The Fossil Files
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- 10. Nov. 2026
Über den Podcast
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/ Bonus content at Patreon https://patreon.com/FossilFiles
Folgen 52
A Pterrible mistake? Something fishy about this new Pterosaur
The Fossil Files needs YOU to tell us what you think! Please take 5 minutes to fill out the survey here https://www.qualtrics.manchester.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_8J77u7ENVOaDPNk For this week's episode, we dive into a …
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The Fossil Files needs YOU to tell us what you think! Please take 5 minutes to fill out the survey here https://www.qualtrics.manchester.ac.uk/jfe/form/SV_8J77u7ENVOaDPNk
For this week's episode, we dive into a baffling array of interweaving palaeo-controversies. Where should scientifically important fossils be homed in this globalised and commercialised world? Who gets access to fossils if we need to check on someone else's potentially mistaken interpretations? Susie and Rob take a look at the fascinating story of a new filter-feeding pterosaur called Bakiribu found inside a fossilised vomit from the Cretaceous of Brazil. But was it actually a pterosaur? Another team on the other side of the world came to the conclusion that it might in fact be a fish. Who is right and how to we sort this out? What does this tell us about palaeontology, colonialism, and reproducibility? How does a holotype specimen end up for sale on the private market? And do we have a new edition to add to our pantheon of infamous "Fossil Fails"? The papers discussed this week are "A regurgitalite reveals a new filter-feeding pterosaur from the Santana Group" by RV Pêgas and colleagues published in Scientific Reports in November 2025 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-22983-3 And "Reinterpretation of Bakiribu waridza from the Romualdo Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of Brazil: a fish not a pterosaur" by David Unwin and colleagues published in Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202620251374 With the associated editorial "Scientific errors in paleontology - the case of Bakiribu: pterosaur or fish?" by Alexander Kellner https://doi.org/10.1590/0001-3765202620269802
UPDATE: Since the release of this episode, we received a personal communication from RV Pêgas disputing some of the details as published in the editorial note by Kellner. More information can be found here https://web.archive.org/web/20260513195001/https://cienciahoje.org.br/direito-de-resposta/
We also get into the issue of illegal export of Brazilian fossils including the controversial case of the fossil 'snake' Tetrapodophis https://www.estadao.com.br/ciencia/herton-escobar/author-of-4-legged-snake-paper-defies-brazilian-fossil-laws/ As well as the baffling circumstances that led to a fossil holotype of a dinosaur in the collections of a famous Paris museum to be put up for sale https://www.nationalgeographic.com/newsletters/article/stones-bones-french-auction-dubreuillosaurus
You can support at our Patreon where you can get access to exclusive bonus content https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
Wide Screen art by Julio Lacerda.
Were Dinosaurs too big to walk? Fake news from Big Palaeo
Were dinosaurs to big to walk? In last episode we looked at some of the science of whether large dinosaurs such as sauropods could cross oceans. This week we look at some of the perhaps… less scientific …
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Were dinosaurs to big to walk? In last episode we looked at some of the science of whether large dinosaurs such as sauropods could cross oceans. This week we look at some of the perhaps… less scientific approaches to dinosaurs swimming; The Aquatic Dinosaur hypothesis contends that dinosaurs would have been too big to walk on land and must have been swimmers. We poor some scorn on this with the help of Dr Darren Naish. We also take a look at some palaeo-drama over interpretations of skin colour in sauropods using fossil melanosomes (i.e. tiny subcellular organelles that contain pigments).The papers discussed this week are "The response to and rejection of Brian Ford's Too Big to Walk, a 21st century effort to reinstate the aquatic dinosaur hypothesis" by Darren Naish published June 2024 in Historical Biology https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2024.2421268 And for the sauropod colour "Fossilized melanosomes reveal colour patterning of a sauropod dinosaur" by Tess Gallagher and colleagues published in Royal Society Open Science December 2025 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251232 and the response paper by Valentina Rossi and Maria McNamara "The colour of sauropod skin. A comment on: 'Fossilized melanosomes reveal colour patterning of a sauropod dinosaur', (2025) by Gallagher et al." published in September 2026 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.260429 And for those that are really interested, the paper that we didn't have time to get into can be found here https://doi.org/10.1038/srep21138 Wide screen art by Sante Mazzei
When Palaeontology Makes the News: How (and how not) to do it [Bonus Preview]
This is a preview of a bonus episode. Full bonus episodes are available to our Patreon members via https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles Scientists have a responsibility to get their research into the wider …
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This is a preview of a bonus episode. Full bonus episodes are available to our Patreon members via https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
Scientists have a responsibility to get their research into the wider world via the media and the press. This is especially true to palaeontologists as we have fortune of working in a field that sparks the imagination of the wider public. But how is this done? In this bonus episode we take a look at the process of how palaeontologists get their work out there, and the relative responsibilities of scientists, press officers and journalists. Along the way we take a look at some remarkable failures of public communication of science and try to learn lessons from them.
