(Intro)

Hank: Hello and welcome to SciShow Talk Show on National Fossil Day.  It's that day where we talk to interesting people about interesting things and today we're talking to Kallie Moore.  

Kallie: Yes!

H: Hi. 

K: Hello.

H: Of our new show, YouTube.com/Eons.  

K: Yes.

H: That was a great high five.

K: That was a good one.

H: And you are the collections manager at the UM Fossil House?

K: Almost!  Fossil house, I'm gonna change the name.  University of Montana Fossil House.

H: Fossil home.  Home for old fossils.

K: Yes, a home full of fossils.  No, the Paleontology Center, yeah, I'm the Collections Manager, so I'm like a fossil librarian.

H: Yeah, yeah.

K: At my fossil house.  

H: That's pretty good.

K: Yeah.

H: Fossil librarian either is a librarian that died a very long time ago, or a very good job.  So are you dead?

K: No.  No.  

H: Then you have a very good job.

K: I have a very good job, yeah, yeah.  

H: That's great.  How many specimens do you have in your fossil home?  

K: Mm!

H: You have no idea.  

K: No, not yet.  We haven't done a full inventory yet.  I assume, I guess--

H: How old is the fossil home?

K: How old is the fossil home?

H: Yeah, how long has it been there?

K: Oh man, our first specimens came in with like, the very first students at the U of M, so 1899 or so.

H: So you haven't done a full inventory yet.

K: Since 1899, no.  No.  

H: That's--you're getting to it.

K: Getting there, we're getting there.  I mean, we're volunteers.  Obviously we're volunteers, yeah, going through I think 50,000 specimens, probably, which is a lot.  A lot of specimens.  It tooks us three years to get through 5,000 specimens, so.

H: Well, so you can 30 years (?~1:35)

K: Job security!  There will always be specimens to curate and count so.

H: Cool, and how did you get that job?

K: Right at the end of my undergrad, I was like, oh, do I go to grad school or do I get a job and um, I found the job announcement in the back of a magazine and I applied and I got it and so I had four weeks from when I graduated to moving up here to Montana, so it was a whirlwind.

Yeah, it was awesome.

H: Well, welcome to Montana.

K: Yeah, I've been here for like, a long time though.

H: Yeah, I don't know how long you've been here.

K: Since 2008.  A little while.  I guess it's not a long time in the grand scheme of geologic history, it's pretty short.

H: Very, very brief amount of time, yes.  So speaking of, I see you've brought me things.

K: Of course.

H: Is that what you want to talk to me about?

K: Sure.  So, each year for National Fossil Day, they have a new logo, some new artistic representation of a fossil, and so they've done like, a mammoth, they've done all sorts of other things.  I can only think of the mammoth right now 'cause it was my favorite one.  It's got like, the aurora borealis in the background, so pretty.  Anyways, this year is called a Heterostracan and it's this armored jawless fish.  Unfortunately, we don't have any specimens of that, so I brought the closest thing.

H: Okay.

K: To a Heterostracan.

H: So there's an armored, jawless fish.

K: Yeah.  So--

H: Why do you need armor if there aren't jaws yet?  

K: I don't know.

H: Or were there jaws?

K: There weren't jaws yet, very close.

H: There were no jaws.  

K: Yeah, these guys were some of the first jawed stuff that I'm gonna show you.

H: So the Heterostracan

K: The Heterostracan's had no jaws.

H: Had no jaws, lived in a time before jaws, but were covered in armor.  To protect themselves from...?

K: Running into things?

H: The thought of sharks?  Just like, we had this idea that maybe there would be jaws someday.

K: Someday, preparing for the worst, I guess they were the ultimate preppers.  

H: Yeah.

K: Yeah, and they had no pectoral fins either.  They were these weird, like, torpedos almost, with no jaws, yeah, but anyways.

H: You brought me a relative.

K: A relative, yeah.

H: Okay.

K: So, we now have jaws.  You can see that from there.

H: This is a really beautiful fossil you've brought.

K: It's awesome fossil!  No, this is a little model, so it has jaws and pectoral fins now, but the fossil that I brought is of this little character.

