Podcast 309 - Wet Hot Archosaur Summer Begins

The gang kicks off a summer of archosaurs by talking about crocodyliforms. The first paper describes an early Cenozoic large notosuchian, and the second paper investigates how cryptic species impacts divergence times within the clade. Meanwhile, Curt diagnoses a problem, James tries to "help", and Amanda does not care.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at animals that today most of the time live in water and grab food from the edge of the water and you should never smile at. The first paper a really big one of these animals that lived a long time ago. This animal was found after a really big rock hit the ground and killed most of the big animals. This big animal shows that some of the animals that you should never smile at were able to live through the big rock hitting. The second paper looks at animals you should never smile at today and finds that there are some animals that look the same but are not actually the same animals. This paper uses these animals that look the same but are different and finds that they have been different for a long time. This means that if we want to try and make sure that these animals are safe, we can not just say that animals that look the same are going to do the same things when things change.   References: Bravo, Gonzalo Gabriel, et al. "A new notosuchian crocodyliform from the Early Palaeocene of Patagonia and the survival of a large-bodied terrestrial lineage across the K–Pg mass extinction." Proceedings B 292.2043 (2025): 20241980. Darlim, Gustavo, and Sebastian Höhna. "The effects of cryptic diversity on diversification dynamics analyses in Crocodylia." Proceedings B 292.2043 (2025): 20250091.