Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something
a little different to kick things off today.
I want to start with a mental challenge. Oh,
okay. I like this. I want you, and you too, listening,
to close your eyes for a second. Just humor me.
Okay, I'm game. Eyes are closed. I'm ready. Now,
I want you to conjure up the image of a dinosaur
discovery. I'm talking about that classic cinematic
eureka moment where the sands of time are brushed
away. What are you seeing? Well, if I'm pulling
from the pop culture database in my brain, I'm
seeing dust, lots of dust. Yes. Heat waves shimmering
off the ground. I'm seeing a rugged, sun -baked
landscape, maybe the Badlands of Montana or the
Red Sandstone Canyons of Utah. Right, that classic
American West look. Totally. And there's almost
certainly a guy in a wide -brimmed hat, maybe
a bandana around his neck, chipping away at a
cliff face with a pickaxe. That'd be rugged.
It's very Western. It's basically Indiana Jones
with a rock hammer. Exactly. That is the Hollywood
image. It's the romance of the American frontier.
It's dry, it's hot, and it's very dramatic. But
what if I told you that the real story, the actual
moment that American dinosaur science was born,
didn't happen in a desert canyon at all? I have
a feeling you're about to dismantle my cowboy
fantasy. I am. Because the story actually starts
in a suburban backyard in New Jersey. New Jersey.
Specifically, a wet, muddy, gray pit in Haddonfield.
Just a stone's throw from Philadelphia. It sounds
completely improbable to modern ears. I mean,
when we think of New Jersey, we think of term
pikes and suburbs, not the land of the lost.
Not at all. But you are absolutely right. And
we are talking about an animal that, honestly,
most people couldn't pick out of a lineup today,
yet it started everything. We aren't talking
about the T -Rex. We aren't talking about the
Triceratops. No, we are talking about Hadrosaurus
fulci. And while it might not be the movie star
that the T -Rex is, I would argue, and the sources
we have today back this up extensively, that
Hadrosaurus is the most historically significant
dinosaur in North American history. That is a
massive claim. Most significant. You're putting
it above the tyrant lizard king. I stand by it.
I really do. This animal represents a massive
turning point. Before Hedrosaurus, our understanding
of dinosaurs was fundamentally different. It
was wrong. This is the creature that forced humanity
to rewrite the textbooks. It's the reason we
know dinosaurs stood up. So our mission today
is to unpack that claim. We are going to look
at a story of firsts. This thing is just loaded
with them. It really is. It's the first species
identified in North America from a skeleton,
not just a straight tooth. Which was the standard
before this. The first dinosaur ever mounted
for display in the world. Anywhere in the world.
A huge deal. And the dinosaur that literally
changed the posture of prehistoric life in our
minds from a four -legged crawler to a bipedal
giant. It's a journey that connects the earliest
days of American science, we're talking pre -Civil
War era, with modern medical technology, cancer
research, and really complex evolutionary biology.
It all starts in a mud pit. So let's get our
boots muddy. Let's travel back in time, not to
the Cretaceous just yet, but to 1838. We are
in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Set the scene for
us. Who is John Estall Hopkins? So John Estall
Hopkins is a landowner. He's a local guy in Haddonfield.
And in 1838, he is not out looking for monsters.
He is overseeing a very mundane, very messy agricultural
task. He's overseeing a dig in a marl pit on
his property. OK, we have to pause there immediately.
Marl. We see this word a lot in the older texts
regarding this discovery. What exactly is marl
and why on earth is he digging it up? Marl is
this dense, heavy soil or mud that is rich in
calcium carbonate and clay. It's actually a sediment
formed in marine environments' ancient seafloors.
So it's basically old ocean gunk. That's a great
way to put it. In the 19th century, before we
had bags of chemical fertilizer at the hardware
store, marl was absolute gold for farmers. It
was known as green sand. Green sand? Yeah. You'd
dig it up, haul it out, and spread it on your
fields to enrich the soil because of that mineral
content. It was a huge industry in New Jersey
at the time. So it's just fertilizer. He's digging
for fertilizer. Basically. But it's messy stuff.
