Listen to Episode 99 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite alternative!
They’ve been on Earth for around 400 million years, they have occupied nearly every ecosystem on land for most of that time, they come in a more dazzling diversity than arguably any other group of life, and they have a fascinating, complex, and deep evolutionary story. This episode, we try our best to touch lightly upon the Evolution of Insects.
Listen to Episode 98 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or elsewhere!
The study of life, past and present, revolves around the evolution, diversity, and extinction of organisms. But exactly how we group organisms and how we understand how new groups arise is a complex topic with much terminology and occasional turmoil. In this episode, we discuss Species and Speciation.
Listen to Episode 97 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you’d like!
From microbes to mushrooms, spiders to snakes, urchins to us, all life engages in chemical warfare. Toxins produced by organisms are enormously varied in their origins, functions, and evolutionary histories. In this episode, we discuss the nasty chemicals that make up Venom and Poison.
Listen to Episode 96 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
Kangaroos, koalas, opossums, possums, Tasmanian devils, and their relatives … they all have a few things in common: an unusual reproductive strategy, a pouch for their young, and a shared evolutionary history that separates them from the majority of living mammals. This episode is all about Marsupials.
Listen to Episode 95 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
Most famous extinction events are very animal-focused, but the end of the Carboniferous saw one of the worst plant mass extinctions in Earth history. In this episode, we discuss the specifics, the background, the causes, and the impacts of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse.
Listen to Episode 94 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
For tens of millions of years, they were dominant predators in North America, and they have since spread naturally into habitats around the globe, but you know them best as the most iconic domesticated species on Earth. This episode, we explore the diversity, evolution, and history of Dogs.
Listen to Episode 93 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
They got their start more than 20 million years ago, and today they’re among the most charismatic and successful mammals on Earth, from the African savannah to the Amazon rainforest to the many memes of the internet. This episode, we explore the diversity, evolution, and history of Cats.
Listen to Episode 92 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
Animals are many and varied, but one of the things nearly all of them share is that they start life off inside a small and special capsule complete with everything the growing embryo needs for protection and nutrition. In this episode, we discuss the diversity, evolution, and fossil history of Eggs.
Listen to Episode 91 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold!
There are three living groups of amphibians, but one in particular is exceptionally diverse, occupying nearly every landmass on Earth and coming in a dizzying variety of species. From their mysterious origins to their Mesozoic diversity to their modern-day world domination, this episode explores the history of Frogs.
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.
The Common Descent Podcast 