Palaeocast (Palaeocast)

The Middle Jurassic is incredibly important to our understanding of pterosaur evolution; however, the remarkable rarity and incompleteness of Middle Jurassic pterosaurs has long hampered scientific understanding of the lineage.

Joining us this episode on the other side of the microphone is one of Palaeocast’s own team members, Dr Liz Martin Silverstone, a Technical Specialist at the University of Bristol who has recently described Ceoptera evansae, a darwinopteran pterosaur from the Isle of Skye. Together, we explore the new specimen, how it fits in to the group, and the insights it can give us in to pterosaur evolution.

One of the longest-ranging and outwardly primitive-looking groups of animals on the planet are the Medusozoa. In consisting of around 95% water, it may be surprising to know that there is a fossil record of jellyfish, however how does one differentiate their fossils from other abiotic sedimentary structures when both look like sub-spherical blobs?

In this episode we speak to Graham Young, Curator of Geology and Paleontology at The Manitoba Museum, Canada, who addressed the identification of jellyfish fossils in a recent paper Young & Hagadorn 2010 The fossil record of cnidarian medusae.

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 Qvarnström and Martin Fikáček 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.

We're all familiar with canines (dogs, wolves, jackals, foxs, etc), but these are just only one of three sub-families of the larger canid family to survive to the present day. There were also the Hesperocyoninae and Borophaginae, but what did these other canids look like and why did they go extinct? The canid family also falls within the larger suborder Caniformia which includes skunks, bears and seals, but how are all these related?

We've therefore quite a lot of history of the group to cover before we eventually see Canis lupus familiaris become man's best friend. To talk us through their evolution is Dr Xiaoming Wang of the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles.

Brachiopods are some of the most common fossils to be found in rocks worldwide. Their thick, hard and (often) calcareous shells make them preferentially preserved in the fossil record. We probably all have found one, but how many of us overlooked them at the time? What can a brachiopod tell us? How big a role have they played throughout geological time?

In this two-part episode we speak to Prof. Lars Holmer, University Uppsala, Sweden, all about the humble brachiopod.

“Saurian is a video game focused on providing the most captivating prehistoric experience ever developed for commercial gaming: living like a true dinosaur in a dynamic open world through intense, survival based gameplay. Players will have the opportunity to take control of several different species of dinosaur in their natural environment. You will attempt to survive from hatchling to adult, managing physical needs, while avoiding predators and environmental hazards in a dynamic landscape reflecting cutting-edge knowledge of the Hell Creek ecosystem 66 million years ago.”

Can video games be educational? If they portray ancient life accurately, could they even be considered palaeoart? We put such questions and more to Saurian project lead, Nick Turinetti.

Please visit the Saurian website for more details about the game and contribute to the Saurian project via their Kickstarter campaign.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked areas of palaeontology, within the public eye, is micropalaeontology. Micropalaeontology is an umbrella discipline, covering a diverse range of organisms, with representatives from many of the highest level biological groupings. Although small in size, microfossils prove invaluable for research into palaeoclimatology and are also one of the most commercially applicable groups of fossils.

In this interview we speak to Dr. Giles Miller, Senior Curator of Micropalaeontology at the Natural History Museum (NHM). As each individual group of microfossils could warrant an entire series, this episode serves as an introduction to micropalaeontology. We discuss what it is and some of its applications, all within the context of how the micropalaeontology collection at the NHM is used.

LOOP 2.2: Prof. Christian Klug, University of Zurich, is our first academic guest. He introduces us to the Cambrian explosion, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event and the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction. Christian is an expert on cephalopods and he tells us more about their biology and his thoughts on the vertical orientation of Cameroceras in this series.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

We can observe colour to be highly important for animals today. It can be used for many different purposes, including camouflage and signalling, and produced by many different methods. What is true of colouration today is also likely to have been so in the past, however the fossilisation process replaces tissues with minerals, so finding hints of colour in fossils is very unlikely. There are however certain colour producing structures that can survive the fossilisation process. We visit the University of Bristol to talk to Maria McNamara, a post-doctoral research assistant, to learn more about the preservation of colour in the fossil record.

LOOP 3.1: We introduce episode three of Life On Our Planet and discuss one of the most significant stories in the series. We’re in agreement that lichens are the unsung heroes of the whole series and that Arthropleura is the crunchiest animal to ever exist. We talk about the ‘fishapod’ Strepsodus and its locomotion.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 6.4: Prof. Anjan Bhullar continues his overview of avian evolution with a look at how the birds fared after the K-Pg mass extinction. What was it that allowed birds to survive when the non-avian dinosaurs died out? Why didn’t they just become dinosaurs again? What have birds been able to achieve in the time since and how important are they to modern ecosystems. Not an episode to be missed (unless you’re Prof. Dan Field).

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

LOOP 4.3: Prof. Peter Falkingham, Liverpool John Moores University, was the consultant biomechanist for the series. He introduces us to the importance of biomechanics in CGI, but more widely in determining the physical capabilities of different animals. You need to have a full understanding of the anatomy of the animal, yes, but also the context on the media through which it is moving.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

The transition of fins to limbs is one of the most significant in the history of vertebrate evolution. These were the first steps that would eventually allow tetrapods to go on to dominate so many terrestrial ecosystems. Fossils that help fill the gaps in this crucial time are invaluable, so how do we go about finding them and what happens when we do discover one?

The Burgess Shale is probably the world's most famous lagerstätte (site of special preservation). Discovered in 1909 on Mt. Stephen, in the Canadian Rockies of British Colombia, Canada, this locality provided an early representation of the true biodiversity of the Cambrian Period. For decades, discoveries from this site have helped palaeontologists better understand the 'Cambrian Explosion' and the origins of modern lineages. Since that time, many more early lagerstätten have been discovered, so we asked Prof. Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge, if this well-studied locality still holds its relevance to modern palaeontology.

In the second part of our SVP coverage we have interviews with some of the researchers on the scientific content of their posters and conference presentations.

