Palaeo After Dark

Wet Hot Archosaur Summer continues as the gang discusses two papers about crocodylomorph evolution. The first paper looks at the impact mass extinctions had on disparity within the group, and the second paper uses new phylogenetic data to revise our understanding of size trends and biogeography of crocodylomorphs during the Cenozoic. Meanwhile, Curt invents a measurement, James invents a new way of eating, and Amanda invents a new phobia for herself.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at big angry animals that you should never smile at, again! This time they are looking at very old big angry animals you should never smile at. The first paper looks at how different these animals were in the past and looks at how different they are today. A lot of people think that the big angry animals today are not as different than they were in the past and that this might be weird. The paper finds that these big angry animals have been more different in the past, but that the animals today are not so much the same as each other in a weird way. There were times in the past where these animals were as different from each other as we see today, and they even got more different again after that. The second paper looks at a new way of thinking about two animals from the past that were really big and you really should not smile at. These animals were thought to be part of this one group that is not as big today and also would be really weird because these some of these animals in the past are found across the big blue wet thing and we do not think that they can move across that big blue wet thing because of the stuff that is in the big blue wet thing that is not water that makes your food good. This paper shows that these big animals are probably not in that group, and so they use this to see what this means about where this one group of animals was living and how they got smaller.   References: Melstrom, Keegan M., et al. "For a while, crocodile: crocodylomorph resilience to mass extinctions." Palaeontology 68.2 (2025): e70005. Walter, Jules D., et al. "Expanded phylogeny elucidates Deinosuchus relationships, crocodylian osmoregulation and body-size evolution." Communications Biology 8.1 (2025): 611.

The gang kicks off a summer of archosaurs by talking about crocodyliforms. The first paper describes an early Cenozoic large notosuchian, and the second paper investigates how cryptic species impacts divergence times within the clade. Meanwhile, Curt diagnoses a problem, James tries to “help”, and Amanda does not care.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at animals that today most of the time live in water and grab food from the edge of the water and you should never smile at. The first paper a really big one of these animals that lived a long time ago. This animal was found after a really big rock hit the ground and killed most of the big animals. This big animal shows that some of the animals that you should never smile at were able to live through the big rock hitting. The second paper looks at animals you should never smile at today and finds that there are some animals that look the same but are not actually the same animals. This paper uses these animals that look the same but are different and finds that they have been different for a long time. This means that if we want to try and make sure that these animals are safe, we can not just say that animals that look the same are going to do the same things when things change.   References: Bravo, Gonzalo Gabriel, et al. "A new notosuchian crocodyliform from the Early Palaeocene of Patagonia and the survival of a large-bodied terrestrial lineage across the K–Pg mass extinction." Proceedings B 292.2043 (2025): 20241980. Darlim, Gustavo, and Sebastian Höhna. "The effects of cryptic diversity on diversification dynamics analyses in Crocodylia." Proceedings B 292.2043 (2025): 20250091.

The gang tries to discuss two papers that look at the evolutionary impacts of the K-Pg mass extinction. Specifically, they look at one paper that estimates sampling probability throughout the late Cretaceous to determine if record bias influences our understanding of the extinction, and another paper that looks at species area relationships to investigate ecological shifts in response to the event. However, the gang gets completely lost and sidetracked throughout. They starting talking about the papers around 18 minutes in… and very quickly lose track again. It's going to be one of those podcasts.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends do a real bad job of talking about two papers that look at what happened when a big rock fell from the sky a long time ago. The first paper looks at the rocks we have from that time and tries to see how well we know what was happening and what was going on with the animals that were around at that time. Given the rocks we have, how sure are we that we know where animals were and how many of those things were around. It turns out that just before the big rock hit, we do not have a good idea of what things were around and where they were. The second paper looks at how the places where things were living in the past changed before and after the big rock hit. The idea is that some animals may have done well because they could go to all of the places when things get bad because they do well when things go bad. This paper says that this is not happening and that there is way more going on with these groups that were doing well after the big rock hit.   References: Close, Roger Adam, and Bouwe Rutger Reijenga. "Tetrapod species–area relationships across the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122.13 (2025): e2419052122. Dean, Christopher D., et al. "The structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record in North America." Current Biology (2025).

The gang discusses two papers that look at the evolutionary impact of shifts in habitat occupation. The first paper looks at a clade of sharks moving into the depths, and the second paper investigates habitat shifts in mammals across the Cretaceous and Paleogene. Meanwhile, Amanda has some opinions, James is doing much better, and Curt is easy to amuse.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look into how animals change when they move from one type of place to another. The first paper looks at animals with big teeth that has soft parts inside and live in the water. One group of these animals is found in really deep water today, but in the past they were found in water that is not deep. This paper looks at when this move into the deep happened, and what it happened along with. The second paper looks at parts of animals that have hair and how these parts have changed over time. These parts are used for moving around and so they can let us know how these animals were moving in the past. This paper shows that before a really bad thing happened, a lot of these animals were moving in the trees, but after that big thing happened these animals were moving in a lot more different ways with more on the ground.   References: Marion, Alexis FP, Fabien L. Condamine, and Guillaume Guinot. "Bioluminescence and repeated deep-sea colonization shaped the diversification and body size evolution of squaliform sharks." Proceedings B 292.2042 (2025): 20242932. Janis, Christine M., et al. "Down to earth: therian mammals became more terrestrial towards the end of the Cretaceous." Palaeontology 68.2 (2025): e70004.

