Listen to Episode 78 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere podcasts can be found!
This episode is about the complex and surprising ways that evolution can change course under new pressures, and about how scientists argue over what to call this phenomenon! It starts as far back as Darwin, and continues in debates to this day. Let’s talk about Exaptation.
Listen to Episode 77 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere podcasts can be found!
Over 350 million years ago, vertebrate animals made one of the most dramatic evolutionary transitions in the history of life on Earth. A full-body anatomical makeover allowed one branch of the fish family tree to conquer the continents, setting the stage for a 300-million-year reign of vertebrates on land. In this episode, we discuss the Fish-Tetrapod Transition.
Listen to Episode 76 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere podcasts can be found!
The evolution of horses is not only one of the classic evolutionary stories of the ancient past, it’s also an incredible story of scientific discovery and adjustment. From the dawn of the Age of Mammals to the domestication of modern work animals, we’re taking a trip through Horse Evolution.
Listen to Episode 75 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast place!
The history of life on Earth is marked by tragedy. Life as we know it only exists because more ancient life lost the fight for survival. In this episode, we discuss the most mysterious – and possibly the most tragic – extinction event in Earth history, the most important transformation our planet has experienced since its formation: the Great Oxidation Event.
Listen to Episode 74 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you find pocasts!
Today, it’s famous for the incredible diversity of the Andes Mountains and the Amazon rainforest, and its fossil record is full of unique ecosystems unlike any we see today, thanks to tens of millions of years of evolution in isolation; in this episode, we tackle South America.
Listen to Episode 73 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts!
As our friend Aly is fond of saying, plants aren’t just a colorful background to Earth history, they’re dynamic and influential drivers of environmental change. In this episode, she joins us to discuss one of the most famous and important innovations in all of plant evolution: Trees.
Listen to Episode 72 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other podcast place you like!
We’re no strangers to fascinating marine creatures on this podcast; we’ve tackled placoderms, whales, sharks, and mosasaurs. But weirder perhaps than all of those were a group of Mesozoic reptiles with large flippers, tiny tails, and heads that ranged from giant death traps to tiny noggins atop long necks. This episode, we dive into the Plesiosaurs.
Listen to Episode 71 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other podcast place you like!
Let’s take a trip back to the Cretaceous of North America, when the whole middle of the continent was flooded by an inland sea unlike anything in the world today. It split the continent in two and hosted a unique ecosystem now preserved across fossil sites from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. It was the Western Interior Seaway.
Listen to Episode 70 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts!
With all the diversity of life past and present, it’s incredible how often evolution repeats itself. Wings, flippers, eyes … all sorts of fascinating features have shown up multiple times in multiple groups of organisms. In this episode, we discuss this very common, curious, and sometimes confusing aspect of natural selection: Convergent Evolution.
Listen to Episode 69 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Lots of animal groups have evolved bony armor, but one group of dinosaurs really took it to the extreme. The armored knobs, spikes, and weapons they wore all over their bodies have fascinated dino-fans for more than a century, and there are still so many questions unanswered. This episode, we look at Ankylosaurs.
Listen to Episode 68 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast source of choice!
Vision is so important in the lives of animals around the globe that it’s difficult to imagine a world without it. But sight has a long and mysterious evolutionary history, from simple light-sensitive cells to the complex organic cameras we humans have in our faces. In this episode, we discuss some of the most incredible innovations and unanswered questions in the Evolution of Eyes.
Listen to Episode 67 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast source of choice! And don’t forget the Bonus Episode: Voices of La Brea!
Join us as we explore one of the most famous fossil sites in the world. It’s not in a desert or on a mountain, but in the heart of one of the largest cities in North America. It’s also one of the best places on Earth to understand the changes in climate and ecology at the very end of the Ice Age. This episode, we take a trip to the La Brea Tar Pits.
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