Some of the news stories we discuss, including the Metro, Daily Mail, and The Telegraph,are linked below
https://bsky.app/profile/newscientist.com/post/3mi4i4jeuwk2i
We also took a look at the reporting of this paper from 2009 about the fossil primate Darwinius
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
Wide screen art includes palaeoart of Kongonaphon by Frank Ippolito
Could dinosaurs swim across oceans? Part 1
Dinosaurs were massive. No cap. They spread all over the world, but how did they cross oceans? In this episode we ask the question: how far could a dinosaur swim? This isn't just an esoteric question, but one …
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Dinosaurs were massive. No cap. They spread all over the world, but how did they cross oceans? In this episode we ask the question: how far could a dinosaur swim? This isn't just an esoteric question, but one that has a big impact on how we try to reconstruct palaeobiogeography of the Mesozoic and how diversification happens. To do so we look at some new fossil finds from Spain and some weird maths based on rare footage of ostriches swimming and how much fat was on a sauropod.
This week's papers are
"Intercontinental evidence of the iconic genus Diplodocus Marsh, 1878 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda)" by Sergio Sánchez-Fenollosa and colleagues published in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in Jan 2026 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2026.2718423 and
"ENHYDROSS: A New Mechanistic Model Supports the Trans-Oceanic Dispersal Capability of Terrestrial Vertebrates" by Alexandros Pantelides and colleagues published in Ecology and Evolution in March 2026 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.73280
Wide screen art by Sante Mazzei
Cute fossil babies reveal how mammals evolved live birth
How and when did mammals transition from laying eggs to live birth? The fossil record doesn't typically preserve soft tissues like embryos and placentas making this a tough problem. This week we take a look at …
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How and when did mammals transition from laying eggs to live birth? The fossil record doesn't typically preserve soft tissues like embryos and placentas making this a tough problem. This week we take a look at two new fossil discoveries that begin to answer the question of mammal evolution, and challenge orthodoxy. A cute baby dicynodont fossil from the Triassic of South Africa is the first mammal to be captured 'in ovo' i.e. inside its egg. Secondly, we discuss a new fossil cynodont from the Triassic of Argentina that might have recorded its growth and birth in its bone histology. Using this we begin to piece together our own evolutionary history and estimate when placental mammals 'got cracking'. Along we way we ask if viviparity evolved twice and whether teenagers can be trusted to go to the shops to get eggs.
The papers discussed this week are "The first non-mammalian synapsid embryo from the Triassic of South Africa" by Julien Benoit and colleagues published in PLoS One in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345016 and "Early origin of viviparity in the mammalian lineage" by Leandro Carlos Gaetano and colleagues published in Frontiers in Mammal Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fmamm.2026.1845319
Palaeoart by Sophie Vrard.
Are we failing the next generation of palaeontologists? The future of fieldwork [Bonus Preview]
New finds in palaeontology are dependent on people getting out in the field and digging up fossils, but are the next generation of palaeontologists getting to do that? Opportunities for fieldwork and fieldwork …
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New finds in palaeontology are dependent on people getting out in the field and digging up fossils, but are the next generation of palaeontologists getting to do that? Opportunities for fieldwork and fieldwork training have become more expensive, which means students might not be getting the training they need. What happens next? In this week's bonus episode, Susie and Rob discuss the importance of fieldwork and whether the next generation of palaeontologists are facing 'an extinction of experience'. We focus on the views of students and early career researchers and ponder what happens to palaeontology if we focus on large scale studies of existing data to the exclusion of digging up new stuff. This is a preview of the full episode available to our Patreon members https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
The main paper discuss in this episode is "#Yourpalaeolife: Interrogating the Status of Fieldwork Among Early Career Palaeontology Researchers" by Harriett Nuttall published in Ecology and Evolution in July 2026 https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.74032
We need your support to be able to continue creating The Fossil Files. To get access to exclusive bonus episodes, you can find us on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
The sound of a Jurassic forest, recreated using fossils and AI
Sounds play such an important ecological role, but palaeontologists have always had to use their imagination when reconstructing the sound of extinct landscapes: Until now! For the first time a team of …
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Sounds play such an important ecological role, but palaeontologists have always had to use their imagination when reconstructing the sound of extinct landscapes: Until now! For the first time a team of scientists have reconstructed the sound of a whole palaeo-community. Using fossil insect wings and some technological approaches to modern animals, the team were able to use physics and AI models to reconstruct the acoustic landscape of a Jurassic forest peppered with the calls of insects. Were the animals avoiding predators or just talking to each other? Listen in and find out.
