Cosmic Queries – Dinosaur Discoveries with Kimberly Chapelle

What did dinosaurs really look like? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Marcia Belsky explore questions we all have about dinosaurs, fossils, feathers, and asteroids with paleontologist Kimberly Chapelle. Is Jurassic Park accurate?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. We're doing a cosmic queries edition today and it's gonna be all about dinosaurs. I think this is the first time we've ever made that the topic of a StarTalk episode. And I got with me as co-host Marcia Belsky. Marsha, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:34Marcia Belsky?

  Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be back.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, excellent. So, you know, I don't know if you, like everybody else, like loved dinosaurs as a kid. But however much you loved them and however much I loved them, we don't have the expertise necessary for the show.

• 0:49Marcia Belsky?

  No.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had to find someone who does. And came across a postdoctoral research fellow at my own home institution, the American Museum of Natural History. Famous for its dinosaurs, I'd also like to think it's famous for its Hayden Planetarium. But the two together are jewels in the crown that this institution wears. Please help me welcome Kimberly Chapelle. Kimberly, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Neil, I'm on my show, Breaks Out, it's me, it's so cool.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you first introduced yourself to me as Kimmy, so we're gonna go with Kimmy?

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Yes, please, please, Kimmy.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so let's go ahead and do that. So, dinosaurologist, that's not what we call you guys. We call you paleontologists, right?

• 1:31Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what do you focus on?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  So, I mainly focus on the plant-eating group of dinosaurs called sauropodaeaeae dinosaurs. And that more, well, people are more familiar with the very, very large guys like the Plodocus and Brachiosaurus and things like that. So, it's that main group of dinosaurs.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the Brachiosaurus, that's the...

• 1:52Marcia Belsky?

  I'm Googling all of this. I'm like, Plodocus, Brachiosaurus.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And don't forget the Theosaurus, that's a new one that just entered.

• 2:01Marcia Belsky?

  Is the Plodocus like the platypus?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Kind of, yes. Different body scales.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, which one, I just want to set this straight, which one? Cause we, we all, this is almost like a Pluto story. We all lost to the Brontosaurus at some point. And that became what, what became the closest thing to the?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Well, Brontosaurus like comes in and out, right? I mean, this is a thing in Pedro is we can, then things get confirmed and then they get removed and then they get confirmed and um it's sort of how it works.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but, but, but Brontosaurus was plant eating, correct?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Yes, that is correct.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:34Marcia Belsky?

  I just always think of that movie, The Land Before Time, when I think of the Brontosaurus. Because uh they really, they really, with the dinosaur plotlines, when you're a kid, they really let you have it. It's really sad.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Marcia, there've been more modern representations of dinosaurs since Land Before Times. You're talking about the animated series?

• 2:55Marcia Belsky?

  Yes.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay. That's like the most successful animated dinosaur series ever at the time.

• 3:00Marcia Belsky?

  Really?

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 3:01Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, with the facts. I mean, I believe that.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's drastic, there's other representations of dinosaurs that are not cartoons.

• 3:08Marcia Belsky?

  Uh, so I've heard. So I've heard.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Just a little.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, we, you know, everyone has dinosaur questions. We'll lead off, I'll ask a question maybe, and then Marcia has one, and then we'll go to our, our fanbase. Um, who all are Patreon members, because right now they have the exclusive access to the question and answer mantle that is Cosmic Queries. So, so let me ask you something. Kimmy?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how did dinosaurs get so big? Like, did you have smaller fuck, spittle? Like, did it just evolve overnight to be big? Didn't, where's the dinosaur that's half the size of the biggest one, and then half that size, and then half that size? Like, how they just all so big?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Alright Neil, so I'm gonna take the next hour basically trying to answer this question.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I mean, that is one of the main things, especially in the plant-eating dinosaur group, right? So the sauropodomorph dinosaurs. They start off as very, very small things, for example, like Virulastes, which is tiny. It's about fifteen kilograms, which is about thirty pounds, walks on two legs. And then as we get to the more derived guys, things like, you know, Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus, and things like that, they're multi-ton animals. So there's this giant transition that happens in body size. And one of the main questions is not only how does that happen? But also what are all the physiological and anatomical changes that go hand in hand with that? Because you can't just grow and become giant. There's lots of things that you need to do to your body plan in order to be able to do that.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, you need fat stubby legs to hold up all that body weight.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  That is one. Yes, you need. Um, but you also, I mean, one of the main things.

• 4:53Marcia Belsky?

  You're lucky they're dead, Neil. You're lucky they're dead.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was I, did I fat shame them? Is that why?

• 5:00Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, fat. So watch your tone with that. Watch your tone.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  They're big bones, Neil.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're bones, and they totally were big bones.

• 5:08Marcia Belsky?

  Beautiful stubby legs.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Um, but one of the, the main transition that happens, you know, also in that is the going from being bipedal or walking on two legs to being quadrupedal or walking on four legs. And that's definitely something that allows, you know, this great gain in body mass. Um, because being giant and multi-ton and walking on two legs is just probably not feasible and not something that could work. You need to be able to load all four of your limbs to be able to do that.

• 5:33Marcia Belsky?

  I've never thought about that, but that makes so much sense.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but that doesn't explain the millipede. That doesn't explain the millipede. What kind of weight is it holding up?

• 5:44Marcia Belsky?

