The gang celebrates their 100th episode by taking a break and playing Fiasco, a crime/noir storytelling game by Bully Pit Games.

A fluorescent motel sign illuminates the inky blackness, its crackling electric hum merging perfectly with the clicking of the cicadas in the humid summer night. A solitary figure stands nearby, barely visible in the garish green and orange glow. She nervously rolls a cigarette between her fingers, her gaze furtively snapping back and forth between the barely illuminated run down two story building, the "Motel Manna", and the vast empty night. The unexpected flash of a pair of headlights from an all too familiar Dodge catches her gaze and for a second she freezes in place and hopes it's all a dream. The car stops and she knows she's been seen. "Fuck it" she says to herself, cigarette now firmly clenched so tightly in her jaw it would take a crowbar to pry it out. Summer nights like these can just be too much for one person to bare.

"Too Much to Bear" is a story of murder, betrayal, and bear smuggling.

"Deadly Roulette" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode, the gang discusses two papers that look at the ecological and evolutionary impacts of animal camouflage. Also, James finds his true calling as a musician, Amanda wants to knit a sweater for a 50 foot hare, and Curt is surprised that he's still surprised.

References:

Zimova, Marketa, L. Scott Mills, and J. Joshua Nowak. "High fitness costs of climate change‐induced camouflage mismatch." Ecology letters 19.3 (2016): 299-307.

Somveille, Marius, Kate LA Marshall, and Thanh-Lan Gluckman. "A global analysis of bird plumage patterns reveals no association between habitat and camouflage." PeerJ 4 (2016): e2658.

<Editor's Note: Skip to 13 minutes in if you only want to get to the science. I didn't have the heart to cut the intro down>

In this episode, we eventually get to discussing patterns of extinction selectivity in mammals during two major extinctions (the end Cretaceous and the modern biodiversity crisis). Also, James discusses delicious ways to end the world, Curt details the Lord of the Footballs, and Amanda really would like to know WHEN we're going to start discussing the papers.

References:

Longrich, N. R., J. Scriberas, and M. A. Wills. "Severe extinction and rapid recovery of mammals across the Cretaceous‐Paleogene boundary, and the effects of rarity on patterns of extinction and recovery." Journal of evolutionary biology (2016).

Lyons, S. Kathleen, et al. "The changing role of mammal life histories in Late Quaternary extinction vulnerability on continents and islands." Biology Letters 12.6 (2016): 20160342.

The gang discusses two papers about archosaur heads, one of which is actually about archosaurs with big heads. Also, Amanda's cat gets revenge for the podcast thumbnail, James wants to be a super villain, Curt decides to drink, and we all design better dinosaurs.

Also, this cockatoo gif is a thing that should be known and celebrated.

http://i.imgur.com/mZEnTJc.mp4

Midi music from freemidi.org

References: 

Gates, Terry A., Chris Organ, and Lindsay E. Zanno. "Bony cranial ornamentation linked to rapid evolution of gigantic theropod dinosaurs." Nature Communications 7 (2016): 12931.

Stocker, Michelle R., et al. "A dome-headed stem archosaur exemplifies convergence among dinosaurs and their distant relatives." Current Biology26.19 (2016): 2674-2680.

The gang discuss two interesting fossil localities that allow us to see snapshots of ancient ecosystems. Meanwhile, Curt describes an alternative Madden series, Amanda is given questionable life advice, and James comes up with a "story" for our fossils.

References: 

Smith, Krister T., and Agustín Scanferla. "Fossil snake preserving three trophic levels and evidence for an ontogenetic dietary shift."Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments (2016): 1-11.

Olive, Sébastien, et al. "Placoderm Assemblage from the Tetrapod-Bearing Locality of Strud (Belgium, Upper Famennian) Provides Evidence for a Fish Nursery." PloS one 11.8 (2016): e0161540. 

The gang discusses two papers that deal with the age of animals, one fossil paper looking at tyranosaurids and one modern example looking at Greenland sharks. Meanwhile, Amanda has unique pronunciations, James invents a series of "better" movies, and Curt gets contemplative when left alone. 

References: 

Nielsen, Julius, et al. "Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus)." Science 353.6300 (2016): 702-704.

Erickson, Gregory M., et al. "Tyrannosaur life tables: an example of nonavian dinosaur population biology." Science 313.5784 (2006): 213-217.

It's that time of year again as James and Curt travel to Denver and see the cool, new, interesting paleo research that's going on at the Geological Society of America Meeting 2016. This year they're joined by friend of the podcast Brendan Anderson, as well as ammonoid worker Carine Kline, evolutionary biology April Wright, and a very exuberant and somewhat inebriated David Bapst.

Day 1 with James and Curt: 0:00:00 - 1:17:30.

Day 2 with James, Curt, Brendan, and Carine: 1:17:30- 2:47:55

Day 3 with James, Curt, and Brendan: 2:47:55-3:31:17

Day 4 with James, Curt, Brendan, April, and David: 3:31:17-5:21:35

In this episode, the gang discusses two studies that look at the extent to which the ecological preferences of an organism are linked to that organism's morphology. Meanwhile, Curt has an existential crisis, Amanda stops caring to the extreme, and James desperately asks for another take.

References:

Smithson, Timothy R., Kelly R. Richards, and Jennifer A. Clack. "Lungfish diversity in Romer's Gap: reaction to the end‐Devonian extinction."Palaeontology 59.1 (2016): 29-44.

Cothran, Rickey D., et al. "Phenotypically similar but ecologically distinct: differences in competitive ability and predation risk among amphipods."Oikos 122.10 (2013): 1429-1440.

The gang discusses two papers that describe the root systems of the first "tree-like" plants, the giant lycopsids from the Carboniferous. Also, Amanda's cat finds a brand new toy, James over commits to a bit, and Curt pulls the strings behind the scene.

References:

Thomas, Barry A., and Leyla J. Seyfullah. "Stigmaria Brongniart: a new specimen from Duckmantian (Lower Pennsylvanian) Brymbo (Wrexham, North Wales) together with a review of known casts and how they were preserved." Geological Magazine 152.05 (2015): 858-870.

Hetherington, Alexander J., Christopher M. Berry, and Liam Dolan. "Networks of highly branched stigmarian rootlets developed on the first giant trees." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016): 201514427.

The gang discusses two papers that study how human beings have affected the evolutionary trajectories of other organisms. Meanwhile, Amanda paints an imaginative scene, James describes the perfect human world, and Curt wins the most obscure movie reference. 

Music: "Central Park" by Charles Ives, used in accordance with Fair Use.

References:

LaZerte, Stefanie E., Hans Slabbekoorn, and Ken A. Otter. "Learning to cope: vocal adjustment to urban noise is correlated with prior experience in black-capped chickadees." Proc. R. Soc. B. Vol. 283. No. 1833. The Royal Society, 2016.