They've lain untouched for more than 70 million years. Now, Paleontologist Ashley Hall is putting some of the largest animals Earth has ever seen back together. We talk dinosaur discoveries, reassembling fossils and the most underrated dinosaurs. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Worst Flavors of Ice Cream.
Interview with Paleontologist Ashley Hall
Speakers
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Ashley Hall: Paleontologist
Episode Notes
How did the dinosaurs die
How long did dinosaurs live for
How do paleontologists find fossils
What do paleontologists learn from fossils
What is the best dinosaur
What is the most overrated dinosaur
What is the lamest dinosaur
Nick VinZant 0:12
Hey everybody welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, dinosaurs and terrible ice cream.
Ashley Hall 0:21 It is the most satisfying feeling piecing a turtle back together. It clicks in the most satisfying way if the bone is a good texture, it's a very cool feeling to put something back together that's not been together for 75 million years. There are so many cool and known dying like dinosaurs. We are just scratching the surface. Right? So, I mean, there's dinosaurs like Criollo for Saurus that lived in Antarctica. It says that volcanoes actually helped rewarm up the atmosphere after the asteroid hit the Earth and cause basic nuclear winter. So it was a very, very interesting kind of time on Earth.
Nick VinZant 1:06 I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it. It really helps us out. So does anyone not like dinosaurs? Has anyone ever looked at a dinosaur and just thought, Nope. Not interested in that thing? No. Our first guest is a paleontologist and she has this fascinating insight into not only what it takes to find these fossils, but to put them together. And also what we're now learning from them using the latest research techniques. This is paleontologist Ashley Hall. So did you just kind of never grow out of the dinosaur phase or how did you become a paleontologist?
Ashley Hall 1:51 You know, I was one of those kids at age four that just knew I you know, grew up loving dinosaurs. I don't remember When but my parents took me to the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, which is one of the best museums in the entire world. And my passion just was ignited as soon as I walked into the, because when you walk in, it's so grand and it has a specific smell. I am, it's very difficult to describe. But if you've ever been into a natural history museum, you probably know what I'm talking about. It kind of smells like marble and taxidermy, which I find really appealing for some reason.
Nick VinZant 2:31 What was it about it though? Was it just the size? Was it the fact that they're not here anymore? Like, what was it about dinosaurs that really sucked you in? Ashley Hall 2:40 It's a little bit of everything. I think as a kid, you're just awestruck that something that large can live or did live on the planet. And the fact that we can still find the remains is just awe striking. So dinosaurs really spark in our imaginations,
Nick VinZant 2:59 something that always jumps out of me is, you know, I have the impression in my mind that they live. All right. I know they live 65 million years ago, but they live for hundreds of millions of years. Like how long were dinosaurs around? That just blows my mind.
Ashley Hall 3:14 They're definitely one of the longest reigning groups of animals definitely, you know, fish have it over them. So fish have been around for for much longer about 400 million years or so. So it goes kind of fish reptiles, amphibians, dinosaurs are a specialized group of reptiles. So they have been around for Gosh, 100 and 80 million years. So from the Triassic 250 2 million years ago, to the Late Cretaceous, which is now 66 million years ago, which is when the asteroid hit and caused the demise of many non avian dinosaurs.
Nick VinZant 3:55 Is that still pretty much I mean, that was the thing that I remember learning as a kid and we're about this Is that still basically the rock solid idea of what happened to them?
Ashley Hall 4:05 You know, over the years, there have been lots of different hypotheses that have been kind of looked at to figure out well, was dinosaur diversity. Kind of waning? Were they on their way out anyways. But no matter what, what it comes down to is the asteroid. So, you know, this giant, massive, massive rock hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and cause mass devastation. So that is still the reigning hypothesis of the mass dinosaur. We call it the kpg or Cretaceous paleogene extinction. The main hypothesis as to why the dinosaurs are no longer with us now. There have been papers recently so you can look at Alessandro Alessandro Kidron says paper. It says that volca Manos actually helped rewarm up the atmosphere after the asteroid hit the Earth and caused basically nuclear winter. So it was a very, very interesting kind of time on Earth. It's kind of reminds me of like the reset button where it's just, all right, we're starting over again, scratch on the slate clean.
