This is a transcript of Episode 41.
Travis Holland (00:24)
We are going to talk today about the Giga Goose and also some new discoveries in Australian theropods and particularly carnivorous theropods. It’d be great if I could actually say the word, but how are you today, Alyssa?
Alyssa Fjeld (00:39)
I’m broiling like a placoderm on a hot griddle as it is still unbearably warm in Melbourne. How about yourself? Are you enjoying the summer heat?
Travis Holland (00:48)
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s eased off a little bit here, which is nice because I’ve been on some trips out to some fossil sites locally where I am in central New South Wales. And we’ll talk about those a little bit later too, but you were down on the coast as well for dinosaur dreaming. So we’ll get to that as the episode rolls on as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:06)
Absolutely. There’s a lot of really exciting stuff going on in palaeontology at the moment in Australia, especially we’ve got some brand new publications hot off the press to talk about with you guys today. This one comes from a couple of people right here in Melbourne, actually within the lab that I’m part of. Our mutual supervisor, Alastair Evans, is one of the co-authors on the recent publication by Jake Kotevsky, who you may have seen on the news talking about his favourite footy team.
But this paper is focused on something that I can relate to, fossils.
Travis Holland (01:35)
Yeah. So the paper led by Jake with, as you said, Alistair Evans and Stephen Poropat, who’s been on the podcast previously and Ruairidh Duncan as well, and a whole bunch of others is all about the finding or I guess the, the putting together of the pieces to talk about the carnivorous theropods in Australia. The first evidence of carcharodontosaurs in Australia.
as well as some more evidence of megaraptorids And how do we say this one?
Alyssa Fjeld (02:06)
gonna guess unenlaginae and then I’m gonna be wrong and some nice reader is going to write in but I’m going to I’m putting my money on unenlaginae.
Travis Holland (02:17)
Importantly, these are basically Dromaeosaurs or related to Dromaeosaurs, but this southern group that’s down here in Southeast Asia, Australia and South America. So effectively what this research shows is that it takes what had been sort of unclear evidence. There was evidence that there were theropods in Australia and particularly in Victoria.
Mostly these were mega raptors or thought to be mega raptors, but the research takes, I think, five particular bones, pieces it together to show that carcharodontosaurs, unenlagae that was really bad, Dromae or Dromaeosaurs, as well as a large mega raptorid were present in Australia for a large part of the Cretaceous. So it shows basically that carnivorous theropods were indeed abundant for long periods of time in Australia.
fantastic piece of research. I had a brief chat to Jake about it and I said to him, I think this is really great because it’s going to change the picture of Cretaceous Australia. will now, when they draw or think about Cretaceous Australia, have to consider a really diverse assemblage of theropods, which we haven’t done until now.
Alyssa Fjeld (03:32)
I guess for listeners who are outside Australia or who are not as familiar with the different Mesozoic time periods, one metaphor that I heard bandied about in the field was thinking about the Cretaceous as being like the third Lord of the Rings movie and we’re looking at the upper lower Cretaceous. So we’re very near the end of the time in which dinosaurs would have inhabited this continent and we’re seeing this enormous diversity of animals that we were not sure would be here.
which is really exciting because it means there might be implications for how these groups evolved prior to this. There are these massive missing chunks of time in our fossil record from the Mesozoic here in Australia. So anything we do to get to fill in that picture is really exciting. And the other really cool bit of news about that is that most of the material that Jake works with comes from deposits in Victoria that have been uncovered by the Dinosaur Dreaming team.
especially somebody named Melissa Lowery, who is just this tiny ball of energy. And I don’t know how she has managed to find so many pieces of dinosaur on the coast. She is just the best at it. She’s incredible. She’s a citizen scientist. And it’s just one more reason to continue supporting dinosaur dreaming and the work that they do. That’s absolutely incredible stuff.
Travis Holland (04:46)
And after that one, our feature interview for the day is a chat that you had, Alyssa, with Dr. Phoebe McInerney. Do you want to introduce us to Phoebe?
Alyssa Fjeld (04:57)
I would love to. Phoebe is somebody that I’ve met a couple of times at different conventions around Australia. She has such a little ray of sunshine and her work has taken her from her PhD at Flinders University to her new position where she as a doctor is heading the science and outreach for I believe most of the national parks in South Australia. I’m gonna let her speak more to that in her own words. But the thing that I primarily chatted with Phoebe about was this
amazing animal that you introduced at the start of the episode called the gigagoose or genyornis.
Picture this. You are in Australia, in South Australia, tens of thousands of years ago in a glorious swamp and you have just encountered a horrible goose. This massive flightless bird, Jenny Ornus, would have been scrounging around in this environment covered in dense feathers and absolutely, I would think, a friend-shaped creature. Phoebe has put a lot of time and work into understanding more about this animal’s growth, its life habits,
And her work, along with the work of people like Jacob Blokland who did some fantastic art that we’ll see later in the episode, are rewriting our understanding, our misconceptions, and our behavioral assumptions about this fascinating, gigantic Christmas dinner.
Travis Holland (06:13)
Let’s jump to the interview.
Alyssa Fjeld (06:19)
Hello and welcome back to Fossils in Fiction. Today we’re going to be interviewing a very special guest that studies animals much like these you can see behind me. Australia is known for its weird and wild bird wildlife, from the classic honking ibis to the loud and gregarious kookaburra. But today’s animal is going to be anatomically a little closer to a friend we might find in New Zealand today, the flightless kiwi, only much, much larger and weirdly closer in relation to a goose.
Today we have Dr. Phoebe McInerney who is going to be talking about her research with, is it genyornis?
Phoebe McInerney (06:54)
Yeah, genyornis. How are you going?
Alyssa Fjeld (06:58)
Yeah, welcome to the show. It’s a rare sunny beautiful day in Melbourne today. I’m hoping Adelaide is much the same.
Phoebe McInerney (07:04)
Yeah, very much the same. It’s a good day for it. Thanks for having me.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:09)
Tell me all about it. How did you get started with genyornis?
Phoebe McInerney (07:12)
I kind of fell into genyornis, to be honest, because my supervisor, Trevor Worthy, really loves big birds. He discovered most of the fossils and things for the giant birds in New Zealand and came to Australia to research our giant birds here. So I was lucky enough to work with him on palaeognaths So I started on the cassowary and then we got some amazing fossils from a place called Lake Callabonna in South Australia. And it was perfect timing for the start of my PhD. And he just said,
great, do you want to work on these? And I was like, yes, please. So, yeah, that was kind of how it happened.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:47)
Was that something you went into for your PhD specifically or was this something you were aware of even during your honours process? Or I guess, what was your process getting to the PhD stage and through it now?
