The Common Descent Podcast

Cats are among the most diverse and successful mammalian predators on the planet, from lions on the savanna to ocelots in the jungle to domestic cats in homes and homepages worldwide. This episode, we...

9 Aug 20201h 55min

Everybody starts somewhere, and most animals start inside an egg! Eggs are about as old and as varied as animal life itself, and when they show up in the fossil record, they can be very telling. In th...

26 Jul 20202h 6min

Roughly nine out of ten living amphibian species are frogs. They’re incredibly diverse and successful, and they have been since the Jurassic Period. But the origins of frogs and their fellow modern am...

12 Jul 20201h 50min

"Living fossils" aren't really a thing, not the way they're typically talked about anyway, and the term can be a source of debate among scientists and science communicators. In this episode, we talk a...

27 Jun 20202h 1min

In the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia sits one of the most important, well-studied, and scientifically influential fossil sites in the world. The Burgess Shale not only provides us a glimpse int...

14 Jun 20201h 48min

In this series, we invite scientists to live Q&As on YouTube, where we discuss topics we’ve covered before on the podcast. This episode, we discussed Conservation Paleontology (Episode 8) with Dr. Rac...

5 Jun 20201h 5min

In this series, we invite scientists to live Q&As on YouTube, where we discuss topics we’ve covered before on the podcast. This episode, we discussed Paleopathology (Episode 84) with Laura Emmert of t...

3 Jun 202059min

Start exploring vertebrate evolution and paleontology, and it won’t be long before you end up on the subject of teeth. These handy structures are enormously significant not only for the history of lif...

31 Mai 20202h 3min