Podcasts about Ediacaran

Ever wonder what the very first animal on Earth was?

Complex life did not start in the Cambrian - it was there in the Ediacaran, the period that preceded the Cambrian. And the physical and chemical environment that prevailed in the early to middle Cambrian may well have arisen at earlier times in Earth history. So what exactly was the Cambrian explosion? And what made it happen when it did, between 541 and 530 million years ago? Many explanations have been proposed, but, as Paul Smith explains in the podcast, they tend to rely on single lines of evidence, such as geological, geochemical, or biological. He favors explanations that involve interaction and feedback among processes that stem from multiple disciplines. His own research includes extensive study of a site where Cambrian fossils are exceptionally well preserved in the far north of Greenland. Smith is Director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Professor of Natural History at the University of Oxford.

It would be no exaggeration to say that 33EMYBW is one of the most original club music producers we've heard in recent years. In addition to being a talented visual artist and a bass player in the experimental band Duck Fight Goose, her solo productions are a highlight of Shanghai's bustling underground scene—home to forward-thinking artists like Tzusing, Osheyack, Swimful and Hyph11e—moving with their own rhythmic language. She has a lexicon of drum sounds borrowed from all over the world, including tablas, bongos and mallets. As 33EMYBW, she puts together strange, multi-limbed rhythms that bring to mind images of dancing spiders and insects, something she addressed directly on 2019's showstopping Arthropods LP, released on the influential SVBKVLT label. As she says in the interview below, you basically need more than two legs to dance to her music. Maybe even eight. Her music deals with creatures that vary from the mythical to the everyday (her first album was called Golem). On her latest record Holes Of Sinian, also out on SVBKVLT, she imagines the mostly-unknown organisms from the recently discovered Ediacaran period. It's more esoteric, atmospheric and arguably even funkier than her previous work, with Marina Herlop on one hair-raising track that you can hear in a demo version on her RA Podcast. This mix is actually a version of her live set—a favourite at influential festivals like Unsound and CTM—featuring plenty of productions from across her career in mutated and improvisational forms. It's creepy, crawly and undeniably danceable. If you can keep up with it. @33emybw Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/912

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

Welcome to Episode 100! Today's special episode will be a deep dive into the world of the Ediacaran biota. We'll explore the early days of the Ediacaran, and the changing world that would give rise to the earliest animal-like organisms. Then, we'll follow their evolution through the Avalon, the White Sea, and the Nama time periods to see how this Ediacaran life evolves, diversifies, and eventually responds to the presence of new forms in the early Cambrian. In this way, we will learn how the Ediacaran biota set the stage for all animal life that would follow after them. 

The gang discusses two papers that study the paleoecology of the Ediacaran fauna. The first paper looks at environmental information that can be gleaned from the microbial mats these organisms lived on, and the second paper studies how different Ediacaran fossils are distributed on this microbial mat. Meanwhile, James is having a week, Curt is unsure about chips, and Amanda is comfortable being very on brand.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that study some very old animals that lived a long long time ago and lived on these beds of tiny tiny tiny animals and not animals. In fact, these two papers are also interested in the beds these things lived on and how they lived on the bed. The first paper looks at these parts of the beds and how you can find them in different beds made of tiny tiny tiny animals and not animals. There are these lines in the beds that are found in some beds but not all of the beds. They think that the way water moves over the beds may cause these lines to form. The other cool thing they find is that the animals are found when there are these lines, and are not found when there are not these lines. This means that the way the water moves might be important for these animals to live. The second paper looks at how these animals lived in space with each other. Did they want to live close to each other or did they want to be far from each other, or do they not really care? Some earlier papers had said they wanted to be far from each other, which is weird when we look at animals in the big blue wet thing today which want to stay close to each other. So they run a lot of studies on three different animals that can show if they are close to each other because they all need the same thing (and that thing is in small parts around the ground) or if they seem to want to be very close to each other because they either use each other or they can not move far from each other. They show that these animals all show that they are close to each other, but two of the animals are close because they all want something that is in just a few places. One animal shows a really strong need to be close, which could mean that this is something about the animal that makes new babies be closer to the father/mother. This shows we can learn things about how these animals lived and why they lived where they did, even for things that are very very very old.   References: Boan, Phillip C., et al. "Spatial  distributions of Tribrachidium, Rugoconites, and Obamus from the  Ediacara Member (Rawnsley Quartzite), South Australia." Paleobiology (2023): 1-20. Tarhan, Lidya G., Mary L. Droser, and  James G. Gehling. "Picking out the warp and weft of the Ediacaran  seafloor: Paleoenvironment and paleoecology of an Ediacara textured  organic surface." Precambrian Research 369 (2022): 106539.