Phoebe McInerney (07:59)
Well, I didn’t do a lot of palaeontology in the lead up to my honours because I just like was really kind of starting to discover what my interests were through undergrad. And it took me quite a long time to realise I was super interested in anatomy and physiology. And I wanted to direct that towards birds. And I managed to get a project for my honours working with Trevor, but on an extant species, the cassowary
And I looked at their syranx and trachea so that’s their breathing tube and how they vocalise. And that really started off the train for me. And then I slowly got further in time and started incorporating fossils into that project, looking at other fossil palaeognaths or relatives to the cassowary. And then, you know, did well, enjoyed that and…
Yeah, Trevor offered me a PhD in palaeo, so that got me there, which very excited about.
Alyssa Fjeld (08:55)
It seems like we’re learning.
would it be fair to say that this is an animal that’s undergone a lot of different revisions and changes through time? It seems like a lot of stuff recently has been going on, determining behaviours, lifestyles, and more details about the anatomy of these birds.
Phoebe McInerney (09:11)
it’s been known for quite a long time, but it was on a lot of fossils and they were in pretty good condition. We got a lot of the post-cranial material for genyornis and a sort of partial, not particularly well-preserved skull. So,
There was good material for this bird and that allowed people to kind of start looking into what it was related to and what it could do. But because it was giant and flightless and in Australia where we already have emus and cassowaries, there was this assumption that they were all closely related. And that really held back research on dromornithids because they were just assumed to be palaeognaths. So much later down the track when people started actually doing more
complicated research into these birds and we got more species and more fossils, it was realised that they weren’t paleognaths and they were placed closely to the ducks and geese, the anseriforms, as well as, you megapodes and chickens and things, the galliforms. So in that group of birds. And of course then the second year you have a change in who it’s related to, you start getting lots of people saying, well maybe it did this as a behaviour and maybe it did that and…
You know, they have big skulls, so this carnivorous hypothesis was put out. yeah, it was a really interesting process thinking about how people viewed the dromornithids and genyornis over time and all the changes that occurred.
Alyssa Fjeld (10:38)
So how do you think the scientific field benefits when we make these new distinctions and we stop lumping everything in in a single category, assuming that these behaviours are all going to be shared among the same animals? What’s something that’s been really exciting that’s come out of this disentanglement, putting genyornis closer to these waterfowls?
Phoebe McInerney (10:58)
It’s just been really nice to really be able to clarify better the relationships that these birds had to live in taxa as well so that we can see where they fit in in the broader scheme of things. And also it has really kind of ticked a lot of boxes for all of the questions that I had when I came into the research and I was like, this doesn’t quite make sense and I’m not sure about that.
And as we looked into it, we’re like, oh, okay, this is why that didn’t make sense, but now it does. So that’s been really nice. But as we look more broadly to science, it just allows us to see how there’s a lot more complexity to relationships, especially when we’re looking at fossil taxa than many might assume. And just because something’s related to something doesn’t mean they’re doing the same thing or they look the same.
really quick changes in species because of environmental factors or numerous other factors that might drive them to change from a chicken-sized animal to a 300-kilo beast in a really short period of time. And then because of that, you assume that they’re not closely related, but they still can be. yeah, tackling all of those challenges has been really interesting.
Alyssa Fjeld (12:23)
Would you say that it’s something that you only really see here or is it that we had large rattites and others? I’m going to mispronounce it if I try, but it starts with D and R.
Phoebe McInerney (12:34)
dromonithids
Alyssa Fjeld (12:35)
Yes. Are those animals that have global distributions or do we just find them here?
Phoebe McInerney (12:40)
So the drominihthids are only in Australia, so they’re endemic to Australia. There is the chance that we might find drominihthids in the future in places like New Guinea, because other megafauna from Australia have also been found on those islands, but they haven’t been discovered there yet. So we don’t have any evidence of that actually being there, it’s just possible. But there are giant flightless birds from a lot of other places across the world. So we have…
other groups like the Gastonithiformes, which are from Northern Europe, North America, and even potentially throughout Asia. And they’re also herbivorous. And then we have the South American carnivorous giant flightless birds, which are the Phorusrhacids. And then we have the paleognaths as well, which are currently distributed across the entire Southern Hemisphere, aside from in Antarctica, but their fossils
are found in Europe as well. So they had a much larger distribution initially than what there is now. So there isn’t really a constraint to environment or location for the presence of giant flightless birds. But what we do see is that they don’t really survive particularly well in environments where you might have a lot of larger mammals that tend to outcompete.
these birds. For some reason, they did manage to survive with mammals in Australia and giant flightless birds surviving with mammals in Australia has been tentatively associated in some cases with the fact that they’re marsupial animals rather than placentals. But there’s still so much unknown in that region that more work could be done in.
Alyssa Fjeld (14:26)
Sorry, the carnivorous ones caught me off guard. What a horrible day to learn that. But that’s fascinating. That’s the only place in the world where we’ve observed carnivory and giant avian theropods. Well, I guess, can we call them avian if they’re not flying?
Phoebe McInerney (14:43)
It is a very complicated thing, this term aves. And if you look into the literature, there’s actually a bit of a disagreement about what to include within aves. Do you just keep the crown birds, so most of the groups that we have alive today and their close fossil relatives, or do we include everything that has the ability to fly? we pick these characters that we
say this is what a bird is, but then you get all these morphs in the lead up to birds which have some but don’t have others. So yeah, there’s a bit of a disagreement at the moment in what actually avialan means, but I think that’s it.
Alyssa Fjeld (15:26)
That’s that’s
here you have a group of animals that evolve the ability to fly and in some cases have decided, done with that. We’re keeping the feathers, but we’re done with that whole process. It feels very much to me like the evolution of seals or whales where we’ve made a choice, we’re going back.
And my understanding is that with some of the flightless birds, you know that they’re flightless because of the presence or absence of certain bones and muscle attachment sites. Is that correct?
Phoebe McInerney (15:51)
Well, in a way, so the term rattite means it’s like associated with the lack of a keel on the sternum. So that’s this like massive flange of bone, which all of the wing musculature attaches to on the front of the, on the breastbone of birds. And the larger that keel or more robust it is, generally the stronger that bird is at flying. And a lot of the flightless birds,
especially once they’ve been flightless for a longer period of time, have lost that structure just because they don’t need that strength in their wings. And you have different levels of the extremity of these morphological changes. So dromornithids don’t have a keel, but they still have these tiny little wings that stick out the side. And then you get something like the moa from New Zealand, which has also lost the keel.
but it’s completely lost all its wings as well. So it’s lost the humorous and all other wing elements, which they’re still not 100 % sure why or how that happened. But yeah, it’s just like we see these kind of differing responses in birds because flight is such a consuming thing to do. consumes so much energy and you need all these structures to be able to do it. That birds are just like,
Well, you know, if there’s no predators around, then why would I bother doing something that’s so exhausting? I might as well just walk around on the ground and use my legs a bit more. they kind of seem to really quickly, especially in groups like the rails, so small wetland birds, they just lose flight like the first chance they get. but because they do it so rapidly, we get this intermediary phase where it’s like, I can fly, but I don’t want to. So they’re behaviorally flightless before they become.
physically, like morphologically flightless so they physically can’t fly.