  I don't trust those things.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  That should be like, a bazillion tons then. It should just be like.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I can't, or it could do that.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Right?

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and millipedes is like, why do you have so many legs? You're creepy.

• 5:56Marcia Belsky?

  Oh my gosh, imagine a giant millipede. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Thank God for small favors. Wow.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And please, please unpack your specialty dinosaur category. Sauropodomorphs.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  That is correct. So sauropodomorphs, so for example, the two main groups of dinosaurs are sauropods and ornithists. Um, so ornithists will be your group that includes your triceratops and ankylosaurus and things like that. Um, they are.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'd love the triceratops.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Right? Everyone loves a triceratops. Um, or if this skin means

• 6:31Marcia Belsky?

  She's a favorite.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Bird hip dinosaur. Um, whereas Zora skin, which includes your meat eating dinosaurs like T-Rex and your sort of animal dinosaurs like the Bodakus. Um, so risk in means lizard hip dinosaurs. So Sora pod sorrow comes from lizard.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. Okay. So you all care about the hip where the hip bone connects to the leg bone.

• 6:54Marcia Belsky?

  So the hip is huge.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  So this is the

• 6:58Marcia Belsky?

  Hip is a big part of dinosaur study.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big hips, that's big ass. You got big ass dinosaurs. Coming out of this exercise.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  It's also one of the most confusing things because so the main difference between lizard hips and bird hips, right? Or if you look at a bird today is the orientation of the pubes bone, whether it points forward or back or backwards. Um, but on it's, uh, we all know that, well, maybe we don't all know, but birds are related to dinosaurs. They are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. Birds fall within the lizard hip group, which is really confusing, not the bird hip group, the lizard hip group because

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's Kimmy, it's a little weird to me that of all the features of a dinosaur, you're focusing on the hip and categorizing them based on it. That feels a little weird.

• 7:46Marcia Belsky?

  That's where it's different. They said either it goes forward or back.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's say, how big is your big toe? And let me categorize that way.

• 7:53Marcia Belsky?

  But if the big toe were facing the other way in happy animals,

• 7:58Marcia Belsky?

  that's a different thing.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different one. Marcia, stupid.

• 8:03Marcia Belsky?

  And I don't even, I don't even know science good like that. So.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Marc, you have a question before we go to our, our cosmic queries.

• 8:11Marcia Belsky?

  I mean, I like to ask the existential questions. I like to get to the root of, I think, I speak for the people. And I feel like when I think about dinosaurs, my whole thing is, okay, if this like big bang killed them, who's to say that's not going to happen to us? Basically, can you reassure me that a meteor is not going to? Crash into us, or have you guys learned more about what the mass extinction event actually was based on? Because I think there's a lot of confusion around that and fear.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll lead off and then hand to Kimmy. Yeah, an asteroid took out all her dinosaurs. One of my, one of my rocks in space.

• 8:49Marcia Belsky?

  I don't like that. Yeah, that was on you.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your fault, Neil. Another one could take us out. And one that took out the dinosaurs pried open an ecological niche for our mammal ancestors to evolve into something more ambitious than a tree rodent. So, so I think-

• 9:06Marcia Belsky?

  I mean, I'm grateful for that, but-

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Killer asteroids can be our friends or our enemies. Now, Kim, what do you have to say about asteroids or killer anything? Extinction and dinosaurs.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, I think with, with the, the sort of incretaceous extinction, and a lot of extinction events, there's this sort of misconception that these things happen instantaneously and that all the dinosaurs disappear. That is not the case. Obviously, we-

• 9:30Marcia Belsky?

  That's what happened in The Land Before Time.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Right? So, I mean, and this is, this is a thing with like all paleo art reconstructions, where you have a bunch of dinosaurs. There's always like fire in the background and like volcanoes.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, there is volcanoes.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  And like a comet.

• 9:43Marcia Belsky?

  There's one of the baby dinosaurs yelling like, "Momma!"

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Like crying in the distance. But obviously, okay, within a direct radius of, of, around the asteroid that, that impacts the Earth, obviously, everything is, is going to die much more quickly. But extinction events take a very, very long time. You know, so for example, the one that killed the dinosaurs, which did not kill all the dinosaurs because the birds made it through. So, birds are, are survivors. My group of dinosaurs got wiped out completely. Probably actually one of the reasons is that they were so big. Being that big in size and losing a lot of your resources on Earth is, is just don't go hand in hand, though.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It gets susceptible.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marsha, I remember a scene in Land Before Time where Chomper, do you remember who Chomper was?

• 10:29Marcia Belsky?

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the baby T-Rex.

• 10:31Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where it, it stumbled on the other playing dinosaurs. I think there was the, you know, the triceratops baby, and there was the brontosaurus baby. And they're playing, and that, and Chomper doesn't realize yet that it's supposed to eat them.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Because they're just babies. It's like the kitten and the puppy playing.

• 10:51Marcia Belsky?

  Wow.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they reach in A's and say, wait a minute, this is a violation.

• 10:55Marcia Belsky?

  And that's a metaphor. And that's a metaphor. Wow, I don't remember that part.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, I thought it was a charming sort of reality check on

• 11:04Marcia Belsky?

  Uh huh.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  what's going on. Anyhow, that's a cartoon. Let's go straight to our questions. Let's do it.

• 11:09Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, great. Okay, let me ask the questions. Let me pull these up.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't seen these and I don't think Kimmy has seen them either, right? So you're the only one.

