Shows
Past TimeEpisode 34 – March of the TrilobitesOf 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 […]
2020-02-1018 min
Past TimeEpisode 33 – The Story of the SlothPAST 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 […]
2019-11-2637 minPast TimeEpisode 32 – The Changing Face of CrocodilesEpisode 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 […]
2019-07-2124 minPast TimeEpisode 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 […]
2019-05-1711 minPast TimeEpisode 30 – SVP Recap, guest-starring I KNOW DINOMeeting of the Minds There is no bigger paleontology conference for fans of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles than the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting. The 78th annual meeting just took place this October in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA and Matt, Adam, and Catherine were in attendance. They learned about a lot […]
2018-12-1426 min
Past TimeEpisode 29 – First of the Four-Footed Giant Dinosaurs!Ledumahadi and the first dinosaur giants The sauropod dinosaurs—the classic long-necks—included the largest land animal species that have ever lived. Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous, multiple families of sauropods achieved body masses over 50 tons: greater than any modern elephant and even exceeding the colossal indricothere rhinoceroses. Despite their incredible sizes, the sauropod dinosaurs have […]
2018-10-0512 min
Past TimeEpisode 28 – PAST TIME reviews Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom!First Iteration I (Adam) am both proud and nervous to say that this is an atypical Past Time episode, as we’re not talking about a new discovery nor a real scientific topic; it is a recap/review of Jurassic World 2. However, I think it is worth addressing whether or not particular elements of new movies, […]
2018-08-2250 min
Past TimeEpisode 27 – Machairoceratops: An Extinct Horned Dinosaur Under Threat!Eighty million years ago, a wildly ornamented species of horned dinosaur roamed the southern half of North America’s western landmass, Laramidia. In 2016, paleontologist Eric Lund and his colleagues named it Machairoceratops cronusi, and we fell in love with this ceratopsian from Utah with hooks over its frill. In 2017, the site where Machairoceratops was […]
2018-07-2731 min
Past TimeEpisode 26 – Colobops: the tiny reptile with a big bite!Big bites come in small skulls This episode tells a story of one of Adam Pritchard’s favorite projects from Yale University, describing the skull of a teeny reptile from the early days of the Age of Reptiles. Hailing from the eastern coast of North America (present-day Connecticut), Colobops noviportensis had a skull only an inch […]
2018-07-1315 min
Past TimeEpisode 25 – Ceratosaurs: Story of a Predatory Dinosaur Dynasty!Masters of horns and teeth Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, dinosaurs were top dogs on every continent and in every sort of environment. The ceratosaurs were some of the classic predators that ruled the tops of the food chains for much of that time. Including classic predators such as Ceratosaurus, Carnotaurus, and Majungasaurus—as well as oddballs […]
2018-06-2904 min
Past TimeEpisode 24 – Dinosaurs and crocodiles in the Land Before Egypt!Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have been discovered in Egypt since the beginning of the twentieth century, work that continues to this day. However, fossils from the Age of Reptiles are […]
2018-05-0409 min
Past TimeEpisode 23: Meet the Echinoderms! Adventures with Ancient Sea Stars!This episode was a blast to produce for a vertebrate scientist. I learned a ton about the echinoderms, the group of invertebrate animals to which sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and crinoids belong. Be prepared for more adventures with invertebrate animals in the future. Engineering Echinoderms with Elizabeth Clark! This episode would […]
2018-03-2314 min
Past TimeEpisode 22: Matheronodon, a new dinosaur with a different kind of bite!Matheronodon is certainly a dinosaur worthy of a bigger bite. With proportionally giant teeth strikingly different from the standard-issue ornithopod dinosaur, it is certainly one of the most important dino discoveries out of Europe this year. Better yet, the original scientific paper by Pascal Godefroit and colleagues is free to read in the journal Scientific […]
2017-12-0813 min
Past TimeEpisode 21: New History of Ancient DNAThe quest to recover ancient genetic material from extinct animals had its blockbuster moment when Jurassic Park came out. But where did the idea come from and who is trying to figure out if the science fiction of Jurassic Park can be science reality? We talk to Dr. Elizabeth Jones, a science historian at University […]
2017-10-1326 min
Past TimeEpisode 20: Digging the Dawn of Dinosaurs – Paleontology at Ghost RanchHi all. Adam Pritchard here. I’ve been thinking about telling the story of my field experience in the Triassic-aged Chinle Formation of northern New Mexico for many years. The Hayden Quarry fossil site at Ghost Ranch has produced the best-preserved and most diverse record of American dinosaurs from the Triassic of North America, plus some […]
