I'm El Alshamahi and this is The Conversation from the BBC World Service, the programme that amplifies women's voices,
which is really just a fancy way of saying
that we get two incredible women from two different parts of the world who share an expertise,
we bring them together and see what happens.
Today, I'm speaking to Mongolian paleontologist Dr Bahlor Titzig Minjin,
director of the Institute of the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs and South African paleontologist Dr Anusya Chinsami Turan,
who is a leader in the study of fossil bone microstructure.
Bahlor Anusya, welcome to The Conversation.
Thank you for having us, Ella.
Thank you.
So let's start with the big picture.
Anusya, how would we really comprehend the sheer scale and timeline of dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs have been around for over 160 million years.
That is a huge amount of time, especially when you compare it to for how long humans have been on the planet.
I mean,
humans and human ancestors have only been around for six at the very most seven million years as compared to this immense time that dinosaurs have been around.
One of the ways I like to always think about this whole scale of time is that
if you just put your arm out and you think about life on earth as this whole history of life on earth is the length of your arm,
we can think about humans being at the very tips of our fingers,
whereas dinosaurs would have evolved like at least halfway by our elbows.