It's often wet, sticky, gray -green mud. So Hopkins
has a crew digging near a tributary of the Cooper
River. It's dirty, wet, back -breaking work.
And suddenly, the shovels hit something hard.
And it's out of rock. No, they pull out these
large, unusual bones. Now, you have to contextualize
this. This is 1838. The word dinosaur had barely
been coined in England by Richard Owen. That
happened around 1842. So Hopkins is actually
finding this before the word really exists in
the public lexicon. So he would have had no frame
of reference. Zero in America. The concept was
virtually nonexistent for the general public.
There was no Jurassic Park. There were no museums
with giant skeletons. So when Hopkins sees these
massive vertebrates. Does he scream? Does he
call the newspapers? Does he rush to Philadelphia?
No. He treats them as curiosities. He thinks,
look at this big bone. He takes them home. He
puts them on display in his house in Haddonfield.
They became conversation starters. Like you have
neighbors over for tea and you say, hey, look
at this giant rock bone I found in the mud. And
people would say, oh, that's interesting, and
then move on. And that's it. That's where the
story ends for 20 years. That's it. For 20 years,
they just sit there. That is agonizing. You have
the key to American paleontology sitting on a
mantelpiece in Jersey, gathering dust while science
marches on without it. It is a classic example
of how scientific discovery relies on serendipity.
You need the object, yes, but you also need the
right person to see the object. And Hopkins,
for all his digging, wasn't that person. He was
a farmer, not a comparative anatomist. He saw
a weird big bone. He didn't see a revolution.
But the right person finally shows up in 1858.
Enter William Parker Folk. Right. So jump forward
20 years. William Parker Folk is a member of
the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
He is what we call a gentleman scientist, very
connected, independently wealthy and very, very
curious. He's not just a hobbyist. He's engaged
with the scientific community. Deeply. And he's
spending the summer in Haddonfield and he hears
about these bones. He hears the local rumors
of the giant bones at the Hopkins place. Exactly.
And unlike Hopkins, Folk has the background to
understand what he might be looking at. He's
been reading the European papers. He's heard
of iguanodon. The light bulb goes on. Instantly.
He visits Hopkins, sees the bones, and his mind
just starts racing. He realizes immediately,
these aren't whale bones. These aren't elephant
bones. These are something else entirely. He's
curious. city must have been electric. It was.
He convinced Hopkins to let him go back to that
original Marl pit. Now, remember, it had been
two decades. A pit dug in mud 20 years ago doesn't
stay open. No, it would be gone. It was likely
overgrown, filled in with silt, maybe even underwater
part of the year. It wasn't exactly a marked
grave, but Folk was determined. He wants to find
the rest of it. He does. He goes back to the
site, which, by the way, is now a National Historic
Landmark, the Hadrosaurus Fulci - site and he
hired a crew. He started digging. And this wasn't
just a casual afternoon with a trowel. This turned
into a full blown excavation. I think we need
to emphasize the what if here. If folk hadn't
visited that summer. Oh, absolutely. If folk
hadn't been summering in Haddonfield or if Hopkins
had decided to throw the clutter away five years
earlier during a spring cleaning, American paleontology
might have been delayed by decades. We might
have missed the window for the great dinosaur
rush that followed later in the century. Because
the spark wouldn't have been there. It's entirely
possible. The whole trajectory could have been
different. So Folk is digging. He's finding more
pieces. And he realizes he's in over his head.
He needs the heavy hitter. He needs the professional.
He contacts Joseph Leidy. The legend. Joseph
Leidy is a titan of 19th century science. We
often hear about Marsh and Cope, the guys who
had the famous bone wars later on. But Leidy
was the father of them all. He was a mentor to
them before they became bitter rivals. So he
was the authority. He was a paleontologist, a
biologist, a parasitologist, a comparative anatomist.
He was the guy you called when you had a biological
mystery. Folk sends word. You need to see this.