H: This is actual rock that was found in--

K: Quebec, mhmm.

H: Okay.

K: Yeah, and this is from the (?~3:56), so the jawless armored fish are from a little earlier in the (?~4:01), and this guy, so here's the head shield here.  

K: Head shield here.

H: Yeah.

K: And one of those little pectoral fins behind this.

H: That is a weird fish.

K: Yeah.  We think they were detritovores, so they just like, cruised along the ocean, the bottom of the ocean and--

H: Eatin' the dead stuff.

K: Eatin' the dead stuff, yeah, what a wonderful life.

H: And their tiny eyes, can you see--oh my God, I broke your thing.

K: You broke it!  No, it fixes.  

H: I'm looking for the eyes, but it's not showing-

K: Oh yeah. 

H: It's not showing me.

K: I think they're crushed up here somewhere. 

H: According to this model they have tiny tiny little eyes. 

K: tiny little eyes. Yeah. So probably more of a light sensing organ more than a lens visually looking at things. 

H: Mostly sniffing around in the dirt

K: But these guys did need protection. There were much larger armoured fish called Dunkleosteus that was like thirty feet long and like yeah, terrifying. 

H: And had a jaw.

K: And had a jaw. So at this point in time, you need something, some protection from larger things eating you. 

H: So Silurian was before the Devonian and before the Silurian was?

K: Ordovician. 

H: And before the Ordovician?

K:  The Cambrian.

H: Ok. I just had to get in my, sort of, where are we and-

K: We are in the Paleozoic, yes. Early Paleozoic.

H:  I'm glad you knew that because otherwise I would have felt like I put you on the spot. 

K: Oh no! I got that. I got that one. That one's good. 

H: Yeah! and that period of time, I mean, it seems, of course, to me, and if you like looking at fossils that it all happened really fast. It didn't. It took a long time. 

K: No. Still millions of years, yeah. 

H: But compared to like Pre-Cambrian stuff when we had just start having -

K: Squishy stuff for like billions of years. Yeah, this did happen a lot faster than Pre-Cambrian. You go from single cell for like a billion years then multicell for a billion years and then colonial multicell for like a billion more years. And then you start getting hard parts, which that's really what the Cambrian explosion is.

K: Yeah, it is kind of an explosion of life, but there was lots of life before it.  It was, again, just squishy and so at the Cambrian, the base of the Cambrian, you get biomineralization, so--

H: It's much easier for that stuff to fossilize.

K: Exactly, yeah.

H: Do you have a--like, a jellyfish, hard to get a jellyfish fossil.

K: Hard to get a jellyfish fossil.  Very hard.  There are some out there, believe it or not, but they're very rare.

H: Ever since Eons started out, I've been looking at lots more of this stuff.

K: Oh yeah.

H: And those like, weird animals that are sort of on the edge of what an animal is.  Sponge-like, jellyfish-like things.

K: Yeah, the (?~6:30) fossils or (?~6:31), tomato, toma-toh, um, those things are so weird, like, we have no idea how they even relate to just even Cambrian forms, let alone the rest of modern life, so that's a weird time period.

H: Yeah, we're like, it's in the script and it's like, wait, we don't know if this is an animal?  Like, how do we not know if it was an animal?

K: It could be--I'm pretty sure it's like the base of the tree before everything splits off.

H: Yeah.  Right.

K: It's all the things in one, mhmm.  

H: I mean, I guess I could ask where this thing lived, but like, where is anything?  It's in Quebec.

K: It all moved around.

H: And the ocean isn't there anymore.  

K: No, yeah, so, I'm pretty sure, during the (?~7:05), Quebec was closer to the equator than it is now, mhmm, and so this would have been more of a tropical sea type environment that these guys were living in, mhmm.

H: Eatin' all the stuff on the--

K: Eatin' all the stuff on the bottom.

H: So you have no jawless armored fish in your collection?

K: We don't have any jawless armored fish.  I looked, I was just like, no!

H: If it was, I mean, there's--the thing to rememeber, 50,000 of all life that has existed so far on Earth.

K: This is a little part.  We do have a wide-ranging collection, so I thought, well, hey, why not look?  I mean, you never know, maybe we do.  We did have an old nasty plastic model of one, but it was like, not impressive at all.

