Episode 219 - Beringia

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2025

⏱️ 109 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For over 100 million years, North America and Asia have been connected over the Pacific Ocean through a region called Beringia. The comings and going of plants and animals across this connection have shaped ecosystems of the past and present. This episode, we explore the geologic history of the region and which ancient species have managed to live in and move through Beringia. In the news: early sperm whales, BC plesiosaurs, megatooth shark food, and Arctic nesting birds. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:09:10Main discussion, Part 1: 00:35:25Main discussion, Part 2: 01:02:15Patron question: 01:40:40 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 Some LGBTQIA+ organizations in the southeast US:Trans Aid Nashville: https://www.transaidnashville.org/ Out Memphis: https://www.outmemphis.org/ Southerners on New Ground: https://southernersonnewground.orgShoutout to Vic Michaelis for these links: www.instagram.com/vicmmic/ 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 to Common Descent, a podcast about
0:25.6	paleontology, evolution, and the history of life on Earth. This is episode 219. Our topic this time is
0:33.7	Beringia. Yeah. For those unfamiliar,
0:39.7	Beringia is a region of the world,
0:44.2	a very famous region when it comes to paleontology and biogeography. It is the continental chunk of land that connects Asia to North America.
0:51.5	It has been hugely important for the changing distribution of plants and
0:56.7	animals over the history, at least the last tens of millions of years. So this episode, we will
1:03.8	talk about the geography of that connection. We'll talk about what it looks like today, and we
1:07.9	will go through a history of how this portion of the globe
1:12.5	has factored in to the distribution of animals and plants on the planet today.
1:18.2	I'm excited for this one, because I, of course, have heard of Beringia and seen it referenced
1:24.8	quite often, but don't actually know a lot about the land itself.
1:29.6	Yeah, this was a fun one to put notes together for them.
1:32.1	We're going to get to, it'll be fun to discuss the famous things about it,
1:36.3	as well as some of the lesser explored aspects of its history.
1:41.0	This episode topic, as with all of our episodes, was requested by our listeners.
1:46.0	This topic comes to us thanks to requests from Hana, IOC Electus, and Origami Pete.
1:53.4	Thank you all for your requests.
1:55.9	Before we get into the episode, we've got some announcements.
1:58.5	We got a bunch of announcements this episode, but stick through them because we got some important stuff here.
2:03.6	First and foremost, as always, we have a Patreon. The support from our Patreon allows us to do all of the podcast things.
	...

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