{"podcast":{"title":"The Fossil Files","slug":"the-fossil-files-7375611","podcast_index_feed_id":7375611,"rss_url":"https://feeds.libsyn.com/583670/rss","website_url":"https://sites.libsyn.com/Fossils","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/9/9/f/3/99f352ecbfc60de0d959afa2a1bf1c87/logo4-20250704-h86q14pd0t.jpg","author":"Robert Sansom","episode_count":40,"summary":"In \"The Fossil Files\", a pair of palaeontologists delve into the latest discoveries from the world of palaeontology and seek to bring fossils to back to life. Each episode, Susie and Rob will discuss an interesting new research paper ranging from topics of what dinosaurs ate, how plesiosaurs swam, where we came from, and the science of de-extinction. Whilst doing so, we peek under the hood of how the science of palaeontology is done and how research gets to see the light of day. It is for anybody interested in palaeontology and past life whether that is students, researchers themselves, or simply the fossil-curious - we laugh as we learn, and hope you will too. Episode guide at https://fossils.libsyn.com/ Bonus content at Patreon https://patreon.com/FossilFiles","last_synced_at":"2026-07-21T12:18:38.080077+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611"},"episode":{"title":"How can we reconstruct the sense of smell of extinct organisms?","slug":"how-can-we-reconstruct-the-sense-of-smell-of-extinct-organisms","published_at":"2026-05-05T16:19:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611/how-can-we-reconstruct-the-sense-of-smell-of-extinct-organisms","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611","url":"https://a94020de-22e2-432b-af22-019fdb3026ee.libsyn.com/how-can-we-reconstruct-the-sense-of-smell-of-extinct-organisms","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/a94020de-22e2-432b-af22-019fdb3026ee/Episode_30_mammal_smell.m4a?dest-id=5062010","summary":"Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich insights for modern organisms, but what about extinct organisms? How did they smell and what was their ecology? This week we take an interesting paper that has found evolutionary links between the endocasts of mammal brains and genetic markers for their 'smellability'. The authors explore how we can use this relationship to infer the smelling habits of sabre toothed cats and giant armadillos, and to reconstruct the evolutionary origins of whales. Get sniffing! This week's paper is \"The olfactory bulb endocast as a proxy for mammalian olfaction\" by Quentin Martnez and colleagues published in PNAS in December 2025 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2510575122 We also briefing mention another paper about Cambrian critters in the Ediacaran by Li et al https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu2291","meta_description":"Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2162,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-fossil-files-7375611/episodes/how-can-we-reconstruct-the-sense-of-smell-of-extinct-organisms/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611/how-can-we-reconstruct-the-sense-of-smell-of-extinct-organisms.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}