Travis HollandEpisode 58: Secrets of the Sea Monsters with Dr Dean Lomax
The ocean had apex predators long before sharks made it scary — and this week, we’re diving into the extraordinary world of ichthyosaurs with one of the world’s leading experts on them.
Alyssa sat down with Dr Dean Lomax — palaeontologist, author, broadcaster, and all-round ichthyosaur evangelist — ahead of his first-ever visit to Australia for Queensland Dinosaur Week (4–10 May 2026). It’s a conversation about science, storytelling, and what it really takes to build a career in palaeontology when nobody in your family has ever been to university.
Plus: Travis is flying up to Brisbane for Dino Week himself, we make some big announcements about the future of the show, and we reveal what kookaburras have in common with Jurassic Park.
—
- Dr Dean Lomax’s website: deanrlomax.co.uk
- Locked in Time — Dean Lomax and Bob Nicholls
- The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs — Dean Lomax and Bob Nicholls
- Why Dinosaurs documentary — [available free on YouTube]
- Queensland Dinosaur Week
- Fossils and Fiction membership and merch
Fossils and Fiction is kept ad-free by our members. Fossils and Fiction is a production of Extinction Media.
Transcript
Alyssa Fjeld (00:08)
Hello and welcome back to Fossils in Fiction. We’ve got a great new episode coming up for you guys today, an interview with the fabulous Dr. Dean Lomax, as well as a quick chat about some changes to our merch. my name is Alyssa Fjeld. I’m one of the co-hosts. My other co-host is Travis Holland, and we are here to talk about fossils and fiction.
Travis (00:28)
Fossils and or Fiction might be a better title, but anyway, here we are.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:31)
Fossils
plus or minus fiction.
You had a- you had a visitor. You had a little kookaburra.
Travis (00:36)
Yeah,
a modern-day dinosaur laughing kookaburra sitting outside the window. So if he starts chirping away, I don’t know if that’s the quite the right word to describe a kookaburra song, but there it is chirping away. Then we will hear all about it on the pod.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:46)
You
Yeah, so for our North American listeners who may not be aware, kookaburras are like, they’re not just the thing from the song, they’re like a large kingfisher, and they are capable of making what could charitably be called laugh. It’s like maximum decibels, and it’s just like, ooh, something like that, you know?
Travis (01:04)
Mmm.
Something like that. You know what?
Our North American listeners are familiar with kookaburras and I will tell you why is because anytime there is a movie which is set in the deep jungle or a mysterious jungle or whatever, they use kookaburra sounds in the background and this includes this includes the Lost World Jurassic Park. the forest on Isla Sorna actually has
Alyssa Fjeld (01:27)
⁓ true!
⁓
Travis (01:35)
Kookaburras in the background. So yeah, there you go. That’s a little bit of trivia and that covers the fiction for today.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:39)
There you go!
Well speaking
of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, we’ve got exciting news. It is dinosaur week very soon that we’re heading into up in Queensland. There’s a lot of very exciting events on for this, including a couple of talks by renowned palaeontologists
Travis (01:56)
in our last episode, we had four interviews with people right across Queensland about what’s happening for Queensland Dinosaur Week, the first Queensland Dinosaur Week
In this first week of May from the fourth till the tenth of May 2026 you should definitely get there and if you can’t get there this year Then look out because it is gonna happen again in future. I am absolutely sure I am very pleased to say that I have cashed in my Qantas frequent flyer points from my Europe trip and I am also flying up to Queensland. So I’m gonna be there
Alyssa Fjeld (02:05)
n.
Travis (02:26)
for a few days just in Brisbane, but I will go along to a couple of the events and I look forward to chatting to some people there. So if you’re around, say hi, if you see me out and about at any of the Queensland Dino Week events in Brisbane, and we will have some more photos and things popping up on the socials through the week as that happens as well. Now, the other thing about this episode is you have recorded an interview with Dean Lomax, as you mentioned, who has become
I want to say the mascot for Queensland Dino Week this year and he is going around all over the place.
Alyssa Fjeld (03:02)
It’s me, your host, Alyssa Fjeld And I’m here today with someone that you may know if you’re a big follower of vertebrate palaeontology on social media, especially if you’re a fan of ichthyosaurs in the UK. Today we have Dean Lomax joining us, Dean, how are you?
Dr Dean Lomax (03:16)
very good. Pleasure to be joining you. I’m really good at the moment, frantically packing for this upcoming trip to come out to Australia for the very first time. So very busy with that and tying off lots of loose ends for research and field work and other things going on at the moment.
Alyssa Fjeld (03:30)
for those of you who are playing along at home that may have missed our last episode, coming up at the start of May we have Dinosaur Week in Queensland, which is gonna be a smorgasbord of different events across the state. Dean will be at Kronosaurus Korner is that correct?
Dr Dean Lomax (03:44)
Yeah, Australian Age of Dinosaurs, Kronosaurus Korner and Queensland Museum. So packing in a lot in literally for Queensland Dinosaur Week. So we’re flying around here, there and everywhere, driving, dig sites, talks, events and stuff. It’s going to be great fun.
Alyssa Fjeld (04:00)
really yeah I mean those are all of the the big highlights in Queensland for sure I can never keep straight which dinosaurs come out of which area but Australian age of dinosaurs is
honestly like a mecca for a lot of our students and Kronosaurus Corner for those of you who don’t know has recently gotten a redesign. This is some of the art from Zev Landes that if you are joining Dean you might be able to get a chance to see. And Dean also has a couple of books and different types of merch that you can pick up as well. Will any of that be available during Dinosaur Week for people?
Dr Dean Lomax (04:31)
Yeah, I believe so actually Alyssa. So the Secret Lives of Dinosaurs is my latest book which is here behind me. That is a book that I’ve been working on. talk, I could probably give you an entire talk all about that. I’m sure we’re to go into some of the finer details later in this chat. But yeah, that should be available at Kronosaurus Korner at Australian Age of Dinosaurs and Queensland Museum. I believe they’ve stocked it. So happy to sign some copies and dedicate a few as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (04:58)
That’s, I mean, that’s super exciting. We very rarely get visits from big names in American Palaeo and UK Palaeo even more rarely given especially how difficult it is at the moment with flights to get here. So we’re very grateful that you are coming and chatting with us. For those of you who do not know Dean, who are playing along at home, gosh, I’m not even sure how to describe your career trajectory. Dean is the ichthyosaur guy, but you’ve had a bit of an unusual inroad into Palaeo. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you’re at in your career?
what your steps have been along the way.
