The Lab With Brad

Strange sharks, giant insects, and a new and improved egg

During the carboniferous, forests and swamp dominated the landscape. In the oceans, strange new sharks appeared. Giant insects walked amongst the trees while the first reptiles and early ancestors of what would become mammals hid inside rotted stumps.

Here are a couple of videos on how chickens make their eggs.

How an Egg is Made

Chicken anatomy and egg formation

Here’s a video about how bird babies get air while they’re still inside the egg.

How Birds Get Oxygen Inside Their Eggs

Here’s an article about the first known reptile.

Hylonomus: The Earliest Reptile

Here’s an article about finding tiny fossils inside carboniferous tree stumps.

Tiny Animals Trapped in Fossil Trees Help Reveal How Fauna Moved Onto Land

Here’s an article about an early ancestor of what one day would become the mammals.

Archaeothyris

Forest, fins and feet

Giant Mushrooms, the first forests, 28 foot long armored fish hunting sharks who were hunting smaller fish. In shallow streams and ponds, some fish were changing, becoming better at breathing air. They developed fins that could support their weight out of the water, if only for a little while at a time. By the end of the Devonian period, the fish that would become us crawled out of the water and went for a walk.

Here’s an article about the giant mushroom fossils.

Mystery prehistoric fossil verified as giant fungus

Here’s an article about a shark who lived during the Devonian.

Cladoselache

Here’s a larger fish that likely hunted the shark.

Dunkleosteus

Here’s a couple of articles about the earliest known live birth.

Fossil reveals oldest live birth

Fossil fish shows oldest live birth

Here are several videos that together, cover boney fish, the lobed finned fish, and how those fish developed into animals that walked on land, rather than living their lives in the water.

Early Vertebrate Evolution - 4.1 - Introduction to Osteichthyes

Early Vertebrate Evolution - 4.2 - The Lobe Finned Fishes

Early Vertebrate Evolution - 4.3 - Primitive Tetrapods

The Lab anniversary: three years and counting!

After three years of doing this show, we do more of this show. Join us as we celebrate our anniversary with a couple nifty interesting things that never quite made it into an episode, along with a few laughs, a status report on our time machine and shrink ray, and other bits and pieces.

Here are some articles about pyrosomes, the giant glowing sea-pickles.

12 Reasons Pyrosomes Are My New Favorite Terrifying Sea Creatures

Pyrosomes Everything You Never Knew You Wanted to Know

Giant Pyrosome

See the giant ‘sea worm’ filmed off the coast of New Zealand

Here are two articles about how signals enter your cell, only to cause all kinds of mischief.

Introduction to cell signaling

Signal transduction pathway | Cell signaling

By tooth and scale

The Silurian period was warm, and compared to the periods around it, rather gentle. Plants on land became a bit more sophisticated, with roots and stems and the ability to move water an nutrients around their bodies. Giant sea scorpions, the largest arthropods of all time, cruised the waters, probably chowing down on our early vertebrate ancestors. The fish developed jaws and moved into fresh water, and apparently, Changed some scales into teeth.

Here are a couple of articles with general information about the Silurian.

The Silurian Period: Plants Move Onto Land, Giant Sea Scorpions

Silurian Period Information and Facts

And here’s some articles about how our teeth may have come from modified fish scales.

Teeth evolved from fish scales say Cambridge researchers

Fish scale development: Hair today, teeth and scales yesterday?

Life tries again

After the extinctions at the end of the Cambrian, the Ordovician once again came with a sudden increase in the amount and variety of life. This time, those who survived the end of the Cambrian would diversify, so life didn’t quite start over. This period saw the armored jawless fish, and just before it’s end, some fish with jaws, which is as far as vertebrates got so far. There were also giant relatives of octopus and squid, with shells that got anywhere from 20 to 40 feet long, and the very first land plants make their appearance.

Here’s the first fishy link.

fish

Here’s the second fishy link, about the early evolution of vertebrates, early vertebrates AKA. Fish.

Early Vertebrate Evolution

Here are a couple of articles with general information about the Ordovician.

The Ordovician Period

Ordovician Period Information and Facts

a bevy of beasts

About 451,000,000 years ago, there was a sudden increase in the number of different types of animals in the fossil record. The animals that came before didn’t stand a chance. The new kids had hard shells, eyes, jaws and teeth. Join us for a chat about the Cambrian period.