Synapsids are one of the major groups of terrestrial vertebrates. They first appear in the Carboniferous period and since that time have gone through many radiation and extinction events. But what did these first stem-mammals look like, how did they live and how do they differ from modern mammals? These may sound like simple questions, but there is an underrepresentation of terrestial deposits from the Permian. How then can we understand larger-scale evolutionary patterns when so much data is missing?

Ostracods are tiny crustaceans (relatives of shrimps, crabs and water-fleas), distinguished by having a shell that is easily fossilised. As microfossils, by virtue of a long and rich fossil record, ostracods are extremely useful for determining the age of the sedimentary strata in which they are found, as well as providing clues to the nature of the environments and climates in which those deposits were formed. The first ostracods lived in shallow continental shelf seas during the early Ordovician period nearly 500 million years ago, later spreading and diversifying into deep oceanic as well as continental environments such as lakes and rivers.  Today, as living organisms, they are globally widespread and diverse, inhabiting almost every kind of aquatic environment from the abyssal depths of the oceans to freshwater ponds.

The Bighorn Basin in Wyoming has been an important area for research into terrestrial ecosystems for decades. The basin formed as part of the uprising of the Rocky Mountains in the west of North America, and sediment from the surrounding mountain ranges was transported into it for millions of years, building up a huge thickness that has fossils from all kinds of life on land preserved within it. Rocks from many different time periods are now exposed in the basin, but a particularly important one is the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) which occurred around 56 million years ago. At this time a huge amount of carbon was released into the atmosphere very quickly, causing a sharp (by geological standards) increase in temperature and dramatic effects on life. Palaeontologists and geologists are particularly interested in studying the PETM as it can potentially give us lots of information about how life and earth systems might respond in the near future to the large quantities of carbon being released into our atmosphere now by humans.

In this episode recorded in the field we talk to Dr Scott Wing, who is curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian in Washington DC but has been coming to the basin every summer for decades. We chat about the geology and history of the area, what it's like to work in the Wyoming desert every summer, how to find and collect fossil plants, and what years of research by many people in the basin has told us about the PETM.

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, or 'GOBE', describes one of the most important increases in biodiversity in the history of life on earth. During a relatively short time span of some 25 million years, an explosion of new species, genera and families appeared. This increase in diversity was accompanied by an increase in ecosystem complexity. Plankton and suspension feeding organisms rapidly diversified and became important constituents of the food web. At the same time, large predators, such as the orthoconic nautiloids, evolved to exploit them. This biodiversity 'explosion' coincided with a dynamic period in earth's history during which continents were shifting, mountains were raised and massive volcanism occurred.

Joining us to try and untangle the causes and consequences of this complex and fascinating period is Prof. David Harper of Durham University, UK.

The proboscideans are a group of animals that contains the elephant and mastodont families. Many of us will be well-aware of these groups, but what of some of the lesser-known proboscideans? One such family are the gomphotheres and in this episode we’re introduced to them by Dr Dimila Mothé, of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The horseshoe crabs (Xiphosura) are a group of large aquatic arthropods known from the East coast of the USA, and the Southern and Eastern coasts of Asia. Despite their name, they are not actually crabs at all, but are chelicerates (the group containing spiders and scorpions). As a group, the horseshoe crabs possess an extremely long fossil record, reaching as far back as the Ordovician Period, some 480 million years ago. Since that time, they would appear to have undergone very little change, leading the horseshoe crabs to become the archetypal 'living fossils'.

Joining us for this two-part episode is Dr Russell Bicknell, University of New England, Australia. We discuss what makes a horseshoe crab, before taking questions from our listeners as to all aspects of horseshoe crab ecology and what we can infer from them about other extinct arthropods.

LOOP 5.3: We’re exploring feather evolution with Dr Anjan Bhullar, University of Yale. We trace feathers up the theropod family tree and question whether or not they would be present in ALL dinosaurs. Anjan does NOT sit on the fence with this question or any other. Were dinosaurs brightly coloured? How intelligent were they? Do not miss some of these mind-blowing insights!

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

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 ≈13,000 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.

Updates about the show and discussion of recent events

The Appalachian mountains, span the Eastern margin of the United States of America. They are predominantly composed of Paleozoic rocks, but Mesozoic marine sediments (formed adjacent to the Appalachian continent at the time) can be found along the Eastern coast. It is within these deposits that the remains of a unique dinosaur fauna can be found.

Joining us to paint a picture of the vertebrate faunas of Appalachia during the Mesozoic is Chase Brownstein, research associate at the Stamford Museum and Nature Centre.

After rodents, bats are the second largest group of mammals, representing a staggering 20% of all mammal species. They can be found all over the world, with the exception of cold climates, where they often play incredibly important ecological roles. Their ecologies (ways in which they live) go well beyond the cave-hanging, moth-eating stereotypes and diets can also be based on fruits, nectar or even blood. In fact, some tropical plants rely solely upon bats for pollination!

But when did bats evolve and who are their closest relatives? Do they have a good fossil record? Is vampirism an effective feeding strategy?

In this episode, we're joined by Dr Nancy Simmons, Curator-In-Charge of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, who introduces us to the wonderful world of bats and their fossil record.

LOOP 3.3: Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, gives us an overview of the major events in tetrapod evolution. He reveals some of the surprising traits that lobe-finned fishes ‘pre-possessed’ that were re-purposed for use on land. But were the biggest hurdles to terrestrialisation oxygen, moisture or gravity? We follow through the evolution of tetrapods into their many groups before the ‘Great Dying’ almost ends it for all of them.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

The Carboniferous (Latin for ‘coal-bearing’) is a period of the Paleozoic named after the massive accumulations of coal that were formed globally during this time. These coal deposits were the fuel for the Industrial Revolution and continue to be an important economic resource to this day.

For this interview, we asked Standford University’s Prof. Kevin Boyce to introduce us to coal production and to tell us how it’s formed and what it’s made of. We then concentrate on determining why the Carboniferous was the period with the largest coal deposits when we know that forests existed in other periods too. Finally, we look at the impact that coal production and subsequent exploitation have had on the planet.

The interaction between plants and atmosphere forms the basis of the carbon cycle and is amongst the most important processes for maintaining life on the planet today. Photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in return forms the base of the food chain and produces the oxygen we, as animals, need to breathe. Equally, the composition of the atmosphere influences the climate and thus the availability of resources, governing where plants are able to survive.

