Palaeo After Dark

A group of fresh faced scientists have biweekly informal discussions about evolutionary biology and palaeontology... over beer.

Podcast 297 - Amanda Falk is Still a Threat 11/17/2024

Podcast 296 - An Arm and a Head 11/03/2024

Podcast 296 - An Arm and a Head The gang discusses two papers that detail interesting findings about the soft tissues of extinct arthropods. The first paper does a detailed study of the limbs attached to the trilobite head. The second paper describes the newly discovered head of the ancient myriapod Arthropluera, and discusses the larger implications this fossil has for the evolution of millipedes. Meanwhile, Curt explores new advertising ventures, Amanda unpacks automotive anxiety, and James has no ethical complications to report concerning this podcast. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at parts of dead animals that have lots of parts that repeat over and over again and take off their skin every time they get bigger. The first paper looks at a group of these dead animals that are no longer around but are found a lot in the past. This paper shows that the number of legs in the head is different than we thought it was. They show that there are five legs in the head, and that it was hard to see in a lot of these animals because of the ways that we get these animals in the rocks makes it harder to see. The second paper looks at an animal that we think is a lot like animals we see today with long bodies and two legs on each part. But we never actually found the head of these animals. This paper finds the head and it helps to show us a lot of cool things about not just these animals in the past, but also how these animals have changed over time. This helps us understand why the groups we have today are the way that they are. References: Lhéritier, Mickaël, et al. "Head anatomy and phylogenomics show the Carboniferous giant Arthropleura belonged to a millipede-centipede group." Science Advances 10.41 (2024): eadp6362. Hou, Jin‐bo, and Melanie J. Hopkins. "New evidence for five cephalic appendages in trilobites and implications for segmentation of the trilobite head." Palaeontology 67.5 (2024): e12723. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/33756292

Podcast 295 - EeMoo or EeMyu 10/20/2024

Podcast 294 - The Motherload 10/06/2024

Podcast 293 - This Episode Doesn't Suck 09/22/2024

Podcast 293 - This Episode Doesn't Suck The gang looks at two papers that compare similar structures in unrelated animals to see if there might be evidence of convergence. The first paper compares Spinosaurus to phytosaurs and the second paper compares the hyoid bone of ichthyosaurs and toothed whales. Meanwhile, Curt will try it, James waits for something that never happens, and Amanda has a surprise. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look to see if animals that are not close are the same in ways because of what they do. The first paper looks at too old and dead big angry animals. Both of these animals look like angry animals today that move in water, and so this paper is looking to see if maybe they were both doing the same thing as what we see today. The paper doesn't come to a strong end, but it looks like maybe these things are doing things that maybe are not always the same as the things that live today that they look like. The second paper looks at two animals that need air but move in the water all the time, one group that is living today and one that has been dead for a very very long time. There is a hard part in them that in the groups that are living today they can use to suck in water to get food to them. People had thought that the old group could have done this too. They looked at this hard part that lets things suck, and they found that the hard part in this old dead group would not let them suck. So these old dead animals would have to get food in a different way than the group living today. References: Yun, Chan-gyu. "SPINOSAURS AS PHYTOSAUR MIMICS: A CASE OF CONVERGENT EVOLUTION BETWEEN TWO EXTINCT ARCHOSAURIFORM CLADES." Acta Palaeontologica Romaniae 20.1 (2024). Delsett, Lene Liebe, et al. "Is the hyoid a constraint on innovation? A study in convergence driving feeding in fish-shaped marine tetrapods." Paleobiology 49.4 (2023): 684-699. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/33151192