H: Didn't want to show it off?

K: It broke a couple of kinds, you know, it's a teaching specimen.  These are a little bit better.  I'm gonna actually put these into a display case later this year, so actually, hopefully it will be in the display case.

H: When you say these, do you mean this and that?

K: Mhmm, yeah, it helps people visualize.

H: I'll try to put it back for you.

K: With models.

H: It looks like there's, like there's the fish going into this clearly, like a mech suit that a fish has put on.  

K: It is so strange, like, what?  You did that?  

H: I'm gonna make this happen.

K: But they weren't, you know, they weren't sluggish, even though you think, like, oh a fish weighed down by armor, that's not gonna be very quick and agile, but they were.  They were very streamlined.  They were quick.  Like, (?~8:28) would have been extremely terrifying back in the day.

H: That's the 30 foot one?

K: Yeah, mhmm, and it is--I hope we do an Eons episode on that.  

H: I mean, I'm sure we will.

K: Well, I'm sure we will.

H: There's lots to cover.

K: There's so much.  There's so much to cover.

H: But we'll get there.

K: We'll get there.

H: So what's up with National Fossil Day?

K: So National Fossil Day is like a national holiday.  It's put on by the National Park Service and Geosciences Institute and uh, it's a day to celebrate fossils and bring awareness and stewardship to the educational and scientific value of fossils and make people see that these are non-renewable resources, you know, like one T-Rex doesn't equal as many T-Rexes as you want, and so we need to keep them safe and keep them in museums like where I live.  

H: Uh-oh.

K: I know, well, or, you know, display.  

H: On my shelf.  

K: I know, you guys got a few.

H: I know, we've got fish.

K: And then you've got the big giant pterabird.  

H: Well, that's not a fossil.

K: It's a model, I know.  But it's a model, they're still cool.

H: Those are renewable resources.

K: Those ones are renewable.  You can make as many casts as you want.  

H: You can make as many of those as you want.

K: But we need to keep real things safe.

H: When I first discovered that you could like, walk into a shop and buy a fossil, I was just like, okay, here goes all my money.  Like, I never will have money ever again.

K: Yeah.

H: And there's so many of these fish in South Dakota.

K: Oh yeah.  I mean, there are some that seem renewable, but some day, we will work through that entire unit and it won't be there.

H: I mean, I hope we do.  I don't know that that's the case. 

K: It's a really big lake.

H: The other thing to remember is that there's a lot of Earth that has not been fossil searched at all.

K: Ohh, yeah, yeah, so like, a lot of people think our picture of geologic time is very incomplete, and in some ways, it is, but I feel like the more paleontologists go out and search in new places, the more that picture is gonna get filled in.

H: Sure.  Yeah, absolutely.

K: Yeah.

H: We did an episode of Eons talking about these like, times when we thought something went extinct but then we found it again after like, tens of millions of years later than we thought it went extinct, even to the point of like, the (?~10:25), which still is alive.

K: Still is alive.

H: And we thought that it had been extinct for millions, tens of millions of years.

K: Just really good at playing hide and seek.

H: And also hangs out in places where, like, fossils don't form well.

K: True, that too.

H: So that is a--that matters a lot.

K: That is a complete bias on the part of fossilization is that not everywhere is really great for fossilizing.

H: Especially if you're like, trying to fossilize like, a giant fish.

K: Exactly.

H: There's very specific circumstances where you--to get these weird Pre-Cambrian squishy things.

K: Squishy things, and that had a lot to do with the microbes more than anything, so I call it the age of microbes and so they actually formed a crust over those dead things and that's what we're seeing.  The fossil is of the microbe crust creating like, almost like a death mask over these squishy things, so it's not even the fossil, it's not really an imprint, it's more of a cast made by other tiny little organisms.  It's bizarre.

H: That's cool.  

K: Yeah.

H: I did not know that.

K: Yeah.  

