Listen to Episode 52 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere they have podcasts!
The sounds that animals make are a huge part of their behavior and how we recognize them. The sounds that prehistoric animals made, on the other hand, are lost to the past. But perhaps not entirely. There have been a few instances where fossils have given us clues to the noises these animals may have made, allowing paleontologists to reconstruct the Sounds of the Past.
Listen to Episode 50 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your podcasts.
This episode, we’re exploring the largest “island” in the world. We’re discussing the long geologic history of how this landmass came to be the way it is now, and what fascinating ecosystems have come and gone along the way. Join us on a trip Down Under, to Australia.
Listen to Episode 49 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your podcasts.
And don’t forget to submit your question for our End Of The Year Q&A!
Most of the time on this podcast, we’re geeking out over fossils from around the world. But in this episode, we’re venting a bit about the darker side of fossil-hunting: fraud. We’re discussing fake fossils: why they happen, how they happen, and what effect they have on paleontology.
Listen to Episode 48 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your podcasts.
And don’t forget to submit your question for our End Of The Year Q&A!
In this episode we discuss sharks and their evolutionary history. Sharks are well know today as the top predators in many of the world’s ocean environments, but this wasn’t always the case. We’re covering the features that define a sharks and taking a look at some of the most interesting cases along the 400 million year story of shark evolution.
Listen to Episode 47 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your podcasts.
*Don’t forget to submit your questions for our End Of The Year Q&A!
In today’s world, there is only one group of synapsids: the mammals. But for a good 100 million years before true mammals appeared, a diverse array of non-mammalian synapsids dominated ecosystems on land. In this episode, we’re following the story of synapsid evolution from their earliest lizard-like ancestors right up to the origin of true mammals.
Listen to Episode 46 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or other podcast providers.
The world is full of strange and miraculous creatures, but some believe there are even stranger creatures yet to be discovered. Mysterious beasts have been in human stories since we started telling them, and even today, there are still tales of animals hidden from science. This is the focus of Cryptozoology.
Listen to Episode 45 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or other podcast providers.
252 million years ago, there was an event so dramatic that it wiped out almost all life on the planet; so dramatic that it brought an end to the entire 300-million-year-long Paleozoic Era; so dramatic that it has come to be known as “The Great Dying.” In this episode, we discuss Earth history’s worst mass extinction: The Permian Extinction.
Will and David took a trip to St. Louis for SciFest: Rock, Fossil, Quake on September 22nd!
You can listen to us discuss the event and to our interviews with paleontologists on PodBean Spotify, YouTube, and other podcast places.
The paleontologists we spoke with were:
Dr. Ashley Morhardt, Washington University
Dr. Andy Farke, Raymond Alf Museum
Dr. Denver Fowler, Badlands Dinosaur Museum
Dr. Casey Holliday, University of Missouri
Dr. Liz Freedman Fowler, Dickinson State University
Josh Matthews, Burpee Museum
Listen to Episode 44 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or other podcast providers near you.
In today’s episode we discuss the weird world of hybrids. The fact that different species of organisms sometimes breed has thrown a wrench into the scientific understanding of species and how they function for centuries. We won’t be solving that problem in this episode but we will cover how hybrids are made, why they’re made, how species stay separate, and what can happen when species (or other groups) interbreed.
Listen to Episode 43 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold (just kidding, it’s free!).
For tens of millions of years, North and South America were separate sisters across the sea, each with their own unique ecosystems. That is, until around 3 million years ago, when tectonic activity birthed the Isthmus of Panama and allowed an incredible mass migration of life across the bridge: The Great American Biotic Interchange.
Welcome to our Spotlight Series!
Listen to Spotlight on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you catch pods!
We’re talking paleo-science with some paleo-people! Across this 5-part series, you’ll get to know some paleontologists as we interview them about their research and their lives as scientists.
Our theme for this series is Invertebrate Paleontology
Here on this blog post, we’ll collect information on our guests, ways you can find them on the internet, and some photos of what we discussed in the episodes!
We’ll be updating this post as we release our Spotlight episodes throughout September!
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The Common Descent Podcast 