The gang discusses two papers that use morphometrics to investigate patterns of selection on bird morphology. The first paper looks at the morphology of feathers, while the second paper looks more broadly at various parts of the avian body. Meanwhile, James breathes new life into a classic, Amanda is passionate about formatting, and Curt exposes “the truth”.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at animals that move in the air. Both of these papers look at how these animals look and try to find out why these animals look the way they do. The first paper looks at the different types of soft things that these animals use to fly and also to stay warm. They look at how these soft things look and how that look has changed over time and between groups. Some of these animals that don't fly have soft things that are different from the ones that do fly, but they way they are different is different with each group that does not fly. The second paper looks at parts of these animals like their mouths to see how they change between groups. They find that there are lots of things these animals could be doing that most of them are not doing. This makes them say that maybe there is something keeping the animals looking like that because if they change too much in one way it might be really really bad for them.   References: Sayol, Ferran, et al. "Biophysical constraints on avian adaptation and diversification." BioRxiv (2023): 2023-10. Saitta, Evan T., et al. "Feather evolution following flight loss in crown group birds: relaxed selection and developmental constraints." Evolution (2025): qpaf020.

The gang discusses two papers that look at preserved skin/external tissues. The first paper shows a unique record of Cambrian molting, and the second paper looks at the first preserved samples of plesiosaur skin. Meanwhile, Amanda commits an "own goal”, Curt shares some old internet fun, and James has opinions about fins.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at skin that is very very very old. The first paper looks at animals from a long time ago that lose their skin when they get too big for it when then grow. They found these parts on the skin that are hard and most of the time there are two but some of them have four, and that these ones that have four are because they are growing new skin under the old skin. The second paper looks at an animal from a long time ago that breathes air but lives in the water and is close to things today that have harder skin. Other animals like this animal have some skin that we know about, but for this group of animal we did not know a lot about their skin. In the other animals that move into water, their skin gets soft, but this group shows that some of their skin is hard like the animals that are on land. This might be because how these animals live.   References: Yu, Chiyang, Deng Wang, and Jian Han. "Cambrian palaeoscolecidomorph Cricocosmia caught in the act of moulting." Historical Biology 37.3 (2025): 643-649. Marx, Miguel, et al. "Skin, scales, and cells in a Jurassic plesiosaur." Current Biology (2025).

The gang discusses two papers that look into the evolution and timing of key morphological innovations within animal groups. The first paper describes possible raptorial appendages in fossil artiopods, and the second paper finds early evidence of modern bird morphologies in the Jurassic. Meanwhile, Amanda gloats, Curt dies, and James eulogizes.   Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends look at two papers where one friend can feel better about how they do the work than how other people do the work. One paper is about big face hand animals with many parts to their legs that use their big face hands to maybe grab and eat other animals. It says that maybe these animals with many parts to their legs all got the big face hand parts in different ways that other animals with many parts that also have the big face hand parts. The other paper is about the animals that do not have hair or hard skin that fly. It says that the animals that do not have hair or hard skin that fly show up earlier than people maybe thought that they did. They are animals that are more like today's animals that do not have hair or hard skin that can fly. One of our friends has said this for a long time and felt good when they saw this paper.   References: O'Flynn, Robert J., et al. "The early Cambrian Kuamaia lata, an artiopodan euarthropod with a raptorial frontal appendage." Journal of Paleontology (2025): 1-13. Chen, Runsheng, et al. "Earliest short-tailed bird from the Late Jurassic of China." Nature 638.8050 (2025): 441-448.

The gang discusses two papers that look into the timing of evolution of the “crown group”. The first paper looks at fossil glass sponges, and the second paper looks at the phylogeny of lampreys. Meanwhile, James gives some sound advice, Amanda has ambitious hobby plans, and Curt imagines the perfect media crossover.   Up-Goer Five: (Curt Edition) The friends talk about two papers that look at groups of animals and try to see when the things that we see today in these groups may have first happened in the past and what we can tell us about why those things might have happened. The first paper looks at a group of animals that are made up of many single parts that can all act on their own and these animals get food out of water in a very simple way. This paper finds some very old animals that look a lot like some groups of these animals we see today. This would mean that this group may have been around a lot longer ago than we think. The second paper looks at a group of animals that are long without much going on and a round mouth and live in the water. This group has animals that live in different places that have made people ask why. This paper looks at how all of these animals changed over time and uses that to see when the animals that we see today may have first been around. They find that these animals may have first appeared during a time that was really hot, and that might be why the animals are where they are today.   References: Botting, Joseph P., et al. "Advanced crown‐group Rossellidae (Porifera: Hexactinellida) resembling extant taxa from the Hirnantian (Late Ordovician) Anji Biota." Papers in Palaeontology 11.1 (2025): e70000. Hughes, Lily C., et al. "Phylogenomic resolution of lampreys reveals the recent evolution of an ancient vertebrate lineage." Proceedings B 292.2038 (2025): 20242101.