H: Do you have anything else (?~11:24)

K: Everybody go and find a fun thing to do on National Fossil Day.  There's stuff going on all over the country.  Since it is part of the National Park Service, any national park that has fossils will probably have something going on.  For example, Glacier National Park has like, one and a half billion year old (?~11:42) all the way to like, I think one cave has some (?~11:46) stuff, so almost like the whole gamut of Earth history can be found at a national park, but most museums that have fossils, anywhere that has a fossil will probably have something going on for national fossil day, so check out the National Fossil Day page and find something cool to do and celebrate today.

H: Thanks.  This is amazing.  I feel honored being in its presence, 'cause it's not--it's not like the South Dakota fish, is it?

K: No, this is a little rarer.  A little rarer.

H: Well, let us meet, I think, this is actually pretty exciting.

K: I know, this is really exciting.

H: You know what we're about to see?

K: Oh yes.  I do.

H: Cool, me too.  

Jessi: Hey guys.

H: Hello.  It's funny, she doesn't seem that long because of how thick she is.

J: She's pretty thick, and she's all twisted up.  This is Daisy.

K: Oh my gosh, that was my grandma's name.  Oh wonderful.

J: Daisy is a red-tail boa. Her--boa constrictor, and she's--

H: Oh, cloudy-eyes.  Is she about to shed?

J: Yeah, so she has--looks like white or blue-ish tinged eyes, and that's because, yeah, she's about ready to shed.  She's going to molt, go through (?~12:52), and get rid of this outer layer of her epidermis.  These scales on the outside.  So when a snake is like this, if you have a snake at home or you're ever around a snake like this, probably shouldn't handle them.  

H: Well, what are you doing?

J: So if you know that they're going to be a little bit more nervous, then you can handle them in an appropriate way, and the reason that they're more nervous is just because they can't see very well and so you know, quick movements and like, anything like right in their face is gonna make them on edge and they may go through defensive maneuvers.  She is doing pretty good, and actually, can I set her back on that knee?

K: Sure.

H: How much does Daisy weigh?

J: Like a really awkward 35 lbs.  

K: Very awkward.  That's so crazy.

J: It isn't that heavy, but it's like--

H: Hard.

J: She's squeezing and then like, like, all her weight is like, over there and then like, yeah.  Or she like, wraps around one leg and you're like, okay.  

H: Yeah.  There's leverage involved.  

J: Yes.  She's very strong.  She has a lot of muscles.

K: Yeah, it's like, just muscle.

J: She's gonna find a comfortable spot, and usually I hold her standing up, so she's gonna try and wrap around me where she's most comfortable.

A lot of people get scared, they're like--you doing alright?

K: Yeah, no, I was just thinking, wrapping around you, you know?

J: Yeah, a lot of people get like, nervous.  They're like, aren't they--isn't she gonna like, squeeze you to death and try and eat you?  Snakes, they're not robots, and they're a lot smarter than what people imagine they might be, and they can definitely know your size.  They look at you and they can see your size.

K: I guessed that.

J: And they're like, I can't fit that thing in my mouth.

K: I can't eat you.

J: She would go after a lot of rodents, mostly warm-blooded things, so she would be eating parrots and small monkeys and lots of different things.  Rodents and other little things in the jungle where she's from, and if she's like, stretching out like this to you and like, she's looking at you as like, a branch.

H: Yeah.  Yeah.  Right.

J: She wants to like, lean on you, but if she's like (?~14:47) neck like that--

H: I can very quickly--

J: Do that, the punch of the face.  Like, that's what snakes do, is they like, the punch things with their face with an open mouth, and she doesn't have like, the big fangs.

H: It's an interesting way to say bite.  They punch you with an open mouth.  

J: I mean--

H: No, and it's different from being bitten.

K: Open mouth punch.

H: 'Cause it's being like, it's like getting hit with a sharp, like, club with fangs in it.

J: It's a stunning punch, it is, yeah.  I've been bit by a smaller snake and I got a little, like a little bruise right there.

H: Yeah.

J: It was a corn snake.

H: But it was a smaller snake.

J: It was a small snake.  It was like a five foot snake with a head like that big.  Little one.

H: If you get punched in the head by Daisy, it's gonna hurt.

