[00:00:05] Garret: Hello and welcome to, I know Dino keep up with the latest dinosaur discoveries in science with us. I’m Garrett,

[00:00:12] Sabrina: I’m Sabrina,

[00:00:13] Garret: and today we have three new had resorts.

[00:00:17] Sabrina: and one of those had OSAs had a sail like tale.

[00:00:21] Garret: Hmm, like Spinosa.

[00:00:23] Sabrina: Yes.

[00:00:24] Garret: We also have an interview with three of the hosts from PBS Eons, Blake De Pastino, Callie Moore, and Gabriel Philip Santos, two of whom we’ve spoken with before. Names might be familiar.

[00:00:38] Sabrina: Yeah. We got to talk about the new six episode series, eons, life and Death on Pangaea. We also have Dinosaur of the Day, Shama Sous, a medium sized and cosa, and our fun fact, which is that most animals had a third eye until the great dying.

[00:00:57] Garret: I think I might know where that’s going.

[00:00:59] Sabrina: That’s do with the [00:01:00] Permian. That. Goes with our interview.

[00:01:03] Garret: But before we get into all of that, as always, we’d like to thank some of our patrons for helping to keep our podcast going and this week we have a new patron to thank and that’s Ash Bot. Thank you so much, Ash Bot for joining. And then rounding out our shout outs. We’ve got Thieving Raptor, Lorenzo Indie, DECA Dang Griffin, T Rx Dinosaurs, Adam j Layla Sous, and Jeff.

[00:01:28] Sabrina: Thank you so much for being a part of our know-it-all community. We really appreciate you. Speaking of, now is a good time. It’s never a bad time to join if you’re thinking of joining.

[00:01:39] Garret: We have so much good content over there, lots of Inop, paleo episodes. That interview we have in today’s episode, we have a much longer version on our Patreon for all of our patrons. So if you wanna check that out, head over to patreon.com/i know Dino.

[00:01:56] Sabrina: Jumping into the news with the three had sores. We’re [00:02:00] starting off with new Racor, crypto Hydros. K. This was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology by Yano Sagia and others. And I would say it looks like a typical hads. You’ve got the bulky body, it can walk on all fours. The long tail, the kind of long horse like head, ’cause sometimes had sores are called the horses of the Cretaceous, although usually we talk about them being the cows of the Cretaceous.

[00:02:26] Garret: I definitely prefer horses ’cause they run faster than cows and the head shape and the browsing rather than grazing in most cases.

[00:02:34] Sabrina: Mm-hmm. This one was in the late Cretaceous in Romania, in the Hotze Basin. It’s about 10 feet long or three meters according to the figure in the paper. So that’s our estimate based on their scale bar. The Hotze basin’s known for the dwarf dinosaurs, although there were some bigger animals,

[00:02:50] Garret: This one sounds like it might have been a dwarf dinosaur. It only three meters long. It’s pretty small for a hat or so in the late Cretaceous.

[00:02:57] Sabrina: they didn’t call it a dwarf dinosaur, so I’m not [00:03:00] sure we know it from a partial skull and skeleton. It includes parts of the skull, parts of the ribs, the tailbone, and part of a leg. It’s closely related to Tel Mesosaurus, which is also from Romania, founded in the Hotze Basin and Teros, which was found in Italy.

[00:03:17] Sabrina: It’s the second non-hard aloid from the Hots region after Urus, which is how it got its name, because the genus name Crypto Hads means hidden. Had or had.

[00:03:30] Garret: I was a little worried that it was gonna be like a crypted link of some sort, but I’m glad it doesn’t have anything to do with that.

[00:03:37] Sabrina: It just refers to being the second hara or in the Hotze Basin and being unacknowledged for so long it was hidden for over a century.

[00:03:44] Garret: Yeah, it is kind of surprising ’cause a lot of times had restores really dominate their ecosystem. We find tons of them. So it’s kind of surprising with all the things that have been found in the Hotze Basin that this one took so long.

[00:03:56] Sabrina: Yeah. Oh, and then hara, of course means thick or bulky, so it’s [00:04:00] got a unique combination of features I should mention to the species name, and is an honor of Maggie R’s mother, the lead author, Celia Kalay. Hopefully I am pronouncing this. Okay. They said, quote, honoring her continuous and full-hearted support and encouragement for pursuing his studies in natural sciences.

[00:04:19] Garret: That’s nice.

[00:04:20] Sabrina: It is. Yeah, they found an incomplete skeleton known as the Jenna specimen. The Holotype includes part of the skull and jaws and some teeth rib fragments, tailbone parts of the legs, and it’s at least a subadult based on fusions of the bones. Again, it’s closely related to Urus, that other Hadrosaur from the same area, and Urus has a long history.

[00:04:44] Sabrina: Ana Nosha first found it in 1895. She found a crushed

[00:04:48] Garret: Oh wow. That’s so, it’s not so new.

[00:04:51] Sabrina: This is OSAs

[00:04:52] Garret: Oh, okay.

[00:04:53] Sabrina: again. It’s got a long history. So she found the crushed skull in 1895, and then her brother, Franz [00:05:00] Nosha, who we’ve talked about a lot on our show, he described and named it as OSAs. But then later the name was changed to Urus because Urus was the name of a Crocodilian already.

[00:05:11] Sabrina: It was named in 1872 by Marsh. They later found OSAs to be a junior synonym of Ortho mes. That one was found in the Netherlands, but that one’s a dubious hado. So then a paper in 1993 found that all hydride fossils from the hot egg were tel Mesosaurus. There’s been some debate on this and eventually a lot of people consider that there may be more than one species, which brings us to crypto hadis.

[00:05:39] Sabrina: So this paper said that only the crushed skull that NSA described, as well as the vertebrae tail back and neck bones that he considered were part of the same individual, belonged to Tata sous, as well as some referred specimens found in the same area. It’s pieces of skull and jaws because they have pieces that overlap with the skull and they look similar.

[00:05:59] Sabrina: So you’re able to [00:06:00] compare and see like, Hey, this looks like the same dinosaur based on this skull. the new genus specimen crypto hydros, they found that it’s different from TSUs and they were able to name it cryptos. And this. Crypto had specimen. The Genesis specimen was excavated in the fieldwork seasons between 2022 and 2024.

[00:06:20] Garret: So it is new.

[00:06:21] Sabrina: Yeah. In some ways, they also found some isolated Titanic or vertebrae pieces of as Darked OSAs crocodile form osteoderms and fragments of turtle plates.

[00:06:33] Garret: Unfortunately, they noticed that those were all from different animals and didn’t just lump ’em together into some crazy combo.

[00:06:40] Sabrina: Mm. I don’t think that happens too often.

[00:06:42] Garret: It does sometimes. It happened with Dakota Raptor just a few years ago. Some turtle pieces got thrown in the mix.

[00:06:49] Sabrina: Yeah. Our next hadas is a ine Gong long fondue. This was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology by [00:07:00] Hanya and others. Sine are known for not really having crests,

[00:07:05] Garret: They’re the boring had

[00:07:07] Sabrina: at least the bony crests. I think we’ve talked about how sores having fleshy crests. Mm-hmm. Anyway, this one Gong Shu Long looks mostly like a typical hadas sour.