Nick VinZant 5:20 So the asteroid hits and when it hits, but it's not like, hey, two weeks later, everybody's dead. Like, what kind of a timeframe are we talking about before they were gone?
Ashley Hall 5:29 No, the actual timeframe, so it wasn't like a split second and everything was gone. Obviously, because the asteroid hit in the Yucatan Peninsula, the other side of the globe wasn't directly impacted. Now, I feel so bad for the dinosaurs that were in the Yucatan because Can you imagine being a dinosaur in that area in Mexico, and not even getting a chance to like think twice?
Nick VinZant 5:56 It's like, what's that? Oh, Ashley Hall 5:58 Just I mean, you see these cartoons of dinosaurs looking up into the sky and kind of seeing a star or something. And you know, they're saying like, What's that? What's going on over there? But for those dinosaurs that were directly around that impact zone, it would have, like they wouldn't have done what hit them. It would have melted them before they had a chance.
Nick VinZant 6:20 Were they smart? Do we think that dinosaurs were smart? Ashley Hall 6:24 Absolutely. Well, depends on the dinosaur. So when you say a dinosaur, what do you think of for example,
Nick VinZant 6:30 I mean, I think of Jurassic Park dinosaurs, T Rex, Brachiosaurus? Triceratops top Stegosaurus. I mean, I think the big ones, the ones that capture everybody's attention.
Ashley Hall 6:43 Sure. Yeah. Um, so actually, we do know and can tell if dinosaurs were or were not smart. So by looking at dinosaur skulls, you can actually see where their brain was inside of their skull. And you can actually do CT scans in a hospital just like you would On your knee, and you can see the inside of their skull. Now that's a really cool thing because we can actually image the sections of their brain. So how big their optic lobes were, how big different regions of the brain were compared to other dinosaurs, right? So we know that T Rex, for example, had a really, really good sense of smell. Maybe couldn't do math very well, of course, you know. But when we when we say smart, you know, what does smart actually mean? When I think of smart I think of an animal being able to have cognition to be able to you know, reason, I think of corvids, I think of crows, ravens, magpies being really really smart animals. And we know that dinosaurs shared some of those same characteristics and actually to clear up everything right away. Birds are dinosaurs. So the corvids, ravens, magpies crows are the smartest group of birds.
Nick VinZant 8:07 I mean, I've always heard the old kind of saying is like, you can't, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb, climb a tree, you're gonna think, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna think it's stupid. Exactly. If we were to compare their intelligence to like an animal alive today. Yeah. What would you probably say like, oh, they're about like that.
Ashley Hall 8:27 So what's your favorite dinosaur? Maybe we can start there.
Nick VinZant 8:30 I'm a triceratops, man. Ashley Hall 8:32 Okay, so when you think a triceratops, Triceratops had not the biggest brain for its size. So when you think of something like an elephant, elephants have the massive brain right there a mammal, they're warm blooded. So they're not to be compared to a dinosaur really. But for all intents and purposes, let's compare like a triceratops to a rhino. Right? They're about the same size. So they weren't, you know, the smartest dinosaurs. But they definitely had the capability to protect themselves. They sawed off these amazing giant predators like T rex in their environment and they reproduced and they survived and we think they probably moved in herds not to quote Jurassic Park, but I'm gonna quote Jurassic Park. And so, you know, a lot of these group animals hung out together, they have social interactions, so they were just about as smart as I don't know, a lot of the animals we probably have around on the Great Plains today.
Nick VinZant 9:33 They're not stupid, basically right. To survive that long, you're obviously doing something right Ashley Hall 9:39 talk about, you know, sort of the idea of dinosaurs being stupid. That does come from a kind of the 1800s kind of antiquated thought of like, you know, Stegosaurus for example. Stegosaurus is a great example because Stegosaurus has a brain the size of two walnuts. So if you imagine Holding your hand out and having two wallets in your hand that's the size of Stegosaurus his brain which was a multi ton animal. And that is the animal that people saw had two brains for a while and if you remember that
Nick VinZant 10:14 Yeah, I do kind of remember that like one was in the tail or something.
