Episode 152 - The Jehol Biota

You might have noticed that over the last few decades, a lot of really exciting and famous fossil discoveries have been coming out of China. If you pay close attention, you might even catch that many of them are coming from the same place: the incredible fossil assemblages of the Jehol Biota. We’ve mentioned Jehol fossils many times on the podcast, but in this episode, we focus on the big picture: where do these fossils come from, why are they so incredibly well-preserved, and what are just some of the fascinating research questions we can answer by examining these amazing fossils?

In the news: bird evolution, dinosaur growth patterns, mammal speciation rates, and glowing scallops.

Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:08:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:48:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:15:30Patron question: 01:51:30

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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/