Palaeo After Dark

The gang discusses two papers that look at live birth in squamates. The first paper is fossil evidence of live birth in an ancient snake species, and the second paper looks at the evolutionary pressures that might drive some lizards towards live birth. Meanwhile, James has advice for reptiles, Curt celebrates a belated “spooky season”, Amanda continues to have extreme face blindness, and we are all haunted by a corrupted PDF.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about animals that have cold blood but also have babies inside of them. The first paper looks at some old animals that have cold blood and no legs that have babies inside of them. These parts of the old animal with babies inside of them might be one of the first times that this has been seen for this group at this time. It raises some interesting questions about how and why these animals that most do not have babies inside of them might change to having babies inside of them. One thought was that maybe this happens when these animals with