What ignited the famed Cambrian Explosion? The majority of today's animal phyla got their start in this strange yet exciting period of time over five hundred million years ago. What triggered this radiation of life, some with shells, others with skeletons? What were the first predators? And what came before this period?DR SHUHAI XIAO is a paleobiologist and geobiologist who studies the interactions between the biosphere and its environments at critical transitions in Earth history, particularly during the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition. MARK from Evolution Soup chats with Shuhai about the Cambrian, why it may have produced so many new animal types, and the even more mysterious period of time before the Cambrian, the period known as the Ediacaran.Original YouTube interview:https://youtu.be/7hzXhfajN_4LINKS FOR SHUHAI XIAO:SITE: https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/geobiologyTWITTER: @XiaoShuhaihttps://twitter.com/xiaoshuhaiLINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuhai-xiao-3439b915/FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/shuhai.xiaoLAB: https://www.researchgate.net/lab/Shuhai-Xiao-LabEVOLUTION SOUP:YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/evolutionsoupFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/evolutionsoup/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/evolutionsoup/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evolution_soup/RSS feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/354743.rssShop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/evolutionsoup/shopSupport the show

This week let's find out what lived before the Cambrian explosion! A very happy birthday to Isaac! Further reading: Some of Earth's first animals--including a mysterious, alien-looking creature--are spilling out of Canadian rocks Say Hello to Dickinsonia, the Animal Kingdom's Newest (and Oldest) Member Charnia looks like a leaf or feather: Kimberella looks like a lost earring: Dickinsonia looks like one of those astronaut footprints on the moon: Spriggina looks like a centipede no a trilobite no a polychaete worm no a Glide reflection is hard to describe unless you look at pictures: Trilobozoans look like the Manx flag or a cloverleaf roll: Cochleatina looked like a snail: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. It's the last week of August 2022, so let's close out invertebrate August with a whole slew of mystery fossils, all invertebrates. But first, we have a birthday shoutout! A humongous happy birthday to Isaac! Whatever your favorite thing is, I hope it happens on your birthday, unless your favorite thing is a kaiju attack. We've talked about the Cambrian explosion before, especially in episode 69 about some of the Burgess shale animals. “Cambrian explosion” is the term for a time starting around 540 million years ago, when diverse and often bizarre-looking animals suddenly appear in the fossil record. But we haven't talked much about what lived before the Cambrian explosion, so let's talk specifically about the Ediacaran (eedee-ACK-eron) biota! I was halfway through researching this episode when I remembered I'd done a Patreon episode about it in 2021. Patrons may recognize that I used part of the Patreon episode in this one. You'd think that would save me time but surprise, it did not. The word Ediacara comes from a range of hills in South Australia, where in 1946 a geologist noticed what he thought were fossilized impressions of jellyfish in the rocks. At the time the rocks were dated to the early Cambrian period, and this was long before the Cambrian explosion was recognized as a thing at all, much less such an important thing. But since then, geologists and paleontologists have reevaluated the hills and determined that they're much older than the Cambrian, dating to between 635 to 539 million years ago. That's as much as 100 million years before the Cambrian. The Ediacaran period was formally designated in 2004 to mark this entire period of time, although fossils of Ediacaran animals generally start appearing about 580 million years ago. Here's something interesting, by the way. During the Ediacaran period, every day was only 22 hours long instead of 24, and there were about 400 days in a year instead of 365. The moon was closer to the earth too. And life on earth was still sorting out the details. Fossils from the Ediacaran period have been discovered in other places besides Australia, including Namibia in southern Africa, Newfoundland in eastern Canada, England, northwestern Russia, and southern China. Once the first well-preserved fossils started being found, in Newfoundland in 1967, paleontologists started to really take notice, because they turned out to be extremely weird. The fossils, not the paleontologists. Many organisms that lived during this time lived on, in, or under microbial mats on the sea floor or at the bottoms of rivers. Microbial mats are colonies of microorganisms like bacteria that grow on surfaces that are either submerged or just tend to stay damp. Microbial mats are still around today, usually growing in extreme environments like hot springs and hypersaline lakes. But 580 million years ago, they were everywhere. One problem with the Ediacaran biota, and I should explain that biota just means all the animals and plants that live in a particular place, is that it's not always clear if a fossil is actually an animal.

n the last week, teams of astronomers have rushed to report ever deeper views of the universe thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. These are galaxies of stars more than 13.5 billion light years from us and we see them as they were when the universe was in its infancy, less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. As University of Texas astronomer Steve Finkelstein tell us, there are some real surprises in these glimpses of the cosmic dawn. The super-distant galaxy that Steve's group has identified is named after his daughter Maisie. Also in the programme: a 550 million year old fossil which is much the oldest representative of a large group of animals still with us today. The early jellyfish relative lived at a time known as the Ediacaran period when all other known complex organisms were weird, alien-looking lifeforms with no surviving descendants. Roland Pease talks palaeontologist Frankie Dunn at the University of Oxford who's led the study of Auroralumina attenboroughii. Did the cultural invention of romantic kissing five thousand years ago lead to the spread of today's dominant strain of the cold sore virus (Herpes simplex 1) across Europe and Asia? That's the hypothesis of a team of virologists and ancient DNA experts who've been studying viral DNA remnants extracted from four very old teeth. Cambridge University's Charlotte Houldcroft explains the reasoning. And, If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? This is an age-old debate that listener Richard and his family have been arguing about for years. Can CrowdScience settle it once and for all? Caroline Steel speaks to experts in hearing, biology, philosophy, physics and sound design, which takes her to some unexpected places. Professor Stefan Bleek is an expert in psychoacoustics who says that sounds only exist in our heads. Dr Eleanor Knox and Dr Bryan Roberts are philosophers that make her question if anything exists outside our own perception. Professor Lilach Hadany wonders if it's limited to humans and animals - could other plants hear the falling tree too? And Mat Eric Hart is a sound designer who says that sound is subjective – it's always tangled up with our own interpretations. Things get truly weird as we delve into the strange implications of quantum physics. If there is such a thing as reality, doesn't it change when we're there to observe it? Does the tree even fall if we aren't there? Image: Maisie's Galaxy aka CEERSJ141946.35-525632.8. Credit: CEERS Collaboration