Alyssa Fjeld (17:42)
That must be so fascinating to try and piece together from fossil evidence as well. I’m guessing you would use maybe walking tracks or other anatomical clues as to whether or not they could but didn’t want to fly.
Phoebe McInerney (17:56)
Yeah, it’s a really complex process to like figure out and flightlessness is so confounding as well because almost everything that evolves flightlessness, the pectoral girdle or like the wings and the sternum have just been modified so heavily that you really can’t use that very well in morphological phylogenetic analysis. Just say because it’s so confounded by this
joint evolution of flight loss, which might be in completely unrelated groups of birds. And then in their hind limbs, they also generally increase the robusticity of their back legs because they’re really relying on that to move and walk around. And then the morphological features in that change as well. So that’s not necessarily reliable for morphological characteristics. So if we have birds that have these
unreliable morphological characteristics and we don’t have genetics for them, then there’s really quite considerable constraints on what we can do with those birds from the fossil record.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:02)
I’m imagining if your fossil record is as incomplete as the Cretaceous fossil record, it must be a big challenge.
Phoebe McInerney (19:09)
Well, surprisingly for genyornis we actually have a lot of fossils. Lake Callabonna is one of those really unusual, especially for Australia, fossil localities where these animals are walking along, they get stuck in mud and they’re covered over pretty quickly. So we actually find near complete, entirely articulated skeletons of these birds. And a lot of them will have some form of erosion.
through just over time environmental processes. But if we’re really lucky, then we can find almost an entire individual. So that means that we can assess genyornis from a species level, but also a population level, and then look at individuals as well, which is really nice. And their relatives, generally, we have a fairly good sample of fossils for as well.
We have dromornithids at the Alcoota fossil site in the Northern territory. And that site has produced a lot of bones from dromornithids. So, and they’ve just started producing some articulated individuals as well from that site, which is really exciting because again, that’s allowing us to look at Alcoota dromornithids from all these different levels. But we are lacking a considerable number of skull fossils.
for different species, which is really challenging because that isn’t necessarily modified from the flightlessness, which I was talking about earlier. So we do kind of need to have these skull fossils to really be able to clarify the relationships of the dromornithids. So I’m hoping that we’ll be able to get some more over time. And the first dromornithid that was described
was described really just from a femur and that’s all that’s ever been found of it. So it’s one of those, you know, up in the air kind of birds that we can’t really do very much with aside from say it exists.
Alyssa Fjeld (20:56)
Thank
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And my understanding is that the large flightless birds in Australia to some extent, mean, Western science has known about them since maybe the 1800s, but Aboriginal people who live in Australia have longer histories with the animals of the land. Was genyornis something that would have overlapped with these Indigenous populations? Would they have had interactions with them?
Phoebe McInerney (21:29)
Yeah, we think I probably would have. There’s an archeological site that’s fairly close to Lake Callabonna, which would have been active sort of around, quite loosely, around the same time as the Lake Callabonna fossil deposit was accumulating these birds. So we think there would have been some overlap. There’s also a number of genyornis fossils from across kind of Southern Australia, which
might be younger in age than Callabonna as well and suggest even more overlap with Indigenous populations through those spaces or through that part of Australia. But we don’t currently have any direct evidence of interactions between Indigenous people and genyornis. There has been records of bones being found that have potential cut marks on them, but they’ve been lost
to time, unfortunately, which means that it can’t be clarified. So unless we find any more or somehow manage to find those fossils, then yeah, it’s still a bit up in the air whether they actually interacted, but they probably did overlap.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:40)
That is fascinating. To imagine that our human ancestors could have seen something how much larger than a cassowary?
Phoebe McInerney (22:48)
So quite a bit larger. I’m not 100 % sure about a cassowary they’re probably, I think they’re just a little bit bigger than an emu, which is generally about 40 to 50 kilos in size. Genyornis would be about 250 kilos in size. So.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:51)
you
I believe there’s an image you actually have for this that I can pull up from one of your articles in the conversation. Let me see here. This one here, which gives you this larger fellow here. That’s our boy. That’s our… Oh, wow.
Phoebe McInerney (23:20)
Yeah, so they’re not necessarily much taller, but they are just so much more robust. Every bone is so chunky.
Alyssa Fjeld (23:29)
So this is an animal, I love that it’s nestled here next to a group of animals called screamers. I’ve never heard this term used before, but I see the quail and I think I understand. Are these its closest modern relatives?
Phoebe McInerney (23:45)
We think so, yeah. So screamers are still alive today in South America and I love calling them that. It’s a wonderful name. They unfortunately don’t scream as much as I would possibly hope for being called screamers, but they’re still very interesting birds because so they’re the oldest living lineage of waterfowl that exists at the moment.
So they have this really unusual morphology where they still have a lot of the ancestral characteristics for the group, as well as some derived and seriform characteristics. So they started on the track to being water dwellers, the way a goose or a duck is, but they still have those ancestral characteristics. And that’s interesting because the ancestor for that whole radiation, including
the galliforms, which are your chickens and quails and things like that, most likely looked more like an ancient chicken than it would do a duck. So the screamers have this unusual characteristic set where they have these ancient kind of more chickenish, for a very large generalisation, chickenish features and then some duckish features as well. So they’re like this intermediate.
half chicken half duck kind of thing.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:11)
Like one of those boats that is also a car.
Phoebe McInerney (25:14)
Yeah.
And we started to, and we kind of see that in dromornithids as well. They have these intermediary structures which are not quite Anseriform yet, but kind of on the way to being Anseriform from the ancestral state. And the overlap in those characters is what really assigns the dromornithids to be a close relative to the screamers.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:34)
I too love an evolutionary weirdo like the horseshoe crab is the famous example from my time period. But that brings us.
Phoebe McInerney (25:38)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think if
screamers weren’t alive at the moment, they’d really just be this missing link between the Anceriformes and the ancestor of that group. But they are alive, so we have the missing link just right there.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:56)
And one of these animal groups that I think is so weird that people would believe you’re shrink-crapping them or reconstructing them inaccurately just by detecting them. But that does bring me to, this is a reader write-in question that I did not know how to phrase any more clearly. So I decided to make a meme out of it in order to express the general thought sentiment. So this is not a particular type of giant bird that you study, but the…
Phoebe McInerney (26:03)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (26:25)
The write-in from Mr. Duncan asks, why are certain bits of these birds so much proportionally larger than the rest of the bird? I guess in comparison to things like passerines or probably even like large, you know, mesozoic theropods. So why are they like this?