The relationship between the two can be committed to the fossil record by such physical proxies as the number of stomata in leaves and by the palaeolattitude of different species. Other chemical proxies, such as isotopic ratios, can also help elucidate what the atmosphere was like at the time a plant was preserved. Similarly, atmospheric proxies can also be used to make inferences about past plant life in the absence of fossil remains.

Joining us to discuss the link between plants and atmosphere is Prof. Jennifer McElwain of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

When thinking of palaeontology in Asia, most people think of Mongolia and China, but there is actually a significant palaeontology community in Japan. Japan has many fossils, starting in the Ordovician, and ranging from everything from bivalves and trilobites to dinosaurs and mammals. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Makoto Manabe, the Director of the Centre for Collections and Centre for Molecular Biodiversity Research at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Makoto introduces us to Japanese palaeontology by walking Liz through the Japan Gallery at the museum, starting from the earliest fossils found up to more recent cave deposits.

Palaeontology (dinosaurs in particular) are incredibly well represented in nearly all forms of popular media today. From documentaries and films to computer games and even specialist podcasts. But where did the public fascination in dinosaurs come from? Has it always been there, ever since the existence of dinosaurs was first revealed, or has interest grown cumulatively with every public engagement milestone.

This third and final part examines the need for modern films and documentaries to be able to substantiate their claims. How do we know whether or not the scenes they depict are based on palaeontological facts? The series then ends by stepping back and considering what the point of this kind of science communication is anyway.

The world is currently undergoing a massive biodiversity crisis, and many people have said that we are in the next major mass extinction event, with species going extinct each day. Unfortunately, we don't currently understand what aspects control biodiversity, and how the past can help us understand the present and the future.

Associate Professor Lindsey Leighton of the University of Alberta discusses his work combining research of modern invertebrate marine fauna related to biodiversity and ecosystems with studies of the fossil record in order to further understand this problem.

Part 2.

Caecilians, sometimes known as ‘blind worms’, are a lesser-known group of lissamphibians (all living amphibians). Most modern caecilians are all fossorial (burrowing) and are restricted to the moist soils and leaf litter of tropical forests. Adaptation to this specific ecology has led to radical modification of their bodies, from fusion of the bones in the head and the function of the jaw, to the loss of limbs and development of unique sensory organs.

The fossil record of caecilians is incredibly poor, with only 10 specimens available for researchers to piece together their evolutionary history with. This is further problematic because without a firm understanding of caecilian evolution, we can’t understand the origins of lissamphibians, which includes the ecologically significant groups of frogs and salamanders.

Published in Nature today, a new study led by Ben Kligman, Petrified Forest National Park and Virginia Tech, details numerous specimens of a new fossil caecilian. Discovered within a Triassic deposit, Funcusvermis gilmorei is not only the oldest known caecilian, but it also displays a unique combination of anatomical characteristics that helps illuminate the evolutionary origins of caecilians and all lissamphibians.

Whilst this discovery goes some way to answer some of the bigger questions, other problems that are raised, most notably why there is such an over-representation of Funcusvermis‘s lower right jaw.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. We will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to an episode of LOOP.

In episode 1.1, we introduce ourselves and explain our roles in the documentary. We look forward to the release of the series and discuss the scope of episode 1 and some of the 'rules of life'.

Images courtesy of Netflix.

From 1:1 scale whales to microfossils scaled up to the size of a house, there are few model-building projects that 10 Tons are afraid to take on. At the helm of this business is Esben Horn and in this episode, he joins us to discuss the process of model building, from concept to museum display.

We also talk about some of the exhibitions 10 Tons have led themselves, including the successful ‘Rock Fossils on Tour‘ which showcases some of the different fossils named in honour of rock/metal musicians.

A new Ordovician lagerstätte (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 lagerstätten 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.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a molecule that encodes the genetic information within every species of life on earth. The information contained within the sequence of base pairs determines how any given organism develops and biologically functions.

DNA is not just limited to the biological world, but is also now being utilised in palaeontology. But why is DNA not normally preserved? What's the oldest DNA we can recover? And what can we learn about fossil animals from their DNA? We spoke to ancient DNA expert Dr Ross Barnett in order to get answers.

Every palaeontologist needs to put their feet up once in a while, and what better place to do so that the Best Western Denver Southwest? This hotel is located just a stone's-throw away from Dinosaur Ridge, one of the world's most famous fossil sites. It was here that many of the house-hold dinosaur names such as Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus) and Stegosaurus were first discovered during the 'Bone Wars' between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh in the late 19th century. The hotel is currently being re-branded, by science-advocate owners Greg and Meredith Tally, as a celebration of the rich paleontological history of the local area, both recent and ancient. Museum displays, fossil replicas and even a swimming pool shaped like the Western Interior Seaway are all planned, not only to excite the inner-child in each of us, but also to educate. We managed to catch up with Greg and Meredith, on a break from the construction, to talk all about their designs and the inspiration behind their re-branding, a story that strangely begins with Physicist Nicolai Tesla and a cartoon on theoatmeal.com.

LOOP 6.2: Dr Anjan Bhullar, Yale University, returns to speak further about dinosaurs. He’s pressed on where he’d draw the line between dinosaur and bird, or whether there should even be a distinction between them at all. At what point does flight evolve and was it ‘ground up’ or ‘tree down’? We find out that none of these questions are simple.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

In this episode, we talk to our very own Dr Elsa Panciroli about her new book Beasts Before Us. In it, she tells the untold story of mammalian evolution, tracing the origin of synapsids back to the Carboniferous. You’ll be taken to fossil sites around the world to meet some of these pioneering animals and some of the palaeontologists that discovered them.

For this interview, we’ll give you an overview of the early evolution of synapsids and dispel many of the misconceptions about what our ancestors were really like.

We’ve got a couple of copies of the book to give away, so look out on our social media channels for details of the competition! For everyone else, Beasts Before Us is available to buy online and in all good book shops.

