Past Time
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
Episode 34 – March of the Trilobites
10 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Of Collective Behavior and Trilobites Reading scientific papers can be a daunting prospect. Even the titles can contain layers of jargon. On Past Time...
Episode 33 – The Story of the Sloth
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
PAST TIME RETURNS! After three and a half months of discovering how insanely busy a museum curator can be, I (Adam) am back to past times with a brand...
Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles
21 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 32 – The Changing Face of Crocodiles INTRODUCTION TO GROWING UP – Every living thing grows up, and this episode of “Past Time”...
Episode 31 – The First Frogs of the Age of Dinosaurs!
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
THE FIRST FROGS OF NORTH AMERICA Every discovery we make in natural history happens thanks to specimens. Fossil bones, shells, footprints, coprolites,...
Episode 30 – SVP Recap, guest-starring I KNOW DINO
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Meeting of the Minds There is no bigger paleontology conference for fans of dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles than the Socie...
Episode 29 – First of the Four-Footed Giant Dinosaurs!
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ledumahadi and the first dinosaur giants The sauropod dinosaurs—the classic long-necks—included the largest land animal species that have ever liv...
Episode 28 – PAST TIME reviews Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom!
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
First Iteration I (Adam) am both proud and nervous to say that this is an atypical Past Time episode, as we’re not talking about a new discovery nor...
Episode 27 – Machairoceratops: An Extinct Horned Dinosaur Under Threat!
27 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Eighty million years ago, a wildly ornamented species of horned dinosaur roamed the southern half of North America’s western landmass, Laramidia. In...
Episode 26 – Colobops: the tiny reptile with a big bite!
13 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Big bites come in small skulls This episode tells a story of one of Adam Pritchard’s favorite projects from Yale University, describing the skull of...
Episode 25 – Ceratosaurs: Story of a Predatory Dinosaur Dynasty!
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Masters of horns and teeth Throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, dinosaurs were top dogs on every continent and in every sort of environment...
Episode 24 – Dinosaurs and crocodiles in the Land Before Egypt!
04 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early...
Episode 23: Meet the Echinoderms! Adventures with Ancient Sea Stars!
23 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This episode was a blast to produce for a vertebrate scientist. I learned a ton about the echinoderms, the group of invertebrate animals to which sea ...
Episode 22: Matheronodon, a new dinosaur with a different kind of bite!
08 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Matheronodon is certainly a dinosaur worthy of a bigger bite. With proportionally giant teeth strikingly different from the standard-issue ornithopod ...
Episode 21: New History of Ancient DNA
13 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The quest to recover ancient genetic material from extinct animals had its blockbuster moment when Jurassic Park came out. But where did the idea come...
Episode 20: Digging the Dawn of Dinosaurs – Paleontology at Ghost Ranch
25 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hi all. Adam Pritchard here. I’ve been thinking about telling the story of my field experience in the Triassic-aged Chinle Formation of northern New...
Episode 19: Masrasector—Egypt’s Ancient Slicer!
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks ago Past Time co-host Matt Borths published a study that identified a new species of now-extinct carnivorous mammal from Egypt. The animal...
Episode 18: The Bird Brains and the Dinosaur Expert
24 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 17: Kingdom of the Monkey Lizard!
03 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Past Time is BACK! Matt and Adam have been traveling the world independently for some time, delving deeply into the history of life on the planet, bu...
A Food Chain in a Fossil: A snake skeleton with its prey still inside!
31 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between predator and prey is a primal one, and one that fires the curiosity of many fossil fans. We love paintings of Tyrannosaurus b...
Grandma Sharkie: The Greenland Shark is the World’s Oldest Vertebrate Animal!
15 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Growth is a universal facet of all organisms that have ever lived, but figuring out how old they grow isn’t always easy. A new study examined th...
A Tale of Two Crocs: Predators of Cretaceous Spain
20 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
I tried to google “crocodiles are living fossils,” to see just how commonly that expression was used in popular articles. There were indeed a few ...
Episode 16: Hunting Antarctic Dinosaurs
25 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Erik Gorscak and Pat O'Connor, two paleontologists from Ohio University, are about to set out on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for fossils from ...
News Bite: Dodos and the evolution of bird brains
11 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
If you wander into the basement of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, and wander into the fossil collections, you will find a v...
News Bite: The evolution of ornithischian dinosaur jaws and bites!
03 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
With Past Time, Matt and I tend to focus on the new discoveries in paleontology: the new species that show up in the news, or the important specimens ...
Episode 15: Degrees of Doctoral Dissertation Domination
11 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of Past Time, Drs. Matthew Borths and Adam Pritchard share their dissertation stories, and a bit of advice on the grad school experien...
News Bite: Kerberos! Giant mammal carnivore from after the Age of Dinosaurs!
08 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
It weighed twice as much as a modern wolf. It had three pairs of meat-slicing teeth. It was the first carnivorous land animal to reach 200 pounds on t...
News Bite: Salamanders of the Caribbean!
15 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Arrr, ye mateys! Pour out some grog, and I’ll tell ye a tale of mines, beaches, and death in ancient jungles. I of course be talkin’…...
News Bite: Basilisks in the Old(er) West!
23 Jul 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The oldest basilisk lizard from North America, described by Jack Conrad from NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine, shows the 48 million year old anima...
