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Hello, and good morning, Steve. How are you doing today? Hello,

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Ero, I'm doing good. How
are you? Absolutely fantastic. I'll

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tell you get when you team up
with National Geographic Kids, you not only

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make me feel like a kid,
but you educate me as an adult because

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what you've got in this book here
is stuff nobody's ever talked about. I

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never even thought about this stuff in
this until right now. Well that's what

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we're excited about with the book because
it's fun. This book. I think

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it's engaging, but it's also educational. And my role on it was to

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check the facts, make sure the
science was right, and I think that

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something NAT GEO does uniquely well.
And I hope the book really does help

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people envision what it was like to
be back in the age of dinosaurs.

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You know, I had one of
those little kid moments when you were talking

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about you better like the taste of
insects, and I'm going, oh,

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come on, but it's the truth. I mean, you definitely had to

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get you had to get your protein
from somewhere. You did so you could

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hunt to try saratops if you want
to, probably posed statures, or you

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could eat a lot of insects when
you say that you have to go and

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do the research. Where where is
this information even located at? I mean,

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it can't be just on Google.
Well, you know, I'm a

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paleontologist and it's my job to study
dinosaurs and dig up dinosaurs and other fossils,

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kind of like a historian it's their
job to study human history. So

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for me and for other paleontologists,
we train for a long time. We

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get a lot of experience in collecting
and interpreting fossils. And the fossils are

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the clues from Earth history. These
are the dinosaur bones and teeth and skeletons

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that are preserved in rock that tell
us what the world used to be like

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and who the characters were in these
ancient worlds. And so there's not a

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single source of information on paleontology,
just like there isn't on history or any

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other field. But those of us
who study these things we build up a

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lot of specialist knowledge. And we
of course build up a lot of technical

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knowledge on things and databases and in
technical books, academic books and so on.

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But that stuff's not very accessible to
the public. So one of the

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things I love about books like How
to Survive in the Age of Dinosaurs and

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other books of National Geographic does is
that it brings that really highly technical information

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into the public realm in an engaging
and fun way. Well, you teach

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us that the figure known as the
human back then, it wasn't all about

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just living in a cave. You
have a way that it teaches us that

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we slept in trees. And then
what I love though, is on the

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next page you kind of teach us
on how to do it in this modern

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world. Yeah, that's what we
want people to think about as well.

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You know, the Age of Dinosaurs
was a long time ago, long before

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there were any humans on the planet. You know, we never did have

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to stare down at t Rex,
thankfully, but by thinking about what that

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might have been like and thinking about
how to survive in a world that was

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so old. The atmosphere was different, but the temperature was different, that

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the climate was different, that the
types of plants around were different. That

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having that thought process will help people
also, especially young people, understand the

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world around them today and understand that
the earth does change and that organisms have

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to deal with that. I have
to adapt to that. So I hope

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that by looking into the deep past, it gives people a greater appreciation for

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the present. You know, it's
kind of scary, is the fact that

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you say that humans were on that
food chain. It's like, what,

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But then when you sit back and
think about it, you're going, yeah,

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we definitely we weren't the dominant one
back then. No, I mean

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humans, our species has only been
around for a few hundred thousand years,

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and before then there were actually other
species of humans which were our cousins and

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ancestors, but they haven't been around
for that long. And you know,

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the age of dinosaurs was millions and
millions and millions of years ago, and

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we had mammal ancestors that lived with
the dinosaurs. You know, we had

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actual ancestors that did have to survive
underfoot of t rex And I think that's

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a fascinating thing to think about.
And of course those ancestors had to endure

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the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. So I think by looking back at

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the age of dinosaurs, we're not
just looking at an alien world, but

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we're looking at the roots of our
world today. We're looking at our deepest

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history. What's fascinating here is and
I would have never thought about this,

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but you actually give us the insight
on how we could have trained those dinosaurs.

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We you know, I mean movies. We ran away from them,

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we were in fear of them,
We didn't train them. But in your

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book you kind of show us the
way. It's funny, and I know

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this is going to strike some people
as really weird, and it's similar in

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some ways to the storyline and the
recent Jurassic World films where Chris Pratt's character

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is training, almost domesticating some of
these raptor dinosaurs. And that seems nuts,

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right of, like training of a
lasso raptor. But let's think about

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it. You know what's a dog. A dog is a wolf basically that

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humans thousands of years ago domesticated,
They made it docile, they turned it

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in turn it from something that was
a fierce predator of ours into a companion.

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And so more than twenty five times
humans have taken a wild animal and

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domesticated it. A chicken is another
example of that. And birds are actually

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dinosaurs. Birds evolved from dinosaurs.
They're part of the dinosaur family tree.

