Podcasts about Burgess Shale

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2025 8:18

Welcome to the Fossil Huntress Podcast. Today, we're taking a journey half a billion years back in time to one of the most extraordinary fossil sites on the planet — the Burgess Shale — nestled high in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada.So close your eyes and fly with me up to the top of North America, find Canada's far western shores then head east. If you were driving from Vancouver to Burgess in Yoho National park the trip takes about 9 hours. But as we are flying, we arrive rather instantly. This site isn't just famous — it's legendary. Why? Because the Burgess Shale preserves an astonishingly detailed snapshot of early life on Earth, dating back to the Middle Cambrian, about 508 million years ago. The creatures found here represent some of the earliest complex life forms — a mind-blowing cast of characters from a time when life was exploding in diversity and complexity. Think of it as nature's original experiment lab, full of alien-looking arthropods, spiny worms, bizarre filter feeders, and some of the earliest chordates — animals that share our evolutionary ancestry.Some of the headliners include:Anomalocaris – a meter-long predator with grasping appendages and a circular mouth lined with teeth. It looks like something straight out of a sci-fi film.Opabinia – with five eyes and a long proboscis, it's one of the weirdest creatures ever discovered.Wiwaxia, Hallucigenia, Marrella – each one stranger than the last.And then there's Pikaia, a tiny, worm-like creature with a notochord — a feature shared by all vertebrates. That includes you and me. It's one of the earliest known members of our own evolutionary lineage.What Do These Fossils Tell Us?The Burgess Shale helps us understand the Cambrian Explosion, that dramatic moment in Earth's history when most major animal groups first appeared.It shows us that early life was more diverse — and stranger — than we ever imagined. Evolution involves a lot of experimentation — many of the creatures found here left no descendants. Even tiny creatures like Pikaia played a major role in our own evolutionary history.It's a story of ancient oceans, evolutionary innovation, and a delicate moment frozen in shale. A time capsule from a world we barely recognize — yet one that gave rise to us all.You can visit the fossils. There are three main hikes:Walcott Quarry Hike – This is the classic. A full-day, 21 km round-trip hike with stunning views and up-close looks at where Charles Doolittle Walcott first discovered these fossils in 1909.Mount Stephen Trilobite Beds – A bit shorter but still steep, this hike rewards you with a literal ground covered in trilobites!Stanley Glacier Hike in Kootenay National Park – A more recent site with new discoveries and another great option to experience the Burgess Shale in the wild.The hikes are moderately to very strenuous, and must be booked in advance through Parks Canada's website. The guides are knowledgeable interpreters — often geologists or paleontologists themselves — and they bring the whole story to life.I highly recommend visiting Yoho National Park and joining one of those hikes. Standing on that mountainside, with half-a-billion years of history beneath your boots, is a humbling, awe-inspiring experience.

canada earth evolution north america standing vancouver window british columbia rocky mountains burgess deep time parks canada cambrian explosion burgess shale anomalocaris

Time Travelers in Stone: What Are Trilobites?

Creation Moments on Oneplace.com

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2025 11:00

Welcome to The Fossil Huntress Podcast—your window into the deep time of ancient oceans, lost worlds, and beautiful traces left behind. I'm your host, Heidi Henderson, coming to you from the rain-kissed coastline of British Columbia on Canada's far western shores.Today on the show, we're diving into one of the most iconic fossils of all time: trilobites—those segmented, alien-looking creatures that once ruled our ancient seas.So grab a cup of something warm, cozy up, and let's take a journey—travelling in time way back more than half a billion years.Highlights from the Show...One of the most famous trilobite sites in the world is Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. While the Burgess is better known for its soft-bodied creatures like Anomalocaris and Hallucigenia, it also preserved some incredibly detailed trilobites, like Olenoides serratus.You can actually see their legs preserved—a rare thing in the fossil record!Farther east, in Manitoba, you'll find Isotelus rex, the largest complete trilobite ever discovered. This big boy stretched 70 centimeters long—over two feet! Isotelus roamed the ancient Ordovician seas that once covered much of central Canada. Imagine snorkeling and coming face-to-face with one of those…Fun Trilobite FactsTrilobites were among the first animals to develop complex eyes. Some had excellent vision, while others were blind—adapted to deep, dark ocean floors.They molted their exoskeletons like modern-day crabs. That's why we find so many trilobite fossils—many are actually molted skins, not full bodies.Some species rolled up into tight balls, just like modern pill bugs—a defense mechanism against predators.Over 20,000 species of trilobites have been identified, making them one of the most diverse fossil groups ever.Wrap UpTrilobites are more than just pretty fossils; they're storytellers, time travelers in stone. And they continue to surprise us.If you ever find yourself walking an ancient seafloor—maybe on the shores of Newfoundland, the cliffs of Anticosti Island, or the dry bed of a long-gone sea in Manitoba—keep your eyes open. You might just meet a trilobite, frozen mid-crawl in a 400-million-year-old journey.Thanks for joining me, my fossil friends. Until next time, keep seeking, keep wondering, and keep listening to the whispers of the stone.

canada stone british columbia manitoba newfoundland burgess time travelers farther trilobites burgess shale ordovician anomalocaris

Yoho Surprise!

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2025 2:00

Evolutionists claim the fossil record shows an ascending ladder of life with increasing complexity, but evidence from places like the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park contradicts this. Fossil records actually display life being more diverse and complex in the past than it is today. This aligns with the Bible's account of living things having always been complex, with no evidence of one kind of creature changing into another. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1232/29

bible surprise fossil yoho evolutionists burgess shale

Michael Garfield — Play the (Mind) Jazz (EP.246)

Infinite Loops

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2024 79:44

My guest today is Michael Garfield, a paleontologist, futurist, writer, podcast host and strategic advisor whose “mind-jazz” performances — essays, music and fine art — bridge the worlds of art, science and philosophy. This year, Michael received a $10k O'Shaughnessy Grant for his “Humans On the Loop” discussion series, which explores the nature of agency, power, responsibility and wisdom in the age of automation. This whirlwind discussion is impossible to sum up in a couple of sentences (just look at the number of books & articles mentioned!) Ultimately, it is a conversation about a subject I think about every day: how we can live curious, collaborative and fulfilling lives in our deeply weird, complex, probabilistic world. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that's interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: Michael's Website Humans On The Loop Twitter Future Fossils Substack Show Notes: What is “mind jazz”? Humans “ON” the loop? The Red Queen hypothesis and the power of weirdness Probabilistic thinking & the perils of optimization Context collapse, pernicious convenience & coordination at scale How organisations learn Michael as World Emperor MORE! Books, Articles & Podcasts Mentioned: The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves; by W. Brian Arthur Pharmako-AI; by K Allado-McDowell The Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century; by Howard Bloom The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism; by Howard Bloom One Summer: America, 1927; by Bill Bryson Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There; by Lewis Carroll The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World; by David Deutsch Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry; by Joshua DiCaglio Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders and the Rise of Social Engineering; by Malcolm Gladwell The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous; by Joseph Henrich Do Conversation: There's No Such Thing as Small Talk; by Robert Poynton Reality Hunger: A Manifesto; by David Shields The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture; by William Irwin Thompson The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science; by Robert Anton Wilson Designing Neural Media; by K Allado-McDowell Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning; by Steward Brand Losing Humanity: The Case against Killer Robots; by Bonnie Docherty What happens with digital rights management in the real world?; by Cory Doctorow The Evolution of Surveillance Part 1: Burgess Shale to Google Glass; by Michael Garfield An Introduction to Extitutional Theory; by Jessy Kate Schingler 175 - C. Thi Nguyen on The Seductions of Clarity, Weaponized Games, and Agency as Art; Future Fossils with Michael Garfield

The Burgess Shale

Geology Podcast Network

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2024 49:07

500 some million years ago the world was full of ‘abnormal shrimp' and ‘blunt feet' and other animals that defy comprehensible definitions. In this episode we talk all about the mind-boggling biology and bizarre geology of the Cambrian. CW: Drug references, cursing, dead animals, cavalier jokes at the expense of white men, dick jokes

cambrian burgess shale

The Burgess Shale

Weird & Dead

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2024 49:07

500 some million years ago the world was full of ‘abnormal shrimp' and ‘blunt feet' and other animals that defy comprehensible definitions. In this episode we talk all about the mind-boggling biology and bizarre geology of the Cambrian. CW: Drug references, cursing, dead animals, cavalier jokes at the expense of white men, dick jokes

cambrian burgess shale

The Burgess Shale

Weird & Dead

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2024 49:07

500 some million years ago the world was full of ‘abnormal shrimp' and ‘blunt feet' and other animals that defy comprehensible definitions. In this episode we talk all about the mind-boggling biology and bizarre geology of the Cambrian. CW: Drug references, cursing, dead animals, cavalier jokes at the expense of white men, dick jokes

cambrian burgess shale

The Hitchhikers Guide to Evolution: Time to Explode

The Hitchhikers Guide to Evolution

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2024 8:33

We are transporting back over 500 million years ago, where we will explore a time when Earth's oceans filled with bizarre and enigmatic creatures, marking the dawn of complex life. From the iconic Burgess Shale fossils to the Cambrian Explosion itself, join me as we uncover the secrets of this pivotal period in Earth's history, where evolution unfolded with an explosion of diversity.References- Amos, J. L. (n.d.). Cambrian Period. National Geographic. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/cambrian- Bagley, M. (2016, May 27). Cambrian Period & Cambrian Explosion: Facts & Information. Live Science. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.livescience.com/28098-cambrian-period.html- Hughes, N. C. (2023, January 6). ,Cambrian Explosion: Life explosion in Cambrian period is an explosion of extant fossils. Science Direct. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/cambrian-period- Kazlev, A. (2002). Palaeos Paleozoic: Cambrian: The Cambrian Period - 1. Palaeos. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from http://palaeos.com/paleozoic/cambrian/cambrian.html- Robison, R. A. , Crick, . Rex E. and Johnson, . Markes E. (2024, March 1). Cambrian Period. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/Cambrian-PeriodMusicUnfolding Plot by Blue Dot SessionsContributorsWritten/Edited/Produced: Kassidy RobertsonThesis Directors: Professor Jeremy Bramblett, and Professor Will DavisThesis Committee: Dr. Hope Klug, and Professor Timothy Gaudin

earth evolution hughes national geographic explode bagley robison hitchhiker's guide hitchhikers encyclopedia britannica crick cambrian live science cambrian explosion burgess shale cambrian period

''Es la joya de la corona del Parque Nacional Yoho''

Aventureros

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2023 16:18

Llegaron a las Montañas Rocosas para recorrer los parques canadienses y las grandes praderas de Alberta, una expedición naturalística compuesta por más de 24 personas fascinadas por el mundo natural y la geología. Xabier Bañuelos nos lleva al Parque nacional de Yoho y a Burgess Shale....

monta parque llegaron la corona yoho parque nacional la joya rocosas burgess shale

''Es la joya de la corona del Parque Nacional Yoho''

Aventureros

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2023 16:18

Llegaron a las Montañas Rocosas para recorrer los parques canadienses y las grandes praderas de Alberta, una expedición naturalística compuesta por más de 24 personas fascinadas por el mundo natural y la geología. Xabier Bañuelos nos lleva al Parque nacional de Yoho y a Burgess Shale....

monta parque llegaron la corona yoho parque nacional la joya rocosas burgess shale

Beyond Bones: Dinosaur Soft Tissues

I Know Dino: The Big Dinosaur Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2023 56:07

For links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Chilesaurus, and our fun fact check out https://iknowdino.com/Chilesaurus-Episode-457/Join us at www.patreon.com/iknowdino for dinosaur requests, bonus content, ad-free episodes, and more.Dinosaur of the day Chilesaurus, A Late Jurassic dinosaur whose origin is a mystery because it has a combination of features from theropods, ornithischians, and sauropodomorphs.Dinosaur bones are some of the most famous fossils. But dinosaur skin, feathers, blood vessels, tendons, and even organs have been found in the fossil record.A couple recent papers describe how and where soft tissue preserves:Researchers found the most common chemical mechanisms for soft tissue preservationMinerals in the Burgess Shale contributed to some of the best soft tissue preservation found anywhere in the world This episode is brought to you by Exquisite Eons. They have new Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Ankylosaurus bronze figurines available for pre-order! Get a discount by ordering the full set for a limited time at https://exquisiteeons.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

bones soft researchers dinosaurs tissues triceratops stegosaurus ankylosaurus burgess shale

Episode 31 - Burgess Shale Fossils at Yoho National Park

Mountain Town Ramblers

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2023 46:25

Wow, are we geologists now? Absolutely not, but we enjoyed acting like one. The Burgess Shale Fossils are a world-recognized fossil bed as a critical piece of anthropological history, and we tell you all about it in this episode. It is a 22km hike to the quarry, and did we forget to say, one of the best hikes ever?

national parks fossils yoho burgess shale

Bench Talk | Our 5th Anniversary Show: 'A Day in Science' | August 28, 2023

FORward Radio program archives

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2023 26:24

We are celebrating five years on the air! To honor science, and the work of scientists, we are dissecting one calendar date (August 28) and describing some of the historical advances that occurred in STEM on that date! Chlorine gas was initially isolated, and the Burgess Shale fossils were discovered on August 28th. The first successful gene therapy trial was performed, and the first human embryos were gene-edited using CRISPR-Cas9 on that day. In addition to the amazing things that happened in science on August 28, we also discuss three pivotal civil rights events that occurred then. ‘Bench Talk: The Week in Science' is a weekly program that airs on WFMP Louisville FORward Radio 106.5 FM (forwardradio.org) every Monday at 7:30 pm, Tuesday at 11:30 am, and Wednesday at 7:30 am. Visit our Facebook page for links to the articles discussed in this episode: https://www.facebook.com/pg/BenchTalkRadio/posts/?ref=page_internal

science stem bench anniversary show 5th anniversary crispr cas9 chlorine aday burgess shale