J: It's gonna hurt a lot.  It's gonna make your hand swell.  The puncture, you know, she does have long teeth, but they're not like, like, pit viper teeth, you know, she's not (?~15:33), but she does have a lot of curved teeth and so when she does, you know, grab something, she's going to wrap around it and she's going to--

H: It's not easy to let go.

J: Yeah, yeah, so it's stuck on there.  It's really awkward if they like, bite it on the side because they can't fit an animal sideways.  I mean, mostly they want to eat it by the head because it's like a little, like a little torpedo that goes right into their mouth.  They can eat it backwards first, but it's hard.  It's difficult.  

J: So when they bite it by the side like that, Its so interesting to watch them have to manuever their mouth to get it to the front. Ya! So their jaw is really cool. 

H: Why don't you just use your hands?

J: Yeah, right? Come on!

J: Their jaw is super cool. Its like kind of a bone and its stretchy so its almost like a double hing so they can open their jaw a hundred and fifty degrees. And then their chin right here is connected by ligaments and so it can actually split in half.  So they can just get a very large mouth. But its all flexible too so they can like walk their mouth down until they can get there. And then they'll do one side and then the other side, and then pull it in. And then one side and then the other.  Once they get it down to their neck area then they can use the muscles and you'll see it ungulating like this way and pulling that animal down as they continue to walk it down into their throat

K: So she eats like rabbits?

J: She could eat a rabbit. We feed large rats. Sometimes she'll eat like a pigeon or something like that. She's not really into pigeons. She likes her rats. 

H: Do you feed live?

J: No, because the size that she is, her prey is going to be large enough that it could harm her.

H: Yeah.

J: If you have a littler snake and their eating littler things, you could do live. But, yeah, I'd be worried it would fight back, bite her. So you mentioned that you saw she has these blueish white eyes. That's actually a separation of the old derma layer and the new one. And so the new cells actually liquify almost and then her eyes will clear up. As soon as she's ready to shed, she'll start rubbing her face against rocks and stuff like that, and branches and it will start to peel off. She'll continue to do it.  It's cool because snakes don't have any eyelids. That's called a spectacle, its a clear scale that goes over their eye and it protects their eye. But it peels off too. It like peels off inside out so as they rub..."

J: So as they rub, it turns inside out and it will slowly come down their entire body until it gets to the tip of their tail. And actually, if you want to reach behind the couch there and pull that sucker out!

H: Oh geez, this is big. 

J: The whole thing.

H: This is a big snake skin.

J: So she shed out of that two years ago.  And so that was against her eye. That's the outside of it. So it's inside out. The whole thing is inside out. Kind of like if you take your sock and like pull it off like that so it's inside out. You can see the spectacles there and you can see the difference in the scales on the back. So like, hold it up, or like across. Yeah!

H: Yeah! we've got these-

J: Isnt that cool? So you can see the pattern on the back. 

K: Oh ya. 

H: It came back in one hunk. 

J: Uh huh. 

H: Does that always happen?

J: Not always, but a lot of the time. It should come off in one or several large pieces. If it's not coming off in one large piece, there's something wrong. They're sick or the environment is not right. But ya, look at the scales on the belly. You can see the scales on her belly.

H: Big flatter ones.

J: The big fat ones. These are how they move so well. Go ahead and stroke her belly. 

H: Oooh, I love the snake. 

J: You can too, Kal, if you can reach around her head. Ok now just gently feel the opposite direction. 

H: She's making it flat for me.

J: Well feel right here. 

H: Yeah, it feels like she can, if she wants to, make it like she can flex those.

J: So they overlap like this so they can move along something smooth this way but if they go backwards they'll start to lift up. That's how they'd like climb. They would stretch their head up and then make a loop right here, maybe stick it on a branch or something like that.  And then they'd pull the rest of their body up and then they'd use their back end to propel themselves up again. But if they start to slip backwards these scoots down here would grip on to it.  

H: Sort of one way

J: Snake movement is so cool. When you're watching them on the ground just go, its like, how are they moving. 

K: So neat!

H: Yeah, it doesn't make sense. 

K: It doesnt!

H: I mean it does. Like clear, physically I understand it.

J: It tricks your eyes!

H: Yeah!

J: But if you look real closely you can see the pulling here and the pulling there.