The gang celebrates the research of the late Elisabeth Vrba by talking about two of her papers, as well as her research more broadly. And, despite their best efforts, they get easily distracted on tangentially related side discussions.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers from someone who they want to remember the memory of because that person is no longer with us. They talk a lot about this person's work, and some other things that come up as they are talking. The big things these two papers look at are how small things working together can build things that are bigger than themselves, and how those bigger things can be changed by the small things but not in a way where the big things can be known just by looking at the small things. The big things have stuff in them that come up from the way the small things work together to build something bigger than themselves.   References: Vrba, Elisabeth S. "Macroevolutionary trends: new perspectives on the roles of adaptation and incidental effect." Science 221.4608 (1983): 387-389. Vrba, Elisabeth S. "Mammals as a key to evolutionary theory." Journal of mammalogy 73.1 (1992): 1-28.

The gang discusses two papers that look at some exceptional soft-tissue preservation during the Silurian. The first paper potentially identifies a unique type of pterobranch, and the second paper looks at some early molluscs. Meanwhile, James has seen some movies, Amanda has a skibidi day, and Curt's soul dies.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two animals from a long time ago that are only found as soft parts and that makes it hard to find the parts of them that were in the ground a long long time ago. The first paper looks at an animal that is not well known in the past but is close to another animal that is better known. These soft parts are weird and people did not know what they were for a long while. This paper makes the case for this being one of this group of animals that all live in long empty round things together. They also say that this one may have lived moving in the water even though the ones today all sit at the bottom of the water on the ground. The second paper looks at another group of animals that many today have a hard part on them and some of them turn their body when they grow. The animals that they are looking at do not do these things. They have hair and are long. These are animals are from a group that we think might be close to what the early animals in this group today would have looked like. The friends talk about this paper because they gave the animals funny names.   References: Briggs, Derek EG, and Nicolás Mongiardino Koch. "A Silurian pseudocolonial pterobranch." Current Biology 33.23 (2023): 5225-5232. Sutton, Mark D., et al. "New Silurian aculiferan fossils reveal complex early history of Mollusca." Nature (2025): 1-6.

The gang discusses two papers that look at some exceptionally preserved juvenile fossil specimens and the interesting clues these fossils give to the ontogeny of extinct groups. The first paper is the current oldest preserved tadpole, and the second paper is an exceptionally preserved mummified sabre-toothed cat. Meanwhile, Amanda becomes light, James is visited, and Curt is left in the dust and the filth. Content warning: This episode contains covers some potentially dark material given that these fossils are juveniles. The following time stamps represent some of the more sensitive moments in which the group make morbid jokes about the subject matter.   6 min 3 sec to 6 min 39 secs. 58 min 13 seconds to 58 min 29 secs   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that show some kids from animals groups that are no longer around. These papers are cool because they show how animals from a long time ago changed as they got older. The first paper looks at the kid of an animal group that changes a lot from a thing that moves through water to a thing that jumps on the ground. This kid is somewhere in the middle of jumping and moving through water. This is the oldest of this type of kid we have found so far. The group today is different because they go through this really big change. This paper shows that they were going through this really big change a long long time ago and shows that this change probably happened early on in their time line. The second paper looks at a kid that is from a group of animals with hair and long teeth. This kid was in ice and so we have a lot of things that we would not get that are soft. This is the first time we have seen the soft parts for this age of this animal and it shows us that lots of things we see in the grown animals were also there when they were kids.   References: Chuliver, Mariana, et al. "The oldest tadpole reveals evolutionary stability of the anuran life cycle." Nature (2024): 1-5. Lopatin, A. V., et al. "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia." Scientific Reports 14.1 (2024): 28016.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the evolution of photosynthesis in different groups. The first paper looks at what might be the first fossil evidence of thylakoids, and the second paper finds evidence for photosynthesizing symbiotes in Devonian fossil corals. Meanwhile, Amanda is making a lasagna, James has a lot of opinions about lasagna (~10 minutes until we actually get to the paper), and Curt is all about those sponges.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how some types of living things can make food from the sun. The first paper looks at these very very old things that are very very very small. Inside these things they find very very very small parts of things that are used today by some living things to help make food from the sun. This might be the oldest one of these things that we have ever found, and it makes it so that we can see how things might have gotten better at making food from the sun over time. The second paper looks at old animals that live in the big blue wet thing that all live close together and make big hard parts that make walls in the water. These old animals are like the ones we see today but they are a group that is not around anymore. Groups today have friends that help make food from the sun for them. This paper looks to see if the old animals had those friends (or friends like them) too. They find that animals today keep some bits of things they do not usually want so that their friends can eat them. This can be seen in the hard parts they make. When they looked at the hard parts of the old group of animals, they saw that they were doing this too. This means that these animals were keeping food for friends just like that animals we see today.   References: Demoulin, Catherine F., et al. "Oldest thylakoids in fossil cells directly evidence oxygenic photosynthesis." Nature 625.7995 (2024): 529-534. Jung, Jonathan, et al. "Coral photosymbiosis on Mid-Devonian reefs." Nature (2024): 1-7.

