Episode 143 - Monitor Lizards

Monitor lizards are charismatic, surprisingly diverse, full of surprising biological features, and on top of all that, they include the largest terrestrial lizards in history. Also, they’re closely related to snakes (it is Snake Month, after all). That’s a cool group of lizards! In this episode, we discuss what makes these lizards so unique and fascinating, and we dive into their long but often mysterious fossil record to address some major questions about monitor evolution.

In the news: vampire squids, dinosaur eggs, octopus intelligence, and pickled snakes.

Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:06:45Main discussion, Part 1: 00:38:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:19:30Patron question: 01:57:00

IT’S SNAKE MONTH! Check out our Snake Month activities on our social media, Discord, and Patreon!

Links to the organizations we mentioned in the Intro:National Network of Abortion Funds: https://abortionfunds.org/about/Answer: https://answer.rutgers.edu/page/aboutusintro

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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/