[00:07:18] Sabrina: We’ve got the bulky body. It’s depicted walking on all fours. It’s got a long tail. It’s medium sized. It’s about 23 feet or seven meters long. So bigger than the last hadas sour we were just talking

[00:07:28] Garret: Yeah. Way bigger.

[00:07:29] Sabrina: But the tail is tall and it’s got this salike structure at the end. So it’s got these long curved neural spines on the vertebrae at the end of the tail.

[00:07:38] Sabrina: That’s what makes the tall salike structure. These neural spines are long and somewhat recurved, curved backward. They’re eight and a half times as tall as the Centrum that they’re attached to. That’s the main part of the vertebrae bone. So yeah, it’s pretty cool. Not quite like spinosaurus we were saying at the beginning.

[00:07:56] Sabrina: Yeah. Of the episode, but different for a hydros.

[00:07:59] Garret: [00:08:00] Yeah, I wouldn’t really say they’re curved, backward. They sort of like start out backwards and then curve up. So kind of like a, a spoiler on some cars, like the, the deck lid spoilers or like on the old nine 11 that had the little is very specific. Um,

[00:08:18] Sabrina: not familiar with that reference.

[00:08:20] Garret: I need a better analogy. A banana, it’s shaped like a banana.

[00:08:25] Garret: If you have a banana standing up or like hanging, it’s got that kind of curve to it. Concave in the front side. But yeah, that’s very long. It’s almost, the tail actually does in a lot of ways. Remind me of that spinosaurus tail in terms of the height compared to the height of the actual meaty part of the tail with the Centrum where all the most of the muscles would’ve attached and everything.

[00:08:50] Garret: It’s interesting in their estimation of maybe what it looked like. They gave it like a, a flat top sort of look because they gave [00:09:00] it. Basically they have a vertebra or a neural spine that they think was pretty close to the hips. And then they got a whole series of ’em that they think is closer to the end of the tail.

[00:09:11] Garret: And they’re similar in length, so they just assumed maybe this thing had neural spines going all the way down. Its back and tail that were similar in length, but that’s obviously a lot of conjecture ’cause they didn’t find any of them from the back. So we don’t know what kind of sale it had on its back.

[00:09:26] Garret: Maybe it was like Spinosa and it had a huge, crazy one on its back. We don’t know. Gotta find more fossils.

[00:09:33] Sabrina: always.

[00:09:34] Garret: Yeah, I guess so. That’s a really cool one. I like that a lot.

[00:09:38] Sabrina: Yeah. So gong, it’s from the Lake Cretaceous. It was found in the Jang Shi Province in China in the Leon Ho formation. The fossils were found back in 2021 during some construction, and it was found in a bone bed. There’s at least two individuals. Most of the bones were found in two large blocks that could be pieced back together, so that’s always nice.

[00:09:58] Sabrina: There’s three sets of [00:10:00] two duplicate bones found. That’s why they say there’s at least two individuals, and these duplicates are similar in proportion. They’re similar size proportions to each other. So for example, they found two lower jaw bones, left entries, part of the shoulders and lower leg bones or tibia of slightly different sizes.

[00:10:17] Sabrina: So again, that’s how we know there’s at least two of them. The holotype for Gong Shu Long is a right dent entry, a lower jawbone, but they also found parts of the skull, neck bones, backbone, tailbone parts of the arm, parts of the shoulder, and leg bones

[00:10:31] Garret: Nice. I should mention they did find that Centrum from the back, but they didn’t find the actual neural spine, so we don’t know how tall it was.

[00:10:40] Sabrina: Oh, we don’t know the neural spine.

[00:10:42] Garret: Not from the back. They only have ’em from the tailbones.

[00:10:44] Sabrina: okay. So yeah, it’s the first horrid name from fossils found in South China. We’re getting a little specific here because fossils have been found before in other parts of China, but they’ve also been found in South China before. They’re just too fragmentary [00:11:00] to get a name.

[00:11:00] Garret: Oh, that’s why it’s first had resort named. Yes. And then in South China.

[00:11:06] Sabrina: yes, because there are six formerly named Resos from China, but they’re all from the north, and that genus name gong sung means Gong River Dragon. The fossils were found near Gong River and the species named FUE alludes to the sail like tail Fenway’s opinion for a Mandarin Chinese term that denotes the sale.

[00:11:25] Sabrina: Like tale?

[00:11:26] Garret: Hmm. That’s cool.

[00:11:27] Sabrina: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:28] Garret: It’s not a place named Sora Place name Sys.

[00:11:31] Sabrina: No, it’s a descriptive one.

[00:11:32] Garret: It’s a place name long descriptive sys.

[00:11:37] Sabrina: There we go. And our last hydro sour is a Lamb Asosa Plei Warner. This was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences by Bradley Mcfe and others. The Paleo to me looks similar to Paris Raus,

[00:11:54] Garret: Hey.

[00:11:55] Sabrina: and it’s possibly potentially an ancestor to Paris.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Garret: Okay.

[00:12:01] Sabrina: It walked on all fours. It had the bulky body, the long tail, and it had a big crest on its head.

[00:12:05] Sabrina: Not quite as big as Paris. You can’t, it’s hard to beat, but yeah, it’s pretty big. It was found in Alberta, Canada. It’s from the late Cretaceous about 77 million years ago. It’s from the Oldman formation. They found a skull, roof, and brain case. Wendy Sloboda found it. She’s the same person who found Wendy Sero tops and has made many other discoveries.

[00:12:26] Sabrina: In case that name sounds familiar, and it was found near the Village Warner. That’s how it got its species name refers to Warner, Alberta near what was found. Warner Ensis is the species name, and then the genus name plei opus means near crest. It refers to being somewhat closely related to perserus, although it’s got more basal traits than perserus.

[00:12:49] Sabrina: So it’s got several ancestral features in its skull. For example, in the top and sides of the skull, the parietal has this triangular plateau, but then there’s also some more [00:13:00] derived or later features, like a quote, boomerang shaped dorsal surface of the frontals. So that’s the upper part of the front bones has this boomerang shape on the surface.

[00:13:11] Garret: Yeah. Sort of above the eye.

[00:13:13] Sabrina: Yeah, and then there’s some other details too similar to Paris office.

[00:13:18] Garret: But it, they’re working from a pretty small bone for the holla type. It’s basically the top back of the head, but it has hardly any crest at all on it. So they’re assuming, because it has a lot of details in the part of the bone that they have to parais, that it’s a close relative. And because it’s a close relative and it looks like there’s at least part of a crest there, that it probably had a big old crest, but we really don’t know.

[00:13:44] Sabrina: Yeah, but it is one of the few diagnostic OSAs from Alberta, from the old information, there’s enough features to identify it as this new species, and it helps show that lamb OSAs were all over the northern hemisphere at the end of the Cretaceous.

[00:13:59] Garret: Nice. [00:14:00] That’s interesting. ’cause out of these, we’re always talking about lamby sores are the exciting ones with the big head crests. But I actually think the sine

[00:14:08] Sabrina: With the tail.

[00:14:09] Garret: that gong long with that cool tail. Yeah. The really high spines, it’s certainly not the first hand sore with tall spines on its tail, but this one, the way they’re curved, the banana shape to ’em is really interesting.