Sausage, Biscuits, Eggey, and Crankshaft make their way into the big mansion. Will they be able to pull off the heist of the century and deliver a perfect Christmas for the raccoons of the junkyard, or will they all go down in a blaze of glory? "Sergio's Magic Dustbin" and “Silent Night” from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Check out “Raccoon Sky Pirates” on itch,io https://hecticelectron.itch.io/raccoon-sky-pirates

Sausage, Biscuits, Eggey, and Crankshaft board the Dumpster Fire and prepare for a holiday adventure... despite the wishes of an unsuspecting populace. "Sergio's Magic Dustbin" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Check out “Raccoon Sky Pirates” on itch,io https://hecticelectron.itch.io/raccoon-sky-pirates

James, Amanda, Curt, and Ants all get together to plan a holiday raccoon heist. What could possibly go wrong?   "Sergio's Magic Dustbin" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Check out “Raccoon Sky Pirates” on itch,io https://hecticelectron.itch.io/raccoon-sky-pirates

The gang discusses two papers that look at patterns of mosaic evolution, one paper looking at cat evolution and the other paper looking at bird ecomorphy. Which means the gang talks about Amanda's two favorite taxonomic groups. Meanwhile, Curt enjoys some realistic bird calls, Amanda remains a threat, and James provides relevant “facts”.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends take a look at how animals change over time and how the parts of the animals might change in different ways at different times. The first paper looks at cats and things that are like cats, and they look at the parts of cats and how they have changed. What they find is that the different parts are changing in different ways across different groups of cats and cat like things. The second paper looks at the neck of animals that move in the air. The paper is looking to see if the reason why these necks change the way they do are because of how they are trying to get food, which is what people thought might be true but no one has looked to see if it is true. A lot of work is done and it does seem that the necks change in a lot of ways that are different for different groups, but it does seem that a lot of these changes are because of how the animals try and look for food.   References: Barrett, Paul Z., and Samantha SB Hopkins. "Mosaic evolution underlies feliform morphological disparity." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2028 (2024): 20240756. Marek, Ryan D., and Ryan N. Felice. "The neck as a keystone structure in avian macroevolution and mosaicism." BMC biology 21.1 (2023): 216.

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.

The gang discusses two papers that look at examples of soft tissue preservation during the Cambrian. The first paper is a deep dive into the sedimentology and paleoenvironment of the Emu Bay Shale. The second paper makes some interesting claims about soft tissue preservation in a marginal marine environment. Meanwhile, James needs some shortcuts, Curt is locked up, and Amanda should be blamed for everything that happened here.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at animals from a long long time ago that lived in the water and were soft but were able to be found in rocks. The first paper looks at a place where there are a lot of animals found in rocks but the types of animals are different from other places around the same time. This paper looks at what the place was like at that time and they see that this was a place where a long line of water that you can drink made its way into the big water that you can not drink. The second paper made us all sad.   References: Naimark, E. B., A. V. Sizov, and V. B. Khubanov. "Kimiltei Is a New Late Cambrian Lagerstätte with the Faunistic Complex of Arthropods (Euthycarcinoidae, Synziphosurina, and Chasmataspidida) in the Irkutsk Region." Doklady Earth Sciences. Vol. 512. No. 1. Moscow: Pleiades Publishing, 2023. Gaines, Robert R., et al. "The Emu Bay Shale: A unique early Cambrian Lagerstätte from a tectonically active basin." Science advances 10.30 (2024): eadp2650.

The gang discusses two papers that look at two Lagerstätten (fossil localities of exceptional preservation). The first Lagerstätte is a unique complex early Triassic community found near the equator, and the second Lagerstätte is a collection of exceptional trace fossils from the Pennsylvanian. Meanwhile, James is convinced in the existence of a town that doesn't exist, Amanda takes an unexpected break, and Curt once again needs to be redacted.   Up-Goer Fiver: (Curt Edition) The friends talk about two papers that look at times when there was a lot of things in the rocks that we do not get in the rocks during most times, and these times can let us know that there were a lot more things were living at this time. The first paper talks about rocks during a time when usually there is not a lot going on because it was just after a time that most things died. Most rocks at this time do not show a lot of things living. These rocks are cool because they are just after the time almost everything died and they show the things that we know lived through that, and that they are all together in a way that looks like the groups of animals we see in rocks way later. The second paper looks at changes in rocks that are because animals move through or on the ground and that gets in the rocks. This area has a lot of these rocks with the bits of animals moving which lets us know a lot about what things were doing on land a long time ago.   References: Dai, Xu, et al. "A Mesozoic fossil lagerstätte from 250.8 million years ago shows a modern-type marine ecosystem." Science 379.6632 (2023): 567-572. Knecht, Richard J., et al. "Early Pennsylvanian Lagerstätte reveals a diverse ecosystem on a subhumid, alluvial fan." Nature Communications 15.1 (2024): 7876.

