Of Collective Behavior and Trilobites Reading scientific papers can be a daunting prospect. Even the titles can contain layers of jargon. On Past Time, we work diligently to break down the barrie...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-34-march-of-the-trilobites/
PAST TIME RETURNS! After three and a half months of discovering how insanely busy a museum curator can be, I (Adam) am back to past times with a brand new episode of Past Time! Join me on a jour...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/past-time-episode-33-the-story-of-the-sloth/
Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles INTRODUCTION TO GROWING UP – Every living thing grows up, and this episode of “Past Time” explores the evolution of the growing process. Speci...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-32-the-changing-face-of-crocodile/
THE FIRST FROGS OF NORTH AMERICA Every discovery we make in natural history happens thanks to specimens. Fossil bones, shells, footprints, coprolites, tissue samples—even field notes and photog...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-31-the-first-frogs-of-the-age-of-dinosaurs/
Meeting of the Minds There is no bigger paleontology conference for fans of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles than the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting....
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-30-svp-recap-guest-starring-i-know-dino/
Ledumahadi and the first dinosaur giants The sauropod dinosaurs—the classic long-necks—included the largest land animal species that have ever lived. Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous, m...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-29-first-of-the-four-footed-giant-dinosaurs/
First Iteration I (Adam) am both proud and nervous to say that this is an atypical Past Time episode, as we’re not talking about a new discovery nor a real scientific topic; it is a recap/revie...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-28-past-time-reviews-jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom/
Eighty million years ago, a wildly ornamented species of horned dinosaur roamed the southern half of North America’s western landmass, Laramidia. In 2016, paleontologist Eric Lund and his colle...
Big bites come in small skulls This episode tells a story of one of Adam Pritchard’s favorite projects from Yale University, describing the skull of a teeny reptile from the early days of the A...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-26-colobops-the-tiny-reptile-with-a-big-bite/
Masters of horns and teeth Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, dinosaurs were top dogs on every continent and in every sort of environment. The ceratosaurs were some of the classic pr...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-25-ceratosaurs-story-of-a-predatory-dinosaur-dynasty/
Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have bee...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-24-dinosaurs-and-crocodiles-in-the-land-before-egypt/
This episode was a blast to produce for a vertebrate scientist. I learned a ton about the echinoderms, the group of invertebrate animals to which sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, sea urch...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-23-meet-the-echinoderms-adventures-in-ancient-sea-stars/
Matheronodon is certainly a dinosaur worthy of a bigger bite. With proportionally giant teeth strikingly different from the standard-issue ornithopod dinosaur, it is certainly one of the most imp...
The quest to recover ancient genetic material from extinct animals had its blockbuster moment when Jurassic Park came out. But where did the idea come from and who is trying to figure out if the ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-21-new-history-ancient-dna/
Hi all. Adam Pritchard here. I’ve been thinking about telling the story of my field experience in the Triassic-aged Chinle Formation of northern New Mexico for many years. The Hayden Quarry fos...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-20-digging-dawn-dinosaurs-paleontology-ghost-ranch/
A few weeks ago Past Time co-host Matt Borths published a study that identified a new species of now-extinct carnivorous mammal from Egypt. The animal was near the top of the African food chain ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-19-masrasector-egypts-ancient-slicer/
Past Time is a podcast that explores how we know what we know about the past. There's a special focus on the fossil record - it is hosted by two paleontologists - but delving into the story of the past isn't limited to dry bones. Today's paleontologists use techniques drawn from other sciences including Physics, Chemistry, Geology, and Biology to figure out what extinct animals were like and how they lived. Whether you are just starting to learn about the amazing animals that have called this planet home, or you have been fascinated by fossils for a long time, we hope you will join us as we dig into past times. Keywords: Paleontology, Dinosaurs, Mammals, Reptiles, Birds, Animals, Fossils, Extinction
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-16-bird-brains-dinosaur-expert/
Past Time is BACK! Matt and Adam have been traveling the world independently for some time, delving deeply into the history of life on the planet, but now they’re back to tell you all about wh...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-15-kingdom-monkey-lizard/
The relationship between predator and prey is a primal one, and one that fires the curiosity of many fossil fans. We love paintings of Tyrannosaurus battling Triceratops or saber-toothed cats lea...
