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Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host

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Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,

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Speaker 1: and today on the show, they're not dinosaurs, mon they're

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Speaker 1: really Oh my god, what's that thing? That's right, folks,

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Speaker 1: we are talking about pre dinosaur animals who are really cool,

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Speaker 1: really wild, really really hard for paleontologists to put together

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Speaker 1: the sordid history of pre dinosaur animals. We should have

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Speaker 1: had a movie about these guys, take it over a

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Speaker 1: park and making people question, you know, whether or not

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Speaker 1: science has gone too far. So joining me today is paleontologists,

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Speaker 1: science communicator, museum educator, and perhaps most importantly of all,

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Speaker 1: a metal guitarist, Dane pa.

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Speaker 2: It Welcome, Hey, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: I'm so excited. So I am not really an expert

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Speaker 1: in these sorts of animals, the pre dinosaur guys. In fact,

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs I'm not even that well versed in because I

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Speaker 1: have most of what I know are animals that are

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Speaker 1: still alive, given that it's the easiest to observe their behavior.

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Speaker 1: But I think what is so fascinating to me about

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Speaker 1: paleontology is the lack of direct observation that you can

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Speaker 1: do and how you guys are kind of like almost

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Speaker 1: like forensic detectives piecing together these animals.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So there's various different branches of how we

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Speaker 2: can do this. We can kind of pass together the

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Speaker 2: sort of most likely conclusions about Yeah, if you want

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Speaker 2: to all about animal behavior specifically, we can use comparative anatomy.

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Speaker 2: So you have this phenomenon evolution. You may know that

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Speaker 2: of a convergent evolution, where different organisms will evolve similar

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Speaker 2: features to solve similar problems in their environments. So you

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Speaker 2: can look at the fossil record and you say, this

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Speaker 2: animal has this particular shaped arm bone that means it

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Speaker 2: was probably digging, or it has this feature in the

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Speaker 2: spine which means it ran a certain media. So we

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Speaker 2: can piece together. But yeah, it is very much like

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Speaker 2: detective work taking these very sparse pieces of evidence, and

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Speaker 2: the fossil record is notoriously sparse. I think there's sort

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Speaker 2: of a ballpark estimation that only one in a million

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Speaker 2: animals that has ever existed actually becomes a fossil. All

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Speaker 2: the rest just die and rot away or are eaten,

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Speaker 2: or are just completely lost to the winds of time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because fossilization. I mean, there's a few ways in

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Speaker 1: which something becomes a fossil, but it is certainly not

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Speaker 1: a common thing to happen to an animal's carcass. It's

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Speaker 1: not as if you have just every dinosaur who has

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Speaker 1: dyed is perfectly encased in stone. The conditions, yeah, the

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Speaker 1: conditions in which fossil actually form is quite rare. And

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Speaker 1: it's even more rare for a fossil, like a complete

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Speaker 1: fossil to form where you get the entire animal perfectly

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Speaker 1: represented in one piece.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's the classic. It's the classic. One is

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Speaker 2: the opening the early scene in the original Jurassic Park

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Speaker 2: where they're in the desert and they brush the sand

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Speaker 2: away and there is a complete dinosaur skeleton perfectly formed,

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Speaker 2: with every bone exactly where it is. That almost never happens.

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Speaker 2: Most fossil animals are known from a handful of bits

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Speaker 2: of frag like maybe not even complete bones. Teeth are

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Speaker 2: very very common because a lot of ret load. Before

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Speaker 2: we want to talk reptiles in particular, a lot of

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Speaker 2: reptiles shed and regrow their teeth, so teeth are quite common. Sharks.

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Speaker 2: Sharks teeth are very common. Shells if you're looking in

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Speaker 2: marine and aquatic environments are aquatic water based environments are

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Speaker 2: generally speaking more productive for fossil because you have movements

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Speaker 2: of the sediments, which is more likely to bury things.

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Speaker 2: So a lot of the most productive sites for fossils

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Speaker 2: in the world tend to be lakes and lagoons and

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Speaker 2: slow flowing rivers where things can be easily buried not

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Speaker 2: necessarily destroyed by strong currents or floods and things like that.

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Speaker 1: There's that beautiful Burgess Shale which was discovered in the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds that had just an incredible wealth of

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Speaker 1: fossils from this period of time where you had this

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Speaker 1: almost doctor Seussian diversity of animals that seemed like some

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Speaker 1: kind of awful fever dream, which oh yeah, yeah, which

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Speaker 1: is it is. It's so interesting too because it was

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Speaker 1: discovered so early, well relatively early. The trials and airs

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Speaker 1: of trying to put together these fossils that were so

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Speaker 1: strange looking.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So the Burger Shale, it's what call the lagostatn,

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Speaker 2: which is a German word and it's basically it's a

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Speaker 2: it's the sort of blanket term for sites of exceptional

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Speaker 2: preservation and the Burgess Shale seems to have been a

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Speaker 2: very deep water environment and possibly an oxic. So there

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Speaker 2: had been quite low oxygen in that environment, which means

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Speaker 2: not a lot of fuel for like bacteria and things

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Speaker 2: to break down the carcasses when they sink to the

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Speaker 2: sea floor. And yeah, you've got creatures, which yeah, they

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Speaker 2: are so because so the Burgers show represents a period

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Speaker 2: of time called the Cambrian which is around two hundred

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Speaker 2: and forty odd million years ago, and it's very you know,

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Speaker 2: it's very famous phenomena called the Cambrian Explosion, wherein there'd

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Speaker 2: been micro organisms and algae and things around for several

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Speaker 2: or several tens and hundreds of millions of years beforehand,

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Speaker 2: but at this particular point, it was sort of the

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Speaker 2: stars aligned, sort of the temperature was just right, the

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Speaker 2: atmospheric conditions were just right, Everything just kind of landed

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Speaker 2: just right, and there's this huge explosion in diversity of

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Speaker 2: tomp like multicellular life. And you have early representatives of

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Speaker 2: the early ancestors of arthropods, sponges, worms, sort of very

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Speaker 2: very early. Yeah, you can kind of sort of squint

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Speaker 2: and see the resemblance to modern animals.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what's so interesting to me is when I

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Speaker 1: see kind of these these animals from the more wormy ones,

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Speaker 1: like the soft bodied ones, which I mean, it's incredible

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Speaker 1: that we have fossils of these soft bodied animals, because

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Speaker 1: we generally think of fossils as like, hey, bones or shells,

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Speaker 1: something hard, because those are more likely to be able

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Speaker 1: to be preserved. But yeah, these soft bodied, like worm

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Speaker 1: like animals that don't have many I think analogs in

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Speaker 1: modern times, but you can you can kind of find like, actually,

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Speaker 1: you know, well, we'll talk about one in a little

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Speaker 1: bit that is very interesting, one of my favorite ones.

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Speaker 1: But first let's talk about the Anomalocras, which I think

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Speaker 1: is sort of one of the most famous examples of

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Speaker 1: this this period. The name being Latin Greco for abnormal shrimp,

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Speaker 1: which is very funny to me.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, very very abnormal shrimp. Anomalo carus is sort of

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Speaker 2: it's famous for being kind of characterized as one of

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Speaker 2: the first eight lot, one of the first large apex predators.

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Speaker 2: It was so as far as we said, it was

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Speaker 2: a free swimming animal, which is quite a big innovation.

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Speaker 2: There were, you know, a lot of the critters that

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Speaker 2: were around at the time were sort of sediment based,

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Speaker 2: either fixed to the sea floor or burrowing or crawling

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Speaker 2: around sea floor. But Anomala carus was free swimming, had

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Speaker 2: these sort of mobile tendrils on its face for gathering

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Speaker 2: at prey, and we think it was probably most likely

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Speaker 2: eating sort of the small Yeah, the small, soft body

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Speaker 2: crystal floor trilobites would have been very abundant food source.

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Speaker 2: So these are the famous sort of sort of woodlousey,

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Speaker 2: beatley looking critters that.

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Speaker 1: Like polls or isopods of today.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much so. Unfortunately they went extinct at

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Speaker 2: the end of the Permian period, which is the end

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Speaker 2: of this sort of we say pre dinosaur is this

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Speaker 2: larger period of time called the Paleozoic, So this is

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Speaker 2: the sort of first of three major eons or chapters

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Speaker 2: if you like, in the history of life on Earth.

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Speaker 2: Paleozoic is from the Cambrian explosion five hundred and forty

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Speaker 2: million years ago up to two hundred and fifty million

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Speaker 2: years ago, which ends with the Permian extinction event, which

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Speaker 2: took out huge, huge numbers of these amazing animals, some

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Speaker 2: of which had made it all the way from the

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Speaker 2: Cambrian explosion, like the trilobites.

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Speaker 1: And what was the precipitating event do we think for

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Speaker 1: that mause extinction was a change in the climate.

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Speaker 2: So well, ultimately, all mass extinction events are some form

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Speaker 2: of climate change. It just depends on what the triggering

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Speaker 2: event is and what we believe. This one was a

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Speaker 2: massive spike in volcanic activity at this site in Siberia.

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Speaker 2: So we're talking an area hundreds of you know, tens

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Speaker 2: of possibly tens of thousands of square kilometers of land

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Speaker 2: in Russia basically fractured into a constantly erupting supervolcano, and

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Speaker 2: I'm talking on the scale of thousands and thousands of years.

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Speaker 2: And over the course of that time, it released you know,

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Speaker 2: trillions of tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases. It

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Speaker 2: caused a runaway greenhouse effect. It acidified the oceans matt

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Speaker 2: huge amounts of acid rain. As sea temperatures rise, water

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Speaker 2: is less able to hold gas at high temperatures, so

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Speaker 2: A that means less oxygen for the life living in

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Speaker 2: the ocean, and B it means less CO two is

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Speaker 2: being absorbed into the ocean, which causes even more heating.

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Speaker 2: Some estimates put it as high as eighty percent of

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Speaker 2: all life on Earth was wiped out at the end

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Speaker 2: of this extinction event.

