18. Pelagornis with Ben Francischelli

Adele banters with Ben Francischelli aka A Fool's Experiment about the lost world of Beaumaris to talk about the prehistoric Pelagornis, a giant bird with a pseudo teeth. 

Plus tangents on short-faced kangaroos and other megafauna, mass death assemblages, the megalodon, and Ben's favourite, Livyatan, a macropredator sperm whale inspired by the mythical sea serpent and the misadventures of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands.

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Transcript

Pelagornis

On today's episode I'm chatting with none other, Ben Francischelli aka A Fool's Experiment to talk about Pelagornis. We dive into the lost world of bayside to explore Beaumaris some 5 million years ago and get lost in the absurd weirdness of the pseudo toothed birds, plus tangents on Megalodon, Megafauna and Ben's absolute favourite, Livyatan.

Pals in Palaeo presents Pelagornis with ya boi, Ben Francischelli

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Pals in Palaeo acknowledges the connection between country, fossils and deep time. As well as the Traditional Custodians of the land throughout Australia and their connections to land, sky, all waterways and community. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, especially the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung peoples of the eastern Kulin Nations and extend respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode was recorded with the assistance of the Museum Victoria Conservation Department, and fossils of Pelagornis are known from the traditional lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, and overseas.

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This is Pals in Palaeo, the podcast fascinated with the prehistoric world and fossil facts. I'm your host, palaeontologist, PhD student and passionate patron of the Standard Hotel, Adele Pentland.

If you want to see photos of some of the fossils we're talking about and palaeo art, check us out on Instagram @palsinpalaeo.

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I'm absolutely busting to get into my chat with Ben, but before we hear about Beaumaris and bizarre bird beaks, Today's Random Fossil Fact is brought to you by none other than Charles Darwin.

So you might have heard of him, an English dude that sailed around on a big ol' ship called the Beagle and credited with coming up with the Theory of Evolution.

So in a nutshell, it's the idea that species change over time, they share a common ancestor and eventually, that's how new species pop up.

And Charles did a few things on his travels on the Beagle, some questionable things too including throwing marine iguanas into the ocean.

Selma, Jub-Jub is fantastic! He's everywhere you wanna be!

I should point out, Darwin did not drown iguanas by tossing them into the ocean, but it was mean and honestly wildly unnecessary. It was a wild time of experimentation for a guy travelling overseas in his twenties, he had a lot of ideas and even though he wasn't super respectful of nature at times, if he hadn't also collected fossils from Argentina and Uruguay, he might not have become such an important figure in the scientific community.

The fossils he collected kind of helped inform his theory of evolution. He recognised these were extinct animals but also saw the similarities between them and modern animals since these were from the Pliocene and Pleistocene of South America.

Eventually they wound up with Richard Owen, who described several extinct species including three different species of ground sloth from Darwin's collection alone.

Speaking of the Pliocene, let's turn our attention to the coasts of south eastern Australia, during the Pliocene some 5 million years ago and get the facts on the form, function and family groupings of Pelagornis the false-toothed bird and nominee for Victoria's state fossil emblem from none other than ya boi, Ben Francischelli.

 (04:02.934)

Adele: My special guest is one of like my oldest friends in paleontology.

 Ben: Woo.

 A: Woo! Ah, we're old.

 B: *laughing*

 A: Today I have Ben Francischelli. Is that how you pronounce your name?

 B: Well, Nono would pronounce it in a different way. He'd go Francischelli. But I pronounce it in a different way because it's my name.

 A: Okay.

 B: So I say Francischelli.

 A: So I'm wrong on both ways.

 B: Nono, he'd be happy with either. Look, honestly, it's a hard name.

 A: Ben F, a fools experiment on Instagram. That's probably how a lot of you know him- because your pronouns are he, him.

 B: He, him, correct.

 A: And we are recording in a beautiful space at Melbourne Museum. We're on the traditional lands of the Eastern Kulins nations. And this is like a full circle moment in a lot of weird ways

 B: Yeah it is.

 A: Because we both volunteered at Melbourne museum, both in paleontology

 B: Before the dark times.

 A: Before the dark times.

 B: Before the empire. No one's going to know what that means.

 A: Some people might make some inferences, but that's okay. So yeah, when I was a tiny little jelly bean back in undergrad, I used to volunteer here.

 B: We both did.

 A: Yeah. Well, you volunteered with Verts and then I couldn't get into Verts. So I volunteered with inverts cause it was less popular. Not that there's anything wrong with Rolf Schmidt.

 B: No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Invertebrates at all. They're important for stratigraphy and understanding the data and strata and all the rest of it.

 A: Yeah. And we both studied at Monash University. We both did undergrad.

 B: Yeah. That was, that feels like an eternity ago.

 A: Oh yeah.

 B: Pre-Cambrian times now.

 A: So. It's funny you say that though, because I can still remember, because there was a paleontology unit and I still remember like that first prac. There was just like a bunch of fossils on a bunch of different tables. We had the sheet of paper and we had to go around.

(05:52.602)

A: And you were basically telling us all the answers.

 B: What an obnoxious know-it-all I was.

 A: No, it was great. Oh my God.

 B: Look, the paleontology unit was interesting in the first session, and then everything was like invertebrate stuff. And I was like, ugh, I'm not interested, but I like whales and sharks and dinosaurs and all the rest of it. This is applied paleontology, the kind of thing where you could go into a career and actually earn money from, not the fun side of paleontology where there's no money in it kind of thing.

 A: Yeah. I mean, we were being taught principally by Dr. Chris Mays who's a paleobotanist Basically the person that got me interested in paleontology as well.

 B: Loved his amber.

 A: He loved his amber? Did he?

 B: Oh, maybe I'm thinking something else.

 A: Nah, Jeff.

 B: Oh, it's still Jeff well.

 A: Yeah, yeah. Cause I did amber. You did? My honours project.

 B: That's right. Oh, goodness me.

A: No, I mean, it's yes, a very, very long time ago. Fun fact, Ben got a better mark in paleo and undergrad than I did too. So he's a better palaeontologist than I am.

 B: I didn't get the top one. James Rule got that one.

 A: Dr. James Ruhl now.

 B: The sneaky, sneaky thing.

 A: In my mind, you both should have gotten higher marks because, no, but at that time, I didn't know that I wanted to do paleontology. I was interested in it. I was still in my mind tossing up between, I don't know, doing geophysics and going for jobs as opposed to pursuing what I really was passionate about. But you and James from the get-go, you have had a lot of natural history.

 B: I was always very much infatuated with natural history and paleontology, but I also saw the dwindling job market that was there as well. And I was like, my goodness, how am I ever gonna make it out of this alive? The competition that's there, there's so many amazing palaeontologists that are currently in the sphere.

A: Yeah.

 B: And you talk to them and they're equally as excited and they're working on all these incredible things, whether it's, you know, sthenurines or pterosaurs or something else. And you're just like, wow.

 A: Sthenurines being short face kangaroos?

 B: Yeah. They, they have the human like faces and did they hop? There's a real curious question.

 A: Oh yeah. Cos their feet are weird too.

 B: Yeah.

