Originally mounted in 1907, the Carnegie specimen is the best example of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus, and perhaps the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world. Casts of the specimen, including the London example known as \\u201cDippy\\u201d, were distributed around the world during the early 1900s, and a final concrete cast was even created in 1957 for the Utah Field House at Vernal.
Although the moulds used to create these casts were lost sometime during the 1960\\u2019s, new ones created from the concrete skeleton have allowed second generation casts to be made, with some elements being incorporated into other iconic mounts.
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Following up on an initial discovery of ice-age remains in Byron, New York, in the 1950\'s, Dr Richard Laub took on the task of systematically excavating the \'Hiscock Site\' for the Buffalo Museum of Science. Fieldwork commenced in 1983, but as more and more fossils were discovered at the site, the \'Byron Dig\', as it became known, would continue for almost three decades. In that time, countless numbers of significant Late Pleistocene and Holocene discoveries were made, including those of mastodon, caribou and bird remains, as well as a rich record of Paleoindian tools.
The Hiscock site proved to be incredibly challenging, not just in terms of physical excavation in its water-logged sediments, but also in developing an understanding of how this complex deposit had formed and evolved over the last \\u224813,000 years. In many cases, it took years to figure out some of the details and whilst we have a good understanding of the site 40 years on, several questions still remain unanswered.
In this interview, Dick joins us to look back at his time leading the Byron Dig. As we work our way through each distinct layer of the deposit, he reconstructs the local environment for us and paints a picture of the flora and fauna of the relatively recent past.
Further details about the Hiscock Site, the Byron Dig and the history of its study can be found in Dick\'s recent book: Two Acres of Time.
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A new Ordovician lagerst\\xe4tte (site of special fossil preservation) has just been described from Llandrindod Wells, Wales. The site contains the remains of well over 150 different species, most of which are entirely new to science. It is dated to around 461 million years old, placing it at a critical point in life\'s evolution: the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. This is even more significant, considering the relative sparsity of lagerst\\xe4tten of this time.
We are joined in this interview by Drs Joe Botting and Lucy Muir, who discovered the Castle Bank site a short walk from their house whilst fossil collecting during covid lockdown in 2020. From them, we\'re able to learn what it\'s like to discover a new site of international significance and we question why the fossil from this site are so small.
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Scleromochlus is an animal that has been known for over 100 years, and has been frequently suggested as being an ancestor to pterosaurs. It hails from the Late Triassic of Scotland, and there are fewer than 10 specimens known. Unfortunately the preservation of this small reptile means that it is very difficult to interpret. However, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and CT scanning, new evidence from Scleromochlus reveals new anatomical insights, and further supports Scleromochlus as a lagerpetid, the group most closely related to pterosaurs.
In this episode we discuss these new discoveries with the lead author of the study Dr Davide Foffa who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech, though this work was part of his previous position at the National Museum of Scotland (NMS). This is part of a larger project looking at the Late Triassic 'Elgin Fauna' along with collaborators Richard Butler (University of Birmingham), Stig Walsh and Nick Fraser (NMS), Steve Brusatte (University of Edinburgh) and Paul Barrett (Natural History Museum, London).
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In this episode we talk to Professor Christine Janis about mammal palaeontology, and her career. Christine is one of the world\\u2019s foremost experts in mammal palaeontology and mammalogy. She has authored dozens of scientific papers, and has been co-author of the major textbook Vertebrate Life for the last 20 years.
Christine has had a long and distinguished career, and is currently a researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her work is particularly focused on mammal locomotion and ecology. We\\u2019ll be talking about some of the research Christine has led, including on hoofed mammals, sabre-toothed South American \\u2018marsupials\\u2019, and Australia\\u2019s extinct giant kangaroos. We\\u2019ll talk about the use and limits of comparative anatomy, the importance of direct observation of specimens in the discipline of palaeontology, and how things have changed for researchers during her lifetime.
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One of the factors that makes palaeontology such a popular science is its constant ability to surprise us. It seems almost every week that a new study is released that significantly adds to our understanding of ancient life. This could be in relation to a new species, a new analysis or new fossil locality. In this episode, we discuss a new discovery that not only yields a new species, but also provides direct dietary evidence and has us re-evaluating the potential for food to be preserved in coprolites (fossilised droppings).
Joining us for this interview are Drs Martin Qvarnstr\\xf6m and Martin Fik\\xe1\\u010dek of Uppsala University and National Sun Yat-sen University, respectively. Both were part of a team that identified and described a new species of beetle preserved within a dinosaur coprolite!