Dr Dean Lomax (05:27)
Yeah, yeah,
no, absolutely Alyssa So you are trying to keep this short, but it could be quite long. So you might want to edit this all the way down. But so if you don’t know my story, so.
Alyssa Fjeld (05:32)
Thank
You
Dr Dean Lomax (05:38)
I was one those kids, like many people in palaeontology, who just loved fossils and dinosaurs, natural history, and grew up watching documentaries and fossil hunting, that sort of thing. But I wasn’t very good academically in school and I didn’t have the grades in school, I didn’t have the finances. And so as I kind of got a little bit older…
and my passion for palaeontology continued to blossom, I got to a point where I was probably like as kind of early mid teenager and then started looking seriously at the prospects of say, how do I actually get into palaeontology? Nobody in my family had ever been to university. We had no idea how to actually become a palaeontologists. Do you go to university? How do you gain experience? All that sort of stuff. And so I ended up selling
a bunch of my own possessions including my childhood Star Wars collection of action figures. These were big sacrifices. These were things where it was kind of like know big birthdays, Christmases, of big models and figures and stuff that you’d have then and I bought a lot from…
car boots, like yard sales, that sort of thing. And so that plus a whole bunch of other stuff that I sold and worked up, worked at least three jobs that I really didn’t like, that sort of thing. Anyway, raised enough money to go and volunteer at a museum in Wyoming for almost four months when I was 18. And that got my foot on the ladder. And then yeah, kind of fast forward through that, I began writing my first academic paper when I was 20, sorry, it was published when I was 20. I ended up writing a bunch of other papers,
then became affiliated with the University of Manchester here in the UK where I ended up doing a Masters then a PhD without ever doing an undergrad and then
continue to write papers, do lots of other books, do a whole load of outreach, TV stuff, radio, all that sort of stuff. I became affiliated with the University of Bristol, where I currently am as one of them. I’m still affiliated with Manchester too, where I’m an 1851 research fellow. So yeah, that’s the kind of very short in a nutshell version. And it’s this summer.
Will mark 18 years working professionally in palaeontology and let me tell you that has flown by i’ve got to say it still feels like that sometimes like it was a few years ago that I was first stepping foot on the plane going to wyoming to To go and chase my dream and and yeah, that’s 18 years ago this summer of which is scary But yeah, as you say in terms of ichthyosaurs that has become
my specialism as well during that time and so I guess yeah I’m one of the world’s experts on ichthyosaurs now and I kind of fell into that by by discovering or rediscovering an ichthyosaur in my hometown museum in Doncaster Yorkshire in the UK where the staff members at the time they thought it was a plastic copy so a replica and they were even doing brass rubbings of the ribs and crayons and stuff and yeah yeah and so I was like as an 18 year old I was like oh maybe don’t do that and I was like that I think
Alyssa Fjeld (08:29)
⁓
Dr Dean Lomax (08:35)
I think this is real as well. And I’m like, no, no, no, it can’t be. And anyway, it was. And that formed my first ever academic paper, which was published in 2010. And that had its last meal preserved, this ichthyosaur of squid remains, so lots of tiny hooklets from the arms of squid and a fish scale. And then eventually I described that as a new species to science, which I named in honor of Mary Anning, which is called ichthyosaurus anningae which you probably, I’m sure, are very much aware of who Mary Anning was, a brilliant pioneer and palaeontologists and a hero of mine.
growing up. yeah, ichthyosaurs have been kind of in an academic context. That’s where most of my I’ve written somewhere probably 100 plus papers and that’s where most of those papers have kind of centered. But yeah, I work on dinosaurs too, plesiosaurs and also similar to Alyssa I’ve published a bunch of papers on inverts too. So things like Eurypterids, Horseshoe crabs, ammonites, belemnites things like that. They’re good stuff too.
Alyssa Fjeld (09:26)
Absolutely. So for context, one of the books that I really like that Dean’s written is Locked in Time, which goes over a couple of different fossils that, like you’ve said, capture behaviour as well as just the fossil itself. And one of the ones that really stood out to me from that, of course, is the Horseshoe Crab. I believe it’s Meso-limulus? Limulus?
Dr Dean Lomax (09:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, good memory. Yeah, so that is a very cool one. And that actually links up nicely with the story of going to Wyoming. when I, when I, and this is legit as well, when I first went to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center to begin volunteering, on the very first day I was given…
a tour of the museum in the morning we went through the museum and the guy who is giving the tour is a called Jordi who is another volunteer from Spain and Jordi showed me through the museum and he showed me this massive block of limestone and he said what do think this is and there was some kind of really strange like they look like trampling some sort of track there I was like oh it’s a trackway and then you kind of followed it and then this track was 9.7 meters 33 feet and then literally dead in its tracks was this little juvenile
horseshoe crab of a Mesolimulus about this long collected from near the famous town of Solnhofen in Bavaria in Germany so you’re famous for like Archaeopteryx the early dino bird those types of fossils and so this honestly blew my mind and it changed the way I thought about fossils because I’d read about incredible fossils like the fighting dinosaurs fossil from Mongolia Velociraptor protoceratops amazing stuff but this was one where I saw it firsthand
it really changed the way I thought about fossils and so after looking at that a few years later weirdly enough I ended up describing that specimen in a scientific journal called Ichnos but that is where ultimately the idea for a book originally about behaviour which was what became Locked in Time that’s where that idea came from it stemmed from a very sad story of a horseshoe crab that suffocated to death in a lagoon in the Jurassic 150 million years ago but you know that’s the story
fossils right every everybody dies unfortunately
Alyssa Fjeld (11:29)
It’s
also interesting because you’re talking about, like you said, a deposit that’s much more famous for the vertebrate fossils that are preserved within it. But even within these more famous vertebrate assemblages, there’s always evidence of communities, of trace fossils, and invertebrates as well. And that’s something I think we see a lot with ichthyosaur-bearing fossiliferous regions in the UK, famously the ammonite pavement.
I’m curious to hear, so you’ve worked a lot with these ichthyosaurs and you know a lot about them. I’ve got a couple of questions, some of them are from my lab, but I wanted to start with what are some common misconceptions that you find people have about ichthyosaurs or marine reptiles more broadly, beyond just that they think that they’re dinosaurs?