This week's paper is "Reconstruction of an extinct soundscape reveals ultrasonic communication in the Jurassic" by Jun-Jie Gu, Fernando Montealegre-Zapata and colleagues published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August 2026 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2615107123
We also provide some updates from previous episodes: #5 "Were Neanderthals the first fossil collectors" updated with Roman findings https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X26100749 #30 "How can we reconstruct the smell of extinct organisms" smells different using new data from fishes https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.3277 #25 "A dinosaur covered in porcupine spines & the earliest fossil cloaca" gets a new friend with the discovery of an early mammal cloaca https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.116752 And the most controversial of all #4 "Is de-extinction a scam?", well it looks more likely given what got left out when the paper finally came out https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2026.101306
Widescreen art by Zuo Xiaoran
Where did turtles come from?
The origin of turtles has long been a scientific mystery. Not only do they have super weird things going on with their ribs, head, and teeth, but also its unclear if they were more closely related to birds and …
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The origin of turtles has long been a scientific mystery. Not only do they have super weird things going on with their ribs, head, and teeth, but also its unclear if they were more closely related to birds and crocodiles, or snakes and lizards, or something else. This week we take a deep dive into the origin of turtles, terrapins and tortoises, and the process of "turtleization". New data from the important Permian critter Eunotosaurus of South Africa might have now solved that problem of the question: Where did turtles come from?
This weeks's paper is "The phylogenetic origin of turtles" by Xavier Jenkins and colleagues published in Current Biology in June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.04.070
Wide screen art by Gabriel Ugeuto.
Fake Fossil Fails [Bonus]
What happens when fossils that have been faked or 'enhanced' end up being used in scientific studies? Why does it happen? How can we spot them? How do researchers, preparators, publishers and museums deal with …
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What happens when fossils that have been faked or 'enhanced' end up being used in scientific studies? Why does it happen? How can we spot them? How do researchers, preparators, publishers and museums deal with it? In this bonus episode Susie and Rob take a look at three nightmarish examples of faked fossils that ended up in the scientific literature, and what happened after they were spotted. Our first story is the discovery that the exceptional soft tissues of a famous Permian reptile had actually been painted on, the second of a dinosaur that had been stitched together from multiple fossils that ended up being far more interesting than the fake, and finally a cheetah that was stitched together from fossil, plastic, and plaster, yet still got published.
This is a preview of our bonus episode. The full episode is available on our Patreon along with lots of other bonus content https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
The papers and sources discussed this week are:
"Forged soft tissues revealed in the oldest fossil reptile from the early Permian of the Alps" by Valentina Rossi and colleagues published in Palaeontology in February 2024 https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12690
"The Archaeoraptor forgery" by Timothy Rowe and colleagues published in Nature in 2001 https://doi.org/10.1038/35069145 with additional information from Benjamin Gutierrez https://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/archaeoraptor/
"A primitive Late Pliocene cheetah, and evolution of the cheetah lineage" by Per Christiansen and Ji Mazák published in PNAS in 2009, retracted 2012 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0810435106 with important extra research and context from Retraction Watch https://retractionwatch.com/2012/08/20/author-retracts-pnas-about-alleged-pliocine-cheetah-fossil-that-had-been-questioned/
Were dinosaurs eating fruit? Cretaceous Plant Power
As well as tasting good, fruit play a really important role in ecosystems across the world. But when did they evolve? Were dinosaurs eating them and dispersing them? In a fossil files first, we take a look at …
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As well as tasting good, fruit play a really important role in ecosystems across the world. But when did they evolve? Were dinosaurs eating them and dispersing them? In a fossil files first, we take a look at the evolution of plants, in particular the centuries long mystery of how and when the flowering plants (angiosperms) got going. A newly described site in New Mexico yields large and varied fleshy fossil fruits which upend how we think about Cretaceous ecosystems. The fossil fruits and seeds are orders of magnitude bigger than other Cretaceous fruit, indicating an active role of animals in their consumption and dispersal in complex forest environments. We also take a look at the story from pollen to reconstruct how and when angiosperms diversified, potentially in two pulses in the Cretaceous and after the Cretaceous. Plant Power!
