The Great Dinosaur Smashup

Wendy Zuckerman
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman. You're listening to sides versus today on the show. Blyth Terrell? Yes, I am Blythe Terrell. I'm editor of the show.

Blythe Terrell
Wendy, we are here in the studio for a very important reason. I have a story for you. I came across this story about a year ago, actually, and I have not been able to get it out of my head. It is so weird. It is so much fun.

And it has everything, Wendy. Everything. Everything, yes. It's got dinosaurs. Ooh.

It's got nerd fights. It's got 18 hundreds. New York City. Politics. Whoa.

Should we get started? Yes. Okay. Yes. All right.

Wendy Zuckerman
Spanning time and space, where do we begin? Okay, Wendy. Imagine it is the 1870s, and we are in a room full of massive models of dinosaurs. These super cool, life size models. And you're walking among them.

Blythe Terrell
They're like, you know, they're towering over you. We've got a meat eater. We've got a plant eater. Maybe we've got, like, other prehistoric creatures. Mammoth and giant armadillos.

Elasmosaurus, one of those water creatures, you know, like. And these models, these gorgeous, super cool models are destined for this museum. It's the first time ever that most people will ever have seen a dinosaur, and it is going to be a complete game changer. People are going to like. It's going to blow people's minds.

Wendy Zuckerman
Wow.

Blythe Terrell
Okay. But, Wendy, here's why you have to imagine it, because before this museum ever had a chance to open, something happened. I would like to paint a little bit of a picture for you. So it's May 3, 1871. Mm hmm.

A group of dudes shows up. They've got sledgehammers. Okay. And these thugs bust in and just go absolutely nuts. They smash everything.

Every model, every life sized, half made dinosaur, every little tiny model of a future life sized dinosaur. What? Two smithereens? And then, Wendy. Once these thugs have smashed everything up, they take all the bits and pieces away, cart them off, and bury them, what?

Somewhere under Central park? So vindictive. What? Like, why, yes. Why, no.

This is a wild story. And actually, this is a story that has mesmerized people for 150 years. A paper wendy just came out on this last year, sort of turning out new stuff in this story. Oh, wow. About what might have happened and why and what maniac was behind this.

So that is what we're going to get into today. We're going to dig into this Dino museum mystery in this episode that I am calling the great dinosaur smash up. Doom Doom Doom of 1871 doo doo doo doo doo. We are gonna get into it. Shall we get into it after the break?

Wendy Zuckerman
Yes.

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Unidentified Speaker
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Wendy Zuckerman
All right. Welcome back. Today on the show, the great dino smash up of 1871. Blythe. We were supposed to have some awesome dinosaur museum.

Instead, we had what? We have dust. What happened? What happened? Yes.

Blythe Terrell
So New York City. Let's head there. Okay. New York City, 1850s, 1860s. Stuff is going down.

The city is growing, and they have just built a fancy new park called Central park. Now, I want to mention that one of the things they did to make this park is, like, kick people off the land. So, like, hundreds of black New Yorkers were displaced, in addition to other New Yorkers as well, to make the park. But New York has this park, and they are trying to figure out what to put in it. And at this time, Wendy, we are, like, just starting to creep up toward dinosaur mania.

Mmm. Aha. So again, what do we know about dinosaurs in the 1860s today? I mean, listen, we got tons of dinosaurs, tons of museums. You know, your average four year old can barely wipe their own butt, but they can tell you what a triceratops is, right?

I mean, it's like, dinosaurs are, like, part of our culture. Yes. In a way that they totally were not in this period of time. Right. Yet.

So what's going on is, like, over in Europe, they've dug up a few big fossils. They've got an iguanodon, they've got a megalosaurus, some stuff like that. Uh huh. Right. And in the US, actually, we've got our first, like, homegrown us dug up dinosaurs.

Dug up in New Jersey, actually. Okay. And so scientists are kind of just starting to piece these together to get a picture of, like, what a dinosaur might have looked like. It's so cool to, like, think about what it would be like to be doing that work, but. Okay, okay.

Wendy Zuckerman
So we've got a new park. We got new dinosaurs. So. Yes. And this is where a british guy called Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins enters our story.

Blythe Terrell
Yeah. Wendy, do you know the phrase bfd? No. Like, oh, we can use freaking. Like, big freaking deal is what BFD stands for, because in this story.

Wendy Zuckerman
Big deal. Big deal. In this story, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins is a big deal. Okay, okay. So let me tell you a little bit about this guy.

