Listen to Episode 90 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other podcast source you like!
You may be familiar with the concept of organisms alive today that are relics of the ancient past, holdovers from times long ago. But this idea, misleading and poorly defined as it often is, is the source of much debate among scientists and science communicators, often revolving around the specific term we discuss in this episode: “Living Fossils.”
Listen to Episode 89 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite place to find podcasts!
More than 100 years ago, explorers in the Canadian Rocky Mountains came across some exceptional fossils. Nowadays, that locality is famous as one of the most important fossil sites in the world for understanding animal evolution, Earth history, and fossil preservation. This episode, we talk about the incredible Burgess Shale.
Listen to Episode 88 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your preferred podcatching method!
We have them, you have them, and vertebrates throughout Earth history have had them. The history of vertebrate life, the study of vertebrate paleontology, and the myriad ways we have to discuss and describe living and fossil animals and their ecological roles are tied tightly to the Evolution of Teeth.
Listen to Episode 87 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you can find it!
In the Late Jurassic they were small bipedal animals with horns on their cheeks; by the end of the Cretaceous, they had given rise to multi-ton animals with enormous ornamented skulls that roamed North America in massive herds. This episode, we discuss the evolution and lifestyles of Ceratopsians.
Listen to Episode 86 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold!
In the South Pacific Ocean, there is a family of islands that have been isolated since the Cretaceous Period. Now and in the distant past, it’s been home to some of the most unique and fascinating ecosystems on Earth. This episode, we explore the history and the evolution of New Zealand.
Listen to Episode 85 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold!
We’ve talked about mass extinction many times, and indeed we’ve covered four out of the famous “Big Five” that so shaped the history of life on Earth. This time, we’re completing the set, discussing the earliest of the five, exploring the setting, causes, and results of the Ordovician Mass Extinction.
Listen to Episode 84 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast place!
Life ain’t easy. For animals, plants, and organisms of all kinds, there exists a constant threat of injury and disease. Fortunately, these unfortunate occurrences sometimes leave evidence in fossils that can inform us of the lives – and even deaths – of species from long ago. The study of this evidence is called Paleopathology.
Listen to Episode 83 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast place!
In 1938, a fishing crew pulled up a fish that everyone thought had been extinct for 70 million years. Since then, these fish have become famous not just for their strangely incomplete fossil record, but also for their unique anatomy and their close relationship to land vertebrates. In this episode, we discuss the strange and incredible story of Coelacanths.
Listen to Episode 82 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast place!
Throughout the Paleozoic Era, the oceans were home to an extraordinarily diverse and charismatic group of hard-bodied arthropods, successful enough in their time to have persisted for over 270 million years, and abundant enough in the fossil record to have become some of the most popular and recognizable fossils in the world. This episode, we talk Trilobites.
Listen to Episode 81 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you’d like!
All animals change as they get older. Typically these changes are slow and subtle, but many animals famously undergo sudden and dramatic changes from young to adult – caterpillars to butterflies; fry to fish; or tadpoles to frogs. In this episode, we discuss the diversity and history of the incredible phenomenon called Metamorphosis.
Listen to Episode 80 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other podcast place you like!
Happy Darwin Day! In keeping with tradition, we’re joined by special guest Brittney Stoneburg this episode to discuss one of the most influential figures of early paleontology, a person who helped set the stage for the ways we uncover and understand ancient life today, and who was famously not famous in her own time. This episode, we’re discussing Mary Anning.
Listen to Episode 79 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts!
Around the same time that the first dinosaurs were walking around, another group of reptiles was doing something no vertebrates had ever done before: taking flight. For more than 150 million years, they ruled the skies, and we’ve spent the last 200 years or so learning ever more about just how bizarre and fascinating they were. This episode, we talk Pterosaurs.
The Common Descent Podcast 