Growth is a universal facet of all organisms that have ever lived, but figuring out how old they grow isn’t always easy. A new study examined the growth in one of the biggest predatory fish in ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/grandma-sharkie-greenland-shark-worlds-oldest-vertebrate/
I tried to google “crocodiles are living fossils,” to see just how commonly that expression was used in popular articles. There were indeed a few articles that referenced this idea, suggestin...
Erik Gorscak and Pat O'Connor, two paleontologists from Ohio University, are about to set out on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. They are par...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-16-hunting-antarctic-dinosaurs/
If you wander into the basement of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, and wander into the fossil collections, you will find a vast array of different dinosaurs dating back ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-dodos-and-the-evolution-of-bird-brains/
With Past Time, Matt and I tend to focus on the new discoveries in paleontology: the new species that show up in the news, or the important specimens discovered in museum collections. These are t...
https://www.pasttime.org/2016/02/news-bite-the-evolution-of-ornithischian-dinosaur-jaws-and-bites/
On this episode of Past Time, Drs. Matthew Borths and Adam Pritchard share their dissertation stories, and a bit of advice on the grad school experience!
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-15-degrees-of-doctoral-dissertation-domination/
It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on the entire continent of Europe after the extin...
Arrr, ye mateys! Pour out some grog, and I’ll tell ye a tale of mines, beaches, and death in ancient jungles. I of course be talkin’…about salamanders! Okay, not going to do that voice the ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-salamanders-of-the-caribbean/
The oldest basilisk lizard from North America, described by Jack Conrad from NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine, shows the 48 million year old animal was part of an ancient lush jungle ecosyste...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-basilisks-in-the-older-west/
As Jurassic World rolls out, Matt has some thoughts on the scientific impact of Jurassic Park and offers his hopes for the scientific discussions Jurassic World might spark.
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-genes-and-jurassic-park/
Dating fossils might sound like Saturday night for a paleontologist, but it’s serious science! In a new study, a group of physicists and paleontologists teamed up to re-date one of the most com...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-cosmic-rays-date-ancient-human-ancestor/
Brontosaurus was an extinct name for an extinct animal, but a new study brings the “Thunder Lizard” title roaring back to life! But how does a name get dropped, and how does it get brought ba...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-brontosaurus-revived/
In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi and other paleontontologists described the crocodiles from a gigantic wetland that predated the Amazon. Ten ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-crazy-croc-diversity-in-the-ancient-amazon/
Under the canopy of an ancient fern forest near the border of Arizona and New Mexico a colossal crocodile-like reptile took a bite out of an even larger, toothy giant. The attack failed and the v...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-clash-of-the-triassic-titans/
A new fossil shows an ancient reptile, Philydrosaurus, surrounded by young. Possible evidence that parental investment is a more ancient trait in land-based vertebrates than paleontologists thoug...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-parental-care-extinct-reptiles/
Researchers lead by Hans-Dieter Sues from the Smithsonian Institution described a wealth of new giant, long-necked dinosaur material from Western Asia (Uzbekistan). They were able to reconstruct ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/news-bite-giant-dinosaur-brain-uzbekistan/
Iguanodon was discovered before the word "dinosaur" was invented and the story of Iguanodon research is the story of dinosaur research as paleontologists use new fossils to test old ideas about w...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-iguanodon-history-dinosaur/
To conjure up extinct environments, museums, books, and documentaries rely on art to show vanished animals revitalized in their ancient surroundings. This type of educational reconstruction is ca...