Theropods are what we would classically recognise as the meat-eating dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era. They are best known from genera such as Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor but the group is much more diverse and includies herbivores, beaked and ostrich-like forms. It is however the link between theropods and birds that has long-caught the public's attention and perhaps represents one of the most scrutinised evolutionary transitions. As more dinosaurs are discovered with feathers, should we still be asking  where the cut-off point is between the two groups and not if there should be a distinction?

We caught up with Dr. Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh,  at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, who spoke to us about the relationship between theropods and birds.

Burmese amber is well known for preserving fossils in exquisite details. This amber is dated to around 100 million years old, representing the Albian - Cenomanian ages of the Cretaceous period, so would have been deposited whilst non-avian dinosaurs still walked the land.

Fossils preserved in this amber include representatives from numerous different groups including arachnids, insects, vertebrates, and plants. Whilst the amber itself (as fossilised tree sap/resin) is produced in a terrestrial environment, some marine species have been caught up in amber. This includes such animals as ostracods, snails and surprisingly even an ammonite!

In the first part of this series, we speak to Dr Javier Luque, Harvard University, about the discovery of a crab in amber. We put this discovery in context by first examining what crabs are, before turning our attention to their fossil record. In the next episode, we'll take a look at the details of the discovery.

Following on from this, we will discuss the political situation in Myanmar and question whether or not working with Burmese amber is currently ethical.

You may be forgiven for having missed the news of NASA's Curiosity rover, or Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), having landed on Mars, given all the coverage the 2012 Olympics had been getting.

To try and even this up, we got in touch with Dr. Leila Battison, a palaeontologist from the University of Oxford, UK, who is currently working at NASA, researching the earliest life in the fossil record and the conditions it needed to survive. We discussed NASA's mission to Mars and explored what kind of things we could expect from any signs of life on another planet based on what we know about early life on Earth from the fossil record.

Blue Beach is a locality in Nova Scotia, Canada that is well known for it's fossils from the Lower Carboniferous. In particular, it is significant for being one of few sites in the world that has fossils from this time period, known as 'Romer's Gap', significant for it's apparent lack of tetrapod fossils, despite the presence of animals like Ichthyostega and Acanthostega before this time. Significant work in recent years has been done on Romer's Gap, including on the tetrapod fossils found at Blue Beach.

In this episode, we spoke to University of Calgary Associate Professor Jason Anderson about these tetrapod fossils from Blue Beach, an area he has been working on for many years. Jason and others published a paper in 2015 on some of the early tetrapod finds from Blue Beach.

In 12 years of podcasting, we have never actually taken the time to address the fundamentals of our field. Such questions could include: what is palaeontology, what is a fossil, how does one become a palaeontologist, and why is palaeontology important?

For what should have been our very first episode, we've invited Prof. Roy Plotnick, University of Illinois Chicago, to help us outline everything you need to know about the field of palaeontology. Roy has had a long and varied palaeontological career, he maintains a blog all about the field, and he is author of the book Explorers of Deep Time.

Laura interviews Dave about Palaeocast's new project: The Virtual Natural History Museum.

The Virtual Natural History Museum (V-NHM) is a project designed to make digital palaeontological resources accessible like never before. This website will integrate fossil multimedia from museums worldwide and bring them together in the one place, creating a kind of ‘master museum’. All of this data will be exhibited inside of a ‘computer game-style’ museum, allowing you to virtually explore the rich biological history of our planet, as told by the world’s best fossils.

As Palaeocast celebrates it's 1st Birthday, we take the chance to look back over the past year and review our highlights. We also look towards the future and discuss our plans to attend some upcoming palaeontology conferences. We introduce a new member of the Palaeocast team and hear a little about the scientific work of all our members.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology are this year holding their annual conference in the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles. The SVP were formed in 1940 by thirty-four paleontologists, the society now has more than 2,300 members representing professionals, students, artists, preparators and others interested in vertebrate paleontology. It is organised exclusively for educational and scientific purposes, with the object of advancing the science of vertebrate paleontology.

At this event, we’re aiming to continue our daily reports, following on from our coverage of GSA, bringing all those who can't attend a flavour of the conference.

Anomalocaridids are iconic Cambrian animals, originally found in the Burgess Shale deposits in Canada. From the Genus Anomalocaris, their name translates as 'strange shrimp' owing to their initial misidentification from incomplete remains. In fact, it took until 1985 to realise that three different animals were all actually disarticulated parts of the same animal! Our knowledge of these enigmatic creatures has increased exponentially in recent years owing to many exciting new fossil discoveries, as well as reanalysis of old specimens using new technologies. Researchers are  building up a picture of a group of animals  far more diverse than previously expected, including apex predators as well as possible filter feeders and scavengers. Their temporal range is surprising too - they survived the end Cambrian extinctions when many other taxa died out, and many questions about their ecology, relationships and extinction remain to be answered.

LOOP 8.4: LOOP Showrunner Dan Tapster returns to give a retrospective on the series and its production. We look at went well and address criticisms; is it possible to keep everyone happy? We finish this series by discussing the show’s take-home messages and Dan’s hopes for Life On Our Planet’s legacy.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

Las Hoyas is a Early Cretaceous lagerstätte (site of special preservation) located close to the city of Cuenca, Spain. In this episode, we welcome Ángela Delgado Buscalioni and Francisco José Poyato-Ariza, both from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, to discuss the details of this remarkable site. Angela and Francisco have recently edited a comprehensive overview of the Las Hoyas site.

Like most lagerstätten, Las Hoyas is most famous for its vertebrate fossils, but what other taxa can we find there? What was the palaeoenvironment like? And which processes have governed the preservation of the fossils?

Piecing together the early lives of dinosaurs is difficult due to a lack of fossils from juvenile and embryonic stages. In this episode, Elsa Panciroli talks to Dr Kimi Chappelle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, part of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Chappelle specialises in sauropodomorphs – the precursors of the giant sauropod dinosaurs like Diplodocus. Her recent work is helping build a picture of their growth and development.

