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Speaker 1: All right, welcome to another episode of the Crime PAGs,

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but Bodany doesn't podcast. Today, I have a guest who

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studies a really weird and cool and obscure lineage of

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plants that not many people are familiar with. So Jeff

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Benk everybody, Hello, Hello Jeff, how you doing. Let's talk

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about lycophytes.

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Speaker 2: Hi joy, Great to be on the great to be

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on the podcast. Thanks for biting me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, man, yeah, well you know you're you're a specialist.

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And then a really really cool lineage that uh yeah, man,

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that I'm that I'm always seeing when I'm out in

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the desert, like selaginella, the spike moss is, don't They're

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fucking so weird and so cool. They're all you know

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whenever you see them. Most of the time in the desert.

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They're dry because the desert's dry most of the time.

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But then after they get wet, they come back to life.

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The quote unquote resurrection plant uh selaganella lepidophla that we

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get out here in West Texas. You know, you'll see

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huge mats of it, of individual rosette plants coating the

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limestone rock, and you know, they're all dry and crispy,

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and then they get wet, and I think, what within

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like thirty minutes or an hour they come back to

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life and just regreen and start photosynthesizing and metabolizing again

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or what.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, they kind of go into a bit

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of a cryptobiotic state, so they basically just shut down

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a lot of their functions and basically preserve their organelles

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and their cells when they dry out, so they pretty

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much nearly fully desiccate, but they're basically making sure they

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preserve their functions their cells so they can reboot when

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they're rehydrated. It's absolutely fascinating, and there's tons of research

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going into just how this happens sort of on a

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cellular to basically a microscopic level, because there's I think

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there's a lot of interest in trying to translate these

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sorts of traits into agricultural crops, for trying to figure

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out how people can produce food in places where it

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gets really water is a short edge, right, so there's

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quite a hot area for research right now.

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Speaker 1: I mean, to dry out without dying and just kind

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of go dormant and hang in there, you know, like

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a lichen wood is insane but it's this is not

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the only Well. First off, let's talk about these other

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the more xeric adapted, the drought adapted ones. The Silaganella

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leptofla is you know, a beautiful rosette, you get Celaganella

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gypsy cola down a nuevo laone, which is kind of

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specialized to gypsum, has a different leaf shape. But then

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you get all these other weird ones, like there's one

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in Baja that looks like when you see it and

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it's dry, it's in that you know, Baja Chaparral, northern

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Baja California, it just looks like someone threw out, like

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someone illegally dumped like a dirty, decaying shag carpeting. It's

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just all gray and it's just but it coats the ground.

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I mean, it's acting like a living mulch. And then

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when it gets wet, it comes back to life and

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starts photosynthesizing again. You've got Silaganella arizonica, which is another

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one that you'll see just draped over rocks, you know,

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And a lot of these are really important for the

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germination of other plants like cacti and some shrubs, and

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you know, they just formed this whole plant community that

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it's fucking wild. I remember being in Guanajuato and looking

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at Mammalaria Andersoniana, this rare mammalaria, and it was, you know,

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so many of them were nestled in beds of Silaganella.

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I think it was a sartori but it's just a

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fucking cool ise. So you've got that, you've got the

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drought tolerant ones, the desiccation tolerant ones, but then you've

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got this whole lineage that's evolved for the shady, super

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wet jungle rainforest, et cetera.

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Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, Yeah, So the vast majority of a lot

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of these Selaginella as a genus of Lycophytes or in

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that group, vast majority of them are in these rainforest

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understories throughout the tropics, and they've I mean, they they've

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diversified into so many species. I mean, they're one of

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the most species rich genera of seed free plants in

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the world. You know, if not the uh there's there's

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hundreds and hundreds of species of Slagnella's out there, and

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they're obscure as heck. I mean, they're really being able

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to determine which species you're dealing with for many of

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these these shade living lineages really requires you know, almost

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a lot of training and a lot of looking under

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the microscope for these minute traits on these leaves of

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plants that might look very similar over time. So it's

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it's it's fascinating, and that sort of evolution of those

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sort of xeric dry adapted slaganellas has really occurred many

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times over the span of hundreds of millions of years

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that these plants have been around. They diverged from many

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of these other lycophytes, you know back well, you know,

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hell over three hundred and sixty million years ago we're

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talking probably you know, very early on in the evolution

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of terrestrial ecosystems that you had these what we call

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heterosporus or two types of spore groups of these plants

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just splitting off from all the others.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's really quick. Let's let's let's fill people

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in on what we're talking These are, So these are lycophytes,

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that's a monophyletic clade consisting of the lycopods and the

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Selejianella and the isoetes, the the what's the kind of

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the quill wars, right, so there's like three main groups here,

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and but a lycophyte they reproduced by spores. But they're

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not really a ferm, they're not really a moss. They're

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their own evolutionary lineage, their own group on the terrestrial

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plant family tree. You know, what is it, Lepidodendron common

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in museums, you know that have like a Natural History

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museum's lepidodendron. The scale bark trees are a common fossil

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you'll see there. You know, I'm there's a one for

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one in the Field Museum that you know, I want.