8. Hallucigenia

Pals in Palaeo

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2023 44:39 Transcription Available

Join palaeontologists Adele Pentland and Dr Martin Smith on a fossil fever dream through the Cambrian! This episode we discuss the spicy noodle Hallucigenia (an inch long worm with spikes, claws and Cthulhu tentacles), family ties to the velvet worms and frolic through the famous Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. Plus de-extinction of 32,000 year old Pleistocene plants from Siberia, revived by raiding a prehistoric squirrel pantry for frozen fruits.This episode is brought to you by Dinosaur Trips! Explore the world and see the best museums, meet experts and even dig up real dinosaurs. For more info visit dinosaurtrips.com and email zach@dinosaurtrips.com about the Badlands and Beyond Trip.Dinosaur Trips It's been 66 million years. Why wait any longer? Join an upcoming trip!Pals in Palaeo @palsinpalaeoHost: Adele Pentland @palaeodelOnline StoreTranscriptsThe Pals in Palaeo Cover ArtJenny Zhao Design @jennyzdesignCrumpet Club House@crumpetclubhouse The Pals in Palaeo Theme MusicHello Kelly @hellokellymusic Podcast Producer + Editor Jean-César Puechmarin @cesar_on_safariPodcast EditorFrançois "Francy" Goudreault @hellofrancy

explore siberia cthulhu badlands pals canadian rockies cambrian pleistocene martin smith francy burgess shale goudreault

Episode 30 - Yoho National Park, Canada

Mountain Town Ramblers

Play Episode Play 22 sec Highlight Listen Later Aug 14, 2023 52:43

In this episode we will visit the least visited of the 4 connected National Parks in the Canadian Rockies, Yoho National Park. This is a small but mighty park, with rugged peaks, amazing hikes, lakes unmatched by many if any place on earth. This is an amazing natural experience off the beaten path that you just need to hear about.

canada field mountains british columbia rivers hiking national parks lakes yoho canadian rockies burgess shale emerald lake

The So-Called "Missing Links" in the Fossil Record

Christian Natural Health

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2023 8:46

Darwin's original tenants of his theory as laid out in his 1859 seminal work, "The Origin of Species," were these: that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor via minor, undirected changes, and that natural selection determines which of those random mutations get passed down to future progeny. Variations that confer a survival advantage allow the creature who inherits it to live long enough to procreate, and pass down that change to the next generation. Darwin successfully demonstrated "microevolution" with his Galapagos finch study, showing that finches confined to a particular island would evolve differently shaped beaks over time, in accordance with their available food sources. Similar processes have been demonstrated within many other species as well, and few would dispute that such microevolution does, in fact, occur. But Darwin then extrapolated this process, assuming that over the eons, such tiny changes could allow one species to evolve into another. Leaving aside the philosophical objections we've already covered in previous episodes, such as irreducible complexity and information theory negating the possibility of this occurring, is there any evidence that it nevertheless did occur? If it did, the fossil record should be riddled with examples of transitional species--some of which might have been "dead ends," but many of which should have been ancestors halfway between one species and another. Darwin himself wrote in "The Origin of Species," "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." In other words, he figured that in time, and with acceptance of his theory and with scientists all over the globe searching for such evidence, the "missing links" would eventually be found. So, 164 years later, with belief in evolution dominating almost the entire scientific community, have any fossils of missing links been found? A quick YouTube search on evolutionary fossils presents the first arthropod, mollusk, insect, etc as "missing links." They're the "first" because of where they were found in the rock strata (where deeper is older). But all of the creatures presented are part of recognizable classes of creatures alive today, though those exact species are often extinct. This means they're the end of a line; they're not an intermediate on the way to anything we can identify. (Some of the species aren't extinct at all though, and the exact same organism is still alive today. This is what evolutionists call "stasis": no change over millions of years.) The only possible true missing link of which I'm aware is one found in the 1860s, during Darwin's own lifetime, called archaeopteryx. It was a fossil showing characteristics of both a bird and a reptile, and it is the basis of the widely supposed belief that dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds. Larry Martin, paleontologist from the University of Kansas, said in 1985 that archaeopteryx is not a true transitional species, but merely an extinct type of bird. According to wikipedia, twelve such fossils of archaeopteryx have been found, and all around the same area of Germany, encased in limestone. Since only 12 fossils of this same species were found in a very localized area, Martin's explanation makes the most sense. We should have found many more intermediates all over the world, in various stages of transition, if the hypothesis that dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds was correct. (We also wouldn't have expected the two to coexist either, if one were the ancestor of the other, but apparently according to both the Smithsonian and National Geographic, they did.) A few other possible contenders for "missing links" have been found over the years, but the case for each of them has been weak at best. One was the Java Man, found in 1891, supposed to be a missing link between humans and apes. All that was found of it was a skull, a femur, and three teeth. These were later determined to have belonged to three different species. Another was the Piltdown Ape, found in England in the early 1900s, also speculated to be a missing link between apes and humans. In Nov 1953, however, Time Magazine published collected evidence of multiple paleontologists that this ape too was comprised of fossils from three different species. The BBC later called it "the biggest hoax in British history." Peking Man was found in China in the 1920s, another supposed common link between apes and humans. All that was found of it were fragments of skull and teeth. Yet another was "Lucy," found in East Africa in 1974, another supposed common ancestor between apes and humans. Because of the structure of her knees, hands, and feet, which were not at all similar to humans, Dr Charles Oxnard wrote in his book, “Fossils, Teeth, and Sex: New Perspectives on Human Evolution” that Lucy was an extinct species of ape. It would be a decided understatement to say that the fossil evidence for evolution is underwhelming. One possible counter-argument for this is that it is exceedingly rare for an organism to become fossilized in the first place. This is because of the putrefaction of microorganisms, which consume dead organic matter. The Smithsonian Magazine writes that fossilization can occur via a few mechanisms: petrification (of bone, or wood), or from an organism being rapidly consumed by sediment that later turns to rock, tar, or amber, protecting the organic dead material from putrefying organisms. While most living things therefore do not become fossils after death, one would think, if Darwin's theory were true, that there should still be many more intermediates than there are recognizable species today. There's an even bigger problem than the lack of transitionary fossils. The rock strata defies the narrative of painstakingly slow evolutionary changes over a period of millions of years. Instead, even in Darwin's own time, he became aware of, and was troubled by, the contradictory evidence of the Cambrian Explosion, also dubbed the "Biological Big Bang." The deepest strata of rock, beneath the Cambrian, demonstrates only fossils of single celled or simple multicellular organisms. Then, suddenly, the layers of rock believed to correspond to the Cambrian period 13-25 million years ago showed nearly every phyla of animals alive today, fully formed. This is true worldwide of the strata belonging to this period. The Biological Big Bang raises several additional questions. First, what happened in the Cambrian period that allowed so many creatures to become fossilized all at once, when fossils are generally rare? In many cases the fossils found are even of soft-bodied creatures (The Qingjiang biota—A Burgess Shale-type fossil Lagerstätte from the early Cambrian of South China), which should putrefy quickly after death--preservation of these in such exquisite detail would certainly require very rapid burial. Also, land animals appear alongside marine animals in the Cambrian period all across the globe. What could have caused such intermingling of creatures that do not otherwise cohabitate? (A global flood mentioned in Genesis 6 comes to mind.) Darwin wrote in the sixth edition of "Origin of Species": "To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer." Evolutionary paleontologist Stephen J Gould later said, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." He went on to propose the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium, in which one species makes a large jump rather than the series of tiny changes predicted in classical evolution to explain the deficit of the fossil record, though this mechanism is philosophically even more fraught than tiny progressive changes would have been. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design, How Mutations Fail To Invent and The Remarkable Coincidences in Photosynthesis. ACU Sunday Series.,

