#565 - Trevor Valle

[0] The Joe Rogan experience Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night All day Trevor Valle Welcome, buddy How's it going, man?

[1] Good, man Sometimes when people sit down And, you know, you just start talking You're like, shit, shit, stop talking We've got to record Trevor's a paleontologist And explain to me the job site thing Like when someone's digging You have to They need a paleontologist Well, it all depends on, on really where you are.

[2] So here in the state of California, we have a law called sequa.

[3] It was started in 1970.

[4] And that mandates that any archaeological or paleontological stuff.

[5] So like dead bodies of, you know, early Californians or glassware all the way up to woolly mammoth bones or not woolly mammoth, but mammoth, saber tooth cats, stuff like that or even older, has to, you know, early Californians or glassware, all the way up to woolly mammoth bones, or not woolly mammoth, but mammoth, stuff like that or even older, has to, be mitigated.

[6] They have to be protected.

[7] So my job right now, I work for a company called SWCA, environmental consultants.

[8] We go out and we make sure that the glassware and the fossils and the bones and all that that get found by 40 -ton excavation machines when they're building new hotels in downtown.

[9] Wow.

[10] So yeah, I'm standing next to things that could very easily kill you.

[11] So when they do that, how they keep from fucking something up?

[12] Like when they're digging?

[13] in, is it just dumb luck?

[14] Oh, no, they, they fuck stuff up.

[15] That's how we find it.

[16] Because we don't have x -ray vision.

[17] I can't, like, look into the ground and go, hey, there's a whale there.

[18] So the bulldozers going by, the excavators, scooping stuff up.

[19] And you're just scrambling to check?

[20] Wow.

[21] It's like, it, it digs this big hole, dumps it over.

[22] I'm looking in the hole, and I'm looking over at the spoil pile where they're mounting everything up and trying to hop back and forth, and all of a sudden you hear this sickening crunch.

[23] And you're like, Oh, you wave everybody off and there's like this bone sticking out.

[24] You sweep it away.

[25] I'm like, oh, crap.

[26] It's a mammoth.

[27] Okay.

[28] And then I shut the shot.

[29] I shut the job site down.

[30] Did they get mad at you?

[31] Oh, yes.

[32] Really?

[33] Yeah.

[34] What's like the biggest thing you found and how pissed were they?

[35] I can't say exactly where, but somewhere here in Los Angeles, I was part of a team.

[36] So the job site I was working on, they found a whale.

[37] A whale?

[38] A fossil whale, a five million -year -old whale.

[39] What?

[40] Where there's no water right now.

[41] Holy shit.

[42] So think like downtown L .A., whale.

[43] Wow.

[44] That's how long?

[45] Five million years old?

[46] Yeah, about five million years old.

[47] Holy fuck.

[48] We were finding sharks' teeth and stuff like that hanging around.

[49] And the owner of the company was the owner of the construction company, the, I forgot what their name is, supervisor, the general contractor.

[50] uh he's like oh you're just finding teeth i'm like well you know where you find really big shark teeth you occasionally find their food and they ate whales he's like oh you won't about three weeks later oh yep look whale rib cage wow the whole rib cage yeah so how big is that five million year old whale the jacket's about three quarters the size of this table a jacket yeah um sorry i'm like thrown out terms we wrap uh fossils in plaster to protect it because we're taking the dirt out with them so we can prep it later so i'm gonna like take out hammers and chisels in about a month and try and work all of the bones out of this big block of dirt so we wrap plaster around it we call it plaster jacketing oh so we put all that on there and so yeah it's about three quarters of the size of this table i mean it's like 1920 ribs like three or four verts some other random bones we don't know what it is and what makes like some of it stay in the dirt and the rest of it deteriorate like what's the dumb luck just dumb luck yeah absolute dumb luck it's uh we get a lot of uh you know paleontology it's still a young science it's started in the 1800s in england pretty much before that yeah before that was natural philosophy natural philosophy wow so uh like in the 1860s when darwin released uh origin of the species his big book on evolution he was saying oh you know we don't have that many things in the fossil record because paleontology was still new Like three years later, they found Archaeopteryx, that big, that big lizard bird.

[51] Yeah.

[52] Archaeopteryx early bird.

[53] They found that.

[54] And then everyone went nuts.

[55] It's like, oh, crap, look, evolution, fossils.

[56] This is awesome.

[57] So it was this huge uptick in, in study.

[58] And now it's one of the, I mean, Rosson Friends was a paleontologist.

[59] How many people do you know saw Jurassic Park or 10 ,000 BC and all that?

[60] Paleontology were kind of getting into a, getting into its own sweliotology.

[61] wing again.

[62] It's kind of cool right now.

[63] We're kind of cool right now.

[64] We've got piercings and we're covered in tattoos.

[65] We're cool people.

[66] You could easily be like a chef somewhere or a comic.

[67] Well, I've seen that.

[68] I have a lot of visible tattoos.

[69] I'm wearing jeans today, but I've got them all over my legs too.

[70] And they're all like science, either science or geeky.

[71] Oh, cool.

[72] And I've seen chefs with like spatulas.

[73] Yeah.

[74] And mine are like fossil shark teeth and saber tooth cats.

[75] Yeah.

[76] What is Is that a turtle, the top one?

[77] Oh, it's a frog type thing?

[78] It's a horn lizard.

[79] Oh.

[80] Yeah, it's my favorite horn lizard.

[81] It's the regal horn lizard from the desert southwest.

[82] I'm a nerd, man. I'm a total, I'm...

[83] The world needs nerds.

[84] It's important.

[85] I love nerds.

[86] Legos, Transformers, lizards, you know...

[87] That's where you lost me. You lost me with Transformers.

[88] I'm sorry.

[89] I've never got that.

[90] Fucking goofy ass robots to turn in the cars.

[91] Fuck off.

[92] But the, uh, so when you find like a giant rib cage of a wheel, how do you know when to stop looking?

[93] How do you know, like, we found like five or six bones?

[94] How do you know, I think we got it all?

[95] When the bones run out, we stop and then we dig underneath.

[96] But sometimes when we dig underneath to like pop what we think is everything out, we find more.

[97] And then we have to go down.

[98] And then one jacket can turn into five.

[99] So do you have time constraints?

[100] Like when you press that red button, you shut it down.

[101] Nope.

[102] You could go on for years.

[103] Yeah, if it's big enough, yeah.

[104] Wow, do you ever worry about getting assassinated?

[105] Like, I would think, like, these fucking assholes that build parking structures, you know, they can be, seriously, man, they can be dicks.

[106] Do they pull you in a room with a cigar smoking asshole?

[107] No, they don't, they, we, we close down the site.

[108] Right.

[109] So they can't even get near us unless we let them.

[110] Wow.

[111] Yeah.

[112] I mean, at that, we limit it to foot traffic only, and we're the first ones in and the last one's out during the day, because we need to make sure.

[113] everyone else is gone so nothing happens to the because we're also we're safeguarding whatever it is we find what's like the most adamant than anybody's ever gotten with you about keeping a job site open um the other week i was uh working an archaeological site and a guy yelled at me because i was trying to salvage an 1800 sears catalog that was buried in sand and uh yeah he was getting kind of savage with me is you're stopping my guys for fucking piece of trash roar I'm like, I'm sorry, man. This is a datable catalog that has hand illustrated things in it and it's necessary.

[114] From the 1800s.

[115] He couldn't see that that's kind of cool?

[116] Nope.

[117] I was getting the way of his excavator.

[118] It's like, wow.

[119] So I closed that part of the site, five feet of the site for three hours.

[120] And he gave me live.

[121] You're holding up my guys.

[122] It's trash.

[123] Wow.

[124] Dude, chill, man. Trash from the 1800s.

[125] It's kind of cool, isn't it?

[126] It's like bottles and horseshoes and people have their own agenda.

[127] People have their own agenda.

[128] Everybody has their own agenda.

[129] I've always been fascinated by the idea of a fossil because when we started learning in school about the fossil record and started learning about fossils and now you look at something and it's actually not even the bone anymore.

[130] It's like the minerals have replaced the bone.

[131] Like I had a conversation with a friend of mine once about that.

[132] He had a Megalodon tooth on his desk.

[133] Yeah, you've got one right there.

[134] Yeah, I found some in L .A. too.

[135] Oh, really?

[136] Yeah.

[137] In L .A.?

[138] The whale side I was talking about.

[139] We actually found Megteeth before that.

[140] Whoa.

[141] That's what I'm saying is like, yeah, when you find big sharks like that, you can find their food.

[142] Yeah.

[143] Megalodon in downtown L .A. Is it Megalodon?

[144] Is that how you say it?

[145] Megalodon, Megalodon, your emphasis is on a different syllable.

[146] It doesn't seem thing.

[147] Oh, okay.

[148] Yeah.

[149] It's like nuclear and nuclear?

[150] No, that's, that's, that's spelled new clear.

[151] Don't you remember how Bush used to say?

[152] Oh, yeah.

[153] Nuclear.

[154] Nuclear bombs.

[155] It's like, was it California when Schwarzenegger used to say it?

[156] I'm a scientist, not a politician.

[157] The bones, or the teeth, rather, when you see them and they're all black, I was trying to tell them, I go, that's not really the tooth.

