Terrible Lizards

What can the anatomy of modern birds tell us about dinosaurs? And why do so many artists, even professionals, get bird anatomy wrong?
In this episode of Terrible Lizards, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone are joined by Katrina van Grouw, author, illustrator and avian biologist, to explore the connections between bird anatomy, dinosaur evolution and the mechanics of flight.
Katrina's new book, A New Unfeathered Bird, is an extensively expanded version of her acclaimed The Unfeathered Bird. It combines detailed anatomical illustrations with a deep dive into how birds are built, how they move and how they evolved. The book also reaches back into the dinosaur family tree, with illustrations of non-avian dinosaurs in action.
We talk about why artists often put a bird's knees in the wrong place, what skeletons reveal about how animals move, and how different birds have evolved different ways of flying. Katrina explains the difference between thermal soaring and dynamic soaring, why albatrosses have such distinctive wings, and how birds use their tails and individual feathers to manoeuvre in the air.
The conversation also explores how birds diversified after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, what we can learn by comparing animals with similar adaptations, and why understanding anatomy means looking beyond appearances to consider how an animal actually works.
Katrina also tells us how A New Unfeathered Bird grew out of a project first conceived decades ago, why she wanted to revisit the science of bird evolution, and how the palaeontology community helped shape the new edition. It's a fascinating look at the meeting point between art and science, and at what careful observation can reveal about the animals around us.
A New Unfeathered Bird by Katrina van Grouw is available to pre-order ahead of publication on 12 January 2027.
Find the book at NHBS:
https://www.nhbs.com/a-new-unfeathered-bird-book
Follow Katrina on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/katrina_van_grouw/
Support Terrible Lizards and get access to bonus episodes and other extra content on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/terriblelizards
Terrible Lizards is a dinosaur podcast hosted by Iszi Lawrence and palaeontologist Dr Dave Hone.

Were pachycephalosaurs really headbutting each other? Could they have been covered in fuzzy filaments? And does the evidence for scaly skin mean that T. rex was definitely not feathered?
Youtube link: https://youtu.be/Km8CWetEnxI
In this Dinosaur Bite, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone get into the details of dinosaur skin, from the healed injuries on thick-skulled pachycephalosaurs to the mysterious patterns preserved in tyrannosaur fossils. Dave explains why what looks like a scale is not necessarily a scale, and why we still have a lot to learn about the coverings of many dinosaurs.
We also hear about the challenges of preserving delicate fossil evidence. Sometimes palaeontologists have to make difficult decisions about what to save, and occasionally that means deliberately breaking bones to get a fossil out of the ground in one piece. It's a reminder that the fossil record is shaped not only by what nature preserves, but also by what researchers can recover.
Support Terrible Lizards and get access to bonus episodes and other extra content on Patreon:
https://patreon.com/terriblelizards
RAWR!

Was Torosaurus REALLY a Male Triceratops? | Dinosaur Bites
Terrible Lizards Dinosaur Bites – bite-sized extracts from old episodes and live streams to keep you going.
Was Torosaurus actually just a male Triceratops? Can we tell whether pterosaurs had emotions? And could the surprisingly dexterous feet of modern birds give us clues about dinosaur behaviour?
In this Dinosaur Bite, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone tackle some wonderfully difficult questions about what we can and can't know about dinosaur behaviour and biology.
They discuss whether pterosaurs and dinosaurs had emotions. We can see emotional responses in living reptiles and birds, but how far can we push that comparison when the animals in question have been extinct for millions of years?
Is the long-running Triceratops vs Torosaurus debate. Could the two dinosaurs actually be different sexes of the same species? Dave explains why the idea is tempting, but why the fossil record makes him very sceptical — including the strange distribution of Triceratops and Torosaurus fossils and the mysterious specimen nicknamed "Tiny".
 