[00:14:23] Garret: I’d like to see a little bit more research into it to see if they think maybe those could have been curved astronomically

[00:14:31] Sabrina: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:32] Garret: or if they were definitely like that in life. ’cause I, I don’t remember seeing a lot of banana shaped neural spine, especially with that length to them. But.

[00:14:39] Sabrina: Banana shaped or specific car shaped. I can’t remember what car you said.

[00:14:43] Garret: Oh yeah, I was talking about a little lip spoiler on the back of a car, but I guess there were so many of ’em, and they all seem to have that same curvature, including one that’s from several vertebrae away that you said was in a different block too, makes it a lot less likely that there was some sort of [00:15:00] taxonomy bending them.

[00:15:01] Garret: So interesting. Why? Why the curve,

[00:15:05] Sabrina: Why not?

[00:15:05] Garret: not? cutting in for one other news item.

[00:15:11] Garret: the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum in Philadelphia is unfortunately closing, which was very shocking to everybody in the Paleo and really just science enthusiasts in general community.

[00:15:26] Sabrina: What happened so fast?

[00:15:27] Garret: It did so a lot of people think that maybe. They don’t want to save the museum.

[00:15:33] Garret: ’cause usually if a museum is in danger of closing, there’s a push when they know that funding’s gonna run out to generate some money and, save the museum. Especially considering the Academy of Natural Sciences is the oldest museum in the US and not just the us. According to the dinosaur mailing list, people are saying it’s the oldest museum Natural History Museum in the Western Hemisphere.

[00:15:55] Sabrina: I mean, it’s where Raus was first mounted and that was the first [00:16:00] dinosaur to be mounted in the world.

[00:16:01] Garret: Yeah, that was back in 1866, but I think it was founded in like 1812 or something like that, and it was, I believe, had like a lot of the founding fathers of the United States in it. So it’s an extremely significant institution, and it got taken over by Drexel some years ago.

[00:16:19] Garret: I guess 15 ish years ago, and a lot of people are saying they think that Drexel just really mismanaged it, but other people are saying that they think Drexel is trying to save money because they’re under financial stress, so they’re gonna keep a lot of the researchers and a lot of the material and just sort of move it into other buildings and close the actual museum building.

[00:16:40] Garret: But either way, it’s very sad. It went under a renovation not too long ago, just about a decade ago, and I guess after the renovation, they didn’t really get a big increase in visitors, but obviously renovations are really expensive. So that was part of the problem. But we really don’t know too much details about it because Drexel really hasn’t shared much about why the museum is closing other than the [00:17:00] fact that it’s gonna close at the end of this month, which

[00:17:03] Sabrina: Which I think they shared that at the end of August or beginning of September. So very fast. Yeah.

[00:17:08] Garret: It was like we’re closing in one month. Basically. There is a Facebook group that our listener, and former guest of the show, Jen Cotton, shared with us. So if you wanna see the Facebook group where people are trying to brainstorm about ways to potentially save the museum, you can check out the link in our show notes for that. But it was interesting looking through some of the comments, what that paleontologists posted on the mailing list about this, because it’s not just the Academy of Natural Sciences, which is closing. Unfortunately, we’ve talked about how Carthage College was potentially ending their paleontology program.

[00:17:46] Garret: apparently the Milwaukee Public Museum is closing at the end of this year. And the University of Michigan replaced their museum and sort of SH is now sharing it with other departments. And as they put it, it’s [00:18:00] now a state-of-the-art beautiful collection, but most of the dioramas were removed and there’s really a lot less in the museum despite it being a nice new building and. Michigan State University, which had a hall of evolution in the basement. They basically just completely removed that. So yeah, there’s a lot of museums that are sort of hurting or closing or partially closing or combining right now. And it’s sad.

[00:18:28] Sabrina: Yeah. But with the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum in Philly, there is a group that’s working to try to save it, which I know it’s very short notice.

[00:18:38] Sabrina: And Jen shared us a link. It’s a group on Facebook. We’ll have the link in our show notes because it’s a little bit hard to share a group link on a podcast thing.

[00:18:48] Garret: alpha numeric thing.

[00:18:50] Sabrina: But if anybody wants to get involved, uh, this might be a place to go.

[00:18:54] Garret: Yep. Or at, at the very least, vent frustrations. There [00:19:00] was one person who posted other recently saying that they were paying attention to the outcry, so maybe there’s a chance of saving it.

[00:19:07] Garret: So I think it’s worth trying because again, it’s one of the most important scientific historically institutions in the country. So hopefully it doesn’t close.

[00:19:18] Sabrina: Yeah. We’ll see what happens, but hopefully not, I guess in case it does, if you are in the area, you should check it out before September 30th.

[00:19:27] Sabrina: Yes. It’s definitely worth seeing. We saw it. Ooh, over a decade ago now.

[00:19:32] Garret: Yes. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s very cool to see the original had resource, the original mounted dinosaur, and they have a lot of other cool stuff in there, including some marine reptiles and like I said, it was renovated not too long ago, so it’s a nice museum.

[00:19:45] Sabrina: It’s, Yet, apparently their collections include more than 19 million specimens and more than 73,000 type specimens.

[00:19:53] Garret: Yeah. So again, I think all of that is gonna go to Drexel in a different collection space. I don’t think it’s all [00:20:00] just gonna get thrown out on the curb, but it’s nice when it’s in. A museum and people can see it.

[00:20:07] Garret: ’cause that’s the big problem with these museums closing. It’s not that there isn’t any research being done or that the type specimens are lost, it’s that the public doesn’t really have access to them anymore.

[00:20:16] Sabrina: Yeah.

[00:20:18] Garret: So now back to hopefully lighter news in the regular episode.

[00:20:22] Sabrina: Hopefully you don’t remember.

[00:20:23] Garret: I don’t, I don’t know where this is getting inserted. And in just a moment, we’ll get into our interview with the PBS Eons team, but first we’re gonna pause for a quick sponsor break and now onto our interview with the PBS Eons team. But if you wanna hear more about all of their work and details of the new show Life and Death on Pangea, then be sure to check out.

[00:20:53] Garret: The extended version on our Patreon. If you’re a Patreon, you should be able to just get it through your premium [00:21:00] content feed. And if you’re not a Patreon, please consider joining. We are joined today by Blake De Pastino, Callie Moore and Gabriel Phillips. Santos, who are three of the hosts of the YouTube channel, PBS Eons and their new six episode series from PBS Digital Studios and Complexly titled Eons Life and Death on Pangea, which Explores the Great Dying is now available.

[00:21:27] Garret: Thank you all so much for joining us.

[00:21:29] Kallie: Thanks for having us.

[00:21:30] Blake: Yes, thanks. This is fun already.

[00:21:34] Sabrina: Yes, yes. We’ve had some technical difficulties, so I appreciate all of you putting up with all that. So I know this is your first like long form storytelling, at least for PBS eons. Did you guys decide on the great dying as the topic?

[00:21:49] Kallie: Well, I, we thought about, we were trying to think of topics, right? And we’re like, Ooh, the great dying. Nobody’s really talked about it. Most natural history shows focus on [00:22:00] dinosaurs or the ice age, basically. That’s like your only, your only two options there. And so with the great dying, we would be able to talk about Permian Critters that are very highly ignored.

