Podcasts about Cenozoic

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

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

Send us a Text Message.Adele bounces off ideas with Dr Isaac Kerr to talk about extinct kangaroos! Isaac kicks things off by telling us about trips to New Guinea, the Smithsonian, American Natural History Museum and the NHM, photographing specimens and 3D scanning. We then hop into Protemnodon, discussing three new species, fieldwork in Lake Callabonna, and why fossil hunting is like fishing crossed with Christmas. Isaac's Monograph Systematics and palaeobiology of kangaroos of the late Cenozoic genus Protemnodon (Marsupialia, Macropodidae)Flinders UniversityGiant kangaroos bounce back from the pastThe ConversationWe found three new species of extinct giant kangaroo – and we don't know why they died out when their cousins survivedABC NewsFlinders University researchers identify three new species of extinct kangarooThis 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

Die Themen in den Wissensnachrichten +++ Bonobo-Männchen sind aggressiver als gedacht - und Weibchen stehen drauf +++ Was Brandenburg gegen den Ärztemangel auf dem Land tun könnte +++ Forschende entwickeln Holodeck-KI +++**********Weiterführende Quellen zu dieser Folge:Differences in expression of male aggression between wild bonobos and chimpanzees, Current Biology, 12.04.2024Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung des Ärzt*innenmangels in Brandenburg, Studie im Auftrag der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, April 2024Holodeck: Language Guided Generation of 3D Embodied AI Environments, Preprint, Dezember 2023Systematics and palaeobiology of kangaroos of the late Cenozoic genus Protemnodon (Marsupialia, Macropodidae), Megataxa, 15.04.2024Should We Really Be Afraid of “Weakness”? Applying the Insights of Attribution Theory, Psychological Reports, 27.02.2024Alle Quellen findet ihr hier.**********Ihr könnt uns auch auf diesen Kanälen folgen: Tiktok und Instagram.

Being the lover of Zeus can be a difficult job. Just ask Semele or Io... However, it turns out being his son can be very, very easy. Join us for the story of Perseus- the man who, after a. bit of a rocky start, had everything pretty much handed to him on a silver plate. Many thanks to Quest for Power for collaborating with us! You can find them at the following links: Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/2tcN4SLk27BAvqKkvBxqz1?si=c125768fecac4f42⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/quest-for-power/id1645972223⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/questforpowerpod/⁠ Sources for this episode: Berger, B. M. (1960), How Long Is a Generation? The British Journal of Sociology 11(1): 10-23. Coleridge, A. P. (1889), "The Argonautica" of Apollonius Rhodius. Translated into English Prose from Text of R. Merkel. London: George Bell and Sons. De Lamotte, D. F., Leturmy, P., Missenard, Y., Khomsi, S., Ruiz, G., Saddaqi, O., Guillocheau, F. and Michard, A. (2009), Mesozoic and Cenozoic vertical movements in the Atlas system (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia): An overview. Tectonophysics 475: 9-28. Frazer, J. G. (1921), Apollodorus: The Library (Volume I). London: William Heinemann. Guerber, H. A. (1929), The Myths of Greece & Rome: Their Stories Signification and Origin. London: George G. Harrap & Company Ltd. MacLeod, M. D. (1961), Lucian in Eight Volumes (Volume VII). London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: William Heinemann Ltd. and Harvard University Press. Matsamura, S. and Forster, P. (2008), Generation time and effective popular size in Polar Eskimos. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275: 1501-1508. Rawlinson, G. (1871), A Manual of Ancient History, From the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire. Comprising the History of Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylonia, Lydia, Phoenicia, Syria, Judaea, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, Macedonia, Parthia, and Rome. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers. Riley, H. T. (1889), The Metamorphoses (Ovid), Literally Translated Into English Prose, With Copious Notes and Explanations. London: George Bell & Sons. Robertson, J. (1788), The Parian Chronicle, or the Chronicle of the Arundelian Marbles; with a Dissertation Concerning its Authenticity. London: J. Walter, Charing Cross. Author unknown (2007), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (6th edition). Volume 1: A-M. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Author unknown (2007), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (6th edition). Volume 2: N-Z. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The year just ended, 2023, was the hottest on record - "Scientists knew 2023's heat would be historic — but not by this much"; "2023 officially hottest year on record as global temperatures close in on tipping point"; "Climate change and El Nino turn 2023 into the hottest year ever"; "2023 hottest year on record"; "A heatwave in Antarctica totally blew the minds of scientists. They set out to decipher it – and here are the results"; "Wet and hot Victorian summer could mean difficult vintage for King Valley grape growers"; "Two degrees: The world set a simple goal for climate change. We're likely to miss it."; "The race for Romney's seat is a fight about climate"; "Global heating will pass 1.5C threshold this year, top ex-Nasa scientist says"; "The End of Snow"; "2023 smashes record for world's hottest year by huge margin"; "Thousands of U.S. homes have flooded over and over again. Here's where."; "New climate report released for Colorado; state warmed by 1.5 degrees"; "U.S. Supreme Court decision puts Minnesota's climate change lawsuit closer to its day in court"; "Emissions from Israel's war in Gaza have ‘immense' effect on climate catastrophe"; "Toward a Cenozoic history of atmospheric CO2"; "A New 66 Million-Year History of Carbon Dioxide Offers Little Comfort for Today"; "2023 Was the Hottest Year Ever Recorded … By a Lot"; "Deadly winter storm pummels central, eastern U.S.; several tornadoes hit the South"; "In Europe, Trains Are Full, and More Are on the Way"; "New York Region Is Under High Wind Warning as Forecasters Warn of Flooding"; "Why can a warming climate increase snowfall?"; "The Tonga Volcano Shook the World. It May Also Affect the Climate."; "2024: First chance of 1.5 °C year"; "The secret to getting people to eat more plant-based food"; "‘We don't know what tomorrow will bring': how climate change is affecting Fijians' mental health"; "PM flags consideration of dedicated force for natural disaster responses amid climate crisis"; "See How 2023 Shattered Records to Become the Hottest Year"; "Azerbaijan names a former oil exec to lead climate talks. Activists have concerns"; "Two large offshore wind sites are sending power to the US grid for the first time". --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robert-mclean/message

In this episode I am returning to a topic that has become a favourite for pundits and trolls, and that is carbon dioxide. The near doubling of the atmospheric concentration of this colourless odourless gas has been identified by scientists as contributing to an accelerating heating of the biosphere that has significantly affected the climate.  As a by-product of one of our most lucrative industries, the burning of fossil fuels, CO2 has gained a lot of friends.  And because of that it is the subject of a targeted disinformation campaign, becoming headline political news.  This is a job for The Rational View. Bärbel Hönisch grew up in Germany and studied at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bremen, as well as the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven. She received her Diploma in Biology in 1999 and her PhD in Natural Sciences in 2002. After moving to the US, she held academic positions at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, the City University of New York at Queens College, the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and Bremen University. She joined the faculty of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University in 2007. She is interested in the effect of global carbon cycle perturbations on climate and the oceans, in particular past variations of seawater acidity and its relation to atmospheric CO2. As she was originally trained as a marine biologist, her research includes culture experiments with living marine calcifiers to validate proxies for past environmental conditions. She applies the resulting calibrations to reconstructing seawater carbonate chemistry and atmospheric CO2 variations through Earth history. Over the past 7 years she has led a consortium of paleo-CO2 proxy experts to compile, vet and modernize published paleo-CO2 estimates over the Cenozoic. Support the podcast at https://Patron.podbean.com/TheRationalView Facebook @TheRationalView Twitter @AlScottRational

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

LOOP 8.2: Prof. Danielle Schreve, Royal Holloway University of London, joins us to cover the last 2 million years of Earth's history. We explore the periodicity of glacials and interglacials and the control Earth's orbit around the sun has on climate. She then places the Holocene's megafaunal extinctions and major palaeobiogeograpical events within this climatic context. We finally look at the impact of human radiation on the world and the lessons we can learn from this time. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 8.1: Dave and Tom introduce episode 8 and round of this special series on Life On Our Planet. We talk about our favourite scenes and reflect on our time working on the documentary and how our perspectives of documentary making has changed. We'd love your feedback on this podcast series. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 6.4: Prof. Anjan Bhullar continues his overview of avian evolution with a look at how the birds fared after the K-Pg mass extinction. What was it that allowed birds to survive when the non-avian dinosaurs died out? Why didn't they just become dinosaurs again? What have birds been able to achieve in the time since and how important are they to modern ecosystems. Not an episode to be missed (unless you're Prof. Dan Field). Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 7.2: Prof. Christine Janis, University of Bristol, outlines mammalian evolution and focusses on the global events that governs their radiation. We look at why mammals survived the K-Pg mass extinction and how the archaic mammals radiated immediately after. We end by looking at how mammals, similar to what we learned about birds, are relatively insignificant to today's ecosystems. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 7.1: In the introduction to episode 7, Dave and Tom just about keep it together whilst reflecting on the most emotional scene of the show. We also celebrate the inclusion of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the series, before giving it a little rebranding to make the science even more approachable. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 6.1: Dave and Tom introduce us to episode 6 of Life On Our Planet and the pair touch upon the Chicxulub impact and the radiation of birds into the Cenozoic. Dave curtails the introduction with one of his worst puns yet. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story. This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been. And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things. In this unofficial series, we've been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show's academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP. Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 929, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: the northernmost capital city 1: Rome,Copenhagen,Lisbon. Copenhagen. 2: Brasilia,Santiago,Caracas. Caracas. 3: New Delhi,Ottawa,Wellington. Ottawa. 4: Pyongyang,Tokyo,Taipei. Pyongyang. 5: Brasilia,Buenos Aires,Bogota,Belmopan. Belmopan. Round 2. Category: american indians 1: Florida tribe which was famous for sheltering runaway slaves. Seminoles. 2: Only East Coast Indians originally used this word for money made of shells. wampum. 3: During the Revolutionary War, the Cherokee fought for this side. the British. 4: Spooky craze that swept the Plains and led to the death of Sitting Bull. the Ghost Dance. 5: A city near Detroit is named for this Ottawa chief who united the Great Lakes tribes in 1763. Pontiac. Round 3. Category: geology 1: The movement of these rivers of ice carved the fjords. glaciers. 2: This earthquake measurement scale is open-ended though none has been recorded above 8.9. a Richter scale. 3: The meltwater from these is often grayish-white because of the powdered rock they contain. glaciers. 4: This "powdery" mineral is number 1 on the Mohs scale of hardness. talc. 5: Following the Mesozoic, it's the era of geological time in which we are now living. Cenozoic. Round 4. Category: party time! 1: Sir John Soane had a 3-day party after buying Seti I's sarcophagus for his home in this British capital. London. 2: Active from the 1790s to the 1810s:This party of the second U.S. president. the Federalists. 3: A noisy mock serenade given for newlyweds, its name is an alteration of the French word charivari. Shivaree. 4: Active 1834-1854:This U.S. party that borrowed its name from a British party. the Whigs. 5: Dissolved in 1991:At its height, this party had about 19 million members. the Communist Party. Round 5. Category: norse mythology 1: This god's hall is called Bilskirnir, which means "lightning". Thor. 2: Nidhogg, one of these mythical fire-breathers, gnaws at the roots of the cosmic tree. a dragon. 3: He could see everything in the 9 worlds from his high throne, Lidskjalf. Odin. 4: Odin rode an eight-legged one of these named Sleipnir. a horse. 5: A hideous giantess named Angerboda was the wife of this Norse trickster. Loki. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

In this episode, the massive, rapacious king power lizards of the Cretaceous are finally taken off the board by an asteroid. We trace the origins and progress of the skulking night vermin that are unleashed in their absence. These night vermin, with their whiskers and fur and fancy new brains, become the superpowers of the Cenozoic (our current era).This is the story of the mammals, from a time long before their origin until the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees. Although this is a re-release of a previous episode, it contains never-before released material about the latest estimates of warm-bloodedness ariiving on the stage. Illustration by Ian Armstrong

Gary Fuis, USGS The 1989 M 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake is the first major event to occur along the San Andreas fault (SAF) zone in central California since the 1906 M 7.9 San Francisco earthquake. Given the complexity of this event, uncertainty has persisted as to whether this earthquake ruptured the SAF itself or a secondary fault. Recent work on the SAF in the Coachella Valley, in southern California, has revealed similar complexity, arising from a non-planar, non-vertical fault geometry, and has led us to re-examine the Loma Prieta event. We have compiled data sets and data analyses in the vicinity of the Loma Prieta earthquake including the 3-D seismic velocity model and aftershock relocations of Lin and Thurber (2012), potential-field data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) following the earthquake, and seismic refraction and reflection data from the 1991 profile of Catchings et al. (2004). The velocity model and aftershock relocations of Lin and Thurber (2012) reveal a geometry for the SAF that appears similar to that in the Coachella Valley (although rotated 180 °): at Loma Prieta the fault dips steeply near the surface and curves with depth to join the moderately southwest-dipping main rupture below 6-km depth, itself also non-planar. The SAF is a clear velocity boundary, with higher velocities on the northeast, attributable to Mesozoic accretionary and other rocks, and lower velocities on the southwest, attributable to Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the La Honda block. Rocks of the La Honda block have been offset right-laterally hundreds of kilometers from similar rocks in the southern San Joaquin Valley and vicinity, providing evidence that the curved northeast fault boundary of this block is the plate boundary. Thus, we interpret that the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on the SAF and not on a secondary fault.

RC is still feeling the effects of the Halloween shiny, reflective Foil Brother, so he discovers the differences between tin and aluminum. With clarity returned and napping mastered, he reviews the factors behind the phenomenon of the Urban Heat Island Effect, and relates how charts of heat waves in the US can be deceptive by manipulating data and wording descriptions that leave the actual point of the graphs unclear. Other more direct graphs blatantly show how comparably low current concentrations of CO2 are and how global temperatures were much higher than they have been the last five million years during the onset and cycling of ice ages. What is proposed as the optimum temperature that we should be striving toward? And what is being proposed as solutions to manage that temperature, that may leave us hamstrung in the face of natural climate change? Kosmographia Ep091 The Randall Carlson Podcast with Brothers of the Serpent – Kyle and Russ, Normal Guy Mike, and GeocosmicREX admin Bradley, from 11/03/22. In the name of liberty and freedom, we are moving this podcast to our new partner platform! Please join us here: https://www.howtube.com/channels/RandallCarlson  LINKS: Heat Waves: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-waves Announcements about events and tours: https://randallcarlson.com/tours-and-events/ https://www.cliffviewresort.com/  Upper Cumberland Plateau Tour in Late March ‘23 RC's monthly updates on science news and his activities:  https://randallcarlson.com/newsletter  Cosmic Summit 2023 in Asheville June 16-18 in-person tickets: https://cosmicsummit2023.com/ Cosmic Summit 2023 howtube Livestream/VoD: https://www.howtube.com/14022 RC and Graham Hancock latest with Joe Rogan on the Netflix “Ancient Apocalypse” series: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xvmTo09BFMd6tJfJPmmvT Get all things Graham directly: https://grahamhancock.com/   Mysterious Origins of Halloween and the Ancient Day of the Dead Festivals (Video on Demand $18) https://www.howtube.com/Dh4nrIFWkiSc?f=yt  Sacred Geometry introductory workshop (Video on Demand $72) https://howtube.com/SGwithRC Plato's Atlantis – 7 hours of deep-dive (Video on Demand $33) https://www.howtube.com/12513 Cool and fun Kosmographia and RC gear:  https://randallcarlson.com/shop (20% off til End of Year) New university/village “Sanctuary Project” : https://project.randallcarlson.com  Contact at the Cataracts May '23  https://contactatthecabin.com/scablands-with-randall-carlson/ Randall with Rogan ep1772  https://open.spotify.com/episode/190slemJsUXH5pEYR6DUbf Full listing of scientific papers about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: https://cosmictusk.com   CBD RECOMMENDED - Listen to Randall's experience with “CBD from the gods” after the mid-break at 56:44. 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The gang discusses two papers that look at what past sharks might have eaten. The first paper uses nitrogen isotopes to determine the trophic level of species belonging to the extinct shark genus Otodus, and the second paper shows evidence of predation/scavenging of sperm whales by sharks in the late Miocene. Meanwhile, James has a couch to burn, Curt proposes an experiment to find the best animal, Amanda becomes shark Nietzsche.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends look at two papers that look at what big angry animals with big teeth who breathe water and lived in the past could have eaten. The first paper looks at the parts of these animals from the past and uses what those parts of made of to try and see what kind of things they might have eaten. This is the first time that this has been done using these parts of the animal, since most of these kinds of papers look at living animals and so they can get parts that do not last when the animals die. It had been said that these big angry animals in the past may have eaten big animals that eat small things, and that they might have died out when there was less big animals that eat small things. This paper finds that the parts that make up these animals show that maybe these animals were eating things that ate other bigger things, that these big animals were probably not just eating this one type of animal but may have gone for anything, as well as other animals that also eat pretty much everything. One animal that they mention these big angry animals that breathe water could have eaten is a big animal with warm blood and big teeth that lives in water. The second paper looks at how the hard parts of big animals with warm blood and big teeth that live in water at this time have hurt marks on their hard parts that look like they were from the teeth of big angry animals that breathe water. These hurt marks are along a part of the head that has a lot of stuff in it which animals would like to eat. The hurt marks are all different, with some that look like the animal bit them right on the head, and others look like marks from teeth that were biting at the body when it was already dead. It seems like many different types of angry animals with big teeth who breathe water may have been eating these animals with warm blood and big teeth.   References: Kast, Emma R., et al. "Cenozoic megatooth sharks occupied extremely high trophic positions." Science Advances 8.25 (2022): eabl6529. Benites-Palomino, Aldo, et al. "Sperm  whales (Physeteroidea) from the Pisco Formation, Peru, and their trophic  role as fat sources for late Miocene sharks." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 289.1977 (2022): 20220774

Episode 97: The Mystery of Dinosaurs Show Notes: Earth Era's: Paleozoic Era (ancient age), Mesozoic (middle age), Cenozoic (present age) Period Subdivisions:  Triassic: 245 mil years ago Jurassic: 208 mil years ago Cretaceous: 144 mil years ago Tertiary: 66.4 mil years ago Quaternary: 2 mil years ago Present Time The fossil record is replete with evidence of death and destruction. The planets of our solar system show evidence of chaos and waste: craters, asteroids Could there be a connection? Were the seeds for plants already in the earth from before and did not need to be re-created? If Moses mentioned ‘great whales,' why not large dinosaurs which were equally remarkable, both on land and sea? Why was man given dominion (a kingdom) if there had been no need or such a thing in the past? Scripture References: All Scripture references cited from the King James Version Bible.  Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 45:18-19, Genesis 1:2, Job 38:4-7, Ezekiel 28:11-19, Isaiah 14:12-15, Revelation 12:7-8, Genesis 3:14-15, Genesis 3:14-15, Genesis 6:1-4, Genesis 6:5-8, Genesis 6:11-13, Genesis 1:11-13, Genesis 1:16, Genesis 1:20-23, Genesis 1:24-27, Romans 5:12, Genesis 1:29-31, Job 40:15-24 Takeaway: While it is possible dinosaurs walked with men up until the time of Noah, it is far more likely they lived in the ages of the past before man was created. It is our believe that dinosaurs are the genetic manipulation of animals God originally created to inhabit the earth with the angels before man. Satan and his rebellious faction of angels likely corrupted their physiology as they did during the days of Noah. New Subsplash Giving Donation link: https://secure.subsplash.com/ui/access/BDJH89 Links: Website: utbnow.com Podcast: https://bible-mysteries.captivate.fm Subscribe: https:/https://biblemysteries.supercast.com Email: unlockthebiblenow@gmail.com

Join Ellen & special guest, science writer Nick Lund, for a special episode nominating our very own top 3 candidates for the national bird of the United States of America! In addition to our bird selections, Nick gives us insight into the process that actually goes into designating official state birds, the history behind the bald eagle's use as the country's symbol and why the turkey was once famously suggested to be America's Next Top Wattle.Follow The Birdist on Twitter!Check out our guest's books:The Ultimate Biography of Earth: From the Big Bang to Today! - Told in a lively, illustrated biography form to deliver its cutting-edge science in the most compelling way, here is the story of Earth, from the chaotic Hadean eon with its huge oceans of molten rock to today's Cenozoic era, aka the Age of Mammals (and that includes us humans). Great for young curious minds!American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Maine -A photographic field guide with one bird featured per page. Each concise species account includes measurements, scientific name, identification description, voice, behavior, and the habitat it is likely to be found in. Photographs by Brian E. Small.More of Nick's writing and science communication work can be found at his website.Follow Just the Zoo of Us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram & join Ellen for weekly video game streams on Twitch! 