When we think of paleontologists, we think of people hunkered down with bones, teeth, and shells studying the preserved body parts of dead organisms. But animals leave behind more than just their...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-13-following-in-the-footsteps-of-dinosaurs-2/
When we think of iconic dinosaurs, like T. rex with its massive head full of teeth, and Parasaurolophus crowned with a gigantic, tube-like horn, we’re thinking of the features of adult dinosaur...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-12-growing-up-dinosaur/
Marine mammals are fascinating beasts. Whales, manatees, seals, otters...they've all gone back to the water and in the process evolved all kinds of spectacular adaptations to make a living in a s...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-weird-whales-and-swimming-sloths/
Over 400 million years ago the oceans were teeming with life, but it didn’t look much like what you see at the aquarium or in Finding Nemo. Instead of colorful fish flitting through coral reefs...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-11-trilobites-and-the-cincinnati-sea/
50 million-years ago, the heir to Tyrannosaurus stalked the forests of ancient Europe and North America, snapping up the tiny ancestors of horses, cows, and wolves in its colossal meat-cleaving b...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-from-terror-bird-to-gentle-giant/
Meet Alienochelys selloumi, a giant, snorkel-nosed turtle with powerful, shell-crushing plates in its massive beak! The distant relative of the largest turtle alive today, the leatherback sea tur...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-the-alien-turtle-and-ancient-color/
Little people! Giant reptiles! Towering elephants! Huge birds! It sounds like the stuff of literary and box-office gold, but this Middle-Earth-like world actually existed 17,000 years ago on Flor...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-10-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-discovery/
Last episode we featured Lythronax, the oldest-known North American tyrannosaur and a close relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. But tyrannosaurs weren’t the only big carnivores to tromp through the ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-the-giant-before-the-tyrant/
Tyrannosaurus rex is a dinosaur celebrity, a villain in most dinosaur movies and documentaries, but where did the massive beast come from? On November 6, 2013, a team of paleontologists including...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-9-new-relatives-of-tyrannosaurus-rex/
Fossils are the raw materials of paleontology, but if we want to know how an animal moved or ate, paleontologists, like Dr. Paul Gignac, need to study living animals, too. Dr. Gignac studies croc...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-8-audio-crocodiles-are-the-chomping-champions/
Whales are spectacularly specialized mammals that seem perfectly adapted to their marine habitat. Plenty of other mammals have gone back to the water, but whales take it to a whole new level. No ...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-7-walking-through-whale-evolution/
Mammals were scrambling around during the Age of Dinosaurs and they're usually seen as small, shrew-like animals waiting for their chance to become diverse. But recent research, including three n...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-new-mammals-from-the-age-of-dinosaurs/
The fossil record is pretty patchy. Most discoveries are tooth fragments, chunks of shell, or isolated slivers of bone and paleontologists are trained to eke out as much information from these pr...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-6-tiny-horses-galloping-crocs-and-fossilized-jungles/
Humans are weird animals. We walk around on two legs, we have big brains...and we like to throw things at each other. Did all this happen in a gradual march to Homo sapiens? In this episode of Pa...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-5-throwing-in-human-evolution/
Meet Ocepechlon, one of the strangest turtles to ever paddle the open ocean in our first Past Time Quick Bite! This new species was announced a few weeks ago based on a lone, beautifully preserve...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/quick-bite-ocepechelon-the-whale-turtle/
Sauropod dinosaurs, the long necked creatures like Apatasaurus and Brachiosaurus, were the biggest animals to ever leave a footprint on the Earth. They were the size of whales, but didn't have th...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-4-giant-dinosaur-mysteries/
We all know what a reptile is, right? Scaly, sprawling legs, cold blooded. But where did they come from and how are they all related to one another? What makes a lizard different from a crocodile...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-3-what-is-a-reptile/
What is a dinosaur? What is a bird? They're related somehow, but how does a paleontologist figure out how close Velociraptors and penguins are in the dinosaur family tree? In this episode of Past...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-2-birds-are-dinosaurs/
Are there really new fossils to find out there? How do paleontologists even figure out where to look? In the first episode of Past Time, Adam and Matt talk to Dr. Dave Krause from Stony Brook Uni...
https://www.pasttime.org/podcast/episode-1-finding-fossils-in-madagascar/