Episode 115 - Biomes

All over the Earth, there are biological communities that differ depending on the local climate and landscape. These are biomes, and biologists love to map them to unravel patterns of ecosystem distribution. But biomes also change over time as climates and landscapes shift. In this episode, our favorite paleobotanist, Dr. Aly Baumgartner, joins us to discuss how we identify biomes in the past and present, how they’ve changed over time, and what it means for a new biome to arise … or for an old one to go extinct.

In the news: whale diets, moa poop, shark extinction, and flower seeds.

Follow Aly on Twitter or Instagram @paleolorax

Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:05:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:33:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:11:30Patron question: 01:46:30

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org.

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/