Chappelle is a champion of South African palaeontology and nominated as one of the Mail and Guardian’s top 200 young South Africans in Science and Technology. With her colleagues she has published a stunning new study of sauropodomorph embryos from a fossil nest site in South Africa. This new paper visualises and describes their tiny skulls using synchrotron scan data. These fossils provide new information on dinosaur developmental processes, and places South African fossils at the heart of our understanding of their early evolution. Chappelle also talks about the latest work she’s involved with in Zimbabwe, and future research into the growth patterns of the largest dinosaurs to have ever lived.

LOOP 3.2: Producer Sophie Lanfear gives us our first insights into how documentaries are shaped. She tells us about the enormous scope of episode three and the difficulty of trying to fit in so many significant events. We analyse her use of emotion throughout the episode and she explains why she opted to use comedy. Finally, we look at the problem of anthropomorphism in documentaries.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

Fossils, at the best of times, are difficult to interpret. Palaeontologists attempt to reconstruct organisms from what little remains are left. This can be relatively simple for groups that we are familiar with today; you can easily make comparisons between a fossil lobster and a living one. But how do you interpret a fossil that has no modern counterpart and is not clearly related to any other organism?  We speak to Dr Jakob Vinther of the University of Bristol about his experience of interpreting some of the oldest and most cryptic specimens in the fossil record.  We look at molluscs, worms, worm-like molluscs and mollusc-like worms.

Trilobites are one of the most instantly recognisable groups of fossils. They were present from the very start of the Paleozoic and went on the fill a great number of ecological roles before going extinct at the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event 252 million years ago. They ranged from the very small to the very large, from the most basic appearance to the most elaborately ornamented.

We were lucky enough to get the opportunity to speak to Prof. Richard Fortey of the Natural History Museum, London, all about trilobite morphology and ecology.

We interview Professor William Stein of Binghamton University about the world's first forets at Gilboa, NY, USA. We talk through the history of the research at this famous locality covering the destruction of the village of Gilboa and some of the 'paleontological difficulties' the researchers found themselves in.  We discuss the palaeobotany and palaeoecology of the forests and the effect the evolution of such communities had on the world.

The Emu Bay shale is a Burgess Shale-type lagerstätte from the Early Cambrian of South Australia. We speak to Dr John Paterson, of the University of New England, all about the locality and the fossils it contains.

Echinoderms are characterised by a mineralised skeleton, specialised water vascular system and five-fold symmetry. It is this unusual body plane symmetry that gives the starfish its star-shape. None of these features, however, are possessed by the closest living relatives of echinoderms – the hemichordates. Palaeontology offers a unique perspective into the early evolution of echinoderms, revealing that echinoderm characteristics were acquired in a step-wise fashion from a bilaterally symmetrical ancestor. We speak to Dr Imran Rahman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol, about the early evolution of echinoderms, from worms to stars.

We got a chance to talk to Dr. George Poinar of Oregon State University about his work in amber. We discuss what it is and how it forms, but also talk about the organisms that are preserved within and the organisms within those organisms. From identifying genuine from fake amber, to parasite behaviour modification and palaeopathology, this episode has it all!

Continuing our mini series on Burmese Amber, we now turn our focus to the ethics of working on this fossil material. Can possessing or working on amber from Myanmar ever be considered ethical?

In the first part of this episode, we examine the political context, work around Myanmar’s fossil exportation laws and follow the money back through the trade routes. In the second part (released in two weeks), we’ll be discussing why it’s currently unethical to study Burmese amber, what palaeontologists can do about that, and whether the situation might change in the future.

Joining us to guide us through this process are Nussaïbah Raja (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Dr Emma Dunne (University of Birmingham), authors of a soon-to-be-released study looking at exactly these issues.

Dr. Larry Witmer’s lab at Ohio University studies the anatomy of modern animals to make interpretations regarding the functional morphology of extinct vertebrates. WitmerLab incorporates anatomical studies with cutting-edge technology, allowing for the reconstructions of soft-tissue structures no longer present in fossils (including respiratory apparatuses, brains, and inner ears). These reconstructions allow Dr. Witmer and his students to study the original physiology, biomechanics, and evolutionary adaptations of creatures long extinct.

Insects are the most abundant and diverse group on animals on the planet today. Would they therefore also be expected to have the richest fossil record? When did they first evolve and how rapid was their diversification? Do we give enough attention to the evolution of insects?

To get answers we spoke to Dr. David Penney, honorary lecturer at the University of Manchester and founder of Siri Scientific Press. Dr. Penney has just recently published an overview of palaeoentomology entitled 'Fossil Insects'. 

We've covered how palaeoart is made on Palaeocast before, but never what daily life is like for a professional palaeoartist. What does it take to get started, when can you say no to a commission and which factors come in to play when deciding how much to quote?

Joining us for this episode is Bob Nicholls of Paleocreations

Part 2.

Diatoms are a major group of algae found in waters all around the world. As photosynthetic phytoplankton, they are hugely important ‘primary producers’, integral to nearly every aquatic food chain. They are responsible for a large proportion of the world’s oxygen production, with estimates ranging between 20 and 50%.

Diatoms are unicellular plants that produce their cell walls, termed frustules, out of silica. These intricate frustules are what we find preserved in the fossil record and they can contain an absolute wealth of information.

In this interview, Prof. Anson Mackay, University College London, joins to discuss his work on the diatoms from Lake Baikal, Siberia. We learn why lakes are such special ecosystems and what diatoms can tell us about the world through studies of their palaeoproductivity over thousands of years.

Planktonic foraminifera are single celled organisms that are highly abundant in modern oceans and a hugely important part of the Earth's carbon cycle. Each cell builds a hard calcite 'test' around itself in a huge variety of shapes. These tests continuously rain down on to the ocean floor leaving continuous records of how these organisms have changed over millions of years. They form the most complete fossil record we have, and are a very useful tool in everything from the oil industry to understanding how evolution works.

In this episode we talk to Dr Tracy Aze from the University of Leeds about her research using planktonic forams to understand macroevolutionary change, as well as decoding their record to map major climate events and temperatures throughout geological history.

Welcome to our coverage of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual conference held this year at the Estrel Hotel, Berlin, between the 5th and 9th November.

We're delighted to be back at this event, which is doubtless the biggest dedicated vertebrate palaeontology conference in the world. As per our usual conference coverage, we’re aiming to produce daily multimedia reports to give you an indication of what it's like to attend such an event and also to bring you the latest news in the field.