[00:22:11] Kallie: But then as we were thinking about a six episode series and. Talking about an extinction for six episodes, it could get pretty dark. It get pretty, you know, pretty glum, pretty depressing. So we took a step back and we’re like, okay, well that happened at the end of the Permian. What if we looked at the entire Permian period?

[00:22:28] Kallie: And we’re like, well, what’s the big thing with the Permian? Pangaea? And they were like, Ooh, if we talk about Pangaea, we could even take. Farther step back and be like, how did Pangea form in the late Carboniferous? How did Pangea end? And how did the Permian end at the end of the Permian and the recovery in the Trias?

[00:22:46] Kallie: So we kind of just kept taking steps back until we weren’t so much focused on the great dying as it was the setup for the great dying. And then we try to leave everybody with a, a happy [00:23:00] note that life recovered.

[00:23:02] Garret: Yeah, that’s good. And with dinosaurs, what more could you want? That’s the happiest of endings. So Gabe, I want to ask you, what was your favorite location that you went to during your filming?

[00:23:17] Gabriel: Oh man, that’s a hard one. I think honestly, for me was getting to. Go to the, there’s like a location in Salt Lake City where there was the outcrop that has a layer that shows the extinction, and then right above it is the recovery period. And that’s my favorite place because on just looking at it as you walk by, you wouldn’t know that one of the greatest tragedies in life’s history is recorded at this one site.

[00:23:46] Gabriel: Right. And you know, there’s so many people who were just walking by that day. They were walking their dogs mountain biking. There were tons of animals. There was literal planes flying over us to land in Salt Lake City Airport, and it’s just [00:24:00] incredible to see that this moment of time is preserved in the rocks and it’s something that’s so accessible to so many people.

[00:24:08] Gabriel: It’s such an awe inspiring thing. And it also has this incredible reminder that yes, the end Permian mass extinction was terrible. It was terrifying, but. It was also the story of survival. Following it, right, the recovery, because there was so much life around there. We were there. There were so many plants.

[00:24:26] Gabriel: It really brings together all this idea of what we were trying to share, the story of life and death on Pangaea, and the fact that it kind of got summarized in this one little location right in Salt Lake City where nobody even realizes it. It blew my mind getting to see that location.

[00:24:44] Garret: That’s awesome. You have that in common with Riley Black, ’cause we were talking to her recently and she was on the other side, on the Colorado side of those mountains, talking about the other end of the Mesozoic and seeing the, the line for the extinction and how cool that spot is too.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Gabriel: That’s awesome. Rocks are awesome. They can show us so many things and inspire things like I wish more people could appreciate the rocks, man.

[00:25:08] Garret: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:09] Sabrina: Was it hard? ’cause there’s four of you, did you call dibs on where to go?

[00:25:13] Kallie: The only one that I know of that was actual dibs was, was me. Uh, ’cause I, I happened to be in a meeting when we were talking about localities. ’cause I had submitted a bunch of localities. ’cause for whatever, my brain is just like a Rolodex of paleo. Facts. So when somebody asked me like, Hey, do you need of any good carbon ferous, fossil localities?

[00:25:38] Kallie: I’m like, yes. How many do you need? You know? So Joggings was one of them, and when they started talk about all of the field localities that had been determined, joggings was one. And as soon as they said it, I was like, I call dibs. I volunteers tribute, and, uh. That was it. I was like, you can send me anywhere else.

[00:25:57] Kallie: I don’t care. Wherever else I go, [00:26:00] you can send me to all of the crappy localities. There were none. There were none spoilers.

[00:26:05] Garret: As long as you get to go to Joggings.

[00:26:07] Kallie: As long as I get to go to joggings

[00:26:08] Garret: Yeah. That’s awesome.

[00:26:09] Gabriel: I was so jealous. But it was, it, it’s, it was, it was jealousy, but also so excited for Cali. Like that’s such a cool site. And like Cali said, there were no bad localities. We all got to go to some really cool places out there.

[00:26:24] Garret: Yeah, I, I’m happy to hear that because I know it made the edit Callie talking about like, I was like yanking the seat in front of me, like trying to get out of the car. So excited. So it’s, it’s nice to hear that that was real excitement and not just playing it out for the cameras.

[00:26:38] Kallie: Oh, for sure it was, I mean, I, I did not realize that the drive from our hotel to the fossil locality was gonna be like 30 plus minutes, and so I’m anticipating like getting in the car and then just driving down to the coast and it being there, and then I had to wait like 30 minutes and then they kept being like, well, should we stop here for a quick shoot?

[00:26:56] Kallie: Or maybe pick up some B-roll here and. [00:27:00] Absolutely not get, get me there. Just Just get me there. Just get me there and then we can decide what we wanna do. And yeah, it was phenomenal. It was magical. It was just one of the most incredible parts for me personally, of this entire experience.

[00:27:16] Garret: Nice. I wanna ask Gabe one more question because I know you need to leave soon. Do you have a favorite animal that was covered in all of the animals that you discussed? I know it’s a long time period and a lot of diversity, but is there one that stands out to you?

[00:27:32] Gabriel: Yes. I was so excited for this one that I got to talk about was episode three looking at Ocean Life in the, in Panang, and I got to talk about Heela Capra, Heela Capra, you

[00:27:44] Blake: Ooh.

[00:27:44] Gabriel: like the, the, yeah, like the, the shark, like cartilaginous fish that had like the buzz saw teeth, right?

[00:27:51] Gabriel: Like, I’ve known about that creature for a long time, but never really like. Diving into it or appreciating how cool it was, just like [00:28:00] I knew it looked awesome, but when I learned more about it as I read the script and when we got to go visit the Idaho Museum of Natural History, seeing the fossils and learning about it was so cool because it’s.

[00:28:12] Gabriel: I love weird creatures, but this like is a weird creature in the best way possible. And the other th Yeah, exactly. And the other reason I like this is my favorite was, ’cause I’d never realized how truly big Helo Capra was until I got to the museum. In the museum there is a statue that’s made by Gary Staub and you turn the corner and there’s this giant.

[00:28:35] Gabriel: Head sticking out of the wall. And I was like, oh, that’s crazy. To make like an a, a big version of that just for the, and for the exhibit. And they’re like, no, that’s, that’s as big as it is. ’cause like I was like, shut up. Nuh. And then you, they, they have a replica of the tooth worldl next to it. And if you look at the tooth world and like kind of superimpose it on the, like on the statue.

[00:28:59] Gabriel: You can see it [00:29:00] really was that big. And I was like, oh my gosh, no way. This thing was actually that big. And there’s a photo of me with my head inside of the mouth of the statue, and it’s just one of those crazy things of like, you don’t realize. How amazing and how big and how cool some of these creatures are.

[00:29:18] Gabriel: Sometimes just from the fossils and when you introduce the incredible artists like Gary Staub and everybody who reconstruct them, you really get a whole different appreciation for them. And Gila Capra just all of a sudden became like one of my most favorite prehistoric creatures because of this.