American Conservative University

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2023 34:09

Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design, How Mutations Fail To Invent and The Remarkable Coincidences in Photosynthesis. ACU Sunday Series. Stephen Meyer Investigates Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design (Lecture 1) Michael Behe Exposes How Mutations Fail To Invent Michael Denton Remarkable Coincidences in Photosynthesis Stephen Meyer Investigates Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design (Lecture 1) https://youtu.be/C5Z6h_RVhIw Discovery Science Visit https://www.discoveryu.org/courses/meyer for the full course. For the first time, you can have living room access to over seven hours of teaching by intelligent design pioneer Stephen Meyer in a brand-new online course. A favorite of students young and old(er), Meyer will delight both as he explores the scientific evidence for intelligent design (ID) found in physics, cosmology, biology and the chemical origin of life. Join Stephen as he investigates the scientific evidence for intelligent design in the origin of life, the development of biological complexity, and physics and cosmology. In 42 short video lectures, Meyer explores the scientific basis for the theory of intelligent design—the idea that key features of life and the universe are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an unguided process. In this course, Meyer will guide you through the major concepts and information presented in his path breaking books Signature in the Cell and Darwin's Doubt, as well as previewing some of the material about physics and cosmology in his book The Return of the God Hypothesis. Each video lecture is accompanied by a short quiz, and a special digital certificate of completion is offered for those who finish the course. For more about the course visit https://www.discoveryu.org/courses/meyer. Check out these videos as well: Information Enigma: Where does information come from? https://youtu.be/aA-FcnLsF1g Michael Behe Investigates Evolution & Intelligent Design (Lecture 1) https://youtu.be/XCTTy0ylf7A Stephen Meyer Shatters The Myth Of The Multiverse (Science Uprising EP4) https://youtu.be/WR51OrawqIg ============================ The Discovery Science News Channel is the official Youtube channel of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. The CSC is the institutional hub for scientists, educators, and inquiring minds who think that nature supplies compelling evidence of intelligent design. The CSC supports research, sponsors educational programs, defends free speech, and produce articles, books, and multimedia content. For more information visit https://www.discovery.org/id/ http://www.evolutionnews.org/ http://www.intelligentdesign.org/ Follow us on Facebook and Twitter: Twitter: @discoverycsc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/discoverycsc/ Visit other Youtube channels connected to the Center for Science & Culture Discovery Institute: https://www.youtube.com/user/Discover... Dr. Stephen C. Meyer: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrStephe... The Magician's Twin - CS Lewis & Evolution: https://www.youtube.com/user/cslewisweb Darwin's Heretic - Alfred Russel Wallce: https://www.youtube.com/user/AlfredRW... Course Overview Join philosopher of science Stephen Meyer as he investigates the scientific evidence for intelligent design in the origin of life, the development of biological complexity, and physics and cosmology. In 42 short video lectures, Meyer explores the scientific basis for the theory of intelligent design—the idea that key features of life and the universe are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an unguided process. In this course, Meyer will guide you through the major concepts and information presented in his pathbreaking books Signature in the Cell and Darwin's Doubt, as well as previewing some of the material about physics and cosmology in his book The Return of the God Hypothesis. Each video lecture is accompanied by a short quiz, and a special digital certificate of completion is offered for those who finish the course. About the Professor Stephen C. Meyer received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in the history and philosophy of science. A former geophysicist with ARCO and professor of philosophy at Whitworth University, he currently directs the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is author of the New York Times-bestseller Darwin's Doubt (2013) as well as Signature in the Cell (2009) and The Return of the God Hypothesis (forthcoming in 2021). Recommended Texts and Resources You are encouraged to dig deeper into the topics explored in this course by consulting the following books and resources: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (book) Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (book) Debating Darwin's Doubt (book) Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell (book) Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and against Neo-Darwinism (book) The Return of the God Hypothesis (book) DarwinsDoubt.com (website) The Information Enigma (video) The Intelligent Design Collection—Darwin's Dilemma, The Privileged Planet, Unlocking the Mystery of Life (videos) Course Outline Unit 1: Evidence of Intelligent Design in the Origin of Life Introduction to Course. What is intelligent design, and why is it controversial? In this first lecture, Meyer introduces the topic of intelligent design. Darwin's Challenge to Intelligent Design. What does evolution mean? Meyer explains adaptation and explains how Darwin's theory challenges the idea of intelligent design. Theories of the Origin of Life in the Nineteenth Century. Darwin conceived of the origin of life happening possibly in a “warm little pond.” Meyer explains the state of origin of life research at Darwin's time and later. Oparin's Theory of the Origin of Life. Meyer delves into Alexsandr Oparin's theory on the origin of life, put forward in 1936. Learn about evolutionary abiogenesis and the experiment that sought to prove it. The Amazing Complexity of Proteins. What do proteins look like? How has science progressed in its understanding of these basic building blocks of life? Meyer traces the work of protein scientists in the 1930s up through the 50s. What is the importance of a protein's shape? And how is this shape determined? The Role of DNA. How did our understanding of the cell change in the 1950s and 60s? Meyer discusses the discovery of the stable double helix structure of DNA and the key scientists involved. The DNA Enigma. Meyer examines Francis Crick's sequence hypothesis and then goes on to delve into the question of code and biological information, explaining what he calls “the DNA enigma.” What Kind of Information Does DNA Contain? Meyer explores types of information, explains mathematical Shannon information, and discusses what kind of information Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, and Bill Gates see in life's code. Explanations for the Origin of Life: Chance. Could the information in the cell come about by chance? Today, learn the history of origin of life research from the 1950s to the present. What is prebiotic soup, anyway? Explanations for the Origin of Life: Self-Organization. Can self-organization explain the origin of biological information? In this lesson, learn about Dean Kenyon and his idea of ‘biochemical predestination' of amino acids. How does DNA fit into this whole picture? 2 Explanations for the Origin of Life: Pre-Biotic Natural Selection. What is prebiotic natural selection? Listen in as Dr. Meyer examines Oparin's hypothesis and modern attempts to reconcile evolution with the origin of life. Introduction to Intelligent Design. Meyer recounts his introduction to the design hypothesis and his quest to shape it into a rigorous scientific argument as he explores historical science methods. Objections to Intelligent Design: Is Intelligent Design Science? Meyer responds to a key philosophical objection to intelligent design. Objections to Intelligent Design: Argument from Ignorance? Some critics claim design proponents make an argument from ignorance. Is this true? Meyer discusses the intelligent designer of the gaps objection and illustrates why it is not applicable. Objections to Intelligent Design: RNA World, pt 1. Is it possible to avoid the cell's chicken and egg problem? Listen in as Meyer discusses the RNA world scenario. Can genetic information and biochemically relevant functions be present without either DNA or protein? Objections to Intelligent Design: RNA World, pt. 2. Can the RNA world scenario overcome the information problem? Listen in as Dr. Meyer analyzes this popular proposal. Objections to Intelligent Design: RNA World, pt. 3. Have scientific developments “overtaken Meyer's book” as Stephen Fletcher claims? Listen in as Meyer examines Fletcher's supposed evidence. Objections to Intelligent Design: Junk DNA. Critics claim that junk DNA disproves intelligent design. Meyer takes on this objection. Unit 2: Evidence of Intelligent Design in the Development of Life Another Information Problem in the History of Life. Is the origin of life the main problem with the materialistic evolutionary account of origins? Meyer delves into the modern evolutionary synthesis. Is information a problem here too? The Cambrian Explosion. What does the fossil record reveal about life's history? Meyer discusses how Darwin found the Cambrian explosion particularly striking and puzzling. The Mystery of the Missing Fossils: The Burgess Shale. Darwin tried to propose an explanation for the mystery of the missing fossils. But have later discoveries confirmed his predictions? Meyer introduces a 1909 discovery – the Burgess Shale. The Mystery of the Missing Fossils: The Chenjiang Fauna. Meyer details a fossil find with great diversity: the Cambrian era Chenjiang fauna. 3 What Does It Take to Build an Animal? Meyer discusses the process of how to get a Cambrian animal. Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Mechanism: Combinatorial Searches, pt. 1. What does combinatorial search mean? And how would the neo-Darwinian mechanism produce the new genetic information needed to build new animals? Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Mechanism: Combinatorial Searches, pt. 2. How hard is it to get a new protein? Meyer does the math, further examining the efficacy of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Mechanism: Developmental Mutations and Gene Regulatory Networks. It's a catch-22: random mutation and organism development. Meyer gets beyond the numbers and uncovers the challenges posed for NeoDarwinism by developmental mutations and developmental gene regulatory networks. Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Mechanism: Information beyond DNA. Do protein folds and developmental gene regulatory networks pose the biggest problems to Neo-Darwinism? Meyer discusses a third devastating challenge to evolution. He also discusses new evolutionary theories proposed to overcome it. The Positive Case for Intelligent Design, pt. 1. Can one make a positive case for intelligent design using accepted methods of reasoning? Meyer examines inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning, and lays out what intelligent design proponents need to demonstrate to make a strong case for design. The Positive Case for Intelligent Design, pt. 2. Meyer applies historical scientific methods to evaluate potential causes of the Cambrian explosion. The Positive Case for Intelligent Design, pt. 3. Meyer discusses genetic algorithm computer programs, the reason why the random mutation/natural selection mechanism is doomed, and why intelligence uniquely can account for functional information. Responding to Critics: Charles Marshall. Paleontologist Charles Marshall challenged Meyer's arguments in Darwin's Doubt, and here Meyer responds. Response to Critics: Dennis Venema and Deborah Haarsma. Meyer evaluates an objection to his book from theistic evolutionists Dennis Venema and Deborah Haarsma. Can evolution's mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations account for new protein folds? And what does the evolution of nylonase demonstrate? Responding to Critics: Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins. Meyer responds to atheists Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins. 4 Who Is the Designer? Who is the designing intelligence? Was it an alien? Or a transcendent being? Meyer addresses this question, distinguishing between evidence from biology that merely points to mind, and separate evidence that may shed light on the identity of the designer. Unit 3: Evidence of Intelligent Design in Physics and Cosmology One Man's Journey. Meyer recounts the story of an astronomer's journey from atheism to intelligent design. What do the stars reveal? What Is Fine-Tuning? Meyer discusses the laws and constants of physics, highlighting striking examples of fine-tuning. How Do We Recognize Design? Meyer discusses William Dembski's theory of design inferences, and applies that to fine-tuning. Weak Anthropic Principle and Natural Law. Meyer gives an overview of the weak anthropic principle and natural law as explanations for fine-tuning. The Multiverse, pt. 1. Meyer describes a popular explanation for fine-tuning and the two cosmological models physicists employ. The Multiverse, pt. 2. Meyer analyzes the multiverse theory. How does it stack up against intelligent design? The Multiverse, pt. 3. Meyer delves deeper into universe generating mechanisms and what they require. Who Is the Designer? In this final video lecture, Stephen Meyer shares his thoughts on this important question. Michael Behe Exposes How Mutations Fail To Invent (Science Uprising EP6) https://youtu.be/_ivgQFIST1g Discovery Science Are chance mutations really “the key to our evolution” like they claim in the X-Men films? Or are there strict limits to what mutations can accomplish, limits that point to the need for an overarching designer and the failure of Darwinian evolution to create fundamentally new things? Be sure to visit https://scienceuprising.com/ to find more videos and explore related articles and books. In this episode of Science Uprising, we'll take a look at the real evidence for the supposed powerhouse of evolution. The featured expert is biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University, author of the books Darwin's Black Box, The Edge of Evolution, and Darwin Devolves. Well-known scientists have been preaching a materialistic worldview rather than presenting the public with all the evidence. We are here to change that. The objective scientific evidence does not prove our universe is blind and purposeless. It does not show we are simply meat machines. It does not prove that evolutionary mechanisms can completely account for the diversity of life on earth. This is what THEY want you to think. Think for yourself and make an informed decision. Are you ready? The uprising has begun. In a lecture, Phillip Johnson cited physicist Richard Feynman on a scientist's obligation to be honest — not only with himself or in other scientific contexts but, not one bit less, when speaking to the lay public. “You should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist.” That such a thing would need to be said is itself revealing. What's more, Feynman insisted, you should “bend over backwards to show how you may be wrong.” The comments are taken from a Commencement address by Feynman in 1974 at Caltech. Johnson, a founding father of modern intelligent design, was so moved by this that he said “I wish it could be set to music.” As far as I know it hasn't been set to music. But the idea is a major theme in the new Science Uprising series. Scientists fool themselves and they fool non-scientists, not about dry technical details with no special significance, but about matters that bear on huge, life-altering world picture issues. One example is the role of mutations in evolution. That is the topic of Episode 6 of Science Uprising, “Mutations: Failure to Invent.” It's out now; see it here: The Alternative Perspective The idea that random genetic mutations lead to wondrous, creative innovations is so influential that it forms the premise of a movie franchise, X-Men, that has grossed $6 billion worldwide over the past couple of decades. That's a lot of “fooling the laymen”! The alternative perspective would be open to the possibility of creative evolution requiring intelligence guidance. The producers of the X-Men movies aren't scientists. However, the science media have done their best to mislead about the work of real scientists, including National Academy of Sciences member Richard Lenski. We're all victims of that hype, including Hollywood moviemakers. Dismantling the hype about Lenski occupies biochemist Michael Behe for a significant part of his recent book, Darwin Devolves. Super-Challenges Not Super-Powers As Professor Behe explains in Science Uprising, the Long-Term Evolution Experiment conducted by Lenski has demonstrated not the creative power of unguided evolution but the occasional benefits of devolution, of breaking or disabling genes. That's the opposite lesson from the one drawn by media such as the New York Times in reporting on Lenski's efforts. “Think about it,” says the masked narrator of Science Uprising, against the backdrop of poignant images of people suffering from genetic illnesses, “significant mutations don't create superpowers. They create super-challenges. Sometimes those mutations are even life-threatening.” Check out some of our other videos: Information Enigma: Where does information come from? Information drives the development of life. But what is the source of that information? https://youtu.be/aA-FcnLsF1g Science Uprising Episode 1 - Reality: Real vs. Material Has science proven we are all just matter? Or does reality extend beyond what we can see and touch? https://youtu.be/Fv3c7DWuqpM Bijan Nemati: Rare Earth https://youtu.be/vn3YpOWCrc4 Check out other videos from this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Discover... Michael Denton Remarkable Coincidences in Photosynthesis -- ID The Future Podcast https://youtu.be/12i2RKct5RM Discovery Science On this episode of ID the Future, we listen in on a few minutes from a lecture given by CSC Senior Fellow Michael Denton. We've all heard of the importance of photosynthesis as an oxygen creating process. In this segment, Denton explains the “remarkable set of coincidences” which makes the creation of oxygen through photosynthesis possible. From the specific energy of visible light to the unique properties of water, this degree of improbability screams DESIGN. For more and to download this episode go to: https://www.discovery.org/multimedia/... For more on how the cosmos is designed for life, watch Discovery Institute's documentary Priviledged Species, featuring Michael Denton, at http://privilegedspecies.com/. The ID The Future (IDTF) podcast carries on Discovery Institute's mission of exploring the issues central to evolution and intelligent design. IDTF is a short podcast providing you with the most current news and views on evolution and ID. IDTF delivers brief interviews with key scientists and scholars developing the theory of ID, as well as insightful commentary from Discovery Institute senior fellows and staff on the scientific, educational and legal aspects of the debate. You've heard the hype, now learn the truth. Subscribe to the podcast Intelligent Design: The Future. Exploring issues central to the case for intelligent design from the Big Bang to the bacterial flagellum and beyond. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i... ============================ The Discovery Science News Channel is the official Youtube channel of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture. The CSC is the institutional hub for scientists, educators, and inquiring minds who think that nature supplies compelling evidence of intelligent design. The CSC supports research, sponsors educational programs, defends free speech, and produce articles, books, and multimedia content. For more information visit https://www.discovery.org/id/ http://www.evolutionnews.org/ http://www.intelligentdesign.org/ Follow us on Facebook and Twitter: Twitter: @discoverycsc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/discoverycsc/ Visit other Youtube channels connected to the Center for Science & Culture Discovery Institute: https://www.youtube.com/user/Discover... Dr. Stephen C. Meyer: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrStephe... The Magician's Twin - CS Lewis & Evolution: https://www.youtube.com/user/cslewisweb Darwin's Heretic - Alfred Russel Wallce: https://www.youtube.com/user/AlfredRW...

university history culture hollywood science discover future challenges new york times design phd evolution seattle mystery development dna fail theory doubt exploring animal id scientists designers origin responding dilemma cambridge xmen bill gates physics multiverse sciences critics theories magicians meyer ignorance remarkable signature big bang national academy objections dismantling mutation black box invent rna denton arco commencement richard dawkins proteins caltech explanations natural law coincidences darwinian intelligent design csc lehigh university richard feynman photosynthesis nineteenth century feynman cambrian scientific evidence discovery institute lawrence krauss francis crick cambrian explosion stephen meyer animal life god hypothesis stephen c meyer michael behe phillip johnson sunday series lenski burgess shale privileged planet neo darwinism william dembski stephen fletcher michael denton

Episode 153: Castle Bank

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2023 75:01

A new Ordovician lagerstätte (site of special fossil preservation) has just been described from Llandrindod Wells, Wales. The site contains the remains of well over 150 different species, most of which are entirely new to science. It is dated to around 461 million years old, placing it at a critical point in life's evolution: the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. This is even more significant, considering the relative sparsity of lagerstätten of this time. We are joined in this interview by Drs Joe Botting and Lucy Muir, who discovered the Castle Bank site a short walk from their house whilst fossil collecting during covid lockdown in 2020. From them, we're able to learn what it's like to discover a new site of international significance and we question why the fossil from this site are so small.

bank wales castle sponges gobe trilobites burgess shale ordovician llandrindod wells

The Weird and the Wonderful: Lessons from the Cambrian

Intelligent Design the Future

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2022 55:54

Joe Moysiuk is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, with research interests in macroevolution, evolutionary developmental biology, and the origin of animal life. He has extensive experience with fossils from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada, one of the world's most significant fossil sites. As part of his continuum of Burgess Shale-related research, he is currently pursuing a PhD focusing on the earliest evolution of today's most diverse animal group: the arthropods. Link to Video of the Talk on ARCHEA: https://youtu.be/4UZ-QwgDozk

canada lessons talk phd video weird british columbia cambrian burgess shale archea

Darwin Visits the 21st Century–A Novella, Pt. 2

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 2, 2022 21:50

Today's ID the Future from the vault continues the audio adaptation of Nickell John Romjue's fascinating novella, I, Charles Darwin. In this episode, Romjue's Darwin explores what we've learned about the fossil record since Darwin's time on Earth — and it's not what he expects. Part 1 of the audio series is here. To learn more and to purchase the book, visit www.icharlesdarwin.com. Source

122. Simon Conway Morris | Complete Imponderables

Language of God

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2022 61:45

The science of evolution in general has been solidified for a long time now, but there are still plenty of new discoveries and implications being drawn out of the specific details of how our world evolved. Among the scientists doing fascinating work in these areas is Simon Conway Morris, who has become relatively famous both in and outside the professional scientific community for his work on fossils from the Burgess Shale, the Cambrian Explosion, and convergent evolution. Morris' new book, From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution, draws from a number of these areas to make its claims. In this episode, we chat about the book, some of the well-established tenets of convergent evolution, and even some more controversial hypotheses on human uniqueness among animals and extraterrestrial intelligent life. While not all scientists agree with the conclusions Morris comes to, our conversation still brings clarity to the obscure limits of science and what these limits mean for us as Christians. Join a conversation about this episode on the BioLogos Forum.