In this first part of the interview, we provide the context for the discovery, discussing the study of coprolites and of beetles. Part 2 of the interview will be released soon.
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With palaeontology as popular as it is you will never be short of content online, whether that be articles, blogs, podcasts (of which there are now many others you should also be listening to) or videos. This allows you, the public, to enjoy learning about past life on demand and in a format that best suits you. The only issue with having so many sources of information/entertainment is that the quality can be highly variable and it can be difficult to determine whether any given outlet/channel values more the accurate communication of palaeontological science or the number of viewers/ad revenue they get.
Amongst some notable exceptions to this issue is the YouTube channel PBS Eons, who have produced a hugely successful series that also stands up to scientific scrutiny. In this interview, we\'re joined by Eons host Kallie Moore who discusses everything to do with the show, from how it is researched and shot, to the benefits of using YouTube for outreach.
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Australia has many fossils from all ages, including several dinosaurs known exclusively from this time and place. However, they are not well known for their pterosaur fossils, having only a handful of specimens, and up to now just two named species from this large continent. Last month, the most complete pterosaur from Australia was described, a new species called Ferrodraco lentoni.
At the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Brisbane, Australia, we were able to sit down with Adele Pentland, lead author on the study published in Scientific Reports, to talk about this exciting new find. Adele is a PhD student at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, and Research Associate at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Natural History Museum.
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Between the weird and wonderful rangeomorphs of the Ediacaran Period and the world-famous palaeocommunities of the Burgess Shale, the 'Early Cambrian' is host to a 'waste basket' of fossils untied by their small size and shelly construction.
These small shelly fossils (SSFs) aren't just a single group of animals, but represent several different invertebrate phyla. Further compounding the difficulty of their identification, each SSF, termed a 'sclerite', is part of a larger composite skeleton known as a 'sclerotome'. Whilst some complete sclerotomes have been preserved, many SSFs still represent multiple jigsaws thrown together and the pictures lost.
Piecing the SSFs back together and building a picture of the Earliest Cambrian is Dr Marissa Betts of the University of New England, Australia. Her work on the SSFs have provided a new framework for the regional stratigraphy of Australia and in this interview, we discuss why this was necessary, how she went about it and finally, what we know about the animals themselves.
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Fossilisation of organic material was long thought to result in the complete loss of original content. However in the last 20 years, several high-profile publications reported the discovery of proteins, blood vessels, blood cells and even DNA. But for as long as these arguments have existed, so too has a counterargument as to the validity of the discoveries.
In this episode, we're joined by Dr Evan Saitta of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, lead author of a recent paper seeking to discover and evaluate the preservation of putative original organic materials within dinosaur bones.
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One of palaeontology\\u2018s great themes of questioning is the rise of novelty: how new structures and functions arise in specific lineages. In this episode we speak with Neil Shubin, Professor of Organismal Biology at the University of Chicago, who has been studying novelty in the context of the vertebrate transition from water to land.
Neil studies the fossil record of early tetrapods, the first vertebrates with limbs, to understand what changes underpinned this great transition. The other half his lab uses molecular techniques on living organisms to see how changes to the development of appendages (and their underlying genetic architecture) effected the shift from a fin to a limb.
In this interview, we hear about his fieldwork in the Arctic and Antarctic, how palaeontologists decide where to look for key fossils, why development matters, and about his deep involvement in science communication.
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Opsins are the photosensitive proteins in the eye, responsible for converting a photons of light into an electro-chemical signals. Different opsins react to different wavelengths of light, each corresponding to a different band of colour. In humans, the 'visible spectrum' of light (a very anthropocentric term) is covered by three opsins, receptive to red, green and blue wavelengths. Other animals have opsins that are capable of subdividing the 'visible spectrum' and responding to a large number of very specific wavelengths of interest. All in all, the ability to detect light and recognise colour is not the same throughout the animal kingdom.
In this episode, we are joined by Dr James Fleming of Keio University, Japan to discuss the evolution of opsins in the ecdysozoa (the group containing arthropods and a fair few worms). We talk about the fundamentals of light detection and how, using phylogenetics, we are able to tell which colours certain extinct animals were capable of detecting.
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Decapods are a group of crustaceans that include such well-known families as crabs, lobsters and shrimp. Whilst crustaceans are known from as early as the Cambrian, we don't see the first decapods until Devonian. Over the course of their evolutionary history, decapods have remained relatively conservative in their morphology with the exception of some interesting forms in the Mesozoic.
In this episode, Dr Carrie Schweitzer, Kent State University, gives us a run-down of the taxonomy and evolutionary history of the decapods and we explore the Middle Triassic Luoping Biota.
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