• 11:17Marcia Belsky?

  No, we're going in blind. I have all the control. I could just be making these up for all, you know?

• 11:24Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, I feel like this is a good follow up on what we were just talking about. Hello, everyone. Hello, Chris from California. He said, why did some animals, parentheses, for example, many birds and alligators survive the meteor that killed most of the life on the planet?

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, and I think some frogs survive too. And you'd think that yes, a big animal needs a lot of resources and things, but a small animal might be more susceptible just because it's small, perhaps. I don't know for sure. So we're gonna leave that as a cliffhanger. See what I did there? And we're going to take a break from Cosmic Queries. And when we come back, more with our expert paleontologist, Kimmy Chapelle, and our co-host, Marcia Delph. And StarTalk returns.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back with our talk Cosmic Queries, the dinosaur edition. And I love me some dinosaurs. At least I like rendering them extinct with asteroids. But that's all I ever do when I think about them, but.

• 12:57Marcia Belsky?

  Let the record show, pro asteroid.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you pro or are you anti asteroid? Something to hinge election results on, right? So we've got Kimmy Chapelle, who's a postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History. And Kimmy, you're leaving us, I'm told. So you're from where to begin with?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  So I'm from Johannesburg, South Africa originally. And I had the great pleasure of doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the A&H, where I met all of you lovely people. And I'm currently transitioning back from South Africa to continue with a postdoctoral fellowship there.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Which university?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I'm at the University of the Witwatersrand, or just Wits University for short.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wits, I'm glad it has a short. And so is South Africa as a country, does it have a lot of good fossils?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Oh, man, again, I could fill a whole episode just to talk about the South African fossil record. We have a great fossil record. So 66% of South Africa's land yields fossils of various types. They go from mammal ancestors to very early dinosaurs to, we have great hominids, just all sorts of very, very cool things.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:12Marcia Belsky?

  The hominins in South Africa.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The hominins, yes. They have a thesaurus and hominins. This is a whole. So Marshall, you left off with a question, someone asking, it was Chris from California, I think. He wants to know, you have these creatures that live so long and so hardy, and an asteroid takes them out. Okay, I get that. But now we have other creatures. Why did the bird survive? Or their bird ancestors and some alligators and other lizards? Like, what protection did they have that other animals did not?

• 14:48Speaker 02

  So I think, I mean, again, especially with the encretation event, it is one that fascinates everyone, including scientists. And just very recently, there was a big splash in the media about the days the dinosaur died was in spring. So we're still. Every day or

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the spring?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  In the spring. So we're still, there's a lot of research ongoing as to one, like, you know, what happens directly after the asteroid hits, but also what happens as we said, the long term after that. Um, why do some animals survive? Why, why do some don't? Um, and there's a lot of factors to consider. One is where in the world those animals are compared to where the asteroid hit. Um, which areas have the most diversity? Groups that have a lot of genetic diversity, um, might do better, for example. Um, and that, that whole group of animals, that whole clade, not all of them will survive, but they'll have enough representatives that will survive, that will keep the group going. Um, for example.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's the whole, that's the whole value of genetic diversity.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Because you have variations that, and you don't know in advance whether the variation is good or bad for what the change, the assault on your environment is. And so now you get an asteroid, so, so some versions of a group have asteroid resistant genes.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  It's just coded in there. Yeah, exactly. They knew, they foresaw it. They knew it was coming.

• 16:16Marcia Belsky?

  That makes so much sense in terms of alligators. I feel like alligators would survive a nuclear bomb. Like, they just seem so sturdy.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  They're like the

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause, cause they, they know they're badass. I think that's the thing.

• 16:27Marcia Belsky?

  They carry themselves that way. Yeah.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They do. Especially, even though on land, they're not nimble like they are in the water. They're still walking like, get out of my way.

• 16:36Marcia Belsky?

  Absolutely. Yeah. They have that confidence of surviving a, an extinction event.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be because their elbows are out when they walk. And anybody who walks down the street with their elbows.

• 16:45Marcia Belsky?

  They look buff.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. They're, they're just like, don't mess with them. So you like our, our paleontology theories?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  So, I mean, I've done fieldwork in Zimbabwe or Lake Kariba, where you're surrounded by crocodiles and hippos. And between the two, I think, um, on land, I would probably would rather run into a crocodile than a hippo, I think.

• 17:06Marcia Belsky?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  That would be my

• 17:07Marcia Belsky?

  I don't ever wanna see a hippo. Are hippos dinosaurs?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:10Marcia Belsky?

  They seem like dinos. This is what I don't get. Like, I look at a blue whale, I'm like, how is that not a dinosaur? How is a hippo not a dinosaur? That's crazy to me.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just wish animals to be dinosaurs. There's a science behind this.

• 17:23Marcia Belsky?

  I know I can.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to tell you.

• 17:24Marcia Belsky?

  That's why I'm on the show to educate myself, because otherwise I'd just say a hippo's a dinosaur. You're not going to convince me otherwise.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Anything that looks mean is a dinosaur, if anything that looks like.

• 17:35Marcia Belsky?

  Any big, mean animal, I think, is a dinosaur.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. A big and mean, especially, what's that lizard thing down somewhere?

• 17:43Marcia Belsky?

  Um, Komodo dragon?

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Komodo dragon. Totally.