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Speaker 1: That's incredible. I mean, maybe this is the optimist in me,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like that's so really impressive that we

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Speaker 1: bounced back from that. You know, it's it's kind of

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Speaker 1: amazing that you can have such a mass extinction. Obviously

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Speaker 1: very bad for the current trial bides just trying to

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Speaker 1: live their lives, but still the life somehow, you know,

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Speaker 1: was able to recover from that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, among the survivors were well, obviously everything that's

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Speaker 2: alive today is descended from that, you know, relatively small

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Speaker 2: handful of life that made it through this extinction event,

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Speaker 2: but it caused this huge kind of restructuring of the

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Speaker 2: food chain. So there's this really interesting event sort of

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Speaker 2: immediately following that extinction. We're still pre dinosaur. By the way,

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Speaker 2: the dinosaurs don't really the dinosaurs don't really come into

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Speaker 2: their own until the sort of middle to late Triassic period,

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Speaker 2: which is sort of two hundred and twenty two hundred

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Speaker 2: and thirty million years, So there's a good thirty million

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Speaker 2: year block between that extinction and the dinosaurs really starting

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Speaker 2: to come into their own, and there's this phenomenon known

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Speaker 2: as the Mesozoic marine revolution, which is really interesting kind

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Speaker 2: of upheaval in the oceans. So one major part of

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Speaker 2: it is the diversification of secondarily aquatic tetrapods. So there's

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Speaker 2: a few technical terms here. I want to make sure

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Speaker 2: the audience are fully on board here. So secondarily aquatic

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Speaker 2: is basically any animal that has evolved from a land

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Speaker 2: based ancestor and has gone back into the water.

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Speaker 1: So we've got whales. Whales would count as that, right.

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Speaker 2: Whales absolutely, yet sturles, crocodiles, sea lions, penguins, anything that

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Speaker 2: has come from a land based ancestor into the ocean.

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Speaker 2: During the Paleozoic, before the Permian extinction event, they didn't

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Speaker 2: really there weren't really any of them because throughout that

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Speaker 2: time the large ocean niches, the sort of big spaces

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Speaker 2: in the ecosystem were dominated by fish and arthropods, So

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Speaker 2: the big predators in the ocean were giant fish and

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Speaker 2: giants arthropods, So there were things like Dunkleostius is probably

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Speaker 2: the most famous one, which is this it's part of

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Speaker 2: a group of fish that doesn't exist anymore, called the placoderms,

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Speaker 2: and rather than having teeth they just have extended bones

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Speaker 2: of the skull that would sheer against each other like

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Speaker 2: scissor blades. That is, there's been some recent studies on

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Speaker 2: Doncleosis as to exactly how big it was. It was

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Speaker 2: believed to be like a sort of school bus sized monster.

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Speaker 2: That's been scaled down with it recently. We think sort of,

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Speaker 2: doesn't it.

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Speaker 1: Where we like it was the size of the Empire

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Speaker 1: state building. Maybe actually just the size of a Volkswagen.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's quite a bit of that. There's also the

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Speaker 2: sea scorpions, which were another casualty of the Permian extinction events.

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Speaker 2: Not technically scorpions, they are arthropods.

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Speaker 1: So they look like a flat scorpion, kind of like

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Speaker 1: if you took the rolling pin and just sort of

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Speaker 1: like rolled out a scorpion.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much so. Yeah, they've got this great, big,

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Speaker 2: grasping pincers. They've got this big, long, flat tail, which

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Speaker 2: some of the smaller ones may have swam, but some

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Speaker 2: of the big ones probably stuck to the seabed. Some

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Speaker 2: of the really big ones were nightmarish, like the biggest

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Speaker 2: arthropods of all time. Yes, two meters long, possibly two

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Speaker 2: and a half. For some of the really big ones.

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Speaker 2: So these are the things that are occupying the big

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Speaker 2: the big ocean niches at the time. And then the

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Speaker 2: Permian extinction happens and it kind of opens up the

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Speaker 2: food chain somewhe It opens up the ecosystem, and you

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Speaker 2: have this big adaptive radiation where this happens a lot

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Speaker 2: after extinction events. When you have when you've got the

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Speaker 2: slate white clean, that leaves a lot of space for

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Speaker 2: innovation and sort of evolutionary experimentation. So you start to

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Speaker 2: get reptiles moving into the ocean. You get early sort

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Speaker 2: of crocodile and turtle relatives. You have lots of very

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Speaker 2: strange things that don't really exist anymore, like the placar

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Speaker 2: donts Placoderms is the armored fish. And then you have plecardonts,

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Speaker 2: which are these weird swimming reptiles that are not turtles,

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Speaker 2: but they have very wide, flat bodies and armor across them.

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Speaker 2: They sort of look like baked turtles. They're very strange things, yeah,

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Speaker 2: very odd looking, but some of them have some of

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Speaker 2: them are derived ones. They've got these forward facing teeth

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Speaker 2: at the front of the jaw, and then they have

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Speaker 2: these very flat plate like teeth at the back of

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Speaker 2: the jaw and the roof of the mouth, and that's

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Speaker 2: interpreted as being adaptations for prising apart and crushing shellfish.

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Speaker 2: And that's the other big part of the mesozoat marine

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Speaker 2: revolution is that it forced this big change in ocean

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Speaker 2: invertebrates through the evolution of new creatures that can crack

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Speaker 2: open and ingest shells and exoskeletons. Because if you think,

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Speaker 2: you know, if you're like a limpet or a barnacle

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Speaker 2: or something attached to a rock or attached to the

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Speaker 2: sea floor, and there's nothing that can break you, basically fine,

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Speaker 2: But if something pulls you off the rock and you

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Speaker 2: can't reattach yourself or swim away or crawl into a

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Speaker 2: hole and hide, you're basically doomed. So sessile animals, so

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Speaker 2: things that attached to the sea floor and basically stay

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Speaker 2: there the rest of their lives started to decline and

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Speaker 2: animal and yeah, these sort of shellfish and invertebrates had

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Speaker 2: to find all sorts of new ways to adapt. So

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Speaker 2: creatures that lived on the surface declined, Creatures that lived

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Speaker 2: in burrows diversified. There was a lot more burrowing animals

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Speaker 2: after this. A really good example is crinoids, which, again

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Speaker 2: making sure your audience caught up. Crinoids is really really

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Speaker 2: weird creatures that evolved early on in the Paleozoic, not

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Speaker 2: quite the Cambrian. They have I think it's penta radial symmetry.

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Speaker 2: So humans are bilaterally symmetrical. We've got a left side

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Speaker 2: and the right side. Chronoids have five way symmetry. You

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Speaker 2: can look you look down on them from the top,

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Speaker 2: you can split them five ways as they've got the

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Speaker 2: mouse in the middle.

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Speaker 1: So like starf like kind of terms like starfish and

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Speaker 1: there are.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they are a kindoderms. Yeah, they're related to starfish

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Speaker 2: and sea urchins. So they've got a mouth in the middle,

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Speaker 2: and then they have all these big branching feathery arms

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Speaker 2: that come outs and their suspension feeders. They gather organic material,

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Speaker 2: they put their arms out, they collect food from the water,

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Speaker 2: and then they draw their arms into the mouth in

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Speaker 2: the middle. And there's two major varieties of them. There's

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Speaker 2: the standard ones just as I've described, which can use

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Speaker 2: their arms to swim around and crawl around on the

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Speaker 2: sea floor, and we call them feather stars. And then

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Speaker 2: there's the stalked variety, which have a great, big, long

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Speaker 2: stalk that trails from underneath the body and attaches them

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Speaker 2: to the seafloor. And they kind of makes them look

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Speaker 2: like a flower, and we call them sea lilies, and

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Speaker 2: they are all still around today. They've made it through

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Speaker 2: all the extinctions, all the way into the present day.

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Speaker 2: During the Massasoka marine Revolution, you have this explosion of

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Speaker 2: creatures that can break through exo skeletons. The sea lilies,

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Speaker 2: the ones fix to the sea floor, start to abandon

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Speaker 2: the shallow water and move into the deeper ocean. So

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Speaker 2: most of the sea lily species that we have today

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Speaker 2: live in deep offshore waters, whereas the feather stars that

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Speaker 2: can move around and swim and escape, they live on

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Speaker 2: the reefs and coastal environments. So it is this complete

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Speaker 2: restructuring of how entire food chains and ecosystems work over

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Speaker 2: this extinction boundary.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you have a mass when you have like a

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Speaker 1: massive shock like that, you have for the remaining species

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Speaker 1: that are now adapting to say the you know, the

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Speaker 1: arms race that's happening as new species start to take

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Speaker 1: over in the niches that have been abandoned by the

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Speaker 1: species that have gone extinct. Everything is impacted right in

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Speaker 1: a way that like they all have to readapt It

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Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of one of the animals I

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Speaker 1: was thinking of talking about today was Endoceras Gigantium, which

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Speaker 1: is sort of like that that big unicorn like cephalopod

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Speaker 1: during the I'm gonna say a period as if I

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Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, even though I don't, the

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Speaker 1: Ordovician period. So it was this like ancestor of modern

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Speaker 1: day squid octopuses, not alloids, but unlike modern day squids

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Speaker 1: and octopuses, it had this massive shell and unlike the nautilus,

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Speaker 1: which still has that shell, it was this really straight,

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Speaker 1: large conical shell that spanned from over nine up to

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Speaker 1: possibly the larger estimates are eighteen feet, although that's not

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Speaker 1: exactly confirmed, but it could be anywhere from like three

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Speaker 1: to over five meters. And so it's thought it was

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Speaker 1: like this ambush predator, right, because you're so big, you're

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Speaker 1: not going to be very mobile, and you have this

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Speaker 1: giant shell to defend itself. So that once, and similarly

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Speaker 1: to other giant shelled cephalopods, thought that it went extinct

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Speaker 1: because it could not out compete with this new sort

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Speaker 1: of wave of like the fish and more mobile, more agile,

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Speaker 1: and swifter creatures that were evolving at the time. So

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Speaker 1: it went from because you'd think, like a lot of

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Speaker 1: people will often ask like, well, if you have something

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Speaker 1: that has this amazing defense mechanism, like a giant shell,

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Speaker 1: why would it get rid of it? Right, because like

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Speaker 1: squid octopuses, they're very vulnerable, they're so squishy, But it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter necessarily if you're perfectly protected, if you're not

