Why do we collect fossils and who were the first fossil collectors? Cretaceious fossils have been found in a cave in Northern Spain alongside the Neanderthals that were living there 46,000 years ago. Were Neanderthals collecting fossils and if so why? This week Susie and Rob examine those claims and discuss fossil collecting and the recent surge in private trade in dinosaur fossils. Because we are children, we also giggle at possibly one of the earliest fossils collected, the Erfoud Manuport as well as the Makapansgat pebble. The paper is "Were Neanderthals the First Collectors? First Evidence Recovered in Level 4 of the Prado Vargas Cave, Cornejo, Burgos and Spain" by Marta Navazo Ruiz and colleagues from the University of Burgos. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat7040049 We also go on to discuss the Stegosaur fossil Apex sold, purchased and loaned to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the sale of a Ceratosaurus fossil by Utah's Museum of Ancient life.
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Walking with… our Carboniferous ancestors in the rain
Our evolutionary timeline just leapt back an additional 40 million years into the past. Some new fossil trackways from the early Carboniferous of Australia have been interpreted as the first bone-fide "amniotes". This is the group of egg laying vertebrates which we belong to along, with all the other mammals, birds, and reptiles. These fossils are much earlier than previously thought possible and potentially turns our understanding of this event on its head. We take a look at these fossils and the implications, in particular that there could be loads of missing things out there yet to be found, including our own ancestors and distant relatives. Figure from the study showing the fossil footprints slab, with details of fingers/toes and claws scrapping along the surface, and fossil rain drops. The paper is "Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution" by John Long and colleagues, published in Nature in May 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08884-5
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Is de-extinction a scam?
Can we bring extinct organisms back to life? Colossal Biosciences caused quite the stir earlier this year when claimed they could do just that, and indeed have done with Dire Wolves - an extinct species of candid from North America. What is going on here? We sense check those claims and ask what they did (and did not do) as well as the broader implications of the science (pseudoscience?) of de-extinction. The front cover of "Time" magazine - no ambiguity here about what they are saying. Here is the phylogeny (evolutionary tree) from the paper. Dire wolves have a long branch arising from a point between Jackal/Dog/Dhole/Wolf on the one side and Bush Dog/Maned wolf on the other side. There was a lot of press about this work, but the paper it comes from is a pre-print "On the ancestry and evolution of the extinct dire wolf" uploaded to BioRxiv in April 2025 by Gregory Gedman and Beth Shapiro of Colossal Biosciences, and colleagues, including George R. R. Martin (!). Update: the 3 individuals are not technically clones but genetically manipulated grey wolves https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.09.647074
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Fossil poos from Poland
How did dinosaurs rise to supremacy? This difficult question is given "fresh" insights from new data from a motherload of fossils from Poland. Over 500 bromalites - fossil vomit, gut contents or poo - were analysed with new technology allowing reconstruction of how diets and ecosystems changed over this crucial time. We take a look at some of these fossils and interpretations and speculate about how to experimentally test these smelly findings. Figure 2: A selection of fossils found inside the bromalites (gut contents, vomit, and poos) from the paper. a - fish scales in a lungfish bromalite, b - teeth and bones with bite marks including a dicyndont in an archosaur bromalite , c - crocodylomorph bones in a theropod bromalite, d- several whole beetles in an early dinosaur bromalite, f - plant fossils including ferns from inside bromalites, g - fish inside a phytosaur coprolite, h and i - fragmented plants. Figure 3: The authors interpretations of the foodwebs and ecosystems changing during the Triassic. The paper is "Digestive contents and food webs record the advent of dinosaur supremacy" by Martin Qvarnström from Uppala University and colleagues from Poland, published in Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08265-4
In “The Fossil Files”, a pair of palaeontologists delve into the latest discoveries from the world of palaeontology and seek to bring fossils to back to life. Each episode, Susie and Rob will discuss an interesting new research paper ranging from topics of what dinosaurs ate, how plesiosaurs swam, where we came from, and the science of de-extinction. Whilst doing so, we peek under the hood of how the science of palaeontology is done and how research gets to see the light of day. It is for anybody interested in palaeontology and past life whether that is students, researchers themselves, or simply the fossil-curious - we laugh as we learn, and hope you will too.
Episode guide at https://fossils.libsyn.com/
Ireland