 A: Good job, Australia. Um, but I suppose, cause you have a really interesting career in paleontology in that you've sort of like really made it your own.

(07:56.374)

A: You're on Patreon and a few people during lockdowns might remember some of your fun videos as well.

 B: Well, during, well, I don't know if everyone remembers what Melbourne was like during the lockdowns during the dark times.

 A: We try not to.

 B: So, yeah, that was horrible. So I went absolutely mad.

 A: Because a big part of your practice is going out into the field looking for fossils.

 B: Yeah so, you know, there's different disciplines of paleontology and most of the people you've had on the show have been research palaeontologists.

A: Yes, I need to branch out and fix that a little bit. Get some fossil preparators in there too. And yeah, I'm working on it.

 B: Oh, well, you've got one now, so it's fine. And so like my thing was going out in the field and finding the fossils and conserving them and being a preparator and understanding the different strata and different types of glues that would need to be adhered and the preparation practices to try and get the bones out of the rock in the first place. So that in itself was a really complicated thing.

 A: Yeah. And a big place for you is Beaumaris.

 B: Oh, Beaumaris is a fabulous place. So you've got these beautiful ochre red cliffs jutting out of the ground. And there, between five- and six-million-year-old fossils are being eroded out onto the beach on a daily basis, from sharks to whales to giant pseudo tooth birds. Everything under the sun you could possibly imagine that lived at that time can be found there.

 A: And a beautiful yacht club.

 B: Oh, the stunning one. They chucked that there in the 70s. “You know what we're going to do? We're going to put a gigantic club right on top of the fossil deposit covering maybe 85, 90% of the extent of the fossil area. Fantastic. So good.”

 A: Um, it, the ramp though does make it's kind of like an interesting landmark because I've been out there with you like a long time ago and like on one side you had, um, Lovenia forbesii?

 B: Yes.

 A: So like these fossil sea urchins, very cute. A lot of them.

 B: A mass death assemblage. These things died on mass. Like that would have been smothered by the sand, but I mean, they were already underneath the sand as well when they died.

 A: So they need to breathe? Well, they do.

(09:57.678)

A: It’s either that or they got starved, suffocated? I don't know, it's a weird situation. They didn't get drowned because they were in the water.

 B: Well, then we go into echinoderm respiratory systems. And to be completely honest with you, they're weird looking things. They don't really look like your common kind of, not sea star, what is it? Sea urchin.

 A: Sand dollar?

 B: It's kind of like a mix between a sand dollar and a sea urchin. It's like a sea urchin that's been flattened a little bit, but is super specialized for burrowing into the sand.

A: Yeah, yeah. So you've got them on one side and then the verts are on the other side.

 B: Oh, well, that's what we originally thought, which was really cool. But then we started looking in other areas and lo and behold, there's vertebrate fossils everywhere.

 A: OK.

 B: Any space that you look down at Beaumaris for an extent of about a kilometre where the massive yacht squadron is itself, you can find bone and teeth and a whole horde of other things.

 A: Yeah, I think when you took me out there, there were like fish plates. So like, I don't know, grinding teeth.

 B: Porcupinefish ones, there's Port Jackson ones that do a very similar thing. They look like jelly bean-like teeth. You can find them on mass as well. They're quite strange looking for shark teeth though.

 A: And then yeah, sort of more your garden variety, typical.

 B: Yeah, you're sharp pointy boys.

 A: Yeah, sharp pointy boys, like a Dorito.

 B: Like a Dorito. It's not quite as crunchy as Dorito. Might break your teeth if you try to eat it.

 A: And then yeah, there's like a lot of new things that have sort of come out of there as well or some Australia first.

 B: Yeah.

 A: Which is why the site's pretty important.

 B: And that's what makes it such an exciting locality is that you go back to some sites, like you look at megafauna and stuff and most of the megafauna deposits that you go to, you know what you're gonna find. There's gonna be Diprotodon, there's gonna be Thylacoleo, there's gonna be the sthenurine to short-faced kangaroos, but there's not gonna be much else that's really new in the fossil deposits unless, you know, in the cave deposits and you find a rare bird or something like that.

B: But Beau has the potential to just throw up absolutely anything at any time, and it might be the only evidence of that entire group of animals on the continent that's known from that one single area.

 A: So I could have probably asked you about any number of vertebrate fossils from that site, and you probably would have just been able to fill out like a whole episode on it. But I wanted to focus on Pelagornis.

 B: Oh yeah, that thing is rad.

 A: Yeah.

 B: And terrifying as well. I couldn't even imagine seeing one alive today.

(12:13.57)

A: They're pretty serious looking things.

 B: Rivals of the pterosaurs in terms of size.

 A: Yeah. So what are the wingspans?

 B: So what's the biggest pterosaur again?

 A: Oh, Quetzalcoatlus northropi.

 B: And how big was that?

 A: Well, depending on who you ask. Conservative estimates are 10 meter wingspans.

Hey, it's Adele. So in the moment, I totally forgot to do the conversions, but 10 meters would be equivalent to 32.8 feet and some of the upper limits for Quetzalcoatlus are 39.3 feet. And then some of the big exaggerated ones I've seen online have been 52.5 feet. But again, that's a little bit hard to swallow. So yeah, just remember 32.8 and then 39.3 feet. Okay. Back to the episode.

A: Then like the absurd estimates are like 16 meters.

 B: Oh, get out 16 meters, the size of a Megalodon, are you serious?

 A: Maybe 12 meters is like a more sensible upper, I don't know. People take things a bit far sometimes.

 B: Yeah, palaeontologists have a tendency of doing that.

 A: Well, when you have an incomplete skeleton, you kind of have some artistic licensing there anyway.

 B: Okay, so that's the biggest one. Pelagornis didn't get anywhere near as big as that.

A: Get dunked on.

 B: Woo! Yeah, no, that was the largest flying thing that ever existed by far.

 A: Pelagornis?

 B: Well, no, Quetzalcoatlus was.

 A: Oh, yeah, yeah.

 B: But Pelagornis was probably one of the largest flying birds that ever existed. Its bony skeleton is at about five and a half meters in length. And when you start to add all the sinews of flesh and feathers and everything else, it probably ended up with a wingspan of about seven meters across.

 A: Pew! Okay, back again. So... five and a half meters would be 18 feet. And then if it's got a seven meter wingspan with all the feathers and everything else on, that's just shy of 23 feet. Okay. Back to it.

 A: Oh, of course. Cause unlike pterosaurs, birds obviously use their flight feathers to fly. So they’ll have an extra little bit of advantage there. Whereas a pterosaur wing is a  membranous skin.

(14:14.046)

 B: They had pycnofibers as well though, right?

 A: Yeah, yeah.

 B: But nothing like a bird.

 A: Yeah. There's debate as to where the pycnofibers are on the body. Some people think they were naked. Let's not get into it. Let's, let's talk about the weird idiosyncrasies of Pelagornis. Um, now it's a genus that's known from other places as well?

 B: All around the world. It's basically being found on every single continent, including Antarctica.

 A: Really?