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.

The gang discusses two papers that look at convergence (maybe?) in modern arthropods. The first paper looks at plant/ant symbiosis in a genus of ants, and the second paper looks at color patterns in crayfish. Meanwhile, James sees through time, Amanda disappears, and Curt plays on everyone's worst fears.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The up-goer thing is back and able to be used so we are now happy! The friends look at two papers that look at how animals can look a lot like each other. In this case the animals are really small and made of small hard parts put together. The first paper is looking at some of these small animals that live on trees. These small animals can either live in a lot of trees or just one type of tree. The animals that live on just one type of tree also look a lot like each other. This paper looks at how and why this could be. The second paper looks at the color of small but angry animals that live along big bits of water. These animals can be lots of colors. They find that different colors appear many times in this group. They look to see if there are any reasons why, and what they find is that maybe color is changing because color is not a big deal for the animals that are living under the ground.   References: Probst, Rodolfo S., John T. Longino, and Michael G. Branstetter. "Evolutionary déjà vu? A case of convergent evolution in an ant–plant association." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2026 (2024): 20241214. Graham, Zackary A., and Dylan J. Padilla Perez. "Correlated evolution of conspicuous colouration and burrowing in crayfish." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2026 (2024): 20240632. Thumbnail photo by Vojtěch Zavadil - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9959681

The gang discusses two papers that...   ok look. I'm going to level with you. No one in this podcast slept more than a few hours before we started recording. One of us was stuck on a plane and didn't get back home until 5 am the day of recording. Everyone was tired and stressed and so we all use this time to vent and drink. Sure, there are papers we talk about: growth rates of Triassic archosaurs and geographic gaps in our early tetrapod record. However, if what you want is focused discussion of the papers, this is not the podcast for you (it takes us 8 and a half minutes to get to the first paper). But if you like us at our most rambling, then do I have a podcast for you!   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Last edition? Oh no the up-goer five word thing has gone down. I can not make an up-goer for this. That makes sense for this because also this time the friends are tired and talking about lots of things that are not the papers, which are about how animals get big and where animals are. But since the nice place that lets us do the word thing is gone, we might not be able to do this ever again. Sorry!   References: Marsicano, Claudia A., et al. "Giant stem tetrapod was apex predator in Gondwanan late Palaeozoic ice age." Nature (2024): 1-6. Klein, Nicole. "Diverse growth rates in Triassic archosaurs—insights from a small terrestrial Middle Triassic pseudosuchian." The Science of Nature 111.4 (2024): 1-5.

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.

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.

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.

The gang convenes in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the 2024 North American Paleontological Convention. We discuss the various talks we saw and highlights on the event. Most of Day 2 discussion starts at 1:03:01 Day 3 discussion starts at 2:19:00 Day 4 discussion starts at 3:22:56

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).

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.

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.

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.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the morphology and ecology of early fishes. The first paper investigates a hypothesis for how the pectoral girdle could have evolved, and the second paper looks at the functional morphology of a Paleozoic jawless fish. Meanwhile, Amanda missed some context, James throws some shade, and Curt is annoyed by AI.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at animals from a long time ago that live in water. The first paper looks at how part of the shoulder in people may have first started as a part of another part of the animal in these animals that lived in water a long long time ago. They find these parts of this animals from a long long time ago that they can use to see how the parts around the head grew. They use this to say that the shoulder parts may have started as a part of the thing these animals use to breath. The second paper looks at the mouth of a type of animal that lived in water a long long time ago that did not have a hard part in the mouth to move up and down and eat food. They use an animal they found with a lot of parts to see how these animals may have lived and what they could have eaten. They find that this animal could have been picking up food from ground at the bottom of the water or they could have been of taking food out of the water. This shows that even animals without a hard part to move up and down to eat food were finding ways to eat a lot of different things.   References: Brazeau, Martin D., et al. "Fossil evidence for a pharyngeal origin of the vertebrate pectoral girdle." Nature 623.7987 (2023): 550-554. Dearden, Richard P., et al. "The three-dimensionally articulated oral apparatus of a Devonian heterostracan sheds light on feeding in Palaeozoic jawless fishes." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2019 (2024): 20232258.

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.