Phoebe McInerney (26:46)
So that’s an
interesting one because that picture there, the head is actually of one of the carnivorous birds. So that is massive because they’ve really strengthened their entire head for this, you know, attacking things, pinning it down, shredding off the meat, I suppose, from what they’re eating. But head-sizing giant flightless birds really does vary quite a bit.
However, there’s not really a lot of disproportionality compared to their close relatives. So if you look at the head to body size, just kind of generalizing it for a tinamoo, which is a smallish flighted bird, closely related to just say your emu, the head to body ratio actually isn’t that different. And we’re kind of seeing that with dromornithids as well, is that?
their head size isn’t really as different as we might expect compared to other ducks. But dromonothids are an interesting group because some of them, the dromonis genus, has really increased the size of its upper beak, which makes it look massive. But then you see that in loads of different birds. So hornbills have a massive beak and
finches have a massive beak. There’s a lot of variation across birds, which kind of normalises the size differences in these structures. When it comes to the legs though, giant flightless birds generally have really large legs because they’re using them 100 % of the time. They don’t fly anymore, so they need to use their legs for absolutely everything.
which means that they’re escaping from predators. They might be traveling really long distances. So their legs are their main form of locomotion and that’s driving them to genuinely be longer or more robust so that they can do that. So yeah, it is quite interesting to see how these are changing as they become giant and flightless.
And the leg thing is definitely a lot more consistent amongst those groups than variation in head size.
Alyssa Fjeld (29:11)
Thank you so much for tackling that question. It’s good to know. And yeah, I could absolutely see how having a big head in that situation would be very beneficial for them.
Phoebe McInerney (29:20)
Yep.
Alyssa Fjeld (29:23)
So with genyornis in particular, a lot of the popular science discussions around this animal have it labeled as like the gigagoose, that comparing it again to that waterfowl kind of lifestyle. But one of the interesting things that I was reading in the run up to this is that they were also possibly mound builders as a form of egg rearing. Is that something that is still believed to be true for this animal?
Phoebe McInerney (29:49)
Not really. So before we kind of started realising that they were anseriformes the anseriforme hypothesis had been proposed a while back, but it was just in a book and it wasn’t really supported by the next piece of literature that came out, which had them as a bit more ancestral to the group, a bit older, and it kind of placed them in
more closer proximity to things like the megapodes in Australia, which are mound builders. So once you have it considered to be more closely related to mound builders, there is the potential for them to be mound builders themselves. But there was also a lot of work coming out on this eggshell that had been attributed to genyornis But that’s a really complicated story with the eggshell.
And it’s not confidently genyornis shell either. So there again has been a lot of back and forth between different groups of researchers saying this is genyornis, this isn’t. I’m not gonna get into that today. But there was some suggestion from that as well that this eggshell might indicate that it was a mound builder. But now that we know that there are
Alyssa Fjeld (30:53)
very fair.
Phoebe McInerney (31:03)
most likely to be close relatives of the Anceriform lineage, they probably weren’t mound builders. Although I don’t imagine them spending much time on creating a beautiful woven nest or anything like that.
Alyssa Fjeld (31:17)
Fair enough. So to the best of your knowledge with all of the wonderful behaviours and things that you’ve gleaned about this animal over the years, what would like a day in the life of a Giga goose be? How is it spending its day?
Phoebe McInerney (31:31)
Well, something that we did find is that in the skull there’s several features which are interestingly potential adaptations for water-based environments. So we linked this to the discovery of a lot of their fossils, which are also in places that would have been wetlands or swamps at the time, to suggest that
genyornis and other dromornithids probably as well hung out around these wetland, swampish kind of areas. They possibly would have been wading through quite shallow mud on the edges of rivers or swamps and getting their heads into the water there to rip out different plants for food or finding fruiting trees around the area.
I reckon they would have been pretty slow moving animals. genyornis has been proposed to be able to run about 15 kilometres an hour, but I doubt they really would have done that too often. I think they only would have freaked out if a crocodile came up or something, but we haven’t got crocodiles from a lot of the places where genyornis has been found. yeah, it probably would have been a very chill bird.
Alyssa Fjeld (32:48)
I love that for genyornis. I’m afraid of really big birds, which I think is normal. I think a cassowary should be a scary animal. We encountered an emu in the field in 2022, I think? No, 2023 when we were doing field work in the Flinders. And I gained a lot of respect for the murder that exists in birds’ hearts.
Phoebe McInerney (32:58)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (33:12)
to know that it was perhaps a little quieter in the Giga Goose is comforting because as we all know regular geese are I’m not going to swear but a word of course with bee comes to mind. They’re not usually known as like placid animals, so it brings me to a point.
Phoebe McInerney (33:28)
No, no.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t have gotten on genyornis’ bad side, but I think generally they would have been pretty chill.
Alyssa Fjeld (33:39)
I’m just picturing like the stardew duck, but really big right now as well. But I’m told that this reconstruction, which you made with your co-author, Jacob Blokland, is one of the better representations of genyornis. This would be a more accurate representation of kind of maybe how its skin feathers would have looked.
Phoebe McInerney (33:44)
here.
Alyssa Fjeld (34:04)
Do you have any commentary about any of the choices you’ve made in this reconstruction?
Phoebe McInerney (34:09)
So all of the design work and the drawing of it was all done by Jacob Blokland. He’s really good and very, he’s also a palaeontologist. So he’s really into creating the bone structure and reconstructing that and then layering on the muscle and the skin afterwards to create that.
depth of understanding in the picture that you don’t necessarily get from just sketching something outright. So there’s a lot of work that’s gone into the structure of the head from the paper this was associated with, but also the length of the neck and how the neck is held from the vertebrae that we have. And then we’re very lucky with Lake Callabonna. It hasn’t really been published on yet, but we’ve been getting some
beautiful material in the same way that was reported in the very first discoveries of genyornis. There is some soft tissue structure preserved and that has come into how we’ve kind of been able to look at these birds as well as taking on other information such as birds have really complex feather structures.
But generally that’s for flight. And the second they don’t need flight, they can just have very simple feathers. So the feathers that you see on this genyornis here are really simple in their structure. And they’re a lot more like an emu or a cassowary feather because they don’t have the requirements of the really strict feather structures that a flighted bird would have. So it’s a lot more relaxed. The skin on the neck
was selected to be like that rather than covered in feathers because these are such big birds. And generally you see emus and cassowaries, they don’t have a lot of feathers on their head. Emus just have like a weird kind of sketchy hairdo. And of course cassowaries have the cask. So it’s probably a temperature thing because they’re so big they’d need to look after their.
internal temperature as well and probably reducing the feathers on the head and neck would help them with that. So that was a consideration that got taken into was a factor that got taken into consideration for the design of this bird team.
