Episode 89 - The Burgess Shale

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 896 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2020

⏱️ 109 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia sits one of the most important, well-studied, and scientifically influential fossil sites in the world. The Burgess Shale not only provides us a glimpse into the tail end of the Cambrian Explosion, and not only yields tens of thousands of fossil specimens, but also includes some of the most exceptional fossil preservation of any fossil locality anywhere. This episode, we’ll dive into how it got that way, and what it has to tell us about some of Earth's earliest animal communities. In the news: baby sharks, hungry dinosaurs, a pregnant ichthyosaur, and one dino’s last meal. Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:06:30Main discussion, Part 1: 00:34:00Main discussion, Part 2: 01:00:00Patron question: 01:37:00 In light of current events, we invite you to explore these links to educate yourself, as we have been doing, about the subject of racial injustice:Smithsonian NMAAHC - Talking About Race https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-raceTimeScavengers - Black Lives Matter https://timescavengers.blog/2020/06/01/black-lives-matter/ Ally Anti-Racism Resources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MjUESaOh2H-846KKiHUWHDUIhi3PlaFts-rqy9EQ43g/edit# We’ve also made a donation to the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund: https://www.naacpldf.org/ Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ New merch at the Common Descent Store! http://zazzle.com/common_descentFeaturing art by Rob Soto! https://www.rob-soto.com/ Follow and Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcastInstagram: @commondescentpodcast PodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduw 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.
0:19.0	Hello, Will. Hello, David.
0:21.2	Hello, listeners, and welcome to episode 89 of the Common Descent Podcast.
0:27.6	A few times in the past, we have devoted entire episodes to specific fossil sites or localities.
0:34.5	Today we do it again with the Burgess Shale. And man, this is a good site to devote an
0:40.8	episode to. What, it's such an amazing site. This has got to be like one of the, it absolutely must be
0:46.8	one of the top five most famous fossil sites in the world. I don't know of what sites would push it out
0:52.7	of that. La Brea. Right. That's out of that. LeBreia. Right?
0:54.6	That's really the online LeBreya.
0:56.2	Yeah, that's up there.
0:57.2	Solenhofen?
0:58.0	Pretty famous.
0:58.8	There's others that I can see being in the top five.
1:01.1	Hell Creeks up there.
1:02.1	I don't know how you'd push this one out of the top five.
1:04.9	The Burgess Shale is a fossil locality in British Columbia up in Canada, that hosts an absolutely phenomenal Cambrian
1:14.9	ecosystem, famous not only for being in the Cambrian and thus related to the Cambrian explosion,
1:21.3	but also for incredible preservation of soft tissues. Like most of the fossils are soft body fossils.
1:29.4	Yes, so not only are we getting fossils from a time that we sorely need fossils from,
1:33.8	we're getting really good fossils.
1:36.3	And it's been known for over a hundred years.
1:39.4	So it's got the La Brea thing where...
	...

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