2017-09-2533 minPast TimeEpisode 19: Masrasector—Egypt’s Ancient Slicer!A few weeks ago Past Time co-host Matt Borths published a study that identified a new species of now-extinct carnivorous mammal from Egypt. The animal was near the top of the African food chain when Africa was cut off from the other continents. It lived in the same swampy ecosystem that was home to our earliest […]
2017-07-1012 min
2017-06-2426 min
Past TimeEpisode 17: Kingdom of the Monkey Lizard!Past Time is BACK! Matt and Adam have been traveling the world independently for some time, delving deeply into the history of life on the planet, but now they’re back to tell you all about what they’ve discovered! In this episode, Matt interviews Adam about his research into the early days of the Age of […]
2017-02-0316 min
Past TimeA Food Chain in a Fossil: A snake skeleton with its prey still inside!The relationship between predator and prey is a primal one, and one that fires the curiosity of many fossil fans. We love paintings of Tyrannosaurus battling Triceratops or saber-toothed cats leaping onto the backs of ground sloths. And we can be pretty sure that those interactions happened based on TRACE FOSSILS, like tooth marks in […]
2016-08-3106 min
Past TimeGrandma Sharkie: The Greenland Shark is the World’s Oldest Vertebrate Animal!Growth is a universal facet of all organisms that have ever lived, but figuring out how old they grow isn’t always easy. A new study examined the growth in one of the biggest predatory fish in all the ocean, the Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), revealing it to be the vertebrate species with the longest lifespan: nearly […]
2016-08-1506 minPast TimeA Tale of Two Crocs: Predators of Cretaceous SpainI tried to google “crocodiles are living fossils,” to see just how commonly that expression was used in popular articles. There were indeed a few articles that referenced this idea, suggesting that croc fossils from 80 million years ago would look identical the skeletons they have today. However, most were news stories reporting various discoveries […]
2016-05-2008 min
Past TimeEpisode 16: Hunting Antarctic DinosaursErik Gorscak and Pat O'Connor, two paleontologists from Ohio University, are about to set out on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. They are part of a larger team called the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project (AP3), an international collaboration of fossil hunters and geologists who are about to spend almost two months at the bottom of the planet. Past Time talks to them about how you look for fossils in Antarctic conditions, how you plan an expedition, and what they hope to find. When they get back, we'll check in...
2016-03-2518 minPast TimeNews Bite: Dodos and the evolution of bird brainsIf you wander into the basement of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, and wander into the fossil collections, you will find a vast array of different dinosaurs dating back over 200 million years. However, just a few feet away from the oldest dinosaurs you will find several drawers filled with the […]
2016-03-1107 minPast TimeNews Bite: The evolution of ornithischian dinosaur jaws and bites!With Past Time, Matt and I tend to focus on the new discoveries in paleontology: the new species that show up in the news, or the important specimens discovered in museum collections. These are the raw materials that feed the fires of paleontology as a science. However, observation is only the first step in the […]
2016-02-0305 minPast TimeEpisode 15: Degrees of Doctoral Dissertation DominationOn this episode of Past Time, Drs. Matthew Borths and Adam Pritchard share their dissertation stories, and a bit of advice on the grad school experience!
2015-11-1137 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Kerberos! Giant mammal carnivore from after the Age of Dinosaurs!It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on the entire continent of Europe after the extinction of the dinosaurs. And a team of European scientists and Past Time co-host Matthew Borths just introduced us to it. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Kerberos, monster mammal carnivore!
2015-10-0806 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Salamanders of the Caribbean!Arrr, ye mateys! Pour out some grog, and I’ll tell ye a tale of mines, beaches, and death in ancient jungles. I of course be talkin’…about salamanders! Okay, not going to do that voice the whole time (though maybe it should be in the episode), but I will briefly present Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae, the first salamander […]
2015-09-1505 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Basilisks in the Old(er) West!The oldest basilisk lizard from North America, described by Jack Conrad from NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine, shows the 48 million year old animal was part of an ancient lush jungle ecosystem...in the middle of Wyoming. The beautifully preserved skull has important stories to tell about the evolution of the lizards most famous for their ability to scamper across the water, but it also reveals what North America was like during a greenhouse world that wasn't all that different from what our planet's future may look like.
2015-07-2305 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Genes and Jurassic ParkAs Jurassic World rolls out, Matt has some thoughts on the scientific impact of Jurassic Park and offers his hopes for the scientific discussions Jurassic World might spark.