christians evolution morris cambrian explosion burgess shale simon conway

Simon Conway Morris - Evolutionary Biologist

Indian Genes

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2022 102:55

Simon Conway Morris is an English paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist known for his study of the fossils of the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian explosion. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 book Wonderful Life. Conway Morris's own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation (1998), however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation. He has held the Chair of Evolutionary Paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge since 1995.Simon Conway Morris speaks exclusively to Indian Genes! In his new book From Extraterrestrials to Humans, he cheerfully challenges six assumptions—what he calls ‘myths'—that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. His convivial tour begins with the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.” If that is so, then what about mass extinctions? Don't they steer the development of life in radically new directions? Rather the reverse, claims Conway Morris. Such cataclysms simply accelerate evolutionary developments that were going to happen anyway. And what about that other evolutionary canard: the “missing link”? Plenty to choose from in the fossil record but what is persistently over-looked is that in any group there is not one but a phalanx of “missing links”. Once again we under-score the near-inevitability of evolutionary outcomes. Turning from fossils to minds, Conway Morris critically examines the popular tenet that the intelligences of humans and animals basically are the same thing, a difference of degree not kind. A closer scrutiny of our minds shows that in reality an unbridgeable gulf separates us from even the chimpanzees, so begging questions of consciousness and Mind.Finally, Conway Morris tackles the question of extraterrestrials. Surely, the size and scale of the universe suggest that alien life must exist somewhere beyond Earth and our tiny siloed solar system? After all, evolutionary convergence more than hints that human-like forms are universal. But Dr. Conway Morris has serious doubts. The famous Fermi Paradox (“Where are they?”) appears to hold: Alone in the cosmos—and unique, but not quite in the way one might expect.

university english earth turning mind humans cambridge morris wonderful life crucible gould biologists earth sciences cambrian stephen jay gould evolutionary biologist burgess shale simon conway

Fossil Hunting with Chris New

The Hunter Conservationist Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2022 97:28

Brought to you buy Community-Minded Alpine Toyota In this episode, Curtis and Mark are joined by their long-time friend Chris New. Chris is an avid fossil hunter and has helped paleontologists identify new trilobite species previously unknown to science. Chris's journey and passion for fossils started at young age near Cranbrook, British Columbia and now he travels all over the place hunting fossils. Chris talks about how he got started in fossil hunting, how he preps fossil hunting, what he does in winter offseason, as well as how he gathers intel and leads on fossil sites. Other cool topics the gang discussions include the brief history of fossil formations, how to get into fossil hunting, how to hunt fossils, trilobites, similarities between fossil hunting and game hunting, laws around digging, poaching fossils, Burgess Shale, how crime doesn't pay in fossil hunting and whether Ricky Gervais trolls fossil hunters on social media. Show Notes Here are the scientific names of the trilobites that Chris, his collecting partner Chris Jenkins, and his daughter Rebecca have had named after them for having discovered them. Olenaspella chrisnewi Anechocephalus rebeccae Orygmaspis jenkinsi Claycreekia chrisorum

hunting british columbia ricky gervais fossil cranbrook chris jenkins burgess shale chris new

Episode 139: Marrellomorphs

bc making space fossils banff world heritage sites kootenay burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2022 52:48

Marrellomorphs are the group of early Paleozoic arthropods that get their name from the well-known Burgess Shale fossil Marrella splendens. They have for a long time been considered to be closely related to the trilobites, based on similarities in their gills, but numerous studies have since suggested they are closer related to mandibulate arthropods (crustaceans, insects & myriapods), although their strange appearance means other relationships might still be plausible. Since they have a soft exoskeleton, marellomorphs have a very poor fossil record and so the discovery of any new specimens outside of the Burgess Shale can be incredibly significant. In this interview, we speak to Joe Moysiuk of the University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum about his newly described species Tomlinsonus dimitrii.

university canada evolution toronto paleo fossil paleontology palaeontology royal ontario museum paleozoic arthropod burgess shale ordovician palaeo

55 – Making Space for Fossils

Let's Find Out

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2022 23:03

In this episode, we travel to the Burgess Shale: a set of incredible fossil beds in Yoho National Park, preserving 500-million-year-old soft-bodied sea creatures. Today, it is part of a huge World Heritage Site: it has expanded to encompass all of Yoho National Park here in BC, Jasper and Banff, Kootenay, and three BC provincial … Continue reading 55 – Making Space for Fossils →

（Level 3）-Day_64 Canadian Rocky Mountains

高效磨耳朵 | 最好的英语听力资源

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 12, 2022 5:34

在喜马拉雅已支持实时字幕关注公众号“高效英语磨耳朵”获取文稿和音频词汇提示 1.Rocky Mountains 落基山脉2.distinctive 独特的3.rugged 崎岖的4,.glacier 冰川5.alpine meadows 高山草甸6.canyons 峡谷7.hoodoos 石林8.landscape 景观9.mammals 哺乳动物10.elk 麋鹿11.grizzly 灰熊12.caribou 驯鹿13.gouged 挖14.picturesque 优美的15.serene 宁静的16.slopes 山坡17.semi-arid 半干燥18.cactus仙人掌19.awe 惊叹20.spectacular 壮观的21.soaring 高耸的22.marine fossils 海洋化石23.bearing 关系24.resemblance 相似原文Canadian Rocky MountainsSome of the best-known mountain scenery on earth is concentrated in a set of seven parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.There are four national parks in the Canadian Rockies-Banff，Jasper，Yoho and Kootenay，and three British Columbia provincial parks-Mount Robson，Mount Assiniboine and Hamber.The seven preserved located along the Albert-British Columbia border attract more than nine million people annually.Banff National Park became Canada's first national park in 1885，and birthplace of the Canada's national park system.It is home to a variety of distinctive natural features and cultural and historical sites.Rugged mountains，glaciers，icefields，alpine meadows，beautiful blue cold-water lakes，mineral hot springs，deep canyons and hoodoos compose the natural landscape and a habitat for a great variety of mammals such as elk，bighorn sheep，black and grizzly bear，and caribou.Jasper National Park is the largest and most northerly of the Canadian Rocky Mountains Parks.The park is less commercialized than Banff，so it can still keep many natural beauties and scenery.Its scenery includes deeply gouged Maligne Canyon，picturesque Maligne Lake，the thunder of Sunwapta Falls，the serene beauty of glacier-covered Mount Edith Cavell，and Miette Hot Springs.As one of 39 national parks in Canada，Kootenay National Park represents the south-western slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.From glacier-clad peaks to semi-arid grasslands，where even cactus grows.Kootenay is rich in variety and is one of the largest protected areas in the world.Yoho National Park，representing the western slope of the Rocky Mountains region holds the secrets of ancient ocean life，the power of ice and water，and unique plant and animal communities that continue to evolve today.Awe and wonder is a natural response for this place of rock walls，spectacular waterfalls and soaring peaks.The Burgess Shale contains one of the world's most significant finds of soft-bodied，Middle Cambrian-age marine fossils，with about 150 species，including some bearing no resemblance to know animals.These four Canadian National Parks account for 14300 square miles.The four National Parks along with three British Columbia provincial parks form the UNESCO Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site-one of the largest protected areas in the world.

canada british columbia national parks rocky mountains awe banff rugged level3 banff national park jasper national park kootenay canadian rocky mountains burgess shale

Et si une tempête solaire menaçait internet ? (FDS #40)

Fil de Science

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 10, 2021 4:49

Pour cette semaine du 6 septembre : une tempête solaire qui pourrait couper internet, l'origine génétique des rayures des chats, les ambitions spatiales de la Chine, des découvertes pour lutter contre le cancer du poumon et des têtes nageuses. Bonne écoute, et bon week-end !

Podcast 219 - Brachiopod Vape Bros

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2021 74:42

The gang discusses two papers that look at examples of cohabitation and unique ecological interactions in the Cambrian. The first paper looks at multiple animals living together in a hemichordate living chamber, the and the second looks at a potential example of parasitism on brachiopods. Meanwhile, James flips a coin, Curt has to live with some consequences, and Amanda ranks things from meh to bad. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about two papers that look at animals which are living together, sometimes not because both animals want that. The first paper looks at these long animals with no legs that live together. There are two different types of these long animals living the in the same spot, which is a home that looks like the ones built by the bigger of the two long animals, but the home seems to be a bit too big. Because the small long things do not have bits that could cut off parts of the bigger long thing, they think that these two animals would have lived in the same spot and been just fine. Since the homes are bigger than either animal, it means we still have to figure out why the homes are so big. It could be that the bigger long animals could be kids and the homes were built by the grown ups for the kids to live in. The second paper looks at these small long round thing that was found on these animals with hard parts on either side which sit on the ground in the water and pull food out of the water. The animals with hard parts could have these small long round things on them or they could not. The animals with hard parts that had these small long round things were smaller than the ones that did not. The way the small long round things were put onto the animals with hard parts makes it look like they are homes for other small animals that would take the food out of the mouth of the animals with hard parts. References: Zhang, Zhifei, et al. "An encrusting kleptoparasite-host interaction from the early Cambrian." Nature communications 11.1 (2020): 1-7. Nanglu, Karma, and Jean-Bernard Caron. "Symbiosis in the Cambrian: enteropneust tubes from the Burgess Shale co-inhabited by commensal polychaetes." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1951 (2021): 20210061.

nature karma bros vape proceedings symbiosis cambrian royal society b burgess shale brachiopod

Burgess Shale Biota: Life in Middle Cambrian Seas

british columbia seas cambrian biota canadian rocky mountains burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2021 14:57

High up in the Canadian Rocky Mountains there are mysteries more than half a billion years old. These are the outcrops of the Burgess Shale Biota — more than 150 species that provide a window into life in our Cambrian seas. Charles Doolittle Walcott will be forever remembered for his extraordinary discovery of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of Yoho National Park in southeastern British Columbia — delivering to the world one of the most important biota of soft-bodied organisms in the fossil record. Here we find a fairly complete look at an ancient ecosystem with algae, grazers and filter feeders, scavengers and active predators. Remarkably, soft-bodied organisms make up 98% of individuals and 85% of the genera. These animals lived and died in the deep waters at the base of what would later become known as the Cathedral Escarpment.

Answers News: Does the Burgess Shale Cry Out?

Answers TV Daily

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2021 33:14

FDA warns people allergic to shrimp to not eat cicadas; Abortion advocates prove intolerant of pro-life sign; Mud flow research challenges settled dogma for evolution's sacred site; Primatologist Jane Goodall rejects naturalism as a worldview; Australians argue over legalizing assisted suicide; Climate alarmists publish more fears of CO2; Burger King allies with LGBTQ+ pride against Chick-fil-A . . . and other stories reviewed during this June 14, 2021, broadcast of Answers News. - - - - - - - - - - - And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. - - - - - - - - - - - Genesis 6:19-23 But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” - - - - - - - - - - - Luke 19:40 Articles: Seafood allergies? If so, let someone else crunch on cicadas https://wtop.com/food-restaurant/2021/06/seafood-allergies-if-so-let-someone-else-crunch-on-cicadas/ Ad company removes pro-life billboard due to complaints and threats https://www.liveaction.org/news/pro-life-billboard-removed-threats/ Jane Goodall Sees Intelligent Design but Misses God's Image https://www.christianheadlines.com/columnists/breakpoint/jane-goodall-sees-intelligent-design-but-misses-gods-image.html Most intense Burst of Evolution Ever Seen: Fossil Secret May Shed Light on origins of Many of Earth's First Animals https://scitechdaily.com/most-intense-burst-of-evolution-ever-seen-fossil-secret-may-shed-light-on-origins-of-many-of-earths-first-animals/ Voluntary assisted dying legislation introduced to Queensland Parliament as protesters voice opposition https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-25/qld-voluntary-assisted-dying-legislation-protests-parliament/100163010 Highest in more than 4 million years: Earth's carbon dioxide levels soar to record high despite pandemic https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/07/carbon-dioxide-levels-soar-record-high-despite-covid-19-pandemic/7588333002/ Burger King mocks Chick-fil-A with Donations to LGBT Group for Every Chicken Sandwich Sold https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/burger-king-mocks-chick-fil-a-with-donations-to-lgbt-group-for-every-chicken-sandwich-sold.html This animal survived 24,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/europe/bdelloid-rotifers-animal-survive-frozen-in-permafrost-scn/index.html - - - - - - - - - - - Burgess Pass photo by James Gabbert GettyImages-1262990965 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/answerstv/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/answerstv/support

earth australian lgbtq climate abortion fda donations co2 highest chick burger king burst voluntary mud siberian burgess shale queensland parliament answers news

Lagerstätte Roundup: March 2021

Fossil Bonanza

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2021 11:01

In this episode we look at interesting Lagerstätte articles released in March 2021. This includes a newly described, oldest Lagerstätte in South America, Paleozoic lamprey embryos, the first opabiniid discovered outside of Burgess Shale, a failed cephalopod predation attack, an oviraptorid brooding on its nest, and a manta ray-like, planktivorous shark. All links to papers on the Fossil Bonanza Twitter account.

science sharks south america eggs fossils paleontology nests lamprey paleozoic burgess shale lagerst ediacara

