:20:38.700 depending entirely on who was looking at it and 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:40.900 what specific scientific lens they happen to 00:20:40.900 --> 00:20:42.839 be wearing that decade. Marsh had an Allosaurus 00:20:42.839 --> 00:20:46.200 lens. Lull had a herbivore lens. Russell was 00:20:46.200 --> 00:20:49.359 wearing an Asian migration lens. Precisely. It's 00:20:49.359 --> 00:20:51.799 almost like the dinosaur itself evolves based 00:20:51.799 --> 00:20:54.740 on the observer. The physical bones don't change. 00:20:55.339 --> 00:20:57.440 They've literally been sitting in the exact same 00:20:57.440 --> 00:21:00.769 drawer for 100 years. Right. But our fundamental 00:21:00.769 --> 00:21:03.049 understanding of them is constantly evolving 00:21:03.049 --> 00:21:05.630 as we learn more about the ancient world they 00:21:05.630 --> 00:21:07.710 lived in. It also makes me think about how much 00:21:07.710 --> 00:21:10.390 we still don't know. Like how many other dinosaurs 00:21:10.390 --> 00:21:12.970 are sitting in museum drawers right now across 00:21:12.970 --> 00:21:15.509 the world with the completely wrong name tag 00:21:15.509 --> 00:21:18.210 on them? Oh, probably hundreds. Maybe thousands, 00:21:18.349 --> 00:21:21.309 honestly. Taxonomy is constantly being cleaned 00:21:21.309 --> 00:21:24.450 up and revised. There are wastebasket taxa all 00:21:24.450 --> 00:21:26.950 over the place just waiting for a Chase Brownstein 00:21:26.950 --> 00:21:28.650 to come along and take a careful second look. 00:21:29.019 --> 00:21:30.980 And it serves as a pretty good reminder to be 00:21:30.980 --> 00:21:32.880 humble about what we think we know right now. 00:21:33.019 --> 00:21:35.700 Absolutely. The dubious label isn't a failure 00:21:35.700 --> 00:21:38.140 of science. It's an honest admission that we 00:21:38.140 --> 00:21:41.200 need more data. It's science simply saying, I 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:43.109 don't know yet. I want to go back to that lost 00:21:43.109 --> 00:21:45.329 bone for a second as we wrap up. The original 00:21:45.329 --> 00:21:48.430 Ornithomimus grandus from Montana. Ah, the ghost 00:21:48.430 --> 00:21:51.329 specimen. It haunts me. Somewhere out there, 00:21:51.450 --> 00:21:53.630 maybe in a dust and forgotten crate in a museum 00:21:53.630 --> 00:21:55.950 basement, or maybe eroded away into sand on a 00:21:55.950 --> 00:21:58.950 hillside, is the single bone that caused all 00:21:58.950 --> 00:22:01.549 this bureaucratic trouble. It is a very provocative 00:22:01.549 --> 00:22:04.720 thought to leave on. How many scientific names 00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:08.259 across all of biology are anchored firmly to 00:22:08.259 --> 00:22:10.599 fossils that no longer physically exist? Right. 00:22:10.700 --> 00:22:13.380 We build these rigorous, uncompromising systems 00:22:13.380 --> 00:22:16.759 of rules, like first name wins, but the physical 00:22:16.759 --> 00:22:19.400 reality of the specimens is incredibly fragile. 00:22:19.960 --> 00:22:22.380 Fossils get lost during wars, they're destroyed 00:22:22.380 --> 00:22:24.579 in museum fires, or sometimes just misplaced 00:22:24.579 --> 00:22:27.160 during bad moving days. Or someone just mislabels 00:22:27.160 --> 00:22:29.900 a cardboard box. Exactly. But the published name 00:22:29.900 --> 00:22:33.059 remains permanently in the literature. legally 00:22:33.059 --> 00:22:35.200 dictating what we can and can't call a brand 00:22:35.200 --> 00:22:38.420 new discovery made 100 years later. It's exactly 00:22:38.420 --> 00:22:40.880 like a binding legal precedent based on a case 00:22:40.880 --> 00:22:43.200 file that was burned in a fire. It's the ghost 00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:45.859 in the machine of paleontology. It truly is. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:48.059 Well, I think that is a perfect place to wrap 00:22:48.059 --> 00:22:50.579 up today's discussion. We started with a muddy 00:22:50.579 --> 00:22:53.519 detective story, went through a massive bureaucratic 00:22:53.519 --> 00:22:56.660 nightmare, and ended up with a ghost story. Very 00:22:56.660 --> 00:22:59.680 fitting for a deep dive into the deep past. So 00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:02.880 next time you're at a museum and you see a neat, 00:23:02.940 --> 00:23:05.920 tidy label on a dinosaur bone, take a closer 00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:08.160 look. Maybe there's a wild story behind that 00:23:08.160 --> 00:23:10.839 name. Maybe it was an allosaurus yesterday and 00:23:10.839 --> 00:23:13.339 a dryosaurus today. And who really knows what 00:23:13.339 --> 00:23:16.480 it will be classified as tomorrow. Exactly. Thanks 00:23:16.480 --> 00:23:18.619 for diving in with us. Look at your own foot 00:23:18.619 --> 00:23:21.079 elements with a bit more respect today. They're 00:23:21.079 --> 00:23:23.400 incredibly complicated structure. They certainly 00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:25.079 are. Catch you on the next deep dive.