TLS12DB20 Forked Tongues

Could a pair of Quetzalcoatlus really harass a T. rex away from a carcass? And did dinosaurs have forked tongues like snakes and Komodo dragons?

In this Dinosaur Bite, Iszi Lawrence and Dr Dave Hone tackle both questions - starting with the Prehistoric Planet scene in which two enormous azhdarchid pterosaurs hassle a T. rex over a carcass.

Dave explains why the basic idea is perfectly plausible, drawing comparisons with modern animals such as hyenas, lions and vultures. But there's one part of the scene he isn't convinced by: with a huge carcass available, would the T. rex really bother wasting energy chasing the pterosaurs away? They then turn to the surprisingly complicated question of forked tongues. What does the fossil record tell us about dinosaur tongues? Why do snakes and some lizards have them? Could pterosaurs or marine reptiles have had them? And what can evolutionary relationships tell us when the soft tissue itself has completely disappeared?

Along the way, we get into how animals use smell, how sharks detect things in water, electroreception, and one of the fundamental problems of biology: where exactly do we draw the boundaries between species when evolution is a continuum?

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Terrible Lizards is a dinosaur podcast hosted by Iszi Lawrence and palaeontologist Dr Dave Hone. RAWR!