Episode Details

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Ken Lacovara joins Julian for a wide-ranging conversation tracing his entire career in paleontology, starting with his first discovery in New Jersey near Haddonfield and the story of Dryptosaurus. He walks through the paleo environments he's studied around the world, including major fieldwork in Argentina and Patagonia, and talks about Spinosaurus and the broader picture of how these ecosystems actually worked millions of years ago. Ken shares his best moment in the field, the story behind his biggest discovery, and even gets into something most people never think about: fossil insurance.

The conversation's centerpiece is the discovery and naming of Dreadnoughtus, one of the largest dinosaurs ever found, a process that Ken reveals actually took ten years from discovery to official naming. He traces his passion for paleontology back to childhood and credits Carl Sagan as a major influence on how he thinks about science and discovery. From there, Ken and Julian talk about lost dinosaurs, the surprising evolutionary link between whales and a tiny ancient creature called Pikaia, and what all of this tells us about Earth's climate legacy and the planet's actual age.

The episode closes on where Ken's work is headed next: joining Colossal, the de-extinction company, in an effort to help actively fix the planet, and what that mission could mean going forward.

@JulianDoreyDaily ​

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