Category: Uncategorized

  • Episode 153 – Armadillos

    Episode 153 – Armadillos

    Listen to Episode 153 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Body armor is a rarity among mammals, and yet this particular group has made it work in modest modern species and gigantic ancient ones. This episode, we discuss the past and present of Armadillos.

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  • Episode 152 – The Jehol Biota

    Episode 152 – The Jehol Biota

    Listen to Episode 152 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    For the last few decades, a seemingly non-stop stream of famous fossils have been produced by excavations in China, and most of them are coming from the same region. This episode, we discuss the deep history, the incredible fossils, and the abundant research opportunities of the Jehol Biota.

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  • Episode 151 – Tails

    Episode 151 – Tails

    Listen to Episode 151 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    For most animals, the body doesn’t end at the hips! That final stretch of anatomy comes in many shapes and sizes suitable to a wide variety of lifestyles. This episode, we discuss the diversity and biological importance – past and present – of Tails.

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  • Episode 150 – Stegosaurs

    Episode 150 – Stegosaurs

    Listen to Episode 150 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    They are among the most famous and the most recognizably bizarre of all dinosaurs. This episode, we discuss the fossil record, evolutionary history, and many morphological mysteries surrounding Stegosaurs.

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  • Episode 149 – Ants

    Episode 149 – Ants

    Listen to Episode 149 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Incredibly diverse, eternally fascinating, and so ubiquitous today that it’s hard to imagine a world without them. This episode, we discuss the deep history of Ants.

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  • Episode 148 – Gliding

    Episode 148 – Gliding

    Listen to Episode 148 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Powered flight has only evolved a few times, but it’s incredible how many times and how ways evolution has produced organisms that sail through the sky. This episode, we discuss the astonishing diversity – past and present – of Gliding.

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  • Episode 147 – Genetics

    Episode 147 – Genetics

    Listen to Episode 147 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Our understanding of evolution would be incomplete without knowledge of what, deep down, determines the traits of an organism and, crucially, how those traits are passed from parent to offspring. This episode, we discuss the foundational field of Genetics.

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  • Episode 146 – The Jurassic-Cretaceous Transition

    Episode 146 – The Jurassic-Cretaceous Transition

    Listen to Episode 146 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Some geologic boundaries are marked by mass extinction and radical planetary transformations. This episode, discuss one that’s marked mostly by mystery: the Jurassic-Cretaceous Transition.

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  • Episode 145 – Photosynthesis

    Episode 145 – Photosynthesis

    Listen to Episode 145 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    We live in a solar-powered world. This episode, we discuss the process that provides the energy that every organism on the planet relies on, as well as the oxygen that characterizes the atmosphere that allows life as we know it to thrive: Photosynthesis.

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  • Episode 144 – Evolutionary Gigantism and Dwarfism

    Episode 144 – Evolutionary Gigantism and Dwarfism

    Listen to Episode 144 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    In evolution, sometimes species get big, and sometimes they get small. The factors behind changing body sizes are extremely varied, and many trends in size evolution are poorly understood. This episode, we discuss Evolutionary Gigantism and Dwarfism.

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  • Episode 143 – Monitor Lizards

    Episode 143 – Monitor Lizards

    Listen to Episode 143 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    These lizards are famous for their diverse lifestyles, their widely-ranging body sizes, and their somewhat mysterious evolutionary past. This episode, we discuss Monitor Lizards.

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  • Episode 142 – Phytosaurs

    Episode 142 – Phytosaurs

    Listen to Episode 142 on PodBean, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts!

    Travel back in time to the Late Triassic, and the waters were home to animals you’d easily mistake for crocs. This episode, we discuss the fossil record, lifestyles, and uncanny croc-ness of Phytosaurs.

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