Let's talk about what they actually pulled out
of that mud. Because usually when we hear dinosaur
discovery in the mid -1800s, it's remarkably
underwhelming. It's like we found one tooth and
we built a whole dragon out of it. Correct. Up
until this point, North American dinosaur finds
were extremely fragmentary. Joseph Leidy himself
had named Trachodon and Dinodon based on teeth
found out west. Enough to say something big lived
here, but not enough to say what it looked like,
how it moved, or how big it really was. But the
Haddonfield dig was different. It was a treasure
trove. They didn't find a whole beast. Let's
be clear, it wasn't a perfect articulated skeleton
like you see in Jurassic Park, where they just...
Brush off the dust and there it is. But they
found a significant portion of the skeleton.
Give us the inventory. What was in the haul?
Okay, let's go through the list because the specific
bones matter. They recovered eight teeth, specifically
from the maxilla, which is the upper jaw, and
the dentary, the lower jaw. So just enough to
know it was a plant eater. And how those teeth
worked. They found fragments of the jaw itself.
They found three partial dorsal vertebrae. Those
are the backbones. And they found 13 caudal centra,
which are the tailbones. And one of those tailbones
was pretty special, right? Yes. They found an
almost complete middle caudal vertebra. That's
crucial because it gives you the shape of the
tail, how thick it was, how much muscle was attached
to it. But the real game changer, the thing that
made ladies' eyes pop, was the limbs. The arms
and legs. That's the part that tells you how
it moved. Exactly. They found a partial right
coracoid, a left humerus, radius, and ulna. That's
the entire arm assembly. They found parts of
the pelvis, the ilium, ischium, and pubis. And
crucially, they found the left hind limb. The
femur, tibia, fibula, and even foot bones. Okay,
so compared to just a tooth, this is like finding
the Rosetta Stone. It really is. It's hard to
overstate this. Before this discovery, scientists
had to guess the entire shape of the animal based
on a tooth or a single bone. Suddenly, Lighty
has the arms, the legs, the hips, and the tail.
He can actually do math. He can do ratios. He
can compare the length of the arm to the length
of the leg. He can measure muscle attachments.
He's not just guessing anymore. He's doing biomechanics.
And that math leads to a revelation. But first,
they have to name it. It's 1858. Leidy sits down
to formally describe this thing. What does he
call it? He names it Hadrosaurus Fulci. Let's
break that down for the non -Latin speakers.
The genus name, Hadrosaurus, comes from the Greek.
Hadros means bulky or large, and soros means
lizard. So, bulky lizard. Which, fair. It was
big. It was huge. And the species name, Fulke,
is obviously honoring William Parker Fulk, the
man who recognized the importance of the bones
and financed the dig. But I read in the notes
that Lighty was being a little cheeky with this
name. He was. He had a good sense of humor. It's
a bit of a pun. If you translate Hadrosaurus
Fulke directly, it can be read as Fulk's Big
Lizard. I love that. Hey, Bill, thanks for digging
this up. Here's a big lizard named after you.
It's so perfectly 19th century gentleman science.
It is. A nice little inside joke in the formal.
records. So Leidy is looking at these bones,
and he sees a connection to something found across
the Atlantic. Yes. He recognized the bones were
dinosaurian because they resembled the iguanodon.
The iguanodon had been discovered in England
decades earlier by Gideon Mantell. So Lady knows
he's dealing with a dinosaur, a member of this
new, strange group of reptiles. He's not working
in a complete vacuum. Not a complete one, no.
But as he starts assembling the mental image
of this animal, he realizes something is wrong
with the prevailing wisdom. Something is deeply
wrong with how they're picturing these things.
The old view. Right. At this time, the scientific
consensus influenced heavily by Richard Owen
in England, who coined the word dinosaur, was
that dinosaurs were essentially rhinoceros -like
reptiles. Heavy, lumbering. Enormous quadrupedal,
plodding beasts walking on all four legs. Think
of a lizard scaled up to the size of an elephant.
The Crystal Palace dinosaurs in London are the
famous example of this, right? They're still
there. They are. And if you go to Crystal Palace
Park today, you can see them. They are these
big, scaly iguanas on four sturdy, pillar -like
legs. That was the absolute truth of science
in 1850. But Lady looks at the hadrosaurus bones.