The gang talks about two papers that look through existing museum collections to discover some fascinating new discoveries. Meanwhile, Curt may be haunted, James may be losing energy, and Amanda may not be real.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers about new things that found when going through the stuff stored in a big building where you keep things so that people can look at them later. The first paper finds some really cool new small things that live in water that had been found before and put in a big building to keep things, but no one saw that these small things were not the same as the other small things. These small things are part of a group that lives in fast moving water that we usually do not get a lot of them in the ground. The second paper finds that a thing that was put in a big building a long time ago was actually a lie. This thing is not what everyone thinks it is and the paper looks into what it really is, which is that it is a painting on rock. The paper talks about how it could have ended up this way.   References: Godunko, Roman J., and Pavel Sroka. "A  new mayfly subfamily sheds light on the early evolution and Pangean  origin of Baetiscidae (Insecta: Ephemeroptera)." Scientific Reports 14.1 (2024): 1599. Rossi, Valentina, et al. "Forged soft tissues revealed in the oldest fossil reptile from the early Permian of the Alps." Palaeontology 67.1 (2024): e12690.

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.

The gang discusses two papers that investigate evidence of symbiosis in the fossil record. The first paper looks at wormy organisms living inside Cambrian vetulicolians, and the second paper shows potential evidence of hydroids growing in mollusc shells. Meanwhile, Amanda is haunted, James's computer is totally cooperating, and Curt may or may not have had to stitch this podcast together from other sources.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at animals that live inside of other animals. Sometimes these things live inside other things and both of the things do well because of it. Sometimes, these things live inside other things and they cause problems for the thing they live in. These two papers look at the ways we can see old bits of things that used to live in other things and how we can try and figure out why they might have lived inside other things. The first paper looks long animals living inside a weird animal from a long long time ago. These long animals are all in a small part of these animals that looks like where these weird animals would breathe. Many long animals live inside one of these weird animals. The second paper looks at how hard parts of animals grow over things trying to live on them and we can use use the way these things grow to get an idea of what could have been living on them.   References: Li, Yujing, et al. "Symbiotic fouling of Vetulicola, an early Cambrian nektonic animal." Communications Biology 3.1 (2020): 517. Wisshak, Max, et al. "Putative hydroid  symbionts recorded by bioclaustrations in fossil molluscan shells: a  revision and reinterpretation of the cecidogenus Rodocanalis." Papers in Palaeontology 9.2 (2023): e1484.

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.

A cleric, a wizard, and a paladin finally make their way into the center of the woods. What will they find at the end of their journey? "The Builder", “The Other Side of the Door”, “For Originz” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A paladin, a wizard, and a cleric continue their trek through a totally normal nature preserve where I am sure nothing bad will happen whatsoever. "The Builder", “Constancy Part Three” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A cleric, a wizard, and a paladin prepare for a trip through a dangerous wood. What could go wrong? "The Builder", “Constancy Part Three” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gang discusses two papers that look at... well... let's be honest here... we really didn't have much of a hook. You see, James was slammed with bureaucratic work, Curt was knee deep in grading hell, and Amanda was traveling for the holidays. So we made... this; a podcast about a worm and a lamprey.    We're sorry.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers about animals that are long with no legs. The first  paper looks at a small long animal that is actually pretty big for the  kind of animal that it is. It is very old and is found in a very cold  place. This is an important animal to find from a long time ago because  there are not a lot of these animals found at this time, and not a lot  of them in the cold. The fact that it is big could be a part of  something we see a lot where some animals get big to live in the cold.  The second paper looks at a long animals that moves through water and  some of them will eat parts of other animals while they are still  living. This paper is looking at two new animals from a long time ago  that have not been seen before and seeing how it changes our ideas of  where these things come from and how they lived. And it does!   References: Angst, Delphine, et al. "A new method for estimating locomotion type in large ground birds." Palaeontology (2015). Degrange, Federico J. "Hind limb morphometry of terror birds (Aves, Cariamiformes, Phorusrhacidae): functional implications for substrate preferences and locomotor lifestyle." Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh 106.4 (2017): 257-276.

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.

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.

The gang discusses two papers that deal with the evolution of tardigrades. The first paper looks at some fossil tardigrades in amber, and the second paper looks to the Cambrian to determine the ancestors of modern tardigrades. Meanwhile, Amanda confuses some details about medication, James has some money making crab solutions, and Curt is somehow the one person trying to keep people on track.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at a group of animals that are very very very small and have been seen as cute by a lot of people even though you can not really see them without help. The first paper finds some of these very very small animals in bits that come out of things that grow big and make their own food. These bits get hard when they get covered in ground over a long time and things that get stuck in the stuff can be there. This paper looks at these old very very small animals and tries to see what they could be like. It also talks about how we might not have as good an idea of these animals because they are so small and we do not always look for small things in these kinds of places. The second paper looks at the older things that might be great great great great mom and dad to the tiny animals today. These animals are much bigger and much much older. This paper shows that lots of things we see in these tiny animals today may have been parts that we see in these older animals. But also, that in order to get so very very very small, these animals may have lost some parts so that they could get that small.   References: Kihm, Ji-Hoon, et al. "Cambrian lobopodians shed light on the origin of the tardigrade body plan." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120.28 (2023): e2211251120. Mapalo, Marc A., et al. "A tardigrade in Dominican amber." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1960 (2021): 20211760.