Dr Dean Lomax (12:13)
That’s where I was always going to go immediately. was like, well, yeah, swimming dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, but but ah, yeah, they’re not. And so that is one of the things that we get constantly is, they’re swimming dinosaurs. And it’s interesting because they’re so, so far removed kind of on the family tree.
from dinosaurs and pterosaurs and things like that. But it’s so interesting that people will just immediately assume, generally speaking, that they are swimming dinosaurs, which I get to a point. But yeah, beyond that, think…
Probably one of the immediate things that I often get quite a bit of until I get into some of my research and kind of talking a bit more broadly about ichthyosaurs is that often people think they’re quite basic animals. What I mean by that is because they, at least not all, but some of them superficially look like dolphins or sharks, your stereotypical ichthyosaur, like ichthyosaurus from the UK or platypterygius from Australia, from Queensland, you kind of think, well, okay, they look a bit like a dolphin
or shark and so we kind of, you we know what these animals look like, we know how they behave. And that couldn’t be anything further from the truth. They’re radically different from dolphins and sharks. And obviously that’s just this convergence over time being subjected to the watery realms and all that jazz. But that’s one of the things where I think it kind of grabs me a little bit because I’ve had these conversations with people, even fellow palaeontologists it’s like, well, maybe take a look at this, this and this. actually, this is really interesting actually. And for me on that
The is it’s kind of where if you think of ichthyosaurs like for two big things I always like to say is that one they were genuinely the first truly gigantic Tetrapods to evolve they really were that they were the first dominant kind of apex predators in the oceans and Secondly, they effectively did everything that to a point that cetaceans did much much later So that transition their early ancestors walk around on land into the water giving birth to live young
all that sort of stuff and they did it incredibly quick and so you got went from kind of these almost like lizards with flippers in the very early Triassic and then immediately within a few million years of literally apex predator beasts of kind of 15 to 17 meters long so I always find that interesting but yeah going back to more of your question of kind of some of the other misconceptions besides that kind of more like basic or that you know the basic animal kind of thing I think it’s
There’s probably the aspects of did they a lot of people assume because they’re reptiles that they came onto land and they laid eggs like crocodiles or something like that, but we know full well that not only did they not have the anatomy at least the much later ichthyosaurs and true ichthyosaurs probably some of the very very early ichthyopterygians the things that we wouldn’t really see as ichthyosaurs they may have kind of walked a little bit on land or walked on land but none of them that
were aware of, Laid Eggs, they all gave birth to live young and we have, I think off the top of my head, maybe somewhere…
somewhere in region of about 10 different ichthyosaurs I should know this because I recently submitted a paper on this so you know but you’re always working in this flux where you’re kind of like right next paper next paper what else are we doing but yeah I think it’s about 10 different ichthyosaurs that we found different types of ichthyosaur that we found with embryos or fetuses and one of them you most remarkably is Stenopterygius in Germany probably a species a genus that you’ve heard of and Stenopterygius in Germany primarily from the area of Hohlesmaden there are more than 100
Not our ichthyosaurs
Alyssa Fjeld (15:48)
That’s fascinating. I’ve also heard that the flexibility in necks for the elasmosaurs and the polycaudelids, like there’s a lot of misunderstandings in terms of the way that these animals could behave anatomically. ⁓
Dr Dean Lomax (15:54)
Mm.
Yeah.
yeah, exactly that that’s another thing and that goes back to some of the Some of earlier kind of like very early things I talked about Mary Anning briefly and obviously her discoveries kind of obviously set the the world of palaeontology alight through especially marine reptiles ichthyosaurs plesiosaurs and other things but but the plesiosaurs and the ichthyosaur like the early reconstructions there’s one I’m thinking of called Guerin [?] which maybe you’re familiar that was done in 18 1825 if somebody if somebody’s listen I’m wrong. I apologize. I think it’s 1825
And that was kind of a reconstruction based on Mary Anning and other people’s finds of the time But even way back then it was kind of like wavy necks for plesiosaurs and things which is understandable But there was a lot of that even right up to only 20-30 years ago and there’s still a few scientists who kind of think that plesiosaurs had a lot more kind of like bendy necks But the science doesn’t really hold up for that and it makes much more sense that there are a lot a lot less flexible and they couldn’t like kind of tie their necks in a loop for
For example, so yeah, that’s another big thing, but there are yeah a whole load of things I mean on that point to you again. It’s a bit random, but it’s a funny thing I do legitimately get asked from time You know from time to time about kind of the Loch Ness monster and a plesiosaur and all this stuff like that happens in my last talk I gave you doing a bit of a book tour at the moment for The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs and the last talk I gave a couple of weeks ago Somebody legitimately asked the question. Do you think not this monster exists and is it a plesiosaur?
Alyssa Fjeld (17:13)
lord.
Dr Dean Lomax (17:27)
So I always like I try not to I obviously you’ve got to be very diplomatic I’m like well actually the science behind this but at the same foot in that is a thing that does come up quite a lot So yeah, I always like to point that out and I’m sure some of your listeners viewers will be like yeah, that’s frustrating
Alyssa Fjeld (17:44)
Well, you know, I mean, this is terrible news for the one Scottish person in our lab who studies whales. I’m sorry to him.
Dr Dean Lomax (17:50)
I apologize
profusely for that.
Alyssa Fjeld (17:53)
It’s
okay, we’ll take them down one peg. But there is somebody in our lab who studies marine reptiles more broadly. Actually, we have two people that kind of, one of them looking at the flipper dynamics, one of them looking more broadly at the animal morphology. I am not a plesiosaur marine reptile ichthyosaur person, so forgive me if this question’s phrased a bit ignorantly, but…
My understanding is that different reptile groups, different marine reptile groups around the world, things behave a little bit differently in the Cretaceous in the UK compared to what we have here in Australia. Why do you think that different marine reptiles had more success in these different regions? And is there anything that you’re especially excited to see in the marine reptile fossil record when you come here to Australia?
Dr Dean Lomax (18:32)
yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. So firstly, yeah, interesting to hear. It’s great that you’ve got two colleagues who are working on marine reptiles and just one thing on the flipper side of things. Hopefully your colleagues saw, because that’s a really intriguing area to look into, especially from, well, for palaeosaurs and ichthyosaurs. The ichthyosaurs especially because they have such radically weird flippers for multiple reasons. Like they’ve got so many different finger digits, many actual fingers. I mean, I think one that I remember off the of my head counting, they had something like 30,
Alyssa Fjeld (18:34)
Thank
Yeah.