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Speaker 1: getting any food, if you're unable to compete with the

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Speaker 1: faster predators and the faster prey.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the the evolution of a spine was a big

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Speaker 2: innovation because that that's you know, that provided the sort

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Speaker 2: of propulsion for sort of early predatory fish to swe

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Speaker 2: you know, be a lot faster and a lot more

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Speaker 2: agile and maneuverable in the water. And yeah, so I

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00:19:38,800 --> 00:19:41,880
Speaker 2: think things like endoceras and you know, these giant autaloids

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Speaker 2: would have would have had no predators, had had no

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Speaker 2: competition until these larger, you know, the early ancestors of

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Speaker 2: sharks and things like that, some of which would have

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00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:58,399
Speaker 2: been capable of cracking through these shells. Yeah, sharks were

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00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:00,639
Speaker 2: a big innovation at the time they used sort of

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00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:02,840
Speaker 2: started to occupy the ape expression each but they were

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Speaker 2: kind of overtaken by the placoderms, the big sort of

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00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:07,280
Speaker 2: sheer teeth fish. They were kind of your two main

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00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:11,080
Speaker 2: sort of apex predator bodies that came in at the time,

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00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:13,679
Speaker 2: and they were all kinds of bizarre as well. You

348
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:17,159
Speaker 2: have these really nice out groups, as they're called, So

349
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:19,800
Speaker 2: you have sort of we have your sort of evolutionary

350
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Speaker 2: group of animals that we consider modern day sharks, and

351
00:20:22,520 --> 00:20:24,119
Speaker 2: then you sort of go back a step on the

352
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:27,080
Speaker 2: family tree and off on a little weird side branch,

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Speaker 2: and you find all these really odd creatures that aren't

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Speaker 2: quite entirely sharks that that's sort of the closest thing

355
00:20:33,840 --> 00:20:37,560
Speaker 2: we can relate into the things like one of the

356
00:20:37,600 --> 00:20:42,200
Speaker 2: more famous one is Stepacanthus, which has got these like rays.

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Speaker 2: It's rather than like the kind of triangular dorsalt thing.

358
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Speaker 2: It's got this kind of flattened structure on its back

359
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:49,640
Speaker 2: with all these bristles and spines across it. We think

360
00:20:49,680 --> 00:20:52,720
Speaker 2: it's a sexual display structure of some kind because we

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Speaker 2: only find it in the males. There's a ah, the

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00:20:56,920 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 2: names escaping me. Now there's all kinds. There's a oh,

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00:20:58,800 --> 00:20:59,760
Speaker 2: helica prion.

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Speaker 1: As a real yeah.

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00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:05,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, this this whole family group of sharks that,

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00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:09,440
Speaker 2: instead of having a jawline as conventional sharks do, all

367
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:11,399
Speaker 2: their teeth run down the middle of the jaw, and

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Speaker 2: there's some that have them like scissor blades, one on

369
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:15,680
Speaker 2: top of the other. But helica prion has this big

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Speaker 2: spiral of teeth which we now interpret as being new

371
00:21:19,160 --> 00:21:22,520
Speaker 2: teeth growing in the center and kind of growing outwards

372
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Speaker 2: towards the outer edge of the spiral, and then as

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Speaker 2: they are replaced, they kind of fall out of the front.

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Speaker 2: It's possible it may have been able to use that

375
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:34,479
Speaker 2: to cut through, you know, shells and of things like

376
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Speaker 2: the squid and the autoloids that were hanging around at

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Speaker 2: the time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it is. It is so weird because with

379
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Speaker 1: a lot of these animals, when I mean, one thing

380
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:48,120
Speaker 1: is that I think that the reason these shapes look

381
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Speaker 1: so bizarre to us is that we are we acclimate

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00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:55,280
Speaker 1: ourselves to the shapes of say, you know, we look

383
00:21:55,280 --> 00:21:58,159
Speaker 1: at a hammerhead shark, right, and we're we're a climatized

384
00:21:58,200 --> 00:22:00,919
Speaker 1: to that. So we see that and we understand it

385
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:04,280
Speaker 1: we see this sh this as a normal animal shape

386
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:07,679
Speaker 1: more or less, but that's really only because we have

387
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:09,800
Speaker 1: gotten used to it that when like the first people

388
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:12,480
Speaker 1: who probably saw a hammerhead shark was like, well, this

389
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:15,560
Speaker 1: is an incredibly weird shape for a shark head. So

390
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:19,640
Speaker 1: something like stephacanthus that has this weird anvil on its head,

391
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:23,120
Speaker 1: which I'd be I'd love to see a hammerhead shark

392
00:22:23,119 --> 00:22:25,600
Speaker 1: and a deethacanthus get together and see what what what

393
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 1: they would make us, what they can build, see what

394
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 1: they can craft? Uh, but you know, yeah, I mean

395
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: it's it is interesting because they're all especially when we're

396
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 1: trying to piece together say that the purpose like how

397
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,280
Speaker 1: how say the jaws work of this like weird spiraling

398
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 1: saw too thing, how they would actually maneuver that? Or

399
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 1: like this death of canthus, what that that protrusion was,

400
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 1: and the way we piece it together in terms of well,

401
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:52,720
Speaker 1: if it was only found on males, maybe it would

402
00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:58,240
Speaker 1: be a sexual signaling uh device essentially. But it's also

403
00:22:58,480 --> 00:23:01,560
Speaker 1: kind of odd because we even in current animals, right,

404
00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 1: like if you look at the narwhal, right, they have

405
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,360
Speaker 1: this it's not really it's not really a horn. It's

406
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: a giant tooth, and it's generally found in the males.

407
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:14,480
Speaker 1: It's less likely to be found in the females, although

408
00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:17,960
Speaker 1: some females do have it, which is again confusing, and

409
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:22,119
Speaker 1: it is unclear exactly these are animals that are alive today.

410
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:25,600
Speaker 1: We can observe them. Whales are always tricky because they're

411
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 1: in the water. These ones especially tricky because they're in

412
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:32,200
Speaker 1: very cold water and we don't generally do well. We

413
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:37,360
Speaker 1: struggle even to understand what narwals use their tusks for.

414
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Speaker 1: And that is as we have been aware of nar

415
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 1: wals for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, I mean,

416
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:48,720
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of years when including local populations, and

417
00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:53,679
Speaker 1: yet the even with understanding that, yes, it seems to

418
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 1: be a sexual difference, but then we find all these

419
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 1: strange things about it, right like where the narwal tusk

420
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 1: is interval. It has all these pores in which a

421
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:06,119
Speaker 1: seawater can filter through, possibly as a sensory organ but

422
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,719
Speaker 1: we don't know. And so it's just it's when you

423
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:13,040
Speaker 1: think about that puzzle that we have currently with an

424
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:16,440
Speaker 1: animal we can physically interact with, we can look at

425
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:18,679
Speaker 1: its tusk, we can get a fresh you know, narwhal

426
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:22,119
Speaker 1: tusk and examine it, and then we try to do

427
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: that with something that's extinct like steph acanthus, And it's like,

428
00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: what this protrusion could have possibly been. It could have

429
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 1: been a sexual ornament, it could have been a sensory organ,

430
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: it could have been both, and you know, just like

431
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:39,879
Speaker 1: it's it's so it's so tantalizing.

432
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 2: Oh, like what say, like the comparison i've heard, you know,

433
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 2: and sort of looking at you what we what we

434
00:24:45,560 --> 00:24:48,120
Speaker 2: can pass in the fossil record. The comparison I've heard

435
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 2: is like human medical research. You know, we've been studying

436
00:24:50,760 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 2: the human body in earnest for a couple of hundred

437
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 2: years now, and there are more people working in human

438
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:00,360
Speaker 2: medicine than arguably any other field of science. And we're

439
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,400
Speaker 2: still learning new things about the human body. Yeah, we're

440
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 2: not going to run out of beatings to figure out

441
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 2: in the fossil record anytime soon.

442
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:12,960
Speaker 1: Still not exactly sure what that all appendix is doing there. Well,

443
00:25:13,000 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and when we

444
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: get back. That's right, we're talking about more pre dinosaur

445
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:23,440
Speaker 1: awesome things, including one that does look like a hallucination.

446
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: All right, So we are back. I do want to

447
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about anomal chrus before we

448
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: move on, because it is I think we had talked

449
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: a bit about its perception of this as this apex predator,

450
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:43,479
Speaker 1: but the way we've seen it has kind of changed

451
00:25:43,480 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: a little bit over the years. You know, it was

452
00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: originally discovered in the Burgess Shale in the early nineteen hundreds,

453
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,439
Speaker 1: and it took a while to assemble this thing, and

454
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,959
Speaker 1: it kind of was I think the first pieces they

455
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 1: found were that the front appendages that that looked like

456
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: giant shrimp. And that's kind of where that name came from,

457
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:10,920
Speaker 1: because it's like straight abnormal shrimp. And I couldn't really

458
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: confirm this, but I think I once read an account

459
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 1: where they were saying that at one point they thought

460
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,879
Speaker 1: that those front appendages were just whole animals because they

461
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: were they seemed like a complete shrimp.

462
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:27,479
Speaker 2: Like a like a big yeah.

463
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:30,679
Speaker 1: And so what the actual entire animal looks like is

464
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:34,960
Speaker 1: it It was over a foot long, its front limbs

465
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:38,360
Speaker 1: looked like it had a pair of giant shramp attached

466
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 1: to its face. It has these two big compound eyes

467
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: attached to short ice docks, a segmented body with these

468
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:52,680
Speaker 1: fan blade like appendages on each segment which are thought

469
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 1: to actually have had gill structures attached to them. Then

470
00:26:57,000 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: it ended in this sort of like fan like tail.

471
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: So the whole thing kind of looked like a giant

472
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 1: flattened shrimp, but also it looked like it had two

473
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:10,119
Speaker 1: other shrimp attached to its face. And it was thought

474
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: to be this example like you had mentioned earlier, because

475
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: it was one of the most even though it doesn't

476
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: seem that huge at only about over a foot long

477
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 1: compared to the other life at the time, it was

478
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 1: very large and very mobile, but there was so there's

479
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: this idea of it being this fierce apex predator like

480
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: basically the early example of say like a great white shark.

