In een podcastaflevering voor Universiteit van Vlaanderen legt VUB-paleontoloog Koen Stein uit waarom paleontologen altijd dezelfde soorten dino's vinden.
Whenever you read or hear about dinosaur excavations, it’s almost always about a well-known species. Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex – big names with instantly recognisable skeletons. But evolution doesn’t work with fixed templates. So where are the dinosaurs without plates on their backs? Or the ones with just a single tiny spike? Surely those in-between forms must have existed too?
“They absolutely did,” says palaeontologist Koen Stein from the Free University of Brussels (VUB), “but you rarely hear about them, because they’re often obscure, scattered finds.”
Curious about the full story? In this episode of the University of Flanders podcast, Koen Stein explains how evolution really works – and why species names are sometimes more about marketing than science..