 B: Just really rad. It had a global distribution. And I think one of the really ridiculous things about it is it was first found immediately after the meteor strike that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs at about 62 to 63 million years of age in New Zealand.

 A: What?

 B: Yeah.

 A: I didn't know that.

 B: It's lived on this planet for a really, really long time. It only went extinct around the early Pleistocene at about 1.8 million years ago.

A: I have to pick my drawer up off the floor because again, I didn't think they'd been around for that long. I was like, oh yeah, they're known from around the world. Oh yeah, Pleistocene maybe like a little bit before that. No, end-Cretaceous, bam, they're in there.

 B: Well, right after the end-Cretaceous. Yeah, so like, yeah. But I mean, it's amazing that the fossils that are first found in New Zealand, they're basically the size of seagull. And then you see this trends towards them just getting to absolutely gigantic proportions, like absurd sizes by the Oligocene where they probably got to one of the absolute largest sizes of probably between six and seven meters in length.

 A: And they also have like the nickname pseudo tooth bird for a reason.

 B: Yes, yes. The beak is quite a contentious thing to look at. So when you look at a normal bird beak, you have the keratin, the keratinous toppy bit, uh, toppy pick. God, I can't even say we've just come off like full days of work and the conference and we're both exhausted.

 A: We were at the pub last night. We're going to go to the pub after this.

 B: We are, we're going to go get a frothy at the standard.

 A: We’re just glutens for punishment.

 B: Yeah. We love punishing ourselves, don't we? Um, but-

 A: Pals in Palaeo brought to you by the standard. This is the second time it's been mentioned on the podcast.

 B: There's a lot of debauchery that happens there. That's for sure. Um, lots of good goss in terms of paleontology. Um.

(16:16.566)

B: But yeah, no, so when you think of a bird beak, you think of, you know, flat beak kind of on either side of the cutting edge of the bill.

 A: Yeah, if you're a kid and you're drawing a bird beak in kindergarten, it's normally some variation of a triangle.

 B: Yeah, exactly.

 A: And it's just, if you want to get-

 B: Two sharp triangles coming together.

 A: Yeah, if you want to get fancy, you'll draw like a line in the middle where you've got upper and lower.

 B: And maybe a tongue sticking out or something like that.

 A: Yeah, you're weird.

 B: Like have you seen a penguin tongue before?

 A: No. That has got to be one of the weirdest things anyone should ever see. If you're listening to this right now, stop what you're doing, stop driving the car and just type in penguin tongue and be shocked because they have these horrific papillae that stick off the tongue that look like sharp spines facing backwards that enable them to grip prey. Really crazy.

 A: Disgusting. And also you've outed yourself as someone who pronounces penguin in a really weird way.

 B: I do, I don't know why I do it. It's so weird.

 A: It's fine. Anyway.

 B: I gave, I've given talks on penguins before and somebody from the audience was like, “So why do you say penguins like that?” I'm like, I don't know. It just sounds, it's just, I can't say penguin. It doesn't sound right at all. It's real strange. But anyway, getting back to Pelagornis and getting back to the segue that is that beautiful bird.

B: They didn't have two triangles adjacent to each other. They had a series of serrated broad margin of the actual beak itself. So it was like a series of smaller triangles that looked like teeth that were actually part of the bill itself, known as pseudo teeth. And extraordinary structure that is not really found in many other birds. Like there's some hummingbirds that have very minute pseudo teeth as well um, and maybe a few other sea birds as well that might have them, but they're nowhere near as pronounced as what this bird has.

 A: Yeah, if you see a fossil of it, it sticks out as a sore thumb right away.

 B: Yeah, it's extraordinary looking. It doesn't look like anything of any modern bird you'd ever expect. It looks like something from the fossil record.

 A: Yeah.

 B: Like a kid could draw it, and you'd be like, yeah, that's a fossil. That's like a terror-looking bird of some sort.

(18:10.39)

A: And then otherwise it has kind of, I guess, normal bird anatomy. Just imagine like a big bird with this crazy bill.

 B: Yeah, think of a big bird, but think of something superficially similar to an albatross. But when a lot of cladistic studies have looked at this, and when they look at the anatomy of the bones and the closest comparison, one, a number of papers have come to the conclusion that it's more closely related to the Anseriformes, which are ducks and geese. So not albatross-like animals or... pelicans or anything like that you would expect or a Gannet even though they probably would have looked pretty similar to Like a Gannet or an albatross in real life.

 A: That's so bizarre.

 B: Yeah, really weird

 A: Oh my god ducks and geese. What are you doing? They gave rise to Genyornis.

 B: Yes, they did They did.

 A: Phoebe mentioned that when I had a chat with her.

 B: But it’s just like what is happening with this? Yeah, so they were very successful, as well Anseriformes in a whole bunch of different ways

 A: Yeah, so I suppose they're kind of developing form similar to an albatross because they're hunting the same prey. And then those pseudo teeth are, I guess, hopefully helping them catch and hold onto their prey, which presumably would have been a slippery something.

 B: Probably. Uh, there's so much debate about exactly what it is that they ate.

 A: Uh, well if they had a long like timescale range too, and they went from small at the moment to-

 B: Chonky boy. Mega chonk.

 A: Chonk to big, big bird.

 B: Heckin big boy.

 A: Yeah, you'd have to assume that, you know, as they get bigger as well, and there's megafauna around too, they can sort of go after bigger prey because it's more readily available.

 B: But even in this case, they probably weren't going after relatively large fish, if they even were going for fish. So some scientists have posited that maybe what they were doing was eating squid because when you take a squid out of the water, they go relatively limp. But when you take a fish out, they thrash around. And many of these scientists have said, well, maybe the fish would actually break off some of the teeth as it's thrashing around in its mouth. So maybe it was purely a squid eater in terms of its structural integrity of its teeth, but we don't know, got no idea. It's entirely possible it was doing everything. And a smart bird that lived for close to 60 million years on this planet probably ate a whole bunch of things.

 A: Yeah.

 B: It probably would have been a generalist diet if it was gonna survive for that huge period of time.

 A: Yeah, plenty of fish in the sea.

 B: Ah!

 A: I thought of that on the spot, so proud. So do they find Pelagornis fossils and some of the pseudoteeth are broken off or does that not turn up?

(20:30.542)

B: No, that doesn't really turn up from what I've seen. So as far as I know, most of the skull bits and the jaw bits tend to have most of the pseudoteeth intact.

 A: Are they all the same size, these pseudoteeth?

 B: Yeah, so no, they're not. They're all different sizes. Really weird looking thing.

 A: Yeah.

 B: It really is just one of those things you look at and you go “What did you look like?” Like, what did the keratin look like over the top of it as well? Were the babies born with the pseudo teeth, you know, because how did they feed from their parents? Did they grow it out later in life? It's a real weird thing.

 A: I mean, the upside for birds is that they don't lactate. So mama bird would have not had to deal with pseudo teeth nibbling and gnawing at her.

 B: No, just regurgitated oil, I think, for some sea birds. Like, I know some like prions and stuff, like they have specialized oil a sack of their stomach that they regurgitate for the young and they eat it. Yeah, it's real gross. You can only imagine, it would have been sticky.

