Dave has *another* book coming out and so of course he wants to talk about it a bit on the pod. Happily for the listeners, this time out he has a coauthor and so we get to have palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton on as well so that Iszi has some support for once. The new book is on that most controversial of dinosaurs, Spinosaurus and its allies, and what we know, and what we don't, and where the research is taking us. Given its insane media profile and the attention it attracts, as well as the back-and-forth in the scientific literature over its bizarre features, this is an animal well overdue a proper popular science book. So here it is, written by Dave and Mark, and with Mark's extensive illustrations throughout. But for now you can enjoy the chat about this animal and how the work came to be.

Links:

For Bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Mark's website with links to his blog and other pages

Home | MarkWitton.co.uk

An old blogpost of Dave's which looks at the main controversies of Spinosaurus swimming

The evidence for Spinosaurus being a specialist aquatic predator and good swimmer is weak | Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings

Long time listener and second time guest Darren Naish joins us to talk about marine reptiles. While Darren is best known for his work on dinosaurs and pterosaurs, he has fingers in a huge number of vertebrate pies, and he has a new edition out of his book on all of the Mesozoic monsters that lived in the sea. So, strap in for an incredibly being tour of mosasaurs, mesosaurs, placodonts, ichthyosaurs, plesionsaurs, thalattosaurs, thalattosuchians and we even manage to sneak in a reference to certain allegedly semi-aquatic large theropods.

Support us on www.patreon.com/terriblelizards

Check out iszi's NEW podcast about Egyptology www.talklikeanegyptian.com

A link to Darren's Home page which combines links to the blog, podcast, con and other resources.

https://tetzoo.com/

A link to Darren's post on the launch of the first edition:

https://tetzoo.com/blog/2023/2/27/ancient-sea-reptiles-is-out-now

A link to the Natural History Museum shop for the book:

https://www.nhmshop.co.uk/ancient-sea-reptiles-plesiosaurs-ichthyosaurs-mosasaurs-more.html?srsltid=AfmBOorc2zt792sWSVYdef8-O5zKci9w2Fiu6FhLlpX_lEATiWy1Gsn0

Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up! Disaster with the recording this episode! Sorry if it is hard to hear in places we were forced to use the emergency back up!

Listeners may remember that Dave went to Utah a couple of years back to try and help with a sauropod excavation. That trip was with sauropod supremo Matt Wedel who was recently in London, and so we scooped him up to get him onto Terrible Lizards. Unfortunately there were real technical issues, so the sound quality is not the best, but hopefully you can enjoy it. So sit back for an hour for deep sauropod nerdery, covering the air sac system, giant sauropods, their evolution, ecology, and follow Matt's career from a chance start on a new giant to bird physiology.

A link to Matt's blog SV-POW! which he writes with Mike Taylor (and in theory, Darren Naish)

https://svpow.com/

A link to an old post from Matt on Dave's blog about his favourite work:

https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/buried-treasure-matt-wedel/

Iszi's book The Time Machine Next Door: inventors and dinosaurs is out on 28th August in the UK: https://amzn.eu/d/dqPr6bo