Episode 208 - The Karoo Supergroup

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2025

⏱️ 109 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Southern Africa is home to an incredible sequence of geologic formations that span more than 100 million years of Earth history. These rocks, collectively called the Karoo Supergroup, are an extraordinary resource for studying evolution and extinction across the Late Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic Eras. This episode, we’ll explore the deep history of this vast geologic resource, and we’ll sample some of the discoveries that have been made there. In the news: dormancy evolution, Pangaean amphibians, regeneration genes, and Neanderthal fossil collectors. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:03:55Main discussion, Part 1: 00:36:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:04:30Patron question: 01:33:30 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/ 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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Common Descent podcast. This is the first episode of the year. It's 2025. This is episode 208, and this episode's topic is the Karu Supergroup.
0:33.1	Ooh, that sounds like a superhero team. It's not. It is, in fact, a super team of geologic formations.
0:41.3	Arguably better.
0:42.3	The Karu Supergroup is a very extensive sequence of the geologic record that is exposed in southern Africa.
0:51.4	That is one of the most incredible sequences of the geologic record in the
0:57.2	world, preserving over 100 million years of more or less uninterrupted Earth history, over a
1:05.3	wide area that is almost coast to coast in the southern end of Africa. It is so cool. There are so
1:10.7	many awesome fossils and discoveries that have been made back there.
1:14.0	When we get to our main discussion topic, we will talk about what it is and how it formed
1:18.5	and a bunch of the cool stuff that has been found down there.
1:21.6	Yes.
1:22.7	As with all of our episodes, this topic was requested by our audience, in particular, this time by Thomas, Jacques, Aaron, Graham, and Ryan.
1:34.6	Good request. I appreciate it because I know very little about the Carter Supergroup.
1:39.4	This is a fun topic where this is one that has come up a bunch of times over the history of the podcast, though
1:44.7	not always by name directly. Yes. And I took a great pleasure in sprinkling through the
1:50.2	discussion times that this has come up previously in the podcast. This is the most asterisks at the
1:55.7	bottom of a comic book panel C issue. Yes, absolutely. Go listen to all these other episodes.
2:02.3	Before we get into that discussion, just a couple of announcements, we have a Patreon.
2:06.7	As with all the time, our Patreon is what allows us to do all the things that we do, including
2:12.0	all the fun stuff we have done previously and supporting us for all of the cool things
2:16.4	that we have in mind to do for
	...

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