• 17:47Marcia Belsky?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I'm old enough to remember this. Every dinosaur movie in the 50s and 60s had a dressed up Komodo dragon. That was the, that was, because we didn't know how to do stop action, really, yet. And so you got the most dinosaur looking thing. But, Marcia, they did not choose a hippo to be a representative dinosaur.

• 18:09Marcia Belsky?

  I don't get that. I think they should have. If I were the casting agent, I would have gone a different way.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Would you teach it to walk on two legs, too, and like?

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, you'd have to sup them.

• 18:19Marcia Belsky?

  I mean, I think hippos, even if you raise them from babies, it's like, don't mess with them. They are dangerous. This is the hippo podcast now.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I did play Hungry Hungry Hippos. I just want you to know.

• 18:31Marcia Belsky?

  And those look like dinosaurs, too, Hungry Hungry Hippos, don't they?

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Kimberly, could, does being underwater offer protection? Because underwater's kind of a stable place. And that's where you might find dinosaurs, or some eggs that were laid, that, I mean, something just has to get through that portal.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And come out on the other side.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  So there aren't many marine dinosaurs. Again, there's a lot of recent research that came out on spinosaurus from Morocco being one of the, the...

• 19:02Speaker 02

  I mean, not most marine, that's a really bad way of describing it, but really good, are really successful at hunting in water or at foraging underwater. So, but there are strictly marine dinosaurs. There are things like, uh, ichthyosaurs and pleseysaws, you know, the things with the long neck that kind of look like the Loch Ness monsters floating around.

• 19:21Marcia Belsky?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Those are marine reptiles, so they're not actually part of, part of the dinosaur.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it that you're referencing real animals to a fictional one.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  I, I, you know?

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They look like the fictional.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  They do. And that's something that everyone recognizes.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree. I agree a hundred percent.

• 19:35Marcia Belsky?

  That's kind of funny that everybody can recognize, yeah, a fictional thing, but then like real dinosaurs. We're like, no, we've never been educated about that.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:43Marcia Belsky?

  No, but I know about what the Loch Ness monster was.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a funny fact, you know, that's, I'm just commenting on the social culture of that.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  It helps.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so just before we go into the next question, you're saying that it depends on what the diversity of that genus was, perhaps. You didn't use that word, but.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  The clade, I think, is a whole, um.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A clade. It's just a whole clade. And so you expect that many would have died and others emerge on the other side. So, so what's interesting to me then, if birds survived or the bird ancestor, how many bird ancestors didn't?

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Probably a lot.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 20:19Marcia Belsky?

  All the ones who are on the ground when the meteor hit.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or vaporized.

• 20:23Marcia Belsky?

  Exactly. And where did the meteor hit? I don't think I know that.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the Yucatan Peninsula of what is now Mexico.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 20:31Marcia Belsky?

  Oh.

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They found a crate of oil drillers, uh, prospecting for where they might find the next batch of Gulf oil, uh, found a ridgeline buried, deep buried, and they traced it into a whole circle. And then they dated that zone and they found out that it dates from sixty-five million years ago. And, and, and so there it is. It was the complete, it was not only the smoking gun. Not only the smoke, it was the gun. It was all there, all in one thing. And from that on, he said, yep. Asteroid took out the dinosaur. But if you remember the Disney movie Fantasia. If you haven't, I highly recommend it. It's all classical music and all animated and there's no dialogue.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And different bits of classical music put to different animated stories. And one of them was Stravinsky does the rites of spring. And to that music, they portrayed dinosaurs thriving and then going extinct.

• 21:33Marcia Belsky?

  See, that's what I'm talking about. So much dark stuff.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but they didn't know about the asteroid back then. So they just had like the temperature changed, you know? And it got hot for them and they couldn't survive it. But Kimmy, dinosaurs were around for hundreds of millions of years. Surely the temperature would have changed at least a few times in that period, right?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  I'm sure it did, but you know, it's, it's sort of like the extinction event today. I'm sure it's the rate at which it happens.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Is, is.

• 22:00Marcia Belsky?

  That's what I was just thinking.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And, and going back to which, which claims go extinct and which don't, I think. And this is also something we're still like working on and understanding. I say we as if like paleontologists as a whole, not me personally, but is, is the physiology of dinosaurs. So I'm sure that being warm-blooded or cold-blooded is also going to affect how you survive in an ever-changing environment. And there's great research that's recently come out on a new method to, to identify whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or, or cold-blooded, for example. So that's, I mean, these are all questions that we're also still, still working on.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's funny is no one ever said he was a warm-blooded killer.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  No, no, right? It's gonna change the story.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Marsha, give me another one.

• 22:47Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, another question. I like this one. Says, hi, everyone. I'm Lucas from New Westminster, British Columbia. I have a geeky question for Dr. Chapelle. I'm gonna mispronounce this word. If Masaspondylus, does that word make sense to you?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Masaspondylus, yes, I suppose.

• 23:10Marcia Belsky?

  Masaspondylus, we're still around today. Do you think we could train them to be ridable? Or would you be able?

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it.

• 23:17Marcia Belsky?

  Would you be able to raise and grow them into an animal like a working horse?

