We've been given exclusive access to a brand new study examining the chemistry of a mosasaur tooth found within the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota. The remarkable circumstances of how this tooth was discovered meant that multiple lines of chemical evidence could be reliably gathered, each acting as a powerful palaeoenvironmental proxy providing clues as to how and where this giant aquatic predator lived. The results of the study now mean that a revision of mosasaur palaeoecol...
Dec 12, 2025•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 171
Dec 03, 2025•57 min
The iguanodontians were an incredibly successful group within the Cretaceous. They could reach incredible sizes, with the largest species even matching the proportions of some sauropods, and they also had an incredible palaeogeographic range, meaning that their remains are found all over the world today. In the late Jurassic, they were a lot less diverse and much smaller, so the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous are key times for understanding the evolution of this group. Cariocecus bocagei is ...
Sep 19, 2025•1 hr 50 min•Ep. 170
Grassy biomes, including grasslands, savannahs and crops, cover over 40% of all land on Earth. They play a significant role in carbon and silica cycles and have a large impact upon the climate. Grasslands (grass-dominated ecosystems) have shaped the evolution of numerous groups of organisms, most obviously grazing mammals, and can support a huge amount of biodiversity. Humans evolved in the savannas and through domestication of grasses formed agriculture, leading to a modern diet dominated by gr...
Sep 13, 2025•49 min•Ep. 169
Grassy biomes, including grasslands, savannahs and crops, cover over 40% of all land on Earth. They play a significant role in carbon and silica cycles and have a large impact upon the climate. Grasslands (grass-dominated ecosystems) have shaped the evolution of numerous groups of organisms, most obviously grazing mammals, and can support a huge amount of biodiversity. Humans evolved in the savannas and through domestication of grasses formed agriculture, leading to a modern diet dominated by gr...
Sep 02, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 168
Determining the origin of teeth in vertebrates is an incredibly significant but notoriously difficult problem within palaeontology. Teeth didn't evolve in the mouths of our ancestors, but are first seen as part of the external skeletons of jawless fish as structures called 'odontodes'. These would later migrate into the mouth with the evolution of jaws, becoming the teeth we have today, but odontodes still remain present in the skin of modern cartilaginous fish, giving them their rough texture. ...
Aug 15, 2025•51 min•Ep. 167
Determining the origin of teeth in vertebrates is an incredibly significant but notoriously difficult problem within palaeontology. Teeth didn't evolve in the mouths of our ancestors, but are first seen as part of the external skeletons of jawless fish as structures called 'odontodes'. These would later migrate into the mouth with the evolution of jaws, becoming the teeth we have today, but odontodes still remain present in the skin of modern cartilaginous fish, giving them their rough texture. ...
Aug 01, 2025•44 min•Ep. 166
Ants are a hugely successful family of eusocial insects with over 14,000 modern species described. They are known from every continent except Antarctica and show a wide range of ecologies. Whilst many of us are familiar with their highly organised social structures and castes, there still remain a lot of public misconceptions about how their societies function. The evolutionary history of ants is equally as impressive, with roughly as many fossil ant species known as there are of dinosaurs! Sinc...
Jul 15, 2025•50 min•Ep. 165
Ants are a hugely successful family of eusocial insects with over 14,000 modern species described. They are known from every continent except Antarctica and show a wide range of ecologies. Whilst many of us are familiar with their highly organised social structures and castes, there still remain a lot of public misconceptions about how their societies function. The evolutionary history of ants is equally as impressive, with roughly as many fossil ant species known as there are of dinosaurs! Sinc...
Jul 01, 2025•44 min•Ep. 164
An ecosystem can be described as all the interactions that occur between organisms and their physical environment. The processes acting within an ecosystem operate on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales and include both biotic and abiotic factors. Ecosystem engineers are those species that have a significant impact on the availability of resources to other species and can be responsible for the creation, maintenance, modification or destruction of an ecosystem. The introduction, or even ...
Feb 22, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 163
Jul 23, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 162
Found in the fossil record between the Jurassic and the middle Miocene, Notosuchia was a highly diverse and strange group of crocodylomorphs, most notable for their terrestrial lifestyle. Joining us for today's episode is Dr Yohan Pochat-Cottilloux from the Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, who specialises in the study of crocodylomorphs. Together, we will explore the wide range of scientific methodologies that have so far been used to study the lives of these strange reptiles and discuss how the...
Jun 15, 2024•49 min•Ep. 161
The field of evolutionary biology has been greatly influenced by the development of modern genetic methodology. The understanding of genes, genomes and the molecular mechanisms key to life on Earth are all goals of evolutionary biology in the 21st century, yet its potential applications seem to be near limitless. Palaeontology and evolutionary biology continue to be closely related and both, with their deeply rooted origins, have been essential to our understanding of macroevolution (major evolu...
Mar 22, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 160
In 12 years of podcasting, we have never actually taken the time to address the fundamentals of our field. Such questions could include: what is palaeontology, what is a fossil, how does one become a palaeontologist, and why is palaeontology important? For what should have been our very first episode, we've invited Prof. Roy Plotnick, University of Illinois Chicago, to help us outline everything you need to know about the field of palaeontology. Roy has had a long and varied palaeontological car...
Feb 19, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 159
It's been two centuries since the first dinosaur, Megalosaurus , was named by William Buckland and to commemorate the date, the Natural History Museum hosted '200 Years of Dinosaurs: Their Rise, Fall, and Rebirth'. This international conference provides a snapshot of dinosaur research in 2024, demonstrating just how far our understanding of this group has come since 1824. In our coverage of this event, we speak to many of the leading palaeontologists in the field, as we look back over the last 2...
