Fossils and Fiction

A supermarket tabloid once ran a front page reading "Space Probe Finds Dinosaurs on Mars." That issue ended up pinned to the wall of the Montana dig trailer in Jurassic Park — and it's the starting point for a wander through everything that connects palaeontology and space.

Travis and Alyssa cover the 1992 Weekly World News hoax and how it accidentally recreated the founding error of dinosaur science, the supernovae that may have triggered two mass extinctions, the asteroid ejecta you can touch in the Flinders Ranges, the hypothesis that Earth had rings while trilobites were alive, dinosaurs living on the far side of the galaxy, and NASA's carefully-worded potential biosignature on Mars.

Plus: 65, Strange New Worlds, Love, Death & Robots, and why every screen dinosaur still says 65 million years when the answer changed in 2012.

Recorded on the 60th anniversary of Star Trek.

Papers and sources

Quintana, A.L., Wright, N.J. et al. (2025). "A census of OB stars within 1 kpc and the star formation and core collapse supernova rates of the Milky Way." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Royal Astronomical Society release: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/violent-supernovae-triggered-least-two-earth-extinctions Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.08286

Tomkins, A.G., Martin, E.L. & Cawood, P.A. (2024). "Evidence suggesting that earth had a ring in the Ordovician." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 646: 118991. (Monash University) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2024.118991

Fischer-Gödde, M. et al. (2024). "Ruthenium isotopes show the Chicxulub impactor was a carbonaceous-type asteroid." Science 385(6710): 752–756. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk4868

Alvarez, L.W., Alvarez, W., Asaro, F. & Michel, H.V. (1980). "Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction." Science 208(4448): 1095–1108.

Williams, G.E. & Wallace, M.W. (2003). "The Acraman asteroid impact, South Australia:cmagnitude and implications for the late Vendian environment" Journal of the Geological Society 160: 545–554.

Hurowitz, J.A. et al. (2025). "Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars." Nature, 10 September 2025. NASA release: https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/perseverance/

McKay, D.S. et al. (1996). "Search for past life on Mars: possible relic biogenic activity in Martian meteorite ALH84001." Science 273(5277): 924–930.

Schmidt, G.A. & Frank, A. (2019). "The Silurian hypothesis: would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?" International Journal of Astrobiology 18(2): 142–150. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550418000095

Russell, D.A. & Séguin, R. (1982). Reconstruction of the small Cretaceous theropod Stenonychosaurus inequalis and a hypothetical dinosauroid. Syllogeus 37.

Weekly World News, 16 June 1992. Cover: "Space Probe Finds Dinosaurs on Mars." Interior, p. 24: "Dinosaurs on Mars!" Digitised in Google Books.

A three-course food web from the Cretaceous seas of Queensland: a Platypterygius australis ichthyosaur that had been snacking on fish, cephalopods and pterosaurs — before it, in turn, got chewed on by a Kronosaurus queenslandicus. Travis and Alyssa dig into what the bite marks and gut contents tell us about who was eating whom in ancient inland Australia.

Then, Travis heads out to Gold Creek to sit down with Shannon Bourke, education and outreach coordinator at the National Dinosaur Museum in Canberra, for a tour through animatronic accuracy (and inaccuracy), seasonally repainted triceratops, and how a small private museum can uietly launch palaeontology careers.

To close out: a preview of The End of Oak Street — dinosaurs, suburbia, Ewan McGregor punching things — and the story of the one Chase question Travis really should have known.

Paper discussed: White, M. et al., "Beneath the Waves: Extraordinary Dietary Insights from a Dismembered Ichthyosaur from the Lower Cretaceous," Gondwana Research.

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Dr Jake Kotevski didn't become a palaeontologist because of a fossil. He became one because of Sam Neill. In this tribute episode, Travis and Alyssa talk with Jake about Alan Grant's quiet, unglamorous masculinity, the "sense of wonder" the movie chose over the book's horror, and why Grant's evolution across three films (and an unfortunate franchise reboot) still resonates thirty years on.

Compsognathus in a handbag. Microraptor as a pet crow. Sauropod methane energy. You're welcome.

We sit down with Professor Amy Brock-Hon from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga — Alyssa's old alma mater — to talk caves, karst, and why a good geology degree might be the most versatile qualification you've never considered. Then we dig into a 2025 paper claiming scientists have found original collagen inside a 66-million-year-old Edmontosaurus hip bone — and ask what that means for the long-running soft tissue debate. Which leads us, naturally, to de-extinction — what we'd bring back, why, and whether Colossal Biosciences hatching chickens from synthetic eggs means we're closer to an answer than we'd like to admit.

Tuinstra et al. (2025), "Evidence for Endogenous Collagen in Edmontosaurus Fossil Bone," Analytical Chemistry. DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.4c03115

Fossils and Fiction is kept ad-free by our members. Join The Fossil Record via our website, or grab some merch from our Fourthwall store. Fossils and Fiction is a production of Extinction Media.