• 23:22Speaker 02

  That's, that's an incredible question. So Masaspondylus is, is my baby. So that is what I did my honors, masters, and PhD degrees on. It's the most common Southern African dinosaur that we have, and it's one of the very early members of that sauropod morph group that we were talking about. It's much smaller. It's about half a ton for people who don't know. And it walks on two legs. When it comes to training them, I would personally love to think that yes. I would say that if you're going to train a dinosaur, I would probably go for one that is not ginormous, such as Deponocus, because that seems really impractical. And then also probably go for one that eats plants, because that sounds like a great,

• 24:07Speaker 02

  you know, idea.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want it to eat you.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's just practical. That's practical.

• 24:11Marcia Belsky?

  You can take some of the risk out of it.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how do you ride something that walks on two legs?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's, I guess that's one that, I mean, they ride ostriches, right? That's doable.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they do.

• 24:21Marcia Belsky?

  Who's they?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the they. Marsha, it's they. It's obvious.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  People who race ostriches.

• 24:27Marcia Belsky?

  Who's these they that are riding ostriches?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  It's the thing. We have ostriches.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen it.

• 24:33Marcia Belsky?

  No, I think I've seen it too.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen it. Plus, in Star Wars, there's that creature on the, on the snow planet.

• 24:40Marcia Belsky?

  Yes, that's what I was thinking too.

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're two-legged, with two, with front little, sort of T-Rex front leg.

• 24:45Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, I feel like it's, you can ride an animal that's two-legged. You just are gonna look kind of silly. It just doesn't look right in the human brain of like, you know what I mean? It looks like a piggyback ride.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I know. So, but, but Kimberly, the, Kimmy, the, the.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A half a ton is about the weight of a horse, right? We ride horses and we don't fear the relative size difference.

• 25:10Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe we should, but we don't.

• 25:12Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, I fear horses.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you think we could ride them? You didn't give an answer to this yet. I think you're dodging the answer.

• 25:18Marcia Belsky?

  Yes or no?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I'm gonna pull up here, she'll delight and say yes.

• 25:25Marcia Belsky?

  Research comes out tomorrow that it's not rideable.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the real question is, have any reptiles been domesticated?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Oh, that's an excellent question. I'm trying to think.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't think so, you know?

• 25:40Marcia Belsky?

  Not big ones, yeah, because I feel like the smaller ones, they just keep in cages and stuff.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just keep feeding them. They're not trained to do anything, right?

• 25:47Marcia Belsky?

  Even snakes, people keep snakes as pets, but they're not like trained to behave.

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we have no experience successfully domesticating a reptile, then to get a reptile that's a thousand pounds and believe that we could ride it, that's kind of a pipe dream right there.

• 26:03Marcia Belsky?

  I think you could ride a big snake. I feel like you could ride a reptile, even if they're not like mentally, you know, like you don't have the bond like a cat or a dog.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could put a saddle on a snake and ride it, okay?

• 26:13Marcia Belsky?

  I think you could, I think someone has.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Riding a navigator or a crocodile seems really inconvenient, though, doesn't it? I don't know how you would do that.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, someone in Florida's done it.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 26:26Marcia Belsky?

  I 100% believe.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody in Florida has done everything, right?

• 26:29Marcia Belsky?

  Definitely.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or everyone in Florida has done something, right? But.

• 26:35Marcia Belsky?

  There it is.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inverse of that. So give me another quick question here.

• 26:40Marcia Belsky?

  All right, let's get another quick one in. Okay, so this is the first one we got. It says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Chapelle. This is Devin from Indiana. I was wondering how accurate the Jurassic Park movies are. Can you extract DNA from fossilized mosquitoes that drank dinosaur blood? And other science facts, I think that that movie.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I know one fact. I would lead off with this, you ready? Because I spoke to one of my paleontology colleagues at the museum. So do you remember where they got the mosquito blood? It was like in a cave in amber in South America and they choppered in. And what I learned is one of the greatest, largest repositories of bugs in amber, including mosquitoes, is just in New Jersey.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the whole beginning of that movie would have been different as they're stuck in traffic crossing the George Washington Bridge. Getting into Jersey. It's in Jersey. On a jet ski on the Hudson. On the Hudson. Let's take a quick break and we're going to come back, straight back to Kimmy, who's going to tell us, who's going to evaluate the authenticity of the Jurassic Park franchise when StarTalk Cosmic Queries Dinosaurs edition. We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries Dinosaurs. Kimmy, how do we find you on social media?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  You can find me on Twitter. My handle is at Kimmy, K I M I dash CHAP, C H A P. You can find me there.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dash, underline or straight dash?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  It's underline, underline, sorry. I'm actually quite new to Twitter.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Kimmy, underline.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So the question we dangled with, who's it from again, Marcia?

• 28:34Marcia Belsky?

  This question is from Devon from Indiana.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Devon from Indiana. So another one, when the first Jurassic Park movie was released, many of them collaborated with our paleontologists at the museum just back in the 1990s. And I was a brand new in the employ of the museum and I was just intrigued to see all this dinosaur stuff happening. And they wanted to make sure that they positioned T-Rex properly to show how it would run, the way birds would run, and how, so there's a lot of this talk about, you know, and will the tail drag or does the tail not drag? And I remember those questions being asked and solved at the time to improve the authenticity of the dinosaurs that were in the films and in the entire franchise. But that's the last I knew of it.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, Kimmy, you've been in the full middle of that. What can you tell us about what we see versus, you know, fiction versus reality?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Right. So, I mean, so I went to see the new Jurassic World movie not that long ago. Actually, the scientific advisor on that one is also an ex-AM and H, which is Steve Buscari, so he was one of Martin Rell's students.