481
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 1: But the front appendages were studied a lot, and they

482
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:45,560
Speaker 1: found that they seemed to not really be meant for

483
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: extreme strength, right like say, wrangling something that's really giving

484
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: it a lot of trouble. So the ideas that maybe

485
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:58,919
Speaker 1: it was actually going after softer bodied prey, maybe something

486
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:02,639
Speaker 1: a little easier to grab, like a trial a bite,

487
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 1: like some kind of soft bodied early these more sessile

488
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: animals that could be grabbed and perhaps even chased and grabbed,

489
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 1: but something that's not going to give these two front

490
00:28:16,359 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: appendages too much trouble.

491
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's sort of you look at there's there's a

492
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 2: bunch of diagrams and sort of close ups of the

493
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 2: different So these sort of front appendages, they have these

494
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 2: sort of bristly spines that were along the underside which

495
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:34,680
Speaker 2: seem they almost they sort of I'm getting fish hook

496
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 2: from them. So it's not necessarily it's not strictly very precise.

497
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 2: It's more you just kind of snag whatever comes onto it.

498
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 2: And there's different species, and the different species all have

499
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 2: slightly different shaped hooks to them, so that's suggesting possibly

500
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 2: they might be going after slightly different prey. Might be

501
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 2: a bit of ecological partition going.

502
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: Over fuschbeak finchbeak differences, where you have different sort of

503
00:28:57,840 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: beaks that.

504
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 2: Are exactly yeah, yeah, yeah, Arwin' stinches.

505
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then you got to think, yeah, like the

506
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 3: creatures it's you know, yeah, yeah, it is only a

507
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 3: foo long, and you've got to think the creatures that

508
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 3: it's going after are probably going to be centimeters long

509
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 3: if that, and yeah, there's there's going to be very rudimentary,

510
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 3: very early defenses.

511
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 2: You know that far back in history, there's going to

512
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 2: be stuff that burrows, is going to be stuff that

513
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 2: has armored, But there's going to be a lot of

514
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 2: stuff that sits on the surface and is going to

515
00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 2: be largely defenseless against a gargantuan creature of entire long Yeah, like.

516
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: Can barely register what this thing is before just getting

517
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: slurped up.

518
00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like a lot of a lot of creatures are

519
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 2: going to be very slow moving. A lot of things

520
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 2: aren't going to have any eyes. They're going to have

521
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 2: very very very basic nervous systems and sensory organs and

522
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 2: things like that. So Yeah, although it does have this

523
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:53,560
Speaker 2: sort of reputation as you know, the earliest apex predator,

524
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily a very high bar to jump, even

525
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 2: the kind of standard of the prey that's around at

526
00:29:59,320 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 2: the time.

527
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: Well, that is a sick burn for the poor Middle

528
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: Cambrian period soft bodied animals living on the seafloor.

529
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 2: Wow, look at you.

530
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: Speaking of soft bodies. I don't we have to talk

531
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: about hallucinogeneous hallucigenea. Yeah, lucigeneia I generally go with hallucinogenea

532
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: hallucigeneous genus.

533
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 2: As long as it's spelled right, it doesn't really matter.

534
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, Hallucigenia, I think is I had written out

535
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: a fancy pronunciation guide for myself that I just tripped over. Uh,

536
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: but yeah, hallucigenia that it was this like genus of

537
00:30:42,680 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: panarthropod's uh lobopodians Greek term for blunt feet, which is

538
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,760
Speaker 1: kind of cute, I guess. But yeah, these these mostly

539
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: soft bodied marine wormlike animals, and they're I mean, I

540
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: I when you look at them, there's I mean, there's

541
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different kind of types of

542
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:12,719
Speaker 1: these local podions and different ones not whucagenea, but different

543
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,080
Speaker 1: types of low podions do look a lot like modern

544
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: day velvet worms, which are also panarthropods, who have these

545
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 1: little tiny legs. They have this soft body. They look

546
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: so much like maybe a caterpillar, but they are not.

547
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: They're they're not at all related.

548
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 2: To caterpillars, like bleshy caterpillars.

549
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 1: Very fleshy. There's I love them. I think they're.

550
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,240
Speaker 2: Velvet velvet worms are great. Yeah, they have a strange

551
00:31:40,280 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 2: sort of air of cuteness about them and then they

552
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 2: do the whole spin.

553
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, glue, they they do scirt a bit of glue.

554
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 1: It's the sticky substance that they have these two protrusions

555
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: at the side of their head that actually kind of

556
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: look like these cute little eyes, but they're not their eyes.

557
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: They are glands from one which they spew this sticky

558
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: glue like substance at their prey. Because as cute as

559
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 1: they they look like little pokemon that would say something

560
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: like yeah, really really adorable, but they are vicious predators

561
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:17,880
Speaker 1: and they will immobilize their prey with this sticky substance. Uh,

562
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: and then just you know, casually stroll up to them

563
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: eat them at their leisure. It's actually quite horrifying. What

564
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: they do. To their credit is like, you know, this prehistoric,

565
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: just a creature from before we even had insects, and

566
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,640
Speaker 1: but yeah, so so we see this and this is

567
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 1: as modern. But hallucigenia was even weirder. It was such

568
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: a strange looking thing that we really struggled after discovering

569
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: it because we actually had it's kind of incredible. The

570
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,200
Speaker 1: fossil records of it were quite good, like there are

571
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: there were like these full sort of impressions of this animal.

572
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: But even with that, it really struggled to figure out

573
00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: how this thing works. What is its feet, what's its back,

574
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: what's its head, and what's its butt? Things that you

575
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: would think are basic things you could figure out looking

576
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: at something.

577
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 2: Its whole body plan is search an anomaly. And yeah,

578
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 2: like I said, there's, there's, there's, there's. There's been so

579
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,720
Speaker 2: many different interpretations of like trying to trying to figure

580
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 2: out just which way round this thing goes. People have

581
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 2: interpreted one end as the head and one end as

582
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 2: the back, and like this, does it sit this way

583
00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 2: up or this way up? And yeah, things like that

584
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,120
Speaker 2: and yeah, and they say it's it's it's incredible that

585
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 2: we do have these like this sort of soft body

586
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 2: preservation of these things. But this is the weird, it's

587
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 2: a weird sort of paradox with kind of fossil preservation

588
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: is that, you know, soft bodied animals do generally preserve

589
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 2: less well in the fossil record, but in environments that

590
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 2: are just right for it, you find loads of them. Yeah,

591
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:00,360
Speaker 2: so those are really really useful fossil sites.

592
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so. It just we kind of looked out

593
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: at getting these these ones at this you know, I

594
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:08,720
Speaker 1: believe this was also the Burgess Shale.

595
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:14,279
Speaker 2: I think I believe so, yes China as well.

596
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: Yes there are. In fact, there was a research done

597
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: by Chinese researcher and I think I don't know where

598
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: this other researcher is from Lars Ramskolden who Jiang Wang,

599
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,800
Speaker 1: who were actually like in the nineties, like we're studying

600
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:37,360
Speaker 1: some of these fossil records, and they there had always

601
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,120
Speaker 1: been this assumption that there was so essentially what this

602
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 1: thing looks like is it's a tube, as are we all.

603
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 2: To be free, which is which is which is how

604
00:34:45,800 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 2: what most animals are.

605
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: We're still tubes. We're just tubes with extra widgets. But

606
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:56,839
Speaker 1: you know, so it's tubes. Tubes, Yeah, tubes at all.

607
00:34:56,880 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: I love that. So we so oh yeah, so a tube.

608
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 3: Uh.

609
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 1: And then on it's along its back or possibly it's belly.

610
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 1: It has these spines, and then along its belly or

611
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,799
Speaker 1: some have thought its back, it has these soft appendages.

612
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:18,240
Speaker 1: So the first go of it, they thought it had

613
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: that it walked on these spines kind of like stilts.

614
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,680
Speaker 1: And it's only this thing is only like a few

615
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: centimeters big, so it's tiny, tiny, But originally thought Yeah,

616
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: it's just it kind of walks on these sharp thorn

617
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,359
Speaker 1: like projections, as if there's stilts. And then the these

618
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: appendages on its back were used to gather food and

619
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: pass it along to its mouth. But then researchers took

620
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 1: another look at that fossil and they used like a

621
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:50,400
Speaker 1: dental drill to kind of like get a little deeper

622
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:52,920
Speaker 1: into it, and they actually found another pair of that

623
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: soft appendage. So it's like, now those are beginning to

624
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,760
Speaker 1: look much more like legs, uh. And so they flipped

625
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:01,359
Speaker 1: it back over and so this might make more sense

626
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 1: that it's walking on these soft appendages whereas the spikes.

627
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a defense. But in terms of that, it

628
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 1: was assumed that there's like always this sort of big

629
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: balloon like blob on one end of it. And people thought, well,

630
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: that's its head. You know. It's kind of a weird

631
00:36:19,160 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 1: look ahead. It's kind of a blobby looking head, but

632
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: it's a head, right, because it's is it is a

633
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: balloon on one end of the animal. But yeah, like

634
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:32,840
Speaker 1: I said, these researchers raum schooled and Jean one like

635
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,839
Speaker 1: questioned whether that really was the head, and they kind

636
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,759
Speaker 1: of because this showed up on multiple fossils, but they thought, like,

637
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: this seems more like it's an artifact of something else,

638
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:45,240
Speaker 1: some kind of stain maybe.

639
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 2: And then more recently, can you can get like preservation,

640
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 2: You can get like tephonomy and preservation issues, or sometimes

641
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 2: stuff is like the fossil itself can be prepared in

642
00:36:55,239 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 2: such a way that it leaves marks and stains and things,

643
00:36:57,520 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 2: and they can get misinterpreted further down.

644
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: The line exactly. But the thing that was weird, right

645
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: was that this was something that seemed to kind of

646
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: recur in multiple fossils. So it was like, Okay, so

647
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: perhaps this is some kind of air and processing, but

648
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:13,799
Speaker 1: it does seem to happen and more than just one individual.