Alyssa Fjeld (36:40)
It’s absolutely gorgeous. I mean, I feel like I can smell this bird. I hope that’s not a weird thing to say. But it also deeply reminds me of the Skeksis from the Dark Crystal. And I personally would love to pet the Skeksis, the Forbidden Swamp Skexies.
are you or Jacob possibly fans of the dark crystal? Was that something you thought about when designing this creature?
Phoebe McInerney (37:11)
We have both seen the dark crystal, but it just didn’t click with either of us. We were just like, yeah, that’s a nice colour. That’s a good positioning. And then, yeah, getting to promoting it.
Just weirdly similar without either of us actually thinking about it.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:32)
I think that it’s fascinating to me to see how the more we learn about the natural world, the more it informs our fantasy in science fiction. And then to see that again get reflected back. There’s a famous case of Cambrian material of an animal called Tomisiacaris, which was first hypothesized to exist in a speculative evolution art thing, like a magazine. Somebody was like, well, there should be filter feeding radiodonts.
Phoebe McInerney (37:43)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:59)
And boom, we found them and they happened to look really similar to what was proposed. So they actually took the name from that, the creator of the illustration. And I think you’re not to to veer too much to a different topic, but you’re also someone with a lot of experience communicating this research to the public. You’ve done a guest spot on ABC. And my understanding is that you’re now working in an education and outreach capacity. What’s that journey been like?
Phoebe McInerney (38:06)
Yeah.
Well, that’s actually been such a wild ride, to be honest. I came into science not really thinking a lot about outreach and just joined the Palaeontology Society at Flinders as vice president and then president just for fun. And that gave me so many cool skills, to be honest. I learned how to manage events, how to promote things, how to build a website, how to lead a team.
how to do finances for groups. There’s just so much that I managed to get out of that and I was just having fun with it. And then different opportunities came from that as well. I was getting my name out there and you know, I got asked to do a design for the logo for another podcast and then I got asked to help with other events and then I got brought in to do the Royal Society.
which I’m a part of at the moment. So yeah, it’s been an interesting process of just like meeting more people and that’s been leading into more things. And it’s a lot of fun because it’s so integral to what we do. We don’t have all the beautiful photos of things that, you know, people with living animals can use. We have to design and promote and we also have to prove why it’s worth doing this research, which a lot of people might say, how did that benefit society? You know?
But it means that we do need to have the skills in outreach to communicate the research that we’re doing and communicate it effectively. And then we can use that to benefit the research and get more grants for the research and prove that it is actually significant work that we’re doing. And it’s great too, because you have so many kids and schools and just everyone who’s interested in palaeo.
that we have the opportunity to educate on these topics who may not know a lot, may not know that we had megafauna or, you know, it might just be like, yeah, there’s diprotodon, but they don’t understand the diversity or the complexity of those animals. And I think as scientists, should be a big part of what we do is that education and outreach.
And a lot of people, you know, if it’s not for you, then that’s fine. But I think it’s actually a lot of fun and people have generally enjoyed when, you know, we’ve been able to have those interactions and talk about these fossil animals. So, yeah, I mean, as you would have found with your podcast, people are interested. They just need to have access to those who are willing to share that information.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:00)
I think that’s a really excellent point, especially thinking about how we are the wardens of the information that we research. We are in some ways like the ambassador through the spokesperson for the brand, genyornis. Because there’s no, all of the output that gets done for things like the conversation or science direct, talking to ABC.
Phoebe McInerney (41:12)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:21)
That’s the researchers like you pulling on your informational communication skills. There’s not always a PR person helping you write the script or choose language. A lot of universities now will have coaches that will help you prep, but yeah, there are skills that you as a researcher have to have if you want people to care about what you do, to get funding.
Phoebe McInerney (41:41)
next.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:42)
I know South Australia had the recent debacle with the museum. I don’t know if that was something that affected your research, but it certainly made me worry about the funding for digs and all sorts of things.
Phoebe McInerney (41:55)
Yeah, yeah, it was quite a concerning time, especially there was a lot of time when we didn’t really know what was going on and it was hard to kind of figure out what you could do about it. I had a lot of good contacts with different people who allowed me to kind of take steps to contribute to getting a voice in how that progressed and we ended up being successful in stopping it and now there’s a bit better news I think coming out of the museum.
It’s not fixed yet, but we’re still progressing. But it’s really important that museums recognise the significance of science and our continuation of science. And then having that outreach and education.
shows to them that it’s not just this little thing that’s hidden in the back room that you you just do without anyone knowing. It’s actually important and they can utilise scientists and science in their outreach to bring in some funds and things like that. yeah like pairing the two together hopefully will get us to a better position
Alyssa Fjeld (42:57)
think that’s really great advice and it’s so optimistic in a time where we’re seeing a lot of defunding happening in my home country and things like that. And I think those are great words of wisdom for the young people who might be listening to this and feeling that same sense of helplessness. I’m wondering if you have any other advice for those that are interested in getting into palaeontology, getting into outreach, any advice for that kind of person in our audience.
Phoebe McInerney (43:20)
Something that I have been so grateful for is that I did take those other opportunities because as you said, I work in outreach now and I’m only able to do that because I took those other opportunities. So my CV was really diverse in what I could do. So when I realised that I wasn’t immediately going to go into a postdoc after my PhD, but I needed work, I could apply for ecology jobs and outreach jobs and
everything in science I could apply for. So because I had those extra skills outside of just my PhD, so palaeontology is very difficult. There isn’t a huge amount of funding or opportunity. So make sure that you have skills in other areas that you can use, even just to get a job for a year while you publish your PhD or your honours and you look for something else in palaeontology.
is one of the most important things that I could not say enough because that has really saved my life several times. So if people can do that, it’s great.
Alyssa Fjeld (44:27)
think we’re in such an exciting time with Australian palaeontology. have all these interested young people and people like you are making these absolutely fascinating discoveries based on new digs but also based on things you’re finding in museum collections. I’m wondering what you prefer more, being out in the field collecting material or analyzing it in the lab?
Phoebe McInerney (44:48)
they’re just so different, you know? When you go out into the field, it’s so freeing and you’re really into you just digging it up and it’s nice not staring at a screen. But then you have to get back to the lab and compare things and analyze things to actually figure out what’s going on. And it’s there that you get those, my gosh, kind of moments because you’re actually clarifying these findings. It can get a little bit tedious sometimes when you’re just staring at a screen all day and trying to tap.
But that’s when it’s nice to have fossils around because you can just get up and be like, I’m just going to go and look at the fossils half an hour and give my eyes break. So I think I love both. It’s a really good mix between the two.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:31)
always good to hear and you do field work in some of these really beautiful, really remote corners of the Australian continent.