And finally, a question about foot dexterity in birds: some modern birds can use their feet almost like hands to pick up and manipulate food. Could that tell us anything about the motor skills of their dinosaur ancestors?
Plus: a five-year-old's interpretation of "Pterosaurs in Motion", some extremely determined pterosaur squawking, and Dave's hopes of one day writing a new book about pterosaurs.
Watch the video on YouTube:
Watch Terrible Lizards on YouTube https://youtu.be/2MTGkSdqSJw
Support Terrible Lizards and get bonus episodes and other extra content:
Patreon – Terrible Lizards https://patreon.com/terriblelizards
Terrible Lizards is a dinosaur podcast hosted by Iszi Lawrence and palaeontologist Dr Dave Hone.
RAWR!

Could a pair of Quetzalcoatlus really harass a T. rex away from a carcass? And did dinosaurs have forked tongues like snakes and Komodo dragons?
In this Dinosaur Bite, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone tackle both questions - starting with the Prehistoric Planet scene in which two enormous azhdarchid pterosaurs hassle a T. rex over a carcass.
Dave explains why the basic idea is perfectly plausible, drawing comparisons with modern animals such as hyenas, lions and vultures. But there's one part of the scene he isn't convinced by: with a huge carcass available, would the T. rex really bother wasting energy chasing the pterosaurs away? They then turn to the surprisingly complicated question of forked tongues. What does the fossil record tell us about dinosaur tongues? Why do snakes and some lizards have them? Could pterosaurs or marine reptiles have had them? And what can evolutionary relationships tell us when the soft tissue itself has completely disappeared?
Along the way, we get into how animals use smell, how sharks detect things in water, electroreception, and one of the fundamental problems of biology: where exactly do we draw the boundaries between species when evolution is a continuum?
Watch the video on YouTube: Watch Terrible Lizards on YouTube https://youtu.be/56vlTGVTCOY
Support Terrible Lizards and get bonus episodes and other extra content: https://patreon.com/terriblelizards
 Terrible Lizards is a dinosaur podcast hosted by Iszi Lawrence and palaeontologist Dr Dave Hone. RAWR!

What can dinosaur footprints tell us that bones can't?
n this episode of Terrible Lizards, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone talk to palaeontologist Brent Breithaupt about the science of trace fossils: the footprints, trackways, nests, bite marks and other evidence left behind by animals millions of years ago. 
You can watch the episode on youtube here: https://youtu.be/puS0gkuTCHY
Brent has spent decades studying dinosaur and pterosaur footprints, particularly in Wyoming, and was at the forefront of using photogrammetry to turn enormous fossil trackways into detailed 3D digital records. He explains how scientists can use footprints to investigate how dinosaurs moved, how fast they travelled, how large they were and even how they may have interacted with one another.
We also discuss: 
🦖 Dinosaur footprints: what they can tell us about individual animals and whole populations.
🦶 Trace fossils vs body fossils: why something an animal did can sometimes tell us more about its behaviour than its bones.
📸 Photogrammetry: how researchers went from stepladders, tripods and remote-control aircraft to modern drones and smartphones. 
🎈 The Great Dinosaur Footprint Blimp: what happens when you try to photograph a tracksite from the air and the Wyoming wind picks up.
🦅 Pterosaur footprints: why they are relatively rare and why Wyoming has some particularly important tracksites.
💃 Dinosaur courtship: the evidence for theropods making display scrapes, and what modern birds can tell us about interpreting these mysterious traces.
🔬 Being sceptical about fossil behaviour: why good palaeontology means considering alternative explanations rather than simply finding evidence that supports your favourite idea.
🦴 Brent also talks about his work on Big Al, Walking with Dinosaurs, modern emus and rheas, and his attempts to track down historic dinosaur quarries from the 19th century. And, naturally, Iszi gets Brent, Dave and herself to make their best guesses at what a dinosaur might sound like while displaying at a lek. Brent Breithaupt is a palaeontologist and ichnologist whose research has included dinosaur and pterosaur trace fossils, fossil trackways, photogrammetry and the history of dinosaur discoveries in Wyoming.
Support Terrible Lizards and get bonus episodes and other extra content: https://patreon.com/terriblelizards
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Terrible Lizards is a dinosaur podcast hosted by Iszi Lawrence and palaeontologist Dr Dave Hone.