Blythe Terrell
He's an artist and a sculptor in the UK and who does tons of nature drawings. He's actually done drawings for, I don't know, a little someone named Charles Darwin. Maybe you've heard of him. Okay, okay. All right.

One historian actually wrote that quote. Hawkins almost single handedly ignited a popular interest in dinosaurs and other forms of prehistoric life that continues to the present day. The big thing Hawkins does is, in London, he designed and built these massive concrete models of dinosaurs. Right? And actually, they still exist today.

So we sent our producer, Michelle Dang, to check them out. Cool. There he is. I'm coming up on him. Ooh, there's a lot of them.

Michelle Dang
So, looking specifically at the iguanodon, I don't know. His hands are. His paws. Are his paws, or his claws are too big. He has no neck.

Unidentified Speaker
Wow. Cause this is the 18 hundreds. They don't know what dinosaurs look like. Right? He's got the body of a bear, but he has a very fantastic rump.

He's big. He's big. He's thick. It's like a bear combined with an alligator. It looks like.

Michelle Dang
It kind of looks like a godzilla. You know? It was. It was the best they could do. Best they could do.

Blythe Terrell
And this is actually when we hit a really big moment in our story, because, get this, Wendy, this guy, this artist, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, he just, like, happens to show up in New York City in 1868. Seriously? Like, just as they're trying to work out what to do with Central park, that's like. That's like dinosaur museum kismet. The best kind of kismet, I would say.

Right? So the people in charge of Central park, they get wind of this, and they're like, oh, this is great. Like, we want you to build us some dinosaurs. And thus, the plan, Wendy, for the paleozoic museum is born. Do do do do.

So the park organizers, the park planners who bring on Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, they basically roll out the red carpet for this guy, right? They are like, we're gonna pay you a bunch of money. And then they set him up in this massive building on the park property, on the park grounds called the Arsenal. It looks like a castle. Very, very thin windows.

Carl Mehling
I guess. So I went there with Carl Mayling, paleontologist. Did you notice the railing on the stairs? Oh, is it guns? Wow, that really completes the imagery.

How did I miss that? So do you think Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins walked up these stairs every day to go to work? I have no doubt. I mean, there's other ways in the building, but why would you choose a different one? If that's your way in, you gotta use the gun.

Blythe Terrell
Stairs. So you can imagine Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins here in this castle covered in guns. Yes. And he has got huge plans for this New York museum. Oh, what kind of plans?

There's a description of this, of this dinosaur display from this book called dinosaurs in the attic. And it says, waterhouse Hawkins, quote, planned to show the hadrosaurus being attacked by a carnivorous dinosaur laelapse, while two other laelaps feasted on the corpse of yet another hadrosword. Ooh. Ooh. This description goes on to say that nearby, the marine reptile Elasmosaurus would lurk in the shallow water of a pool.

Moving farther along the evolutionary ladder. Hawkins had planned for two giant armadillos, mastodons, giant sloths, and a giant elk. So he's like, going all out? Yeah, he's like, you want me to build dinosaurs? I'll do you one better.

Yeah, I got a whole scene of animals that didn't really coexist. Well, that's fine. Don't worry about that part. Would you like to see a picture of this vision? I would love to see a picture of this vision.

Okay, here it is. Oh, wow. Even today. Even today, this would. I mean, obviously, these dinosaurs look ridiculous.

And like, this one is like, oh, the hadrosaurus. Yes. Look at his legs, Wendy. He likes a thick dinosaur. We know this about him.

And again, this would have been the first time most New Yorkers would have seen anything like this. Right? So to get more on all this, I called up a historian who is going to be key to our story. Okay? Her name is Vicky Cools, and she's at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Can you imagine seeing that for the first time ever? That, like, can you imagine experiencing that? Oh, I think it would have been very exciting. I think it would have been the equivalent of somebody in the sixties and seventies going to Disneyland. It would have transported them into another world.

Here is Carl on this, too, our paleontologist. What do you think it would feel like to walk inside of this hall? Panic in the best way. I mean, I've heard. I don't know how apocryphal it is, but a lot of these really, really early exhibits, like the first mastodons that were mounted, which is just a mounted skeleton, you know, women would come in and swoon and pass out, and people were throwing up and, you know, like, no one had ever seen anything like this before.

Carl Mehling
It was probably shocking. I'm getting very sad that we don't have this today. I want to know what went wrong. Yes. All right.

Blythe Terrell
So the first thing that happens is you remember that beautiful building he was in, this arsenal that we talked about? Yes. Love it. Beautiful stairs. Yes, yes, yes.

