Tag: bird

Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles

Episode 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 produce the wide array of crocodile snout shapes we see today …

Filed under: Biology, Paleontology, alligator, biologist, bird, caiman, chicken, crocodile, crocodylia, development, dinosaur, embryo, fossil, paleontologist, skeleton, skull

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 …

Filed under: anatomy, bird, brain, dinosaur, dodo, extinction, fossil, island, scanning

Episode 6 Field Guide: Tiny Horses, Galloping Crocs, and Fossilized Jungles

Fossils can be pretty scrappy. The best, most complete stuff is usually put on display at museums and photographed for books and websites, but a vast majority of material collected by paleontologists are fragments: slivers of teeth, fragments of shells, and splinters of bone. Paleontologists are trained to glean as much as they can from the patchy record, but the fragments can still leave a lot of …

Filed under: Archaeopterygx, Cenozoic, China, Ecology, Eocene, Germany, Mammals, Messel, UNESCO, bat, bird, crocodile, dinosaur, ecosystem, feather, horse, jungle, pterosaur, reptile, snake

Episode 2 Field Guide: Birds are dinosaurs!

What is a dinosaur? What is a bird? They’re related somehow, but how do paleontologists figure out how close Velociraptor 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. Listen to this …

Filed under: Archaeopteryx, Cretaceous, Jurassic, Mesozoic, Systematics, Velociraptor, bird, dinosaur, raptor

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