And he starts shaking his head. The measurements
just didn't add up for a four -legged walker.
He observes a massive disparity between the forelimbs
and the hindlimbs. How big of a difference are
we talking? Are we talking a little bit? No,
it's significant. The femur, the thigh bone,
was over one meter long. It was massive and robust.
The tibia was also huge, over 93 centimeters.
But the forelimbs, the humerus, radius, ulna.
were much smaller, much more slender, and less
heavily built. So if this thing was walking on
all fours? It would be constantly walking downhill.
Or it would have this very awkward hunched posture
where the head is way lower than the hips. It
just didn't make biomechanical sense. It would
look like a frog that was stuck mid -hop. It's
just... It's not an efficient way to move if
you weigh four tons. Not at all. It's a design
for failure. So Lighty takes a leap, a massive
intellectual leap. What does he propose? He suggested
that Hadrosaurus did not walk on four legs. He
reconstructed it as a biped. He compared it to
a kangaroo. A kangaroo. That must have sounded
insane to the Victorian scientific community.
You're telling me this four -ton monster hops
around like a kangaroo? It was a paradigm shift.
He proposed that this massive animal, weighing
tons, stood up on its hind legs and used its
tail for balance, creating a tripod effect. This
completely shattered the heavy lizard image.
It changes everything. It suggested dinosaurs
were dynamic. They were upright. They were distinct
from modern reptiles in a way nobody had truly
appreciated before. So Hadrosaurus is the animal
that stood up. That's a powerful image. And they
didn't just write about it. They decided to show
the world. And that brings us to 1868, the Philadelphia
Academy of Natural Sciences. Lady teams up with
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Now, Hawkins is
an interesting character. He's the guy who did
those Crystal Palace sculptures in London, the
four -legged ones. Yes, which makes it even more
fascinating. He was an English sculptor and naturalist.
He comes to America, sees Lady's work, sees the
physical evidence of the bones, and basically
says, I was wrong. Let's do it right this time.
That's scientific integrity right there, to be
willing to publicly undo your own famous work.
It really is. They decide to do something that
had never been done before in the history of
the world. They are going to mount the skeleton.
It's strange to think that there was a time before
dinosaur mounts. We take them for granted now.
You walk into a museum, you see a skeleton. But
in 1868, this was groundbreaking. It was pure
spectacle and science combined. Before this,
you might see a few bones in a glass case. Letty
and Hawkins wanted to show the animal as it was
in life. They built a metal framework to hold
the bones in that bipedal, kangaroo -like pose.
But they hit a snag. They had a lot of the skeleton,
but they were missing something crucial. The
head. The head. The skeleton lacked a skull.
And that feels like a pretty big piece of the
puzzle to be missing. How do you display a headless
dinosaur? Well, Hawkins was an artist. He didn't
let that stop him. He sculpted a plaster skull
based on speculation. He looked at the modern
iguana, since Iguandan was the closest known
relative, and kind of hybridized it with what
they knew of Hadrosaurus. So the head on the
world's first mounted dinosaur was fake. Reconstructed
is the polite scientific term, but yes, it was
an artistic interpretation. It wasn't bone. Later,
as we found related dinosaurs like Grypasaurus
or Brachylophosaurus, Artists started using those
skulls as models to fill the gap. But that original
Hawkins skull was a best guess effort. I imagine
this exhibit was popular. It was a sensation,
an absolute blockbuster. It drew crowds from
all over. It visualized the prehistoric world
in a way books never could. People were lining
up to see the monster of New Jersey. It changed
the public consciousness overnight. It really
did. It cemented the image of the upright dinosaur
in the American mind for a century. But speaking
of books, there was a bit of a delay on the academic
side. Leidy had written his major monograph,
Cretaceous Reptiles of the United States, in
1860, but it didn't come out for five years.
