Podcast 242 - CT Scan Your Blood Starved Beasts

The gang discusses two papers that analyze exceptional fossils using CT scanning. The first paper looks at an exceptionally preserved vampire squid, and the second paper looks at an exceptionally preserved early mammal. Meanwhile, Amanda follows medical advice, James is a consummate professional, and Curt learns about coleoids in real-time.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends look at two papers that use an important way of looking at things through hard stuff to try and figure out what a lot of older animals actually looked like. The first paper looks at an animal with an arm, and an arm, and an arm, and an arm, and an arm, and an arm, and an arm, and an arm which looks like it could hurt you but really just spends its time eating dead things. There is only one of these animals around today, but this older animal is thought to be a part of this group. By using this way of looking through hard parts, we can say that this old animal is a part of this group. Also, we can see that there are some ways that it is not the same as the living one. It seems that the old animal may have eaten things that were living, which is very different from how the animal around today lives. The second paper looks at an old animal from a group we are a part of that has hair and warm blood. As we have talked about before, figuring out when we have the first of this group of animals is very hard, and lots of changes happen early on that then go back again. This animal gives us some really cool ways to look at some of these changes early on in this group. By using this way of looking through hard parts, they can look inside the head and see the ear parts. Ear parts are an important part of being a part of this group. So seeing how the ear parts have changed is a good way to see how this group is changing over time.   References: Wang, Hai-Bing, et al. "A new mammal from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol Biota and implications for eutherian evolution." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 377.1847 (2022): 20210042. Rowe, Alison J., et al. "Exceptional  soft-tissue preservation of Jurassic Vampyronassa rhodanica provides new  insights on the evolution and palaeoecology of vampyroteuthids." Scientific reports 12.1 (2022): 1-9.