News Bite: Genes and Jurassic Park
13 Jun 2015
Contributed by Lukas
As Jurassic World rolls out, Matt has some thoughts on the scientific impact of Jurassic Park and offers his hopes for the scientific discussions Jura...
News Bite: Cosmic rays date ancient human ancestor
10 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Dating fossils might sound like Saturday night for a paleontologist, but it’s serious science! In a new study, a group of physicists and paleont...
News Bite: Brontosaurus revived!
08 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Brontosaurus was an extinct name for an extinct animal, but a new study brings the “Thunder Lizard” title roaring back to life! But how do...
News Bite: Crazy croc diversity in the ancient Amazon!
03 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi and other paleontontologists described the crocodiles from a gi...
Quick Bite: Clash of the Triassic Titans!
30 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Under the canopy of an ancient fern forest near the border of Arizona and New Mexico a colossal crocodile-like reptile took a bite out of an even larg...
News Bite: Parental care in extinct reptiles
19 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A new fossil shows an ancient reptile, Philydrosaurus, surrounded by young. Possible evidence that parental investment is a more ancient trait in land...
News Bite: Giant dinosaur brain from Uzbekistan!
05 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers lead by Hans-Dieter Sues from the Smithsonian Institution described a wealth of new giant, long-necked dinosaur material from Western Asia...
Quick Bite: Iguanodon, History of a Dinosaur!
05 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Iguanodon was discovered before the word "dinosaur" was invented and the story of Iguanodon research is the story of dinosaur research as paleontologi...
Episode 14: The Art of Dinosaurs
29 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
To conjure up extinct environments, museums, books, and documentaries rely on art to show vanished animals revitalized in their ancient surroundings. ...
Episode 13: Following in the Footsteps of Dinosaurs
18 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of paleontologists, we think of people hunkered down with bones, teeth, and shells studying the preserved body parts of dead organisms. ...
Episode 12: Growing up Dinosaur
06 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of iconic dinosaurs, like T. rex with its massive head full of teeth, and Parasaurolophus crowned with a gigantic, tube-like horn, we’...
Quick Bite: Weird Whales and Swimming Sloths
02 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Marine mammals are fascinating beasts. Whales, manatees, seals, otters...they've all gone back to the water and in the process evolved all kinds of sp...
Episode 11: Trilobites and the Cincinnati Sea
11 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Over 400 million years ago the oceans were teeming with life, but it didn’t look much like what you see at the aquarium or in Finding Nemo. Instead ...
Quick Bite: From Terror Bird to Gentle Giant
10 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
50 million-years ago, the heir to Tyrannosaurus stalked the forests of ancient Europe and North America, snapping up the tiny ancestors of horses, cow...
Quick Bite: The Alien Turtle and Ancient Color
01 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Meet Alienochelys selloumi, a giant, snorkel-nosed turtle with powerful, shell-crushing plates in its massive beak! The distant relative of the larges...
Episode 10: The Hobbit – An Unexpected Discovery
19 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Little people! Giant reptiles! Towering elephants! Huge birds! It sounds like the stuff of literary and box-office gold, but this Middle-Earth-like wo...
Quick Bite: The Giant Before the Tyrant!
01 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Last episode we featured Lythronax, the oldest-known North American tyrannosaur and a close relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. But tyrannosaurs weren’t ...
Episode 9: New Relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex!
06 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Tyrannosaurus rex is a dinosaur celebrity, a villain in most dinosaur movies and documentaries, but where did the massive beast come from? On November...
Episode 8: Crocodiles are the Chomping Champions
29 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Fossils are the raw materials of paleontology, but if we want to know how an animal moved or ate, paleontologists, like Dr. Paul Gignac, need to study...
Episode 7: Walking through Whale Evolution
08 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Whales are spectacularly specialized mammals that seem perfectly adapted to their marine habitat. Plenty of other mammals have gone back to the water,...
Quick Bite: New Mammals from the Age of Dinosaurs!
05 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Mammals were scrambling around during the Age of Dinosaurs and they're usually seen as small, shrew-like animals waiting for their chance to become di...
Episode 6: Tiny Horses, Galloping Crocs, and Fossilized Jungles!
16 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The fossil record is pretty patchy. Most discoveries are tooth fragments, chunks of shell, or isolated slivers of bone and paleontologists are trained...
Episode 5: Throwing in Human Evolution
02 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Humans are weird animals. We walk around on two legs, we have big brains...and we like to throw things at each other. Did all this happen in a gradual...
Quick Bite: Ocepechelon the Whale Turtle
21 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Meet Ocepechlon, one of the strangest turtles to ever paddle the open ocean in our first Past Time Quick Bite! This new species was announced a few we...
Episode 4: Giant Dinosaur Mysteries
15 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Sauropod dinosaurs, the long necked creatures like Apatasaurus and Brachiosaurus, were the biggest animals to ever leave a footprint on the Earth. The...
Episode 3: What is a Reptile?
30 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
We all know what a reptile is, right? Scaly, sprawling legs, cold blooded. But where did they come from and how are they all related to one another? W...
Episode 2: Birds are Dinosaurs!
15 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
What is a dinosaur? What is a bird? They're related somehow, but how does a paleontologist figure out how close Velociraptors and penguins are in the ...
Episode 1: Finding fossils in Madagascar
25 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Are there really new fossils to find out there? How do paleontologists even figure out where to look? In the first episode of Past Time, Adam and Matt...