{"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":"Were giant super intelligent octopuses the top predators of the Cretaceous?","slug":"were-giant-super-intelligent-octopuses-the-top-predators-of-the-cretaceous","published_at":"2026-05-26T01:54:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611/were-giant-super-intelligent-octopuses-the-top-predators-of-the-cretaceous","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-fossil-files-7375611","url":"https://a94020de-22e2-432b-af22-019fdb3026ee.libsyn.com/were-giant-super-intelligent-octopuses-the-top-predators-of-the-cretaceous","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/a94020de-22e2-432b-af22-019fdb3026ee/Episode_32_giant_octopus_medium_.m4a?dest-id=5062010","summary":"Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended this with the suggestion that the \"top dog\" was not any vertebrate, but instead giant octopuses that were far larger than any invertebrates alive today. This has generated a lot of Kraken related headlines (and social media posts), but is everything as it seems? This week Susie and Rob take a look at these claims and ask: were super intelligent giganto-octopuses the top predators in Cretaceous? Get your salt shaker to hand, because you mind need to take it with a pinch of salt. This weeks paper is \"Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans\" by Shin Ikegami and colleagues published in Science in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aea6285 Another paper mentioned is \"Synchrotron data reveal nautiloid characters in Pohlsepia mazonensis, refuting a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians\" by Thomas Clements and colleagues, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B in April 2026 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2369 Widescreen art by HodariNundu","meta_description":"Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended t…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2680,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-fossil-files-7375611/episodes/were-giant-super-intelligent-octopuses-the-top-predators-of-the-cretaceous/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/were-giant-super-intelligent-octopuses-the-top-predators-of-the-cretaceous.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}