Episode 116 - Ichthyosaurs

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2021

⏱️ 131 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The history of evolution has seen many land animals move to the sea, but few have done it with such success and specialization as ichthyosaurs. These Mesozoic marine reptiles were the first group of tetrapods to truly dominate the marine realm, and they evolved some of the most extreme adaptations – and largest bodies – of any ocean-dwelling tetrapods. This episode, we discuss how they got started, what they did, where they went, and why they’re so incredibly famous. In the news: giant crocs, giant rhinos, young tyrannosaurs, and dwarf elephants. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:04:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:32:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:15:00Patron question: 01:59:30 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Find merch at the Common Descent Store! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcastInstagram: @commondescentpodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduwPodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2 The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent podcast.
0:18.8	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.3	Hello, listeners, and welcome to episode 97, I mean 116 of the Common Descent podcast.
0:29.0	Not too far off.
0:30.2	Ictheasors.
0:31.8	We have talked about a lot of secondarily aquatic marine animals.
0:41.5	We've talked about the other two of the major groups of Mesozoic marine reptiles. We did mosasores. We did Pleasiosaurus. Our audience has been
0:48.3	patient. It's Ictheosaurs time. Woo! The final of the three large groups of Mesozoic marine reptiles, which is interesting because
0:56.6	ichthyosaurs are the first of the three chronologically.
1:00.8	Yes.
1:01.3	And by many measures, some might argue, the most impressive of the three.
1:08.6	Ictheasaurus have a lot of claims to fame, some of which I did not know until I pulled together
1:13.4	references for this episode.
1:15.2	So, if you don't have a picture of an iktheosaur in your head, they are the fish reptiles.
1:20.1	Yeah, like shaped like a fish, very sharky, dolphin-ish, long snout fins everywhere.
1:27.2	Yep. Super classic example of
1:29.6	convergent evolution. Reptiles that look a whole heck of a lot like, like you said,
1:34.0	fish, sharks, dolphins. Although, as I've learned, they didn't all look like that. Yeah,
1:38.9	that was something I learned more recent than not, like getting into the career of paleontology,
1:46.2	that there were some that actually looked fairly different.
1:48.8	Yeah, so we'll talk about the diversity of ecteosaurs, what we know of them, what we've learned about their evolutionary trajectory,
1:56.1	and we'll talk about how a lot of the most important things we've learned about them are surprisingly recent discoveries. Yes, we will talk about all this, not just because Ictheasors are cool, but
	...

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