J: The pushing and pulling.

K: So some big anacondas have spikes where their hip girdles used to be. 

J: Yes! Yes!

K: And it's like a vistigle organ. 

J: Mmhmm. Vistigle legs. 

K: Yeah, they used to have legs. 

J: They did, yep.

K: Terrifying, running snake, if you will. 

H: It's interesting that a snake was like man ya know these legs are just not doing me any good. I should just be a big death tube. Just a tube of teeth. 

J: Death tube. These guys are one of the most efficient predators. So they bite something, strike it and the constrictors, and shes one of the constrictors, she'll wrap her body around them. And for forever, we thought they suffocated them. But they dont, they are actually squeezing hard enough that they are stopping the blood flow from the heart pumping out so they actually die from a heart attack, which is actually quicker and more efficient than suffocation.

K: How old is she?

J: She's ten

Oh wow

J: And she's almost nine feet long. They range from ten to twelve feet full grown.

H: Ok, so she's about done

K: She's getting there

J: She's getting close, yeah. Some people like to feed them a lot really fast so they grow really big and we're just like we'll take our time. 

H: Keep her alive. I dont need a bigger snake

J: Don't need a twelve foot snake.

H: How many days until the skin comes off?

J: It takes about like 14 days for the shed to go full round. So she's probably been in the process of shedding for about a week and it will be about a week for the skin, the outer layer comes off again. And I hope- This one is getting kind of beat up. Maybe this will be the good one. 

H: This tail

J: I know

K: Isn't it so weird

H: Is so thick

J: So look right here

H: Yeah

K: Oh, yeah

J: Little claspers. Yeah, the nails get a little bit longer than that. So those are where the vestigle legs would be. 

K: Oh, yeah. 

H: So this, from here on, is actual tail

J: Yeah, yeah! And you can see, that there's a-

H: There's a definite difference. 

J: Yeah, it goes down. 

J: Ya so this is all lower intestines, large intestines there. 

H: And then they have like one lung?

J: They only use one lung really. The left lung is like-

H: A shrivelly thing?

J: Doesn't really use it that much. The right lung, the big one, goes pretty much the length. 

H: And then the heart is?

J: Heart is like right here, wait where is your head, ya like right here. And then her stomach. Ya know her stomach is smaller, but where she's digesting her food is about right in here.  So she can eat something twice as wide as the thickest part of her body. So like I can't-

H: That's nuts!

J: Its like bigger than my hand

K: So like a piglet

J: Yeah?

H: A little piglet

K: a little guy

J: She could definitely eat a rabbit. She could eat something about that big. So like a very large rat or any other kind of rodent

H: She's getting close to a baby human

J: Like a preemie

H: Oh my god. That'll done do. 

J: So there are snakes that are bigger than her that could eat a small human

K: Yeah!

H: Yeah

J: or a small adult. So like anacondas and reticulated pythons

H: So this is by far not the biggest snake

K: Oh no

J: No no

H: Not even curently

K: Not even curently

J: They can get like thirty feet

K: Titanoboa, yeah

J: Awesome

K: Very cool. I know, I wanted to bring. I wish I had a vertebrae replica of it. It's like this big. Like almost as big around as her body, is just one verterbrae of this fifty foot long snake. 

J: Now that's a tube of death

K: That's a tube of death. 

H: I mean, everybody's got to have somebody to eat them

K: I know, like you and mean both would-

J: What ate titanoboa?

K: I don't think anything ate titanoboa.

J: Something had to. Maybe a gigantic hedgehog

K They were really big-

H: Once it died

K: Once it died, it was a smorgasbord for everybody. No, I think it was one of the top predators of Columbia during the paleocene. It survived, well it lived about 10 miilliion years after the dinosaurs went extinct. 

K: So it was like literally the biggest thing alive.

J: Okay

H: It was the thing. It was like, yeah.

K: It ate giant, um, turtles, it ate giant crocodiles, it- I mean.

J: Woah.

H: How does (?~24:11) turtle?

K: It looked like it would be very uncomfortable. Like, 'cause it's huge turtles lived back then too. They're shaped like anacondas. They're much thicker. They look almost fat compared to a boa constricter. 

