Episode 183 - Feathers

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2024

⏱️ 144 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Feathers are among the most diverse and complex forms of animal integument. Today, they’re exclusive to birds, where they can be found in a dizzying variety of forms and functions, and incredible fossils reveal even more diversity of feathers on ancient dinosaurs. This episode, we explore the features of modern feathers, the mysteries of feather origins, and the much-discussed question of which ancient animals were truly feathered. In the news: sturdy bird necks, giant worms, early photosynthesis, and very old skin. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:06:20 Main discussion, Part 1: 00:37:00 Main discussion, Part 2: 01:15:55 Patron question: 02:11:30 Check out our website for this episode’s blog post and more: http://commondescentpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Got a topic you want to hear about? Submit your episode request here: https://commondescentpodcast.com/request-a-topic/ We’re an Audible Affiliate Partner! Use this link for a 30-day free trial to Audible: https://www.audibletrial.com/CommonDescent Lots more ways to connect with us: https://linktr.ee/common_descent 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 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.2	Hello, everybody listening and welcome to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:25.3	This is a podcast about paleontology, evolution, the history of life on Earth.
0:29.6	This is episode 183.
0:33.5	Our topic this episode is Feathers.
0:36.3	Fethers.
0:37.0	This is a fun topic to get to do an episode about because we have talked about feathers a bunch.
0:43.4	Yeah, they've come up a number of times.
0:45.1	Over the history of the podcast, they have come up in various episodes.
0:48.6	We've talked about them in our very many bird episodes, various dinosaur episodes.
0:53.0	They come up in the news pretty regularly.
0:55.5	Yep.
0:55.9	But we've never actually taken a whole episode to just do a full discussion of what are feathers,
1:05.4	what is the diversity of feathers, the structure of feathers, the functions of feathers.
1:09.6	We're going to do a grand
1:11.7	introduction. Well, it's going to be a flyby as often these things are, so to speak, to what are
1:17.6	feathers, how we understand the evolution of feathers, and we'll get to talk all in one episode
1:22.9	about feathers in the fossil record and what ancient animals have feathers and what types
1:28.2	of feathers they have. This is going to be a really fun episode. I'm very excited to talk
1:34.2	about feathers. Yeah, I'm ready. This is also fun because we've talked about feathers and
1:39.5	feather revolution and fossil feathers a bunch in previous episodes, but the podcast has been going on long
	...

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