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils (also termed ichnofossils). Opposed to body fossils, the physical remains of an organism, trace fossils are the fossilised interactions between an organism and the substrate/sediment and include such things as trackways, excrement, burrows, bite marks and borings. Both body fossils and trace fossils are important when studying an organism and especially so in determining palaeoecology (how an organism interacted with its immediate environment). Body fossils can only inform us of the anatomy of the dead organism and its physical constraints, from which we can infer modes of life. Trace fossils, on the other hand, record the activity of organisms in life; it can be possible to see evidence of how certain communities functioned, or how an organism interacted with its environment. However one draw back is that the producer of a trace fossil is not always known, or we can't be certain that any one organism produced a specific trace.

In this first of a two-part episode, we speak to Prof. Anthony Martin from Emory Euniversity, USA, all about trace fossils, why they are important and how they can be used.

Caecilians, sometimes known as ‘blind worms’, are a lesser-known group of lissamphibians (all living amphibians). Most modern caecilians are all fossorial (burrowing) and are restricted to the moist soils and leaf litter of tropical forests. Adaptation to this specific ecology has led to radical modification of their bodies, from fusion of the bones in the head and the function of the jaw, to the loss of limbs and development of unique sensory organs.

The fossil record of caecilians is incredibly poor, with only 10 specimens available for researchers to piece together their evolutionary history with. This is further problematic because without a firm understanding of caecilian evolution, we can’t understand the origins of lissamphibians, which includes the ecologically significant groups of frogs and salamanders.

Published in Nature today, a new study led by Ben Kligman, Petrified Forest National Park and Virginia Tech, details numerous specimens of a new fossil caecilian. Discovered within a Triassic deposit, Funcusvermis gilmorei is not only the oldest known caecilian, but it also displays a unique combination of anatomical characteristics that helps illuminate the evolutionary origins of caecilians and all lissamphibians.

Whilst this discovery goes some way to answer some of the bigger questions, other problems that are raised, most notably why there is such an over-representation of Funcusvermis‘s lower right jaw.

LOOP 3.4: With researcher Ida-May Jones, we explore the Venn diagram of academic and documentary research. She introduces us to the strawberry dart frogs and the extraordinary lengths that mothers will go to to care for their young. With such high-tech equipment to record behaviours, it’s unsurprising that something new might be encountered!

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific research dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

Vertebrates are one of the most diverse and successful groups of animals on the planet.  Modern vertebrates come in an astounding array of sizes and shapes and can be found anywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains.  Yet vertebrates did not attain such success from the outset; their rise to dominance was gradual. The early evolution of vertebrates was a dynamic and, at times, a turbulent interval which, through studying the fossil record, we are able to understand in increasing detail.  We talk to Dr Lauren Sallan, who is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan studying early vertebrate evolution, biodiversity and ecology.

What are Mass extinctions, how are they quantified, what are the driving forces behind them, how bad were the ones in the past and will we have more in the future?

To answer these questions we are joined by mass extinctions specialist Prof. Paul Wignall of the University of Leeds, UK.

On today's episode we're revisiting Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. At this lagerstätte it is possible to find large bedding planes full of Precambrian organisms called rangeomorphs. These are an enigmatic group, which still can't be placed on the 'tree of life'.

We are joined by Dr Emily Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, who's recent paper in Nature was able to show that you don't need to be able to fully understand the anatomy of an organism to discern some of its most intricate details.

The end-Cretaceous mass extinction was a cataclysmic asteroid impact that ushered in the end of the non-avian dinosaurs and forever changed the course of evolution on Earth. But what can we say about the timing of the event, other than it happened 66 million years ago?

Well, it turns out that Tanis, a relatively-recently discovered fossil site in North Dakota, is full of lines of evidence that are allowing earth scientists to piece together when the impact occurred.

In this episode, we’re joined by Melanie During, Uppsala University, who has been examining the details of the bones of fish to say more about the world either side of the event.

LOOP 8.2: Prof. Danielle Schreve, Royal Holloway University of London, joins us to cover the last 2 million years of Earth’s history. We explore the periodicity of glacials and interglacials and the control Earth’s orbit around the sun has on climate. She then places the Holocene’s megafaunal extinctions and major palaeobiogeograpical events within this climatic context. We finally look at the impact of human radiation on the world and the lessons we can learn from this time.

Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon. Ancient organisms and environments are painstakingly recreated by the supremely talented Industrial Light and Magic, whilst modern natural history scenes add vital context to the story.

This show has been worked on for six years, during which time countless papers were read and around 150 different palaeontologists contributed their time and knowledge. The whole production had culture of letting the scientific rese arch dictate scenes, resulting in one of the most accurate on-screen representations of prehistoric life there has ever been.

And how do we know all this? Well, our very own team members Tom Fletcher and Dave Marshall have been embedded within the LOOP team since day one! We are therefore in a totally unique position to reveal to you the work that went into this series, from both the production and research side of things.

In this unofficial series, we’ve been granted exclusive access to many of the people responsible for creating LOOP, we explore what it takes to create a palaeontological documentary and we delve deeper into the science with some of the show’s academic advisors. Each day, we will be releasing batches of interviews, each relating to a specific episode of LOOP.

Image courtesy and copyright of Netflix.

This year sees the GSA celebrate its 125^th anniversary, having formed in  1888. It's a massive event with thousands of attendees. There are literally hundreds of talks to hear and posters to see, so we're hoping to bring just a sample of it to you.

Each day we’ll be posting interviews and pictures from the conference, giving you a flavour of what it’s like to attend.

Burmese amber is well known for preserving fossils in exquisite details. This amber is dated to around 100 million years old, representing the Albian - Cenomanian ages of the Cretaceous period, so would have been deposited whilst non-avian dinosaurs still walked the land.

Fossils preserved in this amber include representatives from numerous different groups including arachnids, insects, vertebrates, and plants. Whilst the amber itself (as fossilised tree sap/resin) is produced in a terrestrial environment, some marine species have been caught up in amber. This includes such animals as ostracods, snails and surprisingly even an ammonite!