J: Yeah. Yeah.

H: Super long? I mean they are 50 feet.

K: Yeah. 50 feet, a city bus.

J: But even present day snakes, they digest bone. I mean when they're pooping out, it's not like, you know-

H: Sure. And also all the keratin, and the feathers, and yeah.

J: Yes. Yes.

K: So it's just breaking it smaller, yeah.

J: Ohh.

K: Like I'm sure, uh, I feel like you could hear it if you were like sitting next to a titana boa.


J: Yeah, goes in there and just like compacts it

H: kr kr (?~24:47) turtle shells getting crushed inside.

J: Oh man. And just be like-

K: That would be really cool.

H: Instead of bringing a titana boa vertebrae you brought us this pill capsule. 

J: What is that?

K: It's a tiny little snake vertebrae. Like really really little. This is all I had

H: This is the only snake fossil you had?

K: There was another one about the same size, so I just brought

J: It's tiny! It looks like insect poop.

K: Yeah, It- I don't, you know, the way they found this, um, is screen washing. So you bring back a bunch of sediment from the field, and then you screen wash it through different sivs pretty much. So they're very very fine.

J: What is it?

H: And then you just-

K: I don't know. 

J: Okay.

K: It was just identified as snake. And I believe it looks like a snake vertebrae. But I don't know what kind of snake though, unfortunately. It is about 25(ish) million years old.

J: Yeah.

H: It's probably very difficult to tell.

J: Oh, okay okay,  so it's not like a garter snake.

K: Oh no, it's still older, um individual I guess. It's from here in Montana so a little 25 million year old Montana snake.

H: My goodness. 

J: Cool.

K: Little dude.

H: I feel like if I had a screen, and there was a bunch of rocks and that.

J: Yeah.

K: So you get down to the finest mesh, it's almost a mesh.

H: Yeah.

K: And whatever's in there is all about this size. And so you take a little bit, and you put it under a microscope, and then you're like "oh bone, rock, bone."

K: rock, bone.

J: That's a lot of work.

K: it is a lot of work, but if you only go out and search for the big stuff that you can see, you have an incomplete collection bias and you don't have the full picture of the full environment. and so this way, we know all the little stuff that was living there, lots of rodents and everything like that. So of course there will be snakes?

J: yeah.

K: one day we'll find much bigger ones.

H: I'm looking at all the engineers out there saying develop some kind of artificial intelligence that can like pick bone out of.

K: right? That would save paleontologists so much time.

J: when I see fossils and like we can see their bone structures and then like see a living breathing moving animal, it's like what did this animal actually do and...

K: It was a living breathing creature at some time.

J: Yeah! what were his behaviors and like we're missing so much of the picture.

H: It's kind of easy to forget how alive this [ pointing at the bone on the table] was and its entire ecosystem was.

J: [nods to agree] Not just the skeleton.

K: yeah. I mean that's why I went into paleontology instead of Biology, it's because all the squishy stinky stuff is gone already and I had the bones cleaned, prepped, nice.

H: [laughs].

K: just a little cracked sometimes, a little deformed you know.

H: but nothing ever stinks.

J: nothing too gross.

K: nothing ever stinks, I don't need an entire colony of bugs to help me and maintain my system here. But I mean I love biologists though cuz they tell us all about these ancient creatures you know. So Paleontology is like a marriage of two sciences: geology and biology you know, so it had both of my favorite things.

J: yeah, [nods]. You're doing great [ K touches the snake]. She can put her chin on you

H: you're just a tree.

K: I'm just a tree, just a tree.

H: big steak(?~27:44)

K: Big freaking steak when they, when you guys emailed me about this, I was so excited.

H: I feel like you spent this entire second half of this episode a little bit leaning away.

K: I mean, I do, I like to, I like to pose up(?~27:58) you know.

H: Okay.

K: But um no, she's so pretty.

J: It wasn't because she was making you nervous?

K: no, not too bad at first it took me a little bit

H: This super bony fish --
J: Yes
H: The tiniest snake vertebra and thank you for watching and subcribe to us at youtube.com/scishow. We've always got more good stuff.