[00:29:33] Gabriel: Documentary series and I now have a bunch of stickers. I have a plushie of it. I would love to get like a few new toys. So it’s definitely become one of like my collectible pieces next to like spinosaur and stuff.

[00:29:46] Sabrina: Do you have it in its different versions of the tooth world? Like you wanna stick it out more

[00:29:50] Gabriel: I would love that. Like when in the script there’s a part where I, where we talk about like the different ways that they thought the tooth worldl went and I haven’t seen any [00:30:00] toys or collectibles with the different versions, but if I see one. You know, I’m dropping cash for my collection like that. That was so cool to see.

[00:30:10] Gabriel: And I, I really loved having that picture because it’s great to talk about it now with people and give them that like, sense of scale and like that. Like that idea that they didn’t have before. And I, I think that’s one of my favorite things overall about this series is the incredible artists that we all worked with to bring these creatures to life.

[00:30:28] Gabriel: It’s really showcasing them in a whole different way that I think so many people never pictured before

[00:30:35] Sabrina: Yeah,

[00:30:35] Garret: Yeah, it is really cool I really liked the, we call it a hologram, right? The hologram

[00:30:41] Garret: Oh yeah. The fancy stage

[00:30:42] Sabrina: the third episode. Yeah, with the multiple, yeah. There was like a bunch of animals that were shown up there.

[00:30:49] Garret: did you guys shoot that, we, yeah, we shot that in a theater here in Missoula and Treasure State Studios.

[00:30:58] Blake: It used to be a, like a [00:31:00] shipping depot or. House or something and these filmmakers bought it and they turned it into sound

[00:31:05] Garret: Oh, cool.

[00:31:07] Blake: Yeah.

[00:31:08] Kallie: It was pretty neat. Uh, they meticulously laid out that grid on the floor, and we filmed, of course, there were. There was nothing there when we were filming. And then they put all that cool stuff in at post and man, I mean, I knew they were describing what it was gonna look like, but until I saw mockups of it, I was just blown away.

[00:31:30] Kallie: I was. Like you guys did that, that’s like movie magic, like, oh my gosh. The, the other thing was having the fog machine, ’cause we had to keep it kind of foggy in there, so the lasers and the lights had something to look like they’re bouncing off of. And so every once in a while they’d be like, we need more fog.

[00:31:49] Kallie: And they’d be flapping near a fog machine to get it all

[00:31:54] Blake: They had a pa with a, on a one wheel, you

[00:31:56] Blake: know, uh, like tooling around the whole warehouse in this one wheel with [00:32:00] cardboard just wafting the, the smoke everywhere.

[00:32:02] Garret: That’s great.

[00:32:04] Kallie: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:06] Sabrina: What was a great effect? It was,

[00:32:09] Sabrina: it was, was it hard to talk about when you’re not actually seeing anything next to you?

[00:32:14] Kallie: Kind of, uh, ’cause we had to think about how big the critters were. You know, like you couldn’t be looking over the top of something that was only as high as your knee. I think spoilers, but I talk about a little critter that’s on a pedestal,

[00:32:27] Kallie: luckily. So when we’re talking about a little bitty

[00:32:30] Blake: I did too.

[00:32:30] Kallie: like a pedestal.

[00:32:32] Kallie: Yeah, it’s a look at.

[00:32:33] Sabrina: I liked all of the, the animals that we saw in, in the third episode and the dimetrodon, especially at the end, it did like a little. The sail kind of like wiggled. It was just really cute. Yeah. so I know this episode will be airing after all six episodes have aired, so hopefully our, all our listeners have had a chance to watch it, but we’ve only been able to see the first [00:33:00] three so far, which has been great. Did you have a favorite animal, Blake?

[00:33:04] Blake: My favorite parts of the shoot was interviewing the collections managers and the field paleontologists. Because that’s when I really feel like I’m in my element, right? Like put me in the field and I am equipped. So my background, as you know, is in science journalism and I’m equipped to ask informed questions.

[00:33:24] Blake: So like to the experts, they’re kind of like obvious and possibly dumb. But that’s my job and I don’t, I’m not self-conscious about that, but I can. Tell the difference between a fossil and a rock. What I can do is ask questions. You know what I mean? And so when I am in the, collections and I’m interviewing the scientists, that’s when I really felt in my element, because I knew exactly what I wanted to know.

[00:33:46] Blake: And like I understand my job is to be a proxy for the audience, for the non-scientists, you know? And so I’m kind of a translator for the scientists and the lay people. The viewer. so I got to ask [00:34:00] questions that to many, experts would be obvious, but like I really needed to have answered like, why are so many dimetrodons at the credit site?

[00:34:09] Blake: Why is there so much oil in West Texas? Like, I just needed someone to connect those dots for me. And in the process of doing that, hopefully I’m connecting the dots for the audience. What I’m trying to do is understand how the things I’m seeing in the field relates to me. There’s no other way to put it.

[00:34:26] Blake: Like what’s my place, in the natural world, and like, how does this connect to me? And I like to think that I actually succeeded in doing that because by asking those sort of big, obvious questions. Presumably the viewer wondering the same thing, like, why am I sitting here listening to some guy I don’t know, talk about the metric on, well, Kyle, it’s because it was the first terrestrial predator and probably the closest ancestor to you as a proto mammal in that distance

[00:34:55] Sabrina: That’s one of my favorite facts about Dimetrodon. Yeah.

[00:34:57] Garret: Yeah, I had forgotten that or maybe never [00:35:00] learned that before. And I, some of those details about Dimetrodon that you were sharing Like, oh yeah, it was a hetero dont, it’s like, yeah, of course. You know, they had different teeth for different purposes, you know, like, okay, but then pointing out but it was maybe the first hetero dont, or one of the first hetero donts, and it’s certainly the first in this sort of niche.

[00:35:18] Garret: It’s like, oh wow, that is actually super important, more important that I had realized before work.

[00:35:23] Blake: Another example of this is, I don’t think it’s posted yet, but I did a follow up YouTube episode, YouTube Eons, YouTube episode about Raddon sales, and I think that’s not out yet, so I’m not gonna spoil it. But there is a part in the script where I literally stopped reading it. I stopped on the table read, and then during the shoot I stopped again because like, I can’t finish this script until someone answers me this question.

[00:35:47] Blake: And the writer had. Just as the throwaway line noted that like one of the hypotheses for the Dimetrodon sale is maybe it was a visual cue either for species identification, sexual selection, [00:36:00] um, scaring off potential predators or whatever. And that would only work because, um, no one could hear in the Permian, and I’m like, hold the fucking phone ears did not exist in the Permian.

[00:36:12] Blake: And Han’s like, yeah, no one had ears back then. I’m like, what? I have so many questions. My first question is, what did Earth sound like

[00:36:21] Sabrina: Yeah,

[00:36:22] Blake: if you were walking on around on Earth? No one could hear, but I have ears. What would I hear? Would I hear like the wind rushing water? You know, maybe

[00:36:33] Garret: So many

[00:36:34] Blake: did, how many, what kind of insects were, you know what I mean?