In the last week, teams of astronomers have rushed to report ever deeper views of the universe thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. These are galaxies of stars more than 13.5 billion light years from us and we see them as they were when the universe was in its infancy, less than 300 million years after the Big Bang. As University of Texas astronomer Steve Finkelstein tell us, there are some real surprises in these glimpses of the cosmic dawn. The super-distant galaxy that Steve's group has identified is named after his daughter Maisie. Also in the programme: a 550 million year old fossil which is much the oldest representative of a large group of animals still with us today. The early jellyfish relative lived at a time known as the Ediacaran period when all other known complex organisms were weird, alien-looking lifeforms with no surviving descendants. Roland Pease talks palaeontologist Frankie Dunn at the University of Oxford who's led the study of Auroralumina attenboroughii. Did the cultural invention of romantic kissing five thousand years ago lead to the spread of today's dominant strain of the cold sore virus (Herpes simplex 1) across Europe and Asia? That's the hypothesis of a team of virologists and ancient DNA experts who've been studying viral DNA remnants extracted from four very old teeth. Cambridge University's Charlotte Houldcroft explains the reasoning. Image: Maisie's Galaxy aka CEERSJ141946.35-525632.8. Credit: CEERS Collaboration Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Scottish paleobiologist Dr Thomas Halliday joins Amy for an in-depth conversation about his new book, Otherlands: A World in the Making. Thomas takes us on a journey into deep time and introduces us to the awe-inducing ecosystems, animals, plants, and places that existed – from Alaska during the Pleistocene (20,000 years ago) to Australia during the Ediacaran (550 million years ago). Thomas is an Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham. His PhD won the Linnean Society Medal for the best thesis in the biological sciences in the UK.

Scottish paleobiologist Dr Thomas Halliday joins Amy for an in-depth conversation about his debut book, Otherlands: A World in the Making. Thomas takes us on a journey into deep time and introduces us to the awe-inducing ecosystems, animals, plants, and places that existed – from Alaska during the Pleistocene (20,000 years ago) to Australia during the Ediacaran (550 million years ago). Thomas is an Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Birmingham. His PhD won the Linnean Society Medal for the best thesis in the biological sciences in the UK.

Dr Chris Wallace discusses the media's role and performance in the federal election campaign and previews Labor's chances of winning. Chris is the author of, How To Win An Election, and is Associate Professor at the 50/50 By 2030 Foundation at the University of Canberra. Scottish paleobiologist Thomas Halliday joins Amy for an in-depth conversation about his debut book, Otherlands: A World in the Making. Thomas takes us on a journey into deep time and introduces us to the awe-inducing ecosystems, animals, plants, and places that existed – from Alaska during the Pleistocene (20,000 years ago) to Australia during the Ediacaran (550 million years ago). Plus, songwriter and comedian Andrew Hansen (The Chaser, CNNNNN, Stories From Oz) stops by to talk about the craft of comedy and his new stage show, Everyone Else Is Wrong, which he will perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Andrew Knoll about the geological history of the earth. They discuss how light, gravity, dark energy, and dark matter explain the early origins of the universe and earth. They also talk about the various layers of the earth, zircons, tectonic plates, and how one defines life. They also talk about how geology can assist in telling the time of earth, why the geologic timescale is important, and the early Ediacaran and Cambrian periods. They also talk about the impact of climate change, human involvement, and many other topics.  Andrew Knoll is the Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. He has a BA and PhD in Geology. He has been an Associate Professor of Biology at Harvard University since 1982. For the past decade, he has served on the science team for NASA's MER mission to Mars. 