In the first part of this series, we speak to Dr Javier Luque, Harvard University, about the discovery of a crab in amber. We put this discovery in context by first examining what crabs are, before turning our attention to their fossil record. In the next episode, we'll take a look at the details of the discovery.

Following on from this, we will discuss the political situation in Myanmar and question whether or not working with Burmese amber is currently ethical.

The Soom Shale is an Ordovician lagerstätte in the Western Cape of South Africa. Whilst it lacks the diversity of organisms seen in other lagerstätten, such as the Burgess Shale or Chengjiang, it more than makes up for it in the fidelity of preservation.

The taphonomic pathway to the fantastic preservation in the Soom Shale is long and complex, reliant not only on local conditions, but also ties into global climatic events. It’s vitally important when interpreting fossils to understand the taphonomy as it provides so much context as to what you can see in fossils and, as equally important, what you can’t.

Joining us for this episode is Prof. Sarah Gabbott, a taphonomist from the University of Leicester, UK.

The buculum is a bone present in the head of the penis of most mammals. Whilst a few mammals, like us, don't possess a baculum, some have greatly reduced versions and many have very elaborate shapes. Despite this variety in expression of the baculum, its function remains elusive, though many theories exist.

Investigating the function of this bone is Dr Charlotte Brassey, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, and she joins us for this episode to give us a crash course on penile anatomy and to reveal to us how little we know about genitals.

Brachiopods are some of the most common fossils to be found in rocks worldwide. Their thick, hard and (often) calcareous shells make them preferentially preserved in the fossil record. We probably all have found one, but how many of us overlooked them at the time? What can a brachiopod tell us? How big a role have they played throughout geological time?

In this second part of a two-part episode we continue our interview with Prof. Lars Holmer, University Uppsala, Sweden, all about the humble brachiopod.

Plants, Animals and fungi; these are all three of the Kingdoms of life we’re all most familiar with, but what you might not know is that fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants. Stranger still is that the vast majority of terrestrial plants live in a symbiotically with fungi.

In this episode, we interview Prof. Marc-André Selosse, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. We discuss this symbiotic relationship and how it helped both groups overcome the massive challenge of adapting to life on land. We further go on to look at exquisitely-preserved fossils which display cellular details and reveal the first evidence of this relationship and discuss the potential identity of a particularly enigmatic giant fossil. We end the conversation theorising about what benefits a true understanding of this symbiosis could have on the future of agriculture.

This relationship between plants and fungi is something that has shaped the evolution of life on land and so this discussion is most definitely not one to be missed!

In this episode, in conjunction with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), we investigate issues of diversity in palaeontology, through interviews with Jann Nassif (PhD student at Ohio University, USA) on being transgender in palaeontology; Professor Taissa Rodrigues (Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil) and Dr Femke Holwerda (Dr Betsy Nicholls Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Canada) about women in palaeontology; and Gabriel-Philip Santos (Collections Manager and Outreach Coordinator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology at The Webb Schools) about racial diversity. We also spoke with Professor Jessica Theodor (University of Calgary), the Vice President of SVP about what they are doing to increase diversity and address these issues. This episode was recorded in 2019 at the SVP meeting in Brisbane, Australia, but for several reasons has taken us a little while to complete. Given the current discussions and anti-racism activism going on around the world, we thought this was a good time to reflect on some of the issues within our science and the ways in which they are being addressed.

Bolca is a site of exceptional preservation of fossils (termed a konservat lagerstätte) located close to Verona, Italy. This 50 million year old limestone was deposited in the Eocene Epoch and contains over 500 species of plants, arthropods terrestrial vertebrates and most notably a lot of fish! The preservation at Bolca is so detailed that even the external colouration of the skin and internal anatomy of many of these fossils can be seen.

Exploring the taphonomy (the processes that occur to a body between death and discovery) and palaeoecology (how fossil organisms lived and interacted with other organisms and their surroundings) of some of the fish from Bolca is Dr Valentina Rossi from University College Cork, Ireland. In this episode, we look at how colour patterns are preserved in a fossil moonfish and look at what that can tell us about how the species lived.

Lack of diversity is one of the major issues in the sciences in recent times. We’ve discussed diversity in palaeontology in previous podcasts, but in this episode Elsa takes a look at the legacy of racism and colonialism in palaeontology and museum collections, and what efforts are being made to address these issues.

Colonial attitudes towards people of non-European descent have meant that their natural heritage was often plundered and sent back to Europe and the United States to fill museum shelves. Researchers continue to benefit from these resources. How should we change our scientific practice to recognise this legacy and avoid making the same mistakes now and in the future?

In the first part of the episode, Elsa speaks to Christa Kuljian, a historian of science and author of Darwin’s Hunch, based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She’ll examine the legacy of racism in science, focusing on palaeoanthropology in South Africa, including figures like Robert Broom and Raymond Dart. We’ll hear how attitudes toward different races shaped the research and conclusions of past generations of scientists.

In the second part, Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coodinator at the Sedgewick Museum in England, talks about the legacy of colonialism in museum collections. We’ll find out about the ways in which specimens were collected in the past, and how this was related to contemporary events and attitudes. We’ll also find out what moves being taken to decolonise museums and refocus public outreach to recognise the past and move positively into the future.

Names can provide a large amount of information about the heritage of an individual, the purpose of a product or even the characteristics of an organism. With so much in a name, are there rules governing what you can and can’t name an animal? Can you name an animal after yourself or a celebrity? Can you sell the rights to a name? Which names are forbidden?

Every year 2,000 genera and some 15,000 species are added to scientific literature and providing the guidelines as to how these animals are named is the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). We invited one of the ICZN’s commissioners, Dr Markus Bertling (Universität Münster), on to the show to discuss how the organisation functions and how its code applies to Palaeontology.

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 ≈13,000 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 the second part of this interview, Dick continues 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.

It wouldn’t be outlandish to state that many a fossil collection has started with the acquisition of an ammonite. Their planispiral shells (termed a conch) are instantly recognisable and since that conch was originally composed of the relatively hard mineral aragonite, they better lend themselves to the fossilisation process.

