Episode 209 - Chimaeras

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2025

⏱️ 147 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You might know them as ghost sharks, rat fish, or spook fish. Chimaeras are close cousins of sharks and rays, equipped with distinctive and unusual features in their fins, teeth, and reproductive structures. In today’s oceans, chimaeras are rare and easy to miss, but their extended family includes some of the most diverse and iconic fish of the Paleozoic seas. In this episode, we’ll explore the traits that set chimaeras apart, we’ll take a tour through their ancient relatives, and we’ll investigate what their most famous cousins were doing with their strange spiral rows of teeth. In the news: Baltic herrings, Cambrian arms race, pterosaur tails, and early dinosaurs. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:06:35Main discussion, Part 1: 00:40:25Main discussion, Part 2: 01:16:45Patron question: 02:20:00 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, David. Hello, Will.
0:21.9	And hello listeners.
0:23.8	Welcome to episode 209 of the Common Descent Podcast.
0:28.6	This episode, we're discussing chimeras or ghost sharks or ratfish, depending on which name you know them by.
0:35.4	So not the mythological creatures that are made of different parts of different animals?
0:41.2	No, this is a cousin of sharks that is arguably as weird as an animal made out of a lion, a goat, and a snake.
0:51.5	This is, this is going to be a very fun episode.
0:54.5	Chimeras are a notoriously unusual group of fish.
1:00.4	They are famous for being bizarre and unique and mysterious.
1:06.6	Yeah.
1:06.9	That's a lot of their names refer to the fact that they are ghostly and unusual.
1:12.6	Yeah, I know that they also have a bunch of really wacky fossil relatives.
1:17.7	Yes, they do.
1:19.0	So we will be discussing our modern chimeras and what makes them unique among fish
1:23.6	and then the fossil record and some of their truly standout cousins, like some of the most
1:31.8	famous fossil organisms that you've, many people have probably heard of because they are
1:37.1	so weird.
1:38.5	This episode was requested, as all our episodes are.
1:43.7	We got requests for chimeras or their cousins from Matt,
1:48.1	Christina, Brashton, Marty, Nora, Taterboy, Todd, and Sam. Thank you, everybody, for those requests.
1:56.7	Yes. We will be getting into our topic soon. But first, some quick announcements.
	...

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