Asteroids, volcanoes, and sex lakes – in this episode we discuss the varied and sometimes hilarious hypotheses of why animals have gone extinct. CW: Extinctions/animal death, toxic shock syndrome, menstruation, serial killers, suicide in reference to having to do geochronology. Referring to non-avian dinosaurs as just dinosaurs.
While usually it’s just the hard bits that fossilize, occasionally the fossil record can preserve things like skin, organs, blood and more. This episode talks about what happens when soft tissue fossilizes, and what weird things scientists have done upon finding it. CW: Dead animals/babies, eating gross things, blood and gushy body bits, placentas.
Sometimes paleontology is awe-inspiring. Sometimes it’s gross and hilarious. This episode is at the weird epicenter of all of those things, because it turns out the best preserved fossil sturgeons are found up the rear end of duck-billed dinosaurs. CONTENT WARNINGS: Hemorrhoids, butt jokes, maligning archeologists, misinterpreting a cloaca as a butthole for the purposes […]
Throughout time we find evidence that animals made it to other continents seemingly by crossing vast oceans. In this episode we talk all about how animals can survive these strange events of accidental seafaring, and how the odds are always stacked against them.
CW: Cruel research methods (not ours!), inbreeding, death.
In this episode of Backyard Geology, Serena takes you to the Jack Hills in western Australia to peer 4.39 billion years into the past. Detrital zircon grains found in the rocks of the Jack Hills are the oldest known materials existing on Earth today. Their chemical makeup preserves Earth’s oldest and most elusive Eon, the […]
