Curating Dinosaurs II Curate Harder! On this episode we welcome Jordan Mallon, a long-time collaborator of Dave’s and, against the odds, a long-time listener of Terrible Lizards. While we talk about Jordan’s research and career in this pod, and his work on dinosaur sizes and ecology, this one also serves as something of a sequel to our previous episode. That’s because he is also the curator of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the national natural history museum of Canada. It’s a much more typical collection than the one we talked about last time out, so join us to learn more about how museum’s work, the importance of the behind-the-scenes jobs that people do, and

Links:

Support us and get extra content:

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

A short interview Jordan did with Dave years ago:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/buried-treasure-jordan-mallon/

A blogpost by Dave on his paper with Jordan on giant T. rex.

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2024/07/24/on-the-trail-of-giant-tyrannosaurus-rex/

Jordan’s webpage at the Canadian Museum of Nature

https://nature.ca/en/our-science/science-experts/jordan-mallon/

We have talked about all manner of fundamentals of research on fossils over the years here on Terrible Lizards, including finding and excavating fossils, writing and publishing papers, reconstructing animals from fragments and more. But we’ve somehow really glossed over the role of museums that store and protect fossils and make them available for research, as well as carrying out their own work too. In order to correct this oversight, today we welcome ReBecca Hunt-Foster who is the curator on the legendary Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. Here she takes us through her background and research and the challenges of looking after one of the most famous and important dinosaur sites in the world.

Links:

https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

ReBecca on Bluesky: @dinochick.bsky.social

Here’s the link to the US National Parks website about Dinosaur National Monument:

https://www.nps.gov/dino/index.htm

An old blogpost of Dave’s about the bitten baby Diplodocus femur: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/non-tyrannosaurs-biting-like-tyrannosaurs/

This time out we are joined by palaeontologist Andre Rowe to talk about his research into the skulls of giant carnivorous dinosaurs and what this means for their biology. This turns into a debate with Dave about how evidence can be interpreted in different ways and trying to piece together the often limited data we have to work out what these animals might have been doing. Though with her media-trained eye, Iszi wants to badge this as a heated fight over just how awesome Tyrannosaurus was (see previous episode for details). Andre takes us through the process of scanning skulls, restoring the bits and then testing ideas about bite force and skull strength and how the different giant theropod differed in their habits.

Links:

Support us on patreon and get extra content: www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Here’s an article Andre wrote on his T. rex bite research: https://theconversation.com/tyrannosaurus-rex-didnt-get-its-ferocious-bite-until-it-was-an-adult-new-research-156668

Here is Andre’s Instagram handle: @tyrannosaurrowe