We often use the phrase ‘it's the end of an era' to signify some great change in our lives, like leaving school forever. But actual eras are far, far longer than our brains can comprehend, usually lasting several hundred million years, with dramatic, global ecological changes as their finale. Around 541 million years ago, there was such an ending. As the Neoproterozoic era came to a close, so did the Proterozoic eon, and nearly 3.5 billion years of bacterial rule. Suddenly the prokaryotic mats were breaking apart and the slow, soft-bodied organisms that characterised the late Neoproterozoic were dying. Following this mass extinction, the new Cambrian period brought stunning increases in the diversity and complexity of life. These increases are called the Cambrian explosion. But what caused such a striking shift?This episode I will start with the fundamentals and work our way to the theorised explanations for the Cambrian explosion. I'll explain how evolution works, summarise the great history of life on Earth, and outline the methods that scientists use to examine this history. Then I'll draw our attention to the border between Ediacaran and Cambrian periods. We will see what was so significant about the evolutionary changes there, before assessing some of the most plausible reasons why the Cambrian explosion happened, and why it happened then of all times. https://whatwedontknow.buzzsprout.com/

Today, Lucas of the channel Deflate explains to us some of the basics of intelligent design...and it turns out that the basics of intelligent design basically debunk intelligent design, so that's fun.Sources:Physics Tutorial: Light Absorption, Reflection, and Transmission: https://bit.ly/3z09vpbThe Other Explosion You Should Know About: https://bit.ly/3ptSrojPre-Ediacaran fauna from Timan (Annelidomorphs of the Late Riphean): https://bit.ly/3FATubuIntegrated records of environmental change and evolution challenge the Cambrian Explosion: https://go.nature.com/3pswdD8Timeline: The evolution of life: https://bit.ly/3mBzChaHow Old Is The Seafloor: https://bit.ly/3H7FxlUMaotianshan Shales: https://bit.ly/3HdHSf9Earth's first animals may have been sea sponges: https://bit.ly/3mCcMWqThe advent of animals: The view from the Ediacaran: https://bit.ly/3Euui5bThe Late Precambrian fossil Kimberella is a mollusc-like bilaterian organism: https://go.nature.com/314CXhdStromatolites: https://bit.ly/3szPNPTLife on land: https://go.nature.com/3EzMR8eThe origin of animal body plans : a study in evolutionary developmental biology: https://bit.ly/3sEy6yGOriginal Video: https://bit.ly/3qw56X9Cards:Premature Explosion! Happens to all the Cambrians (feat. @Jackson Wheat):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-betRP5CT4E

Back in the 1940s, South Australian geologist Reg Sprigg first discovered Ediacaran fossils on the north end of Nilpena Station, to the west of the Flinders Ranges, redefining the Earth's history by adding in a whole new period.The Department for Environment and Water in South Australia has recently teamed up with several non-profit organisations to purchase a chunk of Nilpena Station and turn it into the Nilpena Ediacaran National Park. They're currently building trails, planning tours to the fossil site, and creating a visitor's centre which will have an audiovisual experience bringing a fossil bed to life.Today Cosmos journalist Lauren Fuge talks to Ross Fargher, the owner of Nilpena Station; Jason Irving, Manager of the National Parks and Protected Area Program for the Department for Environment and Water; and Mary Droser, Professor of Geology at the University of California, Riverside, USA. And if you want more on this, make sure you get the current issue of Cosmos Magazine, on sale now!Find the science of everything at the Cosmos Magazine website Subscribe to Cosmos Magazine (print) or the Cosmos WeeklyWatch and listen to all our Cosmos Briefings

(image source: https://prehistoric-life.fandom.com/wiki/Charnia) Host Matthew Donald and guest co-host Natasha Krech discuss Charnia, a very early animal that, yes, was an animal. I mean, not like a party animal or anything, although we did think it lived in groups. From the Ediacaran period, this 1-inch to 6-foot tall creature lived so long ago that I actually first learned the term "Ediacaran period" when researching for this episode. I always assumed before the Cambrian it was just "Precambrian"! Who knew you could learn stuff on this show?!

Today, we're going to be discussing the Ediacaran fauna. This is a faunal assemblage that came before the Cambrian Explosion (535-525 Mya) but is less well known. Unlike the Cambrian Explosion- which saw the creation of most of the phyla we know today- the Ediacaran biota is much less familiar. It also appears to be quite confusing in terms of what category its constituent organisms fall under... Sources for this episode: 1) Campbell, N. A., Urry, L. A., Cain, M. L., Wasserman, S. A., Minorsky, P. V. and Reece, J. B. (2018), Biology: a global approach, 11th edition (Global Edition), Harlow, Pearson Education Limited. 2) Ebling, F. J. G., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2017), Integument (online) [Accessed 29/05/2021]. 3) Flannery, T. F., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Cambrian explosion (online) [Accessed 27/05/2021]. 4) Grazhdankin, D. (2011), Ediacaran Biota. In: Reitner J. and Thiel, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geobiology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. 5) Herron, J. C. and Freeman, S. (2015), Evolutionary Analysis (Fifth Edition, Global Edition). Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. 6) Rafferty, J. P., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2018), Ediacaran Period (online) [Accessed 28/05/2021]. 7) Shen, B., Dong, L., Xiao, S. and Kowalewski, M. (2008), The Avalon Explosion: Evolution of Ediacara Morphospace, Science 319(5859): 81-84. 8) Thain, M. and Hickman, M. (2014), Dictionary of Biology (Eleventh Edition). London: Penguin Books Ltd. 9) Virginia Tech, ScienceDaily (2008), Two Explosive Evolutionary Events Shaped Early History Of Multicellular Life (online) [Accessed 28/05/2021]. 10) Windley, B. F., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Ediacara fauna (online) [Accessed 28/05/2021]. 11) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Ediacaran biota (online) [Accessed 28/05/2021]. 12) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Marinoan glaciation (online) [Accessed 28/05/2021].

