Vsauce host Michael Stevens welcomes world-renowned paleontologist Jack Horner and Jurassic World actor Chris Pratt to talk dinosaurs. More specifically, to dispel long-held myths, how a branch of the species exists to this day and a possible return of the Jurassic giants in the distance future.
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We’ve been taught that dinosaurs went extinct 66 billion years ago when a mega-meteor plummeted into the Yucatan Peninsula. But Dr. Joe Hanson, host of It’s Okay to be Smart, takes exception. “Thanks to science, we know that our planet is home to 10,000 or so species of living dinosaurs,” he says. “We call them birds.” In the following video clip, Hanson explains birds’ place on the tree of life.
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One of the most surprising misconceptions about dinosaurs is that Tyrannosaurus rex, aka T rex, had tiny arms. The king of the dinos indeed had small arms in modern depictions, but because T. rex stood 18-feet-tall, his arms measured around 3-feet. Popular Science magazine estimated that T. rex could curl 430 pounds, compared to a human’s max of 260. Host Elliott Morgan details more dinosaur misconceptions in this edition of Mental Floss.
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Has the age of dinosaur-fossil discovery passed us by. Not quite, say paleontologists, who are wondering how many species of dinosaurs are there to discover and how many fossils of them are out there.
Host Michael Aranda says the first dinosaur fossil was discovered in 1824, and over the next 150 years, paleontologists only found an average of one fossil a year. Now we’re finding an average of 15 per year. Aranda says that paleontologists calculate that between 2069 and 2102 we will have found 75 percent of the dinosaur genera, and by the mid-22nd century, 90 percent.
Tune in as Aranda explains in this edition of SciShow.
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True, a mega-asteroid was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. But is there more to the story? SciShow’s Hank Green discusses evidence that suggests there were other factors percolating that turned a really bad day into one of the worst days in the history of the planet.
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The Permian-Triassic extinction event 250 million years ago was the worst the world has ever seen. That was followed closely by the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Recent research published in The American Journal of Science says the amount of extinctions happening now around the world is beginning to look like what scientists are calling Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. Join Hank Green for the details in this edition of SciShow, plus a look at the world’s first transparent animal–the see-through mouse.
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The Psittacosaurus, or Parrot Dinosaur, was one of the few dinosaurs to walk on two legs – but only did so as an adult. More from NewsyScience.
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Dinosaurs on the comeback trail. More from Talk Show Labs.
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Hank Green gives a quick run-down of the reasons scientists think the land mammals of today are nowhere near the size of the largest sauropods. Some of them might surprise you!
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RODAN
By any name, Rodan is a survivor. Let me explain. The monster we in the United States call “Rodan” was originally christened “Radon” in his debut Japanese screen appearance in 1956. The name was a contraction 
of the dinosaur this beast most closely resembles — the Pterandon. The name also hinted at the word “radiation,” although radiation didn’t produce Rodan. Instead, he was said to be a prehistoric creature unearthed by miners. And just to confuse matters further, there were actually two Rodans in that original 1956 movie, both of whom died. But by the time Rodan resurfaced as one of Godzilla’s Kaiju cronies, the pair had miraculously morphed into one lone survivor. Got that? Good!
Harking back to his discovery by miners, Rodan is often associated with erupting volcanoes and volcanic lairs. Being nurtured around magma has its advantages. Rodan not only seems impervious to Godzilla’s atomic breath, but also shrugs off King Ghidorah’s gravity beams. Sometimes, he’s depicted as being as big as Godzilla, although usually he’s smaller, though no less durable or deadly.
Rodan’s lightning-fast speed and enormous wingspan allow him to swoop down, like a bird of prey, on hapless victims. In that sense, he mirrors the monster Gyaos, although Rodan is more birdlike and has less in common with the bat. Rodan doesn’t even have to make contact to be effective. Flying at supersonic speeds, hugging the horizon, he can generate hurricane-force gales and building-shattering sonic booms. In the heat of battle, he will peck at enemies with his beak or rip them with his talons.
Here’s the trailer for the English-dubbed version of Sora No Daikaiaju Radon, as the original Japanese film was titled.
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Flash forward nearly a half-century later, to the film Godzilla: Final Wars, commemorating Godzilla’s 50th anniversary in 2004. Here, Rodan teams with Anguirus and King Caesar to fight the Big G.
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Tomorrow we won’t have a featured monster but instead will introduce a pair of monster’s sidekicks, the Shobijin, the miniature fairies who summon Mothra.