Rene Savenye: Friendship & Fossil Bees

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2021 7:59

This is a tale of friendship, tragic loss and fossil bees — and an introduction to one of the most delightful paleo enthusiasts to ever walk the planet — Rene Savenye. Rene and I enjoyed many years of waxing poetic about our shared love of palaeontology and natural history. Rene was a mountain goat in the field, stalking the hills in his signature red t-shirt. He was tremendously knowledgeable about the natural world and delighted in it. For many years, he was Chair of the White Rock and Surrey Naturalists, while I was Chair of the Vancouver Paleontological Society. Together, we would plan and often co-lead field trips to many of the wonderful fossil outcrops in British Columbia and Washington state. In 2002, we were planning a very exciting round of field trips. I was offered a fully paid trip to India with Karen Lund to hike to the headwaters of the Ganges, a trip which I was to forgo in favour of a hike up to the outcrops of the Cathedral Escarpment and Burgess Shale and then to yummy Lower Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, Albian, outcrops accessed only by boat in Haida Gwaii. Rene and I had talked about "walking in the shoes" of Joseph Whiteaves, the GSC's chief palaeontologist in Ottawa. He published a paper in 1876 describing the Jurassic and Cretaceous faunas of Skidegate Inlet and spent a significant portion of his career working out the fossil fauna of the Burgess Shale. Combining these two sites within the same field season was a fitting homage. John Fam, Vancouver Paleontological Society (VanPS) and Dan Bowen, Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society (VIPS), did much of the planning for that Haida Gwaii trip, they too being inspired by Whiteaves papers and the work of James Richardson and George Dawson — as a whole, we were giddy with the prospect of the year ahead. Rene and I had planned to do both, but in the end, I had to give up the hike to Burgess that year and Rene never made it back to join me in Haida Gwaii. In the days before the official trip to Burgess, Rene did some solo hiking in the mountains and hills near Field, British Columbia. He was excited to explore Wapta Mountain, Mount Field and Mount Stephen, ever mindful of collecting only with his camera. He walked through the hallowed footsteps of Joseph Whiteaves and Charles Doolittle Walcott over ground that should have been named La Entrada de Dios, The Gateway of God, for each footfall brought him closer to meeting the big man. While a naturalist, Rene held to the belief that once his days were done on this Earth, he would be breaking bread in heaven above. Rene started with clear skies and a pack full of geology hammers, maps and chisels. As the day went on, the skies filled with rolling clouds, then thunder. Grey sheets of rain covered the landscape. Seeing the danger of being solo in darkening weather, he started back to his car but never made it. On the afternoon of July 28th, he was struck and killed by lightning — a tragic loss.

Episode 119: The Soom Shale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2020 59:22

The Soom Shale is an Ordovician lagerstätte in the Western Cape of South Africa. Whilst it lacks the diversity of organisms seen in other lagerstätten, such as the Burgess Shale or Chengjiang, it more than makes up for it in the fidelity of preservation. The taphonomic pathway to the fantastic preservation in the Soom Shale is long and complex, reliant not only on local conditions, but also ties into global climatic events. It’s vitally important when interpreting fossils to understand the taphonomy as it provides so much context as to what you can see in fossils and, as equally important, what you can’t. Joining us for this episode is Prof. Sarah Gabbott, a taphonomist from the University of Leicester, UK.

university uk south africa prof leicester western cape shale soom burgess shale ordovician glaciation taphonomy

Ep. 6 Experimental Taphonomy and the Burgess Shale with Dr Orla Bath Enright

PalaeoParty!

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2020 65:13

PalaeoParty! is a biweekly interactive podcast about palaeontology. In today's episode we chat with Dr Orla Bath Enright, a Postdoctoral researcher at Lusanne University, Switzerland. Orla talks us through the disgusting and smell world of experimental taphonomy (learning how fossils form). We learn how she uses flume tanks (think giant washing machines) to recreate ancient underwater landslides! We also talk about the Burgess Shale, a famous fossil site in Canada that preserves fossils of soft-bodied animals that are over 500 million years old. Orla can be found on twitter @BathEnright. Each week we invite a new palaeontologist guest to join our hosts, Dr Emma Dunne, Dr Chris Dean and Dr Thomas Clements, as we laugh about weird fossils, odd science and whatever else pops into their brains! PalaeoParty! is unlike other podcasts because we live stream each episode on Twitch so you can chat and ask our guests questions in real time! Find our schedule at our website: https://palaeoparty.weebly.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/palaeoparty/message

canada twitch switzerland bath experimental orla enright postdoctoral burgess shale chris dean taphonomy

The Cambrian Explosion

british columbia cambrian explosion burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2020 12:19

Come and explore one of British Columbia's most intriguing fossil localities — the Burgess Shale. This amazing window into our ancient seas was found quite by accident and over the past 100 years has given us one of the best windows to view the Cambrian Explosion

East Kootenay Fossil Field Trip

east british columbia fossil field trip fernie cranbrook kootenay burgess shale ordovician

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2020 12:13

The East Kootenay region on the south-eastern edge of British Columbia is a land of colossal mountains against a clear blue sky. I've been heading to the Cranbrook and Fernie area since the early 1990s. My interest is the local geology and fossil history that these rocks have to tell. I'm also drawn to the warm and welcoming locals who share a love for the land and palaeontological treasures that open a window to our ancient past. Cranbrook is the largest community in the region and is steeped in mining history and the opening of the west by the railway. It is also a stone's throw away from Fort Steele and the Lower Cambrian exposures of the Eager Formation. These fossil beds rival the slightly younger Burgess Shale fauna and while less varied, produce wonderful examples of olenellid trilobites and weird and wonderful arthropods nearly half a billion years old. The Lower Cambrian Eager Formation outcrops at a few localities close to Fort Steele, many known since the early 1920s, and up near Mount Grainger near the highway. Further east, the Upper Cambrian McKay Group near Tanglefoot Mountain is a palaeontological delight with fifteen known outcrops that have produced some of the best-preserved and varied trilobites in the province — many of them new species. The McKay Formation also includes Ordovician outcrops sprinkled in for good measure.

Geological Wonders from Banff to Jasper with Dale Leckie

Stone's Notes

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2020 45:36

This conversation with Dale Leckie is about the roadside geology you will see as you drive from Banff to Jasper as discussed in his book titled "Rocks, Ridges, and Rivers - Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks".Have you ever been driving through the mountains and wondered where the best spots to stop were located? And once you stopped to stare at the beautiful scenery, were you curious what it was you were looking at? Perhaps questions such as how did these particular mountains form, how are they connected to the mountains you previously passed, and how did the features such as waterfalls form popped into your mind? If you'd like to know the answers to all of these questions, join us for a pretend road trip. We'll be stopping at Mount Yamnuska, Vermillion Lakes, Moraine Lakes, Burgess Shale, Big Bend, Old Fort Point, Magline Canyon, and Roche Miette.May this exchange serve to expand your geological knowledge on the go. For more information go to www.stoneconsulting.info.Citation: Leckie, Dale. ROCKS, RIDGES, AND RIVERS: Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks. Toronto. Brokenpoplars. (2017). https://brokenpoplars.ca

toronto rocks wonders banff yoho big bend geological leckie ridges burgess shale

Episode 89 - The Burgess Shale

The Common Descent Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2020 108:47

In the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia sits one of the most important, well-studied, and scientifically influential fossil sites in the world. The Burgess Shale not only provides us a glimpse into the tail end of the Cambrian Explosion, and not only yields tens of thousands of fossil specimens, but also includes some of the most exceptional fossil preservation of any fossil locality anywhere. This episode, we’ll dive into how it got that way, and what it has to tell us about some of Earth's earliest animal communities. In the news: baby sharks, hungry dinosaurs, a pregnant ichthyosaur, and one dino’s last meal. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:06:30 Main discussion, Part 1: 00:34:00 Main discussion, Part 2: 01:00:00 Patron question: 01:37:00 In light of current events, we invite you to explore these links to educate yourself, as we have been doing, about the subject of racial injustice: Smithsonian NMAAHC - Talking About Race https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race TimeScavengers - Black Lives Matter https://timescavengers.blog/2020/06/01/black-lives-matter/ Ally Anti-Racism Resources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MjUESaOh2H-846KKiHUWHDUIhi3PlaFts-rqy9EQ43g/edit# We’ve also made a donation to the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund: https://www.naacpldf.org/ Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ New merch at the Common Descent Store! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Featuring art by Rob Soto! https://www.rob-soto.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast Instagram: @commondescentpodcast PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

time earth origin british columbia kevin macleod podbean species canadian rockies musical interludes cambrian explosion burgess shale protodome professor umlaut

Jennifer Dunne on Reconstructing Ancient Food Webs

COMPLEXITY

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2019 48:05

Looking back through time, the fossil record shows a remarkable diversity of forms, creatures unfamiliar to today’s Earth, suggesting ecosystems alien enough to challenge any sense of continuity. But reconstructed trophic networks — maps of who’s eating whom — reveal a hidden order that has been conserved since the first complex animals of half a billion years ago. These network models offer scientists an armature on which to hang new unifying theories of ecology, a way to answer questions about how energy moves through living systems, how evolution keeps producing creatures to refill specific niches, how mass extinctions happen, what minimal viable ecosystems are and why. Untangling this deep structure of food webs may also shed light on technology and economics, and guide interventions to ensure sustainability in agriculture, conservation efforts, even venture capital investment.This week’s guest is Jennifer Dunne, SFI’s Vice President for Science and Fellow at the Ecological Society of America. Dunne got her PhD in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley, joined SFI’s faculty in 2007, and sits on the advisory board for Nautilus Magazine. In this second half of a two-part conversation, we discuss her work on reconstructing ancient food webs, and the implications of this research for our understanding of ecologies, extinctions, sustainability, and technological innovation.Visit our website for more information or to support our science and communication efforts.Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode.Jennifer Dunne’s Website.Related Reading:Modern Lessons from Ancient Food WebsParasites Affect Food Web Structure Primarily through Increased Diversity and ComplexityHighly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinctionThe roles and impacts of human hunter-gatherers in North Pacific marine food websA primer on the history of food web ecology: Fundamental contributions of fourteen researchersQuanta Magazine features Dunne on humans in food webs.Jennifer on This Week in Science at InterPlanetary Festival 2019.Learn more about The ArchaeoEcology Project.Follow us on social media:Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn

Episode 102b: Small Shelly Fossils

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2019 33:36

Between the weird and wonderful rangeomorphs of the Ediacaran Period and the world-famous palaeocommunities of the Burgess Shale, the 'Early Cambrian' is host to a 'waste basket' of fossils untied by their small size and shelly construction. These small shelly fossils (SSFs) aren't just a single group of animals, but represent several different invertebrate phyla. Further compounding the difficulty of their identification, each SSF, termed a 'sclerite', is part of a larger composite skeleton known as a 'sclerotome'. Whilst some complete sclerotomes have been preserved, many SSFs still represent multiple jigsaws thrown together and the pictures lost. Piecing the SSFs back together and building a picture of the Earliest Cambrian is Dr Marissa Betts of the University of New England, Australia. Her work on the SSFs have provided a new framework for the regional stratigraphy of Australia and in this interview, we discuss why this was necessary, how she went about it and finally, what we know about the animals themselves.

university australia new england fossils piecing ssf trilobites burgess shale stratigraphy mollusc brachiopod

Podcast 169 - Learning about Agnostids

learning star wars jb proceedings bayesian burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2019 86:24

The gang takes some time to discuss two papers about agnostids, a strange group of trilobite-like arthropods whose evolutionary history has been the subject of considerable debate. First, we discuss a short paper summarizing the history of the agnostid debate, and then we discuss a brand new paper using new material and Bayesian phylogenetics to offer a fresh new hypothesis. Also, James channels frustration into fun, Amanda nearly has her house destroyed by cats, and Curt asks the Star Wars questions no one wanted answered. Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends talk about small animals that have no eyes that might be sisters of animals that live in the water that have three parts and big eyes, many legs, and can make themselves into a ball. The first paper talks about the small animals with no eyes and how hard it is to make one of these animals for people to look at. They talk about the past of the animal and where it lived, and who it might be close sisters to. They say that a very cool area where we find these animals lets us see the legs and that they are different, also that they have a different mouth, and that maybe they actually do have eyes but they are on the mouth? They are weird animals. The second paper also talks about these animals, but does not focus on making the animals for people to look at. It looks at these animals from a different very cool area and shows their legs are sort of like the legs of animals that live in the water that have three parts and big eyes, many legs, and can make themselves into a ball. The paper is different from others, though, because it says that these animals are really either part of or sister to animals that live in the water that have three parts and big eyes, many legs, and can make themselves into a ball. But that is the only part of the tree that really is strong, so maybe who knows still? Our cat friend is writing this and did not really know what was going on that day, and does not know much about these cool animals with maybe no eyes that might really be animals that live in the water that have three parts and big eyes, many legs, and can make themselves into a ball. References: Eriksson, Mats E., and Esben Horn. "Agnostus pisiformis—a half a billion-year old pea-shaped enigma." Earth-Science Reviews 173 (2017): 65-76. Moysiuk, J., and J-B. Caron. "Burgess Shale fossils shed light on the agnostid problem." Proceedings of the Royal Society B286.1894 (2019): 20182314.