Phoebe McInerney (45:39)
it is almost like two days drive north of Adelaide. So it’s just a couple of hours north of the Flinders ranges. So maybe almost like half to three quarters of the way up South Australia, which is, it is far north. And it’s very dry and about four hours drive from the nearest building, which is just someone’s home, which is a very long drive from the nearest town.
you know, we have all those processes in place to make sure that it’s safe. yeah, it’s just nice to be able to get away from things sometimes and focus on using your hands a bit more.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:13)
I definitely understand that. Just having gotten back from some field work in Inverloch, I can’t tell you how much more calm I feel when I get to spend a few days hitting some limestone with a big
Phoebe McInerney (46:25)
so the way we do it, Callabonna is all like fine dirt removal, but hitting something with a hammer, I haven’t experienced that palaeontology.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:34)
The Flinders is so great for this when we do the transects because we need one potato size lump for thin sectioning and we need one potato size lump for acid dissolution. So as long as it’s a potato size chunk, we’re probably not destroying anything of value. And the amount of Masters degree stress that I worked out on those poor rocks.
But fine sifting sand and particulate stuff like that must be a really delicate job. Do you find that it’s difficult sitting there doing the sifting? Or do you get back pain?
Phoebe McInerney (47:04)
Oh, well I have done a bit of sifting. Luckily for Callabonna, well mainly because it’s all giant animals, we don’t sieve too much, but also it’s clay, it’s really kind of, you can just pull it off in chunks. I just have a bag of this clay, but I’m like, one day I might make a bowl out of this, you know?
Alyssa Fjeld (47:20)
that would be so cool! Or a mud mask.
Phoebe McInerney (47:23)
Yeah,
mmm fossils. But yeah, I have done a lot of the sieving for some friends who working on sites that require that and it is a very intense process. You’re looking for just these minuscule little things that are hidden in amongst this sand and you’re like, my gosh, they’re so delicate.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:33)
Hmm.
I’ve heard from somebody who studies frog bones and all I can think is how, how do you even know they’re there without breaking them? It makes me so nervous.
Phoebe McInerney (47:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, one the reasons I was like, big things, that’s nice.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:56)
I mean, to be fair, the microfossils are not much better. I don’t tell Glenn Brock this, but one time I sneezed and I think I lost part of an ascapasmus somewhere in the lab.
Phoebe McInerney (48:06)
God, they just
fly away in the slightest breeze.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:10)
Exactly, you know, if somebody it could have been anybody I Have I have one final very important question for you and it is not at all because I skipped lunch In our last episode I also recorded when I was hungry and I kept thinking about like delicious and dungeon that show I don’t know. Cassie has probably told you about it But it’s a show about people eating monsters in a dungeon and I’m obsessed With the idea of doing that with palaeo creatures like I want I want to eat
Phoebe McInerney (48:32)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:37)
the fossils. I’m curious, do you think genyornis would be delicious or do you think it would be kind of rank?
Phoebe McInerney (48:44)
Oh, I dunno. I think to be honest, if you had the opportunity to eat one, you 100 % would.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:52)
Absolutely, right? Like, I would eat, I’ve eaten emu and like a stew, that was okay.
Phoebe McInerney (48:57)
Yeah,
I don’t know what it would be like though. Would it be like a kind of half chicken half duck kind of feel? Or would it turn more into a red meat because it’s so giant? But who knows? Yeah, I don’t know. And if they’re just kind of putting their face in mud all the time, like would it be quite? I mean, they’re not filter feeders, they’re possibly not, but who knows? Who knows what they’d be like? I reckon.
Alyssa Fjeld (49:08)
Yeah, like a Sandhill Crane kind of texture or like…
Phoebe McInerney (49:25)
You try it anyway, though. It would definitely be a big feed.
Alyssa Fjeld (49:30)
Right, like there’s, I have some Scandinavian ancestry and the Norse in me desperately wants to eat the big strange animal. Like it feels important to me. In the same way that when I visit Ireland or Scotland there’s part of me that really wants to just light a bunch of fires. So okay, if you could eat any animal from prehistory, what would you choose? Would you choose genyornis or is there another animal that you’re like put that on a burger?
Phoebe McInerney (49:36)
You
Yep.
Alyssa Fjeld (49:56)
I’m
Phoebe McInerney (49:57)
I don’t know to be honest. I I’m a vegetarian so I’m a little bit biased. But to be honest, there’d be some really weird fruits. I’m sure like what would the first fruit have looked like? was probably this solid, really disgusting, like I don’t know. I don’t even know what it would have been like. But I’d be tempted to try that.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:03)
you
Yeah, like I keep thinking about Osage oranges like crab apples because they’re like evolutionarily older than apples and it’s like Could you put them like a pud like a genyornis Christmas goose and an Osage orange pud? I don’t know like maybe there’d be ancient grains like I’m obsessed
Phoebe McInerney (50:35)
Yeah, just saying, let’s do a whole menu, know, of fossils.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:38)
Okay.
That’s what Travis keeps saying. Okay, I’m glad you’re on team recipe book. We will fact check with you on the roasting times for the giant goose.
Phoebe McInerney (50:47)
Yeah, probably a long time.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:49)
It has been an absolute pleasure to speak with you today, Phoebe. If our listeners are interested in learning more about either you or the Giga Goose, where would be a good place for them to look?
Phoebe McInerney (51:00)
There are some conversation articles which they can go and read through, which would be good. There’s also some information on ABC education. There’s some short videos on genyornis or else in the literature. So, where we publish some papers, which is good. Thanks.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:17)
Thank you so much for joining us today. Once more, is Dr. Phoebe McInerney and she has studied the Giga goose, genyornis. Thank you again.
Phoebe McInerney (51:26)
Thanks
so much for having me.
Travis Holland (51:30)
Alyssa, that was a great interview with Phoebe. She’s such a fascinating speaker. Her work on genyornis is really groundbreaking.
Alyssa Fjeld (51:39)
I really loved that we had such an in-depth discussion about how genyornis’ meat would taste, its composition. I appreciate that she’s on team, consume your study animal.
Travis Holland (51:49)
I think this is going to be an ongoing theme in this podcast is wanting to eat the things that you study. you know, but I study media and film and film strips don’t really taste quite as good as a genyornis drumstick.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:03)
But we do have some additional good news coming up for listeners of the podcast who also enjoy things that you can buy but not necessarily eat. We have merch.
Travis Holland (52:14)
I know we have some listeners out there who would love to support us in other ways. And so we do have some merch. We have some stickers featuring our fantastic scratch and skitters by Zev. They are wonderful. I’ve also, Alyssa’s got one of the patches there.
So we have square stickers, have bumper stickers. I also have arranged for mugs, tees, hoodies and a beanie. I especially love the beanie because it just has skitters on it.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:41)
I think that’s the very appropriate merch for someone like me who is prone to bad hair days, loves a trial bite, and wishes to communicate that through my big old noggin without necessarily having to put down my delicious genyornis steak.