The fossil record goes back through the Phanerozoic eon, about 540 million years, and even earlier, into the Ediacaran period. But while the fossils provide incontrovertible evidence of ancient life, the fossils themselves are certainly not alive. In fossils, the original organic matter belonging to the fossilized life form has been replaced by inorganic materials, cast into the shape formerly occupied by the life form. However, in some situations, the original organic matter does survive. For example, original spores as old as 350 million years have been identified using their original organic material. And DNA can survive for as much as a million years. But in 2019, bacteria that had been buried 100 million years with barely any access to nutrients were not only identified but shown to be alive. Had they been in suspended animation for all that time? Or were they managing to eke out a living using much less energy than was previously thought to be necessary? Steve D'Hondt is a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. He studies life beneath the sea floor and was on the team that discovered bacterial cells living in 100 million-year-old sediment. To see podcast illustrations and learn more about Geology Bites, go to geologybites.com.

The Eon in which we live is called the Phanerozoic, which comes from the ancient Greek word for visible life. The eon starts with the Cambrian, which began 541 million years ago. But in recent decades it has become increasingly clear from the fossil record that there was visible life before the Cambrian, and complex life at that. So what caused it to emerge then, and what caused it to proliferate and diversify so vigorously in the early Cambrian? Rachel Wood is Professor of Carbonate Geoscience at the University of Edinburgh. She and her team have uncovered fossils that suggest that the fuse of the so called Cambrian explosion was lit in the Ediacaran – the geological period that preceded the Cambrian. Go to geologybites.com for illustrations that include pictures of the Ediacaran fossils Rachel Wood discusses in the podcast and of some of the locations in Siberia and Namibia where she found them, as well as to learn more about Geology Bites.

Imagine if you lived in a world where some humans evolved the ability to fly, use one hundred percent of their brainpower, or the ability to reproduce at twice the normal rate. These evolved humans would certainly have an evolutionary advantage over the rest of us, and likely outcompete us in the long-term. What if a similar situation happened around 541 million years ago? Around this time, in the late Neoproterozoic, the Ediacaran biota, mostly filter-feeding and immobile organisms, faced the threat of extinction from their more agile, burrowing, and mobile competitors that evolved during the late Ediacaran and early Cambrian. A mass extinction ensued, but the definite causes are still being debated. We talk to Associate Professor Marc Laflamme, an expert on Paleoclimate and Paleontology about this fascinating time period.  Primary Sources Discussed:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825220304815

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode is PACKED with colorful vocabulary! Most would define these as sexually explicit words, which does not make sense, because these words are referring to organs used for nursing (which are not used for sex!). However, we do use sexually explicit language when referring to the male body, because men have it coming! Oops In today's episode... Me, Myself and YVA toss around some wacky theories! Were the Ediacaran seas packed with floating boobs? Are these boobs remnants of our long-lost dolphin overlords? Have geologists been covering up the existence of prehistoric boobies for decades? And the most wacky, insane theory or all...should we stop sexualizing non-sexual body parts and allow a whole gender to freely inhabit the physical vessels they are born with? Oh, how shocking! They've been trying to cover 'em up for centuries. We're exposing them! :) ====================== The Haven of the Abyssal Cnidaria want YOU! Join us. Spread the word. May eternal be thy Flashy! ====================== Send us suggestions and comments to darwinsdeviations@gmail.com Intro/outro sampled from "Sequence (Mystery and Terror) 3" by Francisco Sánchez (@fanchisanchez) at pixabay.com Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com YVA voiced with FreeTTS Image Credit: Verisimilus at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Episode image is heavily edited, the image owner reserves all rights to their image, and is not affiliated with our podcast) SOURCES: A LOT of Wikipedia articles I cannot possibly list Urban Thesaurus - Slang words for Breasts The science of why human breasts are so big Evolution of Life - The Ediacaran: Cyclomedusa Wei-guo, Sun. “Precambrian medusoids: The Cyclomedusa plexus and Cyclomedusa-like pseudofossils.” Precambrian Research 31 (1986): 325-360. R. J. F. Jenkins, C. H. Ford & J. G. Gehling (1983) The Ediacara member of the Rawnsley quartzite: The context of the Ediacara assemblage (late precambrian, flinders ranges), Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, 30:1-2, 101-119, DOI: 10.1080/00167618308729240 Narbonne, G. (1994). New Ediacaran fossils from the Mackenzie Mountains, northwestern Canada. Journal of Paleontology, 68(3), 411-416. doi:10.1017/S0022336000025816 Crimes, T., A. Insole and B. J. Williams. “A rigid-bodied Ediacaran Biota from Upper Cambrian strata in Co. Wexford, Eire.” Geological Journal 30 (1995): 89-109. McMenamin, Mark. (1986). The Garden of Ediacara. Palaios. 1. 178. 10.2307/3514512. McMenamin, M.A.S. and McMenamin, D.L.S. (1990) The Emergence of Animals; the Cambrian Breakthrough, Columbia University Press McMenamin, M. (1998). The Garden of Ediacara. New York: Columbia University Press.