The papers we look at this week are "Diversification of angiosperm reproductive strategies predated the end-Cretaceous extinction" by Jiamen Lee from Berkley and colleagues published Science in June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adw9457, "Pulsed evolution shaped extant angiosperm pollen disparity" by Yang Luo from Kunming and colleagues published in Nature Communications in January 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68253-8, and "Integrated analysis of fossils and molecular divergence time estimates a latest Jurassic origin of angiosperms" by Ruolin Wu from Bristol and colleagues published in Nature Plants in June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02311-x
Wide screen art by Brian Engh.
You can support The Fossil Files and access bonus via our Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
The weird case of a whale necropolis, sat at the bottom of an ocean trench for 5 million years
The deep sea environment holds many mysteries but yields hardly any fossils. A new mindblowing finding at the bottom of the Indian ocean challenges the way we think about life in the deep and the nature of …
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The deep sea environment holds many mysteries but yields hardly any fossils. A new mindblowing finding at the bottom of the Indian ocean challenges the way we think about life in the deep and the nature of palaeontology. In 2023, a Chinese submersible exploring a 6km deep trench found 476 fossil cetaceans. These extinct whale fossils were covered with life forms previously unknown to science, and what's more, the fossils ranged in age from recent to 5 million years old. How did they get there? Why so many? Can fossils really accumulate in the same place for 5 million years, and just…. sit there?
This week's paper is "A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone" by Xiaotong Peng and colleagues, published in Nature in June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z
Wide screen includes picture from Global Trend.
How to become a palaeontologist: Finding and applying for PhDs
Studying for a PhD is in an important step towards becoming a scientist, but the process of finding and applying for a PhD programme is mysterious and inaccessible. In this bonus episode Susie and Rob discuss …
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Studying for a PhD is in an important step towards becoming a scientist, but the process of finding and applying for a PhD programme is mysterious and inaccessible. In this bonus episode Susie and Rob discuss some tips and ideas to demystify the process. Is a PhD right for you? How do you find the right supervisor and project? What are universities looking for in your application? What questions are you going to face in the interview? This a preview of our bonus episode, the full episode can be found on our Patreon. For further related content, check out our episode "How to become palaeontologist" (#26).
The hunt for the first-ever animals, with Emily Mitchell
Where, when, and how did the animals first appear? The fossil record holds some tantalising insights from well-preserved sites in Canada, Australia, Russia (and Leicester). This week we are joined by Dr Emily …
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Where, when, and how did the animals first appear? The fossil record holds some tantalising insights from well-preserved sites in Canada, Australia, Russia (and Leicester). This week we are joined by Dr Emily Mitchell of the University of Cambridge to discuss how to find these fascinating Ediacaran fossils, what they mean, and how they evolved. Did they move? Were they left-handed? Did they have sex? Where are they hiding? This is a story that includes lasers, school children, lichens, and bees.
The papers discussed this week are "Earliest evidence of behavioural handedness in the Ediacaran motile bilaterian Spriggina floundersi" by Scott Evans and colleagues published in Science Reports in July 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-53857-x, and "Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia" by Scott Evans and colleagues published in Science Advances in May 2026 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed9916
We also continue of our discussion of last episodes's paper, "The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities" by Emily Mitchell and Andrea Manica published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03094-2
Did a lack of sex hold back the evolution of the first animals?
The first animals turned up in the Ediacaran as simple frond-like organisms that didn't do much of anything. Why was this Pre-Cambrian 'Avalonian biota' so static and boring for 12-20 million years before …
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The first animals turned up in the Ediacaran as simple frond-like organisms that didn't do much of anything. Why was this Pre-Cambrian 'Avalonian biota' so static and boring for 12-20 million years before animals started diversifying, moving and becoming more complex? This week we look at a new paper that reconstructs the ecology of the early Avalonian biota, in particular their sexual and and asexual reproductions strategies. To try and figure out what kind of sex these organisms were (or weren't) having, we need to do turn to some interesting maths based on their locations of the fossil surface. This unlocks all sorts of interesting evolutionary dynamics, potentially explaining how animals started to diversify after increasing sexual reproduction and competition in an increasingly dynamic and changeable environment. Life needed chaos! (and sex).
