Palaeo After Dark

That gang discusses convergent evolution and potential sexual selection in the horns and frills of ceratopsian dinosaurs, which Amanda refers to as the "most American dinosaur". Also, Amanda defends a cause, James practices being a "tiger mom", and Curt drinks for two with disastrous but expected consequences.

Up-Goer Five podcast summary (using only the ten hundred most commonly used English words):

The group talks about big angry animals with no hair that have things coming out of their faces. There are two groups of big angry animals with no hair that have things coming out of their faces, one with tall things coming off of the neck with smaller things coming out of their faces and another with a short thing coming off of the neck and longer things coming out of their faces. Some studies have looked at what all these things on faces and necks are for, and hurt marks on the hard bits of bodies show that the things were used to fight so that a Mr big angry animal with no hair could find a Mrs big angry animal with no hair. A new finding also shows that after the ones with long things on the necks died out, one of the ones with a short thing on its neck began to look like one of the long thing on the neck ones on its own.

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

 

References:

Farlow, James O., and Peter Dodson. "The behavioral significance of frill and horn morphology in ceratopsian dinosaurs." Evolution (1975): 353-361.

Farke, Andrew A. "Horn use in Triceratops (Dinosauria: Ceratopsidae): testing behavioral hypotheses using scale models." Palaeontologia Electronica 7.1 (2004): 1-10.

Farke, Andrew A., Ewan DS Wolff, and Darren H. Tanke. "Evidence of combat in Triceratops." (2009): e4252.

Brown, Caleb M., and Donald M. Henderson. "A New Horned Dinosaur Reveals Convergent Evolution in Cranial Ornamentation in Ceratopsidae." Current Biology (2015).

Direct download: Podcast_61_-_Frills_and_Horns_Ceratopsian_Convergence.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

In this episode, the gang discuss the diverse and ecologically abundant mammals of the Mesozoic. Meanwhile, Amanda gives dedicated fans an exclusive cat report, James learns something, and Curtis does his best Skeletor impression. However, the greatest question goes unanswered: what are Wombles?

Up-Goer Five podcast summary (using only the ten hundred most commonly used English words):
The group talks about two papers that look at warm blooded animals with hair from a very long time ago, during the time of the big angry animals that did not have hair. While it used to be thought that there were not many different kinds of warm blooded animals with hair a very long time ago, new studies show that there were lots of different kinds of warm blooded animals with hair a long time ago and that they did lots of different things even when there were still big angry animals that did not have hair. It is shown that they changed to do these many different things several different times, and that changes to do these different things have happened alone in different groups that are not families with each other.

References: 

Luo, X-Z. 2007. Transformation and diversification in early mammal evolution. Nature 450: 1011–1019.

Chen, M. & Wilson, GP. 2015. A multivariate approach to infer locomotor modes in Mesozoic mammals. Paleobiology 41: 280–312.

Direct download: Podcast_60_-_Many_Memorable_Mesozoic_Mammals.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

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