Outreach
1. Play School Episode - Fast Fossils - (August 2025)
In this episode of Play School Science Time, Ben talks about the biggest shark that ever lived, makes some fast fossils (because we don’t have millions of years to wait) and sings and dances on stage. Ben helped to write and star in this episode.
2. Cosmos Magazine - Feature on Prehistoric Bayside (August 2025)
Want to know everything about the ethics of fossil collection in Bayside? Click above to find out more!3.
3. Seacreatures podcast by Matt Testoni Episode 58 - Livyatan the Ancient Sperm Whale (April 2025)
Matt and palaeontologist guest Ben Francischelli chat all about the extinct super predator Livyatan. A 3-million-year-old giant Sperm Whale that roamed the oceans and likely preyed upon animals like the Megalodon Shark.
4. Pals in Palaeo podcast Episode 26 - Prehistoric Bayside Live (September 2024)
Join Adele Pentland and friends of the show Ben Francischelli, Jake Kotevski, Ruairidh Duncan and Astrid O'Connor for the first-ever live show recorded during National Science Week! The panel talks about Prehistoric Bayside, PhD research topics, the fossils we'd love to find, and ends with a Q&A session.
5. ABC Radio 774AM - Introducing Perucetus (August 2023)
Scientists have discovered fossils that might have belonged to the heaviest animal in Earth’s history. Perucetus was an 18-20 metre long whale known as a basilosaurid, an ancestral precursor to both baleen whales and modern toothed whales.
6. Pals in Palaeo podcast Episode 18 - Pelagornis (February 2024)
Adele Pentland banters with Ben Francischelli, aka A Fool's Experiment, about the lost world of Beaumaris to talk about the prehistoric Pelagornis, a giant bird with pseudo-teeth. Plus tangents on short-faced kangaroos and other megafauna, mass death assemblages, the megalodon, and Ben's favourite, Livyatan, a macropredator sperm whale inspired by the mythical sea serpent and the misadventures of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands.
A local palaeontologist has found possible evidence of a megafaunal kangaroo on a beach in the Mornington Peninsula. Vertebrate Palaeontologist and Urban Ecologist Benjamin Francischelli says the bones he recently discovered could be about 500,000 years old and may belong to a short-faced kangaroo, one of the biggest kangaroos to have ever existed.
8. RRR 102.7FM - appearances on Radio Marinara (Sep 2022 - Sep 2024)
Ben has appeared numerous times on RRR. Listen above for more information.
Alli Harding was joined by the guest curator of the exhibition, scientist and fossil expert Ben Francischelli, to discuss Prehistoric Bayside.
10. Seacreatures podcast by Matt Testoni Episode 17 - Megalodon sharks (February 2021)
In this episode, Matt Testoni talks to Paleontologist Ben Francischelli about the Megalodon Shark and other extinct creatures that were super predators living in the ocean only a few million years ago. Ben has spent countless hours searching for and cataloguing various fossils of these extinct animals that were collected from some world-famous fossil sites located locally in Port Phillip Bay.
11. Port Phillip EcoCentre webinar - The Demise of the Australian Megafauna (1 hour long - October 2022)
EcoCentre Palaeontologist Ben Francischelli for a free online journey into the late Pleistocene, and discover Australian megafauna in all of their glory. From sheep-sized echidnas, to giant goannas, Ben will be exploring their anatomy and the catastrophic event that wiped out almost all of the Australian megafauna.