Podcast 292 - That's How You Get Ants 09/08/2024

Podcast 291 - DoInG vErY wElL tHaNk YoU 08/25/2024

Podcast 290 - Want to Get Away 08/11/2024

Podcast 290 - Want to Get Away The gang discusses two papers that look at modern bird migration patterns. The first paper looks at breading and migration patterns of the American woodcock, and the second paper looks at how migration could function as a motor of island speciation. Meanwhile, James is cursed with consciousness, Amanda is on point, and Curt's jokes are consistently ignored. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how animals that move in the sky may move a long way to get to a new home every year. The first paper looks at one fun animal that moves up and down along the land where the friends live as everything gets warmer or colder. People have now been following these animals using big things in space that can show where something is, and this is what the paper uses to see how these animals move and how long they stay in one place. They also have people go to these places to make sure the animals are really there and that they are doing the things they think they are doing. This paper finds that these animals also make babies in many of the places that they go. Many animals that move a lot will only have babies once when they get to their new home, but these animals keep making babies in different places as they move. This paper shows that they are doing it and gives some ideas as to why they might be doing this. The second papers looks to see if some of the animals that are stuck on small land with water on all sides. This paper wants to know if a lot of those animals come from animals moving a long way to a new home and getting lost and ending up on this small land. They run a lot of studies to see how many of these animals may have ended up on these small lands this way. And then, they look at other things that these animals have to see if there are big reasons why some animals get stuck. What they find is that a lot of the animals are there because they go stuck. They also find that animals that live in a lot of places and that move with a lot of other animals were the ones that were going to get stuck. This could be because having more of you in more places makes it so you can have at least one group of animals get stuck. References: Slezak, Colby R., et al. "Unconventional life history in a migratory shorebird: desegregating reproduction and migration." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2021 (2024): 20240021. Dufour, Paul, et al. "The importance of migratory drop-off for island colonization in birds." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2021 (2024): 20232926. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/32484707

Podcast 289 - The Brachiopod Paradox 07/28/2024

Podcast 289 - The Brachiopod Paradox The gang discusses two papers that look at functional morphology in extinct groups. The first paper looks at tooth replacement patterns in an Ornithischian dinosaur, and the second paper studies the shell articulation of Rafinesquina to unravel a long-standing mystery. Meanwhile, James has questions about taste, Amanda forgets protocol, and Curt indulges in his fixations. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how animals did things a long time ago. The first paper looks at a group of big angry animals that are liked a lot and make their way into movies. This paper looks at how the teeth of some of these animals would grow over time. This group of big angry animals also does a lot of cool things with their teeth over a long time because they move from eating animals to eating things that do not move and make their own food from the sun. The big angry animals that they look at have lot of these animals from a lot of different ages so they can see how the teeth get changed as they grew up. What they see is that the way that the teeth grow in changes as the animal grows older. They also find that the number of times that new teeth come in has changed many times in this group of animals. The second paper looks at a group of animals with two hard parts on either side that sits and eats food from the water. This group of animals has really made people confused for a long time because of how the hard parts come together, which could make it so that the animals could not get water inside to eat and would instead get a lot of ground and die. But this group of animals is really good at what it does because it is found all around the world. So how did these things eat? The paper shows that these animals could move their hard parts a lot more than we ever thought. Also, they show that they could move them pretty quick, and could even push out water so quickly that they could maybe move a little bit if they get covered in the ground. References: Hu, Jinfeng, et al. "Tooth replacement in the early-diverging neornithischian Jeholosaurus shangyuanensis and implications for dental evolution and herbivorous adaptation in Ornithischia." BMC Ecology and Evolution 24.1 (2024): 46. Dattilo, Benjamin F., et al. "Paradox lost: wide gape in the Ordovician brachiopod Rafinesquina explains how unattached filter‐feeding strophomenoids thrived on muddy substrates." Palaeontology 67.2 (2024): e12697. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/32260057

