Found in the fossil record between the Jurassic and the middle Miocene, Notosuchia was a highly diverse and strange group of crocodylomorphs, most notable for their terrestrial lifestyle.

Joining us for today’s episode is Dr Yohan Pochat-Cottilloux from the Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, who specialises in the study of crocodylomorphs. Together, we will explore the wide range of scientific methodologies that have so far been used to study the lives of these strange reptiles and discuss how they may have looked and behaved.

LOOP 8.1: Dave and Tom introduce episode 8 and round of this special series on Life On Our Planet. We talk about our favourite scenes and reflect on our time working on the documentary and how our perspectives of documentary making has changed. We’d love your feedback on this podcast 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 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 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.

The Carboniferous was a time of huge swampy forests, big trees, and lots of life both on land and in the ocean. One world-renowned fossil site from approximately 300 million years ago is the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, located on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia Canada. Joggins is one of Canada’s five palaeontology-based UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and is one of the best places in this world to find fossils from this time period.

Why are the Joggins Fossil Cliffs so important? What makes this locality unique?

In this episode, Liz speaks with Dr. Melissa Grey, the curator at the Joggins Fossil Centre to learn more about why this region is so important. We discuss the variety of fossils, from plants to invertebrates to vertebrates, and how the interesting preservation has resulted in virtually an entire ecosystem being preserved.

Palaeontology has an ability to grab the public’s attention like no other subject. Perhaps it’s the size and ferocity of something like a T. rex, or maybe it’s the alien nature of something like Hallucigenia. Irrespective of whatever it is that makes the subject interesting to any given individual, it’s important because palaeontology is a great gateway into STEM subjects and is, in itself, one of the few ways in which we can understand about the evolution of life and the planet.

But how has the public’s perception of palaeontology changed with the times? Was it more popular in its infancy, when huge questions were still left unanswered, or is it more popular now, in the era of Jurassic Park, where animatronics and CGI can bring fossils ‘back to life’?

Joining us to discuss how palaeontological outreach has been conducted and received throughout its history is Dr Chris Manias, King’s College London. Chris is a historian of palaeontology and founder of the ‘Popularizing Palaeontology‘, a network of scholars, scientists, museum professionals, artists, etc. who reflect on trends in palaeontological communication and build future collaborations.

Welcome to this special series of podcasts relating to a fieldtrip that I have been invited on by Dr Martin Brazeau of Imperial College London.

I’m being flown out as the Palaeozoic arthropod “expert” of the team and I’ll be there to deal with all the eurypterids and phyllocaridids we come across, along as documenting the whole process for outreach and hopefully your enjoyment.

In all, this trip will last around 6 weeks, during which time I’ll have no internet, electricity, running water or even any toilets. It’s going to be a gruelling trip, but hopefully one that will give you an insight into what life is like in the field. You will join us as we discuss the science, prepare for the trip, arrive in the field, go out digging and finally wrap things up. You will experience all the highs of discovering new and exciting fossils and the lows of when we’ve just all had enough. This expedition is a unique opportunity to share with you a single research project from start to finish, rather than just the results.

In this first episode, we contextualise why we’re going into the field. What is the current lay of the research landscape? What we already know? and what are we aiming to find out about the early evolution of the jawed vertebrates, a group to which we ourselves belong?

Welcome to this special series of podcasts relating to a fieldtrip that I have been invited on by Dr Martin Brazeau of Imperial College London.

I’m being flown out as the Palaeozoic arthropod “expert” of the team and I’ll be there to deal with all the eurypterids and phyllocaridids we come across, along as documenting the whole process for outreach and hopefully your enjoyment.

In all, this trip will last around 6 weeks, during which time I’ll have no internet, electricity, running water or even any toilets. It’s going to be a gruelling trip, but hopefully one that will give you an insight into what life is like in the field. You will join us as we discuss the science, prepare for the trip, arrive in the field, go out digging and finally wrap things up. You will experience all the highs of discovering new and exciting fossils and the lows of when we’ve just all had enough. This expedition is a unique opportunity to share with you a single research project from start to finish, rather than just the results.

