I'm Steve Brusatte and I've been asked to play dinosaur in the dark I think
it's gonna be fun maybe a little bit weird let's see okay hmm alright the
first thing I can say this is not life-sized I can sense a long tail I can
sense a pretty long neck kind of arched upwards tiny little head four legs this
thing would have walked on all fours and it's got a pretty big God I think it has
to be what we call a sauropod dinosaur like a brontosaurus or a Diplodocus or a
Brachiosaurus one of those long necked big bellied plant-eating dinosaurs okay
ooh this is a different type i'm grabbing on to something it's like a fin
seems to be like a sail like a salad a sailboat or something and that seems to
be along the back of the animal yep there's the tail that means that's the
neck that's the head move tiny little arms not walking on his arms at all but
only walking on his hind legs so this would have to be a meat-eating dinosaur
and it must be one of these things that we call a spinosaur these meat-eaters
fish eaters actually that had these big cells on their back maybe for display or
maybe actually to help them swim a little bit in the water when they were
hunting fish so I'm gonna go with Spinosaurus on this one
ah okay I know what this is right away because it stabbed me so this is a
dinosaur that has a two rows of sharp plates on its back and each one ends
kind of at a point at the top so that means it has to be a stegosaur so
probably stegasaurus itself is you know one of the most iconic dinosaurs I can
tell that the the neck is not very long the heads pretty small and the heads
kind of pointed downwards so that's a Stegosaurus and if we go to the tail
yeah there's a bunch of spikes on the towel so the plates on the back and then
these sharp spikes on the tail those are stegosaur things they're
probably gonna use these spikes on the tail to defend itself from the the big
scary meat-eaters that were always trying to eat it for lunch oh my god I
mean big hind legs small little little smaller arms and actually decent-sized
arms they couldn't have walked on these things 1 2 3 4 claws so ooh that's not
gonna be a t-rex here X only had two claws on his hands it's not gonna be an
Allosaurus that only had three claws quite a long tail though you know a head
with some sharp teeth but feels like a porcupine or something here so I sense
we're in the realm of movie magic maybe here I might be wrong because I don't
know my monster movies as well as I should but I think there's something a
little bit Godzilla Yee about this one so I'm gonna go with
guardzilla and i hope i hope this doesn't turn out to be an actual real
dinosaur because that would also mean I think my paleontology credentials need
to be revoked
well this was all a little bit of fun I'm just glad I didn't completely
embarrass myself but it was fun but also I think there's an educational thing
here you know so many classrooms have toys like this and these are things that
although they might look simple it look even a little bit kitschy
its toys and books and films and television shows this is what gets so
many kids into science and so I think we need to encourage this and I think any
classroom where there's toys like this where kids have a little bit of time to
take these dinosaurs maybe even the occasional mammal and I'll forget about
the mammal and have these things battle each other and run around play with each
other this is how most of us scientists believe it or not got started thinking
about the mystery of what these things were like is real animals and
envisioning the world hundreds of millions of years ago when these
fantastic beasts actually lived on this very same planet that we live on now is
that right is that Godzilla good nice try