Why the long wait? The American Civil War. Right,
of course. The conflict disrupted everything,
including scientific publishing, supply chains,
and just the general focus of the nation. So
while the bones were found in 58 and Lady had
done the work by 60, the comprehensive scientific
volume didn't hit the shelves until 1865 when
the war was over. It really grounds this story
in history. You have this earth -shattering discovery
happening right as the country is tearing itself
apart. It does. It places the birth of American
vertebrate paleontology right alongside the defining
moment of American history. It's a reminder that
science doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's subject
to the same forces as everything else. So let's
get physical. We've established it stood up.
But how big was this bulky lizard? Give us the
stats. It earned its name. Edressus was a large
animal. We are looking at a length of about 7
to 8 meters. So roughly 23 to 26 feet long. Exactly.
That's a school bus, give or take. Maybe a shorter
bus. A short bus, yes. But the weight is the
impressive part. Estimates put it between 2 to
4 tons. That's 2 .2 to 4 .4 short tons. To put
that in perspective, that's like a very heavy
white rhinoceros or a small Asian elephant. Exactly.
Now, imagine an Asian elephant bouncing on its
hind legs. That gives you a sense of the forces
at play on those bones. And the bones reflect
that. They look like they could handle that kind
of stress. Oh, absolutely. Hadrosaurus is described
in the literature as... Ponderously built. Ponderously
built. I like that. It's not a ballerina. No,
not at all. When you look at the figula, the
eider shinbone, it is one of the most robust
among all hadrosaurs. It was built to bear massive
weight. This wasn't a sprinter. It was a tank.
And what about lunch? What is this tank eating?
It's a herbivore. It had a keratinous beak at
the front of its mouth, perfect for cropping.
Foliage stripping leaves off branches, maybe
breaking small twigs. They're like a giant turtle
beak, kind of. A good analogy. But the real engineering
marvel is the teeth further back in the jaw.
The dental battery. Yes. This is a hallmark of
adresaurs. They developed a specialized, complex
dentition. They had hundreds of teeth packed
together in columns to form these large, grinding
surfaces. So it's not just one row of teeth.
No, it's like a conveyor belt. As old teeth on
the surface wore down from chewing tough plants,
new ones were constantly erupting from underneath
to replace them. It was a highly efficient food
processing machine, allowing them to chew tough
vegetation that other animals couldn't handle.
I want to get a little technical for a minute.
We have listeners who really love the details.
And the critique of our earlier discussions was
that we skimmed over the why. Let's do it. In
the notes, there's mention of the pectoral crest
and the supracetabular crest. Why are we talking
about these bumps in the bones? Why do they matter
so much? This is where the detective work of
paleontology happens. Remember, we don't have
a skull. Usually the skull is how you tell species
apart. It's the easiest way. Oh, this one has
a horn here. This one has a crest there. It's
the face. It's distinctive. Exactly. Without
a skull, you have to look at the minute details
of the postcranial skeleton, the body. These
little bumps and ridges called apomorphies are
the unique features that define a species. Okay,
so what makes Hedrosaurus unique? Why isn't it
just a Gryposaurus without a head? Albert Prieto
Marquez, a leading expert on these animals, identified
specific features in a 2011 study. For instance,
on the humerus, the upper arm bone, there is
a ridge called the pectoral crest. This is where
the chest muscles attach. In Hadrosaurus, this
crest is shortened. It's slightly over 40 % of
the total humeral length. That is incredibly
specific. It has to be. And the delta pectoral
crest, which is part of that structure, is developed
from the humeral shaft in a way that creates
a broad lateral facet. Basically, the muscle
attachment points are shaped differently than
in its cousins. It suggests a different musculature.
And the hip. You mentioned the hip. Then you
look at the ilium, the top hip bone. There's
a feature called... the supra acetabular crest
which is a shelf of bone above the hip socket
in hadrosaurus the highest point of this crest
is lower than in other species and the crest
itself is shortened from front to rear so to
the untrained eye it's just a bumpy bone but
to an expert these bumps are a fingerprint exactly
these minute details are the only reason we can
say this is hadrosaurus full key And not just
some generic duck -billed dinosaur. They are
the clues that prove it's a distinct species,
which becomes incredibly important later on.
