Palaeocast

Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona, USA is a hub for Triassic palaeontology and has exposures representing 20 million years of the Late Triassic Chinle Formation. Visitors marvel at the colourful fossilised trees from which the park takes its name, but a whole host of animals called these swampy forests home 225 million years ago.
In this episode, we talk to Dr. Adam Marsh, lead palaeontologist at the National Park. We explore the history, geology, and palaeontology of Petrified Forest, along with exciting research centred around specimens from the park. Research is ongoing, with many groups of palaeontologists working on Petrified Forest specimens, and we hear about directions it might go in the future.

Today, there is only one living species of rhynchocephalian: the tuatara of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Despite today's paucity of species, this was once a diverse group of reptiles, with a wide range of lifestyles from swimming in the ocean to climbing trees. Once highly abundant around the world, reasons for their decline are still debated and may have had to do with competition from their relatives, the squamates, or changing environments.
Rhynchocephalians are related to lizards and snakes within Lepidosauria, but despite their outward appearance, are not lizards themselves and have a number of differences that make them distinct. In this interview, we speak to Dr. Victor Beccari, an expert in rhynchocephalians, and discuss this and more about this fascinating group of reptiles.

We've been given exclusive access to a brand new study examining the chemistry of a mosasaur tooth found within the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota. The remarkable circumstances of how this tooth was discovered meant that multiple lines of chemical evidence could be reliably gathered, each acting as a powerful palaeoenvironmental proxy providing clues as to how and where this giant aquatic predator lived. The results of the study now mean that a revision of mosasaur palaeoecology is required and that food webs in one of the world's most famous fossil deposits might need redrawing.

Joining us in this episode are the lead authors Nathan Van Vranken (Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College) and Melanie During (Uppsala University & Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). Their study "King of the Riverside", a multi-proxy approach offers a new perspective on mosasaurs before their extinction is open access and available in BMC Zoology now!

The iguanodontians were an incredibly successful group within the Cretaceous. They could reach incredible sizes, with the largest species even matching the proportions of some sauropods, and they also had an incredible palaeogeographic range, meaning that their remains are found all over the world today. In the late Jurassic, they were a lot less diverse and much smaller, so the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous are key times for understanding the evolution of this group.
Cariocecus bocagei is a newly described iguanodontian from the Early Cretaceous of Praia do Areia do Mastro, Portugal. Whilst it is only know from a partial skull, there are numerous useful characteristics that help identify it as a new species and fill in our understanding of iguanodontians in this important time in their evolution.
Joining us in this episode is Dr Filippo Bertozzo of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.