Podcast 288 - Some Meat on the Bone 07/14/2024

Podcast 288 - Some Meat on the Bone The gang discusses two papers that use new fossils to add insight into the geographic origins of groups. The first paper looks at some fossil freshwater dolphins and the second paper looks at fossil jumping spiders. The gang also uses these two papers to talk about a lot of other things because, despite being short papers, there is a lot of related things to talk about. Meanwhile, James is pretty sure he read the papers, Curt has very uninformed opinions, and Amanda gives everyone a panic attack. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that use old animals to see where animals may have been in the past. The first paper looks at animals with hair that live in the water and have moved into water that you and I can drink. This is a paper about one group of these animals and some bits of an old animal that were found in a place very far away from where these animals are today. This might mean that these animals moved into water than you and I could drink many times over the years and in many places. The second paper looks at a small animal with many legs and hair that eats other small things. These animals are hard to find parts of in the past, but this paper finds a really nice one in a place that is important for understanding how they got where they are today. This group is found in areas that were close to each other in the past but have moved further away. This old animal being found where it is gives us more ideas about how these animals got to where they are today. References: Benites-Palomino, Aldo, et al. "The largest freshwater odontocete: A South Asian river dolphin relative from the proto-Amazonia." Science advances 10.12 (2024): eadk6320. Richardson, Barry J., Matthew R. McCurry, and Michael Frese. "Description and evolutionary biogeography of the first Miocene jumping spider (Aranaea: Salticidae) from a southern continent." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 200.4 (2024): 1013-1025. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/32036997

Podcast 287 - NAPC 2024 06/30/2024

Podcast 286 - Dinosaurs, Sabertooths, and Mojitos; Oh My! 06/16/2024

Podcast 286 - Dinosaurs, Sabertooths, and Mojitos; Oh My! The gang discusses two papers that study ecological changes in the evolutionary history of some charismatic ancient animal groups. The first paper uses geographic data to infer the timing of the evolution of homeothermy in non-avian dinosaur groups, and the second paper looks at the mechanisms by which cats (and cat-like animals) developed saber teeth. Meanwhile, Curt makes some plans for Amanda, James muddles things over, and Amanda could use another. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how where animals live can change how they look and also maybe how they look can change where they can live. The first paper looks at old big angry animals and where they live to see if they can find when these animals were able to make themselves warm inside. We have other things that make us think that some of these big angry animals may have been able to get warm inside, but that this might have happened a few times in this group. By looking at where these animals were found in the past, they see that there are times when these animals move into places that are colder. They use this to say that these times may be because these animals now being able to make themselves warm inside. The second paper looks at animals that are cats and cat like animals. Some of these cats and cat like animals have very long teeth. This paper does a lot of things to study how these cats and cat like animals change their heads when they get these big teeth. They find that some of these cat like groups do this in a different way than cats, but also that cats start to change their heads to be a bit more like the cat like things when they get bigger teeth but also not in the same way. References: Chiarenza, Alfio Alessandro, et al. "Early Jurassic origin of avian endothermy and thermophysiological diversity in Dinosauria." bioRxiv (2023): 2023-12. Chatar, Narimane, et al. "Evolutionary patterns of cat-like carnivorans unveil drivers of the sabertooth morphology." Current Biology (2024). /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/31720652

Podcast 285 - All Things Big and Small 06/02/2024

Podcast 285 - All Things Big and Small The gang discusses two papers that look into long term trends in body size over time. The first paper looks at body size trends in corals, and the second looks at body size and ecology of terror birds. Meanwhile, James loses a bit of himself, Amanda is bad at transitions, and Curt goes places no one wants to go. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how big things are and how that changes over time. The first paper looks at tiny animals that live together in a group and share their homes with even smaller living things that help give them food. It turns out that being small makes it good for the smaller things living with them. So this paper wants to see if these animals have been getting smaller over time. Turns out that it is not that easy, and that some of these earlier animals were bigger than today but probably did have even smaller living things with them helping them. But it seems like there is some bit of these animals getting smaller, so maybe these animals have gotten better at building homes for these even smaller living things. The second paper looks at big angry animals that are close to things that can fly but these big angry animals could not fly. This paper looks to see if these animals lived at the same time and did the same things and were as big as each other, or do we see these animals doing different things at the same time or with one of them being bigger than the other. They find that most of the time, when there are two of these animals living at the same time, they are either doing different things or one of them is much bigger than the other. The paper says this shows that these animals were trying not to fight each other for the same stuff, but the friends have other questions about what could be going on. References: LaBarge, Thomas W., Jacob D. Gardner, and Chris L. Organ. "The evolution and ecology of gigantism in terror birds (Aves, Phorusrhacidae)." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2021 (2024): 20240235. Dimitrijević, Danijela, Nussaïbah B. Raja, and Wolfgang Kiessling. "Corallite sizes of reef corals: decoupling of evolutionary and ecological trends." Paleobiology 50.1 (2024): 43-53. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/31556632