2015-06-1308 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Cosmic rays date ancient human ancestorDating fossils might sound like Saturday night for a paleontologist, but it’s serious science! In a new study, a group of physicists and paleontologists teamed up to re-date one of the most complete skeletons of a human relative ever discovered. The skeleton was discovered in a cave in South Africa twenty years ago, but the […]
2015-04-1005 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Brontosaurus revived!Brontosaurus was an extinct name for an extinct animal, but a new study brings the “Thunder Lizard” title roaring back to life! But how does a name get dropped, and how does it get brought back again? Follow us into the winding world of paleontology taxonomy, the study of names. In the 1870s two giant hip […]
2015-04-0807 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Crazy croc diversity in the ancient Amazon!In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi and other paleontontologists described the crocodiles from a gigantic wetland that predated the Amazon. Ten million years ago there was the giant Purussarus, the duck-billed Mourasuchus, the tube-snouted gharial-like croc, a coyote-like croc similar to Paleosuchus, and three new crocs with […]
2015-04-0303 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: Clash of the Triassic Titans!Under the canopy of an ancient fern forest near the border of Arizona and New Mexico a colossal crocodile-like reptile took a bite out of an even larger, toothy giant. The attack failed and the victim limped on to fight another day, until its carcass was finally pillaged by another scaly monster and smaller, pickier scavengers. Studying bones collected over a century ago, scientists are now able to reconstruct these scenes from the ancient Wild West using new digital tools familiar to fans of C.S.I. Join Matt and Adam as we explore the crazy Triassic world 215 million years...
2015-03-3010 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Parental care in extinct reptilesA new fossil shows an ancient reptile, Philydrosaurus, surrounded by young. Possible evidence that parental investment is a more ancient trait in land-based vertebrates than paleontologists thought! Reptiles aren’t known for being great parents. When it comes to time and energy spent with the kids, mammals get all the glory. Birds also spend a lot […]
2015-02-2002 min
Past TimeNews Bite: Giant dinosaur brain from Uzbekistan!Researchers lead by Hans-Dieter Sues from the Smithsonian Institution described a wealth of new giant, long-necked dinosaur material from Western Asia (Uzbekistan). They were able to reconstruct what the brain looked like and discvered the dinosaur, part of the lineage called "titanosaurs", is closely related to animals from the far East of Asia, places like China and Laos. They decided there wasn't enough of the giant to give it a name, but they know it and its relatives were able to make a living across the diverse enviroments of Asia 90 million years ago. This is further evidence that tintanosaurs were...
2015-02-0502 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: Iguanodon, History of a Dinosaur!Iguanodon was discovered before the word "dinosaur" was invented and the story of Iguanodon research is the story of dinosaur research as paleontologists use new fossils to test old ideas about what the animal looked like and how it moved. Was it a lumbering quadruped? A springy kangaroo reptile? A little of both? Join us as we dive into the history of paleontology and the history of Iguanodon, the enthusiastic animal who is always ready to give you two thumbs up!
2014-12-0511 min
Past TimeEpisode 14: The Art of DinosaursTo conjure up extinct environments, museums, books, and documentaries rely on art to show vanished animals revitalized in their ancient surroundings. This type of educational reconstruction is called Paleoart (or Palaeoart for the UK inclined) and you can't help but look at an image of a roaming Tyrannosaurus rex without wondering, "How much of that is real?" How do we know its bulk, its color, its environment, or its behavior? Where does the science start and the art (and hypothesizing) begin? Julius Csotonyi, a Candian paleoartist, sat down with us to discuss how he assembles his images which are on...
2014-09-3021 min
Past TimeEpisode 13: Following in the Footsteps of DinosaursWhen we think of paleontologists, we think of people hunkered down with bones, teeth, and shells studying the preserved body parts of dead organisms. But animals leave behind more than just their skeletons. As they walk they can leave behind footprints, as they eat they can leave behind bite marks, and as they finish eating they leave behind…well…what comes from the behind. The study of the traces of past behavior is called ichnology and Dr. Tony Martin (@Ichnologist) and author of “Dinosaurs without Bones” is with us to reveal all the amazing insights a paleontologist can learn from the foss...
2014-07-1822 min
Past TimeEpisode 12: Growing up DinosaurWhen we think of iconic dinosaurs, like T. rex with its massive head full of teeth, and Parasaurolophus crowned with a gigantic, tube-like horn, we’re thinking of the features of adult dinosaurs. But we know from looking around today that animals change a lot from birth to adulthood. Did T. rex always have a massive maw and Parasaurolophus a huge crest? How quickly did they grow in? What were they used for? To really understand the biology of these titans, paleontologists need to study baby dinosaurs to connect the dots from tiny hatchling to adult dinosaur. Unfortunately, the fossils of...