We now move on to discussing the logistics of the trip. How do you go about making this kind of expedition happen? What are some of the challenges we will face? What will life be like in the camp? and how will we get our priceless fossils home?

Squamates are a group of reptiles that include lizards and snakes, with the earliest fossils occurring in the Jurassic, despite molecular studies dating the group back to the Triassic. The study of their origins has been contentious because of this gap, and the lack of fossils during this time period.

However, a new look at a previously-known fossil has changed our view of squamate origins, and discussing this animal and what it means about reptile relationships and squamates is Dr. Tiago Simões of the University of Alberta. This episode is based on a new paper published in Nature by Dr. Simões and colleagues.

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.

Bird evolution has long fascinated palaeontologists. Despite crown-group birds (birds giving rise to modern lineages today) evolving during the Cretaceous, there are relatively few fossils from this time, making it difficult to understand this key time period and just exactly how modern birds came to be.

Dr Daniel Field, 50th Anniversary Prize Fellow from the University of Bath, studies bird evolution, particularly how crown-group birds evolved. In this episode, we discuss his recent paper on an exceptionally preserved Ichthyornis specimen, and it’s significance in understanding how modern birds came to be.

Tooth shape and arrangement is strongly linked with diet, and palaeontologists often use teeth to determine what kind of food an animal may have been eating. Carnivorous teeth are generally more simple, while herbivorous teeth are more complicated. We know that herbivory evolved later, but how did the dentition of herbivores evolve? What kind of variation exists in herbivorous dentition?

In this episode, we speak with Dr Aaron LeBlanc, a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the evolution and development of teeth in amniotes, including some of his PhD work on the development of the dental system in herbivores, which we discuss in detail here, as well as the evolution of the mammalian system, which earned him the Alfred S. Romer Student Prize at last year’s SVP in Calgary.

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.

LOOP 7.3: We’re taken into the field to film snow leopards by episode 7’s Assistant Producer, Darren Williams. He reveals how difficult it is to get just a few minutes of video, both logistically and practically. We get to know the ‘old male’ snow leopard, trace his movements, and learn of his importance to the community. Darren then speaks about the emotional conflict of capturing his final moments on film.

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.

Archaeopteryx is perhaps one of the most iconic taxa in the fossil record. Exclusively found in the Late Jurassic Solnhofen Lagerstätte in Bavaria, Germany, it is a crucial taxon for understanding the relationship between dinosaurs and birds. Furthermore, it is critically positioned to inform us how flight evolved in this group.

Now, a new study published in Nature Communications, has been inferring how Archaeopteryx was able to fly by examining details of its bones. In this interview, we are joined by lead author Dennis Voeten, Palacký University, who shares with us his hypotheses, methods and results.

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.

Ichthyosaurs are large marine reptiles that existed for most of the Mesozoic Era. The most familiar forms superficially represent dolphins, but some earlier ichthyosaurs were more eel like. They could attain huge proportions, with some genera reaching up to 21m long. They were active predators feeding on belemnite, fishes and even other marine reptiles!

In this episode, we talk to Dr Ben Moon and Fiann Smithwick, researchers at the University of Bristol, UK. Both have recently been involved in producing a documentary with the BBC entitled ‘Attenborough and the Sea Dragon’, so we have used this as an opportunity to discuss in great detail what ichthyosaurs are and get insights into the kind of work required to produce such a documentary.

In this episode, we interview Dr Leigh Anne Riedman, University of California, about life during the Neoproterozoic Era, the most recent of the Precambrian Eon. This time interval is far from straight forward; not only were there changes in oceanic and atmospheric chemistry,  but also dramatic shifts in climate and the formation and subsequent rifting of the supercontinent Rodinia. The Neoproterozoic also saw major biological innovations and ended with the appearance of the enigmatic Ediacaran Fauna.

Leigh Anne studies acritarchs, relatively simple, single-celled walled microorganisms and by examining their diversity and abundance, she is able to comment on how life fared during this turbulent time.