Podcast 284 - How Complete Is Your Shark 05/19/2024

Podcast 284 - How Complete Is Your Shark The gang discusses two papers that look at the shark fossil record. The first paper looks into the completeness of the record, and the second paper discusses the ecological implications of an exceptionally preserved specimen. Meanwhile, James has ideas of what is normal, Curt has a hard out, and Amanda shows her specific history interests. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at animals with lots of soft parts that move through the water and have lots and lots of teeth. The first paper is looking at how well we know these animals in the past, since most of the time we may only know them by their teeth. They do a lot of things to see how much of the animals we have at any time. What they find is that, most of the time, we do not have many parts of these animals. However, there are some times in the past when we do see more parts that are not just teeth, so there might be times in the past that were better and making sure the soft parts were able to stick around and be found later. But most of the time, we really only have teeth or a few other parts, and that this makes these animals different from most other animals that are close to them and that makes sense because the rest of these animals have hard parts where these animals have soft parts. The second paper looks at one of these animals with soft parts where those soft parts were found today. This is the first time this type of animal has been found with its soft parts. Most of the time, we just find the teeth, which look like they were good at breaking hard things. With the soft parts, we can get an idea of how it would move through the water and if it was slow or fast. We can also find out what its brothers and sisters were. What they find is that the soft parts show that this animal looked like a lot of the animals in this group we see today that are not breaking hard things but are catching fast moving food in the water. This is not something we would think would happen, because today animals that have teeth like the ones this animal had don't need to move very fast to catch their food. This shows that this animal was doing something that we don't see today. This might be because there were lots of animals with hard parts on the outside that were moving in the water really fast at that time, which this one animal would have tried to catch for food. References: Schnetz, Lisa, et al. "The skeletal completeness of the Palaeozoic chondrichthyan fossil record." Royal Society Open Science 11.1 (2024): 231451. Vullo, Romain, et al. "Exceptionally preserved shark fossils from Mexico elucidate the long-standing enigma of the Cretaceous elasmobranch Ptychodus." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2021 (2024): 20240262. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/31273912

Podcast 283 - Stolen Podcast 05/05/2024

Podcast 283 - Stolen Podcast The gang discusses two papers about an interesting locality in South America and the various body fossils and ichnofossils found in this locality. This podcast originally started as a patreon request to podcast about fossil procyonids… but it ended up like this… ooops! Meanwhile, James has a vocal doppelganger, Amanda deals with being human, Curt deals with scams, and everyone talks way too much about visuals on an audio podcast. Up-Goer Five: (Curt Edition) The friends talk about a place that has rocks from a long time ago that give us an idea of the types of animals that were around in the land areas under where the friends are today. The land where our friends are one used to not be touching the land that is under them like it is now. Once these two lands touched, then the animals from each land moved into the other lands. This place is from a time before these two lands had finished touching, so some animals moved over but others had not yet. The first paper looks at some parts of a type of animals that is brother/sister to animals that grab food out of our place we put food that we can not eat anymore. These animals had moved onto the land under the land our friends are on before the two lands had stopped touching. The place where these parts are found is interesting because it seems like it is under water for some time but there are some bits that are not under water. The first paper shows some marks in the ground that are interesting, but the second paper goes in on these marks to show that they are homes and marks from food searches from other animals. These marks show that the animals in this area were doing a lot of things to make homes and look for food under the ground. This shows that even before other animals moved from the other land, animals in this area were doing cool things in the ground. References: Soibelzon, Leopoldo H., et al. "First record of fossil procyonid (Mammalia, Carnivora) from Uruguay." Journal of South American Earth Sciences 92 (2019): 368-373. Varela, Luciano, et al. "Late Miocene mammalian burrows in the Camacho Formation of Uruguay reveal a complex community of ecosystem engineers." Evolving Earth 1 (2023): 100023. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/31127078