[00:36:36] Blake: But like, no one’s calling to each other, no one’s trying to communicate. So imagine a world without, without hearing. Across the animal kingdom. That’s the kind of stuff that I think about, and so I, I paused the shoot of that episode and I said, Farhan, if you love me, and I think he does for a Christmas present, I want him to write a script about what the Permian world sounded like, and I [00:37:00] want to host it.

[00:37:01] Garret: That does sound cool.

[00:37:03] Garret: Yeah, that was a, that was another detail that was in the Permian episode where you were talking about Dimetrodon and somebody casually is like, oh yeah, the, the joints and the jaw move, and then this part goes back and forms the ear. And I’m like, what? That seems weird.

[00:37:19] Blake: Yeah. Again, like hold up. Did I just understand, did I hear you say that my jaw is also in my ears, like kind of, yeah.

[00:37:27] Kallie: I actually think that would be a really cool eons episode. Just like when hearing evolve. Know, because it’s a different, like transitioning from the water to the land, that’s a whole sound travels in air And so it would’ve been a complete different setup. Um, to hear in air.

[00:37:47] Kallie: It would’ve been huge. Yeah. If a Dimetrodon farts in the woods, does anybody hear it? You know.

[00:37:55] Garret: If no one can hear it, did it happen?

[00:37:58] Blake: Yeah.

[00:37:58] Garret: They had a sense of [00:38:00] smell, so

[00:38:01] Blake: Yeah.

[00:38:02] Kallie: So they, whoever smelt it, dealt it still applies, but at least with the sound, nobody’s gonna know. They’re all silent but deadly.

[00:38:09] Blake: the Permian Forest.

[00:38:16] Garret: That is perfect. There needs to.

[00:38:18] Blake: Anyway, I don’t think I answered your question, but um, that’s my answer.

[00:38:24] Garret: That was a good answer.

[00:38:25] Sabrina: Yes.

[00:38:27] Sabrina: Like

[00:38:28] Garret: places. That’s the important

[00:38:29] Sabrina: It did. And that’s not something that I would’ve even thought about. Like,

[00:38:35] Garret: Farts. Yeah.

[00:38:35] Sabrina: oh no, I was going back to the sound, but yeah.

[00:38:39] Blake: Yeah.

[00:38:42] Garret: Oh man. A lot of you were talking actually about, anti sous,

[00:38:48] Sabrina: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:49] Garret: which is like, to me, sort of the, the most dinosaur, maybe a therapod like of the Permian creatures.

[00:38:58] Kallie: Yeah, anti sous [00:39:00] is one of my favorites. They’re so weird. Their heads are so big. They’re they. Oh man. It seems like everything in the Permian either had too big of head to look structurally sound, or too small of head, like rinus. The proportions just seem. Wrong, uh, all, all around. Uh, but yeah, anti aosa, anti AAU being one of the top synapsids on the planet at that time.

[00:39:28] Kallie: Uh, it’s wild. So knobby, I’m sure it just had awful disposition and probably be biting. Its friends and foes the same. I can’t imagine what all the, even though they couldn’t. Possibly hear that. Well, they probably were still making noises, you know, so like, are they butting heads? Can you hear the clash and Nash of the teeth and,

[00:39:51] Garret: They had to be like, maybe going back to the sound, maybe it was more like the crocodile, like rumble at each other so they could like feel the viscerally, feel the [00:40:00] anger.

[00:40:00] Blake: Yeah,

[00:40:01] Kallie: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:02] Blake: when I, um, had my kind of onset freak out about noise in the Permian, Han’s, like, well, they probably could, they could hear each other kind of like elephants could hear each other moving around and stuff. And they might’ve, like, through their gut, he said their guts are touching the ground. And then.

[00:40:18] Blake: Maybe that’s like some way they didn’t really communicate, but they could at least sense their environment orally, you know?

[00:40:25] Garret: And then the other animal you were talking about, another big one was the Brady, so, which I think you might’ve referred to as the cow of the Permian, which I really like.

[00:40:38] Kallie: Yeah. Uh, the pariah sore, that’s for sure. They are another one that does not look like they’re built structurally sound. So this is one of the small head’s, giant bodied. Ones, but I think, wasn’t it, it’s a

[00:40:50] Garret: Yeah. Or at least that was

[00:40:53] Kallie: yeah, yeah. Yeah. Proposal of their giant bodies, why they had such big, you know, quote unquote [00:41:00] fermentation tanks to try to break down this really poor, nutritious foods that, why would you start eating that?

[00:41:07] Kallie: But good on you. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. ’cause it did leave to cows someday. So appreciate it. But it does seem like a, a big leap. A big leap to eating

[00:41:19] Sabrina: There was a lot of time in between.

[00:41:21] Garret: There was a, and a

[00:41:22] Kallie: There was.

[00:41:23] Garret: because there wasn’t any competition for it, so some, something had to figure out how to eat it, I guess.

[00:41:28] Sabrina: Yes.

[00:41:29] Kallie: True. It was, you know, it was bound to happen. It was

[00:41:32] Sabrina: Somebody had to do it. So, for our listeners who may not have had a chance to watch PBS eons yet, or the latest eons life and death on Pangea, where is the best place that they can stream it and find out more about your work? But all of you.

[00:41:50] Kallie: Well, uh, the PBS app is the best place to watch the. Beyond. I keep calling it beyond. So our shorthand for this whole thing for the past two and a half [00:42:00] years has been beyonds, broadcast eons. And so it, it has, it still has not stuck that this project has a legit title now, eons

[00:42:09] Blake: and the podcast is called Peons on like the call sheet and stuff. Yeah.

[00:42:16] Kallie: Yeah, so you can watch Eons, life and Death on Pangea, on the PBS app or at pbs.org/eons. If you’d like to check out our channel and all of our 300 plus episodes, you can check us out on youtube.com/eons.

[00:42:34] Sabrina: Yes. Thank you so much everybody for joining us today and putting up with all of our technical issues.

[00:42:41] Garret: Yes.

[00:42:42] Kallie: That’s all right. We made it through.

[00:42:45] Blake: I enjoy talking about this more than practically anything in the world ’cause it is real. I don’t mean to speak for Callie or anyone else, but it’s just a real labor of love and I just appreciate the opportunity to talk to folks about

[00:42:55] Garret: Awesome.

[00:42:56] Kallie: Yeah, we can finally talk

[00:42:58] Garret: Yeah.

[00:42:58] Kallie: secret that

[00:42:59] Sabrina: [00:43:00] Two and a half years. That’s a long time.

[00:43:02] Kallie: Ugh, it was really hard. Lemme

[00:43:04] Blake: And I am not good at keeping secrets,

[00:43:06] Garret: Yeah, me.

[00:43:07] Blake: I’m, I deserve a treat.

[00:43:10] Kallie: We, we had a ton of wordings about social media, like do not share anything that would give anything away. You can’t, like if there’s a clapboard in front, you know, and it has like what scene we’re shooting, you can’t put that on there. Don’t tell people where you’re at. Yeah. So

[00:43:24] Garret: Like a spy. I’m

[00:43:25] Kallie: had rules

[00:43:26] Garret: to an undisclosed location.

[00:43:29] Blake: Yeah, exactly.

[00:43:33] Sabrina: Alright, well thank you again.

[00:43:35] Garret: Yes,

[00:43:36] Kallie: Yeah, thanks for having us.