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.

  The gang discusses two papers that look at the provide clues to the modern biogeographic distribution of species, specifically bees and new world monkeys. Meanwhile, Amanda shares something, James finds out about where's the beef in more ways than one, and Curt invents a band.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at where animals live and how those animals got to those places. The first paper looks at group of small animals that fly and go to things that grow their own food and picks up parts of them when looking for food that helps these things that grow their own food make more of themselves. A long time ago, people had an idea that all of these small animals that fly came from one place and them moved to other places. No one had done a big paper using computers to see if this was true. This paper uses computers and finds that it does seem to be true. The second paper looks at small animals that move in trees and can not fly but are closer to people than lots of other animals. This group came from across a big blue wet thing. However, lots of people wonder how they got across the big blue wet thing. This paper looks at new parts of these animals and sees that maybe these animals got across the big blue wet thing a lot of times. This might mean that at some times in the past it was easier for some of these small animals to make it across that big blue wet thing.   References: Almeida, Eduardo AB, et al. "The evolutionary history of bees in time and space." Current biology 33.16 (2023): 3409-3422. Marivaux, Laurent, et al. "An eosimiid  primate of South Asian affinities in the Paleogene of Western Amazonia  and the origin of New World monkeys." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120.28 (2023): e2301338120.

The gang discusses two papers that look at fossils of the early whale group Basilosauridae. Specially, these papers describe the largest whale recovered from this group, as well as the smallest whale from the group. Meanwhile, Amanda has a lovely home, James has some whale facts, and Curt has some art critiques.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at one group of big animals that breathe air but move in the water that are no longer around today. These papers are looking at different animals within the same group. The cool thing about both of these papers is that they talk about the same thing, but from different ways of looking at it. This is because one of these papers is about the biggest animal that people have found in this group and the other paper is about the smallest animal found in this group. This is a big thing because this is a group that today has gotten really big and the reasons why these groups get big has been something people are really interested in. These papers show that these animals were getting both big and small very early on in the group.   References: Bianucci, Giovanni, et al. "A heavyweight early whale pushes the boundaries of vertebrate morphology." Nature (2023): 1-6. Antar, Mohammed S., et al. "A  diminutive new basilosaurid whale reveals the trajectory of the cetacean  life histories during the Eocene." Communications Biology 6.1 (2023): 707.

The gang discusses two papers that investigate the feeding strategies of ancient animals, including a fossil stingray and an ancient bird. Meanwhile, James is recovering, Curt refuses to do his job, and Amanda is in podcast heaven but teetering over podcast hell.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that looks into what old animals that are long dead would eat. The first paper looks at the teeth of a group of animals that move through the water like waves and have a long back part. Animals in this group today eat lots of different things. In the past, we do not know what these animals would eat so we do not know the ways in which these animals have changed to better eat the things they eat. This paper finds an old animal with teeth and body parts and finds that this thing could break hard things with its teeth, but also that it moved through the water in a different way than the animals today that break hard things. The second paper looks at hard things in the stomach of an old animal that flies. This animal has a lot of questions about what it would eat. This paper finds that the hard things in the stomach show that this animal was eating green things that make their own food. This animal was not just eating the soft easy to eat things like sweet parts that hold the things that make new green things, but also the leaves as well.   References: Marramà, Giuseppe, et al. "The evolutionary origin of the durophagous pelagic stingray ecomorph." Palaeontology 66.4 (2023): e12669. Wu, Yan, et al. "Intra-gastric phytoliths provide evidence for folivory in basal avialans of the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota." Nature Communications 14.1 (2023): 4558.

The gang discusses two papers that use Blender 3d modeling techniques (and other functional morphology techniques) to study arthropod morphology. The first paper looks at trilobite enrollment and the second paper looks at the anomalocaris great frontal appendages. Meanwhile, James likes horses, Amanda has some name ideas, and Curt fails to segue.   Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends look at two papers that talk about things with legs that have many parts. The first paper looks at very old pretty large things with mouth legs that people can't decide if they were strong or not strong. The paper does lots of computer stuff to figure out just how strong the mouth legs are. They find that the mouth legs are not as strong as people thought they might be and so they did not eat things with very hard parts, probably, but things that were not hard at all. The second paper looks at how cute little things with legs that have many parts might have made themselves into balls. There are many ways that they might have made themselves into balls, with the way the head fits with the back end. They think only one or two were very good, and that it might have changed as the cute little things with legs that have many parts grew up.   References:  Esteve, Jorge, and Nigel C. Hughes. "Developmental and functional controls on enrolment in an ancient, extinct arthropod." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2000 (2023): 20230871. Bicknell, Russell DC, et al.  "Raptorial appendages of the Cambrian apex predator Anomalocaris  canadensis are built for soft prey and speed." Proceedings of the royal society B 290.2002 (2023): 20230638.