But how much do we actually know about the animal that produces the conch? We might be able to make superficial inferences based on comparisons with the modern Nautilus, but ammonites are actually closer related to squid and octopuses.

So could you recognise an ammonite without its shell?

Prof. Christian Klug of the University of Zurich has recently described just that: a naked ammonite. In this episode, we learn about ammonite soft body anatomy and sink our teeth into the mystery of how this ammonite lost its shell.

Diet is perhaps the most important aspect of ecology. As such, understanding the diet of extinct animals is crucial if we wish to reconstruct the ecosystems of the past. However, determining what was on the menu for extinct animals, known only from fragmentary fossils, is far from straight forward. We spoke to Dr David Button, from the University of Birmingham, to learn about the techniques palaeontologists use to deduce diet from fossils.

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.

Continuing our look at Australia's marsupials, we speak to Dr. Karen Black, also of the University of New South Wales. Here, we discuss Riversleigh fossil site, what fossils it contains, how they preserved and what's it takes to excavate them.

One of the most significant events in Earth’s history has been the oxygenation of its atmosphere 2.45–2.32 billion years ago. This accumulation of molecular oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere was so significant that it is now commonly known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). The long-reaching effects of the GOE were literally world-changing; the compositions of the atmosphere and hydrosphere were altered, and through various redox reactions (where atoms have their oxidation state changed), the nature of the continents and global climate changed too. However, and perhaps from an anthropocentric viewpoint, the most important effect would be upon the biosphere: the GOE paved the way for the evolution of aerobic (oxygen respiring) organisms, including our earliest ancestors.

It is possible to track the GOE through geochemical traces left in the rock record. However, one thing we're still uncertain about is whether or not this event represents either a sharp increase in oxygen production or a reduction in oxygen sinks - the jury is still out on that one. With this level of ambiguity over the dynamics of the GOE, it may be a little surprising to know that there has been a long-standing consensus on how the oxygen was actually produced: photosynthetic organisms called cyanobacteria (blue-green algae, so named after the pigment they produce).

In this episode we discuss with Dr. Bettina Schirrmeister (University of Bristol) about the evolution of cyanobacteria and the role they played in the GOE.

It can be argued that palaeoart is the single biggest hook for getting people interested in prehistoric life. It takes the complex scientific terminology and data found within the academic literature and translates it into a reconstruction of an extinct organism. It is only through palaeoart that we can visualise some extinct organisms (particularly the vertebrates, and dinosaurs in this instance, whose external tissues are rarely preserved as fossils) and show some of the behaviours they might have possessed. Any kind of reconstruction that attempts to accurately depict an extinct organism as a living one could be considered palaeoart and this covers all forms of media, from traditional painting, to animation, 3D models and even how skeletons are posed in a museum.

In this episode, we speak to behavioural geneticist and palaeoartist and Dr Emily Willoughby, University of Minnesota. We take a look at what palaeoart is, how to go about making your own artwork and the release of her new book ‘Drawing and Painting Dinosaurs‘.

Early tetrapods include the earliest animals to grow legs, and their closest ancestors. Moving from the water to land required a number of changes within the skeleton and muscular system, related to moving from swimming to crawling, greater pressure on the body after experiencing further effects of gravity without buoyancy, and the difference in feeding with and without water. This transition is commonly referred to as the 'water-to-land' transition. While a significant amount of work has been done on the anatomical changes through this period, there has been less study on the biomechanics. What has been looked at tends to relate to the mechanical changes related to walking on land and the limbs. However, less has been done looking at the skull mechanics and feeding.

Early tetrapod work was pioneered by Professor Jenny Clack. She did a lot of early field work and description, understanding this transition better than anyone. Sadly, Professor Clack passed away in March, but has left behind a legacy of other professors, post docs and students around the globe which she inspired. In this episode, we talk to Dr Laura Porro from University College London about her work on early tetrapod feeding and skull mechanics, and how the skull changed over the water-to-land transition, work which was done with and inspired by Jenny.

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.

Ankylosaurs are a group of non-avian dinosaurs best known for their armour, tank-like bodies, and sometimes large tail clubs. First appearing in the Jurassic, they were common in Late Cretaceous ecosystems, with several species known from around the world. But how different were these species really? And just where did they evolve from? What was that tail for?

Dr. Victoria Arbour of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is one of the leading experts on ankylosaurs, and has published a number of papers, including a recent study on how the tail club evolved. We spoke with Victoria about these dinosaurs and she answered some of these questions for us.

The field of evolutionary biology has been greatly influenced by the development of modern genetic methodology. The understanding of genes, genomes and the molecular mechanisms key to life on Earth are all goals of evolutionary biology in the 21^st century, yet its potential applications seem to be near limitless. Palaeontology and evolutionary biology continue to be closely related and both, with their deeply rooted origins, have been essential to our understanding of macroevolution (major evolutionary change over long periods of time) ever since the major development of the theory in the 19^th century.

In this episode, Prof. Erica Bree Rosenblum introduces us to this diverse and constantly evolving field. We cover fundamental questions such as: what are genes and genomes and why does understanding them matter; which evolutionary roles do environmental and genetic mechanisms play; and what ultimately causes the rise and fall of species. In order to better understand life on Earth, we show how evolutionary biology brings together the fields of genetics, biochemistry, ecology, palaeontology and more.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology are this year holding their annual conference in the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles. The SVP were formed in 1940 by thirty-four paleontologists, the society now has more than 2,300 members representing professionals, students, artists, preparators and others interested in vertebrate paleontology. It is organised exclusively for educational and scientific purposes, with the object of advancing the science of vertebrate paleontology.

At this event, we’re aiming to continue our daily reports, following on from our coverage of GSA, bringing all those who can't attend a flavour of the conference.

Planktonic foraminifera are single celled organisms that are highly abundant in modern oceans and a hugely important part of the Earth’s carbon cycle. Each cell builds a hard calcite ‘test’ around itself in a huge variety of shapes. These tests continuously rain down on to the ocean floor leaving continuous records of how these organisms have changed over millions of years. They form the most complete fossil record we have, and are a very useful tool in everything from the oil industry to understanding how evolution works.