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Dinosaurs Were Weirder Than We Thought

October 28, 2026 · 25 min

Show notes

Dinosaurs were not like I thought...
Check out https://groundnews.com/Cleo for a data-driven, balanced approach to staying informed. Use my link to save 50 percent on the Vantage plan and see how current events are framed from every perspective.

I’m finally learning the truth about dinosaurs.

I’ve loved dinosaurs since I was a kid, but it turns out a lot of what I thought I knew is wrong… or at the least outdated. So, in this video, I’m gonna show you the cutting edge of dinosaur discovery. I’ll give you rare access into a warehouse full of dinosaur bones, try to find my own fossil, and show you something new these scientists just discovered…

Chapters:
00:00 What were dinosaurs really like?
01:08 Why is today a big deal for dinosaur discovery?
03:31 How big were dinosaurs, really?
05:49 When did dinosaurs actually live?
08:20 How many dinosaurs have we found?
09:26 What was the T-Rex like?
10:39 Did I find a bone??
11:55 What IS a dinosaur?
14:31 What did dinosaur skin feel like?
15:06 What color were dinosaurs?
15:51 Can you guess this modern animal?
16:54 How were dinosaur fossils formed?
17:34 Why did dinosaurs go extinct?*
19:14 Why do we study dinosaurs?

Thank you to the team at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum and the Pipestone Creek Bonebed for making my dreams of hunting for dinosaur fossils come true!

Correction:
17:40 Some of the dinosaurs animated here went extinct before this mass extinction event. Thank you to the thoughtful commenter who pointed this out! We sincerely appreciate it.

You can find me on TikTok here for short, fun tech explainers: https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram
You can find me on Instagram here for more personal stories: https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram
You can find me on Twitter here for thoughts, threads and curated news: https://twitter.com/cleoabram

Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, Huge If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.

Additional reading and watching:
- How do dinosaur fossils form? Natural History Museum: https://youtu.be/87E8bQrX4Wg?si=O-aY_J-oLaENIRhb
- Why are birds the only surviving dinosaurs? Natural History Museum: https://youtu.be/9GVvtKK5sFw?si=1sMXLcp_XbbKm7Mq
- What Makes A Dinosaur? Minute Earth: https://youtu.be/HIbG-dUFnf4?si=JLnfG-oanRrYcq_9
- The Day the Dinosaurs Died – Minute by Minute, Kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/dFCbJmgeHmA?si=fHEcj0C5VQ1qVks1
- Evolution of Dinosaurs in 10 Minutes, What If: https://youtu.be/qWvzBCfFNug?si=JiZigpmXXxb3izkz
- The Biggest Dinosaurs Of All Time, Insider Science: https://youtu.be/VoFX7g0ffAA?si=g44WXEqz6A7K7y8w
- Paleontologist Reviews Dinosaur Movie Scenes, Vanity Fair: https://youtu.be/PJXrCtQAYDs?si=82TDpRtXjX4MfATS
- 25th anniversary of the first known feathered dinosaurs, Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04586-4
- Tyrannosaurus rex couldn’t run says new research, U Manchester: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/tyrannosaurus-rex-couldnt-run-says-new-research/
- A Computational Analysis of Limb and Body Dimensions in Tyrannosaurus rex: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3192160/
- A Fresh Science Makeover for SUE, Field Museum: https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/fresh-science-makeover-sue
- Tracing the evolution of amniote chromosomes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4031395/
- A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinos

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