Professor John Long is an early vertebrate researcher at Flinders University, Australia. He is most famous for his work on the three-dimentionally-preserved fish from the Gogo Formation, North West Australia.

In this interview, Dr Tom Fletcher (who you'll remember from Episode 76) got the chance to speak to Prof. Long during a field trip to the world-famous Burgess Shale.

Coccolithophores are tiny unicellular eukaryotic phytoplankton (algae). Each is covered with even smaller calcium carbonate plates called coccoliths and it is these that are commonly preserved in the fossil record. In fact, coccoliths are so small, and can be so common, that they have been able to be employed in areas other than academia.

Joining us is Dr Liam Gallagher, Director Network Stratigraphic Limited and a nannoplankton specialist. In this episode, he explains what coccolithophores are and we explore some case studies of how their coccoliths are being utilised.

This episode discusses details of recent and high-profile murder case. Whilst focus is placed on the scientific investigation, the latter part of this episode may not be suitable for all audiences.

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

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?

Joining us to give an overview of some of the fossils involved in this transition, and to provide insights into the fieldwork that goes into finding them, is Dr Ted Daeschler, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

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.

LOOP 7.2: Prof. Christine Janis, University of Bristol, outlines mammalian evolution and focusses on the global events that governs their radiation. We look at why mammals survived the K-Pg mass extinction and how the archaic mammals radiated immediately after. We end by looking at how mammals, similar to what we learned about birds, are relatively insignificant to today’s ecosystems.

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 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 shape of an animal is a reflection of the way it interacts with the physical world around it. By studying the mechanical laws which influence the evolution of modern animals, we can better understand the lives of their ancestors. Hydrodynamics examines the movement of water in contact with an organism, and can include everything from body shape to blood flow. In this episode we spoke to Dr Tom Fletcher, University of Leicester, about hydrodynamics in palaeontology, and his research looking at fossil fishes and modern sharks. Tom and others have published a paper on the hydrodynamics of fossil fishes, and he continues to work on the biomechanics of fossil animals.

Palaeontology is a constantly evolving field; when new methods and techniques are invented, they allow us to revisit old fossils and test our previous observations and hypotheses. Recently, an exciting new method called ‘Laser-Simulated Fluorescence’ (LSF) has been gaining popularity in palaeontology and we speak to its inventor Tom Kaye during a visit to the University of Bristol, alongside Dr Michael Pittman, Research Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong.

In this episode, we hear all about how LSF is allowing fossils to be seen under a completely new light. We discuss how the fluorescence is produced, how it’s currently being used and what possible applications it might have in future.

We have a pretty good idea about how different dinosaur groups evolved, and how they are related (although anyone who has been following the recent dinosaur relationship shake-up knows this is not quite as clear as previously thought), but we don't have a good idea of how their ancestors, early dinosauromorphs and other early archosaurs, evolved. When did these groups first appear? What lead to their diversification?

In this episode, we speak with (recently promoted!) Professor Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham and Academic Keeper of the Lapworth Museum of Geology about the evolution of this group, and early archosaurs in general. We also discuss a new, important species from the Middle Triassic of Tanzania described today in Nature by Nesbitt, Butler, and colleagues called Teleocrater rhadinus.

Ask anyone to list all the senses and they'll probably stop at five. Touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing are all important to humans, but in the animal kingdom, there exist others. In this interview, Prof. Kenneth Catania, of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, joins us to talk about some of the other ways in which some vertebrates sense their environment.

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?

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?

This year, the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. We sent Liz and Caitlin there to report on events at the conference.

This year, the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. We sent Liz and Caitlin there to report on events at the conference.

Graptolites are small colonial organisms, each made up of many tiny, genetically identical zooids joined together by tubes. They've been around since the Cambrian and at times in Earth's history have been very morphologically and taxonomically diverse. Now there is just one living genus, but they are very common in the fossil record, often appearing as a 'sawtooth' pattern flattened on surfaces of deep sea sedimentary rocks.