Feb 07, 2024•58 min
The Middle Jurassic is incredibly important to our understanding of pterosaur evolution; however, the remarkable rarity and incompleteness of Middle Jurassic pterosaurs has long hampered scientific understanding of the lineage. Joining us this episode on the other side of the microphone is one of Palaeocast's own team members, Dr Liz Martin Silverstone, a Technical Specialist at the University of Bristol who has recently described Ceoptera evansae, a darwinopteran pterosaur from the Isle of Skye...
Feb 06, 2024•38 min•Ep. 158
Originally mounted in 1907, the Carnegie specimen is the best example of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus , and perhaps the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world. Casts of the specimen, including the London example known as "Dippy", were distributed around the world during the early 1900s, and a final concrete cast was even created in 1957 for the Utah Field House at Vernal. Although the moulds used to create these casts were lost sometime during the 1960's, new ones created from the concre...
Dec 08, 2023•49 min•Ep. 157
LOOP 8.4: LOOP Showrunner Dan Tapster returns to give a retrospective on the series and its production. We look at went well and address criticisms; is it possible to keep everyone happy? We finish this series by discussing the show's take-home messages and Dan's hopes for Life On Our Planet's legacy. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitiou...
Nov 09, 2023•37 min
LOOP 8.3: Episode 8's producer, Sophie Lanfear, joins us again to describe how difficult it was to wrap the series up, having to balance telling the story of the last ice age with conveying the message of the series. We speak about climate change and the 6th mass extinction and try to find any positives. Ultimately, if documentaries keep having to make this point, is the message really getting through? Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and A...
Nov 09, 2023•33 min
LOOP 8.2: Prof. Danielle Schreve, Royal Holloway University of London, joins us to cover the last 2 million years of Earth's history. We explore the periodicity of glacials and interglacials and the control Earth's orbit around the sun has on climate. She then places the Holocene's megafaunal extinctions and major palaeobiogeograpical events within this climatic context. We finally look at the impact of human radiation on the world and the lessons we can learn from this time. Life On Our Planet ...
Nov 09, 2023•33 min
LOOP 8.1: Dave and Tom introduce episode 8 and round of this special series on Life On Our Planet. We talk about our favourite scenes and reflect on our time working on the documentary and how our perspectives of documentary making has changed. We'd love your feedback on this podcast series. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its s...
Nov 09, 2023•14 min
LOOP 7.3: We're taken into the field to film snow leopards by episode 7's Assistant Producer, Darren Williams. He reveals how difficult it is to get just a few minutes of video, both logistically and practically. We get to know the 'old male' snow leopard, trace his movements, and learn of his importance to the community. Darren then speaks about the emotional conflict of capturing his final moments on film. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films...
Nov 07, 2023•38 min
LOOP 7.2: Prof. Christine Janis, University of Bristol, outlines mammalian evolution and focusses on the global events that governs their radiation. We look at why mammals survived the K-Pg mass extinction and how the archaic mammals radiated immediately after. We end by looking at how mammals, similar to what we learned about birds, are relatively insignificant to today's ecosystems. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. ...
Nov 07, 2023•26 min
LOOP 7.1: In the introduction to episode 7, Dave and Tom just about keep it together whilst reflecting on the most emotional scene of the show. We also celebrate the inclusion of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the series, before giving it a little rebranding to make the science even more approachable. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely am...
Nov 07, 2023•14 min
LOOP 6.4: Prof. Anjan Bhullar continues his overview of avian evolution with a look at how the birds fared after the K-Pg mass extinction. What was it that allowed birds to survive when the non-avian dinosaurs died out? Why didn't they just become dinosaurs again? What have birds been able to achieve in the time since and how important are they to modern ecosystems. Not an episode to be missed (unless you're Prof. Dan Field). Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix b...
Nov 07, 2023•32 min
LOOP 6.3: Documentary research takes you down a lot of unexpected avenues. If you're recreating something like the Chicxulub impact and the K-Pg mass extinction, then you need to be able to provide answers for things you didn't even know were questions. What colour was the asteroid? How bright was the flash? How long does it take to cook a Triceratops to death? Silverback Films researcher Edd Dyer returns to discuss the difficulties of finding such information. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new...
Nov 06, 2023•23 min
LOOP 6.2: Dr Anjan Bhullar, Yale University, returns to speak further about dinosaurs. He's pressed on where he'd draw the line between dinosaur and bird, or whether there should even be a distinction between them at all. At what point does flight evolve and was it 'ground up' or 'tree down'? We find out that none of these questions are simple. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, na...
Nov 06, 2023•30 min
LOOP 6.1: Dave and Tom introduce us to episode 6 of Life On Our Planet and the pair touch upon the Chicxulub impact and the radiation of birds into the Cenozoic. Dave curtails the introduction with one of his worst puns yet. Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narrated by Morgan Freeman, is hugely ambitious in its scope, telling the story of life throughout the whole Phanerozoic Eon...
Nov 06, 2023•9 min
LOOP 5.3: We're exploring feather evolution with Dr Anjan Bhullar, University of Yale. We trace feathers up the theropod family tree and question whether or not they would be present in ALL dinosaurs. Anjan does NOT sit on the fence with this question or any other. Were dinosaurs brightly coloured? How intelligent were they? Do not miss some of these mind-blowing insights! Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven ...
Nov 05, 2023•44 min
LOOP 5.2: Producer Barny Revill returns to talk about his second episode. With the public spotlight firmly fixated on the dinosaurs, how much effort had to go into their GCI models and does the reputation of the series depend on getting them right? In light of this, how much room is there for telling the stories of other groups of organisms? Life On Our Planet (LOOP) is a new 8-part series created for Netflix by Silverback Films and Amblin Television. This Steven Spielberg produced series, narra...
Nov 05, 2023•42 min