• 29:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, amen to the American Museum of Natural History. Very good. We got it, got people. So, Marsha, we're gonna take, we're putting our people.

• 29:49Marcia Belsky?

  People are out there, working in Hollywood.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Kimmy says, well, she's leaving to go to South Africa. She's an operative.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. I'm representing.

• 29:59Marcia Belsky?

  Telling all the secrets.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  And there is definitely.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they did have an advisor.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did. And it's, you know, I think it's also the balance between making it scientifically accurate, but also making it entertaining. And as someone who grew up in a country where you can go on game drives or safaris, I think if they had made the dinosaurs as, you know, ecologically accurate as they would have been, it would not be the most entertaining movies. Because, you know, carnivores don't run around running after each other and eating everything that's in their sight and like roaring every two minutes. That's just not how it works. But.

• 30:36Marcia Belsky?

  They hunt stealthily.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  It is really cool to see them do that. And.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roaring every two minutes.

• 30:44Marcia Belsky?

  They wouldn't be very good predators.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  No, that'd be terrible. There's like no stealth involved at all.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 30:53Marcia Belsky?

  You're like, T-Rex, you're already so big, like, down.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Whereas my group of dinosaurs, the sort of carnivores, one are basically never hardly featured. And they're just like these lumbering things that like walk around in the background, not really doing anything. So, it's definitely.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not dangerous, and so they can't eat you.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  But you know, there's so much cool things about them, you know? They could like, I don't know, stampede people or do something cool.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  So.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, was that a sentence that just came out of your mouth? There's such cool things about them. They could stampede people.

• 31:27Marcia Belsky?

  Don't underestimate them as the villains.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I just hear the sentence out of?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  I'm thinking.

• 31:31Marcia Belsky?

  She tried to get her people in the film, her dinosaurs.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  If I was to make the Jurassic World entertaining, then that would be my take. Like, let's, you know, get them to stop.

• 31:40Marcia Belsky?

  Like, they could stampede.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, you know.

• 31:42Marcia Belsky?

  You could get a bunch of herbivores stampeding one of the scientists for sure.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a giant herd of like dreadnoughts, like, you know, dashing across. That sounds terrifying.

• 31:53Marcia Belsky?

  It can be Hollywood exciting.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, at our museum, we have a velociraptor fossil, like, there. On display and the velociraptor, that was like the terrorizing one in the in the first Jurassic Park. And and you look at it, you say, huh? It's like the size of a large dog.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  It's not very big.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that ran out to me, I would just kick it. It's like, get out of here.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm busy eating my sandwich, right? And so they clearly pumped that one up for the movie.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  So if we can drop kick it, it's not a dinosaur, is that what you're saying?

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a scary dinosaur. And and I think I was told, who's I speaking with about this? That they what boosted the terror factor is that they made it the same eye level as you.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's like, oh, my gosh.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is, it's like.

• 32:47Marcia Belsky?

  With the teeth looking right at you.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right at nuts, way high up where you can just dig in a hole. So this can chase you all the places you can go because it's the same size as you.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there it was running through the doorways and all the rest of this, so.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, it goes that has better access to your face, which is which seems to be one of the main factors in Jurassic world.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that sentence. Better access to your face.

• 33:14Marcia Belsky?

  We know that the velociraptors, the T. rex, they obviously had really good agents at the time and made sure that they got in the film.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 33:21Marcia Belsky?

  So if the herbivores had had better PR, they could have maybe, you know, gotten in there with a stampede. But it's been three movies. Where are they?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, right? So what's the biggest velociraptor that's out there? Do we just have a a stunted one on display?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  So I mean, velociraptors, the genus, and they are quite small. So actually, the type specimen is at the the A and H. So the type specimen being the first one described, the skull's only about that big.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Oh, my gosh.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a phrase, type specimen. It is the it is the one that defined the species.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the genre.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Genus and species in this case.

• 34:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  But they are not not big animals. You do get raptors that that get bigger, such as Utah raptor, for example, that is a bigger one.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Utah, OK, uh huh.

• 34:10Marcia Belsky?

  What's the one that flies? The famous one, the one that's like really big and scary and flies?

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the one in Utah is a Mormon. It's a different, they grow bigger there because they don't, there's no caffeine, no alcohol. Totally healthy raptors.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  The big one that flies, the pterosaurs? They're like.

• 34:28Marcia Belsky?

  Maybe that, how big is that one?

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pterodactyl?

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:31Marcia Belsky?

  Were there, were there huge flying dinosaurs? Or were they all like bird sized?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  So yeah, so there's many lineages within reptiles. So dinosaurs are part of the lineage that includes birds and crocodiles, which is called archosaurs. Um, but then you also get marine reptiles like we spoke about, and then you get flying reptiles, which are the pterosaurs. So they are a part of reptilia as a whole, but they are not dinosaurs. They're a different.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pterosaurs, that's a PT.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  PT, yes, yes.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Marcia Belsky?

  We don't have flying reptiles anymore, do we?

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a good thing.

• 35:02Marcia Belsky?

  I like, I'm glad we don't.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:05Marcia Belsky?