 A: Yeah. I mean, birds are normally pretty good though for being oftentimes eagle, like I'm never, I didn't say this word the other day and I'm trying it again. Egalitarian, it sounds like-

 B: Egalitarian.

 A: Yeah. Yeah, that one. Yeah, egalitarian. Good, good co-parents is what I'm just gonna stick with from now on. Is that what that means? Yeah, I think so. I had no idea. I hope so. I picked it up from another podcast called Just The Zoo Of Us. So if I'm using that word wrong, aim your flaming torches and pitchforks at Ellen and Christian Weatherford. No, don't do that, they're lovely. But yeah, I'd assume, I don't know. It’s… I guess it's hard to work out because I'm assuming we don't have any eggs for this animal. It'd be pretty rare, but it's fun to spit ball.

 B: It is, it's fun to think of it. I mean, I'm trying to think of-

 A: Are they found inland or is it just on coast?

 B: Coastal, so this thing probably would have needed to jump off cliffs in order to get that kind of thermal rise and then ride the currents So… And like albatrosses, they probably would have stayed on the, on the air for a very long time, maybe years at a time and only come back for breeding. So sleeping on the air, doing all that kind of weird stuff that albatrosses do today.

 A: So like half their brain switches off.

 B: More than likely. I actually don't know if birds do that. I know dolphins do when they're sleeping and stuff. Pelagornis, I can't quite remember.

(22:46.41)

A: But yeah, the bigger your wingspan gets as well, the easier it gets to just kind of soar and you don't have to like flap manically. Like if you're not into bird watching, but you're starting to get into it, you'll notice like little birds, they're just moving their arms all the time. Where it's-

 B: Have you seen a duck fly?

 A: Oh, it's a struggle.

 B: It's horrific to look at.

 A: It's a bit of a struggle.

 B: Yeah, they're just so energetic. And then you look at something like a sea bird or take an eagle, right? And you just, there's not a single flap sometimes when you see them just riding the thermal currents right above your head. It's complete day and night.

 A: Yeah, we sort of covered form in terms of body size. And like-

 B: We can talk about the fossils and stuff.

 A: Yeah, yes please.

 B: So 2012-

 A: Have you found any? Oh, so many. And it's been great. They're always very, very exciting to find in Beaumaris and Blackrock.

 A: And they've got hollow bones, hey.

 B: They do. How hollow are pterosaur bones actually?

 A: Cortical bone, so like the outer layer, one mil thick. Except for one group, Dsungaripteridae from, predominantly known from China, they have three mil thick. And they're chonky boys.

 B: Three mil, well.

 A: Three mil.

 B: I was gonna say that pelagornithids are known as having some of the thinnest wing bones of all birds, and it's like two to three millimetres thick. So they're pretty chonky by pterosaur standards though. But it's completely hollow in the wing bones all the way through the centre.

 A: There's no trabeculae?

 B: Not much at all.

 A: What?

B: So I mean, towards the base of the actual bone where they kind of articulate with each other in the ends. Yeah, for sure. There'd be some that are there, but throughout most of the hollow section of the bone, there would have been almost nothing. It would have been a few strings, some struts.

 A: Yeah, trabeculae kind of struts and stuff. I know in pterosaurs, to max out how strong that structure is, the struts will actually be arranged in a double helix.

 A: Really? That is so cool.

 A: Biology is the greatest engineer.

B: That is so radical.

 A: Yeah, so I wonder, part of me is wondering whether maybe pelagornithids had that condition as well, but maybe it's not fossilizing.

 B: Well, it's entirely possible it's just not fossilizing because they're completely, like, they're not fossilized as a hollow bone. The sediment infills of the bones entirely, so any evidence of those struts in the interior portion of the bone are probably completely obliterated anyway.

(25:00.022)

B: You wouldn't be able to see them.

 A: Let's zoom back into Beaumaris. Yeah. Like we've sort of said, it's on the beach.

 B: It's a beach, yep.

 A: So when, when you go down, do you have to like pick between high tide and low tide? Or is it not really?

 B: Well, it depends on whether or not you decide you want to go snorkelling or you want to go on land. So if you're-

 A: You do a bit of both.

 B: You have to do a bit of both as well, because there are some conditions like last year with the flooding and stuff like that. It just, we had no opportunity to go in the water. It was just a brown, murky pea soup. It was terrible.

 A: Yeah, so all the sediment coming from inland, just getting washed in and stirring everything up.

 B: For about three months. Yeah, you couldn't go for a snorkel or a dive in that area, period. So there was all these amazing things, presumably, that were coming out and there were these huge stormy conditions at the same time, but God knows what was happening.

 A: Yeah, and the stormy conditions as well highlighted. I remember you talking about them in undergrad, because you'd be like, “Oh my god, there was a storm, I'm going to go to Beaumaris”.

 B: I know, and I did stupid things like going in the middle of the night to go find the fossils. So dumb.

 A: Yeah, no, but people also did that to play Pokémon Go too. So each to their own and if you still do that today, not to rag on you, but also, you know, we're a bit less keen and we're more keen to go to the pub at the moment.

 B: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, how good a frothies they're at the best.

A: But as you said, it's a really active site. So the more fresh stuff is getting-

 B: I love erosion. Everyone's like, you know, beaches erosion, terrible thing, sand getting shucked away, getting deposited somewhere else. It's like the best possible thing to find fossils down in Beaumaris. So if you're on land, you have to go to low tide and low winds. But when you're in the water, you just basically need to make sure that the clarity of the water is OK to see. And if you've got like five plus meters, you're good to go. And so to find this stuff, what I need to do, and I do it with a group of citizen scientists as well, who are amazing. Absolutely mind blowing ability to find these bones.

 A: Can we get some shout outs?

 B: Yeah, absolutely. Connor Brecken, Barb and Elliot Vey, Steve Kuiter. There's a whole heap of them that all do this remarkable work and find these amazing fossils. And there's plenty more that are out there as well. Sean Callahan as well. And um, but in order to go find this stuff under the water, you got to get into your dive suit. You got to get your gloves. You got to get your booties because the water's pretty cold even during summer, which sounds ridiculous down.

(27:11.082)

B: Down here and you just got to go in there and start looking. And the bone is really difficult to find because it's covered in coralline algae and a whole bunch of different microorganisms that make it really tricky to spot. And most of the time it is loose because the erosion acts is kind of this thing that smashes the fossils out of the softer sediment and the fossils themselves are a harder mineral. So they tend to survive better.

A: Are they in rock typically? Like in concretions?

 B: They definitely start off like that. Yeah, but then-

 A: It's depending on when you find them-

 B: Exactly.

 A: Okay, lovely.

 B: You might just find the tiniest scrap of one or you'll find a complete one in a concretion or something like that. So there's a, what's really interesting about Beaumaris as well and the other side of Black Rock is that we still know very little about the geology in that area. We know a lot about what's happening on land, but under the water, no one's really probably done surveys as to just how far and extensive it is. And like the example in Black Rock… We found that site in 2018 and we continue to dive to a depth of seven to 10 meters and find more and more bones, Pelagornithid bones as well that are at these depths. And you know, the sky's the limit with it all. I guess the tide's the limit. So does that make sense?