Ashley Hall 10:18 Yeah ones in the butt and ones in the front so that they can kind of operate the whole animal but yeah, that's been actually disproven so they just said one brain
Nick VinZant 10:28 so Stegosaurus was kind of a big dummy then.
Ashley Hall 10:32 Yeah, I mean, when you're when you're an animal that's got plates and spikes and everything on the outside of you. I mean, you know, that's pretty much a protection you need workers you know, the smarter dinosaurs and we think of quote unquote smart being predatory dinosaurs, right. If you're a predatory dinosaur, you don't have to just leisurely eat your food right? Plants are everywhere. So herbivores have the pick of our And they kind of Can, can graze and have plans with their leader but you know when you're a carnivore that really takes a cutting skill, the predators like T rex the drama soars, which are rafters. And a lot of the, like Allah soars the predatory dinosaurs were definitely the smarter quote unquote dinosaurs if you want to talk about smart in that sort of respect.
Nick VinZant 11:24 So when I imagine paleontologist like yourself going and studying animals, like I'm just imagining you out digging in a field somewhere, like how do you actually do this?
Ashley Hall 11:34 So I was actually in my career I've been more of a lab paleontologists and as of more recent years, I've been specializing in the educational aspect. So when I started my career in paleontology, which I graduated from IU Bloomington with a degree in anthropology, and then it got a job working at excuse me, the remenham Museum of paleontology in Claremont, California, which by the way, you ever get to declare California. The rails museum is situated on a high school campus. So it's a public museum that is on a high school campus. It's a boarding school. So there's actually kids that are high schoolers that get to go to a school with a museum. So I spent five years at the rails museum as assistant curator, which means that when everybody goes out to the field and they bring everything back, so we bring the fossils back and plaster jackets and plastic bags. I would go through and sort out all the little pieces, make sure everything had labels, and make sure the, you know, the specimens stay with what they were brought back with, right. So if you have, you know, five bags together, make sure those bags stay together because they might go to one animal. So a lot of paleontology when you think of paleontology is done in the field, digging up Jurassic Park, right? But there are so many different aspects of paleontology and mine was focused on the creational aspect, right. So what happens to dinosaurs after they get back to the lab?
Nick VinZant 13:13 How doyou guys then figure out, like, learn about them just from looking at their bones? Right? Yeah,
Ashley Hall 13:20 so that's like the biggest coolest thing about paleontology is a giant puzzle. And mind you, I was not a fan of puzzles as a kid. So I just I'm actually a perfectionist. So when I'm looking at a bag of broken fragments, all I can think about is just putting it back together. So for example, turtles make the best puzzles. So in the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, and actually about 75 million years ago, where our field site was in Utah grand staircase Escalante national monument and it is the most satisfying feeling pieces Turtle back together, or any bone for that matter, because it just it clicks in the most satisfying way. If the bone is a good texture, it is extremely cool. It's a very cool feeling to put something back together that's not been together for 75 million years.
Nick VinZant 14:19 I would imagine. That's crazy, right? Is it? Do you get used to the idea that you're holding something in your hand? That is that old?
Ashley Hall 14:26 Yeah. And that's, that's part of the intrigue, right? So, you know, my whole, my whole career, whether I'm in a museum or out in the field or whatever, if I pick something up, you might be the first person to touch that fossil, right? If you're in the field. If you're in a museum collection, that might also be the case because a lot of these specimens are brought back in bulk. A lot of them are brought back and plaster jackets and we don't get to excavating them for maybe 510 15 2030 years even right, so, when you're uncovering something in the lab, you're maybe seeing it for the first time, ever, that any human has ever seen
Nick VinZant 15:12 Mammals changed alongside them though right?
