What was the biggest dinosaur ever? What sound did Tyrannosaurus Rex make?
Those are exactly the questions Professor Ben Garrod will be exploring when he takes the “most up-to-date dinosaur show in 66 million years” on the road. Ideal for anyone aged 5+, Ultimate Dinosaurs will take in dates including November 4 at Guildford’s Electric Theatre.
Those are exactly the questions Professor Ben Garrod will be exploring when he takes the “most up-to-date dinosaur show in 66 million years” on the road. Ideal for anyone aged 5+, Ultimate Dinosaurs will take in dates including November 4 at Guildford’s Electric Theatre.
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FunTranscript
00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Huge pleasure
00:05 this morning to be speaking to Dr Ben Garrod, who is bringing a fabulous sounding show,
00:10 Ultimate Dinosaurs, to a number of venues, particularly in our area of Guildford on November
00:15 the 4th. Now you were saying just now, a fascinating thing, that dinosaurs, part of our attraction
00:20 or fascination with dinosaurs, is that they represent a kind of fear. Explain that to
00:24 me.
00:25 Hi Phil, absolutely. So I think in some ways, well I'm often asked why kids especially are
00:31 so fascinated with dinosaurs, and I think, for me at least, it's a really safe way to
00:37 explore boundaries, and a lot of that is fear. I mean there aren't many things as scary as
00:43 a 20 tonne predatory T-Rex prowling towards you with teeth the size of bananas and a big
00:51 appetite. I mean that would scare me and you, let alone kids, but actually you're given
00:55 that safety net as a child by saying, already there's no chance you're going to bump into
00:59 a T-Rex in the middle of Guildford High Street because they're extinct. And suddenly, unlike
01:04 the monster that might live under their bed, or the thing that lives in the dark forest
01:08 at night, these things we know are extinct, these things we've told categorically they're
01:12 not around anymore, so it's almost a safe space to explore my fears as a child. These
01:17 things were terrifying, they were bloodthirsty, they were eating each other, but they're gone.
01:22 It's almost like a rite of passage in growing up, but obviously these things are fascinating
01:27 in themselves, and the non-surprising thing you're saying is just that we've barely scrunched
01:31 the tip, the surface of all the knowledge that we might one day hope to gain about dinosaurs.
01:37 Absolutely. So dinosaurs as a group, before the asteroid struck, were around for approximately
01:45 170 million years, and across that time we have around about a thousand species of dinosaur
01:52 that we've uncovered and scientifically described. And a thousand might sound a lot, but currently
01:57 there are millions of species alive on our planet right now. So if we think over 170
02:03 million years, how many species there must have been, we as you say, we have barely scratched
02:07 the surface, and that's just the species described. What about their behaviour? What about their
02:11 ecology? So how they lived, where they lived? There is so much more to learn and explore.
02:17 And that must be part of what drives you, the thought of all the things that you absolutely
02:21 don't know yet, but might one day. I think that drives most scientists, this sense
02:26 of what next, what's out there, what's more, what else can I uncover? I always tell kids,
02:32 and I mean this, that being a scientist is very much like being a detective. There's
02:35 always a mystery to solve or clues to unravel. I think many of us feel like big kids, but
02:41 that's what science is. It's constantly exploring the world around you and knowing that you'll
02:46 never know everything. And I think that's lovely.
02:48 But against that, you do have what sounds like a terrible frustration of unravelling
02:52 past assumptions from the past, where people have just got it wrong.
02:57 It's a frustration, but I understand where a lot of it came from. We only know as much
03:02 as we know at that time. So T-Rex, for example, when T-Rex was first discovered, we had no
03:07 concept that these animals were giant relatives of reptiles that were walking around hundreds
03:13 of millions of years ago. It was the equivalent of us finding Atlantis tomorrow in the middle
03:19 of the UK or aliens coming down. It was so unknown. And yet all they could do was piece
03:25 together those discoveries based on the assumptions they had. So a little bit further back, they
03:29 assumed they were Roman giants or monsters from the Ark. And so we've obviously moved
03:36 on from that. But equally, a hundred or so years ago, we put things like T-Rex together,
03:41 not quite as accurately as they could have been. But as technology is improving, as more
03:45 discoveries are being made, as collaborations are being forged, we're knowing more and more
03:50 about these animals every day. And that is fun. It's frustrating at times, but it is
03:53 fun too.
03:54 And it must also be fun to just take your infectious enthusiasm for this onto the stage.
04:00 Absolutely. So typically, I spend a lot of my time in front of undergraduate students.
04:03 I'm a university professor. But I do love going on stage with the kids and families
04:09 as well, adults as well, and sharing that passion for science to see so many young inquisitive
04:16 minds really engaging and having fun with science. The saddest thing I ever hear was
04:21 when people say, "I hated science as a kid. It was boring." It's the least boring thing
04:25 in the universe. It determines every single thing of every single moment of every single
04:30 day. That has to be inspiring. And if we're getting that wrong, we're doing it wrong.
04:34 I missed out on my own level of physics. I was bored to tears.
04:42 Yeah, and that reflects on us as scientists. We need to make it more engaging, more fun,
04:46 more open. And that's what, again, this show and so many others like this are doing to
04:50 promote kids getting into science and having fun. And this, yes, it's educational. Yes,
04:55 there's lots of information. It gives kids a free space to really explore their ideas.
05:00 And it's an important way of thinking that they're learning, isn't it?
05:03 Completely. So yes, I almost want to sneak the learning in while they're having fun for
05:07 a couple of hours. So it kind of works. Brilliant. Really lovely to speak to you, Ben. The nearest
05:12 day to us is November the 4th at Guildford's Electric Theatre, Ultimate Dinosaurs. Thank
05:19 you so much for your time. Great to speak to you.
05:21 You too. Thanks, Phil.
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