Right. So Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, he gets moved from that beautiful space across the park to work in this shed instead. That takes us to a day that shall live in infamy. Wendy the great dinosaur smash up.

Unidentified Speaker
There was a gang of workmen with sledgehammers just went in and smashed everything up into small pieces.

Carl Mehling
It's so thoroughly pulverized that you wouldn't recognize it if you found it. This wasn't just some mindless vandalism. They were actually sent in. It is so bananas, even for the time. It's bizarre.

They could have said, you know, sorry, sorry, Mister Hawkins, or, get out of here, asshole. They could have said that. But destroying everything is bizarre and cruel.

Wendy Zuckerman
Yeah, yeah. So what? What happened? And why? Why?

Yeah, why? Yes. That is the question. Why? Oh, there's.

Blythe Terrell
Even before we get into the why, there's one thing that I find particularly potentially outrageous. One report that I saw said they might have actually not just smashed up the models. It's possible they smashed up some real prehistoric fossils at the same time, because there were bits of an elasmosaurus that had been loaned to Hawkins that have never been found again. What? Yeah.

Like, here, it's just. Here is Vicky. I mean, I don't know of anything else that compares to this in the history of museums, in the history of dinosaur discovery. And it was so final. So done.

So done. We don't know if Hawkins was there at the time. I did ask Vickie, like, God, how do you think. Like, how? Just, like, how do you think he would have reacted to this.

Unidentified Speaker
I think he would have been a combination of absolutely incandescent with rage because of the injustice, absolutely incensed and also devastated. You could argue it would have broken his heart. Okay, I want answers. Ok, we're going to get answers after the break. Woo.

Wendy Zuckerman
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Unidentified Speaker
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Wendy Zuckerman
Okay. Welcome back. Today on the show, the museum that wasn't where we left off. This artist, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, was creating the most beautiful dinosaur museum the world hath ever seen. Would have been amazing today.

We could have seen it at this moment, but instead, it doesn't exist, and we're finding out why. Yes, we are. Let's get back to it. Okay. Why would someone do this?

Blythe Terrell
Okay, so that is what our historian, Vicki, wanted to know, as well. And in a bunch of the stuff that she was seeing about, this one guy was getting blamed. His name is William Boss Tweed. Familiar? I can't say I have.

Wendy Zuckerman
I'm familiar. All right, well, that's good. That's why I'm here. Okay. All right, so New York City in the mid 18 hundreds is basically run by this group of corruption Democrats.

Okay? So nothing's changed, but I'm cheering. Okay. All right.

Blythe Terrell
And within this group, boss Tweed is at the top of the heat, okay? Owns a bunch of land. He's a politician, he was a state senator, and he's got his mitts in everything around town. And I think it's fair to say that, generally speaking, like, history has shown this guy to be, like, kind of a shady character, all right? He'd been accused of doing all kinds of stuff, like vote rigging, you know, extortion, bribery, the greatest hits of your 18 hundreds, mid 18 hundreds, New York politician.

And here is actually how Vicky describes boss Tweed. He was known for being a very, very big man and tall as well. So, I mean, he would have a very commanding presence. I mean, he wasn't just fat. He was huge.

Unidentified Speaker
And he surrounded himself by his, for want of a better word, flunkies who sort of did his bidding, and they became known as the tweed ring.

Blythe Terrell
Okay? When I think of Boss Tweed, I kind of imagined him as, like, you know, hey, here's a bag of cash, you know, say hi to your mother for me. Yeah. And the tweed ring is very suspicious. Like, if you need someone to smash up a shed full of dinosaurs, like, tweed ring's gonna help you out.

Yeah. Okay, boss. Okay, we got it. We got it. We're just gonna smash it to Smith Reeves.

Like, is that. Yeah. So, yeah, people were suspicious that boss Tweed was behind this dino smash up for a few reasons. Okay. Like, for one thing, before the smash up, Tweed had put some new people in charge of the park.

And these people also eventually, like, they canceled the museum. Oh, yeah. Like, they had kind of told Waterhouse Hawkins to back off, and they were like, actually, we don't think we want this paleozoic museum at all. So suspicious. Yeah, yeah.

Wendy Zuckerman
Interesting. Yeah. Huh. I mean, as far as motive for Tweed, people threw. Like, people have generally thrown a few of these around.

Blythe Terrell
There were comments at the time about. Oh, about how Tweed probably killed this. Cause he couldn't figure out how to make money off of it. Oh, right, right. Yeah.