 A: No, it's good. Um, yeah. What kind of different Pelagornithid bones have turned up at Beaumaris?

 B: So the vast majority of wing bones. There seems to be a huge bias for preservation in wing bones. There's just so many. So in 2012, the only evidence that we found of them were a few tiny, scrappy, chunky bits of wing bone and a lower bit of leg bone. And we were able to use that leg bone to compare it to another specimen in Chile. And the Chilean specimen was an identical match to the one that had been found in Beaumaris, to the point where we know it came from the genus Pelagornis, whether or not it's chilensis is a bit too hard to say. But yeah, since that time though, we found coracoids. We found-

 A: So a coracoid's like part of the shoulder.

 B: Yeah, like a clavicle kind of shoulder bone kind of thing to it. We found vertebrae. We found other leg bones as well. And we've more than sextupled maybe like 30 to 40 other Pelagonythid bits that we've been able to find over the last five years.

(29:13.826)

B: From only knowing them from a couple of scraps in 2012. And that was it. So back in 2016, I remember I was going out for a dive and I saw this beautiful long concretion at the bottom and something, I don't know what it was. It was just calling out to me. It was like Moana almost, you know? Moana, you are your people, something like that. Anyway, so I...

 A: Ben, you are a fossil.

 B: You are your fossil. Yes, exactly. So I listened to the voice and that was guiding me there, of course, as I was losing my mind and seeing the fossils talk to me. And you couldn't see anything on the exterior part of this concretion at about a meter and a half of water, but I just had this weird vibe about it. So I kind of got it over the top of my leg and got broken in half.

 And in the cross section, there was this unmistakable Pelagornithid bone texture that was right through the middle of it. And it's one of the biggest Pelagornithid bones ever found in Australia to this day.

 A: Wow. So you've mentioned before, you not only have a love of finding the fossils in the field, but preparing them as well. When you're getting fossils from... salt water and then trying to take them up. Like what steps are involved? Cause it can't be easy.

 B: The salt sucks. Also it's so stinky. It is the stinkiest thing. So like when you bring it into the lab or you bring it into mom and dad's house and they're like, “What is that God awful smell that you've brought into this place?” And I said to mom and dad, “I'm really sorry but I found this very scientifically valuable thing. It's just covered with marine algae, it's dying slowly” because, like, we try and take off all the big bits, the abalone, the sea urchins and all the other things, but there are some things like barnacles that are encrusted on it, and there's no way of getting them off.

 A: They're tenacious.

 B: Yeah, like they've, in some cases, they've even penetrated the fossil bone and the exterior to it.

 A: Oh! Wish you wouldn't.

 B: Yeah, tell me about it. So in that case, you have to deal with the smell, the horrific, gut wrenching, almost vomit-like mixture that comes to the back of your throat as you're thinking about it. And then you've also got to deal with the salt content that's in many of them, depending on the porosity of the specimen.

 So with pelagornithids, it's not too much of an issue, but with whales, there can be a lot of issues with salts. There's been instances where the salt tends to build up and crystallize if you leave it out and when it's exposed to air, and then it just breaks the fossil from the inside out. It doesn't happen that often, but as long as you've kind of soaked them for a long time in fresh water you tend to kind of undo that negative thing.

(31:29.322)

A: Draw the salt out.

 B: Exactly. Leach it out through that means.

 A: Yeah, salt is a mineral and yeah, it'll find a way and then yeah, it could create-

 B: Yeah, life ones away. Cue the Jeff Goldblum laugh. Ha ha

(31:58.146)

A: Did watch Jurassic Park last night.

 B: Yeah! You were part of the panel yesterday which was amazing! How did it go?

 A: It was good, it was a fun time, although I almost made the two other people also on the panel with me cry at the end, but that’s fine. Um, we're not here to talk about, but we're here to talk about Pelagornithids. So yes, um, putting them in fresh water, trying to get the salt out. And then is it a matter of just drying them out really slowly?

 B: Yeah. And then when you see the salt adhering to the surface of it, you just scrape it off very gently, sometimes with a toothbrush or something like that, and then put them back in the water, do the same until the salt doesn't accrue back. And then you can start doing the prep and the fossil sediment that's adhering to it can either be as tough as concrete and the bone itself can be really delicate. So it's a very, very difficult job to do. Or it can be so soft that you can almost rub it off with your fingers. It's a really varying kind of sediment.

 A: Wow. Can't catch a wave.

 B: No, not at all.

 A: Just- okay. Does it tend to be more one way than the other or it's just a real mix?

 B: Real mix of everything that you can possibly imagine. So the last Pelagornithid bones that were found were found in June of this year at BlackRock and they were found in a really soft matrix adhering to it. But the one before it was made of this concrete hard stuff, like absolutely impossible to get the stuff out of without air pneumatic tools, just little tiny little hammering things.

 A: Yeah, that was my next question. Like what tools do you use? Yeah. Yeah, there's things called like air scribes. They're kind of like dentist drills.

 B: Yeah, that's a perfect way and analogy to kind of describe it. You've got a little dentist drill and rather than sitting in the chair as he's checking out your molar, you're just checking out the fossil bone and slowly kind of picking it off and doing that. But you can use hand picks and it really depends. And in the really extreme cases, you can use acid, acetic acid, which is vinegar, basically.

 The stuff that you have on your fish and chips because that's quite tasty actually. And as long as you glue up the bits of bone that are exposed and that adhere and like completely drown the fossil in the acetic acid for like a two-day period, you can bring it back up and the sediment adhering to the other side that wasn't glued, you can actually just rub off. But it's a very long process that takes months and months. And in some cases I've spent years on some specimens trying to get them off as well. Yeah.

 A: That sounds like a nightmare.

 B: It is, it's a really laborious, you have to love it. You have to absolutely be in love with what this is. And like then there's goethite and ironstone as well. And that stuff is almost impossible to go off.

 A: Well goethite has iron in it.

 B: Yes.

 A: Yeah.

 B: And it's so hard.

 A: And as you can imagine, iron is in metal. She's gonna be tough.

(34:15.014)

B: Yeah, so prepping that and then being able to identify what the bone texture looks like compared to it. And like when you're doing the prep, you'll make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. I've broken so many bones. But glue, glue is a lovely thing.

 A: Glue is your best friend.

 B: Super glue, Paraloid, you name it, Mowital, all the other ones.

 A: Paraloid being like a, it's like plastic dissolved in acetone.

 B: Correct.

 A: That you put in- What's the other one you said?

 B: Mowital. It's a kind of an older one. That's not used that much, that often anymore, but it's still useful in some contexts.

 A: Yeah, right.

 B: The hardcore palaeontologists from like the 80s, they all did it with their dinosaur bones. Yeah.

 A: Well, I was born in 93, so I don't know anything about that.

 B: I'm 91.

 A: Yeah.

 B: So, you were saying before at the start that you feel like we're both old now, because we've been in it for so long.