Travis Holland (52:55)
So if you want to get some of our Scratch and Skitters merchandise, please have a look at the links on our website and they’ll be on the socials as well. It would be great if you felt like supporting the podcast and getting some cool clothing or stickers to wear at the same time. But on that note, we have been traveling recently. Both of us have been on some trips. I did a couple of day trips in my region, as I mentioned, and you’ve been to Dino Dreaming.
I might start, if it’s okay, with my chat about the Age of Fishes Museum in Canowindra. Now, this is a small museum. It’s about an hour and a half away from where I live, but it is focused on the Devonian Age of Fishes. So the late Devonian has been called the Age of Fishes because it is full of fish that are rapidly diversifying. And it’s thought that in central New South Wales here at Canowindra, they were
gathered in a large watershed, maybe a swamp area, maybe a collection of rivers or a Delta that were streaming down and all of the fish were there. And as the ponds dried up, there has been a collection of fish has come out in hundreds of slabs, which shows all of these species. A lot of them brand new to science before they were discovered here at Canowindra. And it’s fantastic for this, you know, little town to kind of have its own place on the map.
to have this collection of fish from the Devonian period, which are, you know, super rare, super old and just fascinating. So there are some photos of my trip or some photos, less of me. People don’t really want to see me then the fish, the slabs on our Instagram page. So people should go and have a look at that. You’ve also been on a trip. You’ve been down on the coast digging for dinosaurs. Tell us about it.
Alyssa Fjeld (54:41)
First, just want to say that Canowindra has a special place in my heart. I absolutely adore little rural town museums like that. And for the amount of material that they’ve been able to uncover and store on site as I think the Australian Museum does some stuff with them, but a lot of it is funded by visitors just like Travis. So if you have a chance to go and visit, I really encourage you to. They’ve got some adorable merch with cool art on it and you get to see new fishes. That’s great.
Dinosaur Dreaming as well is a wonderful little, I’m not going to say ragtag because they are actually very put together, but they are a group of volunteers that are funded partially through the university that I attend at Monash as well as Museums Victoria. And through these collaborative efforts, the Dinosaur Dreaming team excavates at sites along the Victorian coast near Phillip Island.
looking for the same sort of material and bones that we see in publications by people like Jake or Leslie Cool. A lot of the digging is done at a single point in time in the month of February because that is the time when it is reasonable to go outside in the summer without getting eaten alive by gnats or frozen half to death working on the bitterly cold coast, which it is bitterly cold most of the year.
And it also happens to be a time when mostly the tides sink up and allow us to go further into these deposits as we’re digging. A lot of the deposits that we work with are based on river systems that flowed along the coast quite a long time ago. So the material we get can be very random. It might seem to the untrained eye. You’re pulling out these gray chunks that are filled with bits of charcoal, bits of plant matter. And sometimes if you’re very lucky,
these little chocolatey nubbins that contain bones of dinosaurs, turtles, fish, and all sorts of other party creatures that would have lived in and along this river system during the upper lower Cretaceous. I was there for about a week. I was helping the dig team in week two. There’s some adorable photos of us on social media that very much make us look like the Atlantis, the Lost Empire crew shot.
We found all sorts of really interesting things that I’m not allowed to tell you about because unfortunately a lot of the information is kept private until we can publish. But I can say that we did find some dinosaur. We found hundreds of individual samples and we found another piece of an ongoing riddle that involves the stacking of various turtle carapaces in a single location. Why are the turtles stacked? What’s stacking them? Answers on a postcard.
Travis Holland (57:11)
Someone trying to make turtle soup, perhaps. We’ll, we’ll have to come back and cover the discoveries out of Dino Dreaming when, when those things are published. And finally, I also went up to Wellington Caves, which is again, about an hour and a half from where I live in Bathurst, but also in the, in the opposite direction. This is also a Devonian deposit, but much younger than the age of fishes. So it’s early Devonian. And so there are.
corals and shells, but no fish deposited. And what Wellington Caves is most famous for is that while we have the limestone deposit, that has been carved out by water over the 400 million years in the intervening period. And most recently from the Pleistocene, a lot of megafauna fell into those caves or went into those caves and were deposited there at various times as well.
And so things like diprotodon and in fact, genyornis and many other megafauna from Australia were discovered there for the first time in the 1830s. This was a period when instead of keeping things in a local museum, you would package it up and ship it back to England. so Richard Owen, in fact, think named some of these creatures for us, but now they are kept locally. And so there are fossils of…
various animals, including diprotodon on display at the caves. A really cool place to visit. The tour goes for a little under an hour. We went down into Cathedral Cave, which is so named because it has this massive altar made out of sort of dripping limestone, stalactites and stalagmites growing in, you know, over millions of years. And it’s just a very spectacular site. And then you get to see the fossils as well, including some scattered on the surface.
And there’s also pretty cool statues of Varanus or Megalania, the large Pleistocene lizard, which is related to today’s modern day monitor lizards and also Diprotodon as well. So it’s a pretty cool site if you are traveling through central New South Wales and I’m glad I finally got up there to see it. Again, there are photos up on our Instagram, so you’ll have to check those out.
Alyssa Fjeld (59:16)
This raises a really good point that I want to ask our listeners about as well. There’s a lot of focus on dream museums, on these elaborate, beautiful, amazing museums. I’m guilty of this as well, like going to the American Museum of Natural History was a dream of mine for a very long time. But often you’ll find that in your own environment, in your own community, there are these little museums and they might not always be focused on fossils. Some of them, like the Bathurst Rock and Mineral Museum,
has fossils, but it also has amazing gemstones that have been donated by private collectors that lived in the region. When you go to these smaller locations and you engage with these museums, often you’re putting money back into these local communities and you’re seeing these amazing deposits that wouldn’t get the same spotlight at a large institution. So just curious to our listeners, are there any small town museums like Travis’s mentioned that might appeal to you or that you wanna give a shout out to anything cool out there?
if we roam the Australian countryside that we could check in and see.
Travis Holland (1:00:18)
If there are any other Australian museums or anywhere else in the world, what’s your favourite small museum? I think is a really good question to put to our listeners. You can tell us in text or share video. If you share a video, I’ll insert it into the podcast, into the next episode. Otherwise we’ll read your answers on text. So let us know, what are your favourite small museums?
I have some questions for you. This is our fun segment for the week and it is a Who Am I? So I have three of these at the end. You will have to answer which creature you think this is. Feel free to buzz in early.
even though you’re not competing. And if you’re right, then that would be fantastic. Otherwise, we’ll wait right to the end. who am I? I ruled the seas before dinosaurs roamed the earth. My spiral shell could grow larger than a truck tire, and my tentacles might have stretched longer than a car.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:01:03)
Excellent.