Like, one of the books later written about this says, quote, tweed was angry because he could find no way to reap illegal profits and kickbacks from the museum's construction. Right. So petty. And also, Wendy, I'm a little offended at the idea of somebody, like, trying to make illegal money off of dinosaurs. That's what was the downfall of Jurassic park.

Oh, you're right. That's right. There's this other theory that Tweed was mad because after the museum was canceled, he'd gotten some bad press. Like, some science nerds said some stuff in the New York Times about him. So the bottom line here is that, like, for decades, you know, nerds have been like, yeah, Tweed.

The tweed ring. He's the one who's got blood on his hands, or they did this concrete dust or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the theory. But this made Vicky put on her true detective hat.

Wendy Zuckerman
Okay. Because Vicky came across this story while she's working on her PhD. She's actually studying art and how dinosaurs appear in art. Mm hmm. So she came across this dino smash up.

Unidentified Speaker
Yeah. And once she started noodling on it, like, to her, this idea, this tweet idea. Yeah. Like, things just didn't really add up. And the more I thought, this doesn't make sense.

So, therefore, what did happen? It became one of those things that sort of bothers you, a bit like an itch you need to scratch.

Blythe Terrell
So Wendy, Vicki scratched that itch. So she started looking into the theories for why Tweed might have done this, and she wasn't buying them, basically, she just didn't buy that he was that mad about this bad press over the museum. There was one dinky article on page five of the times, and it's like, tweed was under fire for a lot of other stuff, you know? So she was like, it just didn't make any sense to her, but she was kind of like, well, if it wasn't Tweed, then who was it? Yeah.

So Vicky's digging into all the sources she can find. I was beginning to get some tantalizing, just little clues. It was like pulling in lots of different threads. And she goes back to about the most boring document that I can think of, which is the meeting minutes of the Central park board. So it's like every time these.

Every time the people running the park get together, someone's taking notes. Okay. Well, I would say I was surprised how absolutely fascinating it was reading these minutes. I really was. I was absolutely hooked, and all my friends looked at me like I was mad.

So she starts going through these minutes. The big breakthrough for me was I was sitting in a cafe with a cup of coffee going through these, and there was very much aha. Yes. This aha moment. So, Wendy, Vicky knows that the date.

She knows the date these dinosaur models got all smashed up, right? Right. It's May 3, 1871, and she finds this entry in the minutes from the day before the dinosaur smash up. So on May 2, there's an entry of the minutes of a meeting in which the board decide it's time they got rid of the temporary workshop and that the old barn, shed, and structures at that place be removed under the direction of the treasurer, Henry Hilton. What?

Wendy Zuckerman
So, wait, what did she say? That the. In these boring meetings, it says that we're gonna get rid of this crappy shed that he's been moved into with all the structures in it. So that's, like, bureaucratic speak for the beautiful dinosaur models. Yeah.

And it's all under the direction not of boss twain rap, but of who? This Henry Hilton guy? Yeah. So, I mean, and this was like, you know, this was huge for her. I didn't leap around the place because I'm british, but I was pretty pleased.

Blythe Terrell
There's one more piece of evidence, by the way, in Vickie's favor, and it is that Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins himself blames Hilton directly in a New York Times article in 1872. Okay, yeah. Who is Henry Hilton? Who is Henry Hilton? Who is Henry Hilton?

So Henry Hilton is the treasurer of this board that is running the park, and he has this reputation already as somebody who's kind of a jerk, kind of an oddball, and also who doesn't have a ton of respect for artifacts. Henry Hilton is known for kind of going around Central park, like, bossing everybody around. Like, there's this one story of him coming across this statue made of bronze, and he's like, you know what? Statues aren't supposed to be bronze. They're supposed to be white, like marble or whatever.

And he tells the sculptor, like, you gotta paint the statue white. And the sculptor's like, no, like, it's a bronze statue. And so Hilton's like, no, he, like, gets somebody. He finds somebody else and gets somebody else to paint the statue white. He's got ideas.

He's a man with a plan. And instead, every statue needs to be white. Yeah. I mean, another weird thing that he does is they get this collection of whale bones, and he's like, we gotta paint these white. Yeah, right.

What? And he actually gets made fun of in the New York Times for being this guy with a can of white paint, like, running around painting everything white. And there's another clue here that I wanna mention. Yeah. Because Henry Hilton is also a supporter of a different museum that is in the works at this time.