The gang discusses two papers that looks at mammal jaws and teeth. The first paper uses many different analyses to study how the mammal jaw evolved, and the second paper looks at a unique set of teeth in a fossil whale group. Meanwhile, Curt gets ideas from Mortal Kombat, James has discusses farming practices, and Amanda finds any excuse to be fabulous.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at how mouths for animals with hair have changed over time. The first paper looks at the bottom hard part of the mouth to see how it first started and how it has changed and why it changed. Lots of people have ideas about this, but this paper is the first attempt to really look at this problem for a lot of different ways of handling it. They do a lot of things that are very number heavy to look at how these hard parts are able to move, and they look at a lot of parts from living and long dead things. What they find is that the bottom mouth parts of animals with hair are not as good as we thought. They are hard so they do not break, but other animals have bottom mouth parts that are easier to use and quicker. Because animals with hair make their bottom mouth from just one hard part, it may have made it easier for them to get many different teeth in the mouth. This is a story that has a lot more parts than just, "animals with hair had better everything so that is why there are now a lot of them" and instead shows that some changes were not "better" but may have opened doors to other ways to use a mouth (like many different teeth in the same mouth).   The second paper looks at one animal with hair that moves through the water and has some very weird teeth that push out the front of the mouth. But first, the paper needs to see if these are really teeth. Some long teeth like things are found in other animals with hair, but these long things do not have all the parts to be teeth. When they look at this animal, they see that these are actually really long teeth. This is interesting because teeth can be more hurt by things than the long teeth like things. So if these are teeth, what did they do with them? They do not have breaks and they would not be good for moving through the ground looking for food, so the people who wrote the paper think they might be used to cut food.   References: Tseng, Z. Jack, et al. "A switch in jaw form–function coupling during the evolution of mammals." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 378.1880 (2023): 20220091. Coste, Ambre, R. Ewan Fordyce, and  Carolina Loch. "A new dolphin with tusk-like teeth from the late  Oligocene of New Zealand indicates evolution of novel feeding  strategies." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2000 (2023): 20230873.  

The gang discusses two papers that look at examples of unusually large animals in the fossil record; one large lacewing larvae and one very large skink. Meanwhile, James is having a great day, Amanda starts a chant, and Curt learns the true meaning of “cool fossil bro”.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers about things that are big for what they are. The first paper is a type of kid of an animal that is small thing that flies when it is grown but does not fly when it is a kid. These animals have a neck when they are kids which some of these animals do not have. This animal has a really long body and a really long neck. They found it in water, so they think this animal would have been a big thing living in the water and eating things that it caught with its long neck. The second paper looks at another group of animals with cold blood and hard bits on its skin that runs around on four legs. This animal is really big for its group. Parts of this animal were found before, but they were smaller and so they were thought to be something else. This paper finds new parts that show those are parts are from this bigger thing when it was a kid. This big animal is close to another animal that is around today. When this bigger animal died, the smaller animal it is close to came into the same places and seems to have taken its place.   References: Du, Xuheng, Kecheng Niu, and Tong Bao.  "Giant Jurassic dragon lacewing larvae with lacustrine palaeoecology  represent the oldest fossil record of larval neuropterans." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.1993 (2023): 20222500. Thorn, Kailah M., et al. "A giant  armoured skink from Australia expands lizard morphospace and the scope  of the Pleistocene extinctions." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 290.2000 (2023): 20230704.

The gang discusses two papers that look at the ecomorphology of Mesozoic swimming reptiles. The first paper investigates swimming strategies in various marine swimming reptile groups, and the second paper looks at changes in the skull of mosasaurs compared to stem whales. Meanwhile, James has a meal, Amanda “makes” animals, and Curt needs more insight.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that look at how big angry animals that move through the water lived a long time ago. The first paper looks at how these big animals moved through the water, because there are many ways that an animal can move through water. They use numbers to look at how these animals look, and they also use some animals from today that move through water to see if the way they look is like the ones from the past. They find that there are some ways that animals look with their bodies that change how they move through the water. This shows a lot of cool things. Some groups start moving through water in one way and over time move to a different way. This shows that there was a lot of different ways these groups of big angry animals were able to move through the water. The second paper looks at the heads of one group of big angry animals from the past that move through water and also an old group of big animals with hair that move through water that are still around today. The paper wants to see if both of these groups do the same things with their heads since they are both moving into moving through water. They find that a few of the heads kind of look like each other between these two groups, which could be that they were trying to eat the same things. However, most of the time these two groups are not looking the same in the head. This is because these two groups come from different things and so they are not able to change their head in the same way.   References: Gutarra, Susana, et al. "The locomotor ecomorphology of Mesozoic marine reptiles." Palaeontology 66.2 (2023): e12645. Bennion, Rebecca F., et al. "Convergence and constraint in the cranial evolution of mosasaurid reptiles and early cetaceans." Paleobiology 49.2 (2023): 215-231.