Join Ellen & special guest, science writer Nick Lund, for a special episode nominating our very own top 3 candidates for the national bird of the United States of America! In addition to our bird selections, Nick gives us insight into the process that actually goes into designating official state birds, the history behind the bald eagle's use as the country's symbol and why the turkey was once famously suggested to be America's Next Top Wattle.Follow The Birdist on Twitter!Check out our guest's books:The Ultimate Biography of Earth: From the Big Bang to Today! - Told in a lively, illustrated biography form to deliver its cutting-edge science in the most compelling way, here is the story of Earth, from the chaotic Hadean eon with its huge oceans of molten rock to today's Cenozoic era, aka the Age of Mammals (and that includes us humans). Great for young curious minds!American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of Maine -A photographic field guide with one bird featured per page. Each concise species account includes measurements, scientific name, identification description, voice, behavior, and the habitat it is likely to be found in. Photographs by Brian E. Small.More of Nick's writing and science communication work can be found at his website.Follow Just the Zoo of Us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram & join Ellen for weekly video game streams on Twitch! 

Chinese scientists used data from Magnolia plastid genomes to peer back millions of years to understand Cenozoic climatic changes. You can read the original blog post at: https://botany.one/2022/05/lessons-from-magnolias-about-past-climatic-events-and-plant-evolution/ You can read the original research at: https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcac057

The Great American Interchange, also called Great American Biotic  Interchange (GABI), is the epic geological event that occurred when the South American continent, which had been isolated for 50 million years,  connected with the North American continent. The Great American Interchange is one of the most important events in the history of land mammals in the Americas.The landmass that is South American used to be home to many unique animals, like Australia is today. However, when the volcanic Isthmus of Panama came up from the ocean floor resulting in the formation of a connected Americas, animals could now migrate back and forth. This immigration of animals should have been uniform, but (spoiler alert) North American animals ultimately won out over their South American counterparts. Scientists are still trying to figure out why, though fossil evidence has shed light on the event. So check our newest episode where we dive into the animals of South America before the interchange and why these native animals were at a disadvantage when the continents connected.In the Good the Bad the NewsLitter of red wolf pups born for the first time in four years, which is good news for this critically endangered animal.Also, Pokemon Go might help young people with depression. Follow us on Twitter @betterthanhuma1on Facebook @betterthanhumanpodcaston Instagram @betterthanhumanpodcasthttps://www.tiktok.com/@betterthanhumanpodcastor Email us at betterthanhumanpodcast@gmail.comWe look forward to hearing from you, and we look forward to you joining our cult of weirdness!

Today we take a look at some strange animals including a dolphin with a walrus head, a giant sloth, and a saber tooth marsupial.Take a look at our website prehistoricpodcast.com for the blog post which has the photosSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/prehistoric-podcast/donations

Ethan Panner the rockmanethan  on all social medias, Binghamton University master student specializing in tectonic geomorphology.check out Ethan Tik Tok as he cracks open rock that have not seen the light of day in millions of years.Ethan Tik Tok https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdrX2PB3/Linktr.eehttps://linktr.ee/ethpenSubscribe YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-X7wvMYSyywC1X3kUjHUAR2 Cents Instagram https://www.instagram.com/r2_cents/R2 cents Twitterhttps://twitter.com/r2_cents_R2 Cents Tik Tokhttps://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe4GkPev/R2 Cents reddithttps://www.reddit.com/u/r2_oscar_mike_cents?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share  Produced by: Oscar CRBuzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Cenozoic creatures have entered the Jurassic range, y'all, and now we have to deal with that. There's also a dinosaur in this episode...a Compy of all things. What could be the effects of posing dinos against ice age mammals? Join us today and bring your thoughts as we discuss the second episode of Camp Cretaceous Season 4. Find us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jurassicfansarathernerd/ and Éverton at https://www.instagram.com/evertons.paz/ Music in this audio - Song 02 Theme From Jurassic Park from Jur - Universal Pictures Film Music Album Jurassic Park Writers John Williams Remix by: Music by Approaching Nirvana http://youtube.com/user/approachingnirvana Song: Fade Away Listen to the song on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2NyBLXr --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jurassicfansofficial/message

The fifth podcast on www.cyclostratigraphy.org is by Anna Joy Drury. She talks about a 30 million year long carbonate content and stable isotope record that she compiled for an ocean drilling site on Walvis Ridge, in the South-East Atlantic Ocean. In this podcast, Anna Joy discusses how climate and carbon cycle have been responding to astronomical frocing throughout the late Cenozoic. This discussion is based on scientific results, recently published in Climate of the Past. They also discuss how CODD, or Code for Ocean Drilling Data (Wilkens et al., 2017), was used to construct composite core images of the sedimentary sequence. The Intro music of this podcast is again an excerpt of a piece based on the North Atlantic Oscillation from the "Aphrodite's Dew" book and CD project by Arvid Tomayko and Sandro Montanari. Check out more of their work at arvidtomayko.com.

Butt-breathing, upside-down swimming turtles, guard tortoises, the Neverending Story, meat-eating tortoises (we were way ahead of the latest video...) and Ryan discovers that Rebecca doesn't like a certain death-feigning animal! Join Rebecca and Ryan on their inaugural full episode of Let's Talk Turtles! News article: https://globegazette.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/watch-now-north-iowa-kids-take-charge-at-ventura-turtle-crossing/article_4d03827c-04a3-5998-937b-cd1aacb255fc.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_ References: https://news.yale.edu/2014/05/05/study-finds-turtles-are-closer-kin-birds-crocodiles-lizards-snakes https://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/archive/workshop-terrestrial-turtles-presentation-abstracts.pdf https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/cryptodira https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00114-016-1375-y Pérez-García, Adán (4 June 2016). "A new turtle confirms the presence of Bothremydidae (Pleurodira) in the Cenozoic of Europe and expands the biostratigraphic range of Foxemydina". The Science of Nature. 103 (7–8): 50. Joyce, Walter G.; Anquetin, Jérémy; Cadena, Edwin-Alberto; Claude, Julien; Danilov, Igor G.; Evers, Serjoscha W.; Ferreira, Gabriel S.; Gentry, Andrew D.; Georgalis, Georgios L.; Lyson, Tyler R.; Pérez-García, Adán (2021-02-09). "A nomenclature for fossil and living turtles using phylogenetically defined clade names". Swiss Journal of Palaeontology. 140 (1): 5. doi:10.1186/s13358-020-00211-x. ISSN 1664-2384.

In this episode we’re joined by Dr. Advait Jukar to discuss the 2002 classic Ice Age, the story of three unlikely Pleistocene mammals who team up to rescue a non-adult Homo sapiens, and in the process discover the value of family. If you like Cenozoic mammalian taxonomy, then you’re going to love this episode! Find Advait on Twitter @amjukar and at https://advaitjukar.weebly.com/ In this episode: We geek out over the scientific names of prehistoric mammals, including: Wooly Mammoth – Mammuthus primigenius: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth Sabre-toothed cat – Smilodon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon Scimitar cat – Homotherium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotherium Ground Sloth – Megalonyx (Bonus – where are sloths' nipples?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalonyx Long-nosed llama – Macraucheniidae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrauchenia Glyptodont (giant armadillo relative) – Dædicurus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doedicurus Ancient proboscidean – Moeritherium (It's not a tapir!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeritherium Not actually a rhinoceros – Megacerops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacerops Not actually Bigfoot – Gigantopithecus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus Dodos don't get enough credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo Scrat was real all along! Pseudotherium argentinus: http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/pseudotherium-argentinus-07533.html We also discuss: Burrows dug by giant ground sloths: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna GABI – Great American Biotic Interchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Interchange People – what a bunch of bastards! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happened-worlds-most-enormous-animals-180964255/

In this episode we're joined by Dr. Advait Jukar to discuss the 2002 classic Ice Age, the story of three unlikely Pleistocene mammals who team up to rescue a non-adult Homo sapiens, and in the process discover the value of family. If you like Cenozoic mammalian taxonomy, then you're going to love this episode! Find Advait on Twitter @amjukar and at https://advaitjukar.weebly.com/In this episode:We geek out over the scientific names of prehistoric mammals, including:Wooly Mammoth - Mammuthus primigenius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth Sabre-toothed cat - Smilodonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmilodonScimitar cat – Homotheriumhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotherium Ground Sloth – Megalonyx (Bonus – where are sloths' nipples?)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegalonyxLong-nosed llama – Macraucheniidaehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrauchenia Glyptodont (giant armadillo relative) – Dædicurushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doedicurus Ancient proboscidean – Moeritherium (It's not a tapir!)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeritherium Not actually a rhinoceros - Megacerops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacerops Not actually Bigfoot - Gigantopithecushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus Dodos don't get enough credithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo Scrat was real all along! Pseudotherium argentinus http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/pseudotherium-argentinus-07533.htmlWe also discuss:Burrows dug by giant ground sloths:https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafaunaGABI – Great American Biotic Interchangehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_InterchangePeople – what a bunch of bastards!https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-happened-worlds-most-enormous-animals-180964255/

Episode 35 To close out another wonderful season, Season 3, we here at Geology on the Rocks decided to dive deep into all things about the geology of our home state, Texas. While we planned on talking about the specifics of North Texas, it evolved into a broader historical approach. Discussed is the evolution of the Lone Star State from the Precambrian times all the way through to the Cenozoic. The Texas we know and think of today, began as thick sequences of coarse sediment dumped into an ancient sea bordering Laurasia that was eventually buried, squeezed, and heated. Collisions with subsequent mobile belts eventually led to mountains forming, producing metamorphic schists and gneisses along with generating molten magma. The plutons cooled to form the granitic Llano Province around 1.3 to 1.1 billion years ago during the Mesoproterozoic. These Precambrian rocks are seen today in the Llano Uplift in central Texas and in the Franklin Mountains in west Texas. Throughout the Phanerozoic Eon, Texas saw a multitude of marine transgressions and regressions that led to most of Texas' history being submerged by shallow, epeiric seas. This undoubtedly led to the vast expanse of limestones and fossil assemblages we see throughout the state. We also see that during the Carboniferous Period Ouchita Mobile Belt is responsible for the distinctive S-shaped feature seen in geologic maps that spans across Texas. The Permian is responsible for a lot of the red bed formations we see up in the panhandle in the Quartermaster formation and the Dockum Group at Caprock Canyon State Park in Palo Duro Canyon. Near-shore evaporation flats produced deposits of bright red shales along with salt and gypsum deposits. As the supercontinent Pangaea began rifting apart, the Gulf of Mexico began opening allowing for sediment accommodation of the weathering of the uplifted Ouchita Mountains to the southeast. Early restriction of the gulf allowed for multiple evaporative phases that is represented by the famous Louann Salt deposits. During the Cretaceous, sandy shorelines and mudflats record the majestic presence of dinosaurs, most famously seen in the Paluxy River in Glen Rose. You name it, Texas probably has it, geologically speaking. Between the bars of our main discussion we bring to you another Mineral Minute and close things out with Leaves, Driving Slow Motion's latest single from their upcoming album. Sit back and enjoy the Geology of Texas in this final episode of the season! We look forward to starting anew sometime in late August. Until next time, be cool, stay tuned, and keep it on the rocks! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/geology-on-the-rocks/support

The gang discusses two examples where extinction may have been very important in directing the evolution of mammals through time. The first paper looks at the impact of other mammals groups on the morphology of earlier therians, and the second paper looks at how extinction could explain some of the patterns observed in the Great American Interchange. Meanwhile, James learns some things, Curt steps out, Amanda imagines the end.   Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends talk about animals with hair. The first paper talks about animals with hair, and that ideas were had a while ago about how old kinds of animals with hair just weren't as good as new kinds of animals with hair, and that the very big angry animals with lots of teeth and no hair made the animals with hair from the same time stay small and not good. But it turns out that even after the very big angry animals with lots of teeth and no hair went away the animals with hair were still all very much the same and didn't do anything fun until much longer after the very big angry animals with lots of teeth and no hair were gone. That means that the very big angry animals with lots of teeth and no hair didn't really keep the animals with hair from being any good. The other paper talks about animals with hair from the upper part of the colder area of land in the "new" half of the world (which is not new but that's the only word we can use in this stupid word thing) moved into the usually warmer lower area of land in the "new" half of the world. It talks about how upper animals with hair moved into lower areas of land, and how lower animals with hair moved into upper areas of land. However, more upper animals moved into lower areas of land. And they wanted to know why. It turns out that more animals with hair that lived in the lower part of the "new" half of the world were dying as the places changed and got colder. We used to think just that it was upper animals with hair were better at living than lower ones, but that isn't true. It's just that there was space for upper animals to move in, and they could use the area better than lower animals with hair that moved to the upper part of the "new" half of the world.   References: Carrillo, Juan D., et al.  "Disproportionate extinction of South American mammals drove the  asymmetry of the Great American Biotic Interchange." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.42 (2020): 26281-26287. Brocklehurst, Neil, et al. "Mammaliaform extinctions as a driver of the morphological radiation of Cenozoic mammals." Current Biology (2021).

The gang talks about two papers that look at changes in ecological interactions through deep time. The first paper looks at how ecological networks changed from the Permian into the Triassic, and the second paper looks at how echinoid diversity patterns compare to echinoid predation patterns. Meanwhile, James has some choice words about Elon Musk, Amanda’s stream is torn “into pieces”, and Curt once again would really like to start the second half of the podcast…   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about how animals and things that are not animals can build a place to live together, and how that changes over time. The first paper looks at how the places these animals and not animals build can change when things get really bad. It looks at two places in the past and uses numbers to see how these places change by getting more busy or less busy. They find that before most of the times when lots of stuff died, the places built by these animals and not animals were getting easy to fall to pieces. This is not true for this one time where things go really bad though, which is interesting and means that what was happening when things got really bad must be different. The second paper looks at how a round animal in the water with hard hurt causing parts have changed over time and tries to see if being eaten caused some change. The paper finds that there are some changes that happen when we see these things get eaten, but also a lot of the changes are happening before we see these things get eaten.   References: Petsios, Elizabeth, et al. "An  asynchronous Mesozoic marine revolution: the Cenozoic intensification of  predation on echinoids." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1947 (2021): 20210400. Huang, Yuangeng, et al. "Ecological  dynamics of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems across three  mid-Phanerozoic mass extinctions from northwest China." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1947 (2021): 20210148.

The gang discusses two papers that look at how competition, environment, and biogeography affect macroevolutionary patterns. The first paper looks at the evolution of bird beaks, and the second paper looks at patterns in horse evolution. Meanwhile, James has “some” gin, Amanda practices her “reviewer” skills, and Curt enjoys some last minute “honesty”.   Up-Goer Five (James Edition): Today the group look at two papers that are interested in what causes animals to change their form over time. The first paper looks at animals with hard noses that fly to see what causes the nose to change, especially whether close friends wanting to eat the same food makes them change. The paper studies many different groups of animals with hard noses that fly and found that while some groups do show some sign of changing because close friends want to eat the same food, it is not all parts of the animal that changes and most groups do not show any sign of changing because of it at all. The second paper looks at scared animals that run on one finger to see what caused their legs to change over time. It shows that the scared animals that run on one finger living on different big bits of land had different legs, and that their legs changed when they moved into new places so that they could walk across the different types of land they found.   References: MacLaren, Jamie A. "Biogeography a key influence on distal forelimb variation in horses through the Cenozoic." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1942 (2021): 20202465. Chira, A. M., et al. "The signature of competition in ecomorphological traits across the avian radiation." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 287.1938 (2020): 20201585.

Hello and welcome to Episode Thirty Four of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah! If you enjoy the podcast subscribe, tell a friend, or write us a review! The English Language Transcript can be found below But as always we start with Reader's Advisory! The Reader's Advisory for Episode Thirty Four is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. If you like Braiding Sweetgrass you should also check out: As Long As Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker, All We Can Save edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Keeble Wilkinson, and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. My personal favorite Goodreads list Braiding Sweetgras is on is Ecosocialism & Degrowth. Happy Reading Everyone Today’s Library Tidbit is on Climate Change. Let’s start at the beginning, what is climate change? According to NASA climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional, and global climates. Global warming is the long-term heating of the Earth caused by human activity since the Industrial Revolution. The burning of fossil fuels has added unprecedented levels of CO2 to the atmosphere which is causing rapid global warming. The Earth has gone through several periods of climate change during it’s history. It is believed, based on geological records, that 2,400 -2,100 million years ago, during the Paleoproterozoic era, that the Earth’s surface froze over in response to the atmosphere and the ocean’s experiencing a rise in oxygen. This is referred to the Huronian glaciation. Fun note here our ocean’s are currently rising in temperature as more CO2 and methane are added to them. The event that is believed to have caused the Huronian glaciation is referred to by a few different things but most often the Great Oxidation Event or GOE. The rise in oxygen in the atmosphere over the next hundred of millions of years caused several different glaciation periods and mass extinction events. The differences between them being uninteresting unless you’re studying prehistoric geology or paleontology. Note paleontologists do not just study dinosaurs but all fossilized animal, plant, bacteria, and virus Around 251 million years ago the Great Dying or the Permian-Triassic extinction event occured. This event saw the most extreme mass extinction ever to occur on Earth to date with the extinction of an estimated 83% of all genera. Genera is the plural of genus which if you remember way back to biology is the rank above species in the taxonomic rank. Reasons for this mass extinction event are unknown but models using the available data say that it would have been caused by ocean acidification. The reason for this acidification is unknown. At about 199 million years ago the Triassic period ends and the Jurassic period begins. The Jurassic period is also the Age of the Dinosaurs. Scientists widely believe that the cause of the mass extinction that ended the Triassic period was increased volcanic activity in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. This volcanic activity released large amounts of CO2 in to the atmosphere raising the overall temperature of the Earth and causing ocean acidification. In general times of extreme cooling of the Earth have been caused by raised oxygen levels in the atmosphere and the oceans and times of extreme warming have been caused by raised CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the oceans. At about 66 million years ago the Cretaceous period ended and the Paleogene period began. This also marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the beginning of the Cenozoic era. This is also the event that caused the extinction of all dinosaurs but birds. There are a few theories behind this mass extinction event. One is a meteorite impact at the Chicxulub crater which is large enough to impact the climate of the planet and lead to potential extinction. Two the Deccan Traps in India, a large range of volcanic activity,

Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne - Book 4, Part 1 Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth Overview: Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, is a classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated inactive volcano Snæfellsjökull, then contend with many dangers, including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and living prehistoric creatures from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (the 1867 revised edition inserted additional prehistoric material in Chaps. 37–39). Eventually, the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, in southern Italy. The category of subterranean fiction existed well before Verne. However his novel's distinction lay in its well-researched Victorian science and its inventive contribution to the science-fiction subgenre of time travel—Verne's innovation was the concept of a prehistoric realm still existing in the present-day world. Journey inspired many later authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel The Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Pellucidar series. Published: 1864, Revised 1867 Series: The Extraordinary Voyages #3 Author: Jules Verne Genre: Action & Adventure Fiction, Fantastic Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure Novel Episode: Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne - Book 4, Part 1 Part: 1 of 2 Length Part: 4:46:07 Book: 4 Length Book: 10:35:59 Episodes: 1 - 22 of 44 Predecessor: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras Successor: From the Earth to the Moon Narrator: Collaborative Memoriam: Lars Rolander (1942 - 2016) Language: English Edition: Unabridged Audiobook Keywords: adventure, travel, hero, struggle, danger, camaraderie Credits: All LibriVox Recordings are in the Public Domain. Wikipedia (c) Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. WOMBO Dream. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/support

Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne - Book 4, Part 2 Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth Overview: Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, is a classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated inactive volcano Snæfellsjökull, then contend with many dangers, including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and living prehistoric creatures from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (the 1867 revised edition inserted additional prehistoric material in Chaps. 37–39). Eventually, the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, in southern Italy. The category of subterranean fiction existed well before Verne. However his novel's distinction lay in its well-researched Victorian science and its inventive contribution to the science-fiction subgenre of time travel—Verne's innovation was the concept of a prehistoric realm still existing in the present-day world. Journey inspired many later authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel The Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Pellucidar series. Published: 1864, Revised 1867 Series: The Extraordinary Voyages #3 Author: Jules Verne Genre: Action & Adventure Fiction, Fantastic Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure Novel Episode: Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne - Book 4, Part 2 Part: 2 of 2 Length Part: 5:50:00 Book: 4 Length Book: 10:35:59 Episodes: 23 - 44 of 44 Predecessor: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras Successor: From the Earth to the Moon Narrator: Collaborative Memoriam: Lars Rolander (1942 - 2016) Language: English Edition: Unabridged Audiobook Keywords: adventure, travel, hero, struggle, danger, camaraderie Credits: All LibriVox Recordings are in the Public Domain. Wikipedia (c) Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. WOMBO Dream. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/free-audiobooks/support

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone. May this year brings more happiness in your life. Wishing you and your family a great year ahead. In this episode of podcast, I have talked about Climate Variability. This is the first part of Climate Variability.Topics:Introduction about Climate Variability Difference between Climate Change and Climate VariabilityEnhanced Greenhouse EffectImpact and VulnerabilityImpacts of climate variability and extremesTransportation Additional Info: The climate system receives nearly all of its energy from the sun. The climate system also radiates energy to outer space. The balance of incoming and outgoing energy, and the passage of the energy through the climate system, determines Earth's energy budget. When the incoming energy is greater than the outgoing energy, earth's energy budget is positive and the climate system is warming. If more energy goes out, the energy budget is negative and earth experiences cooling.  Climate variability is the term to describe variations in the mean state and other characteristics of climate (such as chances or possibility of extreme weather, etc.) "on all spatial and temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events."  Some of the variability does not appear to be caused systematically and occurs at random times. Such variability is called random variability or noise. On the other hand, periodic variability occurs relatively regularly and in distinct modes of variability or climate patterns.  A climate oscillation or climate cycle is any recurring cyclical oscillation within global or regional climate. They are quasiperiodic (not perfectly periodic), so a Fourier analysis of the data does not give a sharp spectrum. Many oscillations on different time-scales have been found or hypothesized.   Throughout the Cenozoic, multiple climate forcings led to warming and cooling of the atmosphere, which led to the early formation of the Antarctic ice sheet, subsequent melting, and its later reglaciation. The temperature changes occurred somewhat suddenly, at carbon dioxide concentrations of about 600–760 ppm and temperatures approximately 4 °C warmer than today. Twitter: https://twitter.com/realyashnegiEmail: yashnegi@climatology.in Website: climatology.inSupport the show (https://paypal.me/yashnegi27?locale.x=en_GB)

Dinosaur George explains the various time periods and what lived during each one. In this podcast you'll also learn about erosion, and why it is important to paleontologists.

Step back into the Miocene and traverse the jungles of ancient Hispaniola! We'll look at the Dominican Amber and all its weird and wonderful inclusions including parasites, luckless stingless bees, wandering spiders, and a salamander that had a real bad day.

In today's episode we look back at the last 65 million years known as the Cenozoic era, and the most anomalous climatic event during this entire time period, known as the Younger Dryas. We also examine the cataclysmic end to the last ice age, and the multivariate global effects that followed this cosmic event. Joining us for today's episode is Dr. James Kennett, a now retired marine geologist and Professor Emeritus of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Kennett originally earned his PhD in Geology from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand in 1965 and has been a prolific scientific researcher ever since. Dr. Kennett is considered a pioneer in developing the relatively new field of Paleoceanography. He is credited with publishing over 500 peer reviewed scientific papers, and has authored or contributed to nearly 2 dozen books. Over the last 50 years Dr. Kennett has contributed towards our comprehensive understanding of major paleoenvironmental and biotic changes that shaped the Cenozoic Era, its stratigraphic record, and the multitude of processes involved in this development. Dr. Kennett is also a co-founder of the Comet Research Group, a scientific organization dedicated to the examination of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and its multitude of global impacts, as well as providing evidence that such impact events are common place throughout Earth's history. To learn more about Dr. Kennett and his work please visit the following links: Dr. Kennett's Website Comet Research Group

Tijdens de avond waarop oorspronkelijk de blackmetalavond van de Zware Metalen jubileumconcertreeks in P60 plaats zou vinden, nemen een chagrijnige Pim en een dekking zoekende Niels uit pure ellende maar een nieuwe aflevering van Osmium - de zwaarste podcast in het Nederlands - op. Thuis opgesloten gaan ze op een nostalgische tour. De uitslag van de Zware Metalen Millenniumlijst is namelijk bekend en dus zijn er een hoop nuances uit te diepen. Tevens zit Pim tien jaar in de redactie van Zware Metalen en viert Osmium haar eerste verjaring. Redenen tot feesten dus, maar we houden het noodzakelijkerwijs bij twee debatterende nerds. Onderwerpen: Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God (00:00) Introductie over het trimmen van fades (00:10) Van hoge hoogten naar diepe diepten: de versobering van de Zware Metalen jubileumconcerten in P60 (02:25) Het IQ van het virus met onderscheid tussen high-brow en low-brow cultuur (04:26) De segway der segways en de vakantie van Niels naar Zweden (07:44) Nog een segway van hoge kwaliteit: de millenniumlijst van Zware Metalen (12:21) The Satanist op #1, het magnum opus van Behemoth (14:47) Met Amon Amarth op #2 de laatste twee hoofdacts van FortaRock aan de top (17:16) Gojira overspoelt de top 20 met drie albums (20:18) Comebackplaat van Iron Maiden op #8 (22:01) Amenra met Mass VI als hoogst genoteerde band van eigen bodem (24:25) Waarom staan er zoveel platen uit 2001 aan de top? (26:22) SpreadsheetPim komt terug met zijn spreadsheetporno (29:01) Tegenvallers aan de onderkant: de droogte van 2009 tot en met 2012 (33:25) Cross-correlaties van de notering in de millenniumlijst en de jaarlijst destijds (38:35) Opvallendheden, zoals geen Death Magnetic in de top 50 (40:28) Waarom de millenniumlijst minder belangrijk voelde dan de gewone jaarlijsten (45:30) Pim's betrokkenheid bij Zware Metalen door de afgelopen 10 jaar heen (47:29) Terugkijken op de eerste twintig afleveringen van Osmium, en waar de podcast heen kan gaan in de toekomst (53:00) Luistertip van Niels: Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator Of God, ex-frontman van The Dillinger Escape Plan doet lekker z'n eigen ding (01:00:00) Luistertip van Pim: HEALTH - DISCO4 :: PART I, het summum van industrieel eclecticisme met hyperpop, transgenderelektro, trapmetal en grindcore (01:04:35) Te gast tijdens de volgende aflevering: Inge Janse van de radioshow Dood & Verderf (01:01:00) Shout-outs (01:11:19)

Metalheads! It is time for us to dive into Tracey's pick for an album released in September. The ninth studio album from the Berlin outfit know as The Ocean Collective Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic. Big History, big prog.

There are two species of Keuppia, Keuppia hyperbolaris and Keuppia levante, both of which we find as fossils. We find their remains, along with those of the genus Styletoctopus, in Cretaceous-age Hâqel and Hjoula localities in Lebanon. For many years, Palaeoctopus newboldi (Woodward, 1896) from the Santonian limestones at Sâhel Aalma, Lebanon, was the only known pre‐Cenozoic coleoid cephalopod believed to have an unambiguous stem‐lineage representative of Octobrachia fioroni. With the unearthing of some extraordinary specimens with exquisite soft‐part preservation in the Lebanon limestones, our understanding of ancient octopus morphology has blossomed. The specimens are from the sub‐lithographical limestones of Hâqel and Hâdjoula, in north‐west Lebanon. These localities are about 15 km apart, 45 km away from Beirut and 15 km away from the coastal city of Jbail

What do you know about the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras? In today's Flashcast, Murray and Tamika provide *eons* of information, laying out the main differences between each era, including the Age of Reptiles and the Age of Mammals. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What do you know about the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras? In today's Flashcast, Murray and Tamika provide *eons* of information, laying out the main differences between each era, including the Age of Reptiles and the Age of Mammals. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We konden niet slapen van enthousiasme, dus namen we een nieuwe aflevering van Osmium op in de vroege ochtend na het eerste jubileumconcert van Zware Metalen. Met het slaapzand in de ogen volgt een lyrisch verslag van de wijze waarop Graceless, Disquiet en Mouflon een uitverkochte avond in P60 - met recordomzet aan de bar - verzorgden. En terwijl het ijzer heet is, klappen we er meteen op met de line-up voor het tweede jubileumconcert: Terzij de Horde, Doodswens en Ggu:ll. Maar het leven van een succesvolle concertboeker gaat niet alleen over rozen, dus in bredere zin bespreken we wat er achter de schermen zoal plaatsvindt. We ronden af met een discussie over het plotsklapse instorten van Holy Roar Records. Met muziek van Graceless en foto van Rob van Dalen. Onderwerpen: Graceless - Warpath (00:00) Introductie en geneuzel (00:14) Vakantieperikelen (03:07) Onderwerpen van de aflevering (07:51) Jubileumconcerten van Zware Metalen (08:30) Sidetrack 1: Mord'A'Stigmata steelt onze banen (12:10) Sidetrack 2: LGBTQ+ kleurcodes (12:37) ZM deathmetalavond: lofzang over de fans, de bands en de aanpak van P60 (13:13) Zuurpruimerij en schuldbetuiging over het boekingsproces (22:34) Line-up ZM blackmetalavond en data toekomstige jubileumconcerten (32:23) Luisteren naar Osmium in 2023 (36:15) Pim’s luistertip: Glorious - Unashamed, punky hardcore met vele gezichten (37:41) Shockerend nieuws uit het kamp van Holy Roar Records (40:16) Shitstorm discussie: contracten, nasleep, geloof in slachtoffers (46:51) Niels’ luistertip: The Ocean - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic, een geschiedenislesje verpakt in consistente, progressieve post-metal (59:49) Shout-outs (01:08:19)

Episode 55 of The Nine Circles Audio Thing is all about the Album of the Month for September which is Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic by Germany's post metal/progressive metal juggernauts The Ocean which is available now on Metal Blade Records and Pelagic Records. Buke once again captains the episode joined by Vince, Ian, Angela, Hera (Cat), and Jon! The pick this month was a mere suggestion from Corey which grew legs to become an all in team pick. And, it's easy to see why, this is The Ocean's 10th full length and they've yet to do anything less than EPIC. Ian puts his college learning to good use in explaining the history and timeline while Hera dives deep into themes and tie ins to Phan 1. Vince loves the concept but...prog...so, he is mixed on everything except the one track that features a strong black metal backbone. Go figure. Jon, Angela and Buke enjoyed it for what it is, another stellar entry into a major catalog from a truly amazing band. One thing is for sure, this just might be the deepest dive into an album we've done since the beginning of these album of the month picks. Plus, car alarms from possible dinosaurs roaming the streets? All that and a "what else drove our boats" in September along with August since we missed that episode. But, pay close attention to the Steve Von Till section which was slated as the August pick from Josh but work and life didn't cooperate in time for it to flesh out. And, a heartwarming tribute to Power Trip's Riley Gale. At nearly 2-1/2 hours, this episode is chock full of stuff to keep you thinking of history, progressive metal and a whole host of albums to explore. So jump in and get an earful! 9C LINKS: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

The Ocean, the progressive and post-metal band, is set to release their new album “Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic” on September 25th through Metal Balde Records (CD / digital) and the band´s Pelagic Records (vinyl). Such album will conclude the Phanerozoic journey initiated by the band’s previous record, with a bolder, more experimental, darker, and more progressive musical direction.  The result [...] The post ROBIN STAPS of THE OCEAN discusses new album “Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic”: ‘Everybody Has to Find Relevance In Music, Art, Lyrics, Find Relevance To Their Own Lives.’ appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Paleontologist Tim James joins the show. Rich wonders what daily life is like for a Cenozoic paleontologist in the American West. Every day is different at the World Fossil Finder Museum in Hot Springs, South Dakota. (9:52) The path that led Tim to his work today. His roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the importance of science education for kids. (18:03) How we benefit from the work of paleontologists. (27:22) The advancement of science and technology in the 21st century and how it allows us to learn more about Earth's history. (38:47) Tim's favorite natural history museum in the U.S. Life in New Mexico and its film scene (49:36) Tim's favorite extinct animal. Mammoth Hot Springs in South Dakota. La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California. The historical richness of the Midwest. (1:02:07) What he's looking forward to in the field. The relationship between private and public fossil collectors and Tim's hope for collaboration in the future.You can follow Tim: @dinoguy1997 

S04 E06 - TOW the Dirty Girl aka TOW Rebecca Romijn, a Velveteen Rabbit, and a Potato-Chip Rat Signature Beverage: Mitzy Spritzy — http://handbagmarinara.com/blog/mitzy-spritzy 00:01:57 — The Ina Garten-inspired reading of our signature cocktail for the week 00:05:04 — We discuss Rebecca Romijn’s early career 00:08:12 — Heather does a deep-dive into the Cenozoic era 00:10:00 — A mind-blowing Montessori lesson 0020:52 — A crossword puzzle and sudoku geek-out 00:30:00 — Widows aren’t usually the ones handling affairs at the funeral reception… 00:34:08 — The tale of how Elizabeth was a blossoming theater geek, until a chorus teacher destroyed her dreams 00:38:31 — Is Angela DelVecchio the same Angela from Season 1? 00:57:52 — Is there an established, standard formula for Brownie Points? Screen shots and recipes at: http://handbagmarinara.com/blog/s04-e06-tow-the-dirty-girl Donate to our NAMI fundraiser! https://donate.nami.org/handbagmarinara Info and resources for mental health amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: nami.org/covid-19 If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, text “NAMI” to 741741.

This week, John and Steve sit down to watch the 2000 feature "Dinosaur." This episode is a little different since neither host had seen the movie prior to this sit down. Enjoy this rare occasion where the content was completely new for John & Steve!

On episode TWO HUNDRED FORTY-TWO of The Hissscast, Sara and Steven welcome animal educator Grayson Kent to chat snakes and lizards. He shares the best ways to care for reptiles, touching stories about his own pets over the years, and more! The Hissscast, talking to reptile people because we can't talk to their reptiles The Purrrcast is the cat podcast for you and your feline friends. Based in Los Angeles, hosts Sara Iyer and Steven Ray Morris chat with fellow cat enthusiasts about the furry little creatures they love. Not sure how the cats feel about it though. New episodes every Wednesday! Please rate and subscribe in iTunes: www.exactlyrightmedia.com/the-purrrcast Email us! thepurrrcast@gmail.com If you shop on Amazon be sure to click this link and we'll get a small kickback. Thanks for the support: http://www.amazon.com?_encoding=UTF8&tag=thepurr-20 - COVID-19 FAQs - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/faq.html Follow Grayson: https://rocknrollreptiles.net/ https://www.facebook.com/RockNRollReptiles https://www.instagram.com/winston_the_tegu Follow The Purrrcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThePurrrcast on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thepurrrcast/ Please like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePurrrcast Follow Sara Iyer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saraanjuliiyer Follow Sara Iyer on Instagram: https://instagram.com/saraiyer/ Check out Sara Iyer on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/saraiyer Listen to Sara's Weezer podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/weezer-has-turned-and-left-us-here Listen to Sara's Don Bluth podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-bluth-the-whole-bluth-and-nothing-but-the-bluth Follow Steven Ray Morris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevenRayMorris Check out Steven's new podcast, See Jurassic Right: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/see-jurassic-right/id1239538917?mt=2 Theme song by Anabot (Analise Nelson) and Dax Schaffer: https://thesaxelnaiad.bandcamp.com/ Artwork by Jillian Yoffe: flatratstudio.com Part of the Exactly Right podcast network See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

PAST TIME RETURNS! After three and a half months of discovering how insanely busy a museum curator can be, I (Adam) am back to past times with a brand new episode of Past Time! Join me on a journey back to the Smithsonian Institution to learn about the whole history of sloths. We’ll also meet RYAN […] The post Episode 33 – The Story of the Sloth appeared first on Past Time Paleo.

South America today is home to some of the most incredible ecosystems on the planet, and its fossil record is even more varied and fantastic. In this episode, we explore the history of the continent from its early formation to its long Cenozoic isolation, and we’ll highlight some of the strangest ancient creatures – especially its bizarre mammals – that have called South America home. In the news: ancient ape locomotion, a Polish pliosaur, post-extinction Colorado, and one really old dinosaur. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:04:00 Main discussion, Part 1: 00:28:30 Main discussion, Part 2: 00:59:30 Patron question: 01:35:00 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ We're doing another End of the Year Q&A! Submit your question here: https://forms.gle/E398RmMhGvaYHpz6A The Common Descent Store is open! Get merch! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/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/

Dinosaur of the day Skorpiovenator, a slightly smaller hornless relative of Carnotaurus. It's one of the most complete abelisaurids found to date.Interview with Dave Hone, lecturer in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London. He is an expert in both dinosaurs and pterosaurs. He wrote the Tyrannosaur Chronicles and just described the pterosaur Cryodrakon. Find him online @Dave_Hone, on facebook, or on his blog Archosaur Musings.In dinosaur news this week:A new study shows the first day of the Cenozoic had huge Sulphur emissions and widespread firesThe second most complete T. rex, Victoria, is going on a world tour for the next five yearsThe Children’s Museum of Indianapolis has a new Jurassic Paleo Prep LabNew children’s show called Super Dinosaur will be on Amazon on Oct 6The game Jurassic World Evolution has a new herbivore dinosaur packThe new short Jurassic World Battle at Big Rock was released on YouTubeTo get access to lots of patron only content check out https://www.patreon.com/iknowdinoFor links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Skorpiovenator, links from Dave Hone, and our fun fact check out https://iknowdino.com/Skorpiovenator-Episode-253/

Terror birds, or phorusrhacids as they are known scientifically, are a group of large, flightless birds that lived during the Cenozoic, and truly lived up to their name. Known for their large, powerful skulls, and enormous beaks, these birds are unlike the flightless birds we have alive today. Despite their strange appearance and unique morphology, terror birds aren't well known in popular culture. What were they doing? How big did they get? What did they eat? In this episode, we talk to a leading terror bird expert, Dr Federico "Dino" Degrange from the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra (CICTERRA) in Córdoba, Argentina to get answers to these questions. We discuss some of his recent research, and what we know (and don't know) about phorusrhacids today.