2014-06-0622 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: Weird Whales and Swimming SlothsMarine mammals are fascinating beasts. Whales, manatees, seals, otters...they've all gone back to the water and in the process evolved all kinds of spectacular adaptations to make a living in a soggy setting. Toothed evolved an ability to “see” the underwater world around them using echolocation - basically sonar - to track prey with high-pitched sounds and echoes. A 23 million years old fossil from South Carolina called Cotylocara shows toothed whales could echolocate early in their evolutionary history. A more surprising adaptation to life in the water was preserved with another new whale fossil from California. Called Semirostrum, the new...
2014-05-0215 min
Past TimeEpisode 11: Trilobites and the Cincinnati SeaOver 400 million years ago the oceans were teeming with life, but it didn’t look much like what you see at the aquarium or in Finding Nemo. Instead of colorful fish flitting through coral reefs, the ancient seas had giant, shelled squids darting past the icons of the early ocean: The Trilobites! Journey back to the Late Ordovician sea with Dr. Brenda Hunda, Curator of Invertebrates at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Dr. Hunda has spent her career carefully documenting the changes in trilobites in the remarkable rocks near Cincinnati, Ohio. Trilobites were spectacularly diverse early arthropods (the group that includes cr...
2014-04-1120 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: From Terror Bird to Gentle Giant50 million-years ago, the heir to Tyrannosaurus stalked the forests of ancient Europe and North America, snapping up the tiny ancestors of horses, cows, and wolves in its colossal meat-cleaving beak. Gastornis was a six-foot-tall, flightless bird and the king of the food chain...or that’s what we thought. For decades paleontologists looked at the huge, parrot-like head and thought the giant bird must be a carnivore, but a recent, exhaustive study drew on molecular evidence, anatomical evidence, and ecological evidence to show Gastornis was a giant herbivore! The former terror bird likely used that massive beak to crack open th...
2014-03-1110 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: The Alien Turtle and Ancient ColorMeet 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...
2014-02-0106 min
Past TimeEpisode 10: The Hobbit – An Unexpected DiscoveryLittle people! Giant reptiles! Towering elephants! Huge birds! It sounds like the stuff of literary and box-office gold, but this Middle-Earth-like world actually existed 17,000 years ago on Flores, an island near Indonesia. Homo floresiensis, or "The Hobbts", only stood three feet tall but they cast a huge shadow over the story of human evolution. In 2004 fossils of the small, big-footed hominins were discovered and they have challenged paleoanthropologists, like this episode's Dr. William Jungers, to reconsider many hypotheses of human origins including which species left the continent and how we're all related. Once thought to just be small versions of...
2014-01-1921 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: The Giant Before the Tyrant!Last episode we featured Lythronax, the oldest-known North American tyrannosaur and a close relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. But tyrannosaurs weren’t the only big carnivores to tromp through the Mesozoic of North America. Before the tyrant lizards were huge, there was another giant terrorizing the American West: Siats! Named for a Ute mythological giant, Siats was a bus-sized carnivore in the middle Cretaceous of Utah (99 million years ago). The giant had close relatives - the neoventors - on almost all the continents. This is a bit of a mystery because the continents were getting spread out by 99 million years, making it...
2013-12-0107 min
Past TimeEpisode 9: New Relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex!Tyrannosaurus rex is a dinosaur celebrity, a villain in most dinosaur movies and documentaries, but where did the massive beast come from? On November 6, 2013, a team of paleontologists including our expert in this episode, Dr. Randy Irmis from the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, published two new skeletons of Tyrannosaurus’s close kin: Teratophoneus and Lythronax. The skeletons reveal Tyrannosauridae (T. rex’s family) was diverse 80 million years ago with different species living in different parts of Western North America. The new genus Lythronax is the oldest member of the Tyrannosauridae even though its anatomy clos...
2013-11-0616 min
Past TimeEpisode 8: Crocodiles are the Chomping ChampionsFossils are the raw materials of paleontology, but if we want to know how an animal moved or ate, paleontologists, like Dr. Paul Gignac, need to study living animals, too. Dr. Gignac studies crocodylians, measuring their bite forces across species and as they grow up to figure out how the strongest bite in nature evolved. Using techniques drawn from mechanical engineering and physiology, Dr. Gignac discovered the relationship between body size and bite force in crocodiles, and developed equations to calculate those forces. Then he used these equations to calculate the bite forces of giant extinct crocodiles like Deinosuchus. He...