This week's paper is "The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities" by Emily Mitchell and Andrea Manica published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, published June 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03094-2
We also mention another paper by Scott Evans (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aed9916) and the story of the discovery of the Ediacaran fossils in Charnwood fossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Negus
Wide screen art by Hugo Salais.
Why did T. rex have such small arms? Revealed
Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous dinosaur and maybe even the most famous fossil animal. It has long been a source of curiosity as to why is has such small arms though. What could the possible …
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Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous dinosaur and maybe even the most famous fossil animal. It has long been a source of curiosity as to why is has such small arms though. What could the possible function be? This week we take a look at a new paper has taken a quantitative approach to this age long-thorny problem to investigate the evolutionary changes that might have led to such unusual anatomy. Indeed it happened not just one, but five times in the theropods. Let's find out why and how!
This week's paper is "Drivers and mechanisms of convergent forelimb reduction in non-avian theropod dinosaurs" by Charlie Scherer and colleagues published in Proceedings of the Royal Society in May 2026. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2026.0528
Wide screen art by Arvalis/Saurian.
Digging for dinosaurs and the battle against poaching: Susie reports from the field [Preview]
Digging up dinosaur fossils is a complicated and unpredictable business. But how does it feel to be one of the scientists on the ground doing the exploring? What can you do when you are in a race to find …
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Digging up dinosaur fossils is a complicated and unpredictable business. But how does it feel to be one of the scientists on the ground doing the exploring? What can you do when you are in a race to find dinosaur fossils before they are extracted and lost to the black market? In this episode Susie is in the field in Morocco to report the trials and tribulations of the team's dino hunting seasons. She takes us on a journey from exciting new dinosaur finds, disappointing setbacks when their quarry was raided, and their work with the local and national authorities to get the site protected for future generations. This is a preview of one of our bonus episode, the full version of which is available on our patreon for subscribers https://www.patreon.com/cw/FossilFiles
In this episode we hear from the team which includes Ahmed Oussou and Kawtar Ech-Charay of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University Fez, Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham, and Simon Wills and Pim Kaskes from the Natural History Museum London.
You can find out more about Susie's work in episode 9, "The Spicomellus special".
The Fossil Files is one year old: The best bits so far
The Fossil Files is one year old! Thank you everbody for your support! To mark the occasion, Susie and Rob take a look back at the last year and put together some of their favourite moments to highlight the …
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The Fossil Files is one year old! Thank you everbody for your support! To mark the occasion, Susie and Rob take a look back at the last year and put together some of their favourite moments to highlight the best of The Fossil Files (so far)
The episodes covered are:
Episode 10. Fossil Fails: A Precambrian beehive and dinosaurs on the moon (September)
Episode 3. Is de-extinction a scam? (July)
Episode 6. Where did Pterosaurs come from? (August)
Episode 12. Cretaceous zombie ants (October)
Episode 9. The Spicomellis special (September)
Episode 5. Were Neanderthals the first fossil collectors? (July)
Episode 19. Dinosaurs were doing fine (before the asteroid), with Steve Brusatte (December)
Episode 17. AI & the future of palaeontology (December)
Episode 2. Dinosaur poos from Poland (June)
Episode 20. Back-breaking and baby making, the disturbing bedroom habits of hadrosaurs (January)
Episode 28. How to get a Species of Human Named after you (March)
Episode 32. Were giant super intelligent octopuses the top predators of the Cretaceous? (May)
The Mysterious Devonian Giant that may be an unknown branch of life
400 million years ago, before the rise of forests, the land was covered in mossy carpets, loomed over by weird 8 meter tall columns called Prototaxites. These weird giants have long been thought to be some sort …
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400 million years ago, before the rise of forests, the land was covered in mossy carpets, loomed over by weird 8 meter tall columns called Prototaxites. These weird giants have long been thought to be some sort of fungus body, slowly digesting rotting matter. A new paper has taken a detailed look at some well preserved fossils from the Devonian of Scotland and reveals that this enigmatic giant wasn't a fungus, wasn't a plant, wasn't an animal, and wasn't a bacterium... it was something else. This week Susie and Rob take a look at the strange world of the Devonian giant Prototaxites and speculate what it might, or might not, have been. In other fungus news, we also take a look at a paper using fungal microfossils to suggests that dinosaur extinction could have been a multi-phase event, before and after the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous.