Ashley Hall 15:16 Oh, yeah.Yeah, mammals evolved right alongside dinosaurs. So, I mean, it's kind of funny because you think of dinosaurs. And, you know, they're so big. And then mammals were just the little things, you know, that didn't get bigger than a raccoon, and they were kind of scurrying around the feet of dinosaurs because they were, they were living at the same time and dinosaurs definitely had the edge. So mammals went from these very small creatures that were, you know, pretty, pretty poor vision. They lived mainly at night, but our vision is not as good as birds not as good as reptiles. fish have amazing vision or visions. Okay. And so when mammals were running around under the feet of dinosaurs, you know, they didn't really get their chance to shine until well after. So, I mean, you just have some pretty cool adaptations evolving. They were seed eaters, they were carnivores. You kind of have those niches still so, you know, imagine like squirrel like animals, a possum like animals, otter like animals, but it wasn't until dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago that mammals just took off. And then after that, you know, not even 10 million years later, you get and I say only 10 million years in the grand scheme of time. But you know, you get these amazing you know, whales evolving my goodness when the marine reptiles died out the big Moses or is like we see in Jurassic World that jumps up in the shark. You know, Moses soars, died out, leave. A room essentially for mammals to fill that. So we see the same sort of pattern right? So after dinosaurs died out mammals kind of took those niches over and thrive.
Nick VinZant 17:13 So then who's gonna who's gonna take over for us then?
Ashley Hall 17:16 Oh, man, you know, I am really voting for cephalopods like the octopus to take over
Nick VinZant 17:26 their time, their time might be coming up fast
Ashley Hall 17:31 Do you remember this meme going around the tree octopus,
Nick VinZant 17:35 it was like a fake thing.
Ashley Hall 17:38 It was. It was kind of like a, I don't know, like a fake internet thing back in the day, but I think it was in the Pacific Northwest, but I feel like if cephalopods I mean, they can change color. They can. Oh, gosh, be all different sizes. They're just restricted to water. So I feel like if we could get them up on land, they might.They might take over
Nick VinZant 18:00 Are youready for the harder slash listener submitted questions?
Ashley Hall 18:03 Absolutely.
Nick VinZant 18:04 We got some good ones better fictional paleontologist Ross in friends, or Alan grant in Jurassic Park.
Ashley Hall 18:12 Oh Alan grant hands down. Absolutely. So Elon grand Rosa Park, which by the way Jurassic Park Favorite movie of all time, I saw it when I was nine years old in a theater and literally walked out of the theater that day and was like, seeing the world differently. It was insane.
Nick VinZant 18:31 As a paleontologist though, what about that movie? Like makes your eye twitch?
Ashley Hall 18:35 Oh my gosh, like, in a bad way?
Nick VinZant 18:37 Yeah, like, they got that wrong. Um,
Ashley Hall 18:41 it's actually the latter movies. So Jurassic World makes me crazy. Jurassic Park had amazing, just groundbreaking science that hadn't been done before. And animals that had never been shown that way on the big screen or pretty much ever And jurassic world has had every opportunity to grow on that and to actually incorporate real science but they actually went the opposite direction and what the genetically mutated monster movie way. So they took our beautiful, lovely dinosaurs that were sort of like a frog hybrid, right and just sort of, you know, while they're made in the lab, it's maybe not like how dinosaurs really were and maybe they can change their sex. But then they just took that and ran with it and made these mutants so it's no longer you I can't I can't even like I'm stuttering. I can't even talk about Jurassic World because there's nothing it's so hard for us as paleontologist to watch that movie.
Nick VinZant 19:47 What is the most overrated dinosaur?
Ashley Hall 19:51 T Rex. And the reason I say most overrated is because it's everywhere, right? You like Google Search dinosaur and tiara Pretty much comes up not to say it's not the most interesting dinosaur because it is fascinating and is amazing. And I love it so much. But it is definitely overrated. There's so many more cool carnivores.
Nick VinZant 20:11 What do you think is the most interesting dinosaur?
Ashley Hall 20:17 Oh my gosh, there are so many cool and known dying like dinosaurs we are just scratching the surface of right. So, I mean, there's dinosaurs like Criollo for Saurus that lived in Antarctica, right? So they lived at the very bottom of the world, and we barely know anything about them. They're super, super cool. They had a crest on their head that kind of made them look like
Nick VinZant 20:41 Oh, I know which ones you're talking about.