The ocean had apex predators long before sharks — 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.

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• Dr Dean Lomax's website: http://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.

We're road tripping across Queensland for Queensland Dinosaur Week.

Featuring interviews with experts from the Queensland Museum, Eromanga Natural History Museum, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum (Winton), and Kronosaurus Korner (Richmond), we find out what's happening across the state from May 4-10, 2026.

For more info, check out https://dinosaurexperiences.com/queensland-dinosaur-week-2026/

Travis just spent three weeks galavanting around the museums of Europe, and he's here to tell you all about it. From Naturalis in Leiden, to Oslo, Oxford, London and Lyme Regis, you'll get the low down on the visitor experience at museums across the continent.

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More info:

• Australia Post's 'creatures of the palaeozoic' https://collectables.auspost.com.au/stamp-issues/view-all-stamp-issues/creatures-of-the-palaeozoic
• ABC Coverage of Dinosaur Dreaming https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-11/dinosaur-dig-at-inverloch-finds-bones-and-fossils/105904132

Travis went to Europe and Alyssa went to Chattanooga. All to find out more about your favourite fossils. We bring you some news on extraordinary palaeo discoveries, a fascinating interview with Dr Indrani Mukherjee about the state of geoscience in Australia and her research into Earth's earliest life, and Alyssa ranks 2025's big hits (come at her).

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Tess Gallagher, Dan Folkes, Michael Pittman, Tom G. Kaye, Glenn W. Storrs, Jason Schein; Fossilized melanosomes reveal colour patterning of a sauropod dinosaur. R Soc Open Sci. 1 December 2025; 12 (12): 251232. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251232

Delclòs, X., Peñalver, E., Jaramillo, C. et al. Cretaceous amber of Ecuador unveils new insights into South America’s Gondwanan forests. Commun Earth Environ 6, 745 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02625-2

Dinosaur mating? Two new tyrannosaurs? We discuss a couple of groundbreaking papers followed by a trip to Wellington Caves, the site of some of Australia's earliest and greatest palaeontological discoveries.

More info:

Join us in Adelaide for Fossils and Fiction live on November 29! https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/1964100016020?aff=oddtdtcreator

Visit Wellington Caves https://www.wellingtoncaves.com.au/

Bertozzo, F., Tanke, D. H., Conti, S., Manucci, F., Arnott, G., Godefroit, P., Ruffell, A., Fowler, D., Freedman Fowler, E. A., Bolotsky, I. Y., Bolotsky, Y. L., & Murphy, E. (2025). Deciphering causes and behaviors: A recurrent pattern of tail injuries in hadrosaurid dinosaurs. iScience, 113739. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113739

Zanno, L. E., & Napoli, J. G. (2025). Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09801-6

Seals. What do they know? Do they know things? Let's find out.

Dr James Rule gives lets us in on the secrets of the seals, covering their evolution, fossil history, and some challenges with modern marine mammal research. James tells us the best and worst seal and lays down the terms to the whales. Also, it's Halloween, so we take a look at some creepy museum exhibitions.

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Flynn, A. G., Brusatte, S. L., Chiarenza, A. A., García, J., Davis, A. J., Secord, R., Shelley, S., Weil, A., Heizler, M. T., Williamson, T. E., & Peppe, D. J. (2025). Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous diversity and provinciality.

Sereno, P. C., Saitta, E. T., Vidal, D., Myhrvold, N., Real, M. C., Baumgart, S. L., Bop, L. L., Keillor, T. M., Eriksen, M., & Derstler, K. (2025). Duck-billed dinosaur fleshy midline and hooves reveal terrestrial clay-template “mummification.” Science, science.adw3536. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adw3536

Travis and Alyssa discuss the challenges and implications of open access publishing in science. They explore the paywall paradox, the role of jargon in scientific communication, and the peer review process, particularly in the context of palaeontology. The conversation also touches on global inequities in access to research, innovations in open access publishing, and the importance of data accessibility. The episode concludes with a light-hearted segment on the frustrations of academic publishing and a fun bingo game.

Support the Diplodocoid publishing campaign: https://experiment.com/projects/reassessing-the-evolutionary-family-tree-and-biogeography-of-the-iconic-sauropod-group-diplodocoidea?s=search

Virtual Paleo Art Gallery curator Karim talks the intersection of art, technology, and community building. Meanwhile, Alyssa and Travis discuss some historical paleo and museum heists.

Check out the palaeo art gallery here https://extinctfineart.com/virtual-paleoart-gallery/

Artist, cartoonist, communicator Zev Landes talks through his experiences and process. We get the low-down on how he created the Fossils and Fiction logo featuring Scratch and Skitters, as well as his work with museums, palaeo-tourism initiatives, and much more.