Podcast 282 - Early Fishies 04/21/2024

Podcast 281 - Climate and Extinction 04/07/2024

Podcast 281 - Climate and Extinction The gang discusses two papers that look at the correlation between climate change and extinction risk in the fossil record. The first paper uses climate modeling to simulate extinction risk during past periods of climate change, and the second paper uses new radiometric age dates to infer diachronous extinction between marine and terrestrial environments during the Permian mass extinction. Meanwhile, James orders food, Curt stirs the pot, and Amanda lives with her choices. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at times when a lot of things died. The first paper uses computers and numbers to see how things could die during times when things get real hot or real cold. They look at real times in the past when lots of things die during these cold and hot times, and then they use their computers and numbers to make those things happen in the world of a computer to see if they can find out what may or may not make that happen. They find that lots of things can cause animals to die during these times when things get hot or cold, but how big the space animals live in and how many different types of places these animals can live in are big for knowing if they will or will not die. The second paper looks at a time in the past when almost everything died. This is a time when it got real hot. Things die on the land and in the water. A lot of what we study is in the water because those things are able to get covered in ground faster than the things that live on the land. But this paper finds some rocks from the land and does some work with the matter that makes up these rocks to see how old the rocks are. These rocks have animals in them that would die because of this big bad time when everything died. But the time that they found was after when everything in the water died. So this could mean that animals may have died first in the water and then died after on the land. This could be because the way the world changes when things get hot is going to be different in the water and on land. References: Malanoski, Cooper M., et al. "Climate change is an important predictor of extinction risk on macroevolutionary timescales." Science 383.6687 (2024): 1130-1134. Wu, Qiong, et al. "The terrestrial end-Permian mass extinction in the paleotropics postdates the marine extinction." Science Advances 10.5 (2024): eadi7284. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/30710663

Podcast 280 - Just a Weird Little Guy 03/24/2024

Podcast 279 - Frogcast 03/10/2024

Podcast 279 - Frogcast The gang discusses two papers that look at the fossil frog record. The first paper identifies fossil frogs from Antarctica, and the second paper looks at some exceptional soft-tissue preservation. Meanwhile, James has ideas for expanding the brand, Amanda asks for clarification on an important topic, and Curt makes some executive decisions. Up-Goer Five (James Edition): The group looks at two papers that are interested in animals that are wrong and good at jumping and live in the water but some can walk on land and climb trees. The first paper is looking at one from the very cold land in the bottom of the round thing we live on, where we do not find any of them today because it is too cold. The animal is known by two small bits but we can tell what type of jumping thing it is and so we know it is part of a group that is found in two areas that do not touch today, but the place at the bottom of the round thing we live on is between them, so that makes sense! But it is very cold today, so that is strange, but the animal being there and the things we find with it seems to show that is must have been a little hotter then. The second paper is looking at one of the animals that is good at jumping that is found with lots of round things that become babies in it. This is very cool because the animal is also still soft in places in it that means it was not the most grown it could be and so was making babies when it was still young. There is also a thought that the animal may have died while trying to make babies which is interesting. References: Mörs, Thomas, Marcelo Reguero, and Davit Vasilyan. "First fossil frog from Antarctica: implications for Eocene high latitude climate conditions and Gondwanan cosmopolitanism of Australobatrachia." Scientific Reports 10.1 (2020): 5051. Du, Baoxia, et al. "A cretaceous frog with eggs from northwestern China provides fossil evidence for sexual maturity preceding skeletal maturity in anurans." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2016 (2024): 20232320. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/30302008