[158] I go, that's sort of the minerals of kind of taken over with.

[159] the tooth was.

[160] You're absolutely right.

[161] And he was like, no, it's fucking tooth.

[162] I'm like, dude, it used to be a tooth, but that's why it's black.

[163] How many black teeth do you have?

[164] He's like, it's just fucking old.

[165] I don't think it works like that.

[166] Mineralization, yeah.

[167] So all the calcium gets replaced by heavier minerals in the bone, the tooth, all that that's been, it's been replaced, it's been petrified, just like petrified wood.

[168] Still looks like wood.

[169] Right, right, right, right.

[170] You know, instead of weighing two pounds, it weighs 15.

[171] And it's a fucking rock.

[172] It's cool looking.

[173] Yeah.

[174] Petrified wood is the weirdest shit ever.

[175] But the, let me tell you, man, I used to be that kind of paleontologist, and then I started working at the tarpits, and then I went to Siberia with these woolly mammoths.

[176] They're not petrified.

[177] Yeah, this is what they were saying in the press thing I found so incredibly fascinating.

[178] Yeah.

[179] You're finding completely flash frozen animals.

[180] Yeah, there was skin, hair.

[181] Like, I played with its lips.

[182] Wow.

[183] It had undigested food in its stomach.

[184] Yeah, they'd be real clear when you say played with.

[185] Yeah, well, what are you doing?

[186] Yeah.

[187] Front mouth.

[188] But it's like, yeah, it had the whole mouth structure was still there.

[189] The lower lip, the root of the tongue.

[190] The root?

[191] Yeah.

[192] Like where it connects.

[193] Yeah, the base of the tongue where it connects in the back of the throat.

[194] It was like still in this animal.

[195] It was an animal.

[196] It wasn't bones.

[197] Yeah, it was creepy, man. Wow.

[198] I'd never dealt with something like that before.

[199] And how did it, how was it so well preserved?

[200] Did it fall into a glacier or something?

[201] We think the way that it was preserved, I mean, you'll see, you'll see in the show, we only kind of have half of a mammoth because the top half has been exposed to weathering and all that, but the bottom half stayed in frozen mud and permafrost.

[202] So it probably got trapped in either a mud bank, a pit, something like that, and got stuck, died, got buried in snow.

[203] The whole thing froze, and then maybe the back end of it got, eaten away it got scavenged dogs came on and went hey look free meat right you know that that kind of it's just it's crazy i did a podcast with a guy named randall carlson have you ever heard of him the name sounds familiar he's an expert in astroidal impacts and yeah yeah he was oh um he had one example of a woolly mammoth that died almost instantly and he believes that the impact of some sort of a large body like killed this thing and not just killed it but broke its back like upon impact like so just some massive impact like you know x amount thousands of years ago they think like 12 plus thousand years ago whoa yeah and he had uh he had actually he had photos of it right he had photos of the the woollen mammoth in its broken position and they had found it very similarly it was like very well preserved and uh sort of perma frozen Weird.

[204] I would think something falling from space and then falling from the sky at terminal velocity, if it's like a big rock, we do more than just break something's back.

[205] Well, it depends on, I guess, how close it is to the impact.

[206] Obviously, it just fucking killed everything really close to it.

[207] Oh, oh, like it impacted nearby.

[208] Okay.

[209] Yeah, and flattened forests.

[210] For some reason, I'm thinking, like, you know, a meteor comes out of the sky and, like, hits the mammoth exactly.

[211] Well, you know that site in Siberia, the Tungusku site.

[212] Oh, yeah.

[213] Yeah, that flattened all the trees and all.

[214] Flattened everything for like some insane amount of thousands of acres.

[215] And that was a meteor impact.

[216] In the 19, early 1900s, right?

[217] 1908 or something like that.

[218] Something almost on that.

[219] Yeah.

[220] Well, he believes that, you know, that one big one that we found is like a pittance in comparison to some, something that hit around 12 ,000 years ago.

[221] And they think there's pretty significant evidence all over Asia and Europe in the form of, uh, it's called Tritonite.

[222] Yeah, nanodiamonds.

[223] That's right.

[224] nuclear glass stuff now i remember his name yeah um there is there's there's there's evidence of that um he did put forth a pretty solid hypothesis but we're starting to find out we have uh everything didn't go extinct right at that moment though no he's saying they were about 60 % of all land mammals died off in that era that's a large that's a huge chunk yeah woolly mammoths kept going For how long?

[225] They were around until about 4 ,000 years ago.

[226] Whoa!

[227] Yeah, woolly mammoths were living on Wrangell Island in northeastern Siberia when the pyramids were being built in Egypt.

[228] Holy shit.

[229] And then we had pygmy mammoths on the, on the Channel Islands.

[230] You can cruise up to...

[231] The Channel Islands outside of L .A.?

[232] Yeah.

[233] Pigmy mammoths?

[234] Yeah, if you cruise up to the Natural History Museum at Santa Barbara.

[235] Yeah, they have pygmy mammoths.

[236] They're related to another mammoth species we had in North America called the Colombian mammoth.

[237] Wow.

[238] Yeah.

[239] So...

[240] When were they?

[241] there how long how recently um i think they went extinct about uh not for for some reason like six to eight thousand years ago is this sticking in my head yeah we had um 11 000 500 years ago we still had saber tooth cats roaming l a yeah yeah that's so crazy stuff man saber tooth cat is a weird fucking animal like what made that animal grow these huge fangs like that that was just in order to sink into the necks of its victims, right?

[242] I mean, that was entirely what it's for.

[243] They were basically knives.

[244] Yeah, quick, quick and easy death.

[245] And they say that, like, saber -toothed cats and even, you know, big cats that are alive today, their teeth can actually sense, like, where the jugular is.

[246] Their teeth can, like, as they sink in, they can feel heartbeats through their teeth.

[247] Well, I mean, you can, too.

[248] You can?

[249] Yeah, bite your wrist.

[250] I'm not going to do that.

[251] I know, but I'm just saying.

[252] Have somebody bite your wrist.

[253] not me. Um, and you can actually, you can feel the pulsation because in your mouth, yeah, the sensitivity of your teeth.

[254] Yeah.

[255] I mean, you, you, you know how your teeth hurt when you're eating something cold or drinking something?

[256] You've got nerve endings in it.

[257] Right, right, right, it makes sense.

[258] It's just, theirs may have a larger nerve ending that, uh, I'm not quite sure on cat, uh, cat tooth anatomy, but they may have just a larger nerve ending that allows them to feel, uh, easier.

[259] Did, so did you guys stumble upon any saber tooth cats?

[260] Uh, not in Siberia.

[261] No. No, I mean, when you're doing, like, job sites in L .A. I used to be the assistant lab supervisor at the LeBreya Tar Pits.

[262] I ran into cats all the time.

[263] I even dropped a skull of one on the floor accidentally.

[264] Oh, no. When I was cleaning it.

[265] It shattered?

[266] Yeah, I put it back together, kind of.

[267] With glue?

[268] Yeah.

[269] How long did that take?

[270] About six months.

[271] Fuck.

[272] Yeah.

[273] One slip, six months of work.

[274] Yeah.

[275] Oh, my God.

[276] If you ever talk to a paleontologist and they say they've never broken, damaged, or otherwise like impacted a bone they're lying those motherfuckers yeah we've all done it it happens and yeah it's you know it happens man yeah you drop shit all the time i mean i almost fell down an ice cliff in siberia and uh my friend got stuck uh repelling down one and stuck yeah you'll see yeah for how long um he wasn't stuck that long probably about 10 minutes but uh um so in the show you'll see Tim King, he's like my co -host, like co -adventurer buddy.

[277] We have to get down this ice cliff and it's a huge ice cliff.

[278] It's not like, you know, oh, we're kind of going down from like the top of, you know, the top of Pierce College down to the street.

[279] No, this is a mountain of ice that we're rappelling down.

[280] Dude, fuck ice cliffs.

[281] That's all I have to say.

[282] And yeah, the bank started eroding away and his rope jammed and he's dangling there and freaking out and panicking.

[283] And I'm like down at the bottom looking up going, why isn't he coming down?

[284] I'm trying to get him on radio and no one's, yeah, he got stuck.

[285] We, we both went into ice caves.

[286] He got lost.

[287] Oh, no. His light went out and he's got turned around and these caves were like minus 10 degrees.

[288] He doesn't have a backup light?

[289] No. What kind of shit is that?

[290] I don't know.

[291] How do you not have a backup light?

[292] I figured when you go into an ice cave, there's a few things you want to bring.

[293] One of them is a fucking backup light.

[294] Yeah, you'd think.

[295] Yeah.

[296] I mean, we, we were with a whole film crew, but for, you know, for narrative's sake, we, you know, it was, it was our expedition.

[297] He was getting me into Siberia and I was going to, you know, do biopsies and discover mammoths and things like that.

[298] So, like, going into an ice cave, you think, oh, no, I've got this great flashlight.

[299] It's in a Ziploc bag.

[300] It's this big bank of LEDs.

[301] I've got a little glow thing.

[302] I've got a camera that can see in the dark.

[303] And, but no, light goes out and you kind of panic a little.

[304] A little.

[305] Yeah.