649
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: And so more recently Martin Smith and John Bernard Karen

650
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: used electron microscopes on this head and they came up

651
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: with a new theory, which is that this seems like

652
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,239
Speaker 1: it was a stain made of fluids that were expelled

653
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:35,879
Speaker 1: during decomposition. So what was once thought of its as

654
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: its head is basically the fluids that were pushed out

655
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 1: of its butt as it was decomposing, which I'm afraid

656
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: to say happens to all of us when we decomposed.

657
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: So if you think that sounds gross bad news, that

658
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,799
Speaker 1: basically happens to all animals as we decompose. We have

659
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: a lot of fluids, gases that will be forced out

660
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,320
Speaker 1: of our tube bodies.

661
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,719
Speaker 2: Problem tube. It's a it's a great example of how

662
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 2: new technology can be used to like examine old specimens.

663
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 2: You know, it's you know, sometime because it's our work

664
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 2: in the museum myself, and yeah, people sometimes wonder why

665
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:12,480
Speaker 2: we hang onto the you know, fossils that are dug

666
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 2: up tens of years ago, hundreds of years we want

667
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 2: you people wonder why do we hang onto them? And

668
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 2: these days you can use X rays and electron scanning,

669
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 2: microscopes and set scans and all sorts of stuff, and

670
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:24,879
Speaker 2: you can get all kinds of new information from old

671
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 2: fossil specimens by applying new technology to them. You know,

672
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 2: you don't know what the next big innovation is. If

673
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 2: you want really bizarre body plans from the Palaeozoic, you

674
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 2: really can't go much further than the Tully monster, which

675
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 2: is such a strange creature. We genuinely don't know what

676
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,800
Speaker 2: it is. So eventually, yeah, we talked about out groups,

677
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 2: you know, things that you know, it's a close relative

678
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 2: of this thing, and it's kind of off on its

679
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 2: own branch of the family tree. With most fossil animals,

680
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,840
Speaker 2: we can kind of get a broad idea of like, okay,

681
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 2: it's an arthropod, or it's a fish or something. The

682
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 2: Tully monster we genuinely have no idea. All we know

683
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 2: is it's got a left side and the right side,

684
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 2: and that's the only thing it has. That's the only

685
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 2: thing it has in common with any group of animals

686
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 2: otherwise symmetry.

687
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: Right there, you go.

688
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 2: It's got it has symmetry. It's got eyes on stalks

689
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 2: like a snail, its mouth is on the end of

690
00:39:15,520 --> 00:39:18,359
Speaker 2: a hose, it's got fins like a squid. It's got

691
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 2: something that looks like a noto cord like a vertebrate,

692
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 2: and it's just put in its own group. It's genuinely

693
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 2: such a weird little creature. And it exists in the

694
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 2: Carboniferous period as well, which is actually quite a long

695
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 2: way from the cart from the from the Cambrian, So

696
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:36,240
Speaker 2: it's not like this is one of those really super

697
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 2: early weirdos that showed up at the beginning of complex life.

698
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 2: This is something that you know, it's whatever it is.

699
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 2: It's a lineage has been around a while and we

700
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 2: don't know. Yeah, it's a ghost lineage. We don't know

701
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 2: what it's evolved from. We don't know how it's related

702
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 2: to other animals.

703
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: Looking at this thing, do you remember that video game Spore?

704
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 2: Yes, it is totally a spore creature.

705
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 1: Yes, looks it looks like when you make something in

706
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,240
Speaker 1: Spore that does it does not survive past the first

707
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: few stages of your game. But yeah, this is such

708
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:10,919
Speaker 1: This is such a wacky looking thing because it's got

709
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: something that almost looks like an elephant trunk or a

710
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 1: or like a tentacle. But at the end it's got

711
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:21,399
Speaker 1: this like little grabby like almost moment a.

712
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 2: Thing like a some Some have interpreted that that, yeah,

713
00:40:25,360 --> 00:40:28,360
Speaker 2: like a beak or pincers or something. Some have interpreted

714
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 2: it as being like flexible like a trunk. Some of

715
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 2: interpreted as being jointed like an arm. Yeah, it's got

716
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:36,319
Speaker 2: like the gills along the side of a body are

717
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 2: like a lamprey. It's got like sets of holes down

718
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 2: the side of its body past It's got all these

719
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 2: weird mixtures of features and nobody's quite sure what to

720
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 2: make of it.

721
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: You know, it kind of looks like one of those

722
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:53,560
Speaker 1: Boston Dynamics robots, but without the legs, uh, which is

723
00:40:53,680 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 1: you know, it is very interesting. This is uh, this

724
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: could be the Lockness monster. Like you know this, maybe

725
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:04,919
Speaker 1: we should take another few submarines in there.

726
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that's what that's what people have seen rising.

727
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 2: It's a giant It's a giant tely monster.

728
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredible. This is this is definitely cryptid territory where

729
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: it does not it does not look like something that

730
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:22,360
Speaker 1: should have existed.

731
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 2: It should not be here.

732
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 1: It should it. Apparently it didn't. It didn't make it.

733
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 2: No, it didn't. Didn't didn't make it into the present,

734
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 2: which is a shame because you know, if if they were,

735
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 2: if if they were one of those creatures that had

736
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 2: made it through the extinctions, we could like do a

737
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,319
Speaker 2: genetic test on it and figure out where it might fit.

738
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,879
Speaker 2: But we've just got these fossils and as far as

739
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 2: we know, they only existed in the Cambrian and we

740
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: don't know what branch of the tree of life they

741
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:49,120
Speaker 2: come from.

742
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 1: Who knows. Maybe it had two butts, we we we

743
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: really can't tell.

744
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe.

745
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, the other thing that Martin Smith and Gene Karen

746
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: found was that when they examined the other side right

747
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: now that they've guessed that the side with the fluid

748
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: explosion is probably the butt. What they look when they

749
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: looked at the head, they found a couple of spots

750
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:20,839
Speaker 1: that looked suspiciously like eye spots. So we go from

751
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: having this the initial impression of this thing, which is

752
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: that it has like it walks on stilts. It has

753
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: this weird balloon head with no eyes, and then we

754
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: turned it upside down. Now it's walking on its little,

755
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: soft little feet, it has spikes on its back, and

756
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: it's got a it's got a head that has eye spots.

757
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: It starts to look a little bit more like a

758
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 1: weird caterpillar, but nonetheless a body plan that does make sense,

759
00:42:51,120 --> 00:42:54,759
Speaker 1: Like the spikes make sense when you make it, you know,

760
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 1: make that analogy to modern day caterpillars. There are a

761
00:42:56,960 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 1: lot of caterpillars that have these thorny projections on their

762
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 1: back that protects it from predators. The soft, soft appendages

763
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 1: are very good for locomotion when you're trying to get

764
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: over ridges and bumps and crawl under things, so that

765
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: you have this this fluidity of motion, and the eye

766
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:20,280
Speaker 1: spots of course pretty important. Like we talked about how

767
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:23,920
Speaker 1: some animals that didn't even have any ability to detect

768
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:28,799
Speaker 1: light at all were very vulnerable to predators. So yeah,

769
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: it is. It's like it went through so many strange iterations,

770
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 1: and even though what we kind of now think it

771
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: probably look like and was oriented as is still incredibly weird,

772
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 1: it at least makes some sort of sense.

773
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's sort of an example of, like it's

774
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 2: a very early example of like recognizable features of sort

775
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 2: of what would go on to become kind of the

776
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 2: body plan of later on anamalgy with discernible legs and

777
00:43:56,280 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 2: eyes and a front end and a back end and

778
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 2: things like that. Yeah, it's it's very it's it did

779
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 2: it in a very weird way, but yeah, it's it

780
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:06,840
Speaker 2: is sort of like an early sort of template or

781
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 2: trial run for what life on Earth would look like

782
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 2: further down the line.

783
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:14,799
Speaker 1: A prototype, Uh, you know, it's the first draft is

784
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,919
Speaker 1: never going to be perfect, and.

785
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,040
Speaker 2: That evolution isn't you know. Most most animals are kind

786
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 2: of a B plus, you know, they're sort of good enough.

787
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all that's required. People sometimes have this

788
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 1: impression of evolution as being like a machine that creates

789
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,640
Speaker 1: the perfect animals, like well, if we are alive right now,

790
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: or the animals that are alive, they must be you know,

791
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: perfected forms of life through the elegant process of evolutions.

792
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:44,839
Speaker 1: Like now, as long as you can pop out some

793
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: babies and those babies can pop out babies of their own,

794
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: it's good enough, good enough.

795
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 2: And there's there's always an issue that like the the

796
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:57,279
Speaker 2: more quote unquote perfectly adapted an animal is, the more

797
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 2: at risk it is to extinction when the climate change.

798
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:02,240
Speaker 2: I like to use it so when I do science,

799
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 2: I like to use the example of bears. So like

800
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 2: black bears, quite they've got quite a broad diet, they're

801
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:09,839
Speaker 2: fairly adaptable, they can tolerate lots of different temperatures. They're

802
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 2: doing okay. Polar bears very strict diets, very tight range

803
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 2: of temperatures they can tolerate, and they're having a really

804
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:17,640
Speaker 2: tough time of it right now.

805
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, it's it's that it's a it's

806
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: the classic thing of like, well did you invest everything

807
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 1: into one crop right like like pandas do or do

808
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:34,720
Speaker 1: you diversify, you know, and need a bunch of different things,

809
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 1: which does it does help out, but yeah, it is.

810
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: There is a recent study of looking into sort of

811
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: the pre we're going back really far. This is like

812
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: pre animal DNA, like the oh yeah, the produced DNA

813
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 1: and how researchers have sort of used genes from that

814
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: produce DNA and then found ones that are similar to

815
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: like gene markers and mice and then tried to see

816
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: if they could just like put that in there, like

817
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,240
Speaker 1: sneak a little bit of protest DNA into the mouse

818
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,760
Speaker 1: to get the same effect as the as that protein

819
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: sequence that was so similar, and they found indeed they could,

820
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 1: which I think is what's so interesting about these early

821
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: animals is yes, they may have lacked a lot of things,

822
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,440
Speaker 1: like some of them didn't even have eye spots, some

823
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: of them didn't have a brain, but they had enough

824
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 1: of a genetic library that they could go through say

825
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 1: a mass extinction event or these these incredible sort of

826
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:42,359
Speaker 1: bottleneck types of events and still have enough diversity that

827
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: they were able to start developing you know, a flurry

828
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: of useful features that were then used in later animals

829
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:52,760
Speaker 1: that we now recognize as having sort of a useful

830
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:57,919
Speaker 1: body plant rather than a strange tube with strange appendages.

