I’m Steve Bruce Adi and I’m a
paleontologist
I’ve been studying dinosaurs for about
ten years but the first dinosaurs were
found more than two centuries ago and
since that time there has been an
incredible amount of research on
dinosaurs and other fossil organisms
over the next five minutes I’m going to
take you on a tour of ten of what I
think are some of the most incredible
fossil discoveries ever made first on
the list has to be the first discoveries
of dinosaurs
now Native Americans and ancient Greeks
undoubtedly came across dinosaur bones
but the first dinosaurs that were found
and studied by scientists were
discovered about two centuries ago in
England including a very important
discovery of a large predator called
Megalosaurus made right near here in
Oxford by the 1840s it became obvious
that Megalosaurus and a few other
species belong to a previously
unrecognized group of giant reptiles
this was the start of our fascination
with Dinosaurs
Tyrannosaurus Rex was a prehistoric
killing machine five tons of muscular
brawn but as you can see its forearms
were tiny they certainly weren’t used in
capturing prey maybe they were used turn
eggs in the nest
maybe they were used during mating maybe
they were used to push the animal up off
the ground that fell doubt altom Utley
we just don’t know and unsolved
mysteries like this make paleontology a
very exciting science to study one
carnivore that was larger than t-rex is
an animal called Spinosaurus which would
have looked something like this animal
here except much larger maybe up to 17
meters in length we do know that it had
a big sail on his back that its skull
looked a lot like that of a crocodile
and then it ate fish and we know that it
ate fish because fossils of fish were
found preserved in the gut of one
specimen
I’m here in front of the skeleton of an
ichthyosaur ik Thea sores weren’t
dinosaurs but they were a group of
peculiar see living reptiles that live
during much of the time of dinosaurs and
as you can see they don’t really look
like any reptiles alive today but they
look more like a dolphin or a tuna and
one of the most unusual and most
interesting discoveries about atheist
laws is that these animals did not lay
eggs like living snakes and lizards but
instead they gave birth to live young
and we know this because there are many
skeletons of mothers with embryos
preserved inside of them
as far as we know all dinosaurs
reproduced by laying eggs and a few
spectacular discoveries over the last
couple of decades tell us that some
species of dinosaurs had huge nesting
grounds that they would return to year
after year the most remarkable of these
discoveries is a site in Argentina that
is so vast that you can’t walk around
without stepping on dinosaur eggshells
the dinosaurs that laid these eggs were
sauropods members of that group of long
necked species that include things like
Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus and as we
can see here these animals the largest
land animals of all time
hatched from eggs that were certainly no
larger than a football but really no
larger than a grapefruit pterosaurs were
a group of flying reptiles that lived
during much of the age of dinosaurs and
were close relatives to dinosaurs but
weren’t actually true dinosaurs probably
the most spectacular pterosaur of all
was an animal with a tongue-twister name
called Quetzalcoatlus and what was truly
unique about this animal is that it had
a wingspan may have been up to 15 meters
in length
this next discovery is one that’s very
special to me because in 2005 I was part
of a team that discovered the first
evidence of group behavior in the very
familiar dinosaur Triceratops here and
it was in this year that a volunteer on
our team named Hellmuth reg slaw
discovered three young Triceratops
individuals in 65 million year old rock
in Montana and this discovery tells us
that young Triceratops probably banded
together in order to protect themselves
probably from predators like t-rex
one of the most unusual types of fossils
is something called a copper light
copper lights are fossilized fecal
matter
so fossilized poop and believe it or not
we have copper lights for many different
species of dinosaurs we have copper
lights for t-rex
they’re about a foot long and they’re
chock full the bones of the prey species
we have copper lights of animals like
this the duck-billed dinosaurs and their
copper lights are full of plants but
also full of pieces of decaying wood so
they would have supplemented their diet
with logs the question of what happened
to the dinosaurs why did they go extinct
has been one of the enduring mysteries
of science but we now know today that
two major things happen about 65 million
years ago right from the dinosaurs when
they stick there were large outpourings
of lava from huge volcanoes and also a
giant asteroid hit the earth something
like this meteorite here but much larger
about six miles in diameter and it’s
likely that one or both of these things
explains why we don’t have animals like
t-rex and Triceratops alive today
we all know dinosaurs are extinct or are
they well it turns out that that’s not
really true because living birds are the
evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs
and the understanding that birds evolved
from dinosaurs is probably the single
most important fact ever discovered by
dinosaur paleontologists and this
understanding came directly from the
oldest species of fossil bird an animal
called Archaeopteryx which we can see
here and as you can see it looks like
it’s half bird half reptile so
Archaeopteryx is a really stunning link
between dinosaurs and their avian
descendants so there you have it
ten of my all-time favorite fossil
discoveries but with so many discoveries
to choose from there were many that
didn’t make my list and some of you out
there may have your own ideas your own
favorite discoveries if so please let us
know in the comments the great thing
about paleontology is that there’s
always new discoveries being made just
last year alone there were more than 50
new species of dinosaurs that were found
more than one per week so who knows what
the next greatest fossil discovery will
be maybe it will be made by one of you
