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In this episode a class of boisterous children and their teacher Ms. Pringle invade the halls of the fossil gallery.

Join us next time as we meet a few fossils!

Kids send your questions to Prof Witherspoon via text link!

Key terms and concepts to learn from this episode.

Paleontologist-Scientist who studies ancient organisms and their fossils.
Cephalopods-Cephalopods are widely regarded as the most intelligent of the invertebrates with very developed senses and large brains. Living examples in this group include octopus, cuttlefish and the nautilus.   
Mollusks (molluscs)- Do all mollusks have shells? Animals in this group usually are enclosed in a shell but there are exceptions as discussed in podcast! Mollusca is the second-largest group of invertebrate animals after arthropods.  Around 76,000 extant or living species of molluscs are recognized with the number of fossil species to be around an additional 60,000 to 100,000 species.
Ammonites (or ammonoids) Ammonoids are actually early relatives of the nautilus. Ammonites are a suborder of ammonoids that didn’t appear until 200 million years ago during the Jurassic. They are more closely related to living octopuses, squid and cuttlefish than to nautiloids.   
Nautilus (living today) (Nautiloids is the formal term for ancient species)- Nautiloids are the earliest cephalopods found in the fossil record and had straight or coiled shells. It is believed there were as many as 10,000 different species of Nautiloids but only about 7-9 species of Nautilus survive today.

See a living Nautilus here!

https://youtu.be/eEJSyvOubiI?si=XOjq0iNU_Vmg7RjcI

 

Voiceovers in this episode: 
Andrea Bryan as Ms. Pringle
Kevin Kline as Professor Witherspoon /boy
Elizabeth Breckenkamp as girl
Written/Directed by Anne Basham
 

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For additional educational content for this podcast go to Extincto! | ECOCAST (eco-cast.org)