[306] So you guys are there.

[307] You're uncovering, how many of these mammoths are you uncovering that are in such great condition?

[308] Well, we only got access to one, unfortunately.

[309] But finding a mammoth carcass is actually pretty rare.

[310] You can find, like, a chunk of a mammoth that may have some hair or tissue, like just falling out of a wall or something like that.

[311] More often than not, you find bones.

[312] finding an intact or even mostly intact carcass, a whole body, is a really rare event.

[313] And we were lucky enough to just to get access to one of the newest ones.

[314] Because we kept striking out.

[315] We're like, oh, we're going to go here and look for one.

[316] It's like, nope, didn't find it.

[317] Oh, well, there may be another one here.

[318] These tusk hunters, these guys that cut into the mountain just to find woolly mammoth tusks and sell them.

[319] Because elephant ivory is illegal.

[320] Mammoth ivory is not.

[321] because the animal's already dead.

[322] Oh, I see.

[323] So these guys, mammoth ivory is beautiful, too.

[324] It's got a weird, sort of a tan quality to it.

[325] Yeah, tan kind of like kind of almost chocolatey in some places.

[326] It's really pretty.

[327] People use it for things, right, for artwork and stuff.

[328] Yep, artwork, they carve it.

[329] So a single tusk, say you have a hundred pound tusk that is perfect quality.

[330] It's just like they pulled it out of an ice cliff.

[331] That thing uncut will be $40 ,000, $50 ,000.

[332] Whoa.

[333] Yeah, there was an episode on Life Below Zero where they were looking for mammoth tusks.

[334] They were looking for them in the side of a mountain or a hillside in Alaska.

[335] Are they that common?

[336] Yeah, they're pretty common, enough that there's an actual commodity and an entire, there's an entire economy based on it now.

[337] But if you find the tusk, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll find the body because a lot of times the body has rotted away.

[338] Right.

[339] Or unfortunately, in our case, if they find the tusk, they don't care about the body.

[340] All they want is the tusk.

[341] When you think, and being a paleontologist, and you think about the fossil record, how many holes are there in it from animals that just simply did not get fossilized?

[342] Oh, we've got gaps all over it.

[343] But, like, I mean, we've got 300, 400, 500 million -year -old bacterial fossils.

[344] Then we have stuff that died last week.

[345] I mean, we have, on a long enough timeline, we have everything.

[346] But there are spaces because nothing, not everything fossilized.

[347] Like for every discovery like that Hobbit man they found and Floriances that's 10 years ago already That's so weird.

[348] I was just reading that on Twitter this morning like in the car here.

[349] I'm like that's right.

[350] It's been 10 years since the weird Hobbit people There's still some people that try to dispute that but apparently they've been discredited the there was a guy was trying to say that they were actually some form of Down syndrome children and that's what that's what accounted for the deviation but it seems like the consensus is no you're dealing with a totally different species yeah i'm i'm not i'm not that up on my uh on my paleoanthro it's like i'm i'm kind of a hardcore paleontologist we don't dig people um or kind of like loners and like dead animals more than uh but what if you found a person i would freak out and call my boss oh you back up yeah it's like no i i don't know if you found like a heavy brown neanderthal looking motherfucker in there you know that would well that would rewrite right history and that would be cool to be part of it, but I'm actually not legally allowed to, because I'm a paleontologist, not an archaeologist.

[351] If I come across human remains, I stop the entire project.

[352] I call the coroner and my boss, and then like a certified archaeologist comes out.

[353] It's very, being an archaeologist and dealing with people and tribal remains and all that in California, very, very specific.

[354] And I know in Mexico City, they're constantly like digging for an apartment building or something like that and they find like some huge pyramid structure that's been covered in dirt for thousands of years that nobody knew existed yeah uh my co -host tim he's a mesoamerican archaeologist that's his deal um i don't know if he's on that on that project he's a teacher up north and north in norcal but it's yeah that's his thing so yeah i wish i knew more about the floriances uh thing because stuff like that's fascinating where did we come from that's another one that was only, I believe, 14 ,000 years ago it was alive, right?

[355] The, the, Floriances?

[356] Yeah, Floriances, I, yeah, I think so.

[357] Yeah, I think it was somewhere, it was, it was, it was recently enough that it was like one of those whoa moments, like, whoa.

[358] Right.

[359] There's a little person running around 14 ,000 years ago, three foot tall humans that were kind of chimp -like, but not really, and they walked like people did.

[360] Right.

[361] That's a mind -fuck, man. And then you've got, you know, like, Australopithecus, it's four and a half million years old.

[362] or Epithicus, it's like 4 .4, whatever the, whatever the current thing is.

[363] Yeah, but you're right, we do have gaps all over the place.

[364] And occasionally they fill them.

[365] And occasionally we fill them.

[366] Like, there's, we have a 55 million -year -old timeline just of horse evolution alone, from when they used to be dog -sized, tiny little, like, horse -like animals with multiple toes on their, on their feet, all the way up to your modern horse that's, like, huge single hoof we have every transitional stage for 55 million years including those Budweiser horses yeah yeah including the Clydesdales yeah what happened with them how they grow hair on their feet is that some asshole decided to grow like a poodle yeah it's just when you get into things like that like horse breeds cat breeds dog breeds and all that that's all human intervention that's all artificial selection um that's hey I like that horse because it's bigger it can carry more and it kind of looks more more noble.

[367] So I'm going to breed that with the biggest female I have and then take their kids and breed them with the second biggest.

[368] And you just start, you know, you just start building this genetic pyramid of things that you like.

[369] And you're, you're naturally selecting the traits you want and artificially selecting the traits you want and getting rid of the ones you don't.

[370] You don't like that color.

[371] I am only going to breed white horses.

[372] When you first started studying paleontology And you got into this subject, the subject of animals being someone actually actively changing the way an animal.

[373] That's got to be a very bizarre thing to try to conceptualize that someone took, say, like a wolf and turned it into a chihuahua.

[374] Like that, that is really the, that's where they came from, right?

[375] Yeah, yeah.

[376] And this is only recently discovered.

[377] That's like the last 50 ,000 years.

[378] God.

[379] Yeah.

[380] But it's only been recently proved.

[381] proven that they all came from wolves, correct?

[382] Oh, yeah, genetically.

[383] Yeah, because you can, you can take a wolf.

[384] And they're, so wolves and dogs, common ancestor.

[385] But then wolves, what more than likely happened was wolves have, you had kind of like this, this proto wolf.

[386] It was just Canis Lupus.

[387] It was your normal everyday wolf.

[388] But you have a group of them that, see, we didn't domesticate wolves.

[389] Wolves domesticated us.

[390] They came in closer for fire and for warmth, for food, for protection.

[391] So if you kind of think about it, we were like giving scraps to these dogs and getting them to come closer.

[392] But they're like, hey, I'm going to hang out with these people because they have a fire.

[393] I have food and I can bark and let them know when things are coming.

[394] So if you think about it, they actually domesticated us.

[395] Well, it was sort of a joint effort, no?

[396] Maybe.

[397] I occasionally like to knock humans down a couple of bags.

[398] Yeah, you seem to air on the side of the animals.

[399] Again, don't dig people.

[400] So say you have one, like small neighboring city has a big, a really big, big bad wolf.

[401] And you have the second biggest.

[402] So they mate.

[403] And then those puppies are bigger.

[404] And then, oh, well, we don't want them as furry.

[405] So only keep, only keep the shorter coat puppies.

[406] and then breed them and then yeah and then all of a sudden you're like oh i need really big dogs oh no i want a small dog that i can carry around because it's fashionable yeah it's weird man even all our food like do you think a banana you know your normal everyday you know cool organic banana that you get that's not that's not a banana is this weird green thing with seeds in it yeah it's yeah we've been doing it ever since we stopped being nomadic and stop the hunter gatherer lifestyle and started planting we've been changing our own everything yeah that's why people when they get angry about GMO foods like well everything you eat is it is modified yeah it's like do you mean lab GMO do you mean like gene spliced right mean what i what i call hip geneered or hippie engineering farming engineering it's like i'm going to make a honey crisp apple by grafting one brand of an apple or one breed of an apple to another one that's gmo yeah it's like we need to be very you know brief segue we need to be very clear on our labeling was it grown in a lab does it have fruit fly dna in it it's like does it glow in the dark no okay it's still gmo but it's not like some creepy you know mixing chemicals you know god apple well people just they love to throw that around like organic you know it's like i only eat organic like okay what what the fuck are you telling me define organic yeah what does that mean do you know what that means are you just saying a word that you think makes you look like a better person right right it's like oh gluten it's like do you know what gluten is yeah it's like do you know it's like do you really know what free range means or grass fred grass fed you know nor hormone uh no hormone uh my girlfriend she's uh you know very very you know healthy eating very fit and uh is getting me on the kick too and like teaches me this stuff like taught me how to read a label uh on food And I'm like, oh, holy crap, okay, that's cool.

[407] Yeah, it's good stuff.

[408] When you actually, when you take time to do the research, things, you know, things just kind of pop out.

[409] And it's, it's kind of nice that way when you have, because we have the internet and all that, it's easy, it's easy to do research, but it's also very easy to get thrown astray with, like, you know, I usually only read things that end in, like, dot edu .org.