On this ID the Future, German paleontologist Günter Bechly explains why the Precambrian fossil Namacalathus fails as a transitional precursor to the Cambrian explosion. Darwinists want to find transitional precursors to the Cambrian animals to minimize how poorly the Cambrian explosion fits with Darwinism’s story of a gradual evolutionary development. Dr. Bechly gives other examples of such efforts as well and shows how each fails. As he says, the more we learn about the Cambrian and Precambrian, the more dramatic the Cambrian explosion appears and the poorer it fits with modern evolutionary theory. As he also notes, the points he makes in this episode have been made by mainstream evolutionary paleontologists. He differs only in stepping back from the larger pattern Read More › Source

New fossil finds and new techniques reveal evidence that early animals were more complex than previously thought.The Cambrian explosion, around 541 million years ago, has long been regarded as a pivotal point in evolutionary history, as this is when the ancient ancestors of most of today’s animals made their first appearances in the fossil record.Before this was a period known as the Ediacaran – a time when the world was believed to be populated by strange, simple organisms. But now, modern molecular research techniques, and some newly discovered fossils, are providing evidence that some of these organisms were actually animals, including ones with sophisticated features like legs and guts.This is an audio version of our feature: These bizarre ancient species are rewriting animal evolution See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

All this will be best viewed through a true biblical cosmology: If you are a rock nerd who loves the Lord... for $5 You can get this, and 72 other videos, and a bunch of PDF's @ https://isgenesishistory.com/conference/ Dr. Kurt Wise provides an explanation for the worldwide distribution of Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian fossils, including Ediacaran, Dickinsonia, and the Cambrian explosion. Dr. Kurt Wise earned his BA in geology from the University of Chicago, and his MA and PhD degrees in paleontology from Harvard University. He founded and directed the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College and taught biology there for 17 years. He then led the Center for Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for 3 years, before founding and directing the Center for Creation Research and teaching biology at Truett McConnell University for the last 7 years. His fieldwork has included research in early Flood rocks in the Death Valley region, late Flood rocks in Wyoming, and post-Flood caves in Tennessee. ~~~~~~~ Contact or follow me @ BeGoodBroadcast@gmail.com Twitter @WinInHim --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/support

All this will be best viewed through a true biblical cosmology: If you are a rock nerd who loves the Lord... for $5 You can get this, and 72 other videos, and a bunch of PDF's @ https://isgenesishistory.com/conference/ Dr. Kurt Wise provides an explanation for the worldwide distribution of Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian fossils, including Ediacaran, Dickinsonia, and the Cambrian explosion. If you like this lecture from the 2017 IGH Conference, you can get it and over 70 more at: https://isgenesishistory.com/conference/. Learn more about the film "Is Genesis History?" and get more resources at http://www.isgenesishistory.com/ The question of how a global Flood could happen is an important area of research for modern creation scientists. One of the theories used to explain this process was developed by a number of scientists featured in the film.* It is known as “Catastrophic Plate Tectonics” and has a great deal of explanatory power concerning the geophysical processes behind the global catastrophe. During the 2017 IGH Conference, Dr. Kurt Wise explored the impact of the global flood on the earth in a series of three in-depth lectures. This lecture on the “geophysics of the flood,” the third in the series, provides a fascinating look at the processes behind the global flood. (Here is a technical paper on the same topic by the six scientists.) If you've not seen the documentary yet, here are ways to watch Is Genesis History featuring Kurt Wise and 12 other scientists and scholars: https://isgenesishistory.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/begoodbroadcast/support