  Keep them on the ground.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  So I mean, I mean.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, one of the, one of the adversaries to Godzilla, who ostensibly is a T-Rex, was Mothra. No, Mothra, um, uh, uh, uh, Rodan.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rodan was a flying dinosaur that could fly supersonic. I, that was the baddest ass dinosaur I've ever seen.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  So that's a good sentence. I like that one. Um, so I mean, the pterosaurs are also terrifying because they get really big. So like Quetzalcoatl, um, if it's sitting on land is the same height as a giraffe, um, which is just, it's just awful. It sounds terrifying. Yeah. They're really, really big.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they'll just chase after they attack you from the sky. Yeah.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:46Marcia Belsky?

  See, I don't like that. And how do they, how does that even? I mean, I guess airplanes are a thing. I was like, it's so big, how does it even fly?

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, again, another, you know, great debate.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you really ask that?

• 35:56Marcia Belsky?

  Like now, I'm like, no, I know, I know.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  But it is a good question.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's keep, let's try to get in a few more questions.

• 36:03Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, great.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couple of minutes left. So Kimmy, we're going to go into soundbite mode. So we'll test your evening news soundbite talents with this next set of questions. Go.

• 36:12Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, so this is a question I think we're all curious about. This comes from Hope. She says, hi, Dr. Chapelle. What was it that made the community start to believe that many dinosaurs had feathers?

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soundbite, please.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  All right, great question. So it's all about how the fossils are preserved. So some fossils that are preserved in the right kind of rock will actually preserve the feathers on them. And that's how you start understanding. And then after that, you can sort of fill in the gaps on the tree of dinosaurs as to which ones would have had feathers and which ones wouldn't have had feathers.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Nice soundbite.

• 36:51Marcia Belsky?

  Okay.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Next one, Marcia.

• 36:52Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, next question.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, feathers don't normally fossilize because they're so fragile, correct? So you need special fossilizing conditions for it?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yes. So I mean, it is special. I mean, ideal conditions, essentially.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ideal, that's the word. Okay.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Perfect.

• 37:07Marcia Belsky?

  I don't like imagining them with feathers, but that's just me. Um, that's my hard opinion. Okay. This is from Sherry, who calls herself Sherasaurus from San Diego.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love it, love it.

• 37:20Marcia Belsky?

  Says, "Love Sherasaurus," says, "Hi, Dr. Chapelle and Dr. Tyson. Are there any parts of my body that I can point to and say, 'Look, this evolved from a dinosaur?'"

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, any cold-overs. I love it.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Not from a dinosaur directly, but probably from an ancestor from a dinosaur. I mean, you can go back all the way to fish, essentially, and some of your body parts will have evolved from that.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like our vertebrae.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Limbs.

• 37:46Marcia Belsky?

  I was gonna say my back, I think, sometimes feels very...

• 37:50Speaker 02

  But no, not from a dinosaur directly.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying nothing, but you have to go to it earlier in the tree of life to find a common ancestor?

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yes, because I mean, we're on completely different branches of the tree of life, right? So nothing that we will have will have evolved from a dinosaur, because that entails that we would have...

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. But before each of our branches, there were animals with heads, four limbs, and a vertebrae, and two eyes and nose and a mouth.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which we do share with dinosaurs.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Right. So that is the common ancestor.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it. Okay, one question that's been bugging me. Maybe I'll save it for the end. I'll save it for the end. Okay, Marcia, go.

• 38:25Marcia Belsky?

  Okay, uh, this is Elaine in the stars. They said, greeting from Montreal. Was the T-Rex able to run as fast as portrayed in Jurassic Park chasing jeeps and all of that?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Oh, questions are fire.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soundbite, remember it's a soundbite.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  No, uh, so T-Rex, there's a great paper, well, there's a great research that showed that they're actually quite slow animals. A lot of dinosaurs would have actually been very, very slow, uh, mainly because of body size. Uh, and they did some work where they scaled up a chicken essentially, and the musketeer that goes on the chicken and found that it would have been very, uh, not as fast as in Jurassic Park.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 39:01Marcia Belsky?

  So a T-Rex is about as fast as a chicken?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  No, a scaled up chicken.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that really what she said?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  A scaled up chicken. Well, you have to look at, in order to be able to understand how these dinosaurs moved, you have to look at animals that we know today, essentially.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, and you, because the physiology has enough similarities.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you can get some insights. I get it. Okay. I keep going, Marcia. You're doing great, T-Rex. Good soundbite. I love it.

• 39:28Marcia Belsky?

  These are great. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Chapelle. Greetings from Ontario. If the meteor hadn't struck, do you think dinosaurs would still be around and perhaps dominate the planet? Homo sapiens would probably still live as grifters in the forest and eat insects?

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I vote yes.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  I mean, that's such, that sounds great. Um, I feel like that's a great, uh, also an ending to the story, but, um, I mean, okay, one, quickly, uh, not all dinosaurs went extinct, so birds are still around. I, I will say that, so, um, so they are still around today, so technically that answers that part of the question. But, you know, that's the one that we just can't answer really, because we don't know what other events would have happened. Uh, I guess lots of things can happen, um, in the world today.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I tell you why I vote yes?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Yes, go for it.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I vote yes rather than I'm not sure.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Here's my yes. You ready?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ask yourself, how many years have elapsed since the dinosaurs, as we know them, as portrayed in Jurassic Park? How many years have elapsed since they went extinct? What's the number?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Sixty-five million years.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good. So now, we ask, how long were dinosaurs on Earth before then?