And that leads us perfectly into the drama. Because
for a long time, those clues weren't considered
good enough. We enter the classification crisis.
Yes, the Nomen Dubium era. Nomen Dubium. Sounds
like a Harry Potter spell, but it's actually
a pretty harsh insult in the scientific world,
isn't it? It is. It is the Latin for dubious
name. Essentially, it means the name is based
on fossil material that is too incomplete or
nondescript to be considered scientifically useful.
It's basically being erased from the books. It's
being put in a taxonomic penalty box. You can't
use it for classification because you can't be
sure what it is. How did Hadrosaurus, the first
mounted dinosaur, the animal that started it
all, end up being dubious? Because the type specimen
the original skeleton folk found lacked a skull.
Many 20th century paleontologists argued that
you couldn't tell Hadrosaurus apart from other
hadrosaurs based only on the body bones. They
thought the body bones were too generic across
the group. They were saying, without a head,
it's just a bag of bones. We can't prove it's
its own species. Correct. They argued it was
too incomplete to compare definitively to other
hadrosaurs, which were being discovered with
beautiful, complete skulls out west. So for decades,
the most famous dinosaur in New Jersey, the first
mounted skeleton in the world, was technically
considered a dubious species. Not a ghost. It
was a ghost in the taxonomy books. A historical
footnote, but not a valid scientific entity.
That's tragic. It's like saying the Model T isn't
a real car because we lost the hood ornament.
It was a very strict interpretation of the rules
of nomenclature. But science evolves, technology
evolves, our understanding evolves. In 2011,
there was that major re -evaluation we touched
on. Redemption. The 2011 study by Pretam or Marquez
looked at those specific characteristics we just
mentioned. The robust limbs, the specific shape
of the ilium and crests. Using modern comparative
techniques, the researchers concluded that these
traits were unique enough to distinguish it,
even without a head. So the fingerprint was finally
legible. Exactly. Hadrosaurus fulci was reinstated
as a valid taxon. It is no longer nomen dubium.
It is the real deal. But the drama didn't end
there. There was a whole family tree shuffle,
right? This part gets a little complex, so walk
us through it slowly. Oh, the taxonomy of duck
-billed dinosaurs is a battlefield. It's constantly
changing. Okay, so Hadrosaurus is the type genus
for the family Hadrosauridae. That means the
whole family is named after it. Right, like how
the Smith family is named after a Smith. It's
the original. Exactly. Traditionally, the family
was split into two subfamilies, Hedrosaurinae,
which were the ones largely without big hollow
crests on their heads, and Lambiosaurinae, the
ones with the big hollow trombone -like crests.
Like Parasaurolophus. The classic example. So
Hedrosaurus obviously belonged to the non -crested
group Hedrosaurinae. It was their namesake. Makes
sense. It's the original Hedrosaurian. But in
2008, studies using cladistics, which is a more
rigorous computer -based method of building family
trees, showed something surprising. Adresaurus
turned out to be more primitive than the other
members of its own subfamily. Primitive here
meaning simpler or just older. In cladistics,
it means basil. It branched off earlier in the
evolutionary tree. It wasn't actually a close
relative of the classic Hedrosaurians like Edmontosaurus
or Serolophus. It was a distant cousin that split
off way back at the beginning of the lineage.
So it was the odd one out in its own club. Precisely.
This caused a nomenclature crisis. If Hedrosaurus
isn't closely related to the other Hedrosaurians,
you can't keep calling them Hedrosaurians. Because
in taxonomy, a group has to include its namesake.
It's a fundamental rule. So what happened? They
couldn't just ignore it? No, they had to redefine
the groups. The name Hadrosaurinae was restricted
to contain only Hadrosaurus, just him, sitting
alone in his VIP section. So it's a subfamily
of one. Lonely. Very lonely. And the massive
group formerly known as Hadrosaurians, all those
famous non -crested ducks like Edmontosaurus
and Myosora, was renamed Sorolophinae. Wow. So
because this one headless skeleton from New Jersey
was so unique and primitive, it forced scientists
to rename a huge chunk of the dinosaur family
tree. It highlights the fluidity of science.