The main paper discussed this week is "Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi" by Corentin Loron and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh, published in Science Advances in January 2026 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aec6277
The other paper is "Fungal proliferation before and after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction event in North America" by Rosanna Baker and colleagues published in PNAS in May 2026 Fungal proliferation before and after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction event in North America https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2536899123
Wide screen art by M Humpage
Were giant super intelligent octopuses the top predators of the Cretaceous?
Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended this with the suggestion that the "top dog" was not any …
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Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended this with the suggestion that the "top dog" was not any vertebrate, but instead giant octopuses that were far larger than any invertebrates alive today. This has generated a lot of Kraken related headlines (and social media posts), but is everything as it seems? This week Susie and Rob take a look at these claims and ask: were super intelligent giganto-octopuses the top predators in Cretaceous? Get your salt shaker to hand, because you mind need to take it with a pinch of salt.
This weeks paper is "Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans" by Shin Ikegami and colleagues published in Science in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aea6285
Another paper mentioned is "Synchrotron data reveal nautiloid characters in Pohlsepia mazonensis, refuting a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians" by Thomas Clements and colleagues, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2369
Widescreen art by HodariNundu
Aliens burning coal? [bonus preview]
Are we alone? For decades a global effort has been made to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), but have we been looking in the wrong place? A new paper suggests that we should be looking for …
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Are we alone? For decades a global effort has been made to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), but have we been looking in the wrong place? A new paper suggests that we should be looking for advanced technological civilizations that had access to coal as this was an important energy rich source enabling industrialisation. In this bonus episode, Susie and Rob take a look at the geological, palaeontolological and evolutionary implications of the seach for coal burning aliens.
This week's paper is "How common are oxygenic photosynthesis and large coal deposits on exoplanets?" by Lincoln Taiz and colleagues, published in the International Journal of Astrobiology in January 2026.
Widescreen art by NASA/SETI.
How can we reconstruct the sense of smell of extinct organisms?
Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich insights for modern organisms, but what about extinct …
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Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich insights for modern organisms, but what about extinct organisms? How did they smell and what was their ecology? This week we take an interesting paper that has found evolutionary links between the endocasts of mammal brains and genetic markers for their 'smellability'. The authors explore how we can use this relationship to infer the smelling habits of sabre toothed cats and giant armadillos, and to reconstruct the evolutionary origins of whales. Get sniffing!
This week's paper is "The olfactory bulb endocast as a proxy for mammalian olfaction" by Quentin Martnez and colleagues published in PNAS in December 2025 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2510575122 We also briefing mention another paper about Cambrian critters in the Ediacaran by Li et al https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu2291
The First Fossil Puke: What It Reveals About Permian Predators
Fossilised vomit can provide direct, yet disgusting, evidence of past ecosystems and interactions between long extinct organisms. This week we take a look at "the earliest terrestrial regurgitalite" from the …
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Fossilised vomit can provide direct, yet disgusting, evidence of past ecosystems and interactions between long extinct organisms. This week we take a look at "the earliest terrestrial regurgitalite" from the early Permian of Germany. This prehistoric puke helps us to reconstruct who was eating what, including the Dimetrodon, the famous sail-backed synapsid.
This week's paper is "Early Permian terrestrial apex predator regurgitalite indicates opportunistic feeding behaviour" by Arnaud Rebillard and colleagues, published in Scientific Reports in February 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02929-8
Another 'paper' we mention is "Unusual Arrangement of Bones at Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada" by Mark McMenamin published in 21st Century Science & Technology in 2012 (no doi). Another that we mention but couldn't remember the title of was "Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory" by Arjun Mann and colleagues https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02929-8
Wide screen art by Sophie Fernandez.