Dr Dean Lomax (19:01)
eight different finger bones, know, phalanges in the in the… Yeah, they look like corn, exactly. Yeah, it’s so weird. And even more so, there are a couple of different species which have they have this thing which is called a digital bifurcation where their fingers, you you imagine five fingers, about eight, but then they’ll split. So it’ll have another finger grow out of another finger. And it’s just bizarre and weird and so on. So, so yeah, good luck trying to work out flippers to your colleagues.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:04)
And they just, look like porn. They don’t look like anything.
Dr Dean Lomax (19:29)
But it’s a lot of fun and we, I want to just touch upon it because we did a study, we had a paper study, paper published last year in Nature that looked at a really extraordinary soft tissue flipper of the first kind of giant ichthyosaur of a Temnodontosaurus from the early Jurassic. And that looked at these, I don’t know if you saw that Alyssa, it’s, oh did, yeah. Yeah, exactly, it’s a really striated banding structure going kind of.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:45)
Yes!
the serrated kind of texture.
Dr Dean Lomax (19:56)
chord-wise across the flipper which is really unusual and then you had the trailing edge had these kind of they’re not spikes but spike-like structures which we termed chondroderms and that combined with the really weird very broad long almost owl kind of wing like flipper showed that they had these these features that were suggesting of kind of like silent swimming and stealth
which is remarkable. so, yeah, looking at flippers is really, really fascinating. And yes, I wanted to mention that. And so that’s very intriguing. But your comment about, how different groups kind of adapted in different parts of the world. And obviously back whenever it was, whether it’s Jurassic, Cretaceous or whatever, or even Triassic, it depends on what kind of, you’ll know yourself studying inverts as well. It depends on kind of what environments and ecology and stuff that kind of these animals are subjected to. And that’ll have a quite, quite an impact on kind of what.
kind of where I guess that how these animals will adapt to their environments what stresses and strains kind of like not force kind of evolution but will send them down a certain path and I think from a marine reptile perspective and kind of comparing just because you said about Cretaceous in the UK we do have some Cretaceous material of mosophores of ichthyosaurs that are quite a bit rarer because ichthyosaurs start to decline
Alyssa Fjeld (21:04)
Yeah.
Dr Dean Lomax (21:15)
and they disappear about 90 just over 90 million years ago worldwide. And then we’ve got some plesiosaur, pliasaur stuff as well. But then I’m fully aware that in Australia you’ve got some really fantastic Cretaceous deposits as you touched upon. And I think it’s kind of, yeah, you’ve got some great stuff. I’m kind of jealous of that in Australia because yeah, we’ve got some amazing Jurassic stuff, Triassic bits and some good Cretaceous stuff. yeah, for ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles, we don’t have
Alyssa Fjeld (21:28)
It’s all we have.
Dr Dean Lomax (21:41)
massive deal of material. A lot of it comes from what we call the chalk deposits and it’s isolated teeth or fragments of bones. Ultimately it’s all about what kind of environment these animals are living in, what that kind of drives and how they have to adapt to that environment. But it’s very hard in terms of say, to answer your second part or third part of your question of kind
not only just like comparing kind of faunas is difficult, but especially if you don’t have a like for like, but then getting into, you know, your third part there talking about what I’m excited to see, for those reasons, we don’t have that much Cretaceous really cool stuff. And I know Queensland in particular does. And so for a long time, I’ve kind of looked at and gone through the extensive literature on kind of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and dinosaurs of course too.
and other stuff in Queensland. And I’m very excited to see some of the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaur material firsthand. And I’ve often relied upon colleagues who have either sent pictures or colleagues who have been there and that sort of thing, or of course the literature. But I think there’s something to be said for actually physically going out and seeing this material. And so it’s nice to go out to be coming out there and seeing. I’m particularly intrigued to see some of the platyterigous material and…
the recently collected ichthyosaur and plesiosaur specimens too. And so I’m hoping I can bring my kind of experience and knowledge and hopefully collaborate with a few colleagues in Queensland and work on this stuff. Which I’m hoping will be a lot of fun. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.
Alyssa Fjeld (23:12)
We take it very easy down here. I’m sure you’ll make tons of friends. Speaking of your science and outreach, you’ve done several books. can, if our audience is watching these clips, you can see them behind Dean, but you’ve got a new one coming out. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about what you’ve been writing about lately?
Dr Dean Lomax (23:16)
No doubt.
Yeah, so that is the… I guess you’re referring to the Secret Lives of Dinosaurs, right? Let’s say, yeah, So yeah, so officially that was published in September, October last year, and we’re doing a bit of a book tour at the moment about that, and as we just touched upon, and I appreciate your kind words about Locked in Time, because Locked in Time, was the kind of… the original kind of OG it was for me for looking at behaviour in fossils, and when I wrote Locked in Time, I’d always kind of hoped that…
Alyssa Fjeld (23:32)
Yes.
Dr Dean Lomax (23:57)
it would evolve into something kind of bigger. And I was so happy that it did so well for the publisher and ended up becoming a bestseller in the States for them as well, that they were like, hey, we’d love to do something similar and what could we explore? And I was like, well, great, because I’d always hoped to become that sort of a bigger project. And it allowed me to kind of dive deeper into this kind of understanding of behaviour in fossils. And that is for listeners.
