Podcast 73 - Sincere Apologies to All Ammonite Workers

In this episode, we discuss two papers that describe ammonite feeding habits. Meanwhile,  Amanda gets into a boxing match, Curt is introduced to Moon Moon, and James is completely derailed by an animal.... again. Also, James invents a completely ridiculous life strategy  for ammonites (34 :30) that Curt is just drunk enough to truly appreciate. 

Simple text summary

The groups looks at two papers to find out what old animals with many arms and a hard house that they moved about the water in ate. The first paper studies old animals that have been looked at with a computer to see inside them and look at their teeth. The study shows that some of these many armed house carrying animals ate tiny animals that fill the water. The other paper looks at the mouths of other types of animals with arms that carry houses on them and finds that they are very different. This paper shows that several different types of animals with arms that cary houses ate different things, and that the oldest type of eating is still seen today in a living animal with many arms that carries its house around.

References

Kruta, Isabelle, et al. "The role of ammonites in the Mesozoic marine food web revealed by jaw preservation." Science 331.6013 (2011): 70-72.

Tanabe, Kazushige, et al. "The jaw apparatuses of Cretaceous Phylloceratina (Ammonoidea)." Lethaia 46.3 (2013): 399-408.