How to get a Species of Human Named after you [Preview]
Getting a fossil species named after you is an unsual way to acheive quasi immortality, especially so for a species of human. In this preview of our second bonus episode we take a look at the weird, and often …
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Getting a fossil species named after you is an unsual way to acheive quasi immortality, especially so for a species of human. In this preview of our second bonus episode we take a look at the weird, and often tragic lives of 5 people who have given their names to species of fossil humans, ranging from mad Austro-Hungarian aristrocrats to rampant imperialists and German pastors. Along the way we ask if we can learn some lessons from this ecletic bunch, and explore the fascinating new science revealing the face of human ancestors.
The full episode is available via our Patreon.
The paper tangentially discussed this week is "Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin cranium" by Qiaomei Fu and colleagues published in Cell in July 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.05.040.
Wide screen art by Australian Museum.
Fossil Fails: Weird ideas about how and when Mammoths were "Snuffed Out"
How and when did mammoths go extinct? This week we take a look at two bizarre mammoth related "fossil fails". The first is some unexpected results from from the "adopt-a-mammoth" scheme, a fascinating citizen …
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How and when did mammoths go extinct? This week we take a look at two bizarre mammoth related "fossil fails". The first is some unexpected results from from the "adopt-a-mammoth" scheme, a fascinating citizen science project trying to find the youngest mammoth fossil to date their extinction. In the second, we take some time to consider the most bizarre hypothesis of mammoth extinction yet: did they sneeze themselves to death as a result of horrible allergies and then get "snuffed out"? Get your skepticism at the ready. The papers we discuss this week are "Adopted mammoths from Alaska turn out to be a whale's tale" by Matthew Wooller and colleagues published in the Journal of Quaternary Science in December 2025 https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70040 and "Sense of smell reduction as factor for mammoth's and other mammals extinction" by Gleb Zilberstein and colleagues published in Earth History and Biodiversity in September 2024 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hisbio.2024.100008.
Relevant past episodes of The Fossil Files are #10 "Fossil Fails: A Precambrian beehive and dinosaurs on the moon" and #3 "Is de-extinction a scam?".
Wide screen art by James Havens.
How to become a palaeontologist [Preview]
How and when and why do you become a palaeontologist? Biology, Geology, something else? Childhood, undergraduate, PhD? Susie and Rob discuss the different routes and offer their advice and experiences. This is …
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How and when and why do you become a palaeontologist? Biology, Geology, something else? Childhood, undergraduate, PhD? Susie and Rob discuss the different routes and offer their advice and experiences. This is a preview of our first bonus episode. To hear the rest of the episode, support us on our Patreon https://patreon.com/FossilFiles
25. A dinosaur covered in porcupine spines & the earliest fossil cloaca
The idea that dinosaurs were all scaley beasts got a massive challenge in 2000s when a variety of feather-like structures were found in fossils in China and other places. An even greater diversity of weird …
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The idea that dinosaurs were all scaley beasts got a massive challenge in 2000s when a variety of feather-like structures were found in fossils in China and other places. An even greater diversity of weird coverings have been found since then, most recently an iguanodontian covered in spines. This week we take a look at the porcupine looking Haolong dongi and what this means for dinosaur evolution. We also take a look some amazing trace fossils from the Permian of Germany, so detailed they even show the scales of an early reptile, including its cloaca. That's right, an improbable fossil butthole. Two tales of suprising scales.
This week's papers are "Cellular-level preservation of cutaneous spikes in an Early Cretaceous iguanodontian dinosaur" by Jiandong Huang and colleagues published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in February 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02960-9 and "The earliest reptile body impressions with scaly skin" by Lorenzo Marchetti and colleagues published in Current Biology in March 2026.
Wide screen artwork by Fabio Manucci.
24. How and when did animals first appear? Extraordinary new fossils from China
What (and when) is an animal? They are thought to have first arrived about 500 million years ago and immediately underwent an explosive diversifcation at the beginning of the Cambrian. When and how this …
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What (and when) is an animal? They are thought to have first arrived about 500 million years ago and immediately underwent an explosive diversifcation at the beginning of the Cambrian. When and how this important event took place has always been hard evolutionary problem to solve: fossils with the necessary preservation of soft-tissues are rare and limited. Two finds from China blow open new windows into this episode.
The first is a new site from just before the Cambrian. It yields all sorts of typical Ediacaran weirdos, but preserved in a way that we don't usually get to see them. This not only sheds new light on what was going on before the Cambrian, but also means we can begin to look at the origin of animals in a new way.
The second is a new site from 27 million years after Cambrian began. The quality and diversity of the new fossil finds is massive, so much so that it could be considered a new "Burgess Shale", the archetypal and famous Cambrian deposit with exceptional preservation.