Travis Holland (1:01:21)
Though I may look like my modern cousin, the Nautilus, I was far bigger and more fearsome. I probably had an iridescent shell, which I used to control my buoyancy as I hunted in the ancient oceans. Like a submarine commander, I could flood or empty chambers to rise and sink at will. Who am I?
Alyssa Fjeld (1:01:45)
guess our good friend the ammonite.
Travis Holland (1:01:47)
Absolutely. We’ve, we’ve talked a bit about ammonites in recent episodes. and yes, I think they’re, they’re really fascinating creatures. And honestly, although people talk about, you know, wanting to bring back dinosaurs, and I know you would love to see some trilobites. I would really dearly love to see.
just a giant ammonite cruising the ocean. think that would be so cool, especially if it glowed like some research synthesis do suggest it did.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:02:14)
does sound absolutely fascinating, especially if you were doing some kind of night dive and you had your little flashlight on. Oh, that would be, and think of the sea shanties we could get about those guys. Absolutely unhinged content. It would be great.
Travis Holland (1:02:27)
It would be fantastic. Okay, the second, who am I? I was one of the last of my kind, disappearing from Ireland just 13,000 years ago and persisting in Siberia perhaps up to 7,000 years ago. Standing taller than the largest male polar bear, my massive antlers spanned up to 12 feet wide.
wider than two adults without stretched arms. I used these impressive weapons to fight rivals and clear snow to find food. Though I may remind you of modern elk or moose, I was uniquely adapted to life in glacial Europe. Who am I?
Alyssa Fjeld (1:03:12)
That big Irish deer, mega something, mega, not megaceros.
Travis Holland (1:03:18)
Very close, it’s Megaloceros. So close.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:03:20)
my gosh, okay, I got there in the end.
I didn’t know that it used its antlers in that way for clearing snow. That’s really interesting.
Travis Holland (1:03:30)
Yeah, I mean that might be speculative. I’m going to have to go and read up on that a little more detail now. But yeah, I think, you know, it’s, it’s a question of why the antlers were so large. It’s just like, I guess a lot of fossil animals for which we can’t observe their exact behavior. It’s kind of speculative. What
what were those used for compared to modern animals? Are they the same or are they different and those kinds of things? But yeah, the Irish Elk or Megaloceros, yeah, is one of those fascinating animals. And in fact, speaking of museums,
The Australian Museum has a magnificent specimen in Sydney. when I walked in and saw that, was like, wow, that is a, that is a massive, it’s so cool to see this up close. And also to know that this is an animal that coexisted with humans in Europe. our ancestors probably saw these.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:04:22)
And I’m sure just like tourists today got way too close to the vaguely friend-shaped animal only to have a very yellowstone moose encounter with it. Very cool.
Travis Holland (1:04:31)
Yeah,
Okay, last one. This one is a dinosaur. I may have been small for a dinosaur, but I was possibly one of the smartest to ever live. About the size of a turkey, I hunted in packs and used my brain and keen vision to outsmart my prey.
My curved claws and long grasping fingers made me a skilled hunter while my feathers helped me stay warm and possibly even glide. I could possibly run as fast as an Olympic sprinter. You might recognize me from a famous movie series, although they made me much bigger than I really was. Who am I?
Alyssa Fjeld (1:05:12)
gotta be our good friend the velociraptor. So cute!
Travis Holland (1:05:14)
Yes, of course.
This is another possibly friend shaped. We would look at a Velociraptor today and just go, how cute. What a beautiful bird I think.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:05:25)
would die trying to pet this animal. Yes.
Travis Holland (1:05:27)
Then it would then it would destroy you.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:05:29)
I’m just thinking about, we watched Jurassic Park while we were at the dig and Sally, Sally Hurst, who’s been on this podcast and Adele who’s also been on this podcast, reenacted that famous scene with the claw and the six foot turkey quote, the whole shebang, but we did not have a small child. So we got the one archeologist that wasn’t Sally to sit on his knees.
Travis Holland (1:05:37)
Mm-hmm.
I saw them actually, they were dressed as Alan and Ellie weren’t they?
Alyssa Fjeld (1:05:56)
It was so cute.
And Jake was, of course, providing us with accurate quotes. had a good system going and a lot of velociraptor appreciation.
Travis Holland (1:06:03)
Yeah.
Look, while we’re speaking of Jurassic park, I should do a bit of self-promotion. was recently asked to talk about Jurassic park on ABC podcast, ‘What the Duck?!’ And so that was a lot of fun. they made me sound a lot better than I, than I thought I sounded when I did the interview, but, it was great. it was a good chat and they had on some other experts as well, a palaeontologist and also a mosquito experts. So they talked about their science of mosquitoes, which is actually a pretty overlooked part of Jurassic park.
I didn’t even, I didn’t touch the mosquitoes. just talked about the kind of cultural impact as much as I could, but it, it was a really cool chat, cool podcast to check out.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:06:44)
I mean, when are we gonna see you on Play School? I assume that’s the next stop off for you.
Travis Holland (1:06:49)
Well, to give an insight into, into that actually, last year I did go to the set of PlaySchool. I took some of my students to the ABC in Sydney and, we toured the, you know, a lot of the recording studios and all sorts of things. And then we walked onto the set of PlaySchool and these, you know, sort of disaffected undergraduates were just in
in awe I think of being on the PlaySchool set. They absolutely loved it. And the photos are so great. So yeah, actually I have been on the set of PlaySchool weirdly enough.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:07:20)
Wow, that’s amazing and congrats on getting on What the Duck. That sounds like such a cool opportunity. And yeah, such an overlooked part of the actual plot for Jurassic Park, I assume, is the bugs that they’re getting the dino DNA out of and how their digestive tracts would work. It’s no fun studying mosquitoes, but somebody’s got to do it.
Travis Holland (1:07:22)
you
Yeah. And, and the person, his name skips to my mind, but, the person who was interviewed about the mosquitoes, you know, apparently was, banging down their door to get on and talk about, talk about how wrong the mosquitoes in Jurassic park actually were. So, worth the listen.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:07:55)
He had his truth, okay? You need to get it out there into the world. Someone’s gonna listen to him.
Travis Holland (1:08:01)
Scientists love talking about their work or what can you say? So there it is.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:08:05)
Absolutely. And
speaking of that, I will be doing Pint of Science this May if people would like to come hear me talk in person. I have no idea what I will do just yet, but I’m thinking comparing different time periods to different types of rock music. Obviously, the Cambrian is prog rock and we will spend a lot of time on that. But that’ll be live in May if you want to come join me. I’ll get more details on social media eventually. Yeah, and I guess.
That’s about it for this episode.
Travis Holland (1:08:32)
Yeah,
check out the merch, find and follow us and rate us on the podcast apps. That’d be great. And, we’ll talk to you next time.
Alyssa Fjeld (1:08:40)
Yeah, thank you so much for listening guys. Hi mom and dad and see everybody else next time.
