Exploreastory

How do paleontologists know when they've found a new species of dinosaur, or any other extinct life? I have no idea but thankfully I've got a few scientists on speed-dial that comes in pretty handy for such questions. In today's episode we caught up with Gabriella Rossetto at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to hear her story about a particularly eventful field season, and Dr. Ken Angielczyk, Associate Curator at the Field Museum comes back to share his experience being one of only a handful of world experts uncovering and studying Dicynodonts; tusked mammal-like animals that lived around 290-251 million years ago.  Oh, and here's the xkcd comic about spider paleontology Ken and I talk about. These first few episodes have been planted pretty firmly in the fossil record but coming up we'll hear from a mammalogist working with ancient DNA, a museum attorney responsible for setting up a fully-functioning tattoo parlor in a public exhibition, and a marine biologist who spends her field season examining c