Episode 102a: Small Shelly Fossils

That's So Second Millennium

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2019 42:16

Between the weird and wonderful rangeomorphs of the Ediacaran Period and the world-famous palaeocommunities of the Burgess Shale, the 'Early Cambrian' is host to a 'waste basket' of fossils untied by their small size and shelly construction. These small shelly fossils (SSFs) aren't just a single group of animals, but represent several different invertebrate phyla. Further compounding the difficulty of their identification, each SSF, termed a 'sclerite', is part of a larger composite skeleton known as a 'sclerotome'. Whilst some complete sclerotomes have been preserved, many SSFs still represent multiple jigsaws thrown together and the pictures lost. Piecing the SSFs back together and building a picture of the Earliest Cambrian is Dr Marissa Betts of the University of New England, Australia. Her work on the SSFs have provided a new framework for the regional stratigraphy of Australia and in this interview, we discuss why this was necessary, how she went about it and finally, what we know about the animals themselves.

university australia new england fossils piecing ssf trilobites burgess shale stratigraphy mollusc brachiopod

HBM118: Mountain Seabed

Here Be Monsters

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2019

Life on earth began in the oceans. And it used to be simpler. For the first few billion years, life consisted of microbes that didn’t really swim or hunt; they mostly floated and, if they were lucky, bumped into something they could engulf and digest. But that changed during the Cambrian period. Over a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian Explosion, organisms started becoming larger and more complex. For the first time they grew limbs and exoskeletons; intestines and eyes. Animals from this period developed strange body plans that look almost alien to the modern eye. It was an unprecedented surge of biodiversity. But many of the animal groups that emerged during the Cambrian Period died soon after during an extinction event, their bizarre body plans perishing along with them. To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, these were “early experiments in life’s history.” Among the survivors of the Cambrian extinction event was metaspriggina, a tiny fish the size of a human thumb. This tiny fish is one of the oldest ancestors of all vertebrate life on earth - including us.Over millions of years and tectonic shifts, Cambrian-era seabeds became modern-day mountains. Today, one of the best places in the world to study fossils from the Cambrian period is at the Burgess Shale fossil deposit, high in the Canadian Rockies. The animals fossilized in the rock were buried quickly in mud that had the right conditions to preserve the soft tissues like brains, organs, and muscles, giving paleontologists a detailed glimpse at some of the first complex life on earth. Scientists have been mulling over the Burgess Shale fossils since they were first excavated in 1909. Stephen Jay Gould was one of those scientists fascinated by the Burgess fossils. He paid attention to the research coming out about them and started wondering what life would look like if a different set of animals had survived and our ancestors had died out. Would humans - or something like us - have ever evolved? Gould thought not. In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, he came up with the ‘tape of life’ thought experiment. Gould wrote, “Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” This idea is called Evolutionary Contingency.Not everyone agreed with Gould. Most notably his contemporary Simon Conway Morris, another evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. Simon Conway Morris spent years studying the Burgess Shale, and it was his work that Gould had cited for his book about Evolutionary Contingency. Conway Morris disagreed with Gould’s interpretation that human intelligence was a fluke. He wrote his own book in 1998 called The Crucible of Creation and posited that, while life may have looked very different after a replay of the ‘tape of life’, consciousness may still have emerged in other forms. He wrote, “There are not an unlimited number of ways of doing something. For all its exuberance, the forms of life are restricted and channeled.” (p. 13) This idea is called Evolutionary Convergence. In August 2018, producer Molly Segal joined a group of paleontologists, including Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum for their biennial dig at the Burgess Shale. Caron believes that Contingency and Convergence both play a role in evolution, their debate has informed discussions about evolution ever since. This episode was produced by Molly and edited by Bethany Denton and Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

HBM118: Mountain Seabed

Here Be Monsters

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2019

Life on earth began in the oceans. And it used to be simpler. For the first few billion years, life consisted of microbes that didn't really swim or hunt; they mostly floated and, if they were lucky, bumped into something they could engulf and digest. But that changed during the Cambrian period. Over a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian Explosion, organisms started becoming larger and more complex. For the first time they grew limbs and exoskeletons; intestines and eyes. Animals from this period developed strange body plans that look almost alien to the modern eye. It was an unprecedented surge of biodiversity. But many of the animal groups that emerged during the Cambrian Period died soon after during an extinction event, their bizarre body plans perishing along with them. To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, these were “early experiments in life's history.” Among the survivors of the Cambrian extinction event was metaspriggina, a tiny fish the size of a human thumb. This tiny fish is one of the oldest ancestors of all vertebrate life on earth - including us.Over millions of years and tectonic shifts, Cambrian-era seabeds became modern-day mountains. Today, one of the best places in the world to study fossils from the Cambrian period is at the Burgess Shale fossil deposit, high in the Canadian Rockies. The animals fossilized in the rock were buried quickly in mud that had the right conditions to preserve the soft tissues like brains, organs, and muscles, giving paleontologists a detailed glimpse at some of the first complex life on earth. Scientists have been mulling over the Burgess Shale fossils since they were first excavated in 1909. Stephen Jay Gould was one of those scientists fascinated by the Burgess fossils. He paid attention to the research coming out about them and started wondering what life would look like if a different set of animals had survived and our ancestors had died out. Would humans - or something like us - have ever evolved? Gould thought not. In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, he came up with the ‘tape of life' thought experiment. Gould wrote, “Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” This idea is called Evolutionary Contingency.Not everyone agreed with Gould. Most notably his contemporary Simon Conway Morris, another evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. Simon Conway Morris spent years studying the Burgess Shale, and it was his work that Gould had cited for his book about Evolutionary Contingency. Conway Morris disagreed with Gould's interpretation that human intelligence was a fluke. He wrote his own book in 1998 called The Crucible of Creation and posited that, while life may have looked very different after a replay of the ‘tape of life', consciousness may still have emerged in other forms. He wrote, “There are not an unlimited number of ways of doing something. For all its exuberance, the forms of life are restricted and channeled.” (p. 13) This idea is called Evolutionary Convergence. In August 2018, producer Molly Segal joined a group of paleontologists, including Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum for their biennial dig at the Burgess Shale. Caron believes that Contingency and Convergence both play a role in evolution, their debate has informed discussions about evolution ever since. This episode was produced by Molly and edited by Bethany Denton and Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

wind mountain animals scientists wonderful life convergence crucible burgess gould contingencies canadian rockies cambrian cambrian explosion royal ontario museum stephen jay gould seabed burgess shale cambrian period bethany denton

Episode 029 - Geological Awe

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2018 29:19

For a change of pace, we discuss emotions and aesthetics and the sense of awe at the scale of the universe and the planet that we inhabit. Paul discusses the "billion year contacts" at his old stomping grounds in the St Francois Mountains of southeast Missouri and the lost world of the earliest visible life in the Burgess Shale. Paul and Bill close with a reflection on how the awe that we feel at comtemplating the enormous scale of space and time of the created world ought to make us better appreciate the audacity of the Christian claim that the Being who set all of this in motion...emptied Itself and became man.

missouri geological burgess shale

Maravillas del Universo: Mensajeros #documental #podcast #astronomia #ciencia

Escuchando Documentales

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2018 51:46

En el último episodio de esta serie documental, el profesor Brian Cox viaja desde los fósiles de Burgess Shale a las arenas del desierto más antiguo del mundo para mostrar cómo la luz es la clave para nuestra comprensión del universo, incluyendo nuestro propios orígenes más profundos. Para entender cómo la luz es la clave en la historia del universo, primero hay que entender sus propiedades peculiares. Brian considera cómo las propiedades de la luz que le dan color a Arenas del desierto y el espectro de un arco iris puede dar lugar a visiones más profundas sobre la historia y evolución de nuestro universo. Por último, con algunos de los fósiles más fascinantes del mundo, Brian considera por un momento aparentemente oscuro en la historia de la evolución temprana de la vida, todos los secretos de la luz pueden haber permanecido ocultos. Porque si bien el universo está bañado por la luz que lleva una cantidad extraordinaria de información acerca de dónde venimos, hubiera permanecido invisible y sin un desarrollo evolutivo crucial que nos ha permitido ver. Sin ese desarrollo evolutivo no podríamos observar, captura y contemplar las increíbles maravillas del universo que habitamos.

sin universo ciencia documental arenas brian cox maravillas astronomia mensajeros burgess shale

Maravillas del Universo: Mensajeros #documental #podcast #astronomia #ciencia

Escuchando Documentales

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2018 51:46

En el último episodio de esta serie documental, el profesor Brian Cox viaja desde los fósiles de Burgess Shale a las arenas del desierto más antiguo del mundo para mostrar cómo la luz es la clave para nuestra comprensión del universo, incluyendo nuestro propios orígenes más profundos. Para entender cómo la luz es la clave en la historia del universo, primero hay que entender sus propiedades peculiares. Brian considera cómo las propiedades de la luz que le dan color a Arenas del desierto y el espectro de un arco iris puede dar lugar a visiones más profundas sobre la historia y evolución de nuestro universo. Por último, con algunos de los fósiles más fascinantes del mundo, Brian considera por un momento aparentemente oscuro en la historia de la evolución temprana de la vida, todos los secretos de la luz pueden haber permanecido ocultos. Porque si bien el universo está bañado por la luz que lleva una cantidad extraordinaria de información acerca de dónde venimos, hubiera permanecido invisible y sin un desarrollo evolutivo crucial que nos ha permitido ver. Sin ese desarrollo evolutivo no podríamos observar, captura y contemplar las increíbles maravillas del universo que habitamos.

sin universo ciencia documental arenas brian cox maravillas astronomia mensajeros burgess shale

Episode 83: Gogo Fishes

australia fish prof go go burgess fishes flinders university shale cambrian tom fletcher burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2017 23:57

Professor John Long is an early vertebrate researcher at Flinders University, Australia. He is most famous for his work on the three-dimentionally-preserved fish from the Gogo Formation, North West Australia. In this interview, Dr Tom Fletcher (who you'll remember from Episode 76) got the chance to speak to Prof. Long during a field trip to the world-famous Burgess Shale.