831
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, like like you know, talking about like giant panthers,

832
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:05,279
Speaker 2: like herbivores, like as a thing, didn't really exist until

833
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 2: the Carboniferous, which is like near the near the end

834
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:10,720
Speaker 2: of the Camry period, And that's where you start getting

835
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,480
Speaker 2: kind of our ancestors. You start getting the first tetrapods

836
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 2: and the land based vertebrates, and like the sort of

837
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 2: the stem mammals, the kind of proto mammals. That's some

838
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 2: of my that's some of my favorite fossil animals is

839
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 2: these thing the creatures that kind of break your traditional

840
00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:30,840
Speaker 2: conception of like animal classification because you kind of learning

841
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:35,280
Speaker 2: you kind of learn in school, you know, mammal, bird, reptile, fish, amphibian, inverterate.

842
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 2: But then there's so much stuff in the fossil record

843
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:40,399
Speaker 2: that just doesn't fit in any of them. And yeah,

844
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 2: like the synapsids, which is the sort of the broader

845
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 2: group that mammals belong to. Their early ancestors are showed

846
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 2: up in the sort of Cambrian period and really really

847
00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 2: flourished in the Permian so sort of right near the

848
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 2: end of the Paleozoic period, and that you know, you've

849
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 2: got creatures that are starting to resemble a kind of

850
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 2: modern eque system. You've got great big terrestrial predators and

851
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 2: herbivores with all kinds of weird horns and spikes and

852
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 2: frills and things coming off them. You've got the first

853
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 2: saber toothed predators shar not like even even before the

854
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 2: diet You've got you got the gorgonopsids, who are these

855
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 2: like horse sized, like lizard wolf things, just just nightmarish stuff.

856
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:26,760
Speaker 1: But we had there were dragon we from weird dragon

857
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 1: type animals, maybe without the wings, but yes, and.

858
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:32,759
Speaker 2: These are these are another group where again you have

859
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 2: all these questions that you can't quite answer through the

860
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:39,919
Speaker 2: fossil record about yeah, because they're they're they're on the

861
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:42,879
Speaker 2: they're on the the line towards the mammals, but they're

862
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:44,640
Speaker 2: not quite there yet. So were they warm bloody or

863
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 2: cold blooded? Did they have skin or scales or fur?

864
00:48:47,760 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 2: Did they produce milk? Is that something that we only

865
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 2: find in true mammals or how far how far back

866
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 2: does that go?

867
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: There's you don't need We've we've learned you don't need

868
00:48:57,560 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: nipples to make milk. You can just kind of let it.

869
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 1: She'll sort of flosh out of you.

870
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 2: Just bring them out like a sponge.

871
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,919
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, and like sicilians, Yes, I know, yes, it's

872
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: just like you have so like so when I'm talking

873
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:19,759
Speaker 1: about monitrems, I'm talking about platypuses and echidnas and they

874
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:25,120
Speaker 1: are you know, egg laying mammals, and they do but

875
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: they do exude milk, but instead of having discrete nipples,

876
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 1: they have these glands and pores and the milk just

877
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:36,800
Speaker 1: kind of like leaks out of them, which lovely. Sicilians

878
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:41,280
Speaker 1: are a reptile that are not so they are not mammals,

879
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 1: but they and they don't technically produce milk, but what

880
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: they do have is a very nutritious and delicious skin

881
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:56,600
Speaker 1: that they allowed their babies to eat off of their bellies.

882
00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: Like it's mom jerky. It's jerky made from Ah. Hey,

883
00:50:01,600 --> 00:50:04,240
Speaker 1: you know it's loving, like when mom makes you cookies.

884
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: But hey, kids, you want a little piece of mom jerkey?

885
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 2: Sure, lovely on that. Any whatever solution works, whatever works,

886
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,479
Speaker 2: I'm pretty I'm pretty sure Sicilians have been around since

887
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 2: the Jurassic or something, so it's worked from so far.

888
00:50:20,680 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: They're very old and very it's it's a recipe that's

889
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: been around for many generations.

890
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:33,479
Speaker 2: Mom Mom's classic homebrew, Mom's classic home homebrewed Deally skin.

891
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,520
Speaker 1: There we go. Yes, we'll take a quick break, and

892
00:50:36,560 --> 00:50:39,279
Speaker 1: when we get back, we're going to talk about one

893
00:50:39,280 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: of the biggest land Arthur pod. No, the biggest planned

894
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,919
Speaker 1: Arthur prod that we know about. Uh and uh yeah,

895
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 1: So we will be right back. So I do want

896
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: to talk about arthropleura because I love bugs. It's not

897
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,240
Speaker 1: really a bug. Oh, actually, I don't know. Bug doesn't

898
00:50:57,280 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: have a very scientific classification, does it.

899
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:02,400
Speaker 2: I thought there was. I'm sure I heard that there is.

900
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 2: There is a specific group of insects that are called bugs.

901
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,640
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it is, but in the general pilance, yeah,

902
00:51:08,680 --> 00:51:10,040
Speaker 2: people just use bugs for bugs.

903
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 1: I feel like like an exoskeleton. For me, a bug

904
00:51:14,239 --> 00:51:16,880
Speaker 1: could also be like a shrimp. That's a bug to me.

905
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:18,480
Speaker 2: So it's a wet bug.

906
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: It's a wet bug. We're eating wet bugs, folks. So

907
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 1: plural was a genus of massive arthropods that lived well.

908
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: It was around like three hundred forty something to two

909
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:36,040
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety million years ago. It was like just

910
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:40,600
Speaker 1: a few million years shy of coinciding with dinosaurs, you know,

911
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:41,760
Speaker 1: which is nothing.

912
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,279
Speaker 2: And when we talk we talk about we talk about

913
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:48,080
Speaker 2: geological time, and we talk about short periods of time

914
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 2: that could be like ten thousand years, a couple of

915
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 2: million years. That's nothing.

916
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: It's nothing, nothing, just a little blip. But yeah, unlike

917
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: the other animals I've talked about, this is a terrestrial animal.

918
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: So like we talked about I mean you've talked about

919
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 1: plane of animals as well that have been terrestrial. But

920
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: like the the other really strange ones like anomalo, cars, hallucigenea, uh,

921
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: the the that big the yeah yeah yeah, the not alloid, Yes,

922
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:22,359
Speaker 1: those have all been marine mammals or marine mammals. Those

923
00:52:22,400 --> 00:52:26,319
Speaker 1: have all been marine life and they and we we

924
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:29,120
Speaker 1: have records of them because of this amazing or just

925
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:32,319
Speaker 1: shale because in for the for the not alloid because

926
00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 1: of its shell. But this is a terrestrial creature and

927
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:40,799
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because we do have good records well

928
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: maybe not good, but enough record of it. And it

929
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 1: was a it was incredible looking so like it was

930
00:52:50,040 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 1: basically a giant millipede slash centipede. It had many many segments,

931
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 1: many many legs, unlike its modern relatives, though it grew

932
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:03,080
Speaker 1: to be over eight feet long, which is around two

933
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 1: and a half meters, So it's the largest terrestrial arthropod

934
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,920
Speaker 1: that we know of, and it had it's a little

935
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're thinking of your classic millipede that

936
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: you typically find in a backyard, and say in the

937
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 1: US or in the UK, it's kind of rounded dome

938
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 1: like sort of like a little like a little train,

939
00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: subway train. But there are plenty of species of millipedes

940
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: and centipedes that actually look more like this arthropleura, which

941
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 1: is their flatter. They're a little wider, and they have

942
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: this like pretty serious armor. So they left behind a

943
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 1: good number of fossils. But in addition to fossils of

944
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 1: the animal itself, they also left behind tracks because they

945
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:55,360
Speaker 1: were so big, they were able to form these little

946
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:59,359
Speaker 1: tracks that were I mean, it's kind of incredible, right

947
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:02,360
Speaker 1: like you think about, like, oh, a, basically what this

948
00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: is a giant miller people leaving behind footsteps that then

949
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:10,640
Speaker 1: get some you know, you imagine like maybe some landslide

950
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 1: happens and then it preserves these these footsteps.

951
00:54:13,800 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's walking through wet mud in the swamp

952
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 2: somewhere and that's then dried up and been and covered up.

953
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 2: And yeah, some of these so they have them in

954
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:26,840
Speaker 2: in Scotland actually, yes, and yeah they find these trackways

955
00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 2: of like you know, these two symmetrical rows of the

956
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:31,880
Speaker 2: little dots in the ground and they're half a meter wide.

957
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 2: You know, you can quite easily stand in the middle

958
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:38,360
Speaker 2: of it. They also they very recently, actually a fully

959
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:43,160
Speaker 2: preserved head of one of these has announced not long ago,

960
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:47,839
Speaker 2: with like mandibles and feelers. So there's there's gonna be

961
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:50,360
Speaker 2: there's gonna be some work done on that to figure

962
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 2: out like feeding mechanics and things like that. I think

963
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:56,840
Speaker 2: most people are pretty on board that it was probably

964
00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 2: a herbivore because this was this would have been living

965
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,480
Speaker 2: in the what we call the coal swamps, which is

966
00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:04,800
Speaker 2: it's a big part of actually the fossil history of

967
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 2: where I live. So I live in stoke On Tract,

968
00:55:06,960 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 2: which a little town in the rough north of England,

969
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:12,840
Speaker 2: and the coal mines and the coal measures you know,

970
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 2: were a big part of industrial revolution and industry in

971
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:18,360
Speaker 2: that whole time of the year. So my museum is

972
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 2: mostly full of fossils that have come from that period

973
00:55:21,640 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 2: in time, so it's a lot of fish and a

974
00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:27,319
Speaker 2: lot of plant fossils occasionally get these big arthropods. They

975
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,760
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been forests made of trees as we can eventually,

976
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:34,640
Speaker 2: because vascular plants weren't quite they weren't quite dominant in

977
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 2: the way. So it would have been like giant horsetails

978
00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:39,719
Speaker 2: and liver warts and club mosses and things like that.

