Palaeo After Dark

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.

Direct download: Podcast_30_-_Thats_Not_Genocide.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

With thesis defenses on the horizon, the group looks to a comforting and familiar topic to escape their morose nerves; mass extinctions. Specifically, they discuss two papers about patterns of survivorship across mass extinction events and use this as a springboard to talking about general macroevolutionary patterns. Also, James fires Curt, Amanda fires James, and Curt decides to host his own private podcast in the middle of the real podcast with special guest Amanda. SPOILERS for House of Cards in the first 30 seconds of the podcast.

 

References:

Jablonski, David. "Survival without recovery after mass extinctions."Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99.12 (2002): 8139-8144.

Thorne, Philippa M., Marcello Ruta, and Michael J. Benton. "Resetting the evolution of marine reptiles at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108.20 (2011): 8339-8344.

Vrba, Elisabeth S., and Stephen Jay Gould. "The hierarchical expansion of sorting and selection: sorting and selection cannot be equated." Paleobiology(1986): 217-228.

Vrba, Elisabeth S. "Levels of selection and sorting with special reference to the species level." Oxford surveys in evolutionary biology 6 (1989): 111-168. 

Direct download: Podcast_29_-_Everythings_Screwed.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

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