[00:43:39] Garret: thanks again, Blake, Callie, and Gabe for coming on our show and talking to us all about your amazing work on PBS Eons. We’ve been following it for a long time, so it’s really fun to get to talk in depth with the people who make these amazing shows that we like so much. And in just a moment, we’ll get into our dinosaur of the day, sham [00:44:00] OSAs.

[00:44:00] Garret: But first we’re gonna pause for a quick sponsor break.

[00:44:05] Sabrina: And now onto our dinosaur of the day, Shama Sous, which was a request from Morgan VR Patreon slash Discord. So thanks. Sham OSA was an encor that lived in the early Cretaceous in what is now Dorna Govie province in Mongolia. It’s the first encor from the early Cretaceous found in Mongolia.

[00:44:24] Garret: Huh. I guess they’re all from the Lake Cretaceous, the ones we have there so far. Mongolia, I suppose, is mostly Lake Creta. The famous stuff is Cretaceous stuff like Velociraptor and all that.

[00:44:35] Sabrina: Mm-hmm. So Shamma sous was medium sized. It’s estimated to be up to 23 feet or seven meters

[00:44:41] Garret: Ooh, that’s pretty good for Anor.

[00:44:43] Sabrina: As long as some of the had sores we were talking about.

[00:44:46] Garret: Yeah, and probably a lot heavier.

[00:44:48] Sabrina: Hmm. It looked different from a had sore, it walked on all fours. It was low to the ground. It did have a bulky body and a long tail that ended in a club and a small head.

[00:44:59] Garret: Nice. [00:45:00] Not a ton of early Cretaceous Ankylos. That’s very neat.

[00:45:03] Sabrina: Yeah. These fossils were found in 1977 on a Soviet Mongolian expedition. They found a complete skull, lower jaws, and part of the skeleton with armor. It includes two cervical half rings, that neck collar.

[00:45:17] Garret: that’s great.

[00:45:18] Sabrina: Yeah. And then later a piece of a skull. And lower jaw were also referred to Shamma sous. So Shamma sous was named in 1983 by Tatiana tva.

[00:45:27] Sabrina: The type species is Shamma sous sku, and the genus name shamma sous means sand desert. The species name sati means protected by a shield and refers to that body armor. Mm-hmm.

[00:45:40] Garret: Sand desert sounds a little bit redundant, but I guess you can have deserts like Antarctica that don’t have any sand.

[00:45:47] Sabrina: Fog deserts, that’s a thing, right?

[00:45:49] Garret: That’s true. Sometimes those have sand too.

[00:45:51] Sabrina: Oh, it’s not the thing you notice. So the skull looks similar to go beau. Shama sours had a [00:46:00] narrow snout that ended in a sharp beak and it had a flat skull. The armor on the skull is not separated like head tiles and they’re not very pronounced.

[00:46:09] Garret: weird.

[00:46:09] Sabrina: Yeah, and the squam horns, the bones at the back of the head.

[00:46:13] Sabrina: They’re short and a little bit rounded. It had horns on the cheek and it also had flat oval skews covering its body, which isn’t surprising being in enc Chiso. Some other dinosaurs that lives around the same time and place as Shamma sous include the Stego, Mongolo Stego. And then we’ve got Urus Sora Pods and TROs.

[00:46:33] Sabrina: Other animals that lived around the same time and place include amphibians, turtles, mammals, and lizards.

[00:46:38] Garret: Sham Oau deserves a better place in our dinosaur knowledge, I feel like,

[00:46:45] Sabrina: I think your bias is showing.

[00:46:46] Garret: bias shown. But it’s got, it’s a well-known and OSA from the early Cretaceous that’s, and it’s big 23 feet, seven meters long. That’s one of the bigger anky sours. That’s cool. It

[00:46:58] Sabrina: It is. And [00:47:00] our fun fact is that most animals had a third eye until the great dying.

[00:47:05] Garret: interesting.

[00:47:07] Sabrina: Yes. This was published by Kelsey m Jenkins and others in Royal Society Open Science. So there’s a link if you wanna read the whole thing, we’ll have it in our show notes first. Some definitions though. So tetrapods, those are animals with four limbs.

[00:47:21] Sabrina: Penal gland is another term that kept coming up in this paper. That’s a small endocrine gland in the brain of most vertebrates. It produces melatonin, which helps with sleep. And then we’ve got endocrine, which relates to glands that release hormones into the bloodstream, the pineal gland.

[00:47:38] Sabrina: Associated with a third eye in many animals. today, exothermic animals like lizards, frogs, salamanders, certain bony fish, sharks and lamp rays have it, but it’s not in any mammals today. It’s also not in any birds, which are endothermic, but we also don’t see it in any [00:48:00] crocodilians or turtles or snakes.

[00:48:01] Sabrina: So it’s not like it’s an all exothermic or all cold-blooded animals have this third eye thing.

[00:48:07] Garret: But it isn’t some tetrapods. ’cause you said it’s in lizards, frogs and salamanders.

[00:48:13] Sabrina: Yeah, some exothermic animals and fish too, but not all exothermic, animals, not crocodilians or turtles or snakes in animals that have it today. The third eye is covered by skin. In the past, like in the Permian and the Triosi, this third eye was more widespread, including in our pre mammalian ancestors. So this third eye is at the top of the head.

[00:48:37] Sabrina: In lizards, for example, it helps them sense sunlight changes or manage body temperatures when they’re basking, and it helps them track day and night cycles. As a side note, mammals today do have a penal gland, but it’s internal, so it isn’t linked to the parietal eye or the third

[00:48:54] Garret: Yeah. ’cause we don’t have a third eye.

[00:48:56] Sabrina: No, but it’s really easy to [00:49:00] see this third eye in fossils because there’s a penial foramen.

[00:49:03] Sabrina: It’s a hole that contained the eye. So pre mammalian, th acids had this hole on top of their heads. It’s likely there was an organ inside to help with thermal regulation. The way today’s reptiles do it, there’s one study in 2016 that found that this hole was in most prima million sids before 260 million years ago.

[00:49:24] Sabrina: Around the great dying, a little before the great dying was like 252 million years ago. Then after this time, it wasn’t around as much. It seems like it wasn’t needed for survival anymore. One of the lineages that lost it led to mammals and it disappeared completely in that lineage around 246 million years ago, which may be when that lineage successfully transitioned from cold-blooded to warm-blooded.

[00:49:49] Garret: Oh, that’s interesting. I never thought about that before. So that would mean Dimetrodon might have been cold-blooded. People used to refer to Dimetrodon all the time. As a [00:50:00] mammal, like reptile, which I guess would be even more fitting if it was cold-blooded, but yeah, they would’ve also being one of those mammal ancestors, Dimetrodon and its relatives also had the pineal gland.

[00:50:15] Sabrina: Yeah, I can’t remember if Dimetrodons considered endothermic.

[00:50:21] Garret: Yeah. I don’t know.

[00:50:22] Sabrina: I think it was.

[00:50:23] Garret: Yeah, I thought, I mean, it was assumed to be fairly active, but it’s always a very difficult thing to nail down in the fossil record.

[00:50:32] Sabrina: And its sail probably helped control its body temperature. Cool it down or heat it up.

