Palaeo After Dark

James Lamsdell, Amanda Falk, and Curtis Congreve
  • 4.0 (7)
  • NATURAL SCIENCES
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

A group of scientists have biweekly informal discussions about evolutionary biology and palaeontology... over beer.

  1. 6D AGO

    Podcast 325 - The Curse of the Not Cat

    Listeners, I'm going to level with you. This podcast is cursed. Not because of the content, which is mostly a pretty straight forward discussion about two papers that look into the fossil record of Nimravids (early cats that are not true cats). No, this podcast is cursed because the file refused to be compiled, crashing Audacity 3 times and each time corrupting the save file. The fact that any mp3 file was able to be compiled at all was a minor miracle. I can only assume that this means this podcast data has gained sentience and did not want to be born. I have no control over what happens when this mp3 file gets released into the internet… so anyways enjoy the episode!   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that both look at things we can see in the hard parts of animals that are like cats but are not cats and use those hard parts to figure out what these not cats are doing. These papers looks at different not cats and try and see what types of food they would eat and how they would get that food. Turns out that many of these not cats were doing things that are not the same as the cats we have today.   References: Castellanos, Miguel. "Hunting types in North American Eocene–Oligocene carnivores and implications for the 'cat-gap'." Journal of Mammalian Evolution 32.2 (2025): 25. Jiangzuo, Qigao, et al. "A new ecomorph of Nimravidae, and the early macrocarnivorous niche exploration in Carnivora." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 292.2059 (2025).

    1h 46m

  2. JAN 25

    Podcast 324 - Pick Up the Pieces

    The gang discusses two papers that use fragmentary fossils of animals to investigate the origins of major groups. The first paper describes an Early Ordovician eurypterid, and the second paper looks at mosaic evolutionary patterns in an early squamate. Meanwhile, James has bird opinions, Curt delights in not knowing, and Amanda will definitely be on time.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends look at two papers that are using broken bits of things to learn a lot about animals from a long time ago. Both of these papers are looking at old animals that may give us new looks at how big groups of animals changed over time. These animals may be some of the first animals in these groups, or at least let us know what kinds of things those early animals could have been doing. The first paper looks at a group of animals that lived in the big blue wet thing a long time ago and are part of a group that today has animals that make homes that they use to catch food. The new parts this paper finds shows that this group may have come around a lot earlier than we thought. The second paper looks at parts from an animal that is in a group that is cold and has hard skin, some with legs and some without legs. These parts show that the early animals in this group had a lot of changes going on in their hard parts, maybe they changed more early on then they do today.   References: Benson, Roger BJ, et al. "Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate." Nature (2025): 1-7. Van Roy, Peter, Jared C. Richards, and Javier Ortega-Hernández. "Early Ordovician sea scorpions from Morocco suggest Cambrian origins and main diversification of Eurypterida." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 292.2058 (2025).

    1h 25m

  3. JAN 11

    Podcast 323e - "All Sales Final" Part 5 - Another Satisfied Customer

    The crew of the CS Perry struggle to extract themselves from their rapidly deteriorating situation. "Lightless Dawn" , "Spacial Harvest", and "Crypto" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    1h 47m

  4. JAN 4

    Podcast 323d - "All Sales Final" Part 4 - The Milk Run

    The crew of the CS Perry, now trapped in a space station run by multiple hostile AI, work to figure out how best to salvage a mission gone very wrong.   "Lightless Dawn" and "Crypto" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    1h 6m

  5. 2025-12-28

    Podcast 323c - "All Sales Final" Part 3 - The Hard Sell

    The crew of the CS Perry begin the negotiation process for the CA-chip, but the sales team wants an arm and a leg for the product.   "Lightless Dawn" and "Crypto" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    1h 11m

  6. 2025-12-21

    Podcast 323b - "All Sales Final" Part 2 - A Representative Will Be With You Shortly

    The crew of CS Perry were offered the perfect deal, a quick stop at an abandoned spaceport to grab some mothballed tech and they'd be set for life. What could possibly go wrong?   "Lightless Dawn" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    1h 48m

  7. 2025-12-14

    Podcast 323a - "The Milk Run" Part 1

    For our holiday episodes this year, James, Curt, Amanda, and Ants get together to play a game of the space horror tabletop RPG Mothership. Join us for our introductory episode where we discuss the setting, rules, and the main characters of our story.   "Lightless Dawn" from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

    1h 2m

  8. 2025-11-30

    Podcast 322 - Obligatory Dinosaur Podcast 3: Dino With a Vengeance

    The gang discusses two papers that are about dinosaurs, and that is all that connects them! The first paper investigates community structure during the Cretaceous, and the second paper describes a well preserved "mummy" of a duck-billed dinosaur. Meanwhile, Amanda is doing well (really she is now), Curt makes an awkward segue, and James has not seen Tremors.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers about big angry animals from a long time ago. The first paper looks at how many types of big angry animals were in a place before something bad happened and all the big angry animals died. Lots of people have said that the big angry animals might have been in trouble before the bad thing happen, and lots of other people say that they were probably not in trouble but we just don't have a lot of places that have the big angry animals in them for us to look and see what is happening at that time. This paper looks at a place and shows that it was during the time we want to see and that the types of animals in a place were a lot like the types of animals in a place before, so that means that it does not look like these big angry animals were having a bad time before the bad thing happened. The second paper looks at soft parts of a big angry animal that was dried out so that you can see skin and other bits under the skin. This lets the people find out what the feet look like for this animal, and other bits about how it moved.   References: Flynn, Andrew G., et al. "Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous diversity and provinciality." Science 390.6771 (2025): 400-404. Sereno, Paul C., et al. "Duck-billed dinosaur fleshy midline and hooves reveal terrestrial clay-template "mummification"." Science (2025).

    1h 27m
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Ratings & Reviews

4
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

A group of scientists have biweekly informal discussions about evolutionary biology and palaeontology... over beer.

Information

  • Creator
    James Lamsdell, Amanda Falk, and Curtis Congreve
  • Years Active
    2013 - 2026
  • Episodes
    344
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © CC-BY
  • Show Website
    Palaeo After Dark

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