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Right. So they appeared 160 million years.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hundreds of millions of years.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  So they appeared 235 million years ago.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they were around long before, they were around for longer than the time that they had been extinct.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so when I just compare those two timeframes, I say there is no reason to think

• 41:00Speaker 02

  That they were.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that just in the next 65 billion years, they go extinct. They've been around for 300 million.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I think that's a great answer.

• 41:07Marcia Belsky?

  Neil's afraid they're gonna come back and wants to make sure they know that he's on their side.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  He wants to stamp Phoenix's sort of on his side. That's what he wants.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the Godzilla came back. You know, I'll just say, hey, go.

• 41:21Marcia Belsky?

  All these birds are gonna say, "Thank you."

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was all for it with you here. So that's why I look at just compare, it's a pure timescale argument. It has nothing to do with.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  I think that is a great answer. And I do think that they would still be around, but I think that the diversity would have changed. Um, because that does happen in the 160 million years that they're around, I think.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah. We'd be a different ensemble, but as a group, they were very successful.

• 41:44Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, they would have survived until they met American hunters and then they would have.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Until, until, until humans came along, essentially.

• 41:52Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. We would still be, T-Rex or whoever would still be dining on our mental ancestors. As warders. And we'd, and like you said, Kimmy, we'd be eating insects in the forest, trying to escape.

• 42:04Marcia Belsky?

  We'd be humble at least. We'd be humble.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So I'm gonna, we gotta bring this to a close. I'm gonna ask my final question, if I may.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. This is a blunt question. Just stay with me on it. Ready? Kimmy, what the hell are the front limbs of T-Rex for?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  That's an excellent.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why do they exist? I'm told that the two hands couldn't even reach each other. So couldn't even use them to hold anything.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just this thing.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Well, that's, I guess, again, a lot of research goes into this question. And still at conferences today, it's an ongoing debate as to why does it happen?

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's unsettled.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, why does it happen, but also how does it happen? Because it's not just T-Rex.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, Marcia, when she says, "A lot of research is going into this", that's science code for, "We still have no idea what the hell is going on."

• 42:57Speaker 02

  We don't know.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why there's still research in it, right? Because the public will be able to research, so we must know. No.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the evidence we don't know. Continue, Kim.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I mean, it's also sort of, yes, their arms shortened, but other things happen, right? They have much stronger legs, they have much stronger jaws. So whether it's sort of a trade-off between the two, they may have found a way that they...

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the two hands, if the two hands can't even touch each other, that, wasn't there a spell there for a while where people, your people, thought, "Maybe T-Rex is not a predator, maybe it's a, what do you call the other one?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Scavenger. Yeah. I think..."

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it can't grab anything that it catches. You can't just bite at something as you're chasing. You gotta sometime grab it.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Well, you clearly have not seen Jurassic World, because that's exactly what it does. It just runs around, just like, "Rrrr!"

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just bites people. Yes, true.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. It does seem like it's mainly using its skull for that kind of, you know, stuff. It's definitely not using its arms.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And one last thing about it, okay. So you're saying the arms, there's a lot of compensatory physiology to the wimp arms that it has. Okay. And is it true that the dinosaur brains were no bigger than the size of a walnut, even though they had huge heads?

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yes, they are proportionally very small brains. That is true. They have, yes.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 44:20Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, a walnut will depend on which dinosaur you're talking about. For example, a sauropod, like the platocuts, the skull is about that big. The brain is probably only about like that big, so they're not...

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you say that, you know, several feet across and the brain is the size of an orange.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, essentially.

• 44:35Marcia Belsky?

  My gosh.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Essentially.

• 44:36Marcia Belsky?

  It's like the Amazon packaging where you get like a big box and there's a little tiny, little tiny chapstick inside.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  It's all a packaging material.

• 44:45Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The chapstick.

• 44:47Marcia Belsky?

  That's what a dinosaur brain is like.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so but what is else is occupying the volume of the skull?

• 44:53Speaker 02

  And what, and all of them? They have a lot of sinus cavities. They have a lot of sinus cavities, a lot of jaw muscles, which, I mean, it also again depends on which one you're looking at. Um, a lot of teeth, uh, a lot of.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they weren't doing calculus or anything like that?

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no.

• 45:09Marcia Belsky?

  They're just biting.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  No, they're just walking around, biting, eating, reproducing, sleeping.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biting or, or as your dinosaurs will do, they chew lettuce.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As they turn their head left and right for the camera.

• 45:22Marcia Belsky?

  And stampede, and stampede potentially.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And rip your face off.

• 45:28Marcia Belsky?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta end it there, guys. The, it's been highly illuminating. Like, Kimmy, this has been wonderful.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  It's been awesome.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, every dinosaur movie that comes out, we're gonna have to call you.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  That sounds great. I like that deal. I'm gonna hold you to that.

• 45:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I pre-arrange for that?

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Anytime.

• 45:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very excellent. There. And Marcia, uh, your social media?

• 45:48Marcia Belsky?

  My social media is all at Marcia Belsky and then my Instagram is at Marcia Sky.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marcia Sky. Any reference to the universe is goodbye me. All right. Not goodbye me, good. Any reference to the universe is okay in my book. Okay, guys, great to have you both on StarTalk Cosmic Queries, the dinosaur edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Keep looking out.