In this episode Laura talks to Dr David Bapst, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis and adjunct assistant professor at the South Dakota School of Mines, about extinct graptolites - the Graptoloidea - and how these animals have changed in the 520 million years since they originated. We find out about major events in their evolutionary history including the transition from sea-floor dwelling benthic species to plankton that floated in the water column, and the reduction through geological time of the number of branches from many branching dendritic forms to the single 'stick' monograptids.

LOOP 7.1: In the introduction to episode 7, Dave and Tom just about keep it together whilst reflecting on the most emotional scene of the show. We also celebrate the inclusion of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the series, before giving it a little rebranding to make the science even more approachable.

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 last 10 years has shown a large increase in the number of new species and new discoveries of dinosaurs, as well as the number of papers written. It seems that almost every week there is a new species or significant find in the news. Why is that? Is this likely to continue? What can we expect for the next 10 years?

We sat down with Dr. David Evans, Temerity Chair in Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto to talk about this so-called ‘Golden Age of Dinosaur Discovery’. Dr. Evans is a well known dinosaur palaeontologist who has worked on many groups all over the world, focusing particularly in southern Alberta and the US.

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!

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.

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.

Mongolia is a vast country with fossils from almost every period in the history of life. Important specimens representing the origin of birds, the origin of mammals, many unique dinosaur species, and the first dinosaur eggs to be identified, have all been found within it’s borders. For this reason it has long been the focus of field expeditions by Mongolian and international academics, but the remote nature of many of the sites has lead to fossil trafficking – where Mongolian specimens are illegally shipped out of the country, often labelled as something else entirely. In this episode we speak to Bolortsetseg Minjin, a Mongolian palaeontologist who is helping bring many important stolen specimens back home, including the tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus bataar. We chat to her, and her colleague Thea Boodhoo, about the history of palaeonotlogy in Mongolia, and about several projects they are running to spread knowledge to Mongolian people about the importance of the rich natural history heritage of their country. We also find out about their moveable museum and plans for a big fossil outreach tour this summer in the Gobi desert, for which they are currently trying to raise funds.

Mongolia is a vast country with fossils from almost every period in the history of life. Important specimens representing the origin of birds, the origin of mammals, many unique dinosaur species, and the first dinosaur eggs to be identified, have all been found within it’s borders. For this reason it has long been the focus of field expeditions by Mongolian and international academics, but the remote nature of many of the sites has lead to fossil trafficking – where Mongolian specimens are illegally shipped out of the country, often labelled as something else entirely. In this episode we speak to Bolortsetseg Minjin, a Mongolian palaeontologist who is helping bring many important stolen specimens back home, including the tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus bataar. We chat to her, and her colleague Thea Boodhoo, about the history of palaeonotlogy in Mongolia, and about several projects they are running to spread knowledge to Mongolian people about the importance of the rich natural history heritage of their country. We also find out about their moveable museum and plans for a big fossil outreach tour this summer in the Gobi desert, for which they are currently trying to raise funds.

“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.

Around 250 million years ago, the largest biotic crisis the world has ever known occurred. The Permo-Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME) was an event that saw the loss of up to 95% of all species. The extinction forever changed the face of life on this planet, but what caused it? How long did the PTME last? Who were the big winners and losers? And how long did it take for life to recover?

Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, joins us to discuss these questions in more.

Science is a process and so the door to the revision and refinement of hypotheses must always be left open. From the research discussed in our last episode, the newspapers would have you believe that the mystery of the Tully Monster had been solved once and for all. Yet only a couple of weeks later, another new study has weighed in on the identity of this enigmatic fossil.

This episode is released to coincide with the publication of a new paper in Nature and lead author Thomas Clements, University of Leicester, joins us to discuss his new insights from looking into the eyes of the Tully Monster

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.

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.

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.

Beneath the city of Chemnitz, Germany, exists a entire fossilised forest. This whole ecosystem was preserved in life-position during a series of volcanic events. The forest is from the Permian period and thus represents a fantastic snapshot of life during a period where terrestrial fossils are notoriously rare.

Joining us to discuss the flora and fauna of the Permian of Germany is Dr Ronny Rößler, director of the Museum für Naturkunde Chemnitz.