🎧🎤the inwils interval 1.18 -Terrible Lizards! 🦎🦎
Hello everyone and welcome to the inwils interval
A short, monthly podcast that is perfect for you to listen to while taking a quick break with or without a beverage and biscuits.
In this month’s interval, I want to talk about terrible lizards!
So, this podcast has been going for 18 months so far that is far more than I ever hoped for. It is, however, reliant on you the listeners! So thank you for coming back every month and listening to my ramblings.
Christmas was always a special time of the year for me. I used to look forward to it so much and remember vividly counting down the days before the celebrated day would arrive. One year, as I launched myself downstairs to frantically unwrap my presents I was met with a hardback book that had a roaring tyrannosaurus rex on the front. The label DINOSUARs was emblazed on the front and I eagerly started to read. The first page actually explained what the word dinosaur actually meant – Terrible Lizard and my fascination about these beasts started!
There are many misconceptions about dinosaurs and their lives. So, in an attempt to rectify these I took to the most reliable source around – the internet – don’t laugh I was being sarcastic – to help put some of these dubious facts to rest.
Before we go any further though, a health warning. The rest of this podcast episode contains some scary facts and if these will scare you or give you sleepless nights then please stop now and return to your biscuits. For the rest of the fearless explorers of facts, let us continue! Oh and please be prepared for my pathetic attempts to pronounce the names of dinosaurs. I would like to reassure everyone that no dinosaur was injured during the recording of this episode, but sadly several of their names were brutally murdered!
Dinosaurs lived for a long long time. Our own life span on this earth is very small, being only a century at best. If we look at the amount of time the human race has been on the earth then this would only be a few hundred thousand years. Dinosaurs dominated the earth for a much longer period of time – over 150 million years! They were definitely not here one day and gone the next! And while we are discussing their lift time, they didn’t all get wiped out in a single event. Yes, a meteor did crash to earth and wipe a huge number of dinosaurs out, but some lived for thousands of years after. The massive impact of the meteor changed the earth’s climate and global temperatures plummeted. Many of the dinosaurs would have died from hunger as the vegetation of the world died. If any of them lived in far reaches of the earth they might have lasted even longer – maybe this could explain the mystery of the loch ness monster that I chatted about in Episode 17 – among other mysteries
Dinosaurs were mainly split into two types, the herbivores and the carnivores. Although the tyrannosaurus rex is probably the most famous dinosaur, it was definitely not the biggest. The size competition was definitely won by a plant-eater group of dinosaurs called the sauropods! The skeleton of the aptly named Dreadnoughtus was approximately 26m (85ft) nose to tail tip long, with a shoulder height of 6m or 20ft, which is the same as a two-story building. And it was definitely not lightweight, weighing in at 65tons! These stats are only available to use because of the fossil remains of one of these huge beasts but scientists believe that the specimen was still growing! The closest meat eater to the Dreadnoughtus would have been the Spinosaurus coming in at 18m (59 feet) and up to 20 tons – scary to say the least – us humans, if we were around at the same time, must have been like small peanuts to be nibbled on between hearty meals!
Although lizards are generally cold-blooded – which means that they can’t regulate their body temperatures like us and the other warm-blooded animals of the world, there are believed to be some warm-blooded dinosaurs that existed and even some with feathers. And mammals did actually live at the same time as the mighty dinosaurs. They were small like mice or shrews and sensibly lived high on in the trees away from the heavy-footed dinosaurs! There were even dinosaurs that looked like a giant rate, although the weirdest dinosaur was probably the Pegomastax which was a strange combination of a cross between a parrot and a porcupine! What made it even stranger was the fact it had a beak with teeth that sharpened themselves!
And before we return to the present day and let these fantastic creatures return to their fossil remains, I would just like to provide you with a slightly disturbing fact. The dinosaurs didn’t instantly grow to their dominance of the world. Before then there was another group of reptiles that ruled the world and, which is the disturbing or interesting fact, is that they are still alive and with us to this day. Before the dinosaurs, the earth was ruled by the most fearsome of all reptiles, the prehistoric crocodiles whose distant relatives are still with us today. Just remember that when you are ever looking into those dark eyes of the modern-day crocodiles, they might just be waiting for the perfect opportunity to raise to world domination once again …
I hope you have enjoyed this inwils interval. Don’t forget to subscribe and come back next month and if you would like to donate a small amount to the monthly upkeep of the podcast then please do visit my donation page on Ko-fi – it will allow you to make a donation of any amount – even just one pound, or provide a monthly subscription that helps the podcast to continue to be created and shared
Until next time, have fun, stay positive and keep an eye on those crocodiles you never know what they are plotting
