Palaeocast

Palaeontology is a constantly evolving field; when new methods and techniques are invented, they allow us to revisit old fossils and test our previous observations and hypotheses. Recently, an exciting new method called 'Laser-Simulated Fluorescence' (LSF) has been gaining popularity in palaeontology and we speak to its inventor Tom Kaye during a visit to the University of Bristol, alongside Dr Michael Pittman, Research Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong.

In this episode, we hear all about how LSF is allowing fossils to be seen under a completely new light. We discuss how the fluorescence is produced, how it's currently being used and what possible applications it might have in future.

We have a pretty good idea about how different dinosaur groups evolved, and how they are related (although anyone who has been following the recent dinosaur relationship shake-up knows this is not quite as clear as previously thought), but we don't have a good idea of how their ancestors, early dinosauromorphs and other early archosaurs, evolved. When did these groups first appear? What lead to their diversification?

In this episode, we speak with (recently promoted!) Professor Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham and Academic Keeper of the Lapworth Museum of Geology about the evolution of this group, and early archosaurs in general. We also discuss a new, important species from the Middle Triassic of Tanzania described today in Nature by Nesbitt, Butler, and colleagues called Teleocrater rhadinus.

Ask anyone to list all the senses and they'll probably stop at five. Touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing are all important to humans, but in the animal kingdom, there exist others. In this interview, Prof. Kenneth Catania, of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, joins us to talk about some of the other ways in which some vertebrates sense their environment.

Las Hoyas is a Early Cretaceous lagerstätte (site of special preservation) located close to the city of Cuenca, Spain. In this episode, we welcome Ángela Delgado Buscalioni and Francisco José Poyato-Ariza, both from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, to discuss the details of this remarkable site. Angela and Francisco have recently edited a comprehensive overview of the Las Hoyas site.

Like most lagerstätten, Las Hoyas is most famous for its vertebrate fossils, but what other taxa can we find there? What was the palaeoenvironment like? And which processes have governed the preservation of the fossils?

Las Hoyas is a Early Cretaceous lagerstätte (site of special preservation) located close to the city of Cuenca, Spain. In this episode, we welcome Ángela Delgado Buscalioni and Francisco José Poyato-Ariza, both from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, to discuss the details of this remarkable site. Angela and Francisco have recently edited a comprehensive overview of the Las Hoyas site.

Like most lagerstätten, Las Hoyas is most famous for its vertebrate fossils, but what other taxa can we find there? What was the palaeoenvironment like? And which processes have governed the preservation of the fossils?

This year, the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. We sent Liz and Caitlin there to report on events at the conference.

This year, the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. We sent Liz and Caitlin there to report on events at the conference.

Graptolites are small colonial organisms, each made up of many tiny, genetically identical zooids joined together by tubes. They've been around since the Cambrian and at times in Earth's history have been very morphologically and taxonomically diverse. Now there is just one living genus, but they are very common in the fossil record, often appearing as a 'sawtooth' pattern flattened on surfaces of deep sea sedimentary rocks.

In this episode Laura talks to Dr David Bapst, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis and adjunct assistant professor at the South Dakota School of Mines, about extinct graptolites - the Graptoloidea - and how these animals have changed in the 520 million years since they originated. We find out about major events in their evolutionary history including the transition from sea-floor dwelling benthic species to plankton that floated in the water column, and the reduction through geological time of the number of branches from many branching dendritic forms to the single 'stick' monograptids.

The last 10 years has shown a large increase in the number of new species and new discoveries of dinosaurs, as well as the number of papers written. It seems that almost every week there is a new species or significant find in the news. Why is that? Is this likely to continue? What can we expect for the next 10 years?

We sat down with Dr. David Evans, Temerity Chair in Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto to talk about this so-called 'Golden Age of Dinosaur Discovery'. Dr. Evans is a well known dinosaur palaeontologist who has worked on many groups all over the world, focusing particularly in southern Alberta and the US.

Plants, Animals and fungi; these are all three of the Kingdoms of life we're all most familiar with, but what you might not know is that fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants. Stranger still is that the vast majority of terrestrial plants live in a symbiotically with fungi.

In this episode, we interview Prof. Marc-André Selosse, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. We discuss this symbiotic relationship and how it helped both groups overcome the massive challenge of adapting to life on land. We further go on to look at exquisitely-preserved fossils which display cellular details and reveal the first evidence of this relationship and discuss the potential identity of a particularly enigmatic giant fossil. We end the conversation theorising about what benefits a true understanding of this symbiosis could have on the future of agriculture.

This relationship between plants and fungi is something that has shaped the evolution of life on land and so this discussion is most definitely not one to be missed!