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The raptor dinosaurs were the ancestors of
today's birds. So when that fence,

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humans have already domesticated some dinosaurs.
So I think if we lived back in

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the Jurassic period, there would have
been dinosaurs around that we could have domesticated

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and used to our own advantage.
Dinosaurs weren't the only dangers that the human

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back then, the Neanderthals were facing. I mean I never even thought about

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this, and we deal with this
all the time even today. Volcanoes,

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yes, yes, and volcanoes are
nasty, I mean can be very destructive.

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You think some of the eruptions like
Mount Saint Helens or Pinatubo once that

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humans have witnessed very recently, people
die, you know, it destroys communities.

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But these volcanoes today are nothing compared
to some of the enormous megavolcanoes that

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once erupted. There were times when
there were volcanoes that were basically like Grand

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Canyon sized fissures in the earth that
opened up and spewed out rivers of lava

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for hundreds of thousands or even millions
of years. I mean imagine the destruction,

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and the destruction was vast. These
volcanoes were so powerful they released so

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much nasty gas from deep in the
earth that they poisoned the atmosphere. They

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led to climate change, and they
led to big extinctions were a huge percentage

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up so one of these extinctions,
up to ninety five percent of all species

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died because of these volcanoes. So
imagine and just be thankful that humans have

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never had to endure this. So
many of your pictures include these big,

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big jungles, and to me,
I look at these trees and I think

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it had to have been hot.
So I mean, really, were the

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temperatures cooler than what we are right
now since they say that we're in this

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this this hot period now, or
are we just pretty much hanging out with

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the same kind of you know,
vibe weather vibe. The temperatures today are

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quite different than they were during the
age of dinosaurs. On the whole,

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the age of dinosaurs was warmer than
today. There were no ice caps,

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there were no big glaciers, there
was more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,

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more greenhouse gas, and so in
general the world was much warmer. So

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that's interesting, right, because our
world is changing today. The climates are

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changing today. So by studying dinosaurs, by looking back into the past,

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we can actually understand what the world
was like when it was Warmer. That's

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valuable information for us to a lot
of the younger kids Generation Z as well

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as this new Alpha generation. They
can't survive without their internet. I mean,

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I can't imagine them stepping back into
a dinosaur world, you know what.

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There you go, see. I
don't think we didn't cover that in

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the book, you know, of
course, but some but you're right,

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are the the many different technologies and
trappings of modern society. If anything,

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might make us more vulnerable if we
went back in time and all of a

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sudden didn't have our phone to pull
out a map to see which route we

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should take to best move away from
the t rex nursery or whatever. You

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know. So I think we would
have to go back to nature. And

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that's something that a lot of us
are not used to. And that's a

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fun thing to think about. Oh
yeah, because I'm an RV and I

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depend you know, whatever camp ground, I'm going to a better internet so

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I can have, you know,
so I can do what I need to

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do with it with my internet.
I'm with you there. I mean,

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I'm not in our V but I
love camp but we camp out, you

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know a lot when we're doing field
work to dig up fossils. We're going

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to be going out to New Mexico
soon in a couple of weeks to do

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that, and we're really out in
the middle of nowhere. They're very bad

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reception, and at first it's always
weird, but you know, and I

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kind of like it when not having
all the emails to come in from the

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university, all the the aureaucratic stuff
I have to do when you're digging things

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up. Because I believe in this
theory called dear future reader. I'm a

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daily writer, so I always look
at it as being letters to somebody in

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the future. I'll never meet them. Do you feel that the dinosaurs have

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left you a message? Yeah,
they have through the fossil. Through the

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fossils, we find it's a message
that maybe they didn't intend to leave.

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I don't think anything ever intends to
become a fossil, but it's a message

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from the past. And it's the
same way I think archaeologists find clues from

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human history. It just tells us
what their world was like. It helps

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us see how the Earth has changed, how the Earth is a very old

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planet, how the Earth has been
through so much. It helps us really

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as paleontologists really are historians prehistorians,
and it just helps us understand the Earth.

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And that's what I love about beating
a paleontologist. Man, you've got

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to come back to this show anytime
in the future, Steve. The door

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is always going to be open for
you. Well, thank you, Ero,

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it's great. I love your enthusiasm. I think we play off each

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other well because we love It's so
cool. It's so fun to think about

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these things. I got a great
job being able to study dinosaurs, and

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I love talking about them. So
let's do it again, and vicariously we

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live through you, sir. You'd
be brilliant today. Okay, all right,

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thanks a lot. Cheers, grow