Palaeocast

The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, or 'GOBE', describes one of the most important increases in biodiversity in the history of life on earth. During a relatively short time span of some 25 million years, an explosion of new species, genera and families appeared. This increase in diversity was accompanied by an increase in ecosystem complexity. Plankton and suspension feeding organisms r...

Trilobites are one of the most instantly recognisable groups of fossils. They were present from the very start of the  Paleozoic  and went on the fill a great number of ecological roles before going extinct at the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event 252 million years ago. They ranged from the very small to the  very large , from the most basic appearance to the most elaborately ornamented. We wer...

Ammonoids are a diverse group of cephalopods, a group of molluscs that include squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiloids. They lived for over 300 million years (from the Early Devonian – the end Cretaceous) and survived multiple mass extinctions. They finally succumbed to the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous, the same event that killed the Dinosaurs. Ammonoid fossils are found...

One of the most significant events in Earth’s history has been the oxygenation of its atmosphere 2.45–2.32 billion years ago. This accumulation of molecular oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere was so significant that it is now commonly known as the  Great Oxidation Event  (GOE). The long-reaching effects of the GOE were literally world-changing; the compositions of the atmosphere and hydrosphere were alt...

Perhaps one of the most overlooked areas of palaeontology, within the public eye, is micropalaeontology. Micropalaeontology is an umbrella discipline, covering a diverse range of organisms, with representatives from many of the highest level biological groupings. Although small in size, microfossils prove invaluable for research into palaeoclimatology and are also one of the most commercially appl...

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils (also termed ichnofossils). Opposed to body fossils, the physical remains of an organism, trace fossils are the fossilised interactions between an organism and the substrate/sediment and include such things as trackways, excrement, burrows, bite marks and borings. Both body fossils and trace fossils are important when studying an organism and especially so i...

Ichnology  is the study of  trace fossils  (also termed  ichnofossils ). Opposed to  body fossils , the physical remains of an organism, trace fossils are the fossilised interactions between an organism and the substrate/sediment and include such things as trackways, excrement, burrows, bite marks and borings. Both body fossils and trace fossils are important when studying an organism and especial...

Every palaeontologist needs to put their feet up once in a while, and what better place to do so that the Best Western Denver Southwest? This hotel is located just a stone's-throw away from  Dinosaur Ridge , one of the world's most famous fossil sites. It was here that many of the house-hold dinosaur names such as  Apatosaurus  (formerly  Brontosaurus ) and  Stegosaurus  were first discovered duri...

Fossils, at the best of times, are difficult to interpret. Palaeontologists attempt to reconstruct organisms from what little remains are left. This can be relatively simple for groups that we are familiar with today; you can easily make comparisons between a fossil lobster and a living one. But how do you interpret a fossil that has no modern counterpart and is not clearly related to any other or...

Sexual selection is responsible for much of the astounding diversity in morphology and behaviour that we can see in animals and plants today, but h ow can we reliably recognise it in the fossil record?  We speak to Dr. Rob Knell of Queen Mary University of London.

The first animals came onto land sometime before 425 Ma. These early colonizers were members of a group called the arthropods - probably early relatives of the millipedes first. However, early land animals - especially those from the Palaeozoic era (542 - 252 Ma) - are relatively rarely preserved as fossils. The Carboniferous period (350-299 Ma) is an exception to this rule. During the Late Carbon...

The 16th to the 18th December 2012 saw University College Dublin  host   The Palaeontological Association  (PalAss)  56th annual general meeting .  Palaeocast were present at the conference for quite a few reasons: firstly, it's always good to try and keep on top of the latest research in the field and conferences are the places to be for hearing a lot of ideas, covering a diverse array of topics,...

The Mesozoic Era saw the spectacular rise and fall of many groups, particularly in terrestrial vertebrates. These include birds, squamates, crocodiles, and pterosaurs, who wove a complex tapestry of evolution through the 185 million years of the Mesozoic, some even persisting until now. Dave Hone, now of Queen Mary in London, has extensively studied the ecology of many of these now-extinct organis...

We can observe colour to be highly important for animals today. It can be used for many different purposes, including camouflage and signalling, and produced by many different methods. What is true of colouration today is also likely to have been so in the past, however the fossilisation process replaces tissues with minerals, so finding hints of colour in fossils is very unlikely. There are howev...

Vertebrates are one of the most diverse and successful groups of animals on the planet.  Modern vertebrates come in an astounding array of sizes and shapes and can be found anywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains.  Yet vertebrates did not attain such success from the outset; their rise to dominance was gradual. The early evolution of vertebrates was a dynamic and, at times, a tur...

The biota of the Ediacaran period (635 - 541 ma) is of critical importance to our understanding of the origin of animals because it immediately precedes the Cambrian fauna, from which all subsequent animal life evolved. Localities of this age are justly famous for the exceptional quality of preservation of soft-bodied organisms. One of the best known and most important Ediacaran localities is at M...

We interview Professor William Stein of Binghamton University about the world's first forets at Gilboa, NY, USA. We talk through the history of the research at this famous locality covering the destruction of the village of Gilboa and some of the 'paleontological difficulties' the researchers found themselves in.  We discuss the palaeobotany and palaeoecology of the forests and the effect the evol...

We got a chance to talk to Dr. George Poinar of Oregon State University about his work in amber. We discuss what it is and how it forms, but also talk about the organisms that are preserved within and the organisms within those organisms. From identifying genuine from fake amber, to parasite behaviour modification and palaeopathology, this episode has it all!

You may be forgiven for having missed the news of NASA's Curiosity rover, or Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), having landed on Mars, given all the coverage the 2012 Olympics had been getting. To try and even this up, we got in touch with Dr. Leila Battison, a palaeontologist from the University of Oxford, UK, who is currently working at NASA, researching the earliest life in the fossil record and th...