Terrible Lizards

To most eyes, dinosaurs are unusual looking animals but on this week’s show we take a look at some that are weird and wonderful even by the standards of dinosaurs. We start with the huge theropods of Late Cretaceous Mongolia, the sickle-clawed Theirizinosaurs and boat-faced Deinocheirus with a mention of the tiny ant-eating alvarezsaurs. From here, we move to Europe and ancient archipelagos that produced some dwarf species of huge animals and giant weird versions of small ones. We round off with some unusual and interesting adaptations that show up in multiple different dinosaurs and show the power of convergent evolution across tens of millions of years. Finally, we are joined by comedian Alice Fraser @aliterative who wants to ask about how dinosaurs might have done if alive today. (You should also check out her many podcasts and watch her special on Amazon Prime.)

An old article of Dave’s on the astounding diversity of dinosaurs https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jun/11/dinosaurs-incredible-diverse

A blogpost on the wonderful arctometatarsal https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/what-is-an-acrtometatarsal/