A single fossil, analyzed with new methods, can
rewrite the textbooks. Current cladograms place
Hedrosaurus right at the split, right before
the family divides into the solid -crested sorolophines
and the hollow -crested lambiosaurians. It's
the grandfather at the fork in the road. I want
to pivot to something that makes this animal
feel incredibly real to me. We've talked about
bones and names and Latin. Let's talk about its
health, specifically the 2003 study on tumors.
This is a fascinating piece of paleobiology.
In 2003, Bruce Rothschild and his colleagues
performed a massive screening of dinosaur vertebrae.
How massive? What kind of numbers are we talking?
They scanned over 10 ,000 fossils from multiple
museums. Wow. That's a huge sample size. It is.
They used CT scans and fluoroscopes, modern medical
imaging, to look inside the bones without having
to cut them open. And they were looking for evidence
of tumors and cancer. And what did they find
in Hadrosaurus? They found them. The study identified
hemangiomas, which are benign tumors of blood
vessels, desmoplastic fibroma, metastatic cancer,
and osteoblastoma. These are real, recognizable
diseases. Metastatic cancer. That's serious.
That means it started somewhere else and spread
to the bone. It is. And here is the surprise.
These tumors were almost exclusively found in
Hadrosaurus and other Hadrosaurids like Brachylophosaurus
and Edmontosaurus. They were not found in other
dinosaur groups included in the study, like the
horned dinosaurs or the stegosaurs. That is wild.
So the duck -billed dinosaurs were uniquely susceptible
to cancer. It seems so. The statistics are overwhelming.
And specifically, the tumors were only found
on the caudal vertebrae, the tail bones. Only
the tail, not the legs, not the back. Only the
tail. That's the part that is so strange. Why?
Why the tail? That is the big question. Was it
genetic? Was it something in their environment?
Some researchers speculate about environmental
factors. Maybe they were eating a specific plant
that had carcinogenic properties. Or maybe their
tails were subject to repeated stress or trauma
that made them vulnerable. We just don't know.
It's incredibly humanizing, if you can say that
about a reptile, to think of these animals dealing
with illness. It's not just a monster roaring.
It's an animal that might have had a sore tail
or a chronic painful condition. It reminds us
that they were biological organisms subject to
the same pathologies that affect life today.
It bridges that 80 million year gap. You look
at that bone, you see the tumor, and you think,
ouch, I know what that feels like. Speaking of
environment, let's set the scene. Where was Hadrosaurus
living? And I don't just mean New Jersey, because
New Jersey looked very different back then. Very,
very different. We are in the late Cretaceous,
specifically the companion stage. Radiometric
dating of bivalve shells from the formation places
this between roughly 83 .6 and 77 .9 million
years ago. So no T. rex yet? Not yet. T. rex
is a bit later, at the very end of the Cretaceous,
in the Maastrichtion. Hadrosaurus is living in
what is now the Woodbury Formation and possibly
the Tarheel -Coachman Formations further south.
But the fossil was found in marine sediment.
You mentioned earlier that Marl is basically
ancient seafloor. Was Hadrosaurus swimming? Was
it an aquatic dinosaur? That was an old theory
for a while, wasn't it? It was, based partly
on their broad, duck -like snouts and flattened
tails. But no, Hadrosaurus was a land animal.
It lived in coastal forests and floodplains.