The gang discusses some very interesting papers about bird fossils in New Zealand. These papers describe how many different types of birds ended up on New Zealand throughout the Cenozoic, and each time they experienced significant increases in their size. Sadly, since this was a very straightforward topic, no one could quite manage to focus on anything. So meanwhile, Curt remembers childhood animations that no one cares about, James makes it “fun” for himself and no one else, Amanda drinks the unholy combination of bourbon and rye (brye?), and everything just kind of gets way too 2019 near the end (EDITOR’S NOTE: Apologies for the inconsistent audio on this episode. The wrong inputs were used for some of the audio due to some last minute changes, but this should not happen in the future).   Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends talk about things with no teeth that can fly that can't actually fly and live on land that has water all around it. One of these things with no teeth that can fly but can't actually fly does sort of fly, but under the water instead of in the air. The other is a very large thing with no teeth that can fly but can't fly that people will have as an animal in their house a lot of the time. These things with no teeth that can fly that people keep in their house yell a lot and can also learn to talk. The one our friends talk about is just a leg, but it was very large and probably as big as a small child. The whole animal was that big, not the leg. The other thing with no teeth that can fly but can't fly but does sort of fly under the water is very big and very old and maybe is one of the oldest ones of these things with no teeth that can't fly anymore. It seems like maybe this land with water all around it was a good place for these early things with no teeth that can fly but now can't fly but sort of fly under water, because there are many of them there at this time. And they are very old, some of the oldest ones, and very big, so maybe being big is an old thing that this group of animals does.   References:  Worthy, Trevor H., et al. "Evidence for a giant parrot from the Early Miocene of New Zealand." Biology letters 15.8 (2019): 20190467.   Mayr, Gerald, et al. "Leg bones of a new penguin species from the Waipara Greensand add to the diversity of very large-sized Sphenisciformes in the Paleocene of New Zealand." Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology (2019): 1-18. 

Dinosaurs may be extinct, but board games featuring them are as alive as ever. We took a huge list and dropped a K-T boundary inducing hunk of rock on the list to see which ones were the best. I'm also really sorry about those jokes.

The story of life concludes with the Cenozoic Era, from the Paleocene to the Pliocene epoch (66 to 2.58 Million Years Ago). We follow the survivors of the great Cretaceous Extinction Event as they adapt to a rapidly changing world, including the mammals. Special topics include the the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Rise of the Himalayas, the Spread of the Grasslands, the Crisis of the Mediterranean, and the Great American Interchange. Transcript: https://riverofhistory.tumblr.com/post/183188061451/episode-6-the-age-of-mammalsLinks and References Mentioned:Placentals Didn't Displace North American Marsupials: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71489/10/ZORA_NL_71489.pdfHow Neornithine Birds Survived: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.062Geology of the Pacific Islands: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607379/ Evolution of Baleen Whales: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31414-3

The story of life concludes with the Cenozoic Era, from the Paleocene to the Pliocene epoch (66 to 2.58 Million Years Ago). We follow the survivors of the great Cretaceous Extinction Event as they adapt to a rapidly changing world, including the mammals. Special topics include the the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Rise of the Himalayas, the Spread of the Grasslands, the Crisis of the Mediterranean, and the Great American Interchange. Transcript: https://riverofhistory.tumblr.com/post/183188061451/episode-6-the-age-of-mammalsLinks and References Mentioned:Placentals Didn't Displace North American Marsupials: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71489/10/ZORA_NL_71489.pdfHow Neornithine Birds Survived: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.062Geology of the Pacific Islands: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607379/ Evolution of Baleen Whales: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31414-3

The story of life concludes with the Cenozoic Era, from the Paleocene to the Pliocene epoch (66 to 2.58 Million Years Ago). We follow the survivors of the great Cretaceous Extinction Event as they adapt to a rapidly changing world, including the mammals. Special topics include the the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Rise of the Himalayas, the Spread of the Grasslands, the Crisis of the Mediterranean, and the Great American Interchange. Transcript: https://riverofhistory.tumblr.com/post/183188061451/episode-6-the-age-of-mammalsLinks and References Mentioned:Placentals Didn't Displace North American Marsupials: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71489/10/ZORA_NL_71489.pdfHow Neornithine Birds Survived: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.062Geology of the Pacific Islands: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607379/ Evolution of Baleen Whales: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31414-3

The story of life concludes with the Cenozoic Era, from the Paleocene to the Pliocene epoch (66 to 2.58 Million Years Ago). We follow the survivors of the great Cretaceous Extinction Event as they adapt to a rapidly changing world, including the mammals. Special topics include the the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the Rise of the Himalayas, the Spread of the Grasslands, the Crisis of the Mediterranean, and the Great American Interchange. Transcript: https://riverofhistory.tumblr.com/post/183188061451/episode-6-the-age-of-mammalsLinks and References Mentioned:Placentals Didn't Displace North American Marsupials: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71489/10/ZORA_NL_71489.pdfHow Neornithine Birds Survived: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.062Geology of the Pacific Islands: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2607379/ Evolution of Baleen Whales: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)31414-3

Earth’s millions of years of existence are divided into different time periods that chronicle its geological development. You may remember studying those in school (Cenozoic era, anyone?). But what is impacting earth right now? In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton discuss the call...

Earth’s millions of years of existence are divided into different time periods that chronicle its geological development. You may remember studying those in school (Cenozoic era, anyone?). But what is impacting earth right now? In this episode of KUT’s podcast “Higher Ed,” Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT’s Jennifer Stayton discuss the call […]

I think I first learned of Rob DeConto when I saw his paper entitled Thresholds for Cenozoic bipolar glaciation, published soon after my arrival at Nature.  Specific and testable thresholds for the initiation of large scale glaciation in Antarctica and the Northern Hemisphere? Interesting! Soon after, I handle Rob’s next two papers at Nature: Modelling […]

Smilodon and dire wolves (drawing by Robert Horsfall, 1913)Running time, 1 hour. File size, 69 megabytes. This is an assembly of the episodes in the original series from 2014 that are about Cretaceous and Cenozoic vertebrates. I’ve left the references to specific dates in the podcast so that you can, if you want, go to the specific blog post that has links and illustrations for that episode. They are all indexed on the right-hand side of the blog.Thanks for your interest and support!

You may have seen some of the spectacular images of the earth in southern Algeria, curves and colors like some Picasso in the opposite of his cubist period. If you haven’t, check out the one from NASA, below. The ovals and swirls, with their concentric bands, are immediately obvious to a geologist as patterns of folds, but not just linear folds like many anticlines and synclines form. These closed ovals represent domes and basins – imagine a large scale warping, both up and down, in a thick succession of diverse sedimentary rocks, like sets of nested bowls, some of them right-side up and some inverted, then all sliced off halfway through. But “obvious to a geologist” has plenty of limitations in a space image. Without knowing more information, it’s difficult to be sure if an oval is a basin or a dome. And you can speculate, but without some ground truth, it’s challenging to be sure what the rock types are. Ahnet-Mouydir, Hoggar Mountains, Algeria. NASA image - sourceThis area, called the Ahnet-Mouydir, on the flank of the Hoggar Mountains close to the middle of the Sahara Desert, is remote, inhospitable, and arid, and called the “land of terror” for a reason. The rocks represent a thick sequence of marine sandstones, shales, and limestones, spanning a huge range of ages, from at least the Ordovician to the early Carboniferous – 150 million years or more, a great chunk of the Paleozoic era.The core of the Hoggar Mountains is an old Precambrian block, not as big as the cratons and shields that form the hearts of most of the continents, but otherwise similar. It might have been something like a microcontinent that became amalgamated into the growing supercontinent of Gondwana about 600 million years ago. After that amalgamation, seas came and went much like they did in western North America throughout much of the Paleozoic era, laying down the sediments that became the rocks we see today in the northern Hoggar Mountains. That’s all well and good – but here’s the next question, how did the rocks get deformed into these oval domes and basins? If you imagine the kinds of collisions that are typical on earth, you think of linear or curvilinear things – island arcs, edges of continents and such – that when they collide, are likely to make linear belts of deformation. This is why so many mountain ranges are long, linear features, and the folds and faults that make them up also tend to be linear. Domes and basins happen, but that seems to be almost all we have here in these mountains. We have to look for a deformational event that is later than the youngest rocks deformed. So if some of these rocks are as young as early Carboniferous, about 340 million years old, the mountain-building event that fills the bill is the Hercynian Orogeny, where ‘orogeny’ just means mountain-building. The Hercynian, at about 350 to 280 million years ago, represents the complex collision between Gondwana and the combined North America and Europe, which were already more or less attached to each other. The leading edge of Gondwana that collided was in what is now North and West Africa, and the collision produced mountain ranges all over – the Alleghenies in the central Appalachians in North America, and a complex swath of mountains across central Europe, from Spain, across France to northern Germany and into Poland, as well as elsewhere. In Africa, the most intense squeezing was at the leading edge, in what is now Morocco and Mauritania, colliding with North America, and northern Algeria, impacting Iberia. The basins and domes of southern Algeria that we’re trying to understand are 1500 kilometers or more from that leading edge of continental collision. So I think – and full disclosure, I’ve never really researched this area in detail – that what must have happened is that that distant hinterland wasn’t pushed into tight, linear belts like those we find along the lines of collision, but the force was enough to warp the sediments into these relatively small domes and basins. Alternatively, it might be possible that the brittle Precambrian rocks beneath the sedimentary layers broke from the force of the collision, so that the sedimentary layers draped over the deeper brittle surface like a carpet lying over a jumble of toy building blocks – some high, some low. The latter idea, that the brittle basement rocks were broken and pushed upward with the sedimentary layers draped over them is supported by research published in the journal Terra Nova in 2001. Hamid Haddoum and colleagues studied the orientations of folds and faults in this area, trying to figure out the orientations of the stresses that caused them. Their data show a shortening direction – which means compression, or squeezing – during early Permian time oriented about northeast-southwest. That is consistent with the collision that was happening at that same time between what is now Senegal and Mauritania, in westernmost Africa, and the Virginia-Carolinas region of what is now the United States. Haddoum and his colleagues show cross-sections with basement upthrusts, basically high-angle reverse faults where older rocks are squeezed so much that they are pushed up and over younger rocks. This is quite similar to the Laramide Orogeny in the western United States about 80 to 50 million years ago, but this compression was happening about 280 million years ago as the supercontinent of Pangaea was assembled during the early Permian Period. Both represent deformation at relatively great distances from the lines of continental collision. In the case of the Laramide in western United States, one idea for transmitting the stress so far from the collision is that the subducting slab of oceanic crust began to go down at a relatively gentle angle, even close to horizontal, creating friction and stress further away from the subduction zone than normal. Whether that’s the case here in southern Algeria isn’t clear for this Hercynian collision. I wouldn’t think of this area as high mountains, such as those that must have formed along the lines of Hercynian collision. Maybe more like warped, uplifted plateaus – but whatever they were, they were certainly subject to erosion. Erosion probably wore the domes and basins down to a common level, so that the nested bowls were exposed in horizontal cross-section – which for geologists is the equivalent of a geologic map. And that’s what the beautiful photos reveal. The area might have been planed off even more by Permian glaciers during and after the Hercynian mountain-building events. But then, during the Mesozoic era, seas returned to the region and all this mess of eroded domes and basins was buried beneath even more sediments. Sometime relatively recently, during the Cenozoic era, the past 65 million years, everything was uplifted at least gently, so that the highest parts – including today’s Hoggar Mountains, were stripped of the younger Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, revealing the much older Paleozoic rocks in the domes and basins. Thanks to Petr Yakovlev for pointing me to the 2001 paper by Haddoum and others.—Richard I. GibsonLink: Haddoum, H., Guiraud, R. and Moussine-Pouchkine, A. (2001),Hercynian compressional deformations of the Ahnet–Mouydir Basin, AlgerianSaharan Platform: far-field stress effects of the Late Palaeozoic orogeny.Terra Nova, 13: 220–226. doi:10.1046/j.1365-3121.2001.00344.x

Aaron and a Cenozoic stranger must work together to retrieve a stolen I.N.O. computer chip. View full episode show notes at www.MyDogRocket.com

Aaron and INO begin their Cenozoic adventure searching for survivors of the asteroid impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs. View full episode show notes at www.MyDogRocket.com

Aaron and INO answer listener questions while prepping the 7Arcade for their journey to the Cenozoic. View full episode show notes at www.MyDogRocket.com

When thinking of palaeontology in Asia, most people think of Mongolia and China, but there is actually a significant palaeontology community in Japan. Japan has many fossils, starting in the Ordovician, and ranging from everything from bivalves and trilobites to dinosaurs and mammals. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Makoto Manabe, the Director of the Centre for Collections and Centre for Molecular Biodiversity Research at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Makoto introduces us to Japanese palaeontology by walking Liz through the Japan Gallery at the museum, starting from the earliest fossils found up to more recent cave deposits.

Let us now see whether the several facts and laws relating to the geological succession of organic beings accord best with the common view of the immutability of species, or with that of their slow and gradual modification, through variation and natural selection.In this episode we explore Chapter XI that deals with the fossil record and how patterns in the fossil record fit with Darwin's model of descent with modification. We begin the discussion with Darwin's views on extinction and how this phenomenon is part of his model of evolution. Sarah introduced the idea that extinction occurs at two different rates - normal background rate of extinction where species themselves have a measured lifespan based on how long they exist in the fossil record. Current analysis of the fossil record indicates that many species persist for a period of time and then go extinct. From this  data scientists calculate an average lifespan for a species - That is, how long in the geological record does a species typically persist? Many authors have written about this idea and many of their findings have been summarized in Extinction Rates, a book edited by J. Lawton, and R. May (1995).Generally species lifespans are varied and biased by the size of the organisms. Small unicellular marine dinoflagellates have species "lifespans" in the 10's million years whereas large multicellular Cenozoic animals had a species 'lifespan" of 1-2 million years. These normal background rates of extinctions in the fossil record are punctuated by five massive extinction events where 75%-96% of all species went extinct. Sarah mentioned the dramatic "soot' line that demarcated the mass extinction event called the K-Pg (formally called the K-T) extinction event that occurred 66 million years ago. This extinction event was correlated with a thin layer of metal iridium that is visually and chemically distinct from rock material layers above and below the line. This layer was now thought to be have been created when a small asteroid impacted the earth near the Yucatan peninsula contributing to massive habitat destruction and climate change. These massive changes in climate are thought to have contributed to the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs.image from http://waynesword.palomar.edu/images2/KT1c.jpgSarah recommended a book on extinctions by Peter Ward called Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future (Harper 2008). Affinities of past to current organismsLet us now look to the mutual affinities of extinct and living species. All fall into a few grand classes; and this fact is at once explained on the principle of descent.We discussed how many of the organisms in the fossil record can be directly related to species we see today - the wide array of extinct elephants themselves are a dramatic example of extinct forms being related to extant forms today.image from http://img13.deviantart.net/1309/i/2015/120/9/7/elephants_by_fotostomias-d34pdf2.jpgJames spent some time explaining the background story of the archeopteryx fossil that was found in 1861 in Germany just after Darwin published Origin of Species. Photograph: Jason Edwards/Getty Images On the photo above notice the fingers on the wing and the long bony tail that extends off of the pelvis region. Museums are now creating displays that highlight the feathered dinosaurs that have been found in the past 10 years.  In 2016 the American Museum of Natural History opened a display that highlighted many new feathered dinosaurs.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/arts/design/fine-feathered-fiends-dinosaurs-among-us-at-the-american-museum-of-natural-history.html The relationship between organisms we see today to extinct versions in the fossil record is one of the stronger pieces of evidence that supports Darwin's model of descent with modification. In the next episode we will discuss how this relationship between extinct and extant organisms is actually restricted geographically, that is the mammals in the fossil record of South America are similar to the mammals you find in South America today, whereas they are different from those mammals you find, either in the fossil record or living, in Europe, Africa, Australia or Asia. Ontongeny Recapitulates PhylogenyJosh introduced the idea that embryos of organisms can reveal their evolutionary past since they often exhibit structures during development that are more fitting to earlier evolutionary forms. It was formally developed by the famous biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) in which he argued that organisms have developmental stages that represent earlier stages of their evolutionary heritage. By Romanes, G. J. - Romanes, G. J. (1892). Darwin and After Darwin. Open Court, Chicago., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=823180Although the drawing above has been discredited because Haeckel was said to have taken liberties in scale and overly emphasizing some structures, it is clear that early embryonic stages of many chordates exhibit clear gill arches and a well developed tail that becomes greatly reduced or lost during development. Josh queried us about what type of tail we would most prefer - foxy tail was by the far the best choice. interlude music ishttp://freemusicarchive.org/music/Latch_Swing/demo_2008/Rythme_Gitan

Erik Gorscak and Pat O'Connor, two paleontologists from Ohio University, are about to set out on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. They are part of a larger team called the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project (AP3), an international collaboration of fossil hunters and geologists who are about to spend almost two months at the bottom of the planet. Past Time talks to them about how you look for fossils in Antarctic conditions, how you plan an expedition, and what they hope to find. When they get back, we'll check in and see what they found! @antarcticdinos #AP3 @ohiou The post Episode 16: Hunting Antarctic Dinosaurs appeared first on Past Time Paleo.

The gang discusses three papers that detail some truly unique examples of morphological convergence; from brachiopods that look like corals to bovids with dinosaurian nasal crests. Also, James designs some conspicuous Mario levels,  Amanda wins an argument that "never happened", Curt is excluded from a business venture, and everything comes back to Zardoz. References: Streng, Michael, et al. "A new family of Cambrian rhynchonelliformean brachiopods (Order Naukatida) with an aberrant coral‐like morphology."Palaeontology 59.2 (2016): 269-293. Labandeira, Conrad C., et al. "The evolutionary convergence of mid-Mesozoic lacewings and Cenozoic butterflies." Proc. R. Soc. B. Vol. 283. No. 1824. The Royal Society, 2016. O'Brien, Haley D., et al. "Unexpected Convergent Evolution of Nasal Domes between Pleistocene Bovids and Cretaceous Hadrosaur Dinosaurs." Current Biology (2016).

It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on the entire continent of Europe after the extinction of the dinosaurs. And a team of European scientists and Past Time co-host Matthew Borths just introduced us to it. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Kerberos, monster mammal carnivore! The post News Bite: Kerberos! Giant mammal carnivore from after the Age of Dinosaurs! appeared first on Past Time Paleo.

The Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB) is one of the world's largest accretionary orogens, which was active during most of the Paleozoic. In recent years it has again moved into focus of the geological community debating how the acrreted lithospheric elements were geographical arranged and interacting prior and/or during the final amalgamation of Kazakhstania. In principal two families of competing models exist. One possible geodynmaic setting is based on geological evidence that a more or less continuous giant arc connecting Baltica and Siberia in the early Paleozoic was subsequently dissected and buckled. Alternatively an archipelago setting, similar to the present day south west Pacific was proposed. This thesis collates three studies on the paleogeography of the south western part of the CAOB from the early Paleozoic until the latest Paleozoic to earliest Mesozoic. It is shown how fragments of Precambrian to early Paleozoic age are likely to have originated from Gondwana at high southerly paleolatitudes (~500 Ma), which got then accreted during the Ordovician (~460 Ma), before this newly created terrane agglomerate (Kazakhstania) migrated northwards crossing the paleo-equator. During the Devonian and the latest Early Carboniferous (~330 Ma) Kazakhstania occupied a stable position at about ~30°N. At least since this time the area underwent several stages of counterclockwise rotational movements accompanying the final amalgamation of Eurasia (~320 - ~270 Myr). This overall pattern of roughly up to 90° counterclockwise bending was replaced by internal relative rotational movements in the latest Paleozoic, which continued probably until the early Mesozoic or even the Cenozoic. In Chapter 2 a comparison of declination data acquired by a remagnetization process during folding in the Carboniferous and coeval data from Baltica and Siberia lead to a documentation and quantification of rotational movements within the Karatau Mountain Range. Based on this results it is very likely that the rotational reorganization started in the Carboniferous and was active until at least the early Mesozoic. Additionally, the data shows that maximal declination deviation increases going from the Karatau towards the Tianshan Mountains (i.e. from North to South). This observation supports models claiming that Ural mountains, Karatau and Tianshan once formed a straight orogen subsequently bent into a orocline. The hinge of this orocline is probably hidden under the sediments of the Caspian basin. In chapter 3 we show that inclination shallowing has affected the red terrigenous sediments of Carboniferous age from the North Tianshan. The corrected inclination values put this part of the Tianshan in a paleolatitude of around 30°N during Carboniferous times. These results contradict previously published paleopositions of the area and suggest a stable latitudinal position between the Devonian and the Carboniferous. Chapter 4 presents paleomagnetic data from early Paleozoic rocks from within the North Tianshan. They imply a second collisional accretion event of individual terranes in the Ordovician. To further constrain the dimensions of these early Paleozoic terranes, chapter 5 presents a compilation of all available paleomagnetic data from the extended study region of southern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Apart from a broad coherence of paleolatitudes of all studies at least since the Ordovician and the exclusive occurrence of counterclockwise declination deviations, no areas with the same rotational history can be detected. Also a clear trend caused by oroclinal bending can not be observed. We conclude that first order counterclockwise oroclinal bending, shown in chapter 2, resulted in brittle deformation within the mountain belt and local block rotations. In order to improve our understanding of intra-continental deformation a study combining the monitoring of recent deformation (Global Positioning System, GPS) with a paleomagnetic study of Cenozoic age in the greater vicinity of the Talas-Ferghana fault has been undertaken in chapter 6. The major task was to distinguish between continuous versus brittle deformation. As it turned out the GPS signal indicates rather continuous and consistent counterclockwise rotational movements of the order of ~2° per Myr. This is in contrast to our paleomagnetic results, where even within fault bounded areas the error intervals of the rotations do always overlap. This indicates that a pure block model seems not appropriate even to explain Cenozoic paleomagnetic data. If this means that also Paleozoic rocks have been affected by complex recent deformation, and that the Paleozoic rotational pattern has been obscured by this, can not be decided based on the present data set. It means, however, that interpreting Paleozoic rotational data from this area has to be done with great caution.

Dating fossils might sound like Saturday night for a paleontologist, but it’s serious science! In a new study, a group of physicists and paleontologists teamed up to re-date one of the most complete skeletons of a human relative ever discovered. The skeleton was discovered in a cave in South Africa twenty years ago, but the […] The post News Bite: Cosmic rays date ancient human ancestor appeared first on Past Time Paleo.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi and other paleontontologists described the crocodiles from a gigantic wetland that predated the Amazon. Ten million years ago there was the giant Purussarus, the duck-billed Mourasuchus, the tube-snouted gharial-like croc, a coyote-like croc similar to Paleosuchus, and three new crocs with […] The post News Bite: Crazy croc diversity in the ancient Amazon! appeared first on Past Time Paleo.

The Marine-Life Era on Urantia (672.1) 59:0.1 WE RECKON the history of Urantia as beginning about one billion years ago and extending through five major eras: (672.2) 59:0.2 1. The prelife era extends over the initial four hundred and fifty million years, from about the time the planet attained its present size to the time of life establishment. Your students have designated this period as the Archeozoic. (672.3) 59:0.3 2. The life-dawn era extends over the next one hundred and fifty million years. This epoch intervenes between the preceding prelife or cataclysmic age and the following period of more highly developed marine life. This era is known to your researchers as the Proterozoic. (672.4) 59:0.4 3. The marine-life era covers the next two hundred and fifty million years and is best known to you as the Paleozoic. (672.5) 59:0.5 4. The early land-life era extends over the next one hundred million years and is known as the Mesozoic. (672.6) 59:0.6 5. The mammalian era occupies the last fifty million years. This recent-times era is known as the Cenozoic. (672.7) 59:0.7 The marine-life era thus covers about one quarter of your planetary history. It may be subdivided into six long periods, each characterized by certain well-defined developments in both the geologic realms and the biologic domains. (672.8) 59:0.8 As this era begins, the sea bottoms, the extensive continental shelves, and the numerous shallow near-shore basins are covered with prolific vegetation. The more simple and primitive forms of animal life have already developed from preceding vegetable organisms, and the early animal organisms have gradually made their way along the extensive coast lines of the various land masses until the many inland seas are teeming with primitive marine life. Since so few of these early organisms had shells, not many have been preserved as fossils. Nevertheless the stage is set for the opening chapters of that great “stone book” of the life-record preservation which was so methodically laid down during the succeeding ages. (672.9) 59:0.9 The continent of North America is wonderfully rich in the fossil-bearing deposits of the entire marine-life era. The very first and oldest layers are separated from the later strata of the preceding period by extensive erosion deposits which clearly segregate these two stages of planetary development. 1. Early Marine Life in the Shallow Seas The Trilobite Age (673.1) 59:1.1 By the dawn of this period of relative quiet on the earth’s surface, life is confined to the various inland seas and the oceanic shore line; as yet no form of land organism has evolved. Primitive marine animals are well established and are prepared for the next evolutionary development. Amebas are typical survivors of this initial stage of animal life, having made their appearance toward the close of the preceding transition period.* (673.2) 59:1.2 400,000,000 years ago marine life, both vegetable and animal, is fairly well distributed over the whole world. The world climate grows slightly warmer and becomes more equable. There is a general inundation of the seashores of the various continents, particularly of North and South America. New oceans appear, and the older bodies of water are greatly enlarged. (673.3) 59:1.3 Vegetation now for the first time crawls out upon the land and soon makes considerable progress in adaptation to a nonmarine habitat. (673.4) 59:1.4 Suddenly and without gradation ancestry the first multicellular animals make their appearance. The trilobites have evolved, and for ages they dominate the seas. From the standpoint of marine life this is the trilobite age. (673.5) 59:1.5 In the later portion of this time segment much of North America and Europe emerged from the sea. The crust of the earth was temporarily stabilized; mountains, or rather high elevations of land, rose along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, over the West Indies, and in southern Europe. The entire Caribbean region was highly elevated. (673.6) 59:1.6 390,000,000 years ago the land was still elevated. Over parts of eastern and western America and western Europe may be found the stone strata laid down during these times, and these are the oldest rocks which contain trilobite fossils. There were many long fingerlike gulfs projecting into the land masses in which were deposited these fossil-bearing rocks. (673.7) 59:1.7 Within a few million years the Pacific Ocean began to invade the American continents. The sinking of the land was principally due to crustal adjustment, although the lateral land spread, or continental creep, was also a factor. (673.8) 59:1.8 380,000,000 years ago Asia was subsiding, and all other continents were experiencing a short-lived emergence. But as this epoch progressed, the newly appearing Atlantic Ocean made extensive inroads on all adjacent coast lines. The northern Atlantic or Arctic seas were then connected with the southern Gulf waters. When this southern sea entered the Appalachian trough, its waves broke upon the east against mountains as high as the Alps, but in general the continents were uninteresting lowlands, utterly devoid of scenic beauty. (673.9) 59:1.9 The sedimentary deposits of these ages are of four sorts: (673.10) 59:1.10 1. Conglomerates — matter deposited near the shore lines. (673.11) 59:1.11 2. Sandstones — deposits made in shallow water but where the waves were sufficient to prevent mud settling. (673.12) 59:1.12 3. Shales — deposits made in the deeper and more quiet water. (673.13) 59:1.13 4. Limestone — including the deposits of trilobite shells in deep water. (673.14) 59:1.14 The trilobite fossils of these times present certain basic uniformities coupled with certain well-marked variations. The early animals developing from the three original life implantations were characteristic; those appearing in the Western Hemisphere were slightly different from those of the Eurasian group and from the Australasian or Australian-Antarctic type. (674.1) 59:1.15 370,000,000 years ago the great and almost total submergence of North and South America occurred, followed by the sinking of Africa and Australia. Only certain parts of North America remained above these shallow Cambrian seas. Five million years later the seas were retreating before the rising land. And all of these phenomena of land sinking and land rising were undramatic, taking place slowly over millions of years. (674.2) 59:1.16 The trilobite fossil-bearing strata of this epoch outcrop here and there throughout all the continents except in central Asia. In many regions these rocks are horizontal, but in the mountains they are tilted and distorted because of pressure and folding. And such pressure has, in many places, changed the original character of these deposits. Sandstone has been turned into quartz, shale has been changed to slate, while limestone has been converted into marble. (674.3) 59:1.17 360,000,000 years ago the land was still rising. North and South America were well up. Western Europe and the British Isles were emerging, except parts of Wales, which were deeply submerged. There were no great ice sheets during these ages. The supposed glacial deposits appearing in connection with these strata in Europe, Africa, China, and Australia are due to isolated mountain glaciers or to the displacement of glacial debris of later origin. The world climate was oceanic, not continental. The southern seas were warmer then than now, and they extended northward over North America up to the polar regions. The Gulf Stream coursed over the central portion of North America, being deflected eastward to bathe and warm the shores of Greenland, making that now ice-mantled continent a veritable tropic paradise.* (674.4) 59:1.18 The marine life was much alike the world over and consisted of the seaweeds, one-celled organisms, simple sponges, trilobites, and other crustaceans — shrimps, crabs, and lobsters. Three thousand varieties of brachiopods appeared at the close of this period, only two hundred of which have survived. These animals represent a variety of early life which has come down to the present time practically unchanged. (674.5) 59:1.19 But the trilobites were the dominant living creatures. They were sexed animals and existed in many forms; being poor swimmers, they sluggishly floated in the water or crawled along the sea bottoms, curling up in self-protection when attacked by their later appearing enemies. They grew in length from two inches to one foot and developed into four distinct groups: carnivorous, herbivorous, omnivorous, and “mud eaters.” The ability of the latter group largely to subsist on inorganic matter — being the last multicelled animal that could — explains their great increase and long survival. (674.6) 59:1.20 This was the biogeologic picture of Urantia at the end of that long period of the world’s history, embracing fifty million years, designated by your geologists as the Cambrian. 2. The First Continental Flood Stage The Invertebrate-Animal Age (674.7) 59:2.1 The periodic phenomena of land elevation and land sinking characteristic of these times were all gradual and nonspectacular, being accompanied by little or no volcanic action. Throughout all of these successive land elevations and depressions the Asiatic mother continent did not fully share the history of the other land bodies. It experienced many inundations, dipping first in one direction and then another, more particularly in its earlier history, but it does not present the uniform rock deposits which may be discovered on the other continents. In recent ages Asia has been the most stable of all the land masses. (675.1) 59:2.2 350,000,000 years ago saw the beginning of the great flood period of all the continents except central Asia. The land masses were repeatedly covered with water; only the coastal highlands remained above these shallow but widespread oscillatory inland seas. Three major inundations characterized this period, but before it ended, the continents again arose, the total land emergence being fifteen per cent greater than now exists. The Caribbean region was highly elevated. This period is not well marked off in Europe because the land fluctuations were less, while the volcanic action was more persistent. (675.2) 59:2.3 340,000,000 years ago there occurred another extensive land sinking except in Asia and Australia. The waters of the world’s oceans were generally commingled. This was a great limestone age, much of its stone being laid down by lime-secreting algae. (675.3) 59:2.4 A few million years later large portions of the American continents and Europe began to emerge from the water. In the Western Hemisphere only an arm of the Pacific Ocean remained over Mexico and the present Rocky Mountain regions, but near the close of this epoch the Atlantic and Pacific coasts again began to sink. (675.4) 59:2.5 330,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of a time sector of comparative quiet all over the world, with much land again above water. The only exception to this reign of terrestrial quiet was the eruption of the great North American volcano of eastern Kentucky, one of the greatest single volcanic activities the world has ever known. The ashes of this volcano covered five hundred square miles to a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet. (675.5) 59:2.6 320,000,000 years ago the third major flood of this period occurred. The waters of this inundation covered all the land submerged by the preceding deluge, while extending farther in many directions all over the Americas and Europe. Eastern North America and western Europe were from 10,000 to 15,000 feet under water. (675.6) 59:2.7 310,000,000 years ago the land masses of the world were again well up excepting the southern parts of North America. Mexico emerged, thus creating the Gulf Sea, which has ever since maintained its identity. (675.7) 59:2.8 The life of this period continues to evolve. The world is once again quiet and relatively peaceful; the climate remains mild and equable; the land plants are migrating farther and farther from the seashores. The life patterns are well developed, although few plant fossils of these times are to be found. (675.8) 59:2.9 This was the great age of individual animal organismal evolution, though many of the basic changes, such as the transition from plant to animal, had previously occurred. The marine fauna developed to the point where every type of life below the vertebrate scale was represented in the fossils of those rocks which were laid down during these times. But all of these animals were marine organisms. No land animals had yet appeared except a few types of worms which burrowed along the seashores, nor had the land plants yet overspread the continents; there was still too much carbon dioxide in the air to permit of the existence of air breathers. Primarily, all animals except certain of the more primitive ones are directly or indirectly dependent on plant life for their existence. (676.1) 59:2.10 The trilobites were still prominent. These little animals existed in tens of thousands of patterns and were the predecessors of modern crustaceans. Some of the trilobites had from twenty-five to four thousand tiny eyelets; others had aborted eyes. As this period closed, the trilobites shared domination of the seas with several other forms of invertebrate life. But they utterly perished during the beginning of the next period. (676.2) 59:2.11 Lime-secreting algae were widespread. There existed thousands of species of the early ancestors of the corals. Sea worms were abundant, and there were many varieties of jellyfish which have since become extinct. Corals and the later types of sponges evolved. The cephalopods were well developed, and they have survived as the modern pearly nautilus, octopus, cuttlefish, and squid. (676.3) 59:2.12 There were many varieties of shell animals, but their shells were not then so much needed for defensive purposes as in subsequent ages. The gastropods were present in the waters of the ancient seas, and they included single-shelled drills, periwinkles, and snails. The bivalve gastropods have come on down through the intervening millions of years much as they then existed and embrace the mussels, clams, oysters, and scallops. The valve-shelled organisms also evolved, and these brachiopods lived in those ancient waters much as they exist today; they even had hinged, notched, and other sorts of protective arrangements of their valves.* (676.4) 59:2.13 So ends the evolutionary story of the second great period of marine life, which is known to your geologists as the Ordovician. 3. The Second Great Flood Stage The Coral Period — The Brachiopod Age (676.5) 59:3.1 300,000,000 years ago another great period of land submergence began. The southward and northward encroachment of the ancient Silurian seas made ready to engulf most of Europe and North America. The land was not elevated far above the sea so that not much deposition occurred about the shore lines. The seas teemed with lime-shelled life, and the falling of these shells to the sea bottom gradually built up very thick layers of limestone. This is the first widespread limestone deposit, and it covers practically all of Europe and North America but only appears at the earth’s surface in a few places. The thickness of this ancient rock layer averages about one thousand feet, but many of these deposits have since been greatly deformed by tilting, upheavals, and faulting, and many have been changed to quartz, shale, and marble. (676.6) 59:3.2 No fire rocks or lava are found in the stone layers of this period except those of the great volcanoes of southern Europe and eastern Maine and the lava flows of Quebec. Volcanic action was largely past. This was the height of great water deposition; there was little or no mountain building. (676.7) 59:3.3 290,000,000 years ago the sea had largely withdrawn from the continents, and the bottoms of the surrounding oceans were sinking. The land masses were little changed until they were again submerged. The early mountain movements of all the continents were beginning, and the greatest of these crustal upheavals were the Himalayas of Asia and the great Caledonian Mountains, extending from Ireland through Scotland and on to Spitzbergen. (677.1) 59:3.4 It is in the deposits of this age that much of the gas, oil, zinc, and lead are found, the gas and oil being derived from the enormous collections of vegetable and animal matter carried down at the time of the previous land submergence, while the mineral deposits represent the sedimentation of sluggish bodies of water. Many of the rock salt deposits belong to this period. (677.2) 59:3.5 The trilobites rapidly declined, and the center of the stage was occupied by the larger mollusks, or cephalopods. These animals grew to be fifteen feet long and one foot in diameter and became masters of the seas. This species of animal appeared suddenly and assumed dominance of sea life. (677.3) 59:3.6 The great volcanic activity of this age was in the European sector. Not in millions upon millions of years had such violent and extensive volcanic eruptions occurred as now took place around the Mediterranean trough and especially in the neighborhood of the British Isles. This lava flow over the British Isles region today appears as alternate layers of lava and rock 25,000 feet thick. These rocks were laid down by the intermittent lava flows which spread out over a shallow sea bed, thus interspersing the rock deposits, and all of this was subsequently elevated high above the sea. Violent earthquakes took place in northern Europe, notably in Scotland. (677.4) 59:3.7 The oceanic climate remained mild and uniform, and the warm seas bathed the shores of the polar lands. Brachiopod and other marine-life fossils may be found in these deposits right up to the North Pole. Gastropods, brachiopods, sponges, and reef-making corals continued to increase. (677.5) 59:3.8 The close of this epoch witnesses the second advance of the Silurian seas with another commingling of the waters of the southern and northern oceans. The cephalopods dominate marine life, while associated forms of life progressively develop and differentiate. (677.6) 59:3.9 280,000,000 years ago the continents had largely emerged from the second Silurian inundation. The rock deposits of this submergence are known in North America as Niagara limestone because this is the stratum of rock over which Niagara Falls now flows. This layer of rock extends from the eastern mountains to the Mississippi valley region but not farther west except to the south. Several layers extend over Canada, portions of South America, Australia, and most of Europe, the average thickness of this Niagara series being about six hundred feet. Immediately overlying the Niagara deposit, in many regions may be found a collection of conglomerate, shale, and rock salt. This is the accumulation of secondary subsidences. This salt settled in great lagoons which were alternately opened up to the sea and then cut off so that evaporation occurred with deposition of salt along with other matter held in solution. In some regions these rock salt beds are seventy feet thick. (677.7) 59:3.10 The climate is even and mild, and marine fossils are laid down in the arctic regions. But by the end of this epoch the seas are so excessively salty that little life survives. (677.8) 59:3.11 Toward the close of the final Silurian submergence there is a great increase in the echinoderms — the stone lilies — as is evidenced by the crinoid limestone deposits. The trilobites have nearly disappeared, and the mollusks continue monarchs of the seas; coral-reef formation increases greatly. During this age, in the more favorable locations the primitive water scorpions first evolve. Soon thereafter, and suddenly, the true scorpions — actual air breathers — make their appearance. (678.1) 59:3.12 These developments terminate the third marine-life period, covering twenty-five million years and known to your researchers as the Silurian. 4. The Great Land-Emergence Stage The Vegetative Land-Life Period The Age of Fishes (678.2) 59:4.1 In the agelong struggle between land and water, for long periods the sea has been comparatively victorious, but times of land victory are just ahead. And the continental drifts have not proceeded so far but that, at times, practically all of the land of the world is connected by slender isthmuses and narrow land bridges. (678.3) 59:4.2 As the land emerges from the last Silurian inundation, an important period in world development and life evolution comes to an end. It is the dawn of a new age on earth. The naked and unattractive landscape of former times is becoming clothed with luxuriant verdure, and the first magnificent forests will soon appear. (678.4) 59:4.3 The marine life of this age was very diverse due to the early species segregation, but later on there was free commingling and association of all these different types. The brachiopods early reached their climax, being succeeded by the arthropods, and barnacles made their first appearance. But the greatest event of all was the sudden appearance of the fish family. This became the age of fishes, that period of the world’s history characterized by the vertebrate type of animal. (678.5) 59:4.4 270,000,000 years ago the continents were all above water. In millions upon millions of years not so much land had been above water at one time; it was one of the greatest land-emergence epochs in all world history. (678.6) 59:4.5 Five million years later the land areas of North and South America, Europe, Africa, northern Asia, and Australia were briefly inundated, in North America the submergence at one time or another being almost complete; and the resulting limestone layers run from 500 to 5,000 feet in thickness. These various Devonian seas extended first in one direction and then in another so that the immense arctic North American inland sea found an outlet to the Pacific Ocean through northern California. (678.7) 59:4.6 260,000,000 years ago, toward the end of this land-depression epoch, North America was partially overspread by seas having simultaneous connection with the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Gulf waters. The deposits of these later stages of the first Devonian flood average about one thousand feet in thickness. The coral reefs characterizing these times indicate that the inland seas were clear and shallow. Such coral deposits are exposed in the banks of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, and are about one hundred feet thick, embracing more than two hundred varieties. These coral formations extend through Canada and northern Europe to the arctic regions. (678.8) 59:4.7 Following these submergences, many of the shore lines were considerably elevated so that the earlier deposits were covered by mud or shale. There is also a red sandstone stratum which characterizes one of the Devonian sedimentations, and this red layer extends over much of the earth’s surface, being found in North and South America, Europe, Russia, China, Africa, and Australia. Such red deposits are suggestive of arid or semiarid conditions, but the climate of this epoch was still mild and even. (679.1) 59:4.8 Throughout all of this period the land southeast of the Cincinnati Island remained well above water. But very much of western Europe, including the British Isles, was submerged. In Wales, Germany, and other places in Europe the Devonian rocks are 20,000 feet thick. (679.2) 59:4.9 250,000,000 years ago witnessed the appearance of the fish family, the vertebrates, one of the most important steps in all prehuman evolution. (679.3) 59:4.10 The arthropods, or crustaceans, were the ancestors of the first vertebrates. The forerunners of the fish family were two modified arthropod ancestors; one had a long body connecting a head and tail, while the other was a backboneless, jawless prefish. But these preliminary types were quickly destroyed when the fishes, the first vertebrates of the animal world, made their sudden appearance from the north. (679.4) 59:4.11 Many of the largest true fish belong to this age, some of the teeth-bearing varieties being twenty-five to thirty feet long; the present-day sharks are the survivors of these ancient fishes. The lung and armored fishes reached their evolutionary apex, and before this epoch had ended, fishes had adapted to both fresh and salt waters. (679.5) 59:4.12 Veritable bone beds of fish teeth and skeletons may be found in the deposits laid down toward the close of this period, and rich fossil beds are situated along the coast of California since many sheltered bays of the Pacific Ocean extended into the land of that region. (679.6) 59:4.13 The earth was being rapidly overrun by the new orders of land vegetation. Heretofore few plants grew on land except about the water’s edge. Now, and suddenly, the prolific fern family appeared and quickly spread over the face of the rapidly rising land in all parts of the world. Tree types, two feet thick and forty feet high, soon developed; later on, leaves evolved, but these early varieties had only rudimentary foliage. There were many smaller plants, but their fossils are not found since they were usually destroyed by the still earlier appearing bacteria. (679.7) 59:4.14 As the land rose, North America became connected with Europe by land bridges extending to Greenland. And today Greenland holds the remains of these early land plants beneath its mantle of ice. (679.8) 59:4.15 240,000,000 years ago the land over parts of both Europe and North and South America began to sink. This subsidence marked the appearance of the last and least extensive of the Devonian floods. The arctic seas again moved southward over much of North America, the Atlantic inundated a large part of Europe and western Asia, while the southern Pacific covered most of India. This inundation was slow in appearing and equally slow in retreating. The Catskill Mountains along the west bank of the Hudson River are one of the largest geologic monuments of this epoch to be found on the surface of North America. (679.9) 59:4.16 230,000,000 years ago the seas were continuing their retreat. Much of North America was above water, and great volcanic activity occurred in the St. Lawrence region. Mount Royal, at Montreal, is the eroded neck of one of these volcanoes. The deposits of this entire epoch are well shown in the Appalachian Mountains of North America where the Susquehanna River has cut a valley exposing these successive layers, which attained a thickness of over 13,000 feet. (680.1) 59:4.17 The elevation of the continents proceeded, and the atmosphere was becoming enriched with oxygen. The earth was overspread by vast forests of ferns one hundred feet high and by the peculiar trees of those days, silent forests; not a sound was heard, not even the rustle of a leaf, for such trees had no leaves. (680.2) 59:4.18 And thus drew to a close one of the longest periods of marine-life evolution, the age of fishes. This period of the world’s history lasted almost fifty million years; it has become known to your researchers as the Devonian. 5. The Crustal-Shifting Stage The Fern-Forest Carboniferous Period The Age of Frogs (680.3) 59:5.1 The appearance of fish during the preceding period marks the apex of marine-life evolution. From this point onward the evolution of land life becomes increasingly important. And this period opens with the stage almost ideally set for the appearance of the first land animals. (680.4) 59:5.2 220,000,000 years ago many of the continental land areas, including most of North America, were above water. The land was overrun by luxurious vegetation; this was indeed the age of ferns. Carbon dioxide was still present in the atmosphere but in lessening degree. (680.5) 59:5.3 Shortly thereafter the central portion of North America was inundated, creating two great inland seas. Both the Atlantic and Pacific coastal highlands were situated just beyond the present shore lines. These two seas presently united, commingling their different forms of life, and the union of these marine fauna marked the beginning of the rapid and world-wide decline in marine life and the opening of the subsequent land-life period. (680.6) 59:5.4 210,000,000 years ago the warm-water arctic seas covered most of North America and Europe. The south polar waters inundated South America and Australia, while both Africa and Asia were highly elevated. (680.7) 59:5.5 When the seas were at their height, a new evolutionary development suddenly occurred. Abruptly, the first of the land animals appeared. There were numerous species of these animals that were able to live on land or in water. These air-breathing amphibians developed from the arthropods, whose swim bladders had evolved into lungs. (680.8) 59:5.6 From the briny waters of the seas there crawled out upon the land snails, scorpions, and frogs. Today frogs still lay their eggs in water, and their young first exist as little fishes, tadpoles. This period could well be known as the age of frogs. (680.9) 59:5.7 Very soon thereafter the insects first appeared and, together with spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, crickets, and locusts, soon overspread the continents of the world. Dragon flies measured thirty inches across. One thousand species of cockroaches developed, and some grew to be four inches long. (680.10) 59:5.8 Two groups of echinoderms became especially well developed, and they are in reality the guide fossils of this epoch. The large shell-feeding sharks were also highly evolved, and for more than five million years they dominated the oceans. The climate was still mild and equable; the marine life was little changed. Fresh-water fish were developing and the trilobites were nearing extinction. Corals were scarce, and much of the limestone was being made by the crinoids. The finer building limestones were laid down during this epoch. (681.1) 59:5.9 The waters of many of the inland seas were so heavily charged with lime and other minerals as greatly to interfere with the progress and development of many marine species. Eventually the seas cleared up as the result of an extensive stone deposit, in some places containing zinc and lead. (681.2) 59:5.10 The deposits of this early Carboniferous age are from 500 to 2,000 feet thick, consisting of sandstone, shale, and limestone. The oldest strata yield the fossils of both land and marine animals and plants, along with much gravel and basin sediments. Little workable coal is found in these older strata. These depositions throughout Europe are very similar to those laid down over North America. (681.3) 59:5.11 Toward the close of this epoch the land of North America began to rise. There was a short interruption, and the sea returned to cover about half of its previous beds. This was a short inundation, and most of the land was soon well above water. South America was still connected with Europe by way of Africa. (681.4) 59:5.12 This epoch witnessed the beginning of the Vosges, Black Forest, and Ural mountains. Stumps of other and older mountains are to be found all over Great Britain and Europe. (681.5) 59:5.13 200,000,000 years ago the really active stages of the Carboniferous period began. For twenty million years prior to this time the earlier coal deposits were being laid down, but now the more extensive coal-formation activities were in process. The length of the actual coal-deposition epoch was a little over twenty-five million years. (681.6) 59:5.14 The land was periodically going up and down due to the shifting sea level occasioned by activities on the ocean bottoms. This crustal uneasiness — the settling and rising of the land — in connection with the prolific vegetation of the coastal swamps, contributed to the production of extensive coal deposits, which have caused this period to be known as the Carboniferous. And the climate was still mild the world over. (681.7) 59:5.15 The coal layers alternate with shale, stone, and conglomerate. These coal beds over central and eastern United States vary in thickness from forty to fifty feet. But many of these deposits were washed away during subsequent land elevations. In some parts of North America and Europe the coal-bearing strata are 18,000 feet in thickness. (681.8) 59:5.16 The presence of roots of trees as they grew in the