 A: Well, yeah, I mean, it's been a while, but I've also had, I guess, the opportunity to like make some discoveries, and you've been part of like a whole movement of people that have turned handful of bones into like 30 or 40 bones. So in terms of what all those bones together can tell us, do they all seem to be adults?

 B: Yeah, almost all of them seem to be adults, which is a really intriguing thing as well. There's no babies at all. No little chicks that probably fell off the side of the cliff.

 A: They probably got smashed or eaten by something as well.

 B: Almost certainly. Yeah. You know, I mean, everything wants to eat a baby chick. You look like a duckling. The mortality rate in some species is like as high as 70% in the first year. So they're very delicious little morsels.

 A: Oh my gosh, Anseriformes.

 B: And they're very cute, but they're apparently delicious for multiple animals. And it would have been the case for pelagornithids, but yeah, no, from memory, I don't know if there's actually any baby pelagornithids that have been found. And that might be a preservation bias as well.

 A: I would assume taphonomy. So like why certain things fossilize compared to others, I'd assume that like, yeah, we're getting things that have hollow bones preserving, but like young individuals where maybe some of their bones are actually still cartilage. They're not fully calcium carbonate. I can imagine that would be hard. Yeah. Um, but I don't know, like.

(36:21.282)

A: There's been some really surprising stuff that's been found at Beaumaris too.

 B: Yeah, there's this.

 A: Can we just get like a quick rundown of other stuff?

 B: Oh, Jesus. Yeah, sure.

 A: We have some time.

 B: Yeah, no, we do. Okay, fantastic. So probably one of the more extraordinary things that can be found in that down there are shark cartilage, like parts of the vertebrae and stuff, which is something you wouldn't expect. So back in 2020, I remembered it was a long dive and I kept on going past this massive block and about four meters of water.

 And it kind of looks like one of those Lego palm trees under the water, like with segments that was sticking out. And I was like, that's too regular. Like there's formations that do weird things. Don't get me wrong.

 A: Yeah, there was like a symmetry to it or something which hinted at something that was a living thing once.

 B: Exactly. So, you know, I often look when I'm, when I've got my scanning eyes on and looking for fossils, I kind of tend to look for that bilateral symmetry of two even sides.

 A: Yeah.

 B: And I could see it in this rock. And so I dive down and held my breath and the bubbles were streaming past my face and frigid cold water and you kind of thunk right at the bottom. You know, I don't wear flippers or anything. I kind of walk around like a moon man down there. It's very fun. So you hold your breath. You don't have any kind of diving equipment other than your lungs that you're kind of using.

 And I kind of turned the rock around and there were these eight huge vertebrae bigger than my fist from a giant type of shark. And to this day, it's either one of two sharks. So there's a giant shark known as Cosmopolitodus plicatilis. And if you say it five times quickly, a genie will appear of some sorts.

 A: I won't… even try it.

 B: No. Okay. That's fine. I'll make the genie appear at some point. So terrible joke. Really sorry for that one, guys. I tried and failed there. So.

 A: Compa… something.

B: Cosmopolitodus plicatilis was a massive shark.

 A: C. plicatilis.

 B: C. plicatilis? Zachary, daiquiri. Speaking of daiquiris though- no, we'll wait.

 A: No, stop. Focus.

 B: Cosmopolitodus plicatilis was a huge shark, probably getting to seven meter lengths, a distant ancestor to the modern great white, and probably came from a Mako-like ancestry, like the great white is thought to come from today. But its teeth are phenomenal.

(38:26.806)

B: We find lots and lots of their teeth and there's a preservation bias for shark teeth because sharks go through so many teeth.

 A: Yeah, and they have multiple rows of teeth as well.

 B: A single shark will have 240 teeth in its jaw, but only about 40 something of them will actually be functional at that time.

 A: That's overkill.

 B: It's massive overkill. But I mean, if you're losing a tooth a day, like by tiger shark standards.

 A: I guess they can't get... calcium tablets at the chemist. So it's just like, I'll just swallow my tooth.

 B: And when they can't get enough calcium, there's these fantastic pathologies. There's little wavy ziggy lines that actually embed in the actual enamel of the tooth to show that it's not got the right kind of calcium input in it.

 A: I didn’t know that. That's very cool.

 B: It is remarkable.

 A: I'm gonna Google that later.

 B: The biggest megalodon teeth have a tendency of having those wiggles as well because they're just so, so massive. Anyway, Cosmopolitodus plicatilis, seven meter shark. It could be that. And we find lots of their teeth isolated, or it could be the megalodon for all we know. But unfortunately, only eight vertebrae were in the block. Yeah, no teeth. And no teeth, so it's really hard-

 A: That is rude.

 B: It's incredibly rude, this stupid fossil bias. It's so, like, unlucky. If we found a skull, could you imagine? It's like the Holy Grail of paleontology, finding a complete megalodon fossil.

 A: That would make such a big difference for Beaumaris.

 B: But with size constraints as well, because we still don't really know how big the Megalodon is getting, you know, 15, 20, there's estimates of 22 meters in length.

 A: Hey, it's Adele, just wanted to pop in with some conversions for you. So if the Megalodon is 15 meters long, that's equal to 49 feet. If it's 20 meters long, that's 65 and a half feet and the max size estimates that are being thrown around at the moment. It's 22 meters, so that's equal to 72 feet. Okay, back to Ben.

 B: One of the biggest macro predators that ever existed in the history of the world. There's just, and there's one other animal that rivals it too, actually. But we'll talk about that another time. But yeah, so there's a really exciting material that you can find of cartilage and soft material that you otherwise wouldn't think would preserve at a fossil site like that. There are tens of thousands of shark teeth that have been found throughout history.

(40:37.954)

B: There's a jaws of giant marsupials known as Zygomaturus. So if you can-

 A: Herbivore. Gentle giant.

 B: Well, I mean, what did, I mean, you look at a hippo, right? It's a herbivore, right?

 A: Mama kills when she's going off to have her calf or whatever. Cause that's typically when they're like on their own, but also when they're super aggressive. Okay. Plant eater. Plant eater of indeterminate temperament, yet to be determined. Livyatan?

 B: Oh, yeah, Livyatan is the best thing ever. Like it's better than the megalodon, it's better than Pelagornis. It is the most exciting creature I think that has ever lived in the fossil record.

 A: So getting you to talk about Pelagornis for this episode topic was a mistake.

 B: Pelagornis is exciting. It's beautiful. There's a lot of fossil material we found of it, but nothing compares to the mice and the beauty of that of Livyatan.

 A: Cause it's got like a big tooth.

 B: Not just, like so-

 A: That looks like a sweet potato.

 B: It really does look like a sweet potato. And every time I post something online, people are like, no, sweet potato bed. And I'm like, ha ha, you're so funny.

 A: All those comments are just me, different accounts. It's been me this whole time. I'm so sorry.

 B: You're terrible. Well, it's caught on, unfortunately. So people associate me with sweet potatoes now. But it is a type of sperm whale and very different from modern sperm whales today. So when you think of a sperm whale, you think of a squid eater. It has teeth predominantly in the bottom row.