The fact that it was found in marine sediment
is a classic case of what taphonomists call bloat
and float. Oh, lovely image. Explain that for
us. It's exactly what it sounds like. The animal
likely died near a river or on a coast. The carcass
began to decompose. As bacteria in the gut break
down the soft tissue, they produce gases. The
body bloats up like a balloon. And it becomes
a balloon. a three -ton balloon. It gets picked
up by the river current, washed out to sea, and
it floats. It can float for days or weeks. Eventually,
the gases escape or the body is torn apart by
scavengers and it sinks to the bottom of the
ocean. And that explains why we have the bones
we have, the disarticulation. Exactly. As the
body decayed and fell apart, some pieces dropped
off earlier. Maybe the head fell off first as
it's attached by a relatively thin neck or was
scavenged by a shark. The rest of the torso sank
later. That explains why we have this specific
mix of limbs and vertebrae, but no skull. So
it was buried. It was buried in the silty mud
of the seafloor, which became the marl that Hopkins
was digging up 80 million years later. It's amazing
to think that a creature that walked through
forests ended up buried with seashells. It gives
us a snapshot of the geography. The east coast
of North America was very different than higher
sea levels, different coastlines. It was a lush
subtropical environment, not unlike the Gulf
Coast today. Let's jump forward to the present
day. Hadrosaurus has had a bit of a renaissance
in pop culture, at least in his home state. It
has. In 1991, Hadrosaurus fulci was designated
the official state dinosaur of New Jersey. And
this wasn't just politicians deciding to be cool.
This was a grassroots movement. A grassroots
movement of children. It was initiated by a teacher
named Joyce Berry and her fourth grade classes
at Strawbridge Elementary School. From 1988 to
1991, these kids lobbied. wrote letters to their
legislators, and pushed for the designation.
I love that. Fourth graders changing state law
to honor a dinosaur. It shows that you don't
have to be a PhD to care about this stuff or
to make a difference. It demonstrates the power
of civic engagement and the universal appeal
of dinosaurs. And now there is a statue sculpted
by John Giannotti standing right in downtown
Haddonfield near the discovery site. A tribute
to their local monster. It is. It's a great statue.
It's about eight feet tall, not quite full size,
but it captures the spirit. It's a real point
of pride for the town. And what about the bones
themselves? The real deal. Do we see them? Usually
the original holotype skeleton is kept in the
collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences
in Philadelphia, mostly out of sight to protect
it. It's very fragile. Bones from these marl
pits can suffer from pyrite disease, what they
call fossil rot, where minerals in the bone react
with humidity and cause it to crumble. So they
have to keep it in a controlled environment.
Exactly. But they have let it out occasionally.
There was a major exhibit from 2008 to 2009 called
Hadrosaurus, the dinosaur that changed the world,
where a fully assembled cast and an exhibit on
the history were open to the public. It was a
huge hit. So even if you can't see the original
bones, the legacy is everywhere. Every time you
see a mounted dinosaur in a museum anywhere in
the world, you are looking at the legacy of Hedrosaurus.
It's the one that started it all. So let's wrap
this up. We've gone from a moral pit in 1838
to a state symbol in 1991. We've talked about
anatomy, cancer, and taxonomy wars. What does
this all mean? Hadrastaurus is the ultimate example
of how science works. It's not a straight line.
It starts with Creosity Hopkins and Folk. It
moves to Hypothesis Lighty, saying it stands
like a kangaroo. It goes through skepticism and
revision, the Nomen Dubium era where everyone
doubted it. And it arrives at refinement. Exactly.
Modern technology revealing cancer and cladistics
revealing its true place in the family tree.
It's a process of constant questioning. It's
a survivor. It survived the Cretaceous, it survived
the Marl Pit, it survived the Civil War delays,
and it survived the taxonomy wars. And it taught
us that dinosaurs were not just lizards, they
were something else. Something grander, more
dynamic, and ultimately more interesting. Here's
a final thought for you to chew on, listeners.
Hadrosaurus is one of the most famous dinosaurs
in history, yet we still don't have its skull.
We have a statue in Haddonfield, we have mounts
in museums, and they all have heads. But those
heads are educated guesses based on other animals.
It raises a provocative question, doesn't it?
Exactly. When you walk through a museum and look
at those towering skeletons, how much of what
you are seeing is hard fossil evidence? And how
much is plaster, sculpture, and imagination filling
in the blanks? How much is science? And how much
is art? How many other facts about the prehistoric
world are actually just composites waiting for
a 2011 -style study to overturn them? It encourages
us to keep asking questions. assume we know the
whole story next time you look at a dinosaur
statue look a little closer ask yourself is that
real or is that the artist talking thanks for
diving deep with us today keep digging see you
next time