[410] See, I'm the opposite.

[411] I go right to the creationist forum.

[412] I want to know how those motherfuckers are thinking.

[413] I know how they think.

[414] Have you seen my Twitter feed that nine times out of ten?

[415] All I'm doing is debating evolution with creationists.

[416] Do you really?

[417] Yeah.

[418] Oh, I need to link your Twitter.

[419] What's your Twitter?

[420] At tattoos and bones.

[421] Really?

[422] Yep.

[423] That's hilarious.

[424] I've been tweeting you like the last two days, man. Well, they're welcome to the club.

[425] There's a lot of fucking people out there on the internet.

[426] There's a lot of humans.

[427] Are there?

[428] Yeah.

[429] At tattoos and bones.

[430] A and D bones?

[431] One word?

[432] A and D. But yeah.

[433] like people are I get that a lot because I go to Siberia I I you know with with mammoth unearthed and I dig up a woolly mammoth carcass and I'm telling people about it and like occasionally I'll throw like a picture up on Twitter because we filmed it last year and it's just debuting on Sunday and then people are like oh well look you found you found that animal it's frozen it's proof that the world's only six thousand years old I'm like oh don't even start ha ha ha ha Yeah.

[434] Those are the best.

[435] Or there's gaps in the fossil record and, you know, things like that.

[436] And it's just like, please just do your research.

[437] Maybe you just need to talk to Kirk Cameron.

[438] You know, you're talking a lot of shit, but you don't really know until you sit down with Kirk Cameron.

[439] Have you ever seen his buddy that shows that banana is proof of evolution?

[440] That would be Ray Comfort.

[441] Yes, this dumb fuck who doesn't even understand that we changed the way bananas look.

[442] Like this guy, he calls a banana an atheist nightmare.

[443] Have you seen that video?

[444] It's beautiful, man. Yeah.

[445] I'm sorry, that video is beautiful.

[446] Oh, yeah, it's, and him and Dwayne Gish and the Gish Gallop where you're just, like, throwing a word salad at somebody.

[447] It's like, oh, well, evolution isn't true.

[448] It's like, dude, shut up.

[449] They're all just gay.

[450] That's what it is.

[451] That's fine, but embrace it.

[452] No, it's great.

[453] Nothing wrong with being gay.

[454] But I really believe that that's what's going on with most of those guys.

[455] The reason why they're so hog wild for Jesus.

[456] Like, Kirk Cameron, that's a gay man. I'm not a gay man, but I'm pretty good at spot.

[457] some things in this life.

[458] I know what a gay man looks like.

[459] I don't know what all gay men look like.

[460] I've been fooled before.

[461] But you know what I'm saying?

[462] It's like you put a fucking lizard outfit on a dog.

[463] I'm going to go, hmm, something's up with that lizard.

[464] What is this?

[465] That's him with the banana.

[466] Oh, yeah, there it is.

[467] Yeah, peeling it.

[468] Oh, wow, man. Coof bag.

[469] He doesn't need, but he never even bothered doing the work to understand that we used to have different looking fucking bananas.

[470] Yeah.

[471] Within, you know, within a written human record.

[472] Like, that ain't that long ago, stupid.

[473] Yeah, it's, and somebody brought, I think once somebody brought him an actual non, like, an original natural banana, he's like, what's that?

[474] It's a banana.

[475] You dumb fuck.

[476] Yeah, it's like, I'm sorry.

[477] Because he's done you that part of his brain is all just for fighting off cock, fighting off the love of the cock.

[478] So he puts that, just, I don't have any room for that.

[479] I can't do that kind of research.

[480] I'm busy fighting off the gay.

[481] So I'll just sit here with this banana.

[482] Just pontificate.

[483] I mean, he could, if that, if that, if that is in any way, shape, or form a hypothesis or true.

[484] It's my thesis.

[485] Why, why use such a phallic symbol?

[486] Why did he?

[487] Yeah.

[488] For all the same reasons.

[489] Oh, true.

[490] He doesn't understand what he's doing.

[491] Oh, it's drawn to it.

[492] It's the transference of, you know, into the symbol.

[493] So it's actually giving him power.

[494] It makes him feel comfortable.

[495] But the, it's such a ridiculous proposition that God made a food that we could hold.

[496] perfectly yeah what tomatoes are no good like why why can't you mean a fucking tomato is pretty easily held too like that's really stupid why isn't it tomato banana shaped which tomato that's true right yeah you've got cherry tomatoes cherries hot house grape you know all these different ones because we've you know modified though yeah we modified them we got involved but that's why i really like my job i go way before all that right i'm dealing with stuff that i can be people yeah or at least pre -people that had the knowledge to fuck with things yeah yeah you know they were still like wandering around going crap can we kill that big furry thing we don't know maybe we'll just wait until one dies and then butcher it and like drive off the smaller animals but it's stuff like that it's watching being able to be in an environment where this animal lived like i was in siberia it was it was cold it was fucking crazy and i'm in the land of these animals looking out over the wastelands like in a train and seeing nothing but reindeer herds and and the and the net and the net people the ninet people are reindeer herders yeah and they wear reindeer leather and they make their sleds and they use mammoth ivory for mammoth tusks they find to make the buckles for their reindeer sleds whoa and these are people that their culture has been doing this for 8 ,000 years so I'm walking with people who's direct relatives may have actually seen mammoths.

[497] Yeah, and there's this, there's this whole sequence in mammoth on earth where I'm hanging out within the net people drinking reindeer blood to like, you know, to sacrifice a reindeer to the ground so I can like find a mammoth because mammoths to them are bad juju.

[498] Mammoths are bad juju.

[499] Yeah, they have this, this really, see, I'm, I'm a scientist and it's like, I'm not a theist, I'm not an atheist, I'm, you know, I'm not even agnostic.

[500] I'm just a scientist.

[501] I need data.

[502] so here I am with these people for a week the nanette and I don't have my archaeologist anthropology buddy with me because he's he's on a different side of the planet at this point on the other side of Siberia still trying to find a mammoth I chase a lead going out here and that's the time I really kind of needed them because I was completely out of my element I'm with these very naturalistic shamanic animistic people and they're like well you know mammoths are bad luck.

[503] They're a sign of trouble.

[504] And they tell me off camera that they have this three -tiered world, that they have an upper god, the middle realm, and then the lower god.

[505] The upper god gifted the Nanette people, the reindeer.

[506] The lower god is too large and too powerful to use reindeer, so he uses mammoths as herd animals and to pull his sled.

[507] When a mammoth dies, the bones fall into the middle world.

[508] If the Nanette people find them, they have to sacrifice one of their reindeer back.

[509] Wow.

[510] So here I am surrounded by all these just very awesome, caring, hearty native people.

[511] And then they're, well, you know, we're going to have to sacrifice a reindeer in order for for you to find a mammoth because if you find one and pull any bones out, we have to, you know.

[512] So do you have to compensate them for their caribou when that happens?

[513] No, no. They did it.

[514] They were very welcoming.

[515] Like, I'm hanging out in their tent.

[516] But like if you find a mammoth and then they.

[517] have to sacrifice one of their reindeer or caribou.

[518] Oh, they killed the, they killed the caribou before that.

[519] But do you eat it or do they, do they have to sacrifice?

[520] They have to leave it in the ground?

[521] No, no, they ate it.

[522] Oh, okay.

[523] So it doesn't go to waste.

[524] It doesn't go to waste, but then they pass around the cup of blood and they make everybody drink.

[525] Oh.

[526] Including me. What does that taste like?

[527] Like you get punched in the mouth and, you know, you're swallowing blood.

[528] It's just, it's blood.

[529] Oh, okay.

[530] But the fact that I'm watching the animal get butchered in front of me. and it's not there this wouldn't be some like you know modern weird ritualistic thing with like people wearing like nitriol gloves and it's very clean no it's just like nope slit the animal open go throw the organs over there and then take this metal coffee cup with like a blue and pink daisy print on it dip it into the chest cavity whoa and pass it around hollow it's still steaming i mean the animal had just died 45 seconds ago did you touch have you ever touched the inside of one of those animals like right after they died oh yeah yeah yeah the blood was steaming like I'm holding this it's like coffee cup steaming full of blood and I'm just like and I had a head cold at the time I'm just like oh well if we'll cure the common cold why not and I just chug it did do anything to you no it kind of it felt like I was sucking on a whole bunch of like copper pennies what if you got a raging hard on would you would you immediately like call your friends and go, listen, I think I'm on to something.

[531] Or would you keep it to yourself?

[532] Hmm.

[533] I might keep it to myself.

[534] Really?

[535] How dare you?

[536] You're a scientist.

[537] You owe the world.

[538] No, I have to test it first.

[539] Okay, so you just keep...

[540] Trevor's just wandering around Russia with hard arms all the time.

[541] Like, what's he doing?

[542] Next up, St. Petersburg.

[543] Come here.

[544] I'm not sure.

[545] Still not convinced.

[546] Give me another gallon on that shit.

[547] I was totally doing like the Bill Hicks goat boy voice there for a moment.

[548] It's Very similar.

[549] I'm mammoth boy.

[550] That's the sound.

[551] So when you're finding these animals, you said there were some that existed 4 ,000 plus years ago.