In a final after-thought, we take a look at sponges and their evolutionary relationships. A new phylogeny helps us to understand why we have such a limited fossil record of early animals: they were likely completely squishy and devoid of a skeleton.
Together a more complete picture of our distant animal origins is emerging and how palaeontology can help us, even through the limited windows that we have.
The first paper is "The terminal Ediacaran Tongshan Lagerstätte from South China" by Jin-bo Hou and colleagues published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in November 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65176-2
The second paper is "A Cambrian soft-bodied biota after the first Phanerozoic mass extinction" by Han Zeng and colleagues published in Nature in Janaury 2026 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10030-0
The final paper is "Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history" by Maria Eleonora Rossi and colleagues published in Science Advances in January 2026 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx1754
Wide screen art by Dinghua Yang.
23. Squishy fishies and horned Hungarian dinosaurs: Fossils hidden in plain sight
Sometimes the answer to palaeontological mysteries can actually be right in front of our faces, if only we know how, or where, to look. This week we take a look a two cases by the Fossils Files' own Susie, Rob …
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Sometimes the answer to palaeontological mysteries can actually be right in front of our faces, if only we know how, or where, to look. This week we take a look a two cases by the Fossils Files' own Susie, Rob and Jane. Firstly, we reveal how the eyes and skeletons of early vertebrates were right in front of us, hidden in Silurian Scottish fish fossils, but only observable when we applied high powered X-ray analysis to them. Secondly, we look at the mystery of the missing European ceratopsian dinosaurs. Turns out these horned dinosaurs were there all along after a new discovery from the Cretaceous of Hungary shook up the family tree.
So this week the Fossil Files gets a bit self-involved as we discuss about our own research. The first paper was by Jane Reeves (behind the scenes contributor to The Fossil Files), with Rob Sansom and colleauges in Manchester and California, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in January 2026 "Early vertebrate biomineralization and eye structure determined by synchrotron X-ray analyses of Silurian jawless fish" https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2248
The second paper was by Susie Maidment, Richad Butler, Steve Brusatte, Luke Meade, and colleauges in Hungary, Germany and Romania published in Nature in January 2026 "A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe" https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09897-w
Another paper we mention when talking about fossil fish came out the same week of Jane's paper in Nature by Xiangton Lei and colleagues published in Nature in January 2026 "Four camera-type eyes in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Period" https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09966-0
Wide screen art by Matt Dempsey.
22. The dawn of dangerous seas in the Triassic
Life nearly died 252 million years ago in a mass extinction at the end of the Permian. It was long thought that it took 10s of millions of years into the Triassic for life to recover and get back to a 'new …
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Life nearly died 252 million years ago in a mass extinction at the end of the Permian. It was long thought that it took 10s of millions of years into the Triassic for life to recover and get back to a 'new normal'. That was until a new and very muddy fossil site from the high Arctic revealed a staggering diversity of predators and tetrapods in the earliest Triassic seas. This week we take a look at the new findings and its implications for life's ability to recover from major extinctions.
This week's paper is "Earliest oceanic tetrapod ecosystem reveals rapid complexification of Triassic marine communities" by Aubrey Roberts, published in Science in November 2025 DOI: 10.1126/science.adx739
An accessible summary can be found here.
You can see lots of nice pictures and get some extra context from some slides by Jørn Hurum here
Wide screen art by Robert Back.
21. Lead Poisoned Apes and Our Human Origins
Lead is a well known pollutant affecting human health over the course of our urbanisation and industrialisation. But what about before this? Analysis of a range of fossil hominid teeth from the Pleistocene …
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Lead is a well known pollutant affecting human health over the course of our urbanisation and industrialisation. But what about before this? Analysis of a range of fossil hominid teeth from the Pleistocene reveals that lead poisoning might have been a ubiquitious part of our deep evolutionary history. Furthermore, lab experiments looking at the effect of lead exposure on human and neanderthal brain development reveals the interplay between this pollutant and 'the language gene' (FOXP2). Together, this suggests that the development of language, socialisation and ultimate evolutionary success of humans might be related to our ability to overcome lead poisoning.
This week's paper is "Impact of intermittent lead exposure on hominid brain evolution" by Renaud Joannes-Boyau and colleagues published in Science Advances, October 2025. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adr1524
Wide screen art by Mark Witton
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