BrainStuff Classics: How Do We Know What Dinosaurs Looked Like?

Museums and movies alike feature representations of dinosaurs, but how can we reconstruct their appearance from a bunch of million-year-old fossils? Learn what we can (and can't) glean from the fossil record in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vocal bamb here with another classic episode from our
archives featuring former host Christian Sagar. This one is so
classic that it's prehistoric. How do we know what dinosaurs
looked like? Hey? I'm Christian Sagar and this is brain Stuff.

(00:25):
Dinosaurs are super old and they are also super popular.
We see them in movies, museums, children's toys, cartoons and more.
But how do we know what they actually looked like?
It all comes down to fossils. Think of reconstructing a
dinosaur's appearance like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The fossils
are the pieces on the edge of the puzzle, but

(00:46):
most of the other pieces are missing. So while they
don't tell us everything, fossils are the best starting point
for figuring out a dinosaurs appearance. The way the bones
fit together can give us a basic understanding of a
dinosaur's shape and paw sture. We can learn a lot
from the teeth to Flat leaf shaped teeth indicate herbivores,
while sharp pointed teeth suggests a carnivore. Cavities in the

(01:10):
skull can help us figure out how well a dinosaur
could see or hear. We also use CT scans to
build three D images of the skeletons. From there, we
can add virtual layers of tissue, muscle and skin. Under
very rare conditions, a dinosaurs soft tissue can fossilize two
in paleontologists Tyler License found in Edmonton Soaurus in North Dakota.

(01:33):
The skin and muscle tissue of its fossil remained intact.
CT scans of the body have revealed a treasure trove
of new information about dinosaurs. And here's the weirdest thing.
Dinosaurs weren't all scaly creatures like crocodiles or Godzilla. Some
had weird filaments all over their bodies, which dinosaur expert
Brian Swittek calls dino fuzz and some dinosaurs even had feathers.

(01:58):
We can tell by quill barb marks little bumps where
feathers connect to bone. These marks aren't just one or
two obscure species either. We're talking about famous dinos like velociraptors.
It turns out quite a few dinosaurs had these feathers,
or technically something like feathers. Not every paleontologist is comfortable
with the name preferring to describe these markings as into

(02:19):
gumentary structures or proto feathers instead. But these feathers and
feather like structures may have been pretty colorful too. In
scientists analyzed a micro raptor fossil with a scanning electron
microscope and found evidence of melanosomes. These are the organelles
inside a cell that store melanin or pigment. Different types

(02:42):
of melanosomes store different colors. This is the same stuff
that determines your hair color. The researchers found that this
microraptor had an irridescent glossy coat. As scientists look for
more fossilized melanisomes, they're reconstructing the appearance of Earth's ancient
dinosaurs with increased and impressive accuracy. Not a bad job

(03:03):
considering they're literally working with a pile of bones. Today's
episode was written by Ben Bolan and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other
topics that you can really dig into, visit our home planet,
how stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts for

(03:24):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.