[552] How old are the ones that you find?

[553] Like when you found this one that is essentially, like, you're finding the actual body of this thing, that you feel the tissue and the hairs on it.

[554] How old, how old was that animal?

[555] About 40 ,000 years old.

[556] Whoa.

[557] Yeah.

[558] So before humans had ever stepped foot on, on North America, you know, 10 ,000 years after native aboriginal people came to, came to Australia.

[559] Like, it's like, that's a stupid long amount of time.

[560] Yeah.

[561] We can't really get that into our brain, can we?

[562] No, no. Even, even as somebody that works in what we call deep time, like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm working a site right now that can be, you know, 30, 40 ,000 years old, but I just came from a site that was seven, eight million years old.

[563] Million, millions of years.

[564] Contents were in different places.

[565] Yeah, that's too far.

[566] I mean, it's like there was a land bridge between Asia and Alaska, the Bering Sea land bridge that these mammoths cruised over 40 ,000 years ago.

[567] Ice was different.

[568] 65 million years ago, India wasn't part of Asia.

[569] It hit it, causing a bunch of volcano.

[570] and a comet came in, an asteroid, and hit South America and wiped out the dinosaurs.

[571] Like, stuff's in different places, man. Yeah.

[572] It's like, like the rocks you hold, depending on where you are, some of them are four and five billion years old.

[573] They're as old as the Earth itself.

[574] They were formed when the solar system was forming.

[575] It's kind of messed up to think about.

[576] It's almost impossible.

[577] Yeah.

[578] As like a point of reference in your little pea brain, a little monkey brains.

[579] It's like you think trying to think of what absolute zero is.

[580] You know, it's like what true nothingness.

[581] The concept of zero is very difficult because everyone's like, oh, you know, I take the coffee coffee cup away.

[582] I have zero coffee.

[583] But think about that.

[584] Think about zero coffee cup.

[585] There's zero.

[586] There's none.

[587] It's like trying to remove an entirety of something.

[588] That is nothingness.

[589] Then go beyond that.

[590] Well, I was listening to a lecture on the Big Bang, where it was explaining the concept of a pre -Big Bang universe, which apparently they believe only existed for the amount of time that it takes light to get, like, across a photon, or across an atom, like, literally, like, an almost immeasurably short amount of time where there was no physics.

[591] Yeah, it was just, it was a singularity.

[592] it's just like yeah and this when this guy was trying to explain this i rewound it and played it back and forth like fucking four times in around i'm like oh i'm too stupid i'm too stupid to get that in like i'm trying to conceptualize the idea of this and then i'm like okay well what happened before that no one knows no no one knows i mean even even uh and that's that's a thing working working in a hard physical science like i do we have radiometric dating we have geology we have biology we have biology we have all this stuff that tells us how old this mammoth is what it did what it's related to we can do DNA mapping and all of that we can see the evolutionary paths of these animals but then you get into well how did life on earth start abiogenesis you know it's like whoa okay bacteria and RNA and lightning strikes and weird things you mean Jesus do you mean Jesus well no Jesus came after he was always here oh yeah he's like um it's his plan it's part of the lord's plan i would have to see empirical data on that oh wow how dare you so when you're finding these when you're finding these uh woolly malice is this just luck or does someone alert you to the fact they found one and then you go we had to use uh kind of kind of kind of the scary bit which is the tusc hunters themselves so so tusc hunting is legal kind of so there's x amount of permits that are released by the Russian government for people to go and look for tusks.

[593] One guy that we ran into, his name's Igor, of course.

[594] Of course.

[595] They're always named Igor.

[596] It's a cool name.

[597] Right.

[598] Um, and he was a cool, he was like the river baron.

[599] He had the biggest boat, the fastest boat and the biggest gun on the entire Yana river.

[600] So the biggest gun?

[601] Yeah.

[602] It's like a 50 caliber like a Barrett sniper rifle.

[603] Really?

[604] Yeah.

[605] Wow.

[606] Or it's, the fuck was he shooting.

[607] The Soviet version of it, which I think is the Draganov.

[608] but he's like he's the boss of that area he has a permit but there are other people in the area that don't have a tusk permit that try and go and poach tusks because they can sell them on the black market it's not more like the gray market you have to have a permit to get a tusso so if you're a guy and you live in Siberia and you're in your backyard and you're digging a hole and you find a tusk you can't just take that tusk nope huh now there's no such thing as land and mineral rights there.

[609] Oh, okay.

[610] So what do you do?

[611] You have to like pretend, oh, just thinking about maybe getting a tusk license, you know, whatever.

[612] You know, you have to pretend you don't have $100 ,000 worth of shit.

[613] Right.

[614] Or you find somebody that does have a permit or you sell it on the black market.

[615] But these people, since they go out, right when the snow starts to melt, right when the permafrost starts to get weaker, they go in and they drill in and dig into these cliff sides.

[616] they know where all of the big fines are first.

[617] So Tim and I had to get in well with this kind of weird gray hat semi -mob scene of Tusk hunters.

[618] And here's like two American dudes walking in.

[619] You know, one's dressed as Indiana Jones.

[620] One's dressed as a biker coming in going, hey, do you know where any mammoths are?

[621] And they're looking at it's like, yeah, you're wealthy American dude.

[622] we don't really want to tell you because you're going to take the tusks away and this is our entire commodity.

[623] So we had to really be nice to them and really be very, very deferring because we heard a few times that some of these tusk bosses, the big guys kind of like Igor, there was a group that went in to poach him.

[624] One got sent home in a box.

[625] They killed him.

[626] Yeah.

[627] Because he was poaching.

[628] Yeah.

[629] Whoa.

[630] In like one dude's area.

[631] So we're dealing with serious people.

[632] Like we're walking through parts of, you know, nowhere'sville, northeastern Siberia, past, you know, cars that, like, with bullet holes in them.

[633] And this is like, it's not the Wild West.

[634] It's the Wild East.

[635] It's, laws don't really apply in some of the places we were in.

[636] So it's just a completely different animal.

[637] Oh, yeah.

[638] It's, it was something I'd never, I was not prepared for.

[639] So how long does the politics of, like, getting in with these people?

[640] How long does that take for them to trust you to the point where they're going to lead you to these stuff?

[641] Well, we would talk, you know, we would have people talk on our behalf for a couple days.

[642] And then we would go meet them.

[643] We'd kind of try and butter them up.

[644] Bring them vodka or some shit?

[645] Yeah.

[646] No, no, no, better.

[647] We brought them like Jamison and things like that.

[648] But don't say better to them.

[649] No. Better than vodka?

[650] There you.

[651] No, man, you break out, you break out a bottle of Jamison Private Reserve.

[652] They go nuts.

[653] Really?

[654] They love Jameson.

[655] What about Jack Daniels?

[656] What about a good goddamn American beverage?

[657] No?

[658] What the fuck is this?

[659] No, we tried, man. How about makers?

[660] Makers would have been good.

[661] I didn't have, there wasn't any at the duty -free shop, because we, I flew from L .A. to London, to Moscow, and that was, so I flew from L .A. to London, spent 19 hours in London, gearing up, and hit a duty -free shop at Heathrow before we got to Moscow.

[662] So then we flew to Moscow.

[663] Then we flew something like, occur.

[664] I think 10 time zones to this tiny little town called Yakutsk and once you're there all bets are off because yeah trying to find anything there that remotely resembles something American is I was not ready for this wow it was it was really weird man so do you speak Russian or read Russian no I I kind of started uh kind of started faking it to the point I was there for six weeks it got to the point where you know uh you know like like uh thank you spasibo you know stuff like that just kind of started to happen i did however go on an adventure by myself no production assistance no director nothing trying to track down a pharmacy because i had like an ear infection and i'm like okay so i'm on google trying to learn the words and then trying it's like apthaca aphtica and people are like oh the dud dude i don't understand russian so i'm like in a weird combination of google translate maps on on my phone and then starting to recognize how the letters work i found a pharmacy i was really proud of myself how long did that take about 45 minutes and it was right around the corner from the hotel so i went in like four different opposite directions and then yeah and then you have to find ear infection medication try asking someone that doesn't speak English for hydrogen peroxide yeah what does it look like in Russian too they have that wacky language yeah it's Cyrillic it's all like like the upside down cues and all weird stuff it it's it was it was an adventure man it was absolutely an adventure I and some of them I wish were in the show but the stuff that's in the show it's gonna blow your mind we're in ice caves we're we're climbing down cliffs we're touching physically touching the skin of a woolly mammoth that's like 40 ,000 years old.

[665] I'm like, I'm showing the trunk, the tusk.

[666] I'm doing a full biological study on this thing with tissue and blood.

[667] What's the environment that you're doing this in?

[668] Is it outside?

[669] Outside of a permafrost cave in a truck.

[670] And so do you cover this thing when you find it?

[671] Do you, like, how do you try, do you attempt to mitigate the damage that the sun and the, The one we finally got our hands on was discovered a few months before, and it was secreted away in this weird, it was like a permafrost fish locker.

[672] It's this natural cave that they store their food in.

[673] So we were the first Westerners to see this thing, because it like, it kind of made a news, a news splash.

[674] It was like, the bleeding mammoth.