Here’s an article that links oxygen levels to the Cambrian and Cambrian explosion.

Possible links between extreme oxygen perturbations and the Cambrian radiation of animals

Here’s an article that shares theories assuming a cold start to the Cambrian.

Diversity of Life Snowballed When Ancient Earth Was Frozen Solid

Here’s an article that shares evidence supporting a very warm start to the Cambrian.

An early Cambrian greenhouse climate

Here’s a video that starts from the Cambrian and keeps going, all the way to the big die off: the Permian–Triassic extinction event. It’s going to take us many episodes to get that far.

From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying

itty bitty chatty: cells, signals, and communication

From Bacteria coordinating their attack, to brain cells trying to figure out how bacteria coordinate their attack, today we look at how cells signal and communicate with one another, for better or worse. No hippos were harmed in the making of this episode.

Here’s a nice overview of cell signaling.

Introduction to cell signaling

Here’s a ted talk on cell signaling, and how studying it could help us develop new antibiotics.

How bacteria "talk"

Here’s a paper about salmonella that communicate in order to infect chicken eggs.

USDA ARS Online Magazine Vol. 48, No. 1

And here’s a paper on cell signaling in salmonella and e. coli.

Cell-to-cell signaling in E. coli and Salmonella

Sex

Parental guidance is advised as we examine the strange, sometimes fatal, always messy world of sex. Queue the sax and have a look at fish joined in a special bond, single celled yeast, bugs with a mathematical sense of timing, and females that make a meal of their suiters.

Here’s a video on Mitosis, simple cell division.

Mitosis: The Amazing Cell Process that Uses Division to Multiply!

And here’s a video on meiosis: when diploids become haploids.

Meiosis

Here’s a paper about the mating single celled yeast.

Population genomic analysis of outcrossing and recombination in yeast

Here’s a paper on some rather inbred wasps.

Functionally reproductive diploid and haploid males in an inbreeding hymenopteran with complementary sex determination

Here’s an article on how cicadas time their emergence.

How Do Cicadas Know When to Emerge from the Ground?

Here’s a video on the 17-year periodical cicadas.

17 Year Periodical Cicadas

Here’s a video about the unusual mating practices of angler fish

The Female Angler Fish's Strangest Appendage: The Male Angler Fish

Here’s a video about the praying mantis, and her habit of literally biting her lover’s head off.

Praying Mantis Love is Waaay Weirder Than You Think

And here’s an article about some of the other deadly mating games played by insects and spiders.

Headless Males Make Great Lovers

The urge to merge: hives, colonies and multicellular life

When does cooperation become identity? How and why did single celled life, which was doing just fine, end up forming plants and animals made up of trillions of cells? By taking a look at birds, army ants, coral reefs and giant jellyfish, we try to understand multicellular life.

Here’s an overview of the questions surrounding the phenomenon of multicellular life.

How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?

Here are articles about the giant ameba that’s brought early evidence for multicellularity into question.

Single-celled giant upends early evolution

Rolling 'Sea Grape' Rocks The Fossil Record

Discovery of Giant Roaming Deep Sea Protist Provides New Perspective on Animal Evolution

Here’s a short video about the man of war.

Portuguese Man-of-War

Here’s a long documentary on jellyfish, including a section on the man of war.

The Secret World Of The Jellyfish

Here’s some video of army ants, including a look inside the nest they build out of their own bodies.

Chasing Millions of Army Ants!

And here’s another video about them army ants.

Army Ants Rampage Through The Forest

The molecular clown car: DNA and your cells

If your cell’s nucleus was about as tall as Brad, your DNA could stretch for more than 200 miles. How do such long molecules fit inside such tiny cells? While we’re on the subject, just how much information is in DNA? Join us for a look at your chromosomes, and cellular nucleus.

Here are a couple of videos about chromosomes.

What is a Chromosome?

Chromosomes and Karyotypes

Here are a couple of articles about chromosome territories—where your chromosomes are while doing their job.

Chromosome Territories

Same name, but different article: Chromosome Territories

Here’s a video about the cell nucleus.

Cell Nucleus

And here’s a video about how your chromosomes are all coiled up.

Chromatin and Chromosomes