That is kind of not just kind of where we say look at a dinosaur skeleton and we’re like, how do we think it behave based on biomechanics? It’s anatomy, know, bite force is all this sort of stuff. It’s not looking at that. It’s primarily looking at when we’re given that very rare evidence of behaviours whether that’s something like feeding, fighting, mating, disease, that sort of stuff. And so
Unpacking the secret lives of dinosaurs and really building on this concept that I’d worked on and for locked in time Secret lives dinosaurs took about three three and a half years to write fully and to really dive into the literature and it kind of tells the story the grand story of life and that’s looking at from kind of right from the beginning of birth right through to death and everything in between and the way in which I look at it is kind of if you imagine
say a Sir David Attenborough documentary and you’ve got Sir David and he’s there out on the savanna and he’s there like, we see a pride of lions and we have the young cubs are venturing out on their own for the first time, know, this sort of thing and it’s kind of watching them grow up and they’re kind of interacting and then they’re hunting and then they’re kind of squabbling over food, all those sort of behaviours that we come to kind of…
kind of see in animal documentaries today and that of course we see if you have pets for example you watch pets and just human behaviours it’s all that sort of stuff and it’s kind of helping I hope helping people to understand that these animals were living breathing creatures and I think there’s often that’s missing in the realm of kind of popular non-fiction books in palaeo because writing a book I gotta say at least writing a book
and doing something very different that hasn’t been done, quite novel is very hard in palaeontology because there’s so many amazing books out there. So you’ve got to kind of without kind of trying to reinvent the wheel, you’ve got to come up with something different. And that’s ultimately what Locked in Time did. And then it led to, yeah, the Secret Lies of Dinosaurs, as I say, is a bigger, bigger project, a more chunkier project and really getting into the kind of detail of behaviours in.
in much broader sense. And one thing I will say, if and when you get a chance to read it, hopefully, like say, you enjoyed Locked in Time. So I’m sure you’ll hopefully love this. But I think one of the key things, and I know this from colleagues and friends who have read it already, I was surprised at some of the fossils that I came across in some of the kind of older literature and physically some of the stuff I should point out that most of the material in both books I’ve actually examined, if not at least had a good time to go through literature and lot of the stuff is actually published. But there are a lot of specimens in there which
surprised me and I was like, how does this exist in the fossil record? What? This is incredible. You know, just as an example, we have evidence of some early lizards and other reptiles that had the ability to detach their tails like some modern lizards do. And we’ve got evidence of that in the fossil record and like a remarkable evidence of it. And I remember coming across it. I read about that a few years ago and I was just like, boom, mind blown. How have we got that? That’s incredible.
And so yeah, there’s those sorts of things that we have that I kind of cover because it’s not just dinosaurs, of course, it’s prehistoric animals and behaviours. So yeah, and also, you know, I should say I try to get quite a bit of my own humour into my writing. Hopefully you enjoyed that aspect in Locked in Time, but I’ve got a bit more of that in The Secret Lies. So some nice little kind of in-jokes and things there and hopefully, but people seem to like that. And I think it helps to to tell the story rather than it being a kind of like dry kind of a take on palaeontology.
Alyssa Fjeld (27:40)
you
I think for people who have not read Dean’s books before, if you’ve read his social media posts, it conveys a similar type of feeling. So if you’ve enjoyed any of Dean’s social media, I think this is a very good opportunity for you to read that but in longer form. It’s good for your brain to read long form things. And one of the things, I guess, that really appeals to me about these kinds of books is that…
For a lot of the past maybe two decades, yourself, Mark Witton and a couple of other authors like Darren Naish have all been kind of on the crest of this wave of understanding dinosaurs and prehistoric life in
in the sense of like more animal behaviour, more complex behaviour. And a lot of this is coming from the revolution in data that we’ve had and an understanding of animals that we just did not have when a lot of these fossils were originally extracted. So these voices for kind of the second dinosaur renaissance, which is all very, very exciting.
And I would assume that a lot of the research you’ve done has also informed the public speaking you’ve done and the advising that you’ve been doing for different museums and shows. For those of you who don’t know, Dean, you’ve advised on a lot of palaeomedia in the past five years, haven’t you?
Dr Dean Lomax (28:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there’s been quite a lot that I’ve worked on and this you’re quite right Alyssa that a lot of the stuff in terms of kind of like academic work and Although for example locked in time sequelize isn’t an academic book You’ve got to dive into the academic side of things and really get to grips with that and so Yeah as a result of that that kind of stuff I I take that in and that when I do a lot of my public outreach so As you mentioned kind of give lots of talks. I’ve given a couple of ted talks in my career I must have given probably hundreds of talks now
And I always enjoy it and I always get asked as well It’s a bit of a tangent, but I always get asked of kind of what’s your your favourite thing in palaeo? And you typically expect always discovering new species It’s going to some far flung location and digging up a dinosaur and it’s like no, know the the best thing genuinely is Sharing my passion and getting people excited about the the subject that I love so you absolutely love it and so that’s where kind of my my kind of TV Story radio media stuff kind of came
Alyssa Fjeld (29:38)
Good.
Dr Dean Lomax (30:01)
came in from, it’s from following my passion and I fell into that stuff and so as you say I’ve worked on over the last five, ten years some really mega projects whether it has been on tv, movies and kind of documentaries and big books and stuff so you know in recent years one of the big big series that I well big documentaries that I’ve worked on was I don’t know if you call called Why Dinosaurs that was a yeah so it’s a big multi-award winning American father and son documentary Tony and James
Alyssa Fjeld (30:23)
Yeah!
Dr Dean Lomax (30:30)
Pinto and I was the lead on-screen palaeontologists and an executive producer for it and I introduced the film in the heart of Hollywood literally on the same stage where I think I think it was the night before Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio on that stage it’s just like what what is happening you know it’s literally in Sunset Boulevard and so this was a pretty epic documentary that if listeners if you haven’t watched that you can watch it for free it’s on YouTube now and so you can you can check that out but
Alyssa Fjeld (30:46)
Wow.
Dr Dean Lomax (30:59)
But yeah, that was just one of many. worked with the Walking with Dinosaurs team recently as well on the recent series, but I worked on the book side of things, so I was the consultant for the book. yeah, one of the other big things was Dinosaur Britain as well. That’s going back a decade now, but that was my first kind of big kind of, I guess, welcome into the TV zone. So I was a co-host for that series. But yeah, I’ve worked with Sir David Attenborough, with Stephen Fry, some sort of big TV legends over the years, which has been really great fun.