[675] And everyone's like, oh, whoa, cool.

[676] You know, there's a woly mammoth.

[677] It's leaking blood.

[678] And I'm like, I need, if, if we're in Siberia, I need to see this mammoth because this is like the newest and baddest mammoth.

[679] I've got to see this thing.

[680] So we go and we track it down and we go into this, this permafrost fish locker.

[681] And you'll see in the show, we're kind of like walking along and then we turn.

[682] And there's this mammoth -shaped snowball.

[683] It's covered in snow and ice.

[684] But we're the first, again, the first.

[685] first westerners because this had been found by a small group of people in this tiny little fishing village called kazachi no one had seen it yet so it takes they find it and they find it they store it and hide it away and then how does the word finally get to the paleontologist in los angeles um through funny enough through google and twitter and things like that there's this big if you search back to last may no is may of uh may of 2012 No, it was May of 2013.

[686] There was the bleeding mammoth that was found.

[687] It's the Leikovsky mammoth.

[688] The Russians that found it, one of them is a paleontologist for the Northeastern Federal University.

[689] There it is.

[690] Yeah.

[691] Check it out.

[692] That's the actual.

[693] That's the bleeding mammoth that was found way back then.

[694] Well, that looks like a rock.

[695] Right?

[696] But you're actually looking at the front left leg.

[697] and so it's totally frozen it's like this rock rock hard permafrost ball at this point so you've got the front left leg and you've got the scapula so the very up underneath the Discovery News logo there that's the that's where the mouth is whoa but it's all you know it's completely frozen in this little thing and bleeding in what way is they found this goo leaking out of it or leaking out near it.

[698] And it took the world by storm briefly.

[699] And we're like, okay, this is weird.

[700] I'm going to Siberia.

[701] I got to check this mammoth out.

[702] It's got to be there.

[703] It didn't just like show up.

[704] People go, hey, look, we've got liquid blood.

[705] Ha ha.

[706] We've got this mammoth.

[707] And then they make it disappear.

[708] It's like, screw that, man. I need to find this mammoth.

[709] If I'm kind of striking out finding other mammoths, I've got to at least get my hands on one.

[710] And we managed to track that mammoth down.

[711] And I brought on a whole slew.

[712] just this portable lab of an endoscope, a biological microscope.

[713] I was going to see if it has blood.

[714] Look at the trunk tissue.

[715] Look at all this stuff and like start this mini autopsy on a mammoth body.

[716] Wow.

[717] It was a trip.

[718] I mean, you'll see.

[719] It's really intense, man. What's your feeling on these people that want to clone something like this?

[720] Oh, yeah.

[721] This is a real issue that we're heading into in 2014 where we actually have the capability of doing something like this where they can take some DNA from some sort of a living dinosaur or a living elephant rather and figure out a way to create a mammoth this is possible yeah people have been asking me this um a lot uh recently especially since we're you know doing all the press for for mammoth on earth here they keep saying it's like oh it's like clone mammoth clone mammoth i i don't believe yes we can probably do it it'll probably take longer than we think, maybe like 50, 60 years.

[722] It's not like a 5 -10 year.

[723] Oh, from now?

[724] From now?

[725] Yeah.

[726] The way as technology advances.

[727] Right.

[728] I mean, there was a Korean geneticist team on site while we were filming in case, because they were also looking after, looking for that mammoth.

[729] And I actually became really good friends with a couple of them.

[730] And we were talking at length and there, it's like, yeah, it's like maybe 50, 60 years away from right now.

[731] But the problem is, at least in my personal and mildly, slightly professional view, it's unethical.

[732] Why bring back an animal just to kill it?

[733] Why would you kill it?

[734] It would eventually die.

[735] It's the, it would not have a mammoth life.

[736] The mammoth step, the environment that it would live in, is extinct.

[737] All other members of its species and genus, for that matter, are extinct.

[738] you could say that it was naturally selected to be to be extinct it was gone it didn't survive be it get hunted by humans or whatever the prevailing theory is right now that animal is no longer here if we bring back one solitary individual how lonely how is that ethical we can figure out social aspects of of mammoths by watching their direct cousins the elephant you put a rug on an elephant there you go there's your woolly mammoth couldn't we have like an island call it like paleolithic park and have like a bunch of cloned mammoths wandering around and we have a nice place we could take a family and see look honey there's the mammoth let me tell you man i mean i've been i've helped uh design like use paleontology and design like life size puppet saber tooth cats and and stuff like that yeah i would love to see a dinosaur or a mammoth or a saber Eopteryx, you know, some amazing, awesome fossil, but these things are gone.

[739] And it's more than just that the animal is no longer living.

[740] The environment it lived in is no longer there.

[741] We're not exactly sure what it ate.

[742] If we can pin down the exact grasses and everything that a woolly mammoth ate, what if they're extinct in the wild now?

[743] We can't feed it what it would normally eat.

[744] Make it eat fucking TV dinners.

[745] Who gives a shit if I could look at the damn thing?

[746] You can.

[747] There's frozen carcasses that, pop out of the ice go check them out man i i completely see your point i totally understand i'm only fucking around but no worries but the reality is i if someone cloned a fucking dinosaur i'm there oh yeah i'm i'm there absolutely i bells on i want to see that shit i want to be that that cliche moment of dr grant Jurassic park like falling out of the jeep and like knocking his sunglasses off and going like holy crap that's a brachiosaur um i want to see the t -rex steal the goat from the rope right right i want to be there When it chokes that thing down.

[748] But just have a bunch of Marines standing by with giant guns.

[749] Bitch, you move.

[750] You make one bad move.

[751] It's over.

[752] Dinosaur, fuckface.

[753] The idea of that would be awesome.

[754] The idea of it.

[755] The idea of it.

[756] I mean, when it comes to a T -Rex, you're dealing with a 40 -foot -long animal that had 10 ,000 plus pounds of force per bite.

[757] And Jesus wrote it around 6 ,000 years ago.

[758] Yeah, 6 ,000 years ago.

[759] It was, I think it was a last, yeah, 6 ,000 years ago with Thursday.

[760] Funny, I think it was like Thursday, October 23rd.

[761] Ha, 6 ,000 years ago.

[762] It's like, it's the anniversary of Jesus writing the velociraptor from Galilee right now.

[763] It seems inevitable, though, that someone's going to do something along these lines.

[764] I agree with you that it's probably not ethical to clone a mammoth.

[765] But when you start collecting things like blood, you have, like, like, real genetic tissue.

[766] uh if there was any blood left we would there wasn't any blood no the problem with the problem with uh the same thing that would that happens to a mammoth is the same thing if i put like you know myself in permafrost or you anybody it doesn't matter how fit you are how of uh adapted to the environment you are anything like that when a mammal cell freezes all the liquid inside freezes and the uh the ice crystals form and shatter the cell wall leaking out of the all of the genetic material into this soup so you need an intact cell with a complete nucleus in order to even begin thinking about cloning really yeah it's fascinating so you we have the woolly mammoth genome but we don't have the genetic information from a single individual to actually begin cloning oh so that's why it would be like 40 or 50 years now because then we technology is just not quite at that level yet and we don't have the evidence yet we don't have the physical requirement of mammoth DNA.

[767] So when you're finding this goo, what exactly is it?

[768] Is this exploded cells?

[769] Yeah, it's exploded cells.

[770] It's like it's like blood, like hemoglobin stained tissue and melted.

[771] It's, the same thing that would happen if you put a steak in a deep freezer for a year and then take it out and let it sit on your counter for overnight.

[772] It just turns into this just cellular goo.

[773] it's a steak in a deep freezer turns in a goo what do you mean yeah if you let it's after you thaw it out it just starts to decompose after how long are you talking about uh usually like you know a couple days start you know just leave it out room temperature it's kind of bad but isn't that's different than a regular piece of meat that you leave out in room temperature no no no it's well yeah actually it is if once once the cells once they get cold enough to burst there still be cohesion you'll still have have like muscle tissue but it'll start to leak out and be kind of gross and it kind of starts to well at least when it comes to the man it starts to smell like a barnyard a really bad one because after all the ice so we're we're checking it every every couple minutes and every hour or so with a thermal scanner and at first it was all nice and solid and hard and we drilled a couple holes through the tissue when it was hard in order to take core samples and look at muscle tissue and then we noticed this goo which is a combination of cellular material and water you know melting ice mud what's left of blood and just gross starting to seep out of the holes and yeah it's it's kind of disgusting it's pretty wild though you're actually getting a liquid from this animal that was exist that existed 40 000 years ago yeah wow it's it kind of messes with your head even it was we filmed it last year and it's just it's airing on sunday and just the thing about it's like no this time last year i was still recovering from like poking a mammoth recovering yeah just mentally recover oh i see yeah it's just like it's like no i didn't get some like mammoth superflu or anything like which would be cool that is something to think about right like is it possible that bacteria or some diseases could survive bacterian viroi and all that they're much heartier than a human cell is i know that trick and there's some there's some there's some strains of trichinosis that can survive a deep freeze.

[774] They say that some strains of trichinosis you can get from something that's been frozen for like years.

[775] If you take a piece of meat from an animal that has trichinosis and freeze it for a couple years thaw it out and cook it.