Ashley Hall 20:43 Yeah.
Nick VinZant 20:46 Yeah, that's the problem though. That crust made him look kind of kind of goofy. And then I think people lost interest. Yeah, this kind of leads me into this one question we got sent. Let me make sure I get this right because it's actually like too intelligent for me to screw up on a percentage basis? How many dinosaur species Do you believe have been discovered, relative to the total number of dinosaur species that have existed?
Ashley Hall 21:13 This is a great question. Thank you to whoever answered that. Okay, so let's put it in perspective. So on earth today, there are 10,000 plus species of birds, dinosaurs that we have right now, I think, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's in the thousand range. Maybe we have 1000 describe species. And by the way, I can't keep up with dinosaur paleontology. my inbox every day gets filled with new papers and there's new groundbreaking stuff that happens just about every week. So we're in a really awesome time for paleontology. So, you know, if you're interested in paleontology, definitely read up and you know, subscribe to these different channels and outlets for For paleontology news, because there's like something new every day. It's crazy. So I think the percentage is very low. Right? I think everyone would agree with me on this. Because when you look at the different numbers of species that we have, right lizards, snakes, birds, mammals on earth currently, and we're only looking at a fraction of time, you know, dinosaurs were around like, once again, 100 and 80 million years, and we only have 1000 some species that we've ever found. So I think it's drastically drastically. I mean, maybe we've discovered I'm so bad at percentages
Nick VinZant 22:39 it sounds like five, like five to 10 almost, is what it sounds like.
Ashley Hall 22:45 It's very, very, very low. And it depends on if you are a splitter or a lumper because I'm really indology you can say okay, these animals even though they look pretty different are probably one species, or you can say they look so different. They're probably different species.
Nick VinZant 23:05 Oh, I see.
Ashley Hall 23:07 So you can say, well, this one may be a female, and this one might be a male. Or you can say, well, this one's obviously different species, you know. So it's very, very difficult because these are not a living, breathing animals that we can go study. So you have to look at geology. So you have to look at the rock layer in which they were found, because if they were found in the same rock layer, they could be, I mean, the same species, it could be male and female. It's really difficult to tell but if you found let's say, a triceratops because you said that was your favorite tracer tops down. Oh gosh, in one layer of the hell Creek formation in Montana where they're found, and then you find a similar looking Sara tops in which looks like tracer tops. But it's millions of years later. Can you still call it Triceratops? Or is it Triceratops and a different species name? Right? So it could be that you have Triceratops horridus in one layer, and Triceratops persists and another layer and maybe one evolved into the other one. So it's crazy, right? So this is like, part of the fascinating, like tangle of web that is paleontology. You kind of have to pick apart and really analyze dinosaurs in order to not overblow you're like, you know, we have 2 million species of dinosaurs.
Nick VinZant 24:37 Are there any places on earth where paleontologists would like to dig, but cannot because of you can't get to the environment. The government doesn't allow it conflicts. Is there like a place that oh, we could only get there?
Ashley Hall 24:51 Oh, oh, luckily the government does allow paleontology so we are lucky enough to be able to dig on Bureau. Land Management lands so any national like grand, grand staircase Escalante National Park is an amazing place Bears Ears. We've got all these different places in the south west and sort of the Central Plains areas that have these amazing fossils that we do have access to because of the government. But the fossils that are hardest to reach are actually because they are out in the middle of nowhere. So, the area where we're I've worked which is grand staircase Escalante national monument is the most rugged place. I think you could find fossils in the United States. I say that because when when you go out to excavate there you have to camp about six miles from the dig site. Oh, wow. Yeah, my first time out. You know, it's my very first excavation and I was so excited. And we get to the campground and it's beautiful. And there's rocks everywhere. And, you know, just the most gorgeous landscape. You know, huge, huge rocks and canyons, and it's like, all right, well, the morning got to get up super early because the dig sites like, you know, three, four miles This way, you know, it's like six miles round trip. So, you know, the reason for that is because you can't, you know, when you think of something like a canyon, you can't get a vehicle down into the canyon. And in the return aspect, you can't get heavy dinosaur fossils back out unless you helicopter them out. So paleontologists have to find very creative ways to get, you know, these really amazing beautiful fossils back to the repository.
