Category: Episode Visual Field Guide
Episode 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 Reports! If you’d like to learn more …
Filed under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Fossils, France, Ornithischia, dinosaur, feeding, jaws, ornithopod
News 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 scientific method: a method that paleontologists follow. This week’s episode features t …
Filed under: Dinosaurs, Fossils, Functional Morphology, Paleontology, feeding, jaws
Episode 14 Field Guide: The Art of Dinosaurs
Conjuring up extinct environments, museums, books, and documentaries rely on art to show extinct animals revitalized in their ancient surroundings: the art of dinosaurs! This type of educational reconstruction is called Paleoart (or Palaeoart for the UK inclined). They are usually striking portraits of the weird place this planet used to be. But, you look at an image of a roaming Tyrannosaurus rex …
Filed under: Art, Behavior, Biology, Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Ecology, Field Guide, Fossils, Geology, Julius Csotonyi, Mesozoic, Paleoart, Paleobotany, Paleoenvironment, Paleontology, Professions in Paleontology, Reconstruction, Tyrannosaurus
Arctic Alligators!
After an exciting summer looking for fossils in Wyoming and New Mexico, Matt and Adam are back in action with a Past Time Video! Adam is pretty excited about a study based on fossils from the far northwest of Canada, but Matt thinks Adam is losing his touch and is a little too excited about a handful of scrappy fossils. It turns out the scraps are key to unraveling the complicated history of allig …
Filed under: Alligators, Arctic, Bering Land Bridge, Beringia, Biogeography, Bowfin, Canada, Crocodiles, Eocene, Fish, Fossils, Gar, Mammoth, Northwest Territories, Paleobotany, Paleogene, Paleontology, Pike, Pleistocene, Pollen
Episode 12 Field Guide: Growing up Dinosaur!
When we think of iconic dinosaurs, like T. rex with its massive head full of teeth, and Parasaurolophus crowned with a gigantic, tube-like crest, 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 the …
Filed under: Baby Dinosaurs, Bone Histology, California, Cretaceous, Dinosaur Joe, Dinosaur behavior, Dinosaurs, Discovery, Field Guide, Fieldwork, Finding fossils, Fossils, Growing Up, North America, Ontogeny, Paleontology, Parasaurolophus, Podcast, Raymond Alf Museum, Triceratops, Utah, Webb Schools
Quick Bite Field Guide: Weird Whales and Swimming Sloths
Marine mammals are fascinating beasts and the subject of our latest Quick Bite episode! Whales, manatees, seals, otters…they’ve all gone back to the water and evolved all kinds of spectacular adaptations to making a living in a soggy setting. Toothed whales evolved an ability to “see” the underwater world around them using echolocation – basically sonar – to track prey with high-pitched sounds a …
Filed under: Cenozoic, Cetacea, Convergence, Eocene, Field Guide, Fossils, Functional Morphology, Marine, North America, Oligocene, Paleontology, Pliocene, Podcast, South America, Xenarthra, dolphin, echolocation, marine biology, ocean, porpoise, sloth, whale
Episode 11 Field Guide: Trilobites from the Cincinnati Sea
Over 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 Cincinna …
Filed under: Cambrian, Field Guide, Fossils, Marine, Mass extinction, Morphometrics, North America, Ordovician, Paleontology, Paleozoic, coral reef, invertebrate, ocean life, trilobite
Quick Bite Field Guide: Terror Bird or Gentle Giant?
50 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 m …
Filed under: Birds, Carnivory, Cenozoic, Comparative Anatomy, Ecology, Eocene, Europe, Field Guide, Fossils, Herbivory, Isotopes, North America, Paleontology