The Mammalian Era on Urantia (693.1) 61:0.1 THE era of mammals extends from the times of the origin of placental mammals to the end of the ice age, covering a little less than fifty million years. (693.2) 61:0.2 During this Cenozoic age the world’s landscape presented an attractive appearance — rolling hills, broad valleys, wide rivers, and great forests. Twice during this sector of time the Panama Isthmus went up and down; three times the Bering Strait land bridge did the same. The animal types were both many and varied. The trees swarmed with birds, and the whole world was an animal paradise, notwithstanding the incessant struggle of the evolving animal species for supremacy.* (693.3) 61:0.3 The accumulated deposits of the five periods of this fifty-million-year era contain the fossil records of the successive mammalian dynasties and lead right up through the times of the actual appearance of man himself. 1. The New Continental Land Stage The Age of Early Mammals (693.4) 61:1.1 50,000,000 years ago the land areas of the world were very generally above water or only slightly submerged. The formations and deposits of this period are both land and marine, but chiefly land. For a considerable time the land gradually rose but was simultaneously washed down to the lower levels and toward the seas. (693.5) 61:1.2 Early in this period and in North America the placental type of mammals suddenly appeared, and they constituted the most important evolutionary development up to this time. Previous orders of nonplacental mammals had existed, but this new type sprang directly and suddenly from the pre-existent reptilian ancestor whose descendants had persisted on down through the times of dinosaur decline. The father of the placental mammals was a small, highly active, carnivorous, springing type of dinosaur. (693.6) 61:1.3 Basic mammalian instincts began to be manifested in these primitive mammalian types. Mammals possess an immense survival advantage over all other forms of animal life in that they can: (693.7) 61:1.4 1. Bring forth relatively mature and well-developed offspring. (693.8) 61:1.5 2. Nourish, nurture, and protect their offspring with affectionate regard. (693.9) 61:1.6 3. Employ their superior brain power in self-perpetuation. (693.10) 61:1.7 4. Utilize increased agility in escaping from enemies. (693.11) 61:1.8 5. Apply superior intelligence to environmental adjustment and adaptation. (694.1) 61:1.9 45,000,000 years ago the continental backbones were elevated in association with a very general sinking of the coast lines. Mammalian life was evolving rapidly. A small reptilian, egg-laying type of mammal flourished, and the ancestors of the later kangaroos roamed Australia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with proboscises, primitive pigs, squirrels, lemurs, opossums, and several tribes of monkeylike animals. They were all small, primitive, and best suited to living among the forests of the mountain regions. A large ostrichlike land bird developed to a height of ten feet and laid an egg nine by thirteen inches. These were the ancestors of the later gigantic passenger birds that were so highly intelligent, and that onetime transported human beings through the air. (694.2) 61:1.10 The mammals of the early Cenozoic lived on land, under the water, in the air, and among the treetops. They had from one to eleven pairs of mammary glands, and all were covered with considerable hair. In common with the later appearing orders, they developed two successive sets of teeth and possessed large brains in comparison to body size. But among them all no modern forms existed. (694.3) 61:1.11 40,000,000 years ago the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere began to elevate, and this was followed by new extensive land deposits and other terrestrial activities, including lava flows, warping, lake formation, and erosion. (694.4) 61:1.12 During the latter part of this epoch most of Europe was submerged. Following a slight land rise the continent was covered by lakes and bays. The Arctic Ocean, through the Ural depression, ran south to connect with the Mediterranean Sea as it was then expanded northward, the highlands of the Alps, Carpathians, Apennines, and Pyrenees being up above the water as islands of the sea. The Isthmus of Panama was up; the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated. North America was connected with Asia by the Bering Strait land bridge and with Europe by way of Greenland and Iceland. The earth circuit of land in northern latitudes was broken only by the Ural Straits, which connected the arctic seas with the enlarged Mediterranean. (694.5) 61:1.13 Considerable foraminiferal limestone was deposited in European waters. Today this same stone is elevated to a height of 10,000 feet in the Alps, 16,000 feet in the Himalayas, and 20,000 feet in Tibet. The chalk deposits of this period are found along the coasts of Africa and Australia, on the west coast of South America, and about the West Indies. (694.6) 61:1.14 Throughout this so-called Eocene period the evolution of mammalian and other related forms of life continued with little or no interruption. North America was then connected by land with every continent except Australia, and the world was gradually overrun by primitive mammalian fauna of various types. 2. The Recent Flood Stage The Age of Advanced Mammals (694.7) 61:2.1 This period was characterized by the further and rapid evolution of placental mammals, the more progressive forms of mammalian life developing during these times. (694.8) 61:2.2 Although the early placental mammals sprang from carnivorous ancestors, very soon herbivorous branches developed, and, erelong, omnivorous mammalian families also sprang up. The angiosperms were the principal food of the rapidly increasing mammals, the modern land flora, including the majority of present-day plants and trees, having appeared during earlier periods. (695.1) 61:2.3 35,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of the age of placental-mammalian world domination. The southern land bridge was extensive, reconnecting the then enormous Antarctic continent with South America, South Africa, and Australia. In spite of the massing of land in high latitudes, the world climate remained relatively mild because of the enormous increase in the size of the tropic seas, nor was the land elevated sufficiently to produce glaciers. Extensive lava flows occurred in Greenland and Iceland, some coal being deposited between these layers. (695.2) 61:2.4 Marked changes were taking place in the fauna of the planet. The sea life was undergoing great modification; most of the present-day orders of marine life were in existence, and foraminifers continued to play an important role. The insect life was much like that of the previous era. The Florissant fossil beds of Colorado belong to the later years of these far-distant times. Most of the living insect families go back to this period, but many then in existence are now extinct, though their fossils remain. (695.3) 61:2.5 On land this was pre-eminently the age of mammalian renovation and expansion. Of the earlier and more primitive mammals, over one hundred species were extinct before this period ended. Even the mammals of large size and small brain soon perished. Brains and agility had replaced armor and size in the progress of animal survival. And with the dinosaur family on the decline, the mammals slowly assumed domination of the earth, speedily and completely destroying the remainder of their reptilian ancestors. (695.4) 61:2.6 Along with the disappearance of the dinosaurs, other and great changes occurred in the various branches of the saurian family. The surviving members of the early reptilian families are turtles, snakes, and crocodiles, together with the venerable frog, the only remaining group representative of man’s earlier ancestors. (695.5) 61:2.7 Various groups of mammals had their origin in a unique animal now extinct. This carnivorous creature was something of a cross between a cat and a seal; it could live on land or in water and was highly intelligent and very active. In Europe the ancestor of the canine family evolved, soon giving rise to many species of small dogs. About the same time the gnawing rodents, including beavers, squirrels, gophers, mice, and rabbits, appeared and soon became a notable form of life, very little change having since occurred in this family. The later deposits of this period contain the fossil remains of dogs, cats, coons, and weasels in ancestral form. (695.6) 61:2.8 30,000,000 years ago the modern types of mammals began to make their appearance. Formerly the mammals had lived for the greater part in the hills, being of the mountainous types; suddenly there began the evolution of the plains or hoofed type, the grazing species, as differentiated from the clawed flesh eaters. These grazers sprang from an undifferentiated ancestor having five toes and forty-four teeth, which perished before the end of the age. Toe evolution did not progress beyond the three-toed stage throughout this period. (695.7) 61:2.9 The horse, an outstanding example of evolution, lived during these times in both North America and Europe, though his development was not fully completed until the later ice age. While the rhinoceros family appeared at the close of this period, it underwent its greatest expansion subsequently. A small hoglike creature also developed which became the ancestor of the many species of swine, peccaries, and hippopotamuses. Camels and llamas had their origin in North America about the middle of this period and overran the western plains. Later, the llamas migrated to South America, the camels to Europe, and soon both were extinct in North America, though a few camels survived up to the ice age. (696.1) 61:2.10 About this time a notable thing occurred in western North America: The early ancestors of the ancient lemurs first made their appearance. While this family cannot be regarded as true lemurs, their coming marked the establishment of the line from which the true lemurs subsequently sprang. (696.2) 61:2.11 Like the land serpents of a previous age which betook themselves to the seas, now a whole tribe of placental mammals deserted the land and took up their residence in the oceans. And they have ever since remained in the sea, yielding the modern whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions. (696.3) 61:2.12 The bird life of the planet continued to develop, but with few important evolutionary changes. The majority of modern birds were existent, including gulls, herons, flamingoes, buzzards, falcons, eagles, owls, quails, and ostriches. (696.4) 61:2.13 By the close of this Oligocene period, covering ten million years, the plant life, together with the marine life and the land animals, had very largely evolved and was present on earth much as today. Considerable specialization has subsequently appeared, but the ancestral forms of most living things were then alive. 3. The Modern Mountain Stage Age of the Elephant and the Horse (696.5) 61:3.1 Land elevation and sea segregation were slowly changing the world’s weather, gradually cooling it, but the climate was still mild. Sequoias and magnolias grew in Greenland, but the subtropical plants were beginning to migrate southward. By the end of this period these warm-climate plants and trees had largely disappeared from the northern latitudes, their places being taken by more hardy plants and the deciduous trees. (696.6) 61:3.2 There was a great increase in the varieties of grasses, and the teeth of many mammalian species gradually altered to conform to the present-day grazing type. (696.7) 61:3.3 25,000,000 years ago there was a slight land submergence following the long epoch of land elevation. The Rocky Mountain region remained highly elevated so that the deposition of erosion material continued throughout the lowlands to the east. The Sierras were well re-elevated; in fact, they have been rising ever since. The great four-mile vertical fault in the California region dates from this time. (696.8) 61:3.4 20,000,000 years ago was indeed the golden age of mammals. The Bering Strait land bridge was up, and many groups of animals migrated to North America from Asia, including the four-tusked mastodons, short-legged rhinoceroses, and many varieties of the cat family.* (696.9) 61:3.5 The first deer appeared, and North America was soon overrun by ruminants — deer, oxen, camels, bison, and several species of rhinoceroses — but the giant pigs, more than six feet tall, became extinct. (697.1) 61:3.6 The huge elephants of this and subsequent periods possessed large brains as well as large bodies, and they soon overran the entire world except Australia. For once the world was dominated by a huge animal with a brain sufficiently large to enable it to carry on. Confronted by the highly intelligent life of these ages, no animal the size of an elephant could have survived unless it had possessed a brain of large size and superior quality. In intelligence and adaptation the elephant is approached only by the horse and is surpassed only by man himself. Even so, of the fifty species of elephants in existence at the opening of this period, only two have survived. (697.2) 61:3.7 15,000,000 years ago the mountain regions of Eurasia were rising, and there was some volcanic activity throughout these regions, but nothing comparable to the lava flows of the Western Hemisphere. These unsettled conditions prevailed all over the world. (697.3) 61:3.8 The Strait of Gibraltar closed, and Spain was connected with Africa by the old land bridge, but the Mediterranean flowed into the Atlantic through a narrow channel which extended across France, the mountain peaks and highlands appearing as islands above this ancient sea. Later on, these European seas began to withdraw. Still later, the Mediterranean was connected with the Indian Ocean, while at the close of this period the Suez region was elevated so that the Mediterranean became, for a time, an inland salt sea. (697.4) 61:3.9 The Iceland land bridge submerged, and the arctic waters commingled with those of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic coast of North America rapidly cooled, but the Pacific coast remained warmer than at present. The great ocean currents were in function and affected climate much as they do today. (697.5) 61:3.10 Mammalian life continued to evolve. Enormous herds of horses joined the camels on the western plains of North America; this was truly the age of horses as well as of elephants. The horse’s brain is next in animal quality to that of the elephant, but in one respect it is decidedly inferior, for the horse never fully overcame the deep-seated propensity to flee when frightened. The horse lacks the emotional control of the elephant, while the elephant is greatly handicapped by size and lack of agility. During this period an animal evolved which was somewhat like both the elephant and the horse, but it was soon destroyed by the rapidly increasing cat family. (697.6) 61:3.11 As Urantia is entering the so-called “horseless age,” you should pause and ponder what this animal meant to your ancestors. Men first used horses for food, then for travel, and later in agriculture and war. The horse has long served mankind and has played an important part in the development of human civilization. (697.7) 61:3.12 The biologic developments of this period contributed much toward the setting of the stage for the subsequent appearance of man. In central Asia the true types of both the primitive monkey and the gorilla evolved, having a common ancestor, now extinct. But neither of these species is concerned in the line of living beings which were, later on, to become the ancestors of the human race. (697.8) 61:3.13 The dog family was represented by several groups, notably wolves and foxes; the cat tribe, by panthers and large saber-toothed tigers, the latter first evolving in North America. The modern cat and dog families increased in numbers all over the world. Weasels, martens, otters, and raccoons thrived and developed throughout the northern latitudes.* (698.1) 61:3.14 Birds continued to evolve, though few marked changes occurred. Reptiles were similar to modern types — snakes, crocodiles, and turtles. (698.2) 61:3.15 Thus drew to a close a very eventful and interesting period of the world’s history. This age of the elephant and the horse is known as the Miocene. 4. The Recent Continental-Elevation Stage The Last Great Mammalian Migration (698.3) 61:4.1 This is the period of preglacial land elevation in North America, Europe, and Asia. The land was greatly altered in topography. Mountain ranges were born, streams changed their courses, and isolated volcanoes broke out all over the world. (698.4) 61:4.2 10,000,000 years ago began an age of widespread local land deposits on the lowlands of the continents, but most of these sedimentations were later removed. Much of Europe, at this time, was still under water, including parts of England, Belgium, and France, and the Mediterranean Sea covered much of northern Africa. In North America extensive depositions were made at the mountain bases, in lakes, and in the great land basins. These deposits average only about two hundred feet, are more or less colored, and fossils are rare. Two great fresh-water lakes existed in western North America. The Sierras were elevating; Shasta, Hood, and Rainier were beginning their mountain careers. But it was not until the subsequent ice age that North America began its creep toward the Atlantic depression. (698.5) 61:4.3 For a short time all the land of the world was again joined excepting Australia, and the last great world-wide animal migration took place. North America was connected with both South America and Asia, and there was a free exchange of animal life. Asiatic sloths, armadillos, antelopes, and bears entered North America, while North American camels went to China. Rhinoceroses migrated over the whole world except Australia and South America, but they were extinct in the Western Hemisphere by the close of this period. (698.6) 61:4.4 In general, the life of the preceding period continued to evolve and spread. The cat family dominated the animal life, and marine life was almost at a standstill. Many of the horses were still three-toed, but the modern types were arriving; llamas and giraffelike camels mingled with the horses on the grazing plains. The giraffe appeared in Africa, having just as long a neck then as now. In South America sloths, armadillos, anteaters, and the South American type of primitive monkeys evolved. Before the continents were finally isolated, those massive animals, the mastodons, migrated everywhere except to Australia. (698.7) 61:4.5 5,000,000 years ago the horse evolved as it now is and from North America migrated to all the world. But the horse had become extinct on the continent of its origin long before the red man arrived. (698.8) 61:4.6 The climate was gradually getting cooler; the land plants were slowly moving southward. At first it was the increasing cold in the north that stopped animal migrations over the northern isthmuses; subsequently these North American land bridges went down. Soon afterwards the land connection between Africa and South America finally submerged, and the Western Hemisphere was isolated much as it is today. From this time forward distinct types of life began to develop in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. (699.1) 61:4.7 And thus does this period of almost ten million years’ duration draw to a close, and not yet has the ancestor of man appeared. This is the time usually designated as the Pliocene. 5. The Early Ice Age (699.2) 61:5.1 By the close of the preceding period the lands of the northeastern part of North America and of northern Europe were highly elevated on an extensive scale, in North America vast areas rising up to 30,000 feet and more. Mild climates had formerly prevailed over these northern regions, and the arctic waters were all open to evaporation, and they continued to be ice-free until almost the close of the glacial period. (699.3) 61:5.2 Simultaneously with these land elevations the ocean currents shifted, and the seasonal winds changed their direction. These conditions eventually produced an almost constant precipitation of moisture from the movement of the heavily saturated atmosphere over the northern highlands. Snow began to fall on these elevated and therefore cool regions, and it continued to fall until it had attained a depth of 20,000 feet. The areas of the greatest depth of snow, together with altitude, determined the central points of subsequent glacial pressure flows. And the ice age persisted just as long as this excessive precipitation continued to cover these northern highlands with this enormous mantle of snow, which soon metamorphosed into solid but creeping ice. (699.4) 61:5.3 The great ice sheets of this period were all located on elevated highlands, not in mountainous regions where they are found today. One half of the glacial ice was in North America, one fourth in Eurasia, and one fourth elsewhere, chiefly in Antarctica. Africa was little affected by the ice, but Australia was almost covered with the antarctic ice blanket. (699.5) 61:5.4 The northern regions of this world have experienced six separate and distinct ice invasions, although there were scores of advances and recessions associated with the activity of each individual ice sheet. The ice in North America collected in two and, later, three centers. Greenland was covered, and Iceland was completely buried beneath the ice flow. In Europe the ice at various times covered the British Isles excepting the coast of southern England, and it overspread western Europe down to France. (699.6) 61:5.5 2,000,000 years ago the first North American glacier started its southern advance. The ice age was now in the making, and this glacier consumed nearly one million years in its advance from, and retreat back toward, the northern pressure centers. The central ice sheet extended south as far as Kansas; the eastern and western ice centers were not then so extensive. (699.7) 61:5.6 1,500,000 years ago the first great glacier was retreating northward. In the meantime, enormous quantities of snow had been falling on Greenland and on the northeastern part of North America, and erelong this eastern ice mass began to flow southward. This was the second invasion of the ice. (699.8) 61:5.7 These first two ice invasions were not extensive in Eurasia. During these early epochs of the ice age North America was overrun with mastodons, woolly mammoths, horses, camels, deer, musk oxen, bison, ground sloths, giant beavers, saber-toothed tigers, sloths as large as elephants, and many groups of the cat and dog families. But from this time forward they were rapidly reduced in numbers by the increasing cold of the glacial period. Toward the close of the ice age the majority of these animal species were extinct in North America. (700.1) 61:5.8 Away from the ice the land and water life of the world was little changed. Between the ice invasions the climate was about as mild as at present, perhaps a little warmer. The glaciers were, after all, local phenomena, though they spread out to cover enormous areas. The coastwise climate varied greatly between the times of glacial inaction and those times when enormous icebergs were sliding off the coast of Maine into the Atlantic, slipping out through Puget Sound into the Pacific, and thundering down Norwegian fiords into the North Sea. 6. Primitive Man in the Ice Age (700.2) 61:6.1 The great event of this glacial period was the evolution of primitive man. Slightly to the west of India, on land now under water and among the offspring of Asiatic migrants of the older North American lemur types, the dawn mammals suddenly appeared. These small animals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they possessed large brains in proportion to their size and in comparison with the brains of other animals. In the seventieth generation of this order of life a new and higher group of animals suddenly differentiated. These new mid-mammals — almost twice the size and height of their ancestors and possessing proportionately increased brain power — had only well established themselves when the Primates, the third vital mutation, suddenly appeared. (At this same time, a retrograde development within the mid-mammal stock gave origin to the simian ancestry; and from that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed.) (700.3) 61:6.2 1,000,000 years ago Urantia was registered as an inhabited world. A mutation within the stock of the progressing Primates suddenly produced two primitive human beings, the actual ancestors of mankind. (700.4) 61:6.3 This event occurred at about the time of the beginning of the third glacial advance; thus it may be seen that your early ancestors were born and bred in a stimulating, invigorating, and difficult environment. And the sole survivors of these Urantia aborigines, the Eskimos, even now prefer to dwell in frigid northern climes. (700.5) 61:6.4 Human beings were not present in the Western Hemisphere until near the close of the ice age. But during the interglacial epochs they passed westward around the Mediterranean and soon overran the continent of Europe. In the caves of western Europe may be found human bones mingled with the remains of both tropic and arctic animals, testifying that man lived in these regions throughout the later epochs of the advancing and retreating glaciers. 7. The Continuing Ice Age (700.6) 61:7.1 Throughout the glacial period other activities were in progress, but the action of the ice overshadows all other phenomena in the northern latitudes. No other terrestrial activity leaves such characteristic evidence on the topography. The distinctive boulders and surface cleavages, such as potholes, lakes, displaced stone, and rock flour, are to be found in connection with no other phenomenon in nature. The ice is also responsible for those gentle swells, or surface undulations, known as drumlins. And a glacier, as it advances, displaces rivers and changes the whole face of the earth. Glaciers alone leave behind them those telltale drifts — the ground, lateral, and terminal moraines. These drifts, particularly the ground moraines, extend from the eastern seaboard north and westward in North America and are found in Europe and Siberia. (701.1) 61:7.2 750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet, a union of the North American central and eastern ice fields, was well on its way south; at its height it reached to southern Illinois, displacing the Mississippi River fifty miles to the west, and in the east it extended as far south as the Ohio River and central Pennsylvania. (701.2) 61:7.3 In Asia the Siberian ice sheet made its southernmost invasion, while in Europe the advancing ice stopped just short of the mountain barrier of the Alps. (701.3) 61:7.4 500,000 years ago, during the fifth advance of the ice, a new development accelerated the course of human evolution. Suddenly and in one generation the six colored races mutated from the aboriginal human stock. This is a doubly important date since it also marks the arrival of the Planetary Prince. (701.4) 61:7.5 In North America the advancing fifth glacier consisted of a combined invasion by all three ice centers. The eastern lobe, however, extended only a short distance below the St. Lawrence valley, and the western ice sheet made little southern advance. But the central lobe reached south to cover most of the State of Iowa. In Europe this invasion of the ice was not so extensive as the preceding one. (701.5) 61:7.6 250,000 years ago the sixth and last glaciation began. And despite the fact that the northern highlands had begun to sink slightly, this was the period of greatest snow deposition on the northern ice fields. (701.6) 61:7.7 In this invasion the three great ice sheets coalesced into one vast ice mass, and all of the western mountains participated in this glacial activity. This was the largest of all ice invasions in North America; the ice moved south over fifteen hundred miles from its pressure centers, and North America experienced its lowest temperatures. (701.7) 61:7.8 200,000 years ago, during the advance of the last glacier, there occurred an episode which had much to do with the march of events on Urantia — the Lucifer rebellion. (701.8) 61:7.9 150,000 years ago the sixth and last glacier reached its farthest points of southern extension, the western ice sheet crossing just over the Canadian border; the central coming down into Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois; the eastern sheet advancing south and covering the greater portion of Pennsylvania and Ohio. (701.9) 61:7.10 This is the glacier that sent forth the many tongues, or ice lobes, which carved out the present-day lakes, great and small. During its retreat the North American system of Great Lakes was produced. And Urantian geologists have very accurately deduced the various stages of this development and have correctly surmised that these bodies of water did, at different times, empty first into the Mississippi valley, then eastward into the Hudson valley, and finally by a northern route into the St. Lawrence. It is thirty-seven thousand years since the connected Great Lakes system began to empty out over the present Niagara route. (702.1) 61:7.11 100,000 years ago, during the retreat of the last glacier, the vast polar ice sheets began to form, and the center of ice accumulation moved considerably northward. And as long as the polar regions continue to be covered with ice, it is hardly possible for another glacial age to occur, regardless of future land elevations or modification of ocean currents. (702.2) 61:7.12 This last glacier was one hundred thousand years advancing, and it required a like span of time to complete its northern retreat. The temperate regions have been free from the ice for a little over fifty thousand years. (702.3) 61:7.13 The rigorous glacial period destroyed many species and radically changed numerous others. Many were sorely sifted by the to-and-fro migration which was made necessary by the advancing and retreating ice. Those animals which followed the glaciers back and forth over the land were the bear, bison, reindeer, musk ox, mammoth, and mastodon. (702.4) 61:7.14 The mammoth sought the open prairies, but the mastodon preferred the sheltered fringes of the forest regions. The mammoth, until a late date, ranged from Mexico to Canada; the Siberian variety became wool covered. The mastodon persisted in North America until exterminated by the red man much as the white man later killed off the bison. (702.5) 61:7.15 In North America, during the last glaciation, the horse, tapir, llama, and saber-toothed tiger became extinct. In their places sloths, armadillos, and water hogs came up from South America. (702.6) 61:7.16 The enforced migration of life before the advancing ice led to an extraordinary commingling of plants and of animals, and with the retreat of the final ice invasion, many arctic species of both plants and animals were left stranded high upon certain mountain peaks, whither they had journeyed to escape destruction by the glacier. And so, today, these dislocated plants and animals may be found high up on the Alps of Europe and even on the Appalachian Mountains of North America. (702.7) 61:7.17 The ice age is the last completed geologic period, the so-called Pleistocene, over two million years in length. (702.8) 61:7.18 35,000 years ago marks the termination of the great ice age excepting in the polar regions of the planet. This date is also significant in that it approximates the arrival of a Material Son and Daughter and the beginning of the Adamic dispensation, roughly corresponding to the beginning of the Holocene or postglacial period.* (702.9) 61:7.19 This narrative, extending from the rise of mammalian life to the retreat of the ice and on down to historic times, covers a span of almost fifty million years. This is the last — the current — geologic period and is known to your researchers as the Cenozoic or recent-times era. (702.10) 61:7.20 [Sponsored by a Resident Life Carrier.]