[776] If you don't cook it to 160 degrees, you can get trichinosis.

[777] Yeah.

[778] Which is insane.

[779] That means those larvae survived deep freeze for years.

[780] Yeah.

[781] What the fuck man?

[782] It's there, it's, that's that's evolution right there that's like nope you know we're gonna we're gonna hang out and and be hearty and just you know the the weaker ones die nature's scary dude yeah nature is totally scary that's why it's scary to clone a mammoth right because who knows what you would what kind of fucking crazy new plague i think think uh what is a Jurassic park two the T -Rex goes and destroys San Diego I mean all of a sudden we have like a rampant woolly mammoth like tearing apart you know downtown soul I mean they'd shoot that shit so quick yeah true it's just I mean they're big 14 light that fucker up like a Christmas tree and then we'd all have mammoth steaks I wanted to actually try a piece of the meat from the mammoth to eat yeah they wouldn't let me you really wanted to eat it really wanted to try it yeah why would you do that Why not?

[783] Because it's 40 ,000 years old, and you could just have a sandwich instead.

[784] I'm already, I'm already doing the once -in -a -lifetime thing.

[785] Right, but why do people have to, everybody has to fucking...

[786] I have to take it into my body.

[787] Well, at, come on, I already, at this point, it's, I'd had, you know, I've been finding mammoth bones.

[788] I've been drinking reindeer blood.

[789] Right.

[790] Come on.

[791] You're a barbarian at this point.

[792] Yeah.

[793] Might as well be wearing, like, leather underwear.

[794] Yeah.

[795] No, I still, the parka actually still smells like mammoth.

[796] now that I now that you mentioned that really yeah do I wouldn't wash it either why would you wash it I kind of don't well you don't want to it's it smells like an animal that lived 40 ,000 years ago right right pretty damn cool right wow so is this the ultimate for you to be able to find this this animal this really mammoth carcass it it really was I mean it was an absolute dream come to I mean you'll you'll you'll see the show and it's this Sunday night it airs yeah it's so it airs it's it headlines National the National Geographic I can already hear it in my head.

[797] It's like, don't mess up the name.

[798] It's like, I'm bad at my own press.

[799] It airs Sunday night, 8 p .m. Eastern Pacific as it headlines the National Geographic Channel's Day of Expedition Marathon.

[800] It's, yeah, it's a two -hour documentary and yeah, Nat Geo Channel Sunday the 26th at 8 p .m. And if you're in LA, though, you can see it two days early.

[801] Why is that?

[802] Because I'm throwing a party at my friend's bar oh shit a mammoth party what day is this uh Friday night 8 30 damn it are you gonna be here fucker oh really bummer man yeah I would love to come to your mammoth party yeah it's we're gonna put it up on the it's my friend's bar it's in east hollywood it's the faculty and powerful plug for the factory faculty powerful plug for the faculty there and and and the preview party east LA East Hollywood East Hollywood yeah is that technically like Silver Lake Is that the new way of saying Silver Lake?

[803] No, we're...

[804] East Hollywood.

[805] We're in this weird little...

[806] It's this bizarre place where we're not quite Los Felis.

[807] We're not quite Silver Lake in Echo Park, and we're not quite Koreatown.

[808] You should just run out there and buy real estate for East Hollywood right now.

[809] Just because the fact that you've said that it's kind of like this cool new spot, people are like, that's the new place.

[810] And the fucking mad scramble to buy real estate in East Hollywood.

[811] Yeah, I've been there for three years now.

[812] You can create a market.

[813] But it's weirdly enough, it's already starting to do it.

[814] Of course.

[815] Because it's like there's the hip, like, you know, craft beer wine place that my friend's got.

[816] And then like the boutique ice cream, the tattoo shop, the CrossFit place.

[817] You know, it's just like in this one corner.

[818] I love that area.

[819] Yeah.

[820] I love Los Felis.

[821] I love Silver Lake.

[822] I don't live there, but my buddy Duncan does.

[823] And whenever I go to visit him, we walk around his neighborhood.

[824] I'm like, this is the weirdest part of L .A. Yeah.

[825] It's like, this is Melrose in Vermont.

[826] Melrose in Vermont, Melrose and Heliotrope right there.

[827] Yeah, it's a great, weird little, like, it's like boutique antique shop.

[828] Mm -hmm.

[829] Really?

[830] It's like three blocks down, somebody just got shot.

[831] This is bizarre.

[832] Yeah.

[833] So, yeah, it's crazy.

[834] Oh, that sucks, man. That'd be rad if you could have come.

[835] Oh, cannot do, my friend.

[836] It does sound pretty badass, though.

[837] Bearline mammoth?

[838] Now that you've done this, what's next for you?

[839] I mean, this is essentially the ultimate for you?

[840] Uh, yeah.

[841] I, I mean, I found a woolly mammoth.

[842] Well, one, I went to northeastern Siberia where very few American paleontologists ever go.

[843] I'm one of the few people to actually touch and interact with a actual, like, woolly mammoth carcass.

[844] It's kind of, it is, right now it is the ultimate for me, but man, I don't know what's next.

[845] And like, how can I top that other than like digging out a Tyrannosaur in the middle of, Montana or there is a lot of that in Montana right yeah Montana's a huge it's uh because there is like it's called the western interior seaway it connected the great lakes in the Gulf of Mexico um that's why Kansas and all that that's all good farmland it's because it was underwater so Montana Utah all that they were they were swampy areas yeah I've been to the area the badlands in Montana in those mountains where you're walking around on silt yeah the mountains are covered with what was essentially at the bottom of the great western inland sea yeah yeah so yeah the dakotas uh all that uh they find cell shells up there yeah like seashells yeah which is just like what the fuck my my co -worker at s w c a lee he's like a tried and true montana paleontologist he's had his hand in more t -rex skeletons than anybody i know wow he's he's a he's a really cool dude and uh do they find megalodons in montana as well no i don't know they do in baker's field baker's field california yeah wow just up north yeah yeah there's actually a place called sharks tooth hill because they found uh they found meg teeth there wow yeah chile um there's ones out in the carolinas and georgia and florida uh all over the place yeah they're they're fantastic man how much does it piss you off when you see those shows where they pretend that they have footage of a Megalodon.

[846] Have you seen that goofy shit?

[847] They actually have fake photos from like World War II.

[848] I purposely don't watch them because then my blood sugar goes up and I probably end up doing a Twitter tirade and my girlfriend would get mad at me and...

[849] Why would she get mad at you for a Twitter tirade?

[850] Oh, there was one time, I think in like two days, I did like over a thousand tweets just like debating people.

[851] It's just because it becomes all focused.

[852] I'm just, you know, my brain's kind of wired different than a lot of people.

[853] I will just focus and nitpick and just go nuts.

[854] And she's just like, you know, you could be doing, I'm not going to scroll through hundreds of tweets.

[855] It's like, what's going on?

[856] I'm like, oh, I was making a point.

[857] He was saying there were gaps in the fossil record.

[858] And, yeah.

[859] Oh, is it one of those dudes who, evolutionary deniers?

[860] Yeah.

[861] Yeah.

[862] Yeah, that's unfortunately incredibly common.

[863] but yeah i've uh unfortunately incredibly common in the u .s not in other places no really no we're one of the highest rates of evolution denial and science denial in the entire world what do you attribute that to um corn gmo corn is that what it is montsado it's chem trails it's not i'm not even gonna get started on all that man um again i'm a scientist i need data um i don't i don't know maybe it's it's freedom it's actual freedom it's you know the freedom to believe it's the freedom to have faith it's it's a great thing to have it's a great thing to question i don't knock that i don't knock religions i don't knock i have a lot of people that are religious i have a lot of people that are atheists that are all good friends of mine i do not in any way shape or form care what you believe just keep it out of my science don't don't tell me that you know 300 years of geology is wrong don't tell me that I'm effectively lying to the public you are lied to the public do you know that the earth is 6 ,000 years old exactly exactly man they had a recent gallop poll uh that was some something insane like 46 % of Americans believe that the earth is less than 10 ,000 years old yeah yeah 10 ,000 years or less or something like that that that hurts yeah I mean that that that directly flies into my entire way of thought feeling and all of that and yes I let it be instead of just like you know putting my blinders on and going through just like do do to do that's cool yeah but just keep it out of my science i kind of feel like that's the last crazy gasp of uh this this sort of uh science denial i feel like this what we're experiencing right now is the last crazy gasp of it as we're we're in this incredible age of information but i believe that even what we're experiencing right now will pale in comparison to the access to data that we'll have in just 20 or 30 years.

[864] That it'll be something symbiotic, some chip or something you have in your brain.

[865] Wetware.

[866] Yeah, it'll almost be impossible to deny because we kind of have like a symbiotic connection with technology.

[867] I mean, essentially, everyone feels lost without their phone.

[868] You put on glasses.

[869] What is glasses?

[870] It's technology that's allowing you to see when you really can't see that good.

[871] There's going to be something that's going to be better than glasses.

[872] We do that.

[873] It's called contact lenses.

[874] Okay, now it's on my eyeball.

[875] Well, we can actually imprint something in your eyeball, and it's permanent, and you never have to worry about it breaking, and it's a simple procedure.

[876] Okay, we'll do it.

