Episode 1: Finding fossils in Madagascar
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...
View ArticleEpisode 2: Birds are Dinosaurs!
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 Time,...
View ArticleEpisode 3: What is a Reptile?
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? In...
View ArticleEpisode 4: Giant Dinosaur Mysteries
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 the...
View ArticleQuick Bite: Ocepechelon the Whale Turtle
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 preserved...
View ArticleEpisode 5: Throwing in Human Evolution
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 Past...
View ArticleEpisode 6: Tiny Horses, Galloping Crocs, and Fossilized Jungles!
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 precious...
View ArticleQuick Bite: New Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs!
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 new...
View ArticleEpisode 7: Walking through Whale Evolution
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 back...
View ArticleEpisode 8: Crocodiles are the Chomping Champions
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...
View ArticleEpisode 9: New Relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex!
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 our...
View ArticleQuick Bite: The Giant Before the Tyrant!
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 Mesozoic...
View ArticleEpisode 10: The Hobbit – An Unexpected Discovery
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 Flores, an...
View ArticleQuick Bite: The Alien Turtle and Ancient Color
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 turtle,...
View ArticleQuick Bite: From Terror Bird to Gentle Giant
50 million-years ago, the heir to Tyrannosaurus stalked the forests of ancient Europe and North America, snapping up the tiny ancestors of horses, cows, and wolves in its colossal meat-cleaving beak....
View ArticleEpisode 11: Trilobites and the Cincinnati Sea
Over 400 million years ago the oceans were teeming with life, but it didn’t look much like what you see at the aquarium or in Finding Nemo. Instead of colorful fish flitting through coral reefs, the...
View ArticleQuick Bite: Weird Whales and Swimming Sloths
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 soggy...
View ArticleEpisode 12: Growing up Dinosaur
When we think of iconic dinosaurs, like T. rex with its massive head full of teeth, and Parasaurolophus crowned with a gigantic, tube-like horn, we’re thinking of the features of adult dinosaurs. But...
View ArticleEpisode 13: Following in the Footsteps of Dinosaurs
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...
View ArticleEpisode 14: The Art of Dinosaurs
Conjuring up extinct environments, museums, books, and documentaries rely on art to show extinct animals revitalized in their ancient surroundings. This type of educational reconstruction is called...
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