In fact, very, very recently, just this week, depending on when this goes out, but I was part of a very prestigious BBC radio series called The Life Scientific, that was originally done, originally aired in 2011, this series. If you looked it up, they basically look at people across the sciences. So they’ll interview astronauts, zoologists, marine biologists, palaeontologists and I was asked…
very humble to be asked to be part of that and tell my story. And that went out this week. And so that’s a very prestigious series. yeah, just another one of the examples that I’ve been involved in. yeah, it’s a great fun, fun Alissa, and you know yourself doing this podcast that I just find that when as palaeontologists, it’s wonderful to share your passion with fellow palaeontologists and at conferences and stuff and really nerd out about this subject. But I really think as
scientists and science communicators I think really think there is something more to actually going to the public speaking to the press and trying your best to really convey that passion and you can just reach a far broader audience of in some cases millions of people and you just never know who’s listening and I’ve had over my
18 year career I’ve had it’s very sweet, but I’ve had many many people come to me you’re in person or send emails messages saying They’ve either heard me on the radio or they watch on TV or I responded to an email many many years ago for an advice and then they’ve come back later in life saying Hey, dr. Lomax you were my inspiration way back when and I now have a job in palaeo or geology or I’ve completed my masters or PhD and it started with that initial interest in you and yeah, that’s that’s me I honestly I get choked up by it Alyssa because I get
It gives me goose bumps even talking about it now because it’s so sweet because I know
I was in that position over 18 years ago, kind of in my teen years and stuff and kind of saying, oh, how do I get into palaeontology and that? So knowing that my story can inspire people is always really so, so lovely and heartwarming to, to hear. And so, yeah, I always feel that doing kind of podcasts like this and reaching different audiences can really help get people more excited about palaeontology. And of course, you know, I’m rambling on, but of course it’s not always to get, to get people to become palaeontologists, not at all.
It’s just to help people to introduce them to the subject, get them excited by it, but also have an appreciation for the natural sciences. And that’s something I think most people on the planet have that interest in dinosaurs and stuff. They’re a great gateway science, for example. But I think people have that and often they lose it. So I like to think that you can kind of rekindle that fascination and passion for palaeontology.
Alyssa Fjeld (34:13)
Absolutely, I agree wholeheartedly. I think there’s a very outdated convention in the way that we teach science communication where it’s like you almost are told that you need to convince people that these things that are not like T. rex not a charismatic megafauna, you have to convince them that it’s interesting. And what I found doing my own smaller scale of science communication is just…
No, people, they don’t care if it’s a bug that’s very large or if it’s a dinosaur. They are just very curious to learn about the history of life on our planet and I agree. think it’s, science communication is what makes that interest not embarrassing for them as adults and could helpfully like…
Dr Dean Lomax (34:38)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (34:53)
help redirect some teens and some people who are a bit younger and early in their career to be interested in palaeo. And I guess my question is, as somebody who’s been doing this for 18 years, you must have noticed the difference in the way that you get different groups engaged and what kind of opportunities might exist for people today. So I don’t know how many British listeners we have, but do you have any advice for people who might have been in your position at 18, starting out now, what’s a good way to get into palaeo for them?
Dr Dean Lomax (35:19)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I agree with what you just saying there as well, just beforehand. I couldn’t agree more with that, Alyssa, And in terms of advice, I always say is what helped me might not help you. That’s important because everybody’s different, of course. We will have different kind of opportunities. Geographically, there may not be opportunities and things and that, I think it’s important to say. But I always say to people is you’ve got to be willing to put in that extra effort.
Palaeontology as you know yourself is such a niche field but there’s so many people and so few real job prospects and I always have to be kind of like upfront and be level with this because I don’t want to ever discourage people not at all but you also have to be realistic and so I say look gain as much experience as you can whether if you depending on your age you might be able to go and volunteer at a museum you might be able to volunteer on a dig or a fossil hunt or
outreach program so for example in the UK those things I’ve just just mentioned they’re up they are to a point few and far between but they do exist but it’s just it might even be even if you lived I don’t know in the north of the UK and there was a dig going on in the south
I would do everything in my power to go on that dig if possible, to get to gain that experience. Even if you were there for a day, it’s great. It really adds up. And it’s the sort of thing which I was doing in my teen years. And even for the first, probably I’d say four or five years of my professional career, I was still, I was actually wasn’t really earning much money. I was still having to work on the jobs that I didn’t like all this sort of stuff because I looked at the bigger picture. You had to be sacrificing so much of your own personal time in order to do this.
And I always just say you’ve got to gain that experience. That’s so important. But also at the same time, gaining experience is good. obviously if you can, depending on what age you are, if you’re going into university and looking at that, obviously you’ve got to really work hard. And if you’re looking to go to university, which like I said, my journey, didn’t do an undergrad, I did a master’s and a PhD. So everybody’s different. We all have to find our own way in life. But I always say, for me was, I knew where I wanted to be, but working out and knowing how to get
was the hardest so I just had to make sure that I could do everything in my power to just basically pull kind of pull all these little bits and pieces together to basically help get my foot on the ladder and keep working my way up and so the volunteering aspect the experience aspect reading books getting into museums and also going to conferences going to professional conferences if I could go back
and probably do one thing quite differently. I never in no pun intended, but in million years, I never had any understanding of academic papers. I had no understanding of academic conferences. If I did have that understanding and if I could go back and say, hey, young Dean, you need to go to a conference. That’s the thing I would have would have recommended. And I say that because if I imagine if I was like a 13, 14 year old and I got to say my teen years, I really suffered with anxiety as well. And so I probably wouldn’t have been the kid who would have gone up
spoken to Professor blah blah but if I could tell myself I would say go and do that and it’s the sort of thing where
I know full well it opens doors and it just gives you that bit more experience. So if I went to a professional conference, I recommend this anybody listening, if you went to a professional conference today and you see a professor or you know you see me and you’re like oh that’s Dr Dean Lomax you know I don’t want to go and speak to him. No no no come and bother me, come and talk to me, introduce yourself and just ask advice because that’s the sort of thing where it just genuinely helps and I know that if you have other palaeontologists listening to this I know many many many colleagues of mine have
that similar thing and it’s helped because it might just open another door and I say that again because it’s such a niche field but lastly because again I can ramble on about this when I talk forever but but the key thing as well is I’m sure you’ll agree with this is to have fun that’s the other thing and I find that in palaeontology we all get into that field because it seems like it’s gonna be great fun right and you might watch a documentary or you might
You might follow your favorite kind of palaeontologists on social media or read a book and say, oh, this sounds amazing. But then when you really get into the nitty gritty of palaeontology, you realize, oh, it’s not all quite this, this and this. And it’s a very tough subject to get into. Exactly. You understand doing your PhD, right? And so it’s very tough. some of it can become quite tedious, laborious, incredibly tough. can have a…
a real impact on your mental health, you know, I’ve been there, done that, and I still do that in many respects. I still have issues along those lines. And I totally get it. You know, it’s a tough area to work in in academia, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to always have that back of your mind that you’ve got to have fun. You’re dedicating ultimately your life to this subject. And I’ve dedicated professionally 18 years, but my entire life to this subject from as far back as I can remember. So you’ve got to remember to have fun with it too.