Podcast 278 - The Wrong Shapes 02/25/2024

Podcast 277 - Bird Tracks For Fun and Profit 02/11/2024

Podcast 277 - Bird Tracks For Fun and Profit The gang discusses two papers that look at Mesozoic tracks that may or may not have been made by an avian archosaur. Meanwhile, Curt becomes activated, Amanda has to deal with harsh truths, James gets creative with taxon names, and everyone get distracted very quickly. (Editor’s Note: If you want to just “get to the science” skip to 11 minutes in. We hadn’t talked in 2 months and it shows. I just didn’t have the heart to cut all of it) Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at foot falls in the ground from a very very long time ago which may or may not be made by animals that can fly through the sky, or may have been made by big angry animals. The problem is that big angry animals and the animals that can fly are very close to each other, and their foot falls can look a lot like each other. The first paper looks at some very old foot falls and some of these foot falls do look like they were made by animals that can fly, but that would be very very strange because it would need a lot of other things to be true if that were true. They say that there was something moving like these animals today that can fly but were probably not those types of animals, but it shows how hard it can be to see if these foot falls were made by these animals that can fly. The second paper uses numbers to try and see if we can really see if some of these foot falls were made by animals that fly. What they find is that we have used how big these foot falls are as a reason why we think some are from big angry animals and some are from animals that can fly. This is maybe a problem because we know there are small big angry animals, and that today there are some big animals that are from the group that can fly. If you use numbers to take how big they are out of the running, it seem like some of these foot falls could be from big animals part of the group that can fly. References: Abrahams, Miengah, and Emese M. Bordy. "The oldest fossil bird-like footprints from the upper Triassic of southern Africa." Plos one 18.11 (2023): e0293021. Hong, Sung-Yoon, et al. "The discovery of Wupus agilis in South Korea and a new quantitative analysis of intermediate ichnospecies between non-avian theropods and birds." Cretaceous Research 155 (2024): 105785. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/29886513

Podcast 276c - In the Woods Somewhere Part 3 01/28/2024

Podcast 276b - In the Woods Somewhere Part 2 01/14/2024

Podcast 276a - In the Woods Somewhere Part 1 12/31/2023

Podcast 275 - Big N Wormy 12/17/2023

Podcast 274 - Cause and Effect and Cause 12/03/2023

Podcast 274 - Cause and Effect and Cause The gang discusses two papers about taphonomy and its influence on our understanding of the fossil record. The first paper looks at how taphonomic processes can blur our understanding of cause and effect, while the second paper looks at the impacts of collector and size biases on our understanding of the ecology of an ancient plant. Meanwhile, James deals with spirits, Curt gets philosophical, and Amanda smartly ignores things. Up-Goer Five (Curt): The friends talk about two papers that look at the ways in which the things we know can be changed because of other problems that we do not always know are there to make things look like one thing but actually be another thing. The first paper looks at how not getting things to be saved over time could mean that you might not see the reason something happens until it looks like it is after that thing has happened. The paper uses a time in the past when it got very cold and looks at what could have made this happen. There are lots of talk about the growing of big things that make their own food from the sun on land, but this paper shows that what we can see might not be the real time when big things started really doing well. While it sounds strange, it might be best to look at something that we see in the rocks after the time that it gets cold, since the thing that changed probably changed before we can see it in the rocks. The second paper looks at another thing that makes its own food from the sun. This old thing could have lived in a lot of different ways and there are lots of people who think one way or another. Some think these things need to burn as part of their life, and some people think that these things would live near water and might get burned only sometimes. The people who wrote this paper looked at how people found these things, if they picked up ones that were big or small, and also went out to find more of these things. What they find is that some of the reasons people have not known how these things lived is because we grab big parts to save but most of the things are found as small parts that have burned. This means that it seems that burning was an important part of the lives of these things. References: Blanco‐Moreno, Candela, Hugo Martín‐Abad, and Ángela D. Buscalioni. "Quantitative plant taphonomy: the cosmopolitan Mesozoic fern Weichselia reticulata as a case study." Palaeontology 65.6 (2022): e12627. D'Antonio, Michael P., Daniel E. Ibarra, and C. Kevin Boyce. "The preservation of cause and effect in the rock record." Paleobiology 49.2 (2023): 204-214. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/28893463