2013-10-2919 min
Past TimeEpisode 7: Walking through Whale EvolutionWhales are spectacularly specialized mammals that seem perfectly adapted to their marine habitat. Plenty of other mammals have gone back to the water, but whales take it to a whole new level. No back legs, weird ear bones, noses on top of the head. What could the land-based ancestor of whales possibly looked like? Is there a fossil record of walking whales? In this episode we discover whales belong to the hooved animal group called Artiodactlys and their closest relatives, according to molecular comparisons, are hippos! But hippos and extinct fossil whales don't look very much alike. How did paleontologists...
2013-10-0819 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: New Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs!Mammals were scrambling around during the Age of Dinosaurs and they're usually seen as small, shrew-like animals waiting for their chance to become diverse. But recent research, including three new fossils discovered in 160 million-year-old rocks from China, show our mammalian cousins were ecologically specialized creatures. Arboroharamiya was climbing through the trees while Megaconus scrambled along the ground, and Rugosodon lead the way for the diverse radiation of mammals called Multituberculates. In this episode, Matt tries to show Adam why these new, tiny mammals are so interesting and where they fit into the mammalian tree of life.
2013-09-0607 min
Past TimeEpisode 6: Tiny Horses, Galloping Crocs, and Fossilized Jungles!The fossil record is pretty patchy. Most discoveries are tooth fragments, chunks of shell, or isolated slivers of bone and paleontologists are trained to eke out as much information from these precious fragments as they can. But some fossil deposits preserve more than just bones and teeth. Called "Lagerstätte" some rare deposites preserve traces of difficult-to-fossilized soft-tissues like feathers and fur. Some even preserve an animal's last meal before it entered the fossil record. In this episode of Past Time, Matt and Adam discuss Messel, a German fossil site that is one of the best examples of the biological a...
2013-08-1719 min
Past TimeEpisode 5: Throwing in Human EvolutionHumans are weird animals. We walk around on two legs, we have big brains...and we like to throw things at each other. Did all this happen in a gradual march to Homo sapiens? In this episode of Past Time, Adam and Matt talk to Dr. Susan Larson, an expert on the anatomy of living and extinct apes. Dr. Larson and Matt will try to convince Adam that mammalian and primate evolution is actually pretty interesting stuff. Dr. Larson's research introduced new wrinkles to the smoth transition from a chimp-like ancestor to us. Her work shows our close bipedal ancestors...
2013-08-0221 min
Past TimeQuick Bite: Ocepechelon the Whale TurtleMeet Ocepechlon, one of the strangest turtles to ever paddle the open ocean in our first Past Time Quick Bite! This new species was announced a few weeks ago based on a lone, beautifully preserved skull from the Late Cretaceous (end of the Age of Dinosaurs) of Morocco. The gigantic animal had a long, tubular snout that the discoverers have interpreted as an adaptation to suction feeding, a specialized feeding method used by lots of aquatic animals including some types of whales. But this would be the first known suction-feeding sea turtle. Ocepechelon also has its nasal opening placed high...
2013-07-2205 min
Past TimeEpisode 4: Giant Dinosaur MysteriesSauropod dinosaurs, the long necked creatures like Apatasaurus and Brachiosaurus, were the biggest animals to ever leave a footprint on the Earth. They were the size of whales, but didn't have the luxury of water to help them support their bulk! The massive size of sauropod dinosaurs intrigued Dr. Michael D'Emic and he has been scrutinizing their bone structure and relationships to figure out how these saurian giants managed to get around and consume enough food to keep growing.
2013-07-1518 min
Past TimeEpisode 3: What is a Reptile?We all know what a reptile is, right? Scaly, sprawling legs, cold blooded. But where did they come from and how are they all related to one another? What makes a lizard different from a crocodile? In this episode Adam teaches Matt about the different lineages of reptiles alive today and some of the mysteries biologists and paleontologists are still wrestling with in the reptile family tree. Spoiler alert: Turtles are the black sheep of the family.
2013-06-3019 min
Past TimeEpisode 2: Birds are Dinosaurs!What is a dinosaur? What is a bird? They're related somehow, but how does a paleontologist figure out how close Velociraptors and penguins are in the dinosaur family tree? In this episode of Past Time, Matt and Adam talk to Dr. Alan Turner, an expert on fossils from the dino-bird transition to figure out which animals are most important in sorting out this incredible evolutionary story.
2013-06-1517 min
Past TimeEpisode 1: Finding fossils in MadagascarAre there really new fossils to find out there? How do paleontologists even figure out where to look? In the first episode of Past Time, Adam and Matt talk to Dr. Dave Krause from Stony Brook University about his incredible discoveries from Madagascar. He went to Madagascar to try to find the ancestors of weird animals like lemurs and chameleons. What he found were the even weirder dinosaurs and crocodiles that called Madagascar home 65 million years ago.
2013-05-2519 min