It's the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Very famous, famously. Does exist, Wendy. Yes. Yeah.

And right next to Central park. And, of course, that's in the works. I mean, it's truly. If you go there. I was there the other day over the door.

It's, like, founded in 1869. And remember, we're talking about 1871, this happening. This is, like the exact same time that these two museums are potentially in the works. Oh, so. So you think conspiracy, like tinfoil hat time.

Wendy Zuckerman
Do you think the organizers of the American Natural History Museum smashed these dinosaurs?

Cause they were jealous? Cause they didn't want the competition? Well, I do know there were a lot of powerful people behind the American Museum of Natural History to go full tinfoil hat. I did actually reach out. I've reached out to the American Museum of Natural History on multiple occasions to ask them about this and have received radio silence so far.

Blythe Terrell
Oh, but couple things. We don't have any direct evidence that it was competition between the two museums that caused the dinosaur smash up. Okay. Vicky is not saying that, to be clear. So why does she think Hilton did it?

Yeah. Well, let me tell you. Let me tell you why Vickie thinks Hilton did it. So as much as Hawkins, our artist, did some important work, he also, like, sometimes kind of sucked. And there's this one story in particular that Vicki told me that I think kind of illustrates this.

He got into some nonsense back in the UK. He was actually a bigamist. He was married with two families. And there is some speculation that actually, it would be a good idea for him to get out of there, because I think one wife had found out about the other wife, and it was perhaps more tactical withdrawal.

Yeah. It was decades, by the way, that this woman did not know he had a second family. Anyway, it's a whole. I mean, it was easy back then, right? Yeah, no social media.

Exactly. Yeah. None of that suspicious Instagram content. Right, right. So it's not just being sneaky with wives.

Like, in general, Hawkins, he could be, like, pretty crusty. He had fallen out with paleontologists. Like he was fighting with scientists. Kind of thought he knew more than everybody else did. Kind of thought he was the smartest guy in the room.

So when it comes to Henry Hilton ordering the Dino smash up, here is what Vicky thinks happened. I actually think it was personal. I think that we saw Hilton was a strange character, incredibly arrogant, thought he knew best. But we also know now that Hawkins himself, he could also be incredibly arrogant. Incredibly arrogant.

Unidentified Speaker
If Hilton had tried to criticize Hawkins work, Hawkins was going to be having absolutely none of it. And so it seemed to me that that's where the real root of this happened. And, of course, we can't be witnesses to history, but I strongly suspect that there might well have been some quite fruity arguments or whatever between the two that might well have eventually triggered this. If you were making a film, you would have quite a good showdown, I think.

Wendy Zuckerman
So she just. Hubris. Smashed the dinosaurs? Is that what she's saying? Yeah, I mean, God creates man.

Blythe Terrell
Man creates dinosaurs. Man smashes man smashes dinosaurs.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. That's what she thinks. She's kind of like, you know, we don't have. We don't have, like, a.

We haven't found a ton of, like, direct evidence of that. But she's like, look, I know these were two jerks. I think they were on a collision course. Right? It is funny.

Wendy Zuckerman
Cause, like, our obsession as humans with wanting to, like, why? Why would you do this? Why would you smash it? And then how they, like, how history had kind of developed this theory about boss Tweed. Maybe he couldn't make enough illegal money from it, which seems like it was, like, a total bull motive.

And then with Hilton, I kind of love that Vicky was like, you know what the motivation was? They were both kind of assholes, and Hilton was a bigger asshole. There's no bigger. There's no bigger idea here. It's just, like, asshole themselves.

Blythe Terrell
So last year, Vicky and a colleague wrote this paper, like, laying this whole thing out, you know, this idea that, like, tweed wasn't involved at all, that Hilton was the ringleader of this whole. This whole disaster. And while Vicki wasn't the first person to id Hilton as the culprit, like, this paper was a big deal for Carl. I mean, he's been following this dino smash up for years, and he was just like, wow. They put in the time.

Carl Mehling
They dug so deep, they were obsessed. They found things that a lot of people missed. It's pretty amazing.

Blythe Terrell
And there's one more mystery to this story. So there's been actually conflicting reports of what happened to the smashed up bits of models. There were actually some claims that they were dumped in a lake or even that the dino model chunks were used to pave the paths of the park, which just feels like it would be such a dick move, like, smashing them up and putting them as rocks down people's feet for us to walk on. So Carl. This is the last thing I did with Carl.

