Meet Alienochelys selloumi, a giant, snorkel-nosed turtle with powerful, shell-crushing plates in its massive beak! The distant relative of the largest turtle alive today, the leatherback sea turtle, Alienochelys swam the ancient ocean of North Africa at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs (the Late Cretaceous). It was found in the same rocks as Ocepechelon, the whale turtle discussed in our first Quick Bite back in July. There were a lot of giant, goofy, snorkel-snouted turtles in Cretaceous Morocco! When Alienochelys' discovery was announced, another paper was published describing fossilized pigment molecules that showed many marine reptiles, including a 55 million-year-old leatherback sea turtle, were dark in color, an adaptation we see in many modern swimming vertebrates. It's time to pick a new-favorite fossil turtle with Past Time!

Quick Bite: The Alien Turtle and Ancient Color

Past Time is a podcast that explores how we know what we know about the past. There's a special focus on the fossil record - it is hosted by two paleontologists - but delving into the story of the past isn't limited to dry bones. Today's paleontologists use techniques drawn from other sciences including Physics, Chemistry, Geology, and Biology to figure out what extinct animals were like and how they lived. 

Whether you are just starting to learn about the amazing animals that have called this planet home, or you have been fascinated by fossils for a long time, we hope you will join us as we dig into past times.

Keywords: Paleontology, Dinosaurs, Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, Animals, Fossils, Extinction

Natural Sciences

Science & Medicine

Education

Training

Language Courses

Higher Education

K-12

Educational Technology

Science

Earth Sciences

Courses

Of Collective Behavior and Trilobites Reading scientific papers can be a daunting prospect. Even the titles can contain layers of jargon. On Past Time, we work diligently to break down the barriers of science to make the discoveries of science for audiences of all ages. In this episode, we experiment with a new method: breaking […]

Episode 34 – March of the Trilobites

PAST TIME RETURNS! After three and a half months of discovering how insanely busy a museum curator can be, I (Adam) am back to past times with a brand new episode of Past Time! Join me on a journey back to the Smithsonian Institution to learn about the whole history of sloths. We’ll also meet RYAN […]

Episode 33 – The Story of the Sloth

Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles INTRODUCTION TO GROWING UP – Every living thing grows up, and this episode of “Past Time” explores the evolution of the growing process. Specifically, we explore the evolution of growth in crocodiles, and how changes to the growing process at the earliest stages of crocodile development help […]

Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles

THE FIRST FROGS OF NORTH AMERICA Every discovery we make in natural history happens thanks to specimens. Fossil bones, shells, footprints, coprolites, tissue samples—even field notes and photograms—are the building blocks scientists use to tell the story of life on our planet. On Past Time, we talk a LOT about the contributions of museums and […]

Episode 31 – The First Frogs of the Age of Dinosaurs!

THE FIRST FROGS OF NORTH AMERICA
Every discovery we make in natural history happens thanks to specimens. Fossil bones, shells, footprints, coprolites, tissue samples—even field notes and photograms—are the building blocks scientists use to tell the story of life on our planet. On Past Time, we talk a LOT about the contributions of museums and scientists to the story of life. However, we don’t often address the specific specimens that help tell that story. Even one little bone can reveal great truths.
A SINGLE SPECIMEN. A BIG DISCOVERY.
Meet DMNH 2018-05-0002, an eyelash-sized bone from the 213-million-year-old Chinle Formation of eastern Arizona. The bone is housed in the fossil collections of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas. DMNH 2018-05-0002 (I refuse to abbreviate!) is a right ilium (pelvic bone) of a frog that was likely only a few centimeters long in life. This fragile treasure is the oldest evidence for a frog on the entire North American continent, predating the next fossil by 30 million years! One little bone leads to a huge expansion in the story of frogs, the most abundant group of amphibians on Earth!
Dr. Michelle Stocker holds up DMNH 2018-05-0002 embedded in matrix and wax. It’s THAT small. Image from vt.edu
These amazing frogs were published in Biology Letters by Virginia Tech paleontologist Michelle Stocker, a world-renowned expert on Triassic ecosystems. Dr. Stocker and her team have done a lot of recent work on MICROVERTEBRATES, the bones and teeth of tiny animals. Microvertebrate fossil sites are those that preserve large quantities of tiny (~1 centimeter and smaller) bits, and they can tell us a lot about the smaller animals in an environment. Some paleontologists use sifting and fine-mesh screens to collect bones out of these sediments. In this case, Dr. Stocker and her team prepared bones out of blocks of sediment using microscopes and extremely fine tools. Hat-tip specifically to Ben Kligman, a Virginia Ph.D. student who is pioneering these refined preparation techniques!
Images of the Chinle frog fossils described by Stocker et al. (2019). DMNH 2018-05-0002 is featured in the top row. The lower images include other frog ilia and jaw fragments found in the collections of Petrified Forest National Park and the Museum of Northern Arizona.

DIG DEEPER (Links and Reading)

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas is a world-class museum with incredible collections of Cretaceous vertebrates from Texas, Alaska, and across the western United States. Obviously, there are some Triassic treasures in the collection, too! The exhibits include classic American dinosaurs like Alamosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Tenontosaurus and some newcomers like Convolosaurus, Nanuqsaurus, and Ugrunaaluk.
The <a href="https://roy

Quick Bite: The Alien Turtle and Ancient Color

Download our free app to listen on your phone