Terrible Lizards

Following on from last week's look at how dinosaurs get named, in this (Patreon picked) episode Iszi and Dave turn to the issue of dinosaur relationships. How do palaeontologists put together family trees and work out which species or group is related to which other one? And how easy and reliable is it when most dinosaurs are known from only fragments of skeletons rather than complete fossils? For our final normal episode of series 3 (have we really come this far already?) we are joined by Professor Sophie Scott who has a question about the sounds dinosaurs might have made.

Links:

Prof Sophie Scott CBE is Director of UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. RI Xmas Lecturer 2017 - listen to her podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-neuromantics/id1455641494

Here’s a link to a discussion  between researchers about the vexed idea of the Ornithoscleida  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/a-discussion-not-a-war-two-opposing-experts-talk-dinosaur-family-trees

And here’s a link to an article about dinosaur origins and the question over the origins of the ornithischians https://news.mit.edu/2020/study-timing-dinosaurs-evolution-0729