Of Collective Behavior and Trilobites Reading scientific papers can be a daunting prospect. Even the titles can contain layers of jargon. On Past Time, we work diligently to break down the barriers of science to make the discoveries of science for audiences of all ages. In this episode, we experiment with a new method: breaking […]
PAST TIME RETURNS! After three and a half months of discovering how insanely busy a museum curator can be, I (Adam) am back to past times with a brand new episode of Past Time! Join me on a journey back to the Smithsonian Institution to learn about the whole history of sloths. We’ll also meet RYAN […]
Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles INTRODUCTION TO GROWING UP – Every living thing grows up, and this episode of “Past Time” explores the evolution of the growing process. Specifically, we explore the evolution of growth in crocodiles, and how changes to the growing process at the earliest stages of crocodile development help […]
THE FIRST FROGS OF NORTH AMERICA Every discovery we make in natural history happens thanks to specimens. Fossil bones, shells, footprints, coprolites, tissue samples—even field notes and photograms—are the building blocks scientists use to tell the story of life on our planet. On Past Time, we talk a LOT about the contributions of museums and […]
Meeting of the Minds There is no bigger paleontology conference for fans of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles than the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting. The 78th annual meeting just took place this October in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA and Matt, Adam, and Catherine were in attendance. They learned about a lot […]
Ledumahadi and the first dinosaur giants The sauropod dinosaurs—the classic long-necks—included the largest land animal species that have ever lived. Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous, multiple families of sauropods achieved body masses over 50 tons: greater than any modern elephant and even exceeding the colossal indricothere rhinoceroses. Despite their incredible sizes, the sauropod dinosaurs have […]
First Iteration I (Adam) am both proud and nervous to say that this is an atypical Past Time episode, as we’re not talking about a new discovery nor a real scientific topic; it is a recap/review of Jurassic World 2. However, I think it is worth addressing whether or not particular elements of new movies, […]
Eighty million years ago, a wildly ornamented species of horned dinosaur roamed the southern half of North America’s western landmass, Laramidia. In 2016, paleontologist Eric Lund and his colleagues named it Machairoceratops cronusi, and we fell in love with this ceratopsian from Utah with hooks over its frill. In 2017, the site where Machairoceratops was […]
Big bites come in small skulls This episode tells a story of one of Adam Pritchard’s favorite projects from Yale University, describing the skull of a teeny reptile from the early days of the Age of Reptiles. Hailing from the eastern coast of North America (present-day Connecticut), Colobops noviportensis had a skull only an inch […]
Masters of horns and teeth Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, dinosaurs were top dogs on every continent and in every sort of environment. The ceratosaurs were some of the classic predators that ruled the tops of the food chains for much of that time. Including classic predators such as Ceratosaurus, Carnotaurus, and Majungasaurus—as well as oddballs […]
Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have been discovered in Egypt since the beginning of the twentieth century, work that continues to this day. However, fossils from the Age of Reptiles are […]
This episode was a blast to produce for a vertebrate scientist. I learned a ton about the echinoderms, the group of invertebrate animals to which sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and crinoids belong. Be prepared for more adventures with invertebrate animals in the future. Engineering Echinoderms with Elizabeth Clark! This episode would […]
Matheronodon is certainly a dinosaur worthy of a bigger bite. With proportionally giant teeth strikingly different from the standard-issue ornithopod dinosaur, it is certainly one of the most important dino discoveries out of Europe this year. Better yet, the original scientific paper by Pascal Godefroit and colleagues is free to read in the journal Scientific […]
The quest to recover ancient genetic material from extinct animals had its blockbuster moment when Jurassic Park came out. But where did the idea come from and who is trying to figure out if the science fiction of Jurassic Park can be science reality? We talk to Dr. Elizabeth Jones, a science historian at University […]
Hi all. Adam Pritchard here. I’ve been thinking about telling the story of my field experience in the Triassic-aged Chinle Formation of northern New Mexico for many years. The Hayden Quarry fossil site at Ghost Ranch has produced the best-preserved and most diverse record of American dinosaurs from the Triassic of North America, plus some […]
A few weeks ago Past Time co-host Matt Borths published a study that identified a new species of now-extinct carnivorous mammal from Egypt. The animal was near the top of the African food chain when Africa was cut off from the other continents. It lived in the same swampy ecosystem that was home to our earliest […]
Past Time is BACK! Matt and Adam have been traveling the world independently for some time, delving deeply into the history of life on the planet, but now they’re back to tell you all about what they’ve discovered!   In this episode, Matt interviews Adam about his research into the early days of the Age of […]
The relationship between predator and prey is a primal one, and one that fires the curiosity of many fossil fans. We love paintings of Tyrannosaurus battling Triceratops or saber-toothed cats leaping onto the backs of ground sloths. And we can be pretty sure that those interactions happened based on TRACE FOSSILS, like tooth marks in […]
Growth is a universal facet of all organisms that have ever lived, but figuring out how old they grow isn’t always easy. A new study examined the growth in one of the biggest predatory fish in all the ocean, the Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), revealing it to be the vertebrate species with the longest lifespan: nearly […]
I tried to google “crocodiles are living fossils,” to see just how commonly that expression was used in popular articles. There were indeed a few articles that referenced this idea, suggesting that croc fossils from 80 million years ago would look identical the skeletons they have today. However, most were news stories reporting various discoveries […]
Erik Gorscak and Pat O'Connor, two paleontologists from Ohio University, are about to set out on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. They are part of a larger team called the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project (AP3), an international collaboration of fossil hunters and geologists who are about to spend almost two months at the bottom of the planet. Past Time talks to them about how you look for fossils in Antarctic conditions, how you plan ...
If you wander into the basement of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, and wander into the fossil collections, you will find a vast array of different dinosaurs dating back over 200 million years. However, just a few feet away from the oldest dinosaurs you will find several drawers filled with the […]
With Past Time, Matt and I tend to focus on the new discoveries in paleontology: the new species that show up in the news, or the important specimens discovered in museum collections. These are the raw materials that feed the fires of paleontology as a science. However, observation is only the first step in the […]
On this episode of Past Time, Drs. Matthew Borths and Adam Pritchard share their dissertation stories, and a bit of advice on the grad school experience!
It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on the entire continent of Europe after the extinction of the dinosaurs. And a team of European scientists and Past Time co-host Matthew Borths just introduced us to it. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Kerberos, monster mammal carnivore!
Arrr, ye mateys! Pour out some grog, and I’ll tell ye a tale of mines, beaches, and death in ancient jungles. I of course be talkin’…about salamanders! Okay, not going to do that voice the whole time (though maybe it should be in the episode), but I will briefly present Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae, the first salamander […]
The oldest basilisk lizard from North America, described by Jack Conrad from NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine, shows the 48 million year old animal was part of an ancient lush jungle ecosystem...in the middle of Wyoming. The beautifully preserved skull has important stories to tell about the evolution of the lizards most famous for their ability to scamper across the water, but it also reveals what North America was like during a greenhouse world that wasn't all that different from what our ...
As Jurassic World rolls out, Matt has some thoughts on the scientific impact of Jurassic Park and offers his hopes for the scientific discussions Jurassic World might spark.
Dating fossils might sound like Saturday night for a paleontologist, but it’s serious science! In a new study, a group of physicists and paleontologists teamed up to re-date one of the most complete skeletons of a human relative ever discovered. The skeleton was discovered in a cave in South Africa twenty years ago, but the […]