979
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,640
Speaker 2: So these other plants that these days are generally confined

980
00:55:42,719 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 2: to the understory would have been making up the trees

981
00:55:45,640 --> 00:55:47,759
Speaker 2: at the time, and then of course that goes on

982
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:50,480
Speaker 2: to make the coal that we mind. But yeah, arthropleura

983
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:53,839
Speaker 2: would have been easily one of the biggest animals on

984
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 2: the land around at the time. It would have been

985
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 2: living alongside there's other giant invertebrates around at the time.

986
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:03,400
Speaker 2: There's dragon flies that are half a meter across in wingspan.

987
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 2: There's giant scorpions and spiders and things like that.

988
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: It's a there's enough, there's enough ambient oxygen to be

989
00:56:10,480 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 1: able to diffuse through those spiracles.

990
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 2: It's a it's partially that and that's one of those

991
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 2: things that kind of gets misrepresented a lot a lot

992
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 2: of people. The idea.

993
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:21,879
Speaker 1: It's not like the only reason that.

994
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:24,200
Speaker 2: They were able to Yeah, it's not the only isdea

995
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,440
Speaker 2: and people often apply it to other animals as well.

996
00:56:26,480 --> 00:56:29,760
Speaker 2: People think that more oxygen makes bigger reptiles and bigger mammals.

997
00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:32,880
Speaker 2: It doesn't doesn't work that way mainly.

998
00:56:32,920 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 1: But the lack of birds was a big one.

999
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:38,839
Speaker 2: Lack of birds probab definitely helps. Yeah, but another big

1000
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:41,560
Speaker 2: part is the opportunity. As far as we can tell,

1001
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 2: arthropods and specifically something like a millipede might have been

1002
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:48,319
Speaker 2: the first animals on land. So there's another fossil from

1003
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:54,560
Speaker 2: Scotland actually older than Arthroplura, called Numadesmus, which is another

1004
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 2: set of footprints. It's another set of tiny fossil footprints

1005
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:02,080
Speaker 2: that dates back to about four hundred million years ago

1006
00:57:02,200 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 2: something like that, which is one of the oldest pieces

1007
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 2: of evidence of any organism coming onto the land. And

1008
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:11,160
Speaker 2: when you know, so we would have been earthly sort

1009
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:14,279
Speaker 2: of grab some millipede looking type creatures coming onto the

1010
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:18,440
Speaker 2: land and there's no competition, there's nothing competing with them

1011
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 2: for space or food resources. So just they've got the

1012
00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:25,200
Speaker 2: whole planets of themselves basically to expand and grow and

1013
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 2: diversify until the arising of the tetrapods that fall invertebrates

1014
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:31,800
Speaker 2: as they start coming out of the water.

1015
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it is interesting because if you

1016
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 1: think about it right like this, they think that this

1017
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 1: was not particularly a vision based sensory creature, right like,

1018
00:57:44,600 --> 00:57:49,479
Speaker 1: it either had very simple eyes or did not have

1019
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: very well functioning eyes, so that it would have probably

1020
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: struggled to compete with a tetrapod that was able to

1021
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: move around from more nimbly and perhaps have a better

1022
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:08,080
Speaker 1: visual grasp of being able to like say, get to

1023
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 1: something faster.

1024
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there weren't There weren't very many big land

1025
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 2: based predators at the time, so the more predatory invertebrates

1026
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 2: at the times, so things like scorpions and spiders, I

1027
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:22,720
Speaker 2: think their their body plan kind of limits how big

1028
00:58:22,760 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 2: they can get on land and like how lethal they

1029
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:28,720
Speaker 2: can be. I think the largest of the land scorpions

1030
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 2: pushed nearly a met along, so not unsubstantial, but it

1031
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been a threat to something as big as arthurplura,

1032
00:58:35,160 --> 00:58:38,560
Speaker 2: and having this big, tough exo skeleton would have been

1033
00:58:38,560 --> 00:58:40,640
Speaker 2: a big, a big help as well. But yeah, you

1034
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:43,800
Speaker 2: start to get the early tuchpods coming on land, and yeah,

1035
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:47,040
Speaker 2: they're more agile. They've they've got limbs, they've got eyes,

1036
00:58:47,080 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 2: they've got everything they need to to flick flip this

1037
00:58:49,800 --> 00:58:51,480
Speaker 2: thing over and get to the belly if they want

1038
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 2: to just.

1039
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:54,320
Speaker 1: Have like a buffet. If you imagine like a like

1040
00:58:54,360 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: a group of sort of like tetrapods that look like

1041
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of little weird mongooses just flip this guy

1042
00:59:00,560 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 1: over and then having a having a last supper like

1043
00:59:03,760 --> 00:59:06,880
Speaker 1: meal at the long this oh yeah book.

1044
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:08,880
Speaker 2: We booked a table for booked a table for twenty

1045
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 2: four but we're all going to sit on one side.

1046
00:59:11,280 --> 00:59:12,920
Speaker 1: I mean, it does it kind of reminds me of that,

1047
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: like because we do have like you mentioned, you know,

1048
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:19,760
Speaker 1: it's scorpions. You know, we have a lot of uh,

1049
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 1: you know, not too not too different in terms of

1050
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,960
Speaker 1: the body pillion compared to really touch pods things like mongooses, And.

1051
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's sort of it. Yeah, that's that's quite

1052
00:59:30,040 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 2: a su comparison. Actually, I never not thought of that

1053
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 2: poor like like mongooses and mustelides and things like that. Yeah, yeah,

1054
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:38,439
Speaker 2: that's yeah, sort of long body, short legs kind of. Yeah,

1055
00:59:38,480 --> 00:59:41,680
Speaker 2: they're not far off. It's a very it's a good

1056
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 2: sort of generalist body plan when you know you want

1057
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:47,720
Speaker 2: to move in around on land. Yeah, basically everything. Yeah,

1058
00:59:47,720 --> 00:59:49,080
Speaker 2: if you if you're not going for any kind of

1059
00:59:49,080 --> 00:59:50,600
Speaker 2: big specialty.

1060
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 1: There's eventually, I think, give it a few hundred million

1061
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:57,680
Speaker 1: years and we're all either going to be noodles or crabs,

1062
00:59:57,880 --> 00:59:58,440
Speaker 1: and that's it.

1063
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:02,040
Speaker 2: Everything is of everything is evolving back into a.

1064
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 1: Crab and too crab or noodle and then we'll duke

1065
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:08,680
Speaker 1: it out see which one which body plan works the best. Uh,

1066
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:13,960
Speaker 1: but I mean this it is go ahead, sorry, but yeah,

1067
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:17,439
Speaker 1: it is really interesting. So this this uh with the

1068
01:00:17,560 --> 01:00:21,040
Speaker 1: Arthur Pleurro being able to see these footsteps, does the

1069
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:24,760
Speaker 1: footprints that have been fossilized, does give us a little

1070
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: bit of insight into its behavior because these tracks were found.

1071
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: I mean it's a little bit of a it's a

1072
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,439
Speaker 1: little bit of a puzzle, right because these tracks were

1073
01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:38,600
Speaker 1: found like near bodies of water. Now, part of that is,

1074
01:00:38,840 --> 01:00:42,479
Speaker 1: like you said, because that is a premium place for

1075
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 1: these tracks to be fossilized. So it's not a very

1076
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: good statistical indicator where they spent most of their time,

1077
01:00:50,160 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 1: because we're gonna have this false like bias towards finding

1078
01:00:54,440 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: fossils near the water. So maybe it was just a

1079
01:00:57,680 --> 01:00:59,440
Speaker 1: few of them who are just like, oh, that's an

1080
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:03,680
Speaker 1: interesting area. It happened to walk there, and we get

1081
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:06,480
Speaker 1: those footprints and that's what's preserved. Whereas maybe they spent

1082
01:01:06,640 --> 01:01:09,760
Speaker 1: most of their times, like on in whatded areas away

1083
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:12,960
Speaker 1: from water. We don't know, but we do know they

1084
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,320
Speaker 1: did at least go in those places at least once

1085
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: or twice.

1086
01:01:17,200 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. When interpreting behavior for fossil animals, this happens all

1087
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:25,360
Speaker 2: the time. You people will over interpret or misinterpret or

1088
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:28,120
Speaker 2: things like yeah you get you know, well you get like,

1089
01:01:28,280 --> 01:01:30,280
Speaker 2: you know, a bone bed of dinosaurs, for example, you

1090
01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 2: find a whole bunch of them buried together, and people go,

1091
01:01:32,760 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 2: they were social, they were living in herds. No, this

1092
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 2: all this tells you is that they died together. It

1093
01:01:37,160 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 2: doesn't tell you what they were doing for the rest

1094
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:40,960
Speaker 2: of their lives. It could have been a flash flood,

1095
01:01:40,960 --> 01:01:42,840
Speaker 2: it could have been a disease or Somethingeah.

1096
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 1: They all fill in the same hole. We don't know.

1097
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:48,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Well, there are examples of that. There's

1098
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 2: like like sinkholes and things you know, like that have

1099
01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 2: been that have been full of the bones of animals

1100
01:01:55,480 --> 01:01:57,400
Speaker 2: that have fallen and you could easy, oh these animals

1101
01:01:57,440 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 2: like living in caves. No, no, this is just where

1102
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 2: they died. And yeah, like you and like trace fossils

1103
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:05,400
Speaker 2: as well, you know, so things like footprints and copper lights.

1104
01:02:05,760 --> 01:02:09,160
Speaker 2: You know, people will sometimes you overinterpret it as one

1105
01:02:09,200 --> 01:02:11,120
Speaker 2: particular behavior. You know, You've always got to keep in

1106
01:02:11,200 --> 01:02:13,840
Speaker 2: mind that a fossil or a trace fossil or whatever

1107
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 2: it is you're looking at just represents one animal at

1108
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 2: one particular point in its life. It doesn't represent the

1109
01:02:20,720 --> 01:02:23,720
Speaker 2: complexities of its behavior and its biology. You've got to

1110
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:26,080
Speaker 2: be really careful about interpreting these sorts of things.