and that’s very very important and that is something I always try to say to people and instill within them have fun and I do understand as well there’s probably people saying well yeah it’s all you know all good that you can have fun Dr Lomax but I’m not getting paid it’s like well hopefully that work will come down the line
I have colleagues of mine who have volunteered for me, who have done masters with me, know, master’s and for years they couldn’t find a job and then all of a sudden now they’re a curator at a museum, they’re leading research projects. It happens, but you’ve just got to keep at it. And even those times where it seems you’re not going to get anywhere, something will come along. You’ve just got to keep going and be realistic. Obviously, you’ve got to be working, know, pay the rent or your mortgage or whatever, you know, behind the scenes, but you’ve got to just keep at
it
and I’m sure it’s a lot of that you can relate to.
Alyssa Fjeld (40:55)
Absolutely. I mean, going back to your point about younger people coming to these conferences, we have seen that happening at CAVEPS here in Australia and in the, not this last CAVEPS, but the one before it. I do remember a young person, I think at the time they were maybe 17, coming up to me giving me like a fun drawing of an Anomalicaris that I’ve kept on my desk and when they joined Monash as a student, it’s like, of course I remember you.
This is a no-brainer. I’m always gonna remember that. That was beautiful. And I say a lot that I think palaeontology comes down to this intersection of creativity, accuracy, and trustworthiness because you have to know where the fossils are and you have to not tell Jim, Jane, and Bob about it in case they come and dig them up when you’re not looking. You have to be somebody who’s able to imagine these prehistoric animals and you also have to have the academic rigour to do that imagining in a way that is easy to…
Dr Dean Lomax (41:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:49)
that can be tied back to the research that you’re actually doing. And I really appreciate the note of optimism as well. So the final question that I’m gonna ask you as we lead out of this is you’ve been in the field for 18 years, palaeontology in the UK notoriously old school, notoriously stratified within UK society. What are some positive things that you’ve been seeing since you joined palaeontology? What are some things that early career researchers have to look forward to?
Dr Dean Lomax (42:13)
think probably the immediate for me is that there are a lot more opportunities now than there were just 18 years ago and by that I mean although some listeners might think are there but there are there are lot more opportunities for funding for research there are more jobs now than any other point for palaeontologists and there are more opportunities to to volunteer in the UK on digs or museum opportunities for like public outreach and I think
On that latter, think that’s because of how the kind of just society is changing too. So through social media, there are more jobs in public outreach for palaeontologists. So engaging with the public, doing kind of talks and events, of like fossil handling sessions, things like that. And I think that is a big thing for, if somebody said to me 18 years ago that there are all these opportunities are there, for example, just off the top of my head, in the last couple of years, we’ve had
the Rutland Sea Dragon dig that I led here in the UK, this giant 10-meter long complete ichthyosaur. We’ve had a mammoth graveyard dig that’s also got Jurassic fossils and that’s been an occurring thing for several years. We’ve had an excavation going on that I’ve been part of, of what we call a fish-head farm, which is a Jurassic site with fossil fish and ichthyosaurs, ammonites and everything else. We have a Carboniferous fossil site that is in
in Wales near Wrexham called Brimbo that is being ongoing for a couple of years. They actually have a cool program for outreach, for getting schools, youngsters involved, but students to do research, to do field work and all sorts of cool stuff. And of course, you know, just another example, of course, I could not say is the Jurassic Coast. There are so many opportunities still there. It’s not just fossil collecting, but we have the biggest palaeo event in the UK is the the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival where we have
professional palaeontologists, enthusiasts, fossil collectors there giving talks, working with the public, seeing new fossils being discovered. So there is so much more happening and it’s all kind of like, it’s a bigger field now than it was 18 years ago. And I think that’s enormously positive and it feeds nicely into kind of turning it around a little bit to yourself, but also back to kind of Australia and Queensland and for the Queensland dinosaur week. I…
I’m enormously excited for what is going to be an incredible adventure, not just personally to get out there to meet colleagues, meet members of the public to chat about Queensland palaeontology and get my hands dirty on the dig site, seeing some of the fossils and doing talks and things, but also to share my kind of story, share the research I do in fieldwork TV stuff with different communities. And I think…
doing something like, having something like Queensland Dinosaur Week is quite remarkable as well because it kind of feeds into this kind palaeo tourism kind of thing, but it’s done in such a way that you actually have academics, people who are the scientists working collaboratively with local communities. And I think that’s massively important, Alyssa, which I’m sure again, you would agree.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:17)
Yeah, I remember in the UK a couple of years ago during lockdown there was this initiative called Geobus that went to underprivileged rural communities in Scotland, bringing the exact kind of knowledge you’re talking about, and I think that stuff is just so crucial. For those of you who are not aware, it’s not that no countries in the world have fossils, or that the US has more than others.
All countries in the world have rocks and all rocks have a chance of being fossils. It’s just that some places have better funding for digs. And while globalization brings its own problems, it does mean that there is more outreach. There are more opportunities for everyone listening to this, regardless of where you are, to get connected with palaeontology in your region. No matter what scale it’s at, it really is about finding those opportunities. And if you are coming out for Dinosaur Week to support it, this is the first year it’s running, but we’re hoping it’s going to be an annual thing, bringing those kinds
of skills and that knowledge to the people that live there who might not know more about these fossils. And hopefully you’ll join us for that. Hopefully you’ll come see Dr. Lomax at that. And if you don’t have the capacity to come to Queensland, we hope that you’ll check out his social media and hopefully one of his really cool books. Dean, where can my audience find you?
Dr Dean Lomax (46:24)
So yeah, you’re quite right, Alyssa So I’ve got my website, is just deanrlomax.co.uk, but also I’m pretty active still on Instagram and Facebook, and then occasionally on Twitter and a few of the social media platforms. But yeah, come and check out some of my adventures in palaeontology. And yeah, definitely, as Alissa said, Locked in Time is a great book to pick up. And if you like that, definitely check out The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:48)
Dean, thank you so much for joining us today. That’s all the time we have, so I’m going to end our little interview, but thank you so much for joining us and thank you again for coming to visit us down here in Australia. I hope you have a fantastic visit.
