Professor Jim Al-Khalili
speaker
535 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 15 Jun
Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The Life Scientific · Dean Lomax on discovering ichthyosaurs and defying nay-sayers · 26 May 2026
podcast
In 2016, you got word that something special might have been discovered on the Somerset coast.
Because it's a few years later, you got word that another gigantic jawbone had been found again down on the Somerset coast.
I gather there's even a documentary film in the works, isn't there?
Let's talk about perhaps your most famous discovery, the Rutland Sea Dragon.
What a fantastic name.
It's one of the most complete large prehistoric marine reptiles ever found in Britain.
It's difficult to do this on radio, but...
I mean, just so that people don't get overexcited by any old odd-shaped rock or an old pipe, what should we be looking for if we're on the hunt for genuine prehistoric fossils?
There's one final discovery I'd like to mention, Dean, that you publish in the journal Nature last year.
This was an unprecedented finding of the first soft tissues of a large ichthyosaur, which revealed some rather special features.
And this is the sort of thing that has huge potential in the field of biomimicry, that, you know, we see how nature's evolved these clever tricks and we try and copy them.
Might these ichthyosaur traits have some use in modern design?
80 million years ago and already doing this thing way back then reducing noise and you can use that and apply it to modern world well dean your your field work continues as does your outreach work now a big part of your outreach you do with schools getting the message across to kids that they can achieve their dreams what advice do you give them for doing that
And having fun, as you say, is very important because I've certainly had fun chatting to you.
Dean Lomax, thank you very much for sharing your life scientific.
My great pleasure.
And thank you for listening.
I'm Jamal Khalili and my producer is Lucy Taylor.
If you enjoyed listening to this edition of The Life Scientific, why not check out some of our other interviews with leading scientists, exploring everything from space travel to medical breakthroughs.
You can access the whole archive of programmes for free via BBC Sounds.
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