1111
01:02:26,680 --> 01:02:29,160
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I think that's what I like about

1112
01:02:29,200 --> 01:02:32,040
Speaker 1: Like when you look at like modern animal behavior and

1113
01:02:32,080 --> 01:02:36,440
Speaker 1: then you try to think about what humans say, you know,

1114
01:02:36,560 --> 01:02:39,160
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand years from now, or maybe aliens would

1115
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,520
Speaker 1: might how they might misinterpret something. So like that, what

1116
01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:46,320
Speaker 1: we're talking about reminds me of hermit crab death cyclones

1117
01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:49,840
Speaker 1: where they they get stuck. So like we leave out

1118
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:53,720
Speaker 1: glass or plastic bottles on the beach. Hermit crabs will

1119
01:02:54,280 --> 01:02:58,720
Speaker 1: investigate the aperture because they are drawn to apertures because

1120
01:02:59,080 --> 01:03:02,120
Speaker 1: I mean, they're always sort of looking out for interesting

1121
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: little nooks and crannies to get into but also potentially home.

1122
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: So they look at this aperture and then they kind

1123
01:03:07,560 --> 01:03:10,880
Speaker 1: of fall into the neck of the bottle. And a

1124
01:03:10,920 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 1: lot of these bottles are designed such that the hermit

1125
01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:16,080
Speaker 1: crab can get in, but they can't get out because

1126
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: they don't have the friction right that, like, they have

1127
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:20,800
Speaker 1: the traction of the sand as they're going in, but

1128
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 1: once they've slipped in, they no longer have traction, so

1129
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:28,200
Speaker 1: they're stuck and then they die. And hermit crabs have

1130
01:03:28,240 --> 01:03:30,919
Speaker 1: this behavior that when they smell a dead hermit crab,

1131
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 1: it gives off this a there's this decomposition odor that

1132
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:44,040
Speaker 1: attracts other hermit crabs because free home so forree real

1133
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:48,560
Speaker 1: estate folks. And so then they are drawn to this

1134
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:50,080
Speaker 1: this bottle and they're like.

1135
01:03:50,040 --> 01:03:53,000
Speaker 2: Hey, you you just end up with.

1136
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:56,800
Speaker 1: At you get a jug of dead hermit crabs, And

1137
01:03:57,080 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: what a weird thing. Like if you're an archaeologist hundred

1138
01:04:00,360 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 1: thousand years from now and you look at this thing.

1139
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: You might think, like, well, people liked to gather hermit

1140
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 1: crabs and jugs and keep them in there for some

1141
01:04:08,520 --> 01:04:12,040
Speaker 1: reason or or this like hermit crabs liked to use

1142
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:14,560
Speaker 1: these jugs as like a din and this is like

1143
01:04:14,600 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 1: a family of hermit crabs. Everything absolutely wrong, But like

1144
01:04:19,720 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: you can think about all the ways we could come

1145
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: up with some theory about this, all the ways in

1146
01:04:25,040 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 1: which it's wrong. I do. I like, I love these

1147
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:32,720
Speaker 1: sort of illustrations where I forgot the artist's name, but

1148
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 1: it's those I think the same artist that was like

1149
01:04:35,680 --> 01:04:40,560
Speaker 1: behind like all Yesterday's or all tomorrow's. Oh yeah, yeah, and.

1150
01:04:43,240 --> 01:04:47,640
Speaker 2: I've met him. I've met him Google Dixon, Sorry.

1151
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:53,920
Speaker 1: Dixon, Okay, yes, And and sort of the the take,

1152
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:58,880
Speaker 1: you know, taking a the skeleton of a swan and

1153
01:04:58,880 --> 01:05:01,800
Speaker 1: then trying to reimagine as someone might try to reconstruct

1154
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:06,440
Speaker 1: it as this terrifying creature that uses its side like

1155
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:10,080
Speaker 1: like armbones to stab prey and get fish.

1156
01:05:10,400 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, when you when you find things that

1157
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:15,720
Speaker 2: have no modern equivalence is when you really start to struggle,

1158
01:05:15,760 --> 01:05:19,080
Speaker 2: like interpreting the behavior or the biology of it, like.

1159
01:05:18,960 --> 01:05:24,760
Speaker 1: The Tolly monster, which you know, but yeah, it is

1160
01:05:24,760 --> 01:05:27,280
Speaker 1: a really I think that's what's something that is so

1161
01:05:27,360 --> 01:05:30,600
Speaker 1: interesting to me about palaeontology is that you do you

1162
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:35,960
Speaker 1: have such limited data and so it is the that

1163
01:05:36,000 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can't come to interesting conclusions or come

1164
01:05:40,440 --> 01:05:45,600
Speaker 1: to correct conclusions, but it requires so much thoughtfulness because

1165
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:49,640
Speaker 1: you know, it is like what we were saying with like, say,

1166
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:54,440
Speaker 1: you don't take into account that you're finding this fossil

1167
01:05:54,480 --> 01:05:56,760
Speaker 1: because this is the most this is the only place

1168
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,280
Speaker 1: that a fossil could have formed, and it doesn't actually

1169
01:05:59,280 --> 01:06:01,800
Speaker 1: tell you much about the animal animal's behavior and how

1170
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:06,040
Speaker 1: you cope with those problems and then yet continue on

1171
01:06:06,760 --> 01:06:10,120
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, what might actually be a

1172
01:06:10,480 --> 01:06:13,320
Speaker 1: better theory. And it's just so interesting to me. So

1173
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 1: bad news everyone, My guests did get hit by an

1174
01:06:18,760 --> 01:06:22,840
Speaker 1: asteroid and now has to spend a few million years

1175
01:06:22,880 --> 01:06:27,120
Speaker 1: re evolving. Now he's fine, just his internet cut out.

1176
01:06:27,320 --> 01:06:32,000
Speaker 1: So what a wonderful guest he was, wasn't he? So again,

1177
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:36,040
Speaker 1: his name is Dane pat You can find him on

1178
01:06:36,320 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 1: a Blue Sky so and he is also a museum educator,

1179
01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:45,560
Speaker 1: a science communicator. Very cool. I was so lucky to

1180
01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:47,920
Speaker 1: have him on the show today. Before we go, I

1181
01:06:48,080 --> 01:06:50,200
Speaker 1: do got to play a little game called guests Who's

1182
01:06:50,240 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 1: squawkn the Mystery animal sound game. Every week I play

1183
01:06:53,840 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: a mystery animal sound and you, the listener, try to

1184
01:06:57,040 --> 01:07:02,840
Speaker 1: guess who is making that sound. So here is last

1185
01:07:02,920 --> 01:07:06,840
Speaker 1: week's mystery animal sound. The hint was this, who's a

1186
01:07:06,920 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 1: stripey baby? All right? So congratulations to Emily M Joyp

1187
01:07:18,680 --> 01:07:23,960
Speaker 1: and Jares for guessing correctly that this is a baby zebra. Specifically,

1188
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:28,080
Speaker 1: this is a baby planes zebra. So the brain the

1189
01:07:28,160 --> 01:07:31,520
Speaker 1: brain call of a zebra. These are meant to help

1190
01:07:31,560 --> 01:07:34,880
Speaker 1: orient the herd in one direction. It might also be

1191
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:39,000
Speaker 1: useful for disorienting and confusing predators because you have this

1192
01:07:39,160 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: cacophony of this sound. Very distracting. Calls can also be

1193
01:07:44,880 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 1: used to communicate socially. Something cute about planes zebras is

1194
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:54,720
Speaker 1: that herds will collectively protect folds by forming a ring

1195
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 1: around them defensive things. So where all the youngest the

1196
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:03,400
Speaker 1: babies are protected from creditors. All right, So onto this

1197
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:08,560
Speaker 1: week's mystery animal sound. It is inspired by young listener Eleanor.

1198
01:08:09,600 --> 01:08:12,560
Speaker 1: And here is the hint. If you wanted it, you

1199
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:20,280
Speaker 1: should have put a ring on it, all right. So

1200
01:08:20,320 --> 01:08:22,080
Speaker 1: if you think you know who is making that sound.

1201
01:08:22,080 --> 01:08:23,920
Speaker 1: You can write to me at Creature Feature Pod at

1202
01:08:23,920 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can also write to me your questions,

1203
01:08:27,360 --> 01:08:32,280
Speaker 1: interesting articles you've read, questions about your pets, just pictures

1204
01:08:32,280 --> 01:08:35,120
Speaker 1: of your pets. I always love those, so yeah. That's

1205
01:08:35,240 --> 01:08:38,400
Speaker 1: Creature featurepot at gmail dot com. Thank you guys so

1206
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:41,400
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you

1207
01:08:41,520 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: leave a rating and or review, it really does help me.

1208
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:47,760
Speaker 1: I read all the reviews and all the ratings are

1209
01:08:47,760 --> 01:08:52,760
Speaker 1: incredibly helpful to keeping keeping them metrics up for that algorithm.

1210
01:08:53,080 --> 01:08:56,840
Speaker 1: Because robots rule the world. Bet boop. Thanks to the

1211
01:08:56,840 --> 01:08:59,719
Speaker 1: Space Cossics for their super awesome song excel Alumina. Creature

1212
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:03,280
Speaker 1: Feature creat Your Features a production of iHeartRadio. For more

1213
01:09:03,360 --> 01:09:07,280
Speaker 1: podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1214
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:09,720
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or he guess what. Some of you listen

1215
01:09:09,720 --> 01:09:12,320
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows not your mother, and I can't

1216
01:09:12,320 --> 01:09:14,479
Speaker 1: tell you what to do, but I will tell you this.

1217
01:09:15,280 --> 01:09:18,759
Speaker 1: If you find a Tully monster under your bed, don't panic.

1218
01:09:19,320 --> 01:09:22,800
Speaker 1: Call your local paleontologists. They'll be very interested to meet him.

1219
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:24,880
Speaker 1: See you next Wednesday