Palaeocast1 Elo 2016

Episode 68: Fossil plants and the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum

The Bighorn Basin in Wyoming has been an important area for research into terrestrial ecosystems for decades. The basin formed as part of the uprising of the Rocky Mountains in the west of North America, and sediment from the surrounding mountain ranges was transported into it for millions of years, building up a huge thickness that has fossils from all kinds of life on land preserved within it. Rocks from many different time periods are now exposed in the basin, but a particularly important one is the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) which occurred around 56 million years ago. At this time a huge amount of carbon was released into the atmosphere very quickly, causing a sharp (by geological standards) increase in temperature and dramatic effects on life. Palaeontologists and geologists are particularly interested in studying the PETM as it can potentially give us lots of information about how life and earth systems might respond in the near future to the large quantities of carbon being released into our atmosphere now by humans.

In this episode recorded in the field we talk to Dr Scott Wing, who is curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian in Washington DC but has been coming to the basin every summer for decades. We chat about the geology and history of the area, what it's like to work in the Wyoming desert every summer, how to find and collect fossil plants, and what years of research by many people in the basin has told us about the PETM.

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Jaksot(245)

Episode 176: Insect Gigantism Pt2

The Carboniferous period is host to some of the largest arthropods to have ever lived. Giant taxa such as the griffenfly Meganuera and the millipede Arthropleura are almost talismanic and are often de...

13 Touko 48min

Episode 175: Insect Gigantism Pt1

2 Touko 39min

Episode 174: A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils

Prof. Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum, London, recently authored A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils. We took this as an opportunity to get an overview of what we really know about dinosau...

15 Huhti 58min

Episode 173: Petrified Forest

Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, USA is a hub for Triassic palaeontology and has exposures representing 20 million years of the Late Triassic Chinle Formation. Visitors marvel a...

17 Maalis 49min

Episode 172: Rhynchocephalians

Today, there is only one living species of rhynchocephalian: the tuatara of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Despite today's paucity of species, this was once a diverse group of reptiles, with a wide range of li...

5 Helmi 52min

Episode 171: Freshwater Mosasaurs

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 ...

12 Joulu 20251h 34min

SVP 2025

3 Joulu 202557min

Episode 170: Cariocecus bocagei

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...

19 Syys 20251h 50min