B: Sperm whales tend to have a lot of teeth in the upper row. They just don't erupt or you don't see them and they're not born with them. But the case for this sperm whale that lived five million years ago was a macro predator contemporaneous with that of the megalodon with a skull the size of my Toyota small hatchback, Toyota Corolla.

 A: You still drive the Toyota Corolla?

 B: I still, yeah. Yeah.

A: Oh my gosh. I'm glad you've looked after it over all these years.

 B: I have, I have. Well, to an extent. So there's a lot of salt. Yeah. From all the fossil specimens. But anyway.

 A: Rust. Smells terrible in there, don't know why.

 B: Oh, I don't know why we won't go into that story. God, no, absolutely not. That's for another time. Yeah. That story. But um.

 A: So car-sized skull. Car-sized skull.

 B: To get back on track. Yeah, to get back on track.

 A: Livyatan’s head.

(42:48.654)

B: So its teeth are the most remarkable thing about it. It has the largest functional teeth ever known of any organism. Of excluding things like tusks. You know, elephants are cheating. That's crap. You know, if you've got a...

 A: You heard it here first. And walruses... and pinnipeds.

 B: Yeah, that's true. It doesn't count at all. You know, you're not using them to bite altogether.

 A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The fancy ones.

 B: Yeah, exactly. You're scooping something out with it. Yeah, you know, you're using it for sexual dimorphism or something like that.

 A: Yeah, just show off teeth.

 B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, they weigh like three kilos each. The biggest one I ever found was from Peru, which was 36.2 centimeters.

 A: Is that the new one?

A: Last one, I promise 32 centimeters is a foot. Okay, no more interruptions from me back to Ben.

 B: No, well, this is the one. So the first specimen ever discovered was in Peru in the middle of the Peruvian desert, no less.

 A: Yeah, whales in the desert.

 B: Such a weird thing to think of because of course, whales walked on land as well at one stage. For you listeners, if you weren't aware of that, that's another whole episode in itself.

A: Whale evolution is like really well understood. So the transition from like land to water in this case is actually really well understood.

 B: Yeah.

 A: Which is nice for once.

 B: Yeah. It's weird to think of an animal, you know, the largest thing that's ever lived in the history of the world of a blue whale originating from a creature 15 million years ago. That was the size of a Labrador and superficially it looks like an otter. Real strange, but Livyatan, huge teeth. We were talking about the teeth and the size of them.

 A: And the size of the skull.

 B: And the size of the skull.

 A: And fossils in Peru.

 B: Fossils in Peru, that was right. Yeah, so the fossils, yeah, found the seven- to eight-million-year-old fossil deposits in Peru. And they found a partial skull and the biggest tooth associated with that individual. And it was only part of the skull. But like again, the skull's bigger than me and bigger than my car. With 36.2 centimetres, the size of a Coke bottle, basically. So it's just so terrifying. Imagine the combined force of that bite coming down. It would have pulverised bone and flesh.

(44:42.454)

B: It would have been red sinews in the ocean. And when you look at it, it's kind of macrophages looking teeth, teeth that probably ate other larger things. Like you look at orcas today, orcas are capable of eating other whales. It has dentition very similar interlocking teeth like that of an orca. So it has been proposed that this was an animal that fed on the flesh of other animals when it was alive.

 B: Not like squid though, possibly other small baleen whales in the same ecological niche as the megalodon itself.

 A: It's a whale eat, whale world.

 B: Was it eating the megalodon!?

 A: Oh my gosh.

 B: But there's no evidence of that. No. But that would be phenomenal if it was.

 A: It is fun to talk about though. Just to get back on track before Pelagornis, cause we will have to wrap up pretty soon and stuff. Another- cause I think we've covered form, function and family pretty well. The other thing that I love to do is talk about pop culture stuff, cause I'm a nerd. There is a Pelagornis Yowie.

 B: There is isn't there?

 A: Yeah, I have it. I have one.

 B: Wow. I don't even have that Yowie.

 A: I'm getting into having second childhood. It's either that or some sort of crisis again. I don't know how many crises you can have. COVID has a fast track the crisis. But anyway, there's a Pelagornis Yowie and I'll probably post photos of that on Instagram. And then I was wandering through like the public stuff here at Melbourne Museum. And there's like a silhouette and a little bit of info about Pelagornis in the Gondwana Garden as well. And yeah, it's got a simple silhouette, but yeah, they've captured those pseudo teeth.

 B: Which is exactly what they needed to do.

 A: You gots ta. Do you know if any of the stuff that, like you found or like Pelagornithid, Pelagornithid…

 B: Pelagornithid.

 A: That one. Any of them bits are on display like in the other galleries and stuff?

 B: As far as I know, not at the moment, but I am planning on putting a whole bunch of them on display for something very soon, which is very exciting.

 A: So, okay. So where can we find that and give us the goss.

 B: All right, so the goss.

(46:52.402)

B: The inside goss and you're hearing this, you're not the first to hear this, but it's still really exciting.

 A: Don't tell them that. Make them feel special!

 B: OK, we'll make it out. Like I've never said this before, but back in 2021, I approached Bayside City Council with an idea to create an exhibition of the fossils that have been found in Bayside of Blackrock and Beaumaris. And they said, we love the idea. We just need to wait till things calm down with COVID and all the rest of it. And we need to make sure we've got the right funding required for it as well for the stillage, for the artwork and a whole bunch of other things.

B: Earlier this year, they got back to me and they said, Hey Ben, would you like to create the exhibition as a curator? And I said, I absolutely would love the opportunity to put something on display of fossils that have been found by citizen scientists and create artwork with other paleo artists as well and get people to go in and do an exhibition, see the life size creature and then see the fossils themselves.

 B: So I decided to call it Prehistoric Bayside because I think you instantaneously know exactly what you're talking about when you think of prehistoric natured stuff and you're talking about the area itself. And it's going to be open from late June of 2024. It's going to be, I think it's a free exhibition and anyone can actually go and see it.

 A: Wow.

 B: And like I've created a whole bunch of documentaries as well that are going to be airing, promoting the work that the citizen scientists are doing and the incredible wealth of information that Bayside holds as a capsule for understanding the evolutionary lineages of so many different organisms on this planet.

 A: Very keen for that. I tend to come back to Melbourne at least like once a year because I have family here. So yeah.

 B: Will you be here during August as well?

 A: Oh, August is normally a bit of a busy time…

 B: Oh… That's okay. I was going to create a panel of scientists to come and actually talk to people I was going to invite you to come onto it.

 A: Oh, well, I'll have a look at my calendar again. I'll have my people talk to your people and stuff. Yeah. And speaking of paleo artists as well, like one of the most popular or my favourite reconstruction of the animals by Dr. Peter Trusler.

 B: Yeah, P-Truss. Yeah, very beautiful stuff that he's been able to do. The attention to detail. And I've been told he takes weeks, months, creating a single image.

 A: He spares no expense.

(49:05.222)

A: I've heard the legends of the water in the freezer.

 B: And The ginkgo and everything.

 A: Hundreds, possibly thousands of hand cut paper ginkgo leaves.

 B: Yeah, that's absolutely bananas.

 A: Yeah, he's next level.