043 Save a caribou, kill a moose, the burgess shales and fire updates on the mountain west

Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2017 28:16

Can Killing Moose help Caribou? A recent study conducted by researchers in British Columbia's Columbia Mountain range is raising eyebrows for its novel approach to trying to help struggling caribou populations in several endangered herds throughout several areas. Over the past few years, programs focused on killing wolves in many areas concentrated on reducing predation of already declining herds of caribou in Alberta and British Columbia. These herds have been in decline for a long time. Much of that decline has been the result of previous interventions that created the current situation. Caribou are animals of deep snowpacks and dense old-growth forests. Their traditional ranges were not an area where heavy wolf predation took place. The deep snows were a disadvantage to the wolves who rarely trekked into the caribou's home range. Unfortunately for the Caribou, decades of extensive logging of old-growth forests, along with the roads that come with them, followed by snowmobile and atv adoption of these same roads, provided easy access into their home ranges. At the same time, moose thrive on clearcuts where the new growth is just what they need to survive. Moose moved into the area in ever increasing numbers. The moose were aided in their population boom by the simple fact that wolves had bounties on their heads from 1906-1962 throughout British Columbia. Without a strong predator presence, the moose population exploded to many times their historic levels. With tonnes of moose, and an end to predator control, the wolf population moved in and began to prey heavily on moose. All of these developments created a situation where logging opened an area to moose, followed by wolves being attracted by those moose, and in turn giving the wolves access to another tasty prey; caribou. This is a story that is repeated in almost every caribou herd in the mountain west. As a result, almost every caribou herd in the mountain regions of Alberta and British Columbia is in serious decline with some on the verge of disappearing. When a classic predator prey interaction, like moose and wolves, ensnares a third party, we refer to that as incidental competition. Essentially, if the moose weren't there, the caribou would not likely be bothered by the wolves simply because they don't occur in dense enough populations to support wolf packs. They also live in areas that are difficult for the wolves to access. Wolf culls are a controversial practice, but are being used in Alberta and British Columbia to try to help struggling caribou herds. The mantra has been kill the wolves and the caribou can survive. This mantra has been repeated over and over by politicians convinced that it is the only way to keep caribou herds in the wild. We have to remember, that without the developments that provided access for wolves to get to the caribou, the problem may not have occurred in the first place. Alberta in particular, is still allowing more oil and gas exploration in critical caribou habitat, putting in more roads to allow wolves into caribou territory. Any plan that focuses only on killing predators but doesn't prioritize habitat protection and restoration is not likely to succeed. In this particular study, scientists wanted to take a different approach to caribou conservation. Step one is to either reduce or halt logging in caribou home ranges to reduce the opportunities for white-tail deer and moose to move in and drag their canine predators with them. Caribou do not benefit from logging. They rely on the hanging, stringy lichens that dangle from the foliage of old growth trees and these are not found in clearcuts. At this point, just stopping logging will not help the caribou on the short-term. It will take decades for today's clearcuts to regrow into dense forests more amenable to caribou instead of moose and deer. Biologists decided to try something else. Since moose were not traditionally present in their currently dense populations in the study areas in B.C.'s Columbia Mountains, it was proposed that increasing the availability of moose hunting licenses might be a better approach to reducing wolf populations. Because moose are the wolves primary prey, a significant reduction in their food supply would also stimulate a drop in wolf population as a natural response. Predator-prey relationships are always interdependent. If the prey is plentiful, the wolves will produce more young and fewer wolves will disperse to new territories. One fear was that by reducing elk, the wolves may be forced to hunt more heavily on caribou as moose became less available. In order to test this, they designated two study areas in the Columbia and Caribou Mountains. One area of 6,500 km2 was designated as the treatment zone, where moose hunting permits would be increased 10-fold. The second area, covering 11,500 km2 did not have any increase in moose quotas during the hunting season. The goal was to compare moose, wolf and caribou populations in the two areas to see if reducing the numbers of moose would indeed have a positive impact on caribou populations by reducing the number of wolves in the area. The two areas were separated by the Monashee Mountains which helped to provide a geographic boundary between the two study areas. There were three caribou populations in the treatment area, the Columbia North, Columbia South and Frisby-Queest. Only the Columbia North population exceeded 50 animals with a population around 150. With the increase in hunting pressure, the moose population in the treatment area was reduced by 71% or a drop from approximately 1,650 moose down to 466. Wolf populations soon began to reflect the reduction in prey. Of 34 wolves in the treatment area, 8 wolves, or 23.5% of the population dispersed out of the study area, and 12 wolves died of a variety of causes. Four wolves were found to have starved and an additional one was killed by other wolves. So how did the caribou fare during all of this? Well, it's a bit of a good-news bad news story. The two smaller populations continued to decline during the study, however the larger Caribou North herd showed a slight increase in population. There may be other reasons that the smaller populations did not benefit from the reduction in wolf numbers. It may take longer for the reduction in wolf populations to have an impact on the caribou numbers. Moose were reduced substantially, but even 466 moose is still higher than the historic abundance of around 300 moose prior to logging and predator control. In fact, prior to the 1940s, moose may not have been present at all in much of central and southern B.C. The wolf population in the winter dropped to 13 wolves/1,000 km2 which is still higher than the desired density of just 6.5 wolves in the same area. So where do researchers go from here? One option would be to do some limited wolf control, in addition to the increased moose harvest each year during the hunting season. Any wolf cull would not need to be nearly as extensive as the unpopular one in Alberta and would not likely need to be continuous. In the long-term, caribou habitats need to be restored if they have any hope of surviving in a landscape of high intensity logging and outdoor recreation. Restoration and protection of old growth forests will eventually limit the habitat for moose and deer and their numbers will naturally diminish - with the wolf populations following suit. There are no winners in this research. Humans have changed the habitat so that it now favours animals other than the native caribou. For them to survive, the first priority must be habitat based. Returning the landscape to one that favours the caribou and not the invasive moose and white-tail deer. Without these food species, the wolf population will also diminish naturally over time. Any program of culling, must be seen as a temporary program to stem the population decline while other efforts at habitat restoration can take root. No amount of culling with replace the need for a good landscape to call home. We can just look at Alberta's abject failures to protect their native caribou herds to see what happens when you simply slaughter animals but do nothing towards habitat restoration. Let's hope that B.C. will continue to focus on prioritizing habitat while at the same time working to reduce the downward population trends in its caribou herds. Burgess Wonders Lying just within Yoho National Park are several rock outcroppings collectively known as the Burgess Shales. So unique and vital were the discoveries at this site that it was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1980. Discovered by Charles Walcott in 1909, it's one of very few sites in the world where soft bodied animals left almost perfect fossils. This may not seem important until you realize that most of the study of early life is the study of hard parts--trying to learn something about an animal from a cast of its shell. This tells us little about what lived inside the shell. This quarry uniquely preserved a huge variety of soft bodied creatures along with their shells. For the first time we could see the whole picture. How did this level of preservation occur? Scientists believe that a mud slide came down into a shallow bay and then washed the animals caught in its flow down into the oxygen poor depths far below. Since oxygen is a major factor in decay, this allowed the soft bodied animals to remain for a long time before disappearing - long enough to leave their remains fossilized. The other unique characteristic of this rock formation lies in the timing of this tragic slide. It occurred in middle Cambrian times, basically around 508 million years ago. This puts it right in the middle of the greatest explosion of life in the history of the planet. The Cambrian was the first period in which multicellular life exploded and within a geologic blink of the eye, the world was populated with a diversity never before (or since) experienced. Few other fossil sites across the globe can match the high level of preservation of this site along with such excellent timing. There are a few other important Cambrian sites in other parts of the world, but they are much more recent and as a result don't show nearly the diversity found in this site. As Walcott began to grapple the significance of this fossil bed, he ravenously collected tens of thousands of specimens which he brought back to the Smisthsonian. At the time, he was one of the most powerful scientists in the U.S. and this would be his greatest discovery. Over the next 18 years he published small preliminary works on the fossils but he never found the time to truly study them and unravel their real significance. In the small amount of actual study of the fossils that he completed, he tried to force them to fit into the same groupings of animals present on the planet today, and although this may seem a natural conclusion, it would become his greatest error. Many of the animals present in the Burgess Shales, could not properly be categorized as part of any group of animals present on the planet today. Harry Whittington, one of Walcott's successors slowly unraveled the true mysteries of the Burgess by careful and thorough examination of the multitude of fossils left behind. One of the techniques used by Whittington to rebuild the creatures of the Burgess Shales was to slowly dissect the actual fossils. Like living beings, even though crushed flat, the fossils retained most of their original structure and by carefully removing micro-thin layers, one by one, Whittington was able to make much more detailed examinations of each specimen. Whittington began in 1971 with a creature called Marella. This animal was clearly an Arthropod (the group of animals containing all the insects, spiders and crustaceans as well as the extinct trilobites) but he found that it didn't fit into any of the major grouping of Arthropods known to exist today. His next specimen, Yohoia, led him to a similar conclusion; it was an arthropod but of no known group. Moving onto Opabina, the biggest surprise to date would arise. Not only was this not even an arthropod, it didn't fit into any known Phylum. After Kingdom, Phylum is the next largest category of living things on the planet. Arthropods are one phylum and all living creatures fit into at least one of 25 or 30 known phyla. Further examination of many of the other fossils led to similar conclusions – animals that could not be classified based on today’s system of phyla. Never before, at any other fossil site in the world, had fossils been found that could not be classified. This would have far reaching consequences Most standard discussions of evolution show a single primitive ancestor giving rise to a wide variety of future species. As a result we expected there to be less diversity early in the history of life; not more. In actual fact what we have found is that there were many more basic structural plans at the beginning of life than today and this doesn't work well according to standard discussions. Survival of the fittest may be invoked to say that these early animals were merely inferior and failed to survive. However, survival of the fittest should be predictable and scientists could not find anything that would indicate inferiority in these unclassifiable animals. This led to Stephen Jay Gould, the author of the book Wonderful Life that details much of the science of the shales to come up with a new aspect of natural selection - luck. Perhaps some extinctions were based on some environmental of otherwise unpredictable fluke and as a result, animals not inferior in any way ended up perishing. The long term results become very interesting indeed. If chance plays a major role in the extinction of species, than perhaps if we were to turn the clock back in time an entirely different outcome could arise. This could in turn change the entire sequence of events following this particular occurrence - and could have had a dramatic impact on the evolution of humans. Found in this fossil bed is the oldest ancestor of all the animals with backbones. What if it had have been the unlucky one? This brings a whole new view to evolution. This chance factor is known as contingency and is being widely accepted as one possible component of evolution today - all because of a tiny quarry in Yoho National Park. There has been a lot of recent news relating to the Burgess Shales over the past few years, including several new exposures of rich fossil bearing rocks in nearby Kootenay National Park. Most recently, a frightening new worm has been described from the Burgess Shales. It is a predatory worm called Capinatator praetermissus. It was a flat worm, some 10 cm long with a series of 25 grasping spines on either side of its mouth. While 10 cm may seem small today, in its day it was one of the largest predators in the ocean. This Capinatator is a member of a group of worms that still exist today called Arrow Worms, but this particular species was much larger and had many more grasping spines than any species alive today. Arrow worms are extremely efficient predators. The clasping spines quickly reach out and close around potential prey, locking them in their interlocking grasp. Today, they only grow to a few milimetres in length, but Capinatator would have been a frightening prospect to many aquatic residents of the early oceans. To add to their frightening character, they are translucent which gives them an air of invisibility. A few quick flaps from their flat tail fin and the spines open and this near invisible creature has another meal. Today, there are still some 120 species of arrow worms globally. The fossil record though is very sparse simply because they lack the hard body parts found in some animals and so are rarely fossilized. If anything survives, it's just the clasping spines. Despite this rarity, the Burgess Shales have provide some 50 fossils of varying levels of condition. Even though the species has only recently been described, the first fossils were collected way back in 1983. In order to get enough information to do a formal description, scientists needed many different specimens with each helping to reveal a different component of the worms physiology. It's just one more example of the ongoing and amazing science being done at the various exposures of the Burgess Shales. If you'd like to visit one of the quarries, you'll need to book an official tour since they are all designated as archaeological sites and closed to the general public. Parks Canada and the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation offer guided tours to several of the sites. I'll leave a link to their booking pages in the show notes for this episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep043 . You can book your Parks Canada hike to one of three Burgess Shale exposures, the classic Walcott Quarry, the Mount Stephen site or the Stanley Glacier site in Kootenay National Park at the following link: https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/bc/yoho/activ/burgess/burgess-visit/reserv.aspx. Alternatively the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation leads walks to the Walcott and Mount Stephen sites. Bookings can me made at: https://www.burgess-shale.bc.ca/guided-hikes. Next up - local fires provide hope for endangered pines Fire Updates First up, a few updates on the fire situation in western Canada. Perhaps one of the most surprising updates comes from Fort McMurray. After 15 months, the Horse River fire that devastated Fort McMurray in May of 2016 has just been officially deemed to have been extinguished. Fires can linger for long periods underground, and this fire, christened the 'beast', burned some 6,000 km2 last year and leveled 2,400 buildings. Fire managers had to wait until advanced heat detectors from helicopters could find no more lingering hot spots before finally declaring the fire out on Aug 2, 2017. This story comes as our skies are still full of smoke from fires burning across British Columbia. Closer to home, Calgary is set to surpass its record for the smokiest summer on record. The current record was set in 1969 and saw 269 hours of smoke clouding the skies above Calgary. As of Sept 3, 2017 Calgary had seen 255 hours. This record is toast. The season is far from over and the skies around Canmore are continually smoky with much of that drifting eastward towards Calgary. Unless we see some dramatic changes in weather over the next few weeks, Calgary will likely set a record that will be difficult to top. Unfortunately though, with warming climates, all bets are off when it comes of fires in our western forests. To put this into perspective, the average number of smoke filled hours in a year in Calgary is slightly less than 17 for the entire year. Calgary has bettered that on single days numerous times this year. Aug 17 saw 24 hours of smoke, Aug 31 saw 23. July 12 had 19 hours. In 1969 the last smoke measurement was on Dec 22. We still have 4 months of potentially smoke-filled skies before we bid this record breaking year good bye for hopefully clearer skies in 2018. [caption id="attachment_609" align="alignleft" width="501"] Wilderness closure in the Rocky Mountain Forest District in British Columbia[/caption] This week also saw the complete closure of all wilderness in southeastern British Columbia due to the extreme fire situation. The closure affects the entire Rocky Mountain Forest District following the Continental Divide from Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park and areas south of Glacier National Park, all the way south to the U.S. Border. I'll include a map of the closure area in the show notes to this episode at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep043. As fire hazards continue to escalate and wildfires appear with little warning, the provincial government wants to make sure that nobody gets stranded in the wilderness should another fire break out. At the same time, provincial resources are already stretched to the limit dealing with currently imminent situations and simply don't have the manpower to make sure fire bans are respected and wilderness regulations followed. According to the closure bulletin posted. The government states: "When deciding to implement a restriction multiple factors are considered, such as current and forecasted weather conditions, anticipated fire behaviour, access routes, the number of active fires and the current extreme fire danger rating. Given, the extreme wildfire activity within the Rocky Mountain Resource District and forecasted high temperatures and winds, it has, in the interests of public safety, become necessary to restrict access to the backcountry in the Rocky Mountain Resource District." The closure doesn't affect anybody's home. People are free to travel to their residences, but as of noon on Sept 2, they cannot head into the wilderness to retrieve boats or camper trailers. I'll leave a link to the government announcement in the show notes if you would like to get additional information as this story unfolds. Looking closer to home, the Verdant Creek fire is still burning, but it is being looked at as an opportunity to help restore some of Kootenay National Park's endangered whitebark pine. As of this week, the fire has burned 15,500 ha within Kootenay National Park and Mount Assiniboine Provincial Parks. As it burned, it also burned some of these endangered trees. While some trees have been lost, the whitebark, like it's close relative the lodgepole pine, is a fire adapted species. It thrives in open sunlight like the landscape left behind by wildfires. Fire suppression has been one thing that has limited the reproduction of whitebark pine trees in the recent past. Without fire, nice open habitats are not available for the pine to grow. According to a story in the Rocky Mountain Outlook, Parks Canada fire and vegetation specialist Jed Cochrane was quoted as saying: “What fire does is it removes the competition, which is typically Engelmann spruce and sub-alpine fir,” Cochrane said. “Fire removes that competition and whitebark pine comes in and has time to grow without competition and get a foothold. “Without fire, what we have seen is that spruce and fir species outcompete whitebark pine and there is a loss of overall regeneration and habitat for whitebark pine.” Whitebark pine has more to contend with than just lack of habitat though. It is also very susceptible to white pine blister rust. This fungal infection has had dramatic impacts on populations of western white pine, limber pine and whitebark pine. In a 2002 study in British Columbia (http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/x02-049), a 3 year survey of more than 24,000 whitebark pine trees found that 19% were dead and an additional 31% showed signs of active infection. Provincially, infections are more common in the eastern portion of the province and slightly lower in the west. Parks Canada biologists have been looking to breed more blister rust-resistant whitebark pine seedlings and outside Cranbrook, B.C. 2,500 seedlings have been grown. This month, park staff will be planting 1,500 of those seedlings in the area burned by the Verdant Creek fire. As the fire burned over areas already burned in 2001, 2003 and 2012, it will help to create a mozaic of different forest age classes. While the seedlings can help to restore some pine lost to the fire back to the landscape, they won't begin producing seeds for 40 years or more. Once they do produce cones, the Clark's nutcracker will collect the seeds for food, and at the same time, help disperse them to new habitats. Fire is an important ecological process in the mountain west. Unfortunately, fire suppression for the past 100 years has left us with much denser forest canopies then would have existed prior. This leaves fewer potential sites for sun-loving trees like the whitebark pine to take root. Please remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for hiking, step-on and corporate guides across the mountain west. We work with a team of expert naturalists and guides that can help make sure that your mountain experience is one full of memories and discovery. If you'd like to connect with me on social media, you can leave a comment on this page, or hit me up on twitter @wardcameron. You can also visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wardcameronenterprises.