Nick VinZant 27:00 Lamest dinosaur
Ashley Hall 27:02 Oh, everyone's gonna hate me. So the lamest dinosaur I think, is camp to Saurus and camp disorders. So there are these there is a group of dinosaurs called ornithischians. And they are sort of the plant eating dinosaurs that you walk into a museum and you kind of walk past them because they don't have any crazy like, you know, head ornamentation or sharp claws or sharp teeth or anything. They're just kind of like the goats of the Cretaceous, so I'm not like a huge fan of camp to Saurus I know a lot of people love them, and I'm sorry, but, but there is a best dinosaur. Do you know the best?
Nick VinZant 27:46 Who's the who's the best? Who's like the biggest badass?
Ashley Hall 27:50 The best dinosaur is parasaurolophus. Do you know which one this is?
Nick VinZant 27:55 No,
Ashley Hall 27:56 Okay. So imagine so this was actually in Jurassic Park. So parasaurolophus is the big duck billed dinosaur with the crest. Oh, crap. I know what you're eating back. Yeah, on its head. So parasaurolophus has been my favorite dinosaur since I was little. And I don't know why small things you like as a kid, you're like, yeah, this is my thing. And then I grew up and started working at the rail museum. And guess what? On my first dig, I got to go dig up a baby parasaurolophus
Nick VinZant 28:34 like, that's still like a size of a human being though, isn't it?
Ashley Hall 28:37 Yes. Yeah, it's it's exactly the size of a human being. It's actually the size of like a really big dog. So, you know, it came full circle for me. And it's what's really cool about learning about dinosaurs is that when they're babies, they look different than when they were adults. So you get these little baby parasaurolophus imagine like a baby Rhino. You know how they're born was like a little tiny note Instead of a big horn,
Nick VinZant 29:01 yeah,
Ashley Hall 29:02 yeah. So baby parasaurolophus hashed out of an egg with a little teeny tiny bump on his head. And then as they get older, they grow these huge huge tubes on their head, which are basically nasal cavities. So imagine having your nose or AB super super long and up through your skull. They actually pushed air through that so they took in air and pushed it through their head. It was basically a big resonating chamber and made sounds for communication with one another. Oh, so it was like communicating by tuba.
Nick VinZant 29:39 They do they look like they look like a tuba kangaroo basically.
Ashley Hall 29:44 Yeah, they really do.
Nick VinZant 29:48 They do look like a cross between a tuba and a kangaroo.
Ashley Hall 29:51 Yes. I'm never gonna think of it in a different way
Nick VinZant 29:54 If you discover a new species. I need you can you tuba kangaroo.
Ashley Hall 30:02 I love it. Speaking of new species, like I said, there's all sorts of new things being discovered all the time. But did you know that you can name a new dinosaur off of anything?
Nick VinZant 30:14 No.
Ashley Hall 30:15 Yeah, so if you are a paleontologist, you can name a dinosaur off of a Star Wars character. If you like Star Wars. There was a lizard that was named Obama Don after President Obama.
Nick VinZant 30:32 Obamadon
Ashley Hall 30:35 There are dinosaurs that are named after the land they were found on the person that found it you just can't name it after yourself because It's seen as kind of tacky.