 B: But no, I'm not using Petros, unfortunately. I'm going to be using a couple of other locals. Ruairidh Duncan, who I think he might be having.

 A: I'm going to have soon.

 B: That's great, because he's such a lovely bloke. I love Ruairidh. Hey Ruairidh, if you're listening to this, hi. How are you doing?

A: He's like one of my best friends.

 B: Yeah, he's awesome. He's a PhD student at Monash studying whales and he's also a great artist as well. And Zev Landes, who's a cartoonist based.

 A: We love Zev. I'm wearing one of his shirts right now. I kept on his case for ages. Cause he only made them in kid sizes. I'm like, when you do an adult run-

 B: He gave me a kid size one. I can't wear that. I've got an incredible Hulk it. So, yeah.

A: We love both of them.

 B: Yeah, and so they're going to collaborate together to actually create the artwork and kind of fuse both of their kind of styles and stuff like that. It's going to be a realistic imagery of what we're going to see. So people are going to see it and it's going to look, it's going to be life-size and they're going to see it to the side of them. And it's going to, yeah, it's going to be really phenomenal.

 A: Okay, I might clear out August because that sounds way better than doing work on the farm and shearing.

 B: Plus it'll be a whole bunch of kids that'll be coming up to you and asking for... questions of how you became a paleontologist and all that stuff.

 A: What's your favorite dinosaur?

 B: All that stuff. I'll, yeah. And you can present on pterosaurs and stuff. That'll be really fun. So.

 A: We'll talk afterwards at the, at THE STANDARD.

 B: Yeah, The Standard.

 A: Um, yeah. And okay. So that's an incredible project. Congratulations on that. Cannot wait. And then in terms of other stuff, like people can support your stuff by finding you on Patreon.

 B: Yeah, they can, absolutely. So I post every now and again about the work that I'm doing on that.

 A: You link to interviews and stuff that you do too. You've done a bunch of ABC interviews.

 B: Yeah, I'm on every fortnight, and it's kind of tricky to kind of come up with an idea every fortnight to talk about for the last year. So I'm just like, “oh, whales, maybe, oh”. Half the time.

(51:06.794)

B: And you're like, you wouldn't think… but like, it's been like, I've been on like 35 times this year out on the ABC. And it's just like, you know, I have like a 10–15 minute segment and it's really kind of like, I don't get paid to do it, but like, it's just great exposure and it's great experience talking on radio as well. And going through, like sometimes you'll get through really tricky banter as well with somebody who's- like you're great at doing all the questions and everything like that, but you might get a host who's not, and then you've got to kind of drive the show.

A: Yeah, that's also why I'm like, oh, I've got so, oh, I'm feeling really dusty after the last night of the conference, after going to the pub. So I'm like, I'll talk to Aaron, and I'll talk to Ben, because they'll do the interview for me. I'm such a rat bag. And then, other than supporting you on Patreon, if people are just like, oh, I don't really know if I wanna just, you know, if I'm ready for that level of commitment, they can find you on Instagram, and see what you're about.

 B: Find me on the gram. I called myself a long time ago, before the dark times “A Fool's Experiment”, it was a quote that was by Charles Darwin and he was talking about himself as a fool and that all the things that he did were this level of an experiment. And I loved that the forefather of evolution referred to himself as a fool, just doing these tiny little experiments and hoping for the best.

 A: In some of his personal letters, he's quite self-deprecating.

 B: He is.

 A: I memed one ages ago, I'll have to resurface it. But it's essentially, he's just like, I hate everything and I'm dumb. And like, this is not going well at all.

 B: I am poorly and tired today or something.

 A: Yeah. And it's just like, oh, aren't we all, Chucky D.

 B: Oh, fatigue is real. Yeah. It's like Chuck the occasional sick day every now and again. No one heard that then. It's fine. So. OK.

A: Well, awesome. I think, yeah, we've got that pretty, we've got Pelagornis pretty well covered. Thank you so much for being on.

 B: Aw, Adele, you're amazing. All the work that you're doing for outreach and paleontology in Australia, it's an absolute pleasure being on the show. Seriously, I think you're doing such an amazing job. It's so good.

 A: Well, like, yeah, considering you've been doing it for, you were smart, you've been doing it for years since undergrad. Imagine if I had actually started a podcast in 2014 instead 2023. Anyway.

 B: I could have done the same too, yeah. So, you can always look back on it like- Yeah, but is it is it frothy time at The Standard?

(53:19.946)

A: Absolutely. I owe you a beer. Let's go.

 B: Let's do it. Woo.

 A: Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

 B: Thanks.

 A: Thanks so much.

(53:33.902)

BEN!!!

So grateful for all your help in undergrad, helping me get into volunteering at Melbourne Museum, your advice on my first Dinosaur Dreaming dig and sharing frothies with me at the Standard.

If this was your first time listening to the show, thank you so much for giving a try I really appreciate it. And if you've been a fan of the show since the get go, I'm leaning in and sending you a hug through the microphone.

If you've got five minutes and want to hug me back, virtually, the best way you can do that is by leaving a review of the show on Apple Podcasts. Rating us on your podcast app also makes a huge difference and makes it easier for other folks to find the show so if you love palaeontology, don't forget to do that.

Thank you for hanging out with us and putting up with us getting distracted constantly. Hope you enjoyed listening and learned something new or maybe it helped you stay awake on a long drive. Either way, this is what it's like when two mates get together, banter and bond over fossils so yeah! Again, couldn't have done this without the Museum Victoria Conservation Department, in particular Richard and Lizzie for letting us use their space.

The Pals in Palaeo podcast cover art is by Jenny Zhao freelance extraordinaire and confounder of Crumpet Club House. And our theme music is by Hello Kelly, the teenage mutant ninja turtles of pop rock. Even though they're on hiatus at the moment, you can still find them on Instagram @hellokellymusic and their album Sweet Nostalgia on Spotify and Apple Music. Otherwise, if you dig the vocals on those tracks, their lead singer Francy has some new tracks up on Spotify @francy.planet

That leads us into a perfect segway to thank you our incredible podcast editor Francy! He's a wizard with the making music and sound production, and I'd be absolutely lost without him

Thanks heaps for listening, hope you enjoyed this one and if you need me I'll be at Moe's. See ya later, keep on digging

References

Museums Victoria - Pelagornis
https://museumsvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/state-fossil-emblem/pelagornis/#:~:text=Pelagornis%20was%20an%20ocean%2Dgoing,about%202.5%20million%20years%20ago.

Atlas of Living Australia - Pelagornis
https://bie.ala.org.au/species/NZOR-6-78648

Fossils of Beaumaris
https://www.bayside.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-08/beaumaris_fossil_book_museum_victoria.pdf

YouTube Video: Beaumaris: 'One of Australia's most significant fossil sites'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NyBIybWw2Y

Beaumaris Bay Fossil Site

https://www.bcs.asn.au/beaumaris-bay-fossil-site/

Ben Francischelli - A Fools Experiment
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/a_fools_experiment/

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI7eAPlkN1Sv88Gk8TX8OBg

Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/a_fools_experiment/posts

YouTube Video: Livyatan, the Great White Whale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYKjJZ-zN9w