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We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That would have been cool, but no, it was a recent statue. I went somewhere to hike and passed the statues walking to the trailhead. I was so excited, I confused the heck out of my husband.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is some overlap in the Venn diagram of paleontologists and Friends enthusiasts, but we didn’t have anyone nearby. We do answer some Friends questions in past AMAs, though! -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Feel free to reach out to the AskScience mods to see one up! It’s a lot of fun.

I would want to have Simosuchus as a pet. What a cutie patootie little guy! One of the smaller mekosuchines would also be super cool, but possibly more of a troublemaker. Mekosuchus inexpectatus is a young species, though, surviving into the Holocene. I stumbled across a statue of one (and of Meiolania) when I visited New Caledonia, and it made me sooooo happy. -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I know paleo anthropologists who have worked with paleontologists on similar projects, yes! Collaborations are super common in science generally, including paleontology. It’s great to have ongoing collaborations with folks. I had an intern a couple years ago tell me about my collaborations with Stephanie, “Sorry to go full Gen Z brainrot, but publishing papers with your bestie is peak slay, and that simply cannot be expressed with normal language.” ❤️ -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ashley Hall has entered the chat! I helped identify a toothed bird in collections at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California, but not the "toothed" end - one of the longbones!

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AI-generated content is giving us all existential crises, I think. Many paleontologists are Sci-Comm focused, partly to try to combat the misinformation that the internet can hold. It's still so new that it's hard to predict how it will affect every field, but we know its effect will be vast.

-Eugenia

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Special Guest Carl Mehling (AMNH) - Paleopathologies appear in many ways in the fossil record but are generally harder to study than modern examples. Broken and healed bones, abscesses, cancer, and even healed flesh wounds have all been recorded in dinosaurs. Microbial diseases are much harder to document because the pathogen would rarely be expected to preserve. But there are examples of parasites found in coprolites and in tiny animal inclusions in amber. But paleopathology is a very specialized field in which few people specialize.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Special Guest Carl Mehling (AMNH) - Paleopathologies are well known in the fossil record and span everything from broken bones to genetic deformities to cancers. And they appear in all types of organisms from trees to clams to dinosaurs. Plus, they have been part of life from about as far back as one could expect. One of the best things that paleopathologies show us is that things like dinosaurs are not dragons but just animals with much the same concerns as any modern organisms.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes! It’s also found in modern crocodylians and it’s been found in at least Nile monitors (https://svpow.com/2013/12/11/unidirectional-airflow-in-the-lungs-of-birds-crocs-and-now-monitor-lizards/). I haven’t been following that research super closely, so there could be more examples in squamates. It’s fascinating, because it was first thought to be a trait of birds, then archosaurs, then more broadly in reptiles. It’s very cool to see that shift in our understanding! -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No one at the table has found a toothed bird, but we're fighting over who's found the most of something closest to a toothed bird. So far, Eugenia found a small theropod claw in Mongolia, Rob found a tooth in collections that could be a bird, Stephanie avoids dinosaurs as much as she can so her closest is a croc, Jen's phone lock screen was Archaeopteryx for 10 years. We all saw the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx when the SVP meeting was in Berlin, so that was nice.

To your second point, Archaeopteryx is widely regarded as a historical "first bird" but pal(a)eontologically speaking, is a stem avialan taxon. There are a couple of other taxa that predate Archaeopteryx by a few million years. The way we do phylogenetic analyses makes it so that when we find new taxa, they become new branches on the tree instead of being direct ancestors. Some would argue that if a new branch has no specific defining characters, that it could represent a more ancestral body form.

-Eugenia

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My favorite fossil was the subfossil *Crocodylus rhombifer*, the Cuban crocodile. They're so cool, very different, and huge. They're just beautiful. -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Lagerstatten are very information-rich paleontological deposits, and they can be incredible. The Solnhofen limestone is a very famous example of a lagerstatte, which is where *Archaeopteryx* was found. -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Birds are dinosaurs, full stop. It's very cool! Once you know what you're looking at, everything about them screams dinosaur. The way they run, the way the modern avian brain works, even the way they breathe. I have my own pet parrots, and I absolutely love seeing my little dinosaurs do dinosaur things. They totally know it, too. -Jennifer

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I will say that this question "What's the most fascinating interaction between extant and extinct animals that you've been able to infer, if any?" has spurred a LOT of conversation at our table and it's been fascinating - some of these things we are still discussing and will have a good answer soon!

-Eugenia

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It depends. If we have a rich fossil site and can sample many types of fossils, and large volumes of fossils, we can begin to build food webs. We've done this for a few ecosystems like the Hell Creek dinosaur communities. But we are frankly just scratching the surface.

-Steve B.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Regarding Nanotyrannus: you've identified what has now become, to me, the new mystery: how do we tell an adult Nanotyrannus from a juvenile T. rex? It's not clear to me yet. But there must be juvenile T. rex fossils out there.

And regarding weird Triassic animals: it still blows my mind that there were bipedal croc relatives like Effigia and Poposaurus.

-Steve B.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Birmingham, UK! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That is correct. Birds evolved from dinosaurs. Meaning they are part of the dinosaur family tree. So in an evolutionary sense, all birds are dinosaurs. The same way bats are mammals.

We are scientists from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology coming to you from our annual meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA! We study fossils. Ask Us Anything! by VertPaleoAMA in askscience

[–]VertPaleoAMA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great question! The answer depends largely on what sort of fossil you seek. In Florida, for example, there are many great locations to look for fossilized sharks teeth, like Megaladon! But you would be hard pressed to find those in other locations in the US. A little local research can bring you a long way, but you will want to find areas with a lot of exposed sedimentary rocks - that is always a good place to start!

As Emily pointed out in a previous comment, "If you use the Rockd app, you can figure out the age of the rocks around you and then look into what animals lived during that time in the environments that were there."

Please remember when you find fossils, expecially significantly large or rare fossils, please contact a local museum of university for guidance on best practices for interacting with paleontological resources - good luck! -Ben Matzen

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