In this episode, the gang is all back in the same zip code and celebrate by having a long discussion on the origin and extinction of the large mammals from the Cenozoic known as the Megafauna. Somehow this gets.... weird. Meanwhile, James defends the Star Wars Empire, Curt argues why turtles should be ninjas instead of mere heroes, and Amanda confuses Michael Bay with Roland Emmerich. Also, congrats to Dr. Amanda Falk for defending her thesis.    References: Anthony D. Barnosky et al. Assessing the Causes of Late Pleistocene Extinctions on the Continents Science 306, 70 (2004); Tao Deng et al. Out of Tibet: Pliocene Woolly Rhino Suggests High-Plateau Origin of Ice Age Megaherbivores Science 333, 1285 (2011);  Prescott, Graham W., et al. "Quantitative global analysis of the role of climate and people in explaining late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.12 (2012): 4527-4531. Lorenzen, Eline D., et al. "Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans." Nature 479.7373 (2011): 359-364.

Can you clone a mammoth and have it build a pyramid? Baz Edmeades of megafauna.com joins us to talk about prehistoric elephants, hell pigs, terror birds, giant ground sloths, marsupial lions, hippopotamus wombats, moas, sabretooth cats, stellar sea cows and more! Music: "Downtown (in the Cenozoic)" by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets Images Links Megafauna.com Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XfFtKGECjI

This dissertation addresses the biogeographic history of the Araceae family and of one of its largest genera, Alocasia. With >3300 species, Araceae are among the largest families of flowering plants. It is the monocot lineage with the deepest fossil record, reaching back to the Early Cretaceous. Araceae are distributed worldwide, but >3100 species occur in the tropical regions of the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia; most fossils from the Late Cretaceous and many younger ones come from the temperate zone in the northern hemisphere, implying much extinction and range expansion. Most subfamilies are pantropically distributed, and almost all genera are restricted to one continent. Alocasia comprises 113 species, many as yet undescribed, making it the 7 th -largest genus of the Araceae. Many species are ornamentals, and two species are of interest for man, either for food (giant taro) or in local cultures (Chinese taro). The origin of these species was not known. Alocasia is distributed in Southeast Asia from India to Australia, with species occurring on all islands of the Malay Archipelago. This region has a complex geologic history shaped by the collision of the Eurasian, the Pacific, and the Indo-Australian plate. The Malesian flora and fauna comprises Laurasian and Gondwanan elements, reflecting the influence of changing sea levels, uplift and submergence of islands, and other tectonic movement. In this thesis, I used molecular phylogenetics, Bayesian divergence dating, ancestral area reconstruction to understand the past distribution of the Araceae family and the Alocasia clade in the context of past continent movements and climate history. For the family analysis, existing chloroplast DNA matrices were augmented so that all Araceae genera were represented by one or more species, with a focus on covering geographic disjunctions, especially between continents. Divergence dating relied on seven confidently assigned fossil constraints, comparing uniform and gamma-shaped prior distributions on fossil ages, as well as several molecular clock models. Biogeographic analyses were performed in a model-based likelihood framework that took into account past dispersal routes based on continent connectivity and climate. I also integrated fossils into the ancestral area reconstruction, either simulating extinct or still existing ranges, and then compared results to those obtained from analyses without fossils. To study the morphology and ecology of Alocasia, fieldwork was conducted in Malaysia and herbarium work in Germany, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Maximum likelihood phylogenies were inferred based on chloroplast and nuclear loci, sequenced for 71 species of Alocasia plus 25 outgroup species from 16 genera. Bayesian divergence dating of the nuclear phylogeny relied on one fossil constraint and ancestral areas were reconstructed using parsimony- and likelihood-based methods. The Araceae diverged from the remaining Alismatales in the Early Cretaceous (ca. 135 Ma ago), and all eight subfamilies originated before the Cenozoic. The earliest lineages are inferred to have occurred in Laurasia (based on fossils and tree topology), and most lineages reached Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and Australia during the Paleogene and Neogene. Many clades experienced extinction in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere during the Oligocene climate cooling. Two continentally disjunct genera (Nephthytis and Philodendron) are polyphyletic and need taxonomic rearrangement. Plastid substitution rates are exceptionally high in free-floating and water-associated Araceae. Ancestral area reconstructions obtained when fossil (no longer occupied) ranges where included in the analyses were more plausible than those without fossil ranges. This is not a trivial result because only in a quantitative (computer-based) analysis is it possible for fossil ranges to influence results (here areas) at distant nodes in the phylogenetic tree. The nuclear and plastid phylogenies of Alocasia revealed the polyphyly of the two genera Alocasia and Colocasia; to achieve monophyly, two species (Alocasia hypnosa and Colocasia gigantea) have to be moved to other genera. There were strong incongruencies between phylogenies from the two partitions: The chloroplast data reflect geographical proximity, the nuclear morphological similarity. This may indicate hybridization events followed by chloroplast capture. Based on the nuclear tree, Alocasia split from its sister group by the end of the Oligocene (ca. 24 Ma) and colonized the Malay Archipelago from the Asian mainland. Borneo played a central role, with 11–13 of 18–19 inferred dispersal events originating there. The Philippines were reached from Borneo 4–5 times in the late Miocene and early Pliocene, and the Asian mainland 6–7 times during the Pliocene. The geographic origin of two domesticated species could be resolved: Giant taro originated on the Philippines and Chinese taro on the Asian mainland.

