The Common Descent Podcast

For many years, scientists pondered the question: how and why do offspring inherit traits from their parents? And key to the answer to that question is another question: what determines an organism’s…

Every period of geologic time is distinguished by its own environmental and ecological features, and every boundary between time periods is characterized by change. The boundary between the Jurassic …

We live in a solar-powered world. Photosynthesis is the process by which some organisms (notably plants and cyanobacteria) harness the energy of sunlight to power their own metabolism, in the process…

The history of evolution is full of species of unusual size, big and small. But the factors that lead to evolutionary miniaturization or embiggening can be quite varied and are not all fully agreed-u…

Happy Snake Month!

In this bonus episode, we discuss snake conservation and geek out about snakes with special guest Hiral Naik of Save the Snakes. We talk about what it takes to save snakes, why sna…

Monitor lizards are charismatic, surprisingly diverse, full of surprising biological features, and on top of all that, they include the largest terrestrial lizards in history. Also, they’re closely r…

Take a walk along the waterways of the Late Triassic, and you could easily think it was a world full of crocodiles! But in fact, those are not crocs, but phytosaurs, a group of predatory reptiles tha…

Once again, we return to the Jurassic franchise! And as usual with these movies, there’s lots to discuss about the portrayal of ancient animals, scientific concepts, and scientists.

Another trilogy c…

Happy Croc Month!

In this special episode, we talk croc conservation and geek out about crocs with special guest Dr. Marisa Tellez of the Crocodilian Research Coalition. We learn about what it’s like…

Perhaps you’ve heard of Pangaea, the supercontinent that existed when our modern continents were puzzle-pieced together. But have you heard of Rodinia? Or Columbia? Scientists have only come to reali…

Recently, BBC Studios put out a new documentary series set in the world of the Late Cretaceous, so we’re doing our first-ever Silver Screen Science discussion focused on a documentary!

The documentar…

Who doesn’t like a flashy bit of headgear? A wide variety of cranial ornamentation is found on a wide variety of animals: sharp horns, branching antlers, bumpy knobs, and more. In this episode, we br…

Scavenging isn’t easy. There’s a reason most scavengers are only part-time carrion-eaters. But vultures are exquisitely adapted for a dedicated lifestyle of finding and feasting on carcasses, and as …

It's an easy mistake to think of the Moon as a simple accessory to our planet, but the Earth and Moon are a close-knit pair, and the Moon influences everything from our tides to our magnetic fields t…

We talk about fossils a lot on this podcast – every episode, in fact – but we rarely take the time to discuss how fossils get the way they are. This is a crucial subject, because the fossilization pr…

Seahorses are very strange fish, with their upright posture, tube-like mouths, and various other unusual features. Along with their cousins in the family Syngnathidae, seahorses have been the subject…

Our highest-level supporters on Patreon get their own special mini-episode on a topic of their choosing! We released the first five in a compilation a while ago, and now that we’ve done five more, he…

Every plant starts somewhere, and often that somewhere is inside a seed. Seeds are among the most diverse and important evolutionary innovations of plants, allowing species to survive, thrive, and tr…

Paleoartist Rob Soto has created some fantastic artwork for the podcast over the years. Most recently, for our Five Year Anniversary celebration, he produced our Five Year logo and a series of movie-…

Blood is nutritious, easy to digest, and not hard to come by, so it’s unsurprising – if a bit unsettling – that thousands of species have evolved a taste for the stuff. From birds to bats to bugs, th…