[00:50:37] Garret: Use that pineal gland to decide when it needs it.

[00:50:42] Sabrina: So for this study, they reconstructed the evolutionary history of the size of the parietal foramen, the hole on top of the head, and they looked at amnios from the carboniferous. The Permian and Trias Amnios are tetrapods that produce a membrane that surrounds and protects [00:51:00] developing embryos. So they have no need for larvae or laying eggs and water.

[00:51:04] Garret: Then the whole world is your oyster if you don’t have to be tied to that watery, mating round.

[00:51:10] Sabrina: Yes. That’s funny ’cause oysters need water.

[00:51:14] Garret: It’s true. The whole world is your tetrapod doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess.

[00:51:20] Sabrina: So this study, they took a sample of 398 amnio animals and put them in a super tree to look for clay specific trends in the size of the hole on the top of the head. That parietal pramin, they measured their skulls and when possible they measured the length and width of the parietal foramen. And then they compared them with major climatic shifts in the carboniferous, Permian and Triassic to get insights on how things changed.

[00:51:46] Sabrina: So their range was going from about 320 million years ago to 201 million years ago.

[00:51:52] Garret: Okay.

[00:51:52] Sabrina: Yeah. And they found that the size of the third eye varies a lot, but there’s some trends between major amnio lineages [00:52:00] throughout the Permian. So there might have been some convergence in thermal regulatory behaviors between mammal and reptile lineages.

[00:52:07] Sabrina: Some things that are look the same between the mammals and the reptiles going on at the same time.

[00:52:12] Garret: Even though they were evolving them independently.

[00:52:15] Sabrina: Yes. The penal complex has a few functions. They help with spatial orientation, regulating circadian rhythms, and they have a role in associated behaviors like reproduction, and also with like exothermic animals, their behavior regulates their body temperature, like lizards bask in the sunlight.

[00:52:35] Sabrina: The third eye is often absent in animals today that are nocturnal burrowing or thermo. Conforming thermoforming means they allow their internal body temperature to match the outside environment, which is what most sharks do.

[00:52:50] Garret: Oh, that’s interesting. I dunno if I’ve ever heard thermo conforming before.

[00:52:55] Sabrina: I hadn’t either. I was a new term for me.

[00:52:57] Garret: It’s like the most extreme [00:53:00] version of exothermic. Like I just do whatever the environment is. I don’t even try to lay in the sun to warm up. I just go with the flow. Yeah.

[00:53:11] Sabrina: now the size of the third eye may matter. It seems like when it’s bigger, it gets more light, and that may influence thermal regulation, although this is speculative. So knowing more about the third eye can tell us more about prehistoric animal behavior, especially in the Permian and Trias before the great dying.

[00:53:28] Sabrina: The size trends were different between the two groups, the ones that led to mammals and the ones that led to reptiles. The whole disappeared in lineages with higher metabolisms and potential endothermic, the warm bloodedness, and including the direct ancestors of mammals and OSAs, and the hole got bigger in siddons and marine reptiles.

[00:53:50] Garret: marine reptiles too. That’s weird.

[00:53:52] Sabrina: Mm-hmm. There’s one surprise, the parietal foramen. That hole got bigger in the middle and late triosi in pan [00:54:00] mammals before the clade completely lost it.

[00:54:03] Garret: What?

[00:54:03] Sabrina: Yeah. In both pan reptiles and pan mammals, there’s multiple losses in various clades throughout the late Permian, into the triassic, so a lot of interesting things going on.

[00:54:13] Sabrina: There’s a lot of shifts in sizes too, which could be based on environmental, like the weather, the seasons changing over time. So many animals had different amounts of sun exposure or evolutionary changes. The penal complex produces melatonin, which affects how much melanin is in the skin, and melanin protects the skin from UV radiation and can help the animal camouflage in new environments or tract mates.

[00:54:36] Sabrina: Also, the penial complex plays a role in homing behavior and can help the animal navigate territory, or there are also lineage specific trends.

[00:54:44] Garret: That’s a lot of confounding factors.

[00:54:46] Sabrina: It’s really hard to test these hypotheses. It does seem like a large hole would allow for more light, which could affect melatonin production and through that circadian cycles or body temperature regulation.

[00:54:58] Garret: Yeah, and you could [00:55:00] definitely imagine like some of those points, it seems like if you’re in an area with less sun exposure, maybe the penial opening gets bigger because you have to try to get more light in to have the same effect. Yeah. But who knows?

[00:55:16] Sabrina: Now, some marine reptiles got larger parietal foramen, larger holes in their heads during the trias that maybe show some diverse thermo regulatory strategies that could be related to counter shading of the skin, or maybe living in open colder waters. Of course, all of this is speculative though for now.

[00:55:36] Sabrina: Patterns in size and loss of the parietal foramen go with a larger pattern of morphological and physiological change. How bodies changed. So for example, pan mammals and Pan OSAs had a shift in posture and their ears and jaws change, which affects how they move and ate. And these changes may have affected that parietal foramen.

[00:55:56] Sabrina: Maybe they needed it gone to make more room for these other things [00:56:00] going on with their skull.

[00:56:02] Garret: That’s a lot. It also just to me, and this is obviously. Not exactly how evolution works, but it seems like if you can get away with one less vulnerable hole in your head, that’s a good thing. So if they were evolving a way to handle, you know, metabolism, melatonin production, all that kind of stuff internally, using the pineal gland not connected to an a third eye, then that could be an advantage.

[00:56:35] Sabrina: Yeah, a lot of interesting things happening before the great dying.

[00:56:39] Garret: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:40] Sabrina: I guess a little bit after. ’cause we were just talking about some trias animals too.

[00:56:45] Garret: Yeah. And that’s what all the dinosaurs were.

[00:56:47] Sabrina: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:48] Garret: So we find them interesting too.

[00:56:50] Sabrina: That’s true. I was trying to keep on theme with what we talked about with the eons

[00:56:53] Garret: Yeah. It is cool to know that both dinosaurs and humans did not have this [00:57:00] third eye, but like just outside, like you were saying, pan OSAs and pan mammals. So I guess the groups that are just a little bit broader than mammals and OSAs, the groups that led up to both of those independently lost it.

[00:57:14] Garret: Yes. So our shared ancestor between mammals and dinosaurs definitely had these third eyes.

[00:57:20] Sabrina: They needed that hole in the head.

[00:57:22] Garret: Yeah. They needed like a hole in the head. Is that what you’re

[00:57:26] Sabrina: That is what I was thinking. I just couldn’t think of a good way to work it in, but we don’t.

[00:57:32] Garret: We don’t, we don’t need a pineal glam, like another hole in the head.

[00:57:39] Sabrina: And that wraps up this episode of iod Dino. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned. In our next episode, we’ll be talking all about Mega Raptors. And in the meantime, if you don’t wanna wait a whole two weeks, ’cause we’re a biweekly show for our patrons.

[00:57:53] Garret: We’re a weekly

[00:57:55] Sabrina: Yeah, we’ll have an I know Paleo episode all about ancient dragonflies, [00:58:00] so make sure you sign up at patreon.com/i know Dino.

[00:58:04] Sabrina: Thanks again, and until next time.