Podcast 273 - The Hunt for Red Plankton 11/19/2023

Podcast 273 - The Hunt for Red Plankton The gang discusses two papers that look at plankton through time. The first paper looks at some Cambrian acritarch fossils and shows that they are likely colonial algae, and the second paper looks at how shifting temperature affected plankton distribution across the Cenozoic. Meanwhile, everyone stays completely on task with the stated goals of this podcast: a detailed (and wrong) discussion on the events of the movie “The Hunt for Red October”. Yes, it is going to be “one of those” podcasts. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at things that live in the water without having to move parts to stay in the water and maybe they are single cells and maybe they are groups of cells. The first paper looks very very old things that live in the water. These old things are so old and hard to figure out that people are not always sure what they are. These things are often thought to be all single cells. This paper shows that some of these things that are very old might be groups of cells that are living together. The way that these cells group together does look like some things that live in the water today that make food from the sun. This paper shows that this type of cell or something like it might have been around a very very long time ago. The second paper looks at how where things living in the water but not moving and maybe they are single cells and maybe they are groups of cells, could have lived when things got cold in the past. They see that there are changes in the types of these things over time and where the live. They show that the way things are today is because it was getting colder. It also shows that, when things warm up, we might see some big changes in where these things are. References: Woodhouse, Adam, et al. "Late Cenozoic cooling restructured global marine plankton communities." Nature 614.7949 (2023): 713-718. Harvey, Thomas HP. "Colonial green algae in the Cambrian plankton." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2009 (2023): 20231882. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/28702328

Podcast 272 - The Tardigrade Cast 11/05/2023

Podcast 271 - Feel It In My Guts 10/22/2023

Podcast 271 - Feel It In My Guts The gang discusses two papers that look at the gut contents and traces of ancient animals. The first paper reconstructs gut traces (or lack thereof) for Ediacarans and then the second paper looks at the detailed gut contents and 3d track of a lichid trilobite. Meanwhile, Amanda’s cat is changing careers, James is feeling “motivated”, and Curt has some house improvement recommendations. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about the insides of different animals from a long long time ago. The first paper looks at animals from a long long time ago that do not look much like things we see today. There is a lot of talk about how these animal would eat and where the food would go when they did eat. This paper looks at the parts that remain and looks over the things that are left behind to see if they can find out what the insides of these things were like. What they find is that the things we think are more like things we see today all have insides where the food goes. The one really strange thing does not and could have had food move into it along its outside. The second paper looks at a small animal with many parts that makes a hard home. This paper finds the food that it ate in its insides and can use it to see what the insides look like. This is a great way for us to see the insides where the food goes in a group that is not around anymore. Also, the food in the insides lets us know how this animal ate things and the way it ate is strange when we look at things today. This thing ate hard things but it did it in a way that is not like what we see today. Also, this animal may have been getting ready to grow but did not make it. References: Kraft, Petr, et al. "Uniquely preserved gut contents illuminate trilobite palaeophysiology." Nature (2023): 1-7. Bobrovskiy, Ilya, et al. "Guts, gut contents, and feeding strategies of Ediacaran animals." Current Biology 32.24 (2022): 5382-5389. /episode/index/show/palaeoafterdark/id/28381247

Podcast 270 - Rafting Away 10/08/2023

Palaeo After Dark

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