Episode 118 - Trace Fossils

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2021

⏱️ 124 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As organisms live, grow, and move in their environments, they leave all sorts of traces in their surroundings, and these can become fossilized just like body parts can. Trace fossils (ichnofossils) can include evidence of burrowing, walking, feeding, and more. Individual trace fossils are great for understanding the behaviors of ancient organisms, and communities of trace fossils can help us track major changes in ecosystems through time. In the news: damaged cave bear, shrinking dinosaurs, koala lemurs, and megaripples. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:05:30Main discussion, Part 1: 00:35:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:11:30Patron question: 01:55:00 We're on a new podcast! We're both players on Mysteries of the Mournland, a Level Up: Advanced Fifth Edition actual play horror podcast, set in the world of Eberron.https://motma5epodcast.podbean.com/ 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.
0:18.4	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:20.2	Hello, listeners, and welcome to episode 118 of the Common Descent podcast.
0:26.5	This episode's topic is trace fossils.
0:29.4	Ooh.
0:30.1	Trace fossils and the study thereof, echnology.
0:34.0	It's a good word.
0:34.9	It's a good word.
0:35.5	Or more specifically, paleoecology. Which is a better word. It's a good word. Or more specifically, paleoecology.
0:38.3	Which is a better word.
0:40.3	This is an interesting subject because we have mentioned traces and trace fossils and
0:45.3	echnology throughout the run of the podcast.
0:49.3	Oh yeah, like a bunch.
0:50.3	It comes up in the news, it comes up in discussions, but this will be the first time we are
0:54.7	devoting an episode to the general topic, and it is a dense, vast topic.
1:02.7	Echnology is the study of traces that is evidence of activity of organisms in the environment.
1:12.3	Footprints, bite marks, boroughs, things like that, traces of life.
1:17.8	Yeah, so not the actual animal, but some trace, some signal that that animal was there.
1:24.6	In this episode, we will discuss what traces are, what counts as traces, what the
1:30.3	diversity is, how we study them in the fossil record, and what they tell us about Earth history,
1:37.4	life history, what things were doing in the past and how they were changing over time.
1:42.4	This is, I'm excited to talk about this subject.
	...

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