Check out Zev's website https://www.zevlandes.com/ or Instagram @ZevLandes.

Alyssa and Travis delve into a fascinating new paper on dinosaur tracks, dubbed the 'Dinosaur Dance Floor.' They discuss the implications of the findings, including the behavior of ceratopsians and tyrannosaurs. The conversation shifts to exciting announcements in paleontology, including a new season of Prehistoric Planet. They also interview shark palaeontologist Ben Francischelli, exploring the megalodon and other ancient sharks. The episode concludes with a fun 'Would You Rather' segment.

More info:

Bell, P. R., Pickles, B. J., Ashby, S. C., Walker, I. E., Hurst, S., Rampe, M., Durkin, P., & Brown, C. M. (2025). A ceratopsid-dominated tracksite from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Campanian) at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada. PLOS ONE, 20(7), e0324913. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0324913

Ben's website: https://www.benfrancischelli.com/

Poo and poetry.

George Frandsen is founder of the Poozeum in Williams, Arizona. He shares the story of the Poozeum and its mission to educate the world about coprolites. George also introduces us to Barnum - the world's biggest T. rex poop. Alyssa and Travis review Walking with Dinosaurs and Jurassic World: Rebirth before Travis unleashes his softer side with a little palaeo poetry ('Species' by Tishani Doshi, from A God at the Door published by Cooper Canyon Press).

From Part 2 of our interview with palaeontologist and palaeoartist Mark Witton featuring chat on AI, to news about the origins of teeth, and a very difficult game of 'guess that fossil', this episode has a little bit of everything.

More info:

• King Tyrant on Amazon
• Haridy, Y., Norris, S.C.P., Fabbri, M. et al. The origin of vertebrate teeth and evolution of sensory exoskeletons. Nature 642, 119–124 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08944-w

Can they spell it? No, they can't!

This episode features renowned palaeoartist Mark Witton talking about his new book King Tyrant and other topics in palaeoart. Plus, news on the world's first sauropod gut contents. Then, Travis and Alyssa challenge each other to a prehistoric spelling bee.

More info:

Mark Witton's website https://www.markwitton.co.uk/

Poropat, S. F., Tosolini, A.-M. P., Beeston, S. L., Enchelmaier, M. J., Pentland, A. H., Mannion, P. D., Upchurch, P., Chin, K., Korasidis, V. A., Bell, P. R., Enriquez, N. J., Holman, A. I., Brosnan, L. M., Elson, A. L., Tripp, M., Scarlett, A. G., Godel, B., Madden, R. H. C., Rickard, W. D. A., … Grice, K. (2025). Fossilized gut contents elucidate the feeding habits of sauropod dinosaurs. Current Biology, 35(11), 2597-2613.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.053

Palaeo artist James Pascoe shares his lifelong fascination with dinosaurs and how it has shaped his journey. He discusses the importance of community in the paleo art world and the role of engagement in science communication.

We discuss new research showing the origin of tyrannosaurs may have been in Asia and also how megaraptors arose and spread throughout Gondwana. And another new paper pushes back the origin of tetrapods and (maybe) places it in the southern continents.

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• Long, J. A., Niedźwiedzki, G., Garvey, J., Clement, A. M., Camens, A. B., Eury, C. A., Eason, J., & Ahlberg, P. E. (2025). Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution. Nature, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08884-5

• Morrison, C., Scherer, C. R., O’Callaghan, E. V., Layton, C., Boisvert, C., Rolando, M. A., Durrant, L., Salas, P., Allain, S. J. R., & Gascoigne, S. J. L. (2025). Rise of the king: Gondwanan origins and evolution of megaraptoran dinosaurs. Royal Society Open Science, 12(5). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242238

Visit the 'La Brea of the East' with us. Shay Maden from Gray Fossil Site and Museum tells us about the history and importance of this amazing Tennessean lagerstatten. And, we can't help but chat about the controversial claims by Colossal Biosciences that they have resurrected the dire wolf.

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Check out:

• Gray Fossil Site https://gfs.visithandson.org/
• Dinosauria Season 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRXB67fcXZA
• Paleo Pines https://paleopines.com/
• Pint of Science https://pintofscience.com.au/

This conversation explores the fascinating and often humorous world of paleontology hoaxes, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the Cardiff Giant. Alyssa and Travis discuss various historical and modern examples of scientific fraud, the implications of these hoaxes on the scientific community, and the lessons learned about integrity in research. They also touch on the cultural significance of these hoaxes and how they reflect societal beliefs and values.

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Palaeo Pulse:

McCurry, M. R., Gill, A. C., Baranov, V., Hart, L. J., Slatyer, C., & Frese, M. (2025). The paleobiology of a new osmeriform fish species from Australia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2024.2445684