Episode 162 – Caecilians

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2023

⏱️ 133 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You’re probably familiar with frogs and salamanders, but there is a third group of modern amphibians, the strangest of them all: the worm-like caecilians. In this episode, we’ll explore the many bizarre anatomical features of caecilians, from their tentacled faces to their abrupt hind ends. Then we’ll explore the entire caecilian fossil record (it won’t take long) and tackle the much-discussed mystery of how this fascinating lineage of amphibians got started. In the news: weird marsupial eyes, long dinosaur necks, and kangaroo rats. Also a retraction! Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:05:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:43:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:22:30 Patron question: 01:59:30 HUGE THANKS to our News guests, Sabrina and Garret! Check out I Know Dino: https://iknowdino.com/ And they have a Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures: http://commondescentpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Follow this link for a 30-day free trial to Audible! www.audibletrial.com/CommonDescent Or make a one-time donation via PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/4c68u4hp Find merch at the Common Descent Store! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Join the Common Descent Discord server! https://discord.gg/CwPBxdh9Ev Follow and Support us on: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcast Instagram: @commondescentpodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2 You can email us at commondescentpodcast(at)gmail.com Or send us physical mail at: The Common Descent Podcast 1735 W State of Franklin Rd. Ste 5 #165 Johnson City, TN 37604 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.
0:19.3	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.4	Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Common Descent podcast, a podcast about paleontology, evolution, and the wonderful history of life on Earth.
0:30.3	This is episode 162, and our main topic, this time is Sicilians.
0:36.8	It's going gonna get weird.
0:38.2	Sicilians are a group of amphibians that are well known for a handful of things.
0:41.7	For example, being shaped like worms, which is kind of strange, being just not very well
0:46.9	understood or known compared to the more famous amphibians like frogs and salamanders,
0:52.2	but mostly they're known for being utterly bizarre and mysterious.
0:55.6	Yep.
0:56.2	There is so much we don't know about Sicilian lifestyle and evolution, and what we do know is very strange.
1:03.3	I am super excited to talk about Sicilians this episode.
1:06.7	We've already talked about it.
1:07.7	We already recorded, but I'm super excited for our listeners to hear it.
1:11.4	We will talk about what Sicilians are, what makes them distinctive.
1:15.5	We will go through their lifestyle, and we'll take a bit of a tour across Sicilian anatomy and the surprises that lie within.
1:24.2	And then we will go through the fossil record to see what we know about the evolution
1:29.3	of this strange group of amphibians. As always, there's a blog post associated with this episode.
1:35.9	There's a link in the episode description. If you don't know what a Sicilian is, go click that
1:40.0	link and get a look, get an image in your brain, so you can follow along as we're talking about
1:45.9	these weird animals. Yeah, they are super distinct once you get to know them, but easy to have
1:53.7	never heard of them before. No surprise to our long-term listeners that I am doing the episode
	...

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