The Earth's magnetic field underwent hundreds of reversals during its history. But within a ~40 Myr span (84-125 Ma) during the Cretaceous no reversal happened. For comparison, the second longest chron length during the last 167 Ma is ~5 Myr. Thus, the ~40 Myr long chron is known as a superchron and is called Cretaceous Normal Superchron (CNS). Two other superchrons are now established: the Permian-Carboniferous Reversed Superchron and the Ordovician Reversed Superchron. Why do these superchrons exist? Are they an extreme chron duration of the same statistical distribution? Or, do superchrons reflect a distinct dynamo regime separate from an oft-reversing regime. Are the onset and end of superchrons triggered by changes in the physical conditions of outer core convection? For example, instabilities within the convection in the outer core are suspected to trigger reversals. A `low energy' geodynamo during the superchron could stem from less turbulent convection. But also the concept of a `high energy' geodynamo during a superchron is conceivable: stronger convection would stabilize the field and increase the field intensity. These different dynamo regimes could be be triggered by changing the temperature conditions at the core mantle boundary (CMB), for example with the eruption of deep mantle plumes or the descent of cold material such as subducted slabs. Insights into past geodynamo regimes can be learned primarily from two paleomagnetic methods: paleosecular variation (variation in field directions) and paleointensity. For the former, we collected 534 samples for a paleosecular variation study from a 1400 m-long, paleontologically well-described section in northern Peru. Thermal demagnetization isolates stable magnetization directions carried by greigite. Arguments are equivocal whether this remanence is syn-diagenetic, acquired during the Cretaceous normal superchron, or a secondary overprint, acquired during a chron of solely normal polarity in the upper Cenozoic, yet pre-Bruhnes (>800 kyr). We explore the ramifications on the S value, which quantifies paleosecular variation, that arises from directional analysis, sun compass correction, bedding correction, sampling frequency, outlying directions and different recording media. The sum of these affects can readily raise the S value by more than 20%. S values from northern Peru are indistinguishable from other S values for the Cretaceous normal superchron as well as those for the last 5 Ma. Summing over all the potential uncertainties, we come to the pessimistic conclusion that the S value is an unsuitable parameter to constrain geodynamo models. Alternatively, no statistical difference in paleosecular variation exists during much of the Cretaceous normal superchron and during the last 5 Ma. Even though the S value might be unsuitable, we wanted to understand why the S value is latitude dependent. The origin of this latitude dependency is widely attributed to a combination of time-varying dipole and non-dipole components. The slope and magnitude of S are taken as a basis to understand the geomagnetic field and its evolution. Here we show that S stems from a mathematical aberration of the conversion from directions to poles, hence directional populations better quantify local estimates of paleosecular variation. Of the various options, k is likely the best choice, and the uncertainty on k(N) was already worked out. As we came to the pessimistic conclusion that the S value might not be the best parameter to quantify the `energy state' of the geodynamo during a superchron, we also carried out a paleointensity study on 128 samples from volcanic rocks in Northern Peru and Ecuador. Oxidation of the remanence carriers was a problem. Only one site gave reliable results. Two methods of paleointensity determination were applied to these rocks. The results of both methods agree quite well with each other and also with previous studies from other sites. Our results suggest that the field intensity towards the end of the superchron seems to quite similar to today's magnetic moment. Thus, it can be concluded that the `energy state' of the geodynamo was not substantially different during the Cretaceous Normal Superchron compared to reversing times. Why do superchrons exist? One possible explanation is that paleomagnetism is not able to resolve different energy states of the geodynamo, neither with paleosecular variation nor with paleointensity. This was suggested by some dynamo simulations in which the heat flux across the core-mantle boundary was kept the same, but the resulting paleosecular variation, paleointensity and frequency of reversals differed a lot. Another possible explanation is that a superchron is an intrinsic feature of the distribution of magnetic polarity chron lengths. Thus, no changes of the convection in the outer core are needed to trigger a superchron.

What were the biggest, baddest and weirdest dinosaurs? Did killer algae take them out? What's the deal with brontosaurus? Was T-Rex a cannibal? Who fought in the 'bone wars?' What kind of car does Predator X eat? Answers to these questions may or may not appear in the "Dinosaur" episode of Caustic Soda. Plus early paleontological blunders! Music: "Downtown (in the Cenozoic)" by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (Yes, the Cenozoic marked the end of the dinosaurs. Deal with it.) Images Movies Land of the Lost Toren: 6/10 Jurassic Park Toren: 7/10 Joe: 7/10 Kevin: 9/10 The Lost World: Jurassic Park Toren: 6/10 Joe: 5/10 Kevin: 6/10 Jurassic Park III Toren: 4/10 Valley of Gwangi Toren: 5/10 One Million Years BC Toren: 3/10 Joe: 4/10 Kevin: 2/10

The Earth's magnetic field is generated by the motion of liquid iron-rich material in the outer core. One of the most drastic manifestations of the dynamics in the outer core are polarity reversals of the magnetic field. The processes controlling geomagnetic reversals, however, are still poorly understood. The mathematical formulation of the dynamics of the liquid outer core show such a degree of complexity that a universal numerical model still remains elusive. Given that the last reversal occurred about 780,000 years ago, direct observations of a reversal have never been possible. Thus we are left with records of ancient reversals recorded in sequences of sedimentary and igneous rocks. Documenting any systematics in reversal processes will provide substantial information about the outer core and core mantle boundary conditions. However, despite the advances in deciphering the behaviour of the field during polarity transitions, reversal records yield controversial results and thus answers to several key questions are still enigmatic. Detailed studies of palaeodirectional and absolute palaeointensity patterns of geomagnetic reversals are scarce and are restricted to the Cenozoic so far. In order to verify or reject concepts developed on the basis of this dataset, reversal records which occurred in the more distant geological past of the Earth are needed. This work presents the results obtained from the Siberian Trap Basalts (Russia) which are coeval with the Permo-Triassic boundary (250 Ma). The sequence yields the by far oldest hitherto studied detailed record of a geomagnetic transition from reversed to normal polarity and provides new insights in transitional field behaviour. Three sections (Talnakh, Listvjanka and Abagalakh) comprising a total of 86 lava flows have been sampled in the Noril'sk region, located at the northwestern rim of the Siberian Trap Basalt province. They provide a complete coverage of the lava pile outcropping in the area. The samples have been subjected to palaeomagnetic direction analysis and to Thellier-type palaeointensity experiments. Extensive rockmagnetic investigations and microscopical studies have been carried out to asses the reliability of the palaeomagnetic information recorded by the lava flows. Magnetite and Ti-poor titanomagnetites were identified to be the carriers of the characteristic remanent magnetisation. The reversibility of the thermomagnetic curves and the observation of exsolution lamellae by ore microscopy give clear evidence for a primary high-temperature oxidation of the titanomagnetite. It can thus be inferred that the measured palaeodirectional and intensity information obtained from these flows was acquired shortly after extrusion of each flow. The demagnetisation of the natural remanence reveals only one direction of magnetisation for most samples. Thermal and alternating field demagnetisation methods are equally effective in isolating the characteristic remanent magnetisation. Occasional overprints have maximum unblocking temperatures of 350°C or remanence coercivities less than 20 mT. Reliable palaeointensity estimates were obtained for approx. 50% of the samples. The relatively high success rate can be attributed to the enhanced magnetic and thermal stability of high-temperature oxidised titanomagnetites. In the lower part of the sequence reversed polarity of the Earth's magnetic field is identified. The associated palaeointensities yield values around 10 µT. The subsequent flows recorded transitional configurations. A tight cluster of virtual geomagnetic poles (VGPs) in mid northerly latitudes, comprising the results of 15 flows, is observed during the transition. Within the cluster the record shows a pronounced and well defined increase in intensity from around 6 to 13 µT. A doubling of local field intensity infers that large scale dynamic processes in the outer core are responsible for this feature, making a strong case for a reasonable temporal stability (several hundreds to a few thousand years) of the VGP cluster. Moreover, the VGP clustering is identified in two parallel sections (Talnakh and Listvjanka). This observation makes it unlikely that this feature is an artifact of a localised burst in volcanic activity and supports the concept of stabilised phases of the geomagnetic field during reversals. The VGPs of the overlying flows move towards the position expected for normal polarity. After rotating of the VGPs into the Late Permian/Early Triassic geographic reference system it is evident that most of the transitional VGPs are strongly confined to a narrow longitudinal band which is perpendicular to near- or far-sided VGP paths. Such near- or far-sided paths would be indicative for the dominance of zonal, and thus axis-symmetric, non-dipole fields. The VGP path of this transition suggests the contribution of strong sectorial components of the Earth's magnetic field. Following the transition itself, normal polarity is reached for a brief time interval. Subsequently, the VGPs depart from this position to form another well defined directional cluster recorded by 14 successive flows. During this clustering, which is interpreted as an excursion of the Earth's magnetic field, no characteristic variation in palaeointensity is identified (mean value 14 µT). Such post-transitional excursions are frequently observed in younger reversal records and are explained by instabilities of the geodynamo after the reversal. However, VGPs associated with post-transitional excursions usually reach positions similar to those occupied by VGPs during the transition. In contrast to such "rebound" effects, the excursion-related VGPs of this record are still confined to the latitudinal band defined by the transition, but "overshoot" normal polarity. This geometrical constraint suggests that non-dipole components similar to those dominating the transitional VGP path are responsible for this observation. Remarkably, the geomagnetic polarity transition described here shares many similarities - such as directional clustering, longitudinal confinement of the VGP path, the existence of a post-transitional excursion and generally low palaeointensities - with previously published reversal records of mainly Tertiary age. It may, therefore, be inferred that the underlying reversal processes are similar to those observed for the Cenozoic. The results obtained of the superjacent 41 flows, which were extruded immediately after the reversal-related excursion, indicate that only at this stage of the record stable normal polarity is reached allowing to determine several characteristic parameters of the Early Triassic Earth's magnetic field. The mean palaeointensity for this part of the sequence is 19 µT, which corresponds to a virtual geomagnetic dipole moment (VDM) of 2.3 * 10^22 Am^2. These findings confirm that the Mesozoic dipole low extends at least down to the Permo-Triassic boundary. Calculation of the recorded secular variation yields values similar to those averaged over the last 5 Ma, a period with distinctly higher mean VDM (5.5 * 10^22 Am^2) compared to the data presented here. The hypothesis of enhanced secular variation during phases of a low mean VDM can, therefore, not be substantiated by this study. Secular variation and the strength of the dipole moment seem to be - at least in the Early Mesozoic - more complexly coupled than previously assumed. Magnetostratigraphic results of borehole samples obtained from basalts related to the Siberian Trap volcanism including the West Siberian basin yield in total 6 polarity intervals. Comparison to the global magnetostratigraphic scale indicates that the volcanic activity lasted no more than 3.2 Ma. However, the lava sequence in the Noril'sk area (more than 1700 m thick), representing the bulk of the erupted material, recorded only one polarity transition. This finding has been supported by data derived from boreholes in close vicinity to the surface sections which makes the presence of further undetected polarity transitions highly unlikely. It can be thus inferred that the emplacement of the sequence occurred much faster than the aforementioned 3.2 Ma. Radiometric ages suggest an upper limit for the duration of the emplacement of approximately 1 Ma. Based on the assumptions of similar rates of angular secular variation in the Early Triassic and in the Holocene and an average duration of the transition itself the time interval covered is estimated to be in the order of 15000 years. This value has to be regarded as a lowermost limit for the duration of the emplacement. Such a rapid development of the volcanic province in the Noril'sk area would imply an enormous eruption rate making a strong case for the Siberian Trap basalts as cause for the Permo-Triassic crisis.

The assumption that stationary hotspots underlie the Earth’s lithospheric plates has been most important in the development of the theory of plate tectonics. According to the fixed hotspot hypothesis seamount trails are formed by volcanism penetrating the lithospheric plates whilst moving over ”hotspots”of upwelling mantle. In turn, the azimuths and age progressions of seamount trails can be used to quantify plate motions with respect to an independent reference frame of hotspots in the mantle. Also, assuming fixed hotspots, the direction of characteristic remanent magnetization in the basalts acquired during cooling should always be the same. Even if due to plate motion the products of the hotspot are located far away from the position of the hotspot itself, paleomagnetic studies on the basalts must always provide the position of the hotspot itself. Recently the question arose, why a hotspot with its origin deep in the mantle would not get advected in the convecting mantle of the Earth. - In this thesis a possible motion of the Kerguelen hotspot in the southern Indian Ocean and of the Louisville hotspot in the Pacific has been studied. The Kerguelen hotspot is active since approximately 117 Ma. Since then it formed the Kerguelen Plateau and the Broken Ridge in the southern Indian Ocean as well as the Ninetyeast Ridge, which is the hotspot track going north up to India, and the Ramajal Traps in India. Drilling into basement rocks of Broken Ridge and the Kerguelen Plateau was aim of the Ocean Drilling Program, Leg 183, from December 1998 to February 1999. Eight sites have been drilled. In seven of the sites also the sediments have been recovered. In this thesis, a possible motion of the Kerguelen hotspot has been studied by determining its paleolatitudes. First, basalts from the Kerguelen Plateau have been studied paleomagnetically to compare the paleolatitudes with the latitude of the hotspot itself. Basement from a drillsite on the central Kerguelen Plateau (Site 1138) and of a site on the northern Kerguelen Plateau (Site 1140) were suitable for a determination of paleolatitudes. A sufficient number of independent lavaflows has been penetrated and sampled there to properly average out paleosecular variation, an important requirement for determining paleolatitudes. The characteristic magnetization from the subaerial Site 1138 with AA- and Pahoehoe lava and of the submarine Site 1140 with its pillow basalts is carried by magnetite and titanomagnetites and -maghemites and consists of a single remanence component with sometimes a small viscous overprint, that could easily be removed during demagnetization. Stepwise demagnetization in an alternating field and stepwise heating of the specimens provided the inclination value of the characteristic magnetization very precisely with small error. Conversion of the mean-site inclination into the paleolatitude of a site provided a latitude of λ = 43.6◦S (max.: 47.8◦S; min.: 37.9◦S) for Site 1138 on the central Kerguelen Plateau and a latitude of λ = 35.8◦S (max: 43.0◦S; min.: 28.9◦S) for Site 1140 on the northern Kerguelen Plateau. In Site 1136 on the southern Kerguelen Plateau only two lava flows have been sampled. Therefore paleosecular variation could not be averaged out properly. Site 1142 on the Broken Ridge has been tilted and deformed tectonically after its formation, as was found from seismic explorations prior to drilling, and the inclination of the magnetization could therefore not be used for a determination of paleolatitudes. Compared to the latitude of the Kerguelen hotspot at 49◦S, the paleolatitudes of the central and northern Kerguelen Plateau are further north. This result agrees with previous paleomagnetic studies on the southern Kerguelen Plateau and the Ninetyeast Ridge, where paleolatitudes have been found that indicate also a formation north of the present-day hotspot position. This difference indicates a southward movement of the hotspot since the Cretaceous relative to the spin axis of the Earth. The motion can be explained with a rotation of the whole mantle of the Earth relative to the spin axis (true polar wander) or with a motion of the hotspot within the Earth’s mantle. Therefore, the possibility was studied whether true polar wander can be responsible for the difference between the paleomagnetic data and the present-day latitude of the hotspot. Three independently obtained true polar wander paths have been used, that describe the motion of the whole mantle (with the hotspots) relative to the rotation or dipole axis. All three curves point to a shift of the mantle at the time when the central and southern Kerguelen Plateau formed in such a way that higher southern paleolatitudes should be observed. This prediction is just the opposite to what was found in the paleomagnetic studies. The Cenozoic parts of the three experimentally obtained true polar wander paths roughly agree within their uncertainties with a numerically calculated path that accounts for changes of moments of inertia of the mantle. This means that the difference between paleomagnetic data and the present-day position of the hotspot can not be explained by true polar wander. The next starting point to explain the discrepancy is hotspot motion. For the determination of hotspot drift, geodynamic modeling has been carried out. Assuming that a mantle plume rising from the core-mantle boundary is advected in an convecting mantle, a hotspot sould move relative to the surface of the Earth. Seismic tomography models were converted into density models of the Earth’s mantle. Then a velocity field derived from the mass motion due to the density heterogeneities is calculated. The rising mantle plume is then inserted into the model and becomes advected in the velocity field. Seven different tomographic models have been used to obtain velocity fields. All seven models result in a southward motion for the Kerguelen hotspot since its first appearance approximately 117 Ma ago. The motion is in a similar direction for the different models, and its magnitude varies from 5 to over 10 degrees. So far, the program to model the hotspot drift assumed a constant viscosity within the rising plume. More realistic is the assumption of a depth-dependent plume radius, based on estimates of temperature- and hence viscosity variations within the plume. This has been integrated as a subroutine into the program. The plume radius affects the buoyancy of the plume. A plume with larger radius rises faster through the mantle, and will hence have a stronger tendency to straighten up. In contrast, a plume with smaller radius rises slowly and will be influenced more strongly by the velocity field of the mantle. Allowing for the variation of viscosity within the plume, the hotspot motion was calculated again. A comparison of the resulting hotspot motion for various input parameters showed that the result is rather independent of the parameters. The calculations also yield a southward motion of 5 to 10 degrees, only the shape of the hotspot path is somewhat changed. This southward motion of the Kerguelen hotspot by 5 to 10 degrees can explain the difference between the paleomagnetic data and the present-day position of the hotspot. Even combined with true polar wander it fits the paleomagnetic results, although true polar wander, taken by itself, even increases the difference that has to be explained. The consistency of paleomagnetic results with the model calculations allows the conclusion that the Kerguelen hotspot indeed moved southward by some degrees since its first occurence 117 Ma ago. A magnetostratigraphy has been made using the sediments of ODP Leg 183. It yielded a contribution to the age dating of the basalts prior to 40Ar/39Ar dating. Paleomagnetic studies on the sediments contributed to a combined Bio/Magnetostratigraphy. The stratigraphy helps to determine the minimal age of the underlying basalts. Using the reversals found in the magnetization and a correlation with the paleontological data, the lowermost sediments of Site 1136 (southern Kerguelen Plateau) are dated to have an age in the Early Cretaceous, Site 1138 (central Kerguelen Plateau) in the Late Cretaceous, and Site 1140 (northern Kerguelen Plateau) in the Oligocene. These results are meanwhile confirmed by precise 40Ar/39Ar age dating of the basement yielding an age of 100 Ma for Site 1138 and of 35 Ma for Site 1140. The Ontong Java Plateau, a Large Igneous Province in the western Pacific, was thought to be formed by the rising mantle plume of the Louisville hotspot approximately 120 Ma ago. However, according to a recent plate reconstruction, the plateau has been formed well to the north of the location of this hotspot. In this thesis it could be shown that the formation of the Ontong Java Plateau by the Louisville hotspot is possible if hotspot motion in the convecting mantle is allowed. For this purpose, the motion of the Louisville hotspot for the last 120 Ma years has been modeled, using the same method as already applied for the Kerguelen hotspot. The calculations indicate, that the Louisville hotspot has probably shifted by some degrees to the south since its first occurence approximately 120 Ma ago. There is a considerable variation between different model results, though. The Louisville hotspot is now located too far south to be responsible for the formation of the Plateau. However, it could have been in the right place at the time of the formation 120 Ma ago if hotspot motion is considered. This is an example that the drift of hotspots can affect plate tectonics and tectonic reconstructions and that it should be considered.