Learn why coffee tastes bad when you reheat it; and how researchers found the ancestor of most living animals. Stand-up mathematician Matt Parker will also explain why the word “null” causes so many problems for computer programmers. Why does coffee taste bad when you reheat it? by Andrea Michelson Shields, J. (2017, April 14). Can Science Explain Why Microwaved Coffee Tastes So Terrible? HowStuffWorks. https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-science/why-microwaved-coffee-tastes-bad.htm  Underwood,‌ K. (2018, May 23). This is the best way to reheat coffee. Death Wish Coffee Company. https://www.deathwishcoffee.com/blogs/news/best-way-to-reheat-coffee  Gaterman, L. (2015, September 11). This is the Best Way to Reheat Coffee. The Daily Meal. https://www.thedailymeal.com/drink/best-way-reheat-coffee  We just found the ancestor of most living animals by Cameron Duke Ancestor of all animals identified in Australian fossils. (2020, March 23). Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancestor-animals-australian-fossils.html  Balter, M. (2015, March 9). Oldest known sponge pushes back date for key split in animal evolution. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/oldest-known-sponge-pushes-back-date-key-split-animal-evolution  Evans, S. D., Hughes, I. V., Gehling, J. G., & Droser, M. L. (2020). Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2001045117  Jellyfish and Comb Jellies. (2019, March 22). Smithsonian Ocean. https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/jellyfish-and-comb-jellies  Werner, E. (2012). The Origin, Evolution and Development of Bilateral Symmetry in Multicellular Organisms. ArXiv:1207.3289 [Cs, q-Bio]. https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.3289  Additional resources from Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician: Pick up “Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World” on Amazon https://amzn.to/3c3xwi9  Matt Parker’s official website http://standupmaths.com/ Subscribe to Matt Parker’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/standupmaths Follow @standupmaths on Twitter https://twitter.com/standupmaths Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY

The gang talks about two papers which look at the ecology of the Ediacaran. One paper uses trace fossils to infer how ecological systems change as we move from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian, and the second paper identifies some interesting features previously undocumented in Ediacaran fossils. Meanwhile, Curt has ideas about sponges, the internet destroys James’s comedic timing, and Amanda is happy to finally put those years of teaching physiology to good use.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about the time just before we have a lot of dead things that can appear in rocks. The first paper looks at the tracks left behind by animals and other things as they change through time. In the time before when we have a lot of dead things in rocks, there are still tracks. As we study these tracks, it turns out that there are lots of changes in these tracks that we didn't know about. It turns out that tracks show life was doing lots of things that we didn't see because the dead things themselves didn't get into rocks. This means the big changes we see as soon as dead things appear in the rocks might have been happening earlier. The next paper looks at a group of weird things that were around a lot before we had a lot of dead things in the rocks. These weird things are like sticks with bits on either side. There used to be lots of these stick things, and it turns out that these stick things had small lines that goes to each of these sticks. These lines are very small, which is why it was so hard to find them. The paper thinks that these lines might mean that all of these sticks are a repeat of the same stick over and over again. This is something that some things that make their own food from the sun do today, meaning that making more of themselves by repeating over and over again might be something that first happened a long time ago.   References:  Liu, Alexander G., and Frances S. Dunn. "Filamentous Connections between Ediacaran Fronds." Current Biology (2020).  Laing, Brittany A., et al. "A protracted Ediacaran–Cambrian transition: an ichnologic ecospace analysis of the Fortunian in Newfoundland, Canada." Geological Magazine 156.9 (2019): 1623-1630.

The Ediacaran Period is host to the first large and complex multicellular organisms known in the fossil record. This 'Ediacaran Biota' has long eluded definitive placement on the tree of life, seemingly falling between even the most fundamental of its branches. At the core of this taxonomic issue are their unique body plans, not seen replicated in any other kingdom. Amongst the researchers trying to unravel the mystery of these organisms is Dr Frances Dunn of the University of Oxford. Frankie has been researching the developmental biology of the Ediacaran Biota in the hope that we can learn more from how these forms grew, as opposed to what they eventually grew into.

Kiedy powstało życie? Czym jest eksplozja Avalonu a czym eksplozja kambryjska? Słuchajcie a się dowiecie. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fauna_ediakara%C5%84ska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wymieranie_ediakarskie

The gang discusses two papers that use new findings to upend some of our previous interpretations of fossil taxa. First, they talk about the new biogeochemical studies that suggest the odd disc-shaped Ediacaran organism, Dickinsonia, might be the first animal in our fossil record. Second, they talk about some new fossil interpretations that challenge our understanding about the evolution of sauropods (the big, long necked dinosaurs). Also, James discusses posture, Curt buries the dinosaur lede, and Amanda finds out she has things to say… later.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends get together to talk about new things that have been found out about some very old things. First, they talk about this round thing that was around a very very very long time ago. This round thing was very funny looking, and a lot of people had different ideas about what this round thing could have been. But some people just did a study to try and found out what the round thing was made of. It turns out, the round thing is made up of matter with 4 bits in rings. These types of matter rings are only found today in all of the animals. So, they then said that this funny looking round thing was probably an animal. The friends next talk about these very large animals that had very long necks and lived a long time ago. These long necked animals were thought to have gotten really big after they started walking on all four of their feet and their legs became like trees. However, this study found that there were earlier long necked animals that were almost just as big, but were able to spend some time on two feet and their legs were still very much like legs. This means that these long necked animals got big and got small again over time without needing to get really thick tree legs that would make them have to only walk on four feet.   References: Bobrovskiy, Ilya, et al. "Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals." Science 361.6408 (2018): 1246-1249.   McPhee, Blair W., et al. "A giant dinosaur from the earliest Jurassic of South Africa and the transition to quadrupedality in early sauropodomorphs." Current Biology 28.19 (2018): 3143-3151. 