He's done a lot of research on this, and he thinks he knows the right spot, like, the real deal for where the pieces are, if they exist in Central park. And it's this place called the mount. Oh, wait. So is it this hill? It's apparently this hill, yeah, I think most stories point to this.

Wendy Zuckerman
This is where the smashed dinosaurs lay. Yeah, this is the smashed dinosaur graveyard. I would love to see a piece of one of the models. I would love to see that. So we are walking up this hill.

Carl Mehling
So far, rocks and grass, they don't look. Does anything look suspicious to you? No. What, just the dinosaur head sticking out of the ground? No, all of it is just gone.

And there's no marker here. There's nothing. There's no sign that this was anything but a hill. But there's a whole story here. I know.

Blythe Terrell
I keep looking at the ground like I'm gonna see anything but cigarette butts. It's there. I don't know. There's probably something here I want there to be. I'm a dreamer.

Carl Mehling
I'm a romantic, but I'm also, like, a scientist addicted to accuracy. And those two worlds rarely cross over. No, they cross over all the time. What am I talking about? Carl, you know, he is hopeful that, like, maybe there is something left toe of a hadrosaur.

Blythe Terrell
Like, maybe one of the thugs took a souvenir home that day. So that there is stuff that might. Be out there 100%. It has to be there. Somebody's sequestered this stuff in their basement or in some frozen mountain out west.

Carl Mehling
Something. This story is not over if you. Have a dinosaur pore claw, something in your basement. Dinosaur crimes. Yes, my dinosaur crimes have been committed.

Blythe Terrell
Wendy. We cannot let it stand. We will not. We will not. We cannot.

Carl Mehling
Someone's gonna find something cool.

What if we wait here long enough some nerd's gonna tell us what happened here. That's all I want. I just wanna wait long enough for a nerd to tell me what happened. That's all we exist for.

Wendy Zuckerman
Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Wendy. That is science versus the great Dino smash up of 1871.

Hello, Ari. Introduce yourself. My name is Ari Natovich. I was an intern at science verses and I have been doing science writing ever since then. How many citations in this episode?

There are 49 citations in this episode. 49. People can find them in a link to the transcript which is in our show notes. Ari, what are you most excited about when it comes to this episode? I'm excited for the audience to get to see pictures of these weird, weird creatures and what they would have looked like.

Oh yeah. Which we're gonna put on our instagram, which is science versus. And also something, Ari, that you don't know about but we need your help with as well, is if you go onto our instagram, there is a survey that we want all of our listeners to fill out which has nothing to do with dinosaurs. It's about the last mysteries of sex, basically for a future episode. I have tried desperately to find scientific answers to some questions and I cannot.

And we need your help. And last time that we did a similar survey, we ended up getting it published. It was our survey on blue balls, which is now published in peer reviewed literature. So if you want to help science, totally anonymous survey, please please help us out. Ari, you should do it too.

Oh, you know I love to anonymously help science. Excellent. And I hope all of our listeners do too. It's on our Instagram. Science versus.

It's also the link in my TikTok, which is Wendyzukerman. And it'll be in the show notes. Thank you so much, Ari. Nice to hear from you. It's great to hear from you.

This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Ari Natovich, Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne, Rose Rimler and Joel Werner. Editing by Blythe and me. Fact checking by Erika Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby. Music written by Bobby Lord, Emma Munger.

So Wiley, boomi Hidaka, and Peter Leonard. Thank you so much to everyone that we spoke to for this episode, including professor Gowan Dawson, Robert Peck, Wendy Anthony and Jessica Liddon. A special thanks to Jack Weinstein, the Zuckerman family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you are listening on Spotify, then just tap the bell icon and you'll get notifications whenever new episodes come out. If you want to fill out our sex survey and you should do it, head to our instagram and just. There's a link in the bio. It's also in my TikTok at Wendy Zuckerberg, you could be a part of science. Go fill it out.

Wendy Zuckerberg, back to you next time.

Do you want me to tell you a New York anecdote to get us in the mood? Yeah, tell me a New York anecdote. Do. I'm in New York. I'm in New York.

Blythe Terrell
Have you missed it? I mean, there was a human turd on the way here. You know, I wasn't gonna tell you until we were on the mic, but I did leave that for you to help you find your way to the office. It was huge. You know, it was so huge.

And saving it up because I just wanted to get you the classic New York welcome. So it just wouldn't be right to welcome you with anything but a steaming pile of sidewalk feces.

The Great Dinosaur Smashup

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Episode Chapters

1: The Setup

2: The Discovery

3: The Vandalism

4: The Investigation

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