June, rather incredibly, marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of series 1, episode 1 of the podcast. As a rather fortuitous bit of timing, we were invited to host a live Terrible Lizards event at Lyme Regis (home of Mary Anning) for their Fossil Festival. We could hardly say ‘no’, so here is a recording of that hour long session where we fielded a ton of questions from the audience (that was overflowing out of the room!) and even included a few professional palaeontologists in the audience to put a bit more pressure on Dave’s answers. A good time was apparently had by all, maybe this will happen again next year?

A link to the Fossil Festival website. Stay tuned for next year’s details: https://fossilfestival.com/

For extra content go to patreon.com/terriblelizards

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/