4 billion years ago, life on earth looked nothing like it does today. In fact, the oceans contained only single-celled microbes. At some point, these single-celled organisms began to work together, forming complex, multi-celled creatures, which then suddenly became much larger. The question is, why? Emily Mitchell studies one of the earliest animals believed to exist, and explained to Marika Ottman why she thinks these creatures got bigger when they did Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

4 billion years ago, life on earth looked nothing like it does today. In fact, the oceans contained only single-celled microbes. At some point, these single-celled organisms began to work together, forming complex, multi-celled creatures, which then suddenly became much larger. The question is, why? Emily Mitchell studies one of the earliest animals believed to exist, and explained to Marika Ottman why she thinks these creatures got bigger when they did Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Before life as we know it, and before even the Cambrian Explosion, there was a time when the Earth was home to an assortment of strange squishy creatures so unusual that they defy most of our best attempts at classification. This episode, we discuss life’s earliest experiments with complex bodies: the Ediacaran Biota. In the news: the last pterosaurs, ancient lost tails, island spider evolution, and the legs of gators and crocs. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:05:30 Main discussion: 00:31:30 Please take our LISTENER SURVEY! https://goo.gl/forms/sY8YUr5cme59ORR03 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ 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 Podcast music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org.

Just what are prehistoric aliens? Simon Darroch from the Department of Paleobiology introduces us to the Ediacaran biota of Southern Namibia.

The gang discusses two papers that deal with the events that led to the extinction of the early metazoan Ediacaran fauna, as well as the extinction's philosophical ramifications for our understanding of evolution in general. Chaos runs rampant throughout this podcast as our figurative and literal systems break down through time. But somehow, life.... finds a way.... through a 4G network. Meanwhile, Amanda jumps the gun, Curt makes jokes no one can understand, James "wins" again, and everyone slowly succumbs to chaos and madness. If you're just joining us for the first time, I'm so very... very sorry.    References: Darroch, Simon AF, et al. "Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacara biota." Proc. R. Soc. B. Vol. 282. No. 1814. The Royal Society, 2015. Erwin, Douglas H. "Was the Ediacaran–Cambrian radiation a unique evolutionary event?." Paleobiology 41.01 (2015): 1-15.

The gang goes broad and tackles two papers that deal with evidence of sex and reproduction in the fossil record. Meanwhile, Amanda goes method, James invents a new scientific term, and Curt is haunted by one terrible joke that will not die. "Hyperfun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ "Up goer five" text summary Today the group talks about fucking. Yes, fuck is one of the ten hundred most used words, while better and less bad words for fucking are not. You think what that means about people. Just think about it. The first paper is looking at the oldest pictures of stuff that comes out of a man after he has had a fuck. This fuck water is from a small animal with no hard parts and so we usually do not know that the animal was there. However, the fuck water is different for different types of small animal, and so we can see what small animals with no hard parts were there without seeing the actual animals. The fuck water has also been ignored for a long time, so we may be able to find more fuck water and find out more about small animals with no hard parts. The second paper is looking at some of the earliest things that might be animals and their babies. Looking at where the babies are and where the parents are, the paper tries to work out whether these things that might be animals that fucked or whether they just grew babies off of them on sticks. The numbers show that these maybe animals did not fuck, but grew babies on sticks. Other things that might be animals from the same time did fuck, and they are found in many more places. The fact that these maybe animals grew babies on sticks might explain why they are found in only one place while the ones that did fuck are found in lots of places. References Bomfleur, Benjamin, et al. "Fossilized spermatozoa preserved in a 50-Myr-old annelid cocoon from Antarctica." Biology letters 11.7 (2015): 20150431. Mitchell, Emily G., et al. "Reconstructing the reproductive mode of an Ediacaran macro-organism." Nature (2015).

In this episode, the gang discusses two papers that look at the ecology of the early life forms of the Ediacaran period. Also, James discusses the American dream, Curt details the secrets of the podcast's "success", and Amanda is nearly murdered by her cat.   References: Carbone, Calla, and Guy M. Narbonne. "When life got smart: the evolution of behavioral complexity through the Ediacaran and early Cambrian of NW Canada." Journal of Paleontology 88.2 (2014): 309-330. Cuthill, Jennifer F. Hoyal, and Simon Conway Morris. "Fractal branching organizations of Ediacaran rangeomorph fronds reveal a lost Proterozoic body plan." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2014): 201408542.

The history of life in the oceans spans over 3.5 billion years. In this Naked Oceans we'll take a whistlestop tour of that story... For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

The history of life in the oceans spans over 3.5 billion years. In this Naked Oceans we'll take a whistlestop tour of that story... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The biota of the Ediacaran period (635 - 541 ma) is of critical importance to our understanding of the origin of animals because it immediately precedes the Cambrian fauna, from which all subsequent animal life evolved. Localities of this age are justly famous for the exceptional quality of preservation of soft-bodied organisms. One of the best known and most important Ediacaran localities is at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. We got to talk to Dr. Alex Liu, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, about Mistaken Point, and the nature of its biota.