Podcast 113 - What's In a Bauplan

america british nature references bauplan burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2017 81:20

The gang discuss the concept of the body plan, or "bauplan", and what it means for our understanding of evolution. When in the evolutionary history of a group do the morphological characteristics we associate with that group become fixed? Meanwhile, Amanda details the exploits of mischievous crows, Curt explains our free-to-play academic futures, and James educates America on British society. Also, we start talking about science about 9 minutes in.... it's one of those podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, you can go to www.patreon.com/palaeoafterdark to find out more. Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about body plans. Yes, we can say body plan in this. Some animals and not animals are almost the same, and people wonder if it is because those animals and not animals are brothers and sisters but bigger. Also, people wonder when these animals and not animals first became the same, because they started out not the same and became more same over time. Does it matter that these animals and not animals are the same? Why are they the same? It turns out that some animals that are small with weird mouths were more different in the past than we thought, and they got their weird mouth before they became really same. Also big animals that were brother and sister but bigger to animals that would walk and maybe fly some day were very different in the past. References: Aria, Cédric, and Jean-Bernard Caron. "Burgess Shale fossils illustrate the origin of the mandibulate body plan." Nature 545.7652 (2017): 89-92. Nesbitt, Sterling J., et al. "The earliest bird-line archosaurs and the assembly of the dinosaur body plan." Nature 544.7651 (2017): 484-487. "Brightly Friendly" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed by Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode 48: The Burgess Shale

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2015 44:17

The Burgess Shale is probably the world's most famous lagerstätte (site of special preservation). Discovered in 1909 on Mt. Stephen, in the Canadian Rockies of British Colombia, Canada, this locality provided an early representation of the true biodiversity of the Cambrian Period. For decades, discoveries from this site have helped palaeontologists better understand the 'Cambrian Explosion' and the origins of modern lineages. Since that time, many more early lagerstätten have been discovered, so we asked Prof. Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge, if this well-studied locality still holds its relevance to modern palaeontology.

university canada prof mt cambridge discovered burgess canadian rockies shale cambrian british colombia trilobites arthropod burgess shale cambrian period

Episode 47: Lobopodians

china worm burgess shale martin smith arthropod burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2015 46:05

It's been quite a week for lobopodians! First off, we've had the redescription of Hallucigenia by Dr Martin Smith. This enigmatic fossil from the Burgess Shale typifies the difficulty palaeontologists have had in interpreting some of the earliest animals in the fossil record. It has famously been reconstructed upside-down and is now shown to also have been back-to-front too! Dr Smith joins us to tell us about the observations, including some new anatomical characters, that put an end to the uncertainty of the orientation of this animal. Secondly, there's a older and more heavily-armoured lobopodian from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba biota of China that we've got the exclusive on. Collinsium ciliosum is described today and we're also joined by one of the lead authors Dr Javier Ortega-Hernández.

Episode 20 - The Burgess Shale

The Geology Flannelcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2015 75:14

In this episode of the Flannelcast, the gang talks about dark matter being linked to mass extinction events, NASA mission to put a probe on Titan, and the Burgess Shale. Podcast Episodes RSS

science global funny nasa stone ocean rocks warming geology sediment burgess shale

Episode 36: Emu Bay Shale

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2014 36:51

The Emu Bay shale is a Burgess Shale-type lagerstätte from the Early Cambrian of South Australia. We speak to Dr John Paterson, of the University of New England, all about the locality and the fossils it contains.

university new england bay south australia emu shale cambrian trilobites arthropod burgess shale john paterson

Podcast 41 - Hallucigenia; Eating Planets and Crapping Rainbows

Berserker Cast- A Falling Skies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2014 106:03

In this episode of Palaeo After Dark, the gang discusses the complicated history of Hallucigenia, and somehow gets completely derailed into rambling conversations about Star Trek 5, proper pronunciation, Gould's “Wonderful Life”, microwave ovens, the effects of aging on your storytelling abilities, natural kinds versus individuals, puppy petting, poor puns, minions, food, Hell and Michael Bolton, LSD, oracles, stilt walkers, emus, otaku cat people, evolutionary convergence, My Little Pony, tripe, confusing a camera with a mouth, rubber bands, contingency, the importance of bricks, improper ways to train your cat/James, choking hazard candies, milk allergies, sharing, and historically important beers. Also, Amanda shares her reconstruction of Hallucigenia in its natural habitat (why it has a shapely pair of human legs, no one can say). If you want to get the point where we actually start talking about science, skip to 19:39 (it's one of those podcasts). References: Ramsköld, Lars. "The second leg row of Hallucigenia discovered." Lethaia 25.2 (1992): 221-224. Hou, Xianguang, and Jan Bergström. "Cambrian lobopodians–ancestors of extant onychophorans?." Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 114.1 (1995): 3-19. Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history. Random House, 2000. Smith, Martin R., and Javier Ortega-Hernández. "Hallucigenia/'s onychophoran-like claws and the case for Tactopoda." Nature (2014).

hell eating star trek lsd planets wonderful life rainbows gould random house my little pony hou michael bolton cambrian martin r crapping linnean society burgess shale stephen jay

BC 14-Berserker Cast Episode 14-Shoot The Moon Review

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2014 54:35

In episode 14 of Berserker Cast we take a long hard look at the finale episode of season 4 of Falling Skies before speculating on just what the writers have in store for us next season! So much happens in this finale, we see the skitterization machine put into effect against the 2nd Mass, we see Tom take down Scorch, and we see Lexi take one for humanity (or...does she?). The mysterious fog substance that flowed out of the skitterization machine (we need a better name for this... Flower Pod? Fog Egg?) reinforced this idea that the humans have reached a point of helplessness on earth. They need to stretch beyond their limits in order to bring the Espheni reign of terror to an end. Emilee compares the creatures coming out of the pod to a 500 million year old, Cambrian-era creature we know of only through the fossils they've left behind, Burgess Shale (see picture to right; source). The show she references that brought her to this creature is called Primeval (she highly recommends you check it out!). Read more... The post BC 14-Berserker Cast Episode 14-Shoot The Moon Review appeared first on Golden Spiral Media- Entertainment Podcasts, Technology Podcasts & More.

mass bc berserker primeval cambrian scorch falling skies shoot the moon burgess shale

BC 14-Berserker Cast Episode 14-Shoot The Moon Review

Berserker Cast- A Falling Skies Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2014 54:35

In episode 14 of Berserker Cast we take a long hard look at the finale episode of season 4 of Falling Skies before speculating on just what the writers have in store for us next season! So much happens in this finale, we see the skitterization machine put into effect against the 2nd Mass, we see Tom take down Scorch, and we see Lexi take one for humanity (or...does she?). The mysterious fog substance that flowed out of the skitterization machine (we need a better name for this... Flower Pod? Fog Egg?) reinforced this idea that the humans have reached a point of helplessness on earth. They need to stretch beyond their limits in order to bring the Espheni reign of terror to an end. Emilee compares the creatures coming out of the pod to a 500 million year old, Cambrian-era creature we know of only through the fossils they've left behind, Burgess Shale (see picture to right; source). The show she references that brought her to this creature is called Primeval (she highly recommends you check it out!). Read more... The post BC 14-Berserker Cast Episode 14-Shoot The Moon Review appeared first on Golden Spiral Media- Entertainment Podcasts, Technology Podcasts & More.

mass bc berserker primeval cambrian scorch falling skies shoot the moon burgess shale

Episode 7: Marrella splendens

Dragon Tongues

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2014 16:15

Season 2: Enigmas; Episode 7: Marrella splendens; In paleontology, there is a word for fossil sites that seem to defy the laws of chance and nature: lagerstätten. This is the story of the most famous of the lagerstätte, a site only recognized for what it truly was decades after its discovery. This is the story of the Burgess Shale. Like the podcast? Contribute to my patreon campaign! Find my site here. Find my Twitter here.

enigmas burgess shale

Darryl Whetter, “Origins” (Palimpsest Press, 2012)

New Books Network

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2014 46:34

In his new book of poems, Origins (Palimpsest Press, 2012), the Canadian writer Darryl Whetter uses metaphor to excavate the links between pre-historic life, extinction, evolution and modern-day sex. In this interview with the New Books Network, Whetter says the fossilized remains of ancient creatures are like poems that use metaphors to convey emotion and truth. “Fossils share a lot of analogues with poetry,” Whetter says. “For one, we get that incredible power of compression.” He explains that from fossilized fragments, scientists extrapolate whole creatures and ecosystems. “And that’s so much like poetry, where to just take the most common tool of poetry, metaphor, we’re getting a lot of ideas compressed into a few words.” Origins, published in 2012, begins with the fossil cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where coal-age forests flourished 310 million years ago. The book also takes Whetter in search of the dinosaurs at Drumheller, Alberta and the rich fossil finds of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Along the way, he visits Charles Darwin’s house in Kent, England and ponders the mating habits of the students at the universities where he has taught as an English professor. Darryl Whetter is the author of a book of short stories, A Sharp Tooth in the Fur (2003). His first novel The Push and the Pull was published in 2008 and his latest novel Keeping Things Whole came out in 2013. In this interview, Darryl Whetter discusses some of the poems in Origins and why he felt compelled to write them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

english england canadian origins kent british columbia nova scotia charles darwin fossils fur unesco world heritage sites new books network drumheller burgess shale palimpsest press

Darryl Whetter, “Origins” (Palimpsest Press, 2012)

New Books in Poetry

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2014 46:34

In his new book of poems, Origins (Palimpsest Press, 2012), the Canadian writer Darryl Whetter uses metaphor to excavate the links between pre-historic life, extinction, evolution and modern-day sex. In this interview with the New Books Network, Whetter says the fossilized remains of ancient creatures are like poems that use metaphors to convey emotion and truth. “Fossils share a lot of analogues with poetry,” Whetter says. “For one, we get that incredible power of compression.” He explains that from fossilized fragments, scientists extrapolate whole creatures and ecosystems. “And that’s so much like poetry, where to just take the most common tool of poetry, metaphor, we’re getting a lot of ideas compressed into a few words.” Origins, published in 2012, begins with the fossil cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where coal-age forests flourished 310 million years ago. The book also takes Whetter in search of the dinosaurs at Drumheller, Alberta and the rich fossil finds of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Along the way, he visits Charles Darwin’s house in Kent, England and ponders the mating habits of the students at the universities where he has taught as an English professor. Darryl Whetter is the author of a book of short stories, A Sharp Tooth in the Fur (2003). His first novel The Push and the Pull was published in 2008 and his latest novel Keeping Things Whole came out in 2013. In this interview, Darryl Whetter discusses some of the poems in Origins and why he felt compelled to write them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

english england canadian origins kent british columbia nova scotia charles darwin fossils fur unesco world heritage sites new books network drumheller burgess shale palimpsest press

Episode 31: Anomalocaridids

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2014 42:07

Anomalocaridids are iconic Cambrian animals, originally found in the Burgess Shale deposits in Canada. From the Genus Anomalocaris, their name translates as 'strange shrimp' owing to their initial misidentification from incomplete remains. In fact, it took until 1985 to realise that three different animals were all actually disarticulated parts of the same animal! Our knowledge of these enigmatic creatures has increased exponentially in recent years owing to many exciting new fossil discoveries, as well as reanalysis of old specimens using new technologies. Researchers are building up a picture of a group of animals far more diverse than previously expected, including apex predators as well as possible filter feeders and scavengers. Their temporal range is surprising too - they survived the end Cambrian extinctions when many other taxa died out, and many questions about their ecology, relationships and extinction remain to be answered.

canada field researchers burgess shale cambrian arthropod burgess shale anomalocaris

SoT 136: It Should Be Venereal

Science On Top

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2014 44:00

A thorough investigation of the 'jelly doughnut shaped rock', known by NASA as Pinnacle Island, confirms it isn't an alien fungus, it isn't a meteorite fragment, it's just a chipped bit of rock. Doubts have emerged about the radical stem cell breakthrough that suggested acid or other stress could turn mature cells into stem cells. The jury's still out on this. Scientists have developed a detailed model of curly hair, which could give insights into the behaviours of all curved rods. Most importantly, headphone cables. An artificial hand wired directly into the nerves of an amputee gives the sensation of touch. The recipient could tell if objects were hard or soft, and even their shapes. A trace fossil gives clues how dinosaurs peed. We don't know which dinosaur, but we do know it was a lot of pee. The Burgess Shale is famous for its large collection of varied soft-tissue fossils, and another similar site has been found nearby. A 248 million year old fossil of a dinosaur giving birth has been found and raises questions about whether ancient sea monsters gave birth on land.

nasa scientists doubts burgess shale venereal

The Skeptics Guide #449 - Feb 15 2014

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2014

This Day in Skepticism: Decimal Day; News Items: Organic Molecule on the Moon, Astrology Belief, Burgess Shale, Boeing Anti-Gravity, Photo Lineups, Fusion Beats Unity; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Net Neutrality, Placebo Medicine; Science or Fiction

science moon fiction net neutrality your questions skeptics guide burgess shale

The Skeptics Guide #449 - Feb 15 2014

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2014

This Day in Skepticism: Decimal Day; News Items: Organic Molecule on the Moon, Astrology Belief, Burgess Shale, Boeing Anti-Gravity, Photo Lineups, Fusion Beats Unity; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Net Neutrality, Placebo Medicine; Science or Fiction

science moon fiction net neutrality your questions skeptics guide burgess shale

Podcast 24 - We never should have podcasted about Wiwaxia

kama sutra podcasted burgess shale

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2014 66:23

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. If only we had known that, despite our best intentions, we weren't prepared for the sheer insanity of trying to podcast about the ambiguous Burgess Shale taxon Wiwaxia. The conversation somehow drifts to the Kama Sutra, seething contempt, giant desserts, vomiting, snot, yiffing, spiny koopas and zoomers, and the evil nature of goats. Thankfully, James manages to summarize everything at the end in a way that EVERYONE can understand. Brought to you by the letter W.

Podcast 16 - TUBE FEET!!!!!