[877] Okay, your memory sucks.

[878] So what we're going to do is we're going to give you a chip, and we're going to, all your memories will now be stored on your chip.

[879] You'll be able to plug in and send them to your friends.

[880] Okay, is it painful?

[881] No, no, no, you don't feel a thing.

[882] Okay, we'll do that.

[883] And then boom, boom, boom, boom.

[884] And it's going to get to a point where they're a 6 ,000 years old.

[885] No, it's not fuckface.

[886] Come here.

[887] Yeah.

[888] Come over here.

[889] Boom.

[890] I'm going to show you.

[891] The actual evolution of the earth itself, you'll be able to see in the next 10 minutes how we've proven that I think it's the last gasp of the science denialism that we see right now.

[892] I think it's the last gasp.

[893] I kind of hope so.

[894] I think within 100 years it's going to be over.

[895] That would be rad.

[896] That would be really rad.

[897] It seems like it has to be.

[898] No, it doesn't seem like it has to be.

[899] It needs to be because that's what's holding us back as a species is.

[900] It's like personal beliefs.

[901] I just read this fantastic article on the difference between belief, where somebody says, I believe and I believe the earth is four and a half billion years old or I believe it's 6 ,000 years old.

[902] One is, I believe factually that the earth is four and a half billion.

[903] It's like, I believe I have faith in.

[904] We need to figure out how to keep those both within the public thought, both within the idea.

[905] idea that it's perfectly okay to have these sorts of beliefs.

[906] But science doesn't impact religion.

[907] We are not out to kill God or anything like that.

[908] We're just out to ask questions.

[909] Boy, the way you said that, it makes me think you want to kill God.

[910] No, I don't.

[911] I don't care.

[912] I don't care.

[913] It's completely irrevelable.

[914] You cannot disprove and unprovable.

[915] It's their, why?

[916] Why even about why waste the time?

[917] Well, it's just folks, I think the existential angst that comes along with being.

[918] a human being is very difficult to manage and there's a lot of people that look for all sorts of tools and vehicles for distributing their just the anxiety of being alive right and they take comfort in some strange things like i've had this conversations with people before where they defend religion by the fact that it gives people comfort and like okay that's all well and good man but you know well think about how many great people have been christian and great people have believed in real that's all well and good but it doesn't mean anything what the reality of what we can measure what we can prove what we can show what we've learned if that is in any way impacted by these people who believe things if it's in hindered retarded slowed down diverted in any way then those belief systems are fucking dangerous yeah because they're confusing and they get in the way of our understanding as much as we know now we know an incredible amount it's still in unbelievably limited amount of information we have in comparison to what's actually out there for us to discover and and we have in just in a measurable amount of competing data too which is kind of the problem it's having competing data is fine having data that is completely thrown together with confirmation bias and oh no it has to be this because I don't like that.

[919] It's like just let the method do its job.

[920] Let science, let science is a tool.

[921] You don't, when, when you break a hammer, you, you, you bitch at the tool, but it's your fault that you didn't see the crack or anything like that in it.

[922] Science is the tool.

[923] Use the tool the way it's, the way it's supposed to be used.

[924] Let it test things.

[925] Let it do that.

[926] It doesn't mean, it doesn't have any malice.

[927] The nice thing is, you know what, if you're wrong, that's rad.

[928] Because if you're wrong, that means you can come.

[929] up with a whole new idea of cool shit to do you've found some new stuff yeah you having a negative is a positive having a negative result means that it's something else which is cool it's an unanswered question if you answer the question cool refine it make it better again personal beliefs are fucking rad man if it makes you a better person and it's another tool in your basket to use whether it's digging up a mammoth or finding the cure for cancer by all means please use it just don't bring it into science don't have confirmation bias don't do you know oh we we can't we can't believe that because the earth is only 6 ,000 years old why are you doing that why are you going against hundreds of years of geology and science and technology and all of this stuff that we've already unlocked because they're dopes that's the problem it's playing dopes there's It's easy to be a dumb dumb.

[930] We've got a real cushy life.

[931] It's easy to be negative and it's easy to, yeah, it's easy to be stupid.

[932] Yeah, those are two really easy things to be.

[933] Yeah.

[934] Oh, I'm always negative, oddly enough.

[935] Are you?

[936] Well, the Twitter rants.

[937] Thousand tweets in a day.

[938] I want to go outside, dude.

[939] Yeah.

[940] No, but I'm usually outside.

[941] That's the thing.

[942] That's true, right?

[943] I'm at work.

[944] It's slow.

[945] I'm waiting for the excavator.

[946] It blew a hydraulic line and I'm just like, do, do, do, do, oh.

[947] You motherfucker.

[948] And then you just go off on a...

[949] Yeah.

[950] And then, you know, I make my point.

[951] and then they come back, I'm like, no, you're not getting it.

[952] And then I make my point again.

[953] And then they come back, I'm like, no, you're still not getting it.

[954] Here's a 43 -page PDF on 55 million years of horse evolution.

[955] Oh, it's all the same kind.

[956] Do you think that you're being trolled ever?

[957] Do you think people recognize that you do this?

[958] Well, kind of, because I follow a few accounts that actually purposely retweet them.

[959] They retweet the stupid.

[960] On purpose.

[961] On purpose.

[962] Just to start.

[963] Yeah.

[964] If man came from monkeys, why are you?

[965] they're still monkeys that's my thing that's what i always tell me because we didn't come from monkeys man bro you don't even know right right okay now you see if uh whoa um yeah it's like take that darwin retweets that question that's all he does and he gets into debates and it's like that's okay i'll follow that someone says take that darwin no that that's the account take that darwin oh that's funny i need to check that out and then there's also like theory fail theory fail yeah when people say evolution is fake because it's just a theory oh that's great it's like theory is the biggest thing ever i've actually heard intelligent people who are educated biologists being referred to as non -darwinists or they believe in a non -darwinian form of of evolution what what other potential forms of evolution are there what or are hypothesized what's the error that people believe i that i'm not that i'm not that sure on to be honest i i've i've never heard that a non darwinian neo darwinist or a non non -darwinian i've never never heard that really yeah maybe i'm just hanging out with idiots non -darwinian evolution i'll google it yeah it's uh scholarly articles for non -darwinian evolution oh wow uh scientific paper written by jack lester king thomas h Dukes published in 1969, is credited along with Motu, Kimura's 1968 paper evolutionary rate of the molecular level, at the molecular level, proposing what became known as the neutral theory of molecular evolution paper brings together a wide variety of evidence, ranging from protein sequence comparisons to studies of the Treffers mutator gene and E. coli.

[966] Trevor's mutator gene?

[967] Cool.

[968] Treffers, two Fs.

[969] analysis of the genetic blah blah blah blah blah blah blah can you tweet me that link so I can check that later yeah sure definitely all these other interviews that I'm doing today yeah oh man who else you doing today um Mary Lou Henner Mary Lou Henner yeah she like a gymnast or something no the the actress um she was on taxi oh Mary Lou Henner yeah the breadheaded lady yeah yeah and she uh it's really cool uh yeah she's supposed to be a genius she she has a photograph like bizarre amazing awesome photographic memory well she could remember the very day the time like of yeah like 1979 i was you know in my living room it was 12 p .m and this happened and yeah yeah and and weirdly in this big grand synthesis of the world she filmed a movie in my girlfriend's old home in toronto like in 94 and has a signed headshot my girlfriend has a signed headshot my girlfriend has a signed headshot from Mary Lou Henner so like wow yeah and I'm gonna ask her I'm gonna like hey do you remember like this this this house in Toronto and she'll probably like oh yeah and the it was near a thing with that and the wallpaper was this color which was kind of like at crew and it's just like whoa and she's a very rare example yeah extremely extremely I actually think I got to be bugging off to get to that where is a does she have a podcast or something it's syndicated radio um Mary Lou Henner is a syndicated radio she show yeah that's amazing what's it what's the subjects about anything she wants no kidding yeah it's uh it's uh it's uh yeah on twitter it's at mary lucio well i i saw her interviewed once and i was like wow she's surprisingly intelligent yeah and that whole photographic memory thing right that's a bummer if you date her though you know you can't say you didn't say that oh oh yeah it was and the the resident yeah the relative humidity was 83 % and it was It's like, oh, crap.

[970] Okay, man. Well, listen, thank you very much for our coming on here.

[971] If you've got to go see Mary Lowe, I totally understand.

[972] Right on.

[973] This is amazing.

[974] Tattoos and bones on Twitter.

[975] You can follow him on Twitter.

[976] And this Sunday?

[977] Yeah, this Sunday.

[978] What time?

[979] 8 p .m. on the National Geographic Channel, Mammoth unearthed.

[980] Listen, dude, I'm so happy these people like you out there doing that.

[981] It's so cool to be able to, like, enjoy the fruits of your labor and just take into this information.

[982] and knowledge and I'm looking forward to your show thanks man check out museums get out there anyone can do my job to be honest no that's not true you have to you have to be into it no I'll take you out camping we'll find fossils it'll be fine oh I know how that works no not like that oh man yeah with Ray Comfort's banana there we go Trevor Valle ladies and gentlemen that's how you say it if you want to be cool thank you brother I really appreciate it it was awesome this is amazing