Podcast 319 - CSI Crato Formation

The gang discusses two papers that use taphonomic experiments to test hypotheses about the paleo-environmental conditions of the Crato Formation. Meanwhile, Amanda has her daily requirements, James longs for the rack, Curt launched a new podcast concept, and no one on this podcast can keep to a topic for longer than five minutes.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends talk about two papers that look at rocks that come from the same place. This place is a spot where you get a lot of soft things from animals in the rocks which would usually not be able to be in the rocks because they would get broken up and lost. These two papers look at the types of animals we see in these rocks to see if that can tell us about the place where these animals with very soft parts were able to be saved. The first paper looks at small animals with many legs that stick their food with points on their mouth. When these animals die their legs are pulled under them. But in these rocks, the legs are not like that. The people who wrote this paper took some of these animals and put them in water and also water with stuff in it that you put on food and makes food good to eat. They found that the animals in the water with the stuff that makes food good had legs that look like looked like the rocks. This would mean that these animals were in water that had this stuff in it. The second paper looks at other small animals with soft things. These animals need to live in water and would not do well if the water had the stuff in it that the other paper said it did. Some people have said that maybe this means the animals got put in here and did not live in here. So the people who wrote this paper took dead animals and shook them to make it like they were moved to see what happened. They found that they could not have been moved because they break up easy when you try to move them. This means that the water must have had some times when it was just water and some times when the water had lots of stuff in it that makes food good.   References: Downen, Matt R., Paul A. Selden, and Stephen T. Hasiotis. "Spider leg flexure as an indicator for estimating salinity in lacustrine paleoenvironments." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 445 (2016): 115-123. Storari, Arianny P., et al. "Taphonomy of aquatic insects from the Crato Formation Lagerstätte (Aptian, Lower Cretaceous) under an actualistic look." Plos one 20.9 (2025): e0331656.