Dr Dean Lomax (47:01)
thank you very much and it’s been a great pleasure chatting to you and I’m really excited for Queensland Dinosaur Week.
Travis (47:07)
Alyssa that interview with Dean was fantastic. He seems like just such a genuinely nice guy
Alyssa Fjeld (47:13)
He was so lovely to speak with and I strongly encourage anyone who has any further questions, especially about marine reptiles, to keep Dean in mind,
And I’ve actually got a little necklace here of an ammonite. So one of the little creatures that is also known for being found alongside the marine reptiles and often crunched upon by them, as you might see in the fossil record.
Travis (47:34)
Now, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a little while, you will notice something different about this episode and that is we have switched off ads. So you hate ads.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:44)
We all hate ads.
Travis (47:45)
We all hate ads. We’ve permanently switched off automated ads on the podcast. From now on, the only thing you’ll hear us recommend on the show are things we genuinely stand behind. Now, we still would love to get some partners on board who are willing to sponsor the show, but we’re not going to be running just your standard insert podcast ads. Instead to support the show, we’ve launched a membership tier through our fourth wall, which is similar to Patreon for this purpose.
It’s where our merch is located. It’s only five US dollars a month. You just got to sign up via the website on our link tree or search for us on the fourth wall or go via our website to get there. Now members get a custom digital wallpaper featuring scratch and skitters. We’re going to send you regular thank you notes via voice, video, email from both of us. These are going to be personal and written.
you’ll get a shout out in future episode credits and there’s also a 10 % discount on any podcast merch that you buy. So if you like this podcast and you’d love to help keep it ad free, we would love to have you as a member of the podcast for just $5 a month.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:59)
That’s right. And the merch is very lovely. The yellow stands out really nicely. I use my little mug all the time. We have a fabulous little beanie that suits all of your beanie related needs. We’ve got lovely stickers as well. And when you support our pod and allow us to do this kind of work without relying on ads, I mean it’s better for everyone, right? No one wants to hear a stinky ad.
lots of good merch in the merch store. Check it out and consider being a member today.
Travis (49:26)
Our second announcement for this episode is that over on YouTube I’ve been posting longer cuts of those interviews that I mentioned from the previous episode about Queensland Dino Week so you can hop over there to hear more from Macca Eichelmaier at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs and from Travis Enright at Kronosaurus Korner Natural History Museum and Jo Wilkinson from the Queensland Museum. All of those episodes are available more or less in full.
on YouTube, so jump over there and have a listen to those as well.
Alyssa, I thought we could play a little game of ichthyosaur fact and fiction. So I’m going to read a little fact here and I want to know what you think. Is it true? Is it false? Is it fact or is it fiction? So the first one ichthyosaurs and dinosaurs are closely related.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:01)
Ooh.
you
Ooh, I’m gonna go with no. I’m gonna go with no because I remember Dean saying that they split off much earlier in their evolution.
Travis (50:22)
Yes, that’s correct. So, we often hear ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs referred to as dinosaurs, but of course we know that they’re not. they separated millions of years prior to the emergence or the formal emergence of dinosauria as a clade.
So now I know this is one that you talked about with Dean so we will see if you can remember what he talked about. Ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young. Fact or fiction?
Alyssa Fjeld (50:45)
Okay.
Okay, he just made a post about this to his Instagram about a fossil that he found where the ichthyosaur had babies in its stomach and had died because one had gotten stuck in the birth canal. So I’m going to say yes, they are, gosh, it viviparous is giving birth to live young? True.
Travis (51:13)
Yes,
I think so. Yes, it’s it’s facts. Pick this all gave birth to live young
This one I know didn’t come from your interview with Dean. The name Ichthyosaur means terrible fish. Fact or fiction?
Alyssa Fjeld (51:28)
Okay, well.
Travis (51:29)
Icthyosaur,
how good is your Latin?
Alyssa Fjeld (51:32)
Not very good. I learned like a little bit in college, but it was mostly like for liberal arts majors. So we learned how to tell myths in Latin. It was called Latin for science majors and I swear I still didn’t learn anything. I’m sorry. This is Latin class slander Like it’s funny too because I can never remember the difference between the Latin for ichthyosaur and ichthnology, the study of trace fossils.
But I want to say that neither of those words is fi- well no, hang on. So, saur terrible lizard, dinosaur. I’m gonna say ichthyosaur, terrible fish, ichthyse. I’m gonna guess true. I’m hope it’s true.
Travis (52:11)
It’s fiction. ichthyosaur doesn’t mean terrible fish. It means fish lizard. But they weren’t fish or lizards. it. They were marine reptiles.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:17)
Ahhhh!
There you go. Well…
Well, I guess aardvark means earth pig and it is neither of the pig or made of the earth, so, you know.
We should just stop letting 1800s naturalists name things, I think.
Travis (52:33)
Yeah, I know. Like, how dare they?
Um, okay, last one. Uh, a horseshoe crab’s death inspired one of the best popular palaeo books in years.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:38)
Okay.
Yes, that’s true because that was my favorite story from Locked in Time. It’s such a cute little story. horseshoe crabs, been around for 420 million years, have not evolved significantly and there’s this beautifully preserved one in the Solmhofen limestone that accidentally got trapped in an environment with not enough oxygen and did little wheelies until he died and he’s at the end of his little track and he’s- Oh, it’s so good.
Travis (53:09)
We will put links to locked in time and Dean’s other books in the show notes as well. If anyone wants to wants to track them up. So to wrap up the episode, look, the interview was great. You talked about palaeontology requiring creativity, accuracy and trustworthiness. I think that’s a really nice summary. Check out Dean’s books, locked in time, the secret life of dinosaurs.
his website, social media, Follow Dean and thank you so much for doing that interview Alyssa. I hope people get along to Queensland Dino Week.
Alyssa Fjeld (53:41)
if you’re a fan of the show, continue to support us by writing in, even if you can’t monetarily afford to support us. Likes, follows, and shares also go a long way, and obviously we always love to hear from you guys as well, so if you have any comments or questions on our social media, we will get to those, and we appreciate all of you so much. So thank you for making the continuation of this pod possible.
Travis (54:02)
We have email addresses now. You can email Travis at fossils fiction.co or Alyssa at fossils fiction.co to get in touch, but also comment on the socials, give us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts and we’ll see you next time.
