Paleobiology podcasts

This science-news segment examines a team's report of blood-related molecular evidence and mineralised structures in a 115-million-year-old Brazilian dinosaur bone. Researchers Alexander Kellner and Kliti Grice discuss the finding and its potential to open further investigation of ancient dinosaur biology. The segment concerns an interpretation of fossil evidence rather than living blood or recoverable dinosaur DNA.

Hosted by Andy Park

Emma Teeling discusses research combining genomes from more than one hundred bat species with the fossil record to reconstruct bat evolution. The conversation examines evidence for their geographical origins and spread, the challenge of integrating anatomical and genomic histories, and what this work can reveal about flight, echolocation, longevity and the diversity of living bats.

Hosted by Flora Lichtman

Science writer Riley Black joins Kathleen Davis to explore the everyday biology and life history of Tyrannosaurus rex. Drawing on the evidence and reconstruction behind Tyrant Lizard Queen, they move beyond its familiar image as a movie predator to consider what life for an individual animal may have involved and what fossils can tell us about it.

Hosted by Kathleen Davis

Nature editors discuss nearly 400 structures that reveal the scale of the Aquiry civilization and tiny fossils of an early squid ancestor.

Nature staff discuss evidence that young tyrannosaurs hunted from birth, the weapons used by ancient Egyptian princesses and London’s emerging role in artificial-intelligence safety.

Steve Brusatte discusses the dinosaurs that survived the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact: birds. The episode follows fossil evidence for feathered dinosaurs and the emergence of avian traits, then considers how surviving bird lineages diversified after the extinction. Publisher illustrations connect fossils, anatomy and evolutionary relationships.

Hosted by Oliver Strimpel

Sara Pruss discusses archaeocyath sponges, the first multicellular reef builders, and their relationship to diversification during the Cambrian. The episode traces successive reef-building groups through the geological record and asks why reefs repeatedly emerge despite environmental disruption and extinction.

Lene Liebe Delsett discusses fossils, extinct animals and the methods used to reconstruct life in the distant past. Conversation in Norwegian.