Episode 21: New History of Ancient DNA

The 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 College London, about her work digging through the murky early history of ancient …

Episode 20: Digging the Dawn of Dinosaurs – Paleontology at Ghost Ranch

Hi 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 of the strangest reptiles that ever lived. I’ve been proud …

Episode 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 monkey-like relatives! Here’s a link to the original paper in the open access journal P …

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Episode 18: The Bird Brains and the Dinosaur Expert

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Episode 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!   Painting of Drepanosaurus by paleoartist Victor Leshyk, commissioned for the publication of the New Mexico Drepanosaurus fossils In this episode, Matt interviews Adam about his r …

A 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 Triceratops bones that match closely with tyrannosaur teeth. How …

Grandma 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 400 years, if not more! Just goes to show that you don’t always need …

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A Tale of Two Crocs: Predators of Cretaceous Spain

I 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 in the fossil history of crocodiles and their rel …

Episode 16: Hunting Antarctic Dinosaurs

Erik 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 p …

News Bite: Dodos and the evolution of bird brains

If 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 bones of Raphus cucullatus: the dodo. These are not fossilized; the dodo has on …