Nick VinZant 30:43 So the co host of this podcast does not believe in dinosaurs because enough fossils haven't been found. That is my reaction as well. Can you can you please educate this man
Ashley Hall 30:58 I didn't mean to laugh to like I know but it's we have so many Oh my gosh. So I spent I spent five years at the elf museum cataloging fossils and i think i catalogued like 10,000 fossils. And that's just in my time at one museum dinosaur paleontology started in the 1800s. With cope and Marsh These are two very distinguished paleontologist back in the day professors and they actually tried to outcompete one another because when they were first starting out in paleontology, and if you can imagine, there were just there are fossils everywhere in the American West because no one had collected them before. And so you have whole skeletons laying on the surface, Triceratops T rex duck billed dinosaurs edmontosaurus. And so they were actually able to get the best of the collection right right off the bat, and I wish I could have seen what it We'd like for them because it I mean, you can go into areas today where that happens. But, you know, like in dinosaur Provincial Park up in Alberta, Canada, which is an amazing place to go, by the way, if you ever want to see fossils, they're just fossils laying everywhere. And it is one of the coolest things to look around and just see them laying around you like they did in the 1800s. So, you know, we've we've started doing paleontology, the 1800s. It's only about 200 years old. And the technologies we have now to learn about them are absolutely incredible. Like, for example, we have CT scanning, which is, you know, one of the coolest things to see inside of a dinosaur bone, but did you know that we actually now can get proteins and collagen out of dinosaur bones?
Nick VinZant 32:53 Like 65 million years later, we can pull it out of there?
Ashley Hall 32:56 Absolutely. Yep. So at the Museum of the Rockies, Here, so I live in Bozeman, Montana. There are there's a very, very cool cutting edge lab here. museum of the Rockies is known for kind of pioneering this. So it's called histology. And it's done by the medical professionals today, basically, where you take a thin section of something and look at it under a microscope. So Excuse me, what you can do today is if you take a dinosaur fossil, let's say, a limb bone of a T Rex. And if you make a very, very thin section, imagine slicing through a log, right? So taking a very, very paper thin section, and then we grind it down. And if you look at it under a microscope, you can actually see how old the animal was when I died. So we can count growth rings inside of the bone that does that are basically lines of growth so they're seasonal. So dinosaurs have seasons just like We had seasons today. And they had periods where they were growing more than other times. So we can actually look and see, oh, this dinosaur was five years old, or this dinosaur was 10 years old, or this one was just hatched, right? But then the even cooler aspect is you can actually, like mind blowing stuff. There are chemical analyses that we can do now today, to extract protein in certain dinosaur fossils. This is so cool. And I'm happy to provide links for listeners if you want to read more about this. So I know everyone's thinking Jurassic Park, right? So Oh, can we you know, recreate dinosaurs. And, you know, DNA actually doesn't preserve for more than about 500 to 700,000 years, and dinosaurs lived 66 million years. But what we're seeing are proteins that are still left over in some of these fossils that are that old. So we're starting to get better idea about preservation. And hopefully this can give insight into more about their biology. So, you know, the biggest thing I want people to know about dinosaur bones is that they're not rocks. That's kind of a thing that we're taught as kids is like, oh, bones or, you know, rocks or whatever, you know, it's just like a rock in the shape of about No, they're actually bones. You know, bones, your skeleton, my skeleton are made of minerals. And they're produced by our body. And so sometimes we can get chemical signatures from those things that are just
Nick VinZant 35:38 incredible. That's pretty much pretty much all I got is anything what's next coming up for you? How can people get a hold of you?
Ashley Hall 35:45 Yeah. So I have a brand new book out called fossils for kids, which is I think how you found me in the first place, right?
Nick VinZant 35:51 Oh, my son loves dinosaurs.
Ashley Hall 35:54 Oh, good. Yeah. So how old is he?
Nick VinZant 35:57 Four
Ashley Hall 35:58 Oh, awesome. So My book is for ages five to nine, or as I say, five to 99. And it's called fossils for kids, a junior scientists guide to dinosaur bones, ancient animals and prehistoric life on earth. And you can find it pretty much every big retailer online. Amazon target Barnes and Noble and it is the most comprehensive guide for kids who love fossils and really want to dig in and you know, take a big bite out of the science. So you can find me on Twitter at lady naturalist you can find me on Instagram at lady underscore naturalist and yeah, pretty much all social media.
Nick VinZant 36:39 I want to thank Ashley so much for joining us if you want to connect with her. We have a link to her on our social media accounts where Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and we have also included Ashley's information and the RSS feed that's on this podcast.