Palaeo After Dark

The gang discusses two papers that use fossil material to assess the origin of animal groups. The first paper describes a new Early Devonian fish and its implications for the evolution of jaws, and the second paper reassesses the fossil material of turtles (and possible not turtles) to determine where turtles fit on the evolutionary tree of sauropsids. Meanwhile, James invents new flavors, Curt breaks things down, and Amanda sets boundaries.   Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends look at two papers that talk about things showing up for the first time. The first thing to show up for the first time are teeth. Animals with inside hard backs have teeth, but how those teeth first show up are a big question mark. Turns out that teeth first show up as not-teeth and can actually grow over each other and grow in weird ways that today's teeth can't grow in. It also turns out that these early animals with hard backs and mouths that open and close had these sort of teeth and they're pretty much from the same