Palaeo After Dark

The gang discusses two papers that look at fossils of the early whale group Basilosauridae. Specially, these papers describe the largest whale recovered from this group, as well as the smallest whale from the group. Meanwhile, Amanda has a lovely home, James has some whale facts, and Curt has some art critiques.

 

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

The friends talk about two papers that look at one group of big animals that breathe air but move in the water that are no longer around today. These papers are looking at different animals within the same group. The cool thing about both of these papers is that they talk about the same thing, but from different ways of looking at it. This is because one of these papers is about the biggest animal that people have found in this group and the other paper is about the smallest animal found in this group. This is a big thing because this is a group that today has gotten really big and the reasons why these groups get big has been something people are really interested in. These papers show that these animals were getting both big and small very early on in the group.

 

References:

Bianucci, Giovanni, et al. "A heavyweight early whale pushes the boundaries of vertebrate morphology." Nature (2023): 1-6.

Antar, Mohammed S., et al. "A  diminutive new basilosaurid whale reveals the trajectory of the cetacean  life histories during the Eocene." Communications Biology 6.1 (2023): 707.

Direct download: Podcast_269_-_Baba_Yagas_Whale_Facts_As_Written_By_ChatGPT.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

The gang discusses two papers that investigate the feeding strategies of ancient animals, including a fossil stingray and an ancient bird. Meanwhile, James is recovering, Curt refuses to do his job, and Amanda is in podcast heaven but teetering over podcast hell.
 
Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):
The friends look at two papers that looks into what old animals that are long dead would eat. The first paper looks at the teeth of a group of animals that move through the water like waves and have a long back part. Animals in this group today eat lots of different things. In the past, we do not know what these animals would eat so we do not know the ways in which these animals have changed to better eat the things they eat. This paper finds an old animal with teeth and body parts and finds that this thing could break hard things with its teeth, but also that it moved through the water in a different way than the animals today that break hard things.
The second paper looks at hard things in the stomach of an old animal that flies. This animal has a lot of questions about what it would eat. This paper finds that the hard things in the stomach show that this animal was eating green things that make their own food. This animal was not just eating the soft easy to eat things like sweet parts that hold the things that make new green things, but also the leaves as well.
 
References:
Marramà, Giuseppe, et al. "The evolutionary origin of the durophagous pelagic stingray ecomorph." Palaeontology 66.4 (2023): e12669.
Wu, Yan, et al. "Intra-gastric phytoliths provide evidence for folivory in basal avialans of the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota." Nature Communications 14.1 (2023): 4558.
Direct download: Podcast_268_-_Tooth_Hurts.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am EDT

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