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I wanted my room when I was a kid to

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be done up, and you know, they got like a

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whole diorama and shit, it's like the lipidods. I mean,

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these were some of the largest their modern relatives is

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some of the first large growing terrestrial plants that ever

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grace the surface of the Earth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: They were among the first formers of forests. They were

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in certainly in the first forests back you know, in

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the Devonian period had lycophytes as part of the canopy.

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Some of these what we call lycopods. And what's wild

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is that there's thought that there's different lineages of these

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lycopods that evolved into trees, So most of those tree

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like ones back in the Paleozoic era that make up

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a huge portion of the world's coal today and altered

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the climate when they were growing by sucking up some

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CO two out of the atmosphere and de positive it

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these equatorial coal swamps. They're now still altering our climate

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through their fossilized dead remains into our atmosphere, which is

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just absolutely profound that there's like these plant lineages that

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do this over and over again in different almost reincarnations

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of like this sort of primal primal issue. I mean,

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lycopods nearly destroyed the world about three hundred and sixty

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million years ago by plunging it into a total possible

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snowball Earth that would have been but thankfully that didn't happen.

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I mean, there was volcanism still going on.

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Speaker 1: It was just such a rapid drying and such a rapid,

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such a rapid sequestration of CO two. It just it

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holds so much CO two so quickly, could you know, yeah,

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in terms of geologic time comparatively speaking, that it it

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just it was like an anti greenhouse effect. It just

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really I mean it was that it was that big

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it almost caused an extinction.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and then you know today they there, their

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remains are coming back and they're destroying the world in

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the opposite way now by cooking us. So it's like this,

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it's it's this really weird thing. Just solar energy that

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has been captured in the Earth is being unleashed again

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in a different manifestation. So, like, I think that's sort

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of dynamic about this. This bizarre group of plants has

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always drawn my just my research toward them is that

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there's just they had they've had such a profound impact

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on our planet, and yet they're so obscure, and you know,

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unless you're like actually walking out in habitats and arid lands,

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as you were saying, where you see them and how

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prominent they are ecologically and these amazing habitats, they're not

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the sort of thing that you think about most of

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the time walking through the city or looking you know,

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it's not like you're going to see them coming out

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of most sidewalks in most places.

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Speaker 1: Right right, Well, just so people, just so people know

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what the thing of in picture when we're talking about them.

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So we got three major clades, right, the solaganellas, the Isohetes,

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the quill worts, which you know, like here in Texas

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enchanted rock, which is just a big, you know, pluton

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of granite that's got these ephemeral ponds. There's like an

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Isoetes species up there. It's it's the quill worts they

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call them. Looks like almost like a tiny onion, right.

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And then so you've got the Isoetes, the celaginella, and

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then the truelycopods, right, and so what what would be

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like a good example of a lycopod, because there's some

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that you get in temper regions. I remember being up

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in the up in northern Wisconsin and there was like

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this cool lycopod occurring in these Thuia oxidant tellus swamps.

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So what would be like a good How would you

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describe like one of the lycopodiums or like a podiella

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to people?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so typically I kind of describe them as like

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pipe cleaners on acid. They're basically they're almost like a

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caterpillar like plant in a way. They look almost more

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animal than plant in some manners of how their shapes

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are formed. So they basically a lot of people call

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them depending on the types. There's a lot of them

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are called club mosses and firm mosses, which is one

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of those, of course misnomers that it's like they're not

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mosses and they're nothing close to them, but they have

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basically it's like you took a conifer and you let it,

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set it loose on the ground and let it scramble

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over the ground and spread in this electric green color.

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Many of them at least, and they always branch like

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tuning forks. In some way or another, they dichotomize, and

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those dichotomies will basically create these at least in these

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sorts of lycopods, it'll create these sort of ground running

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runners that'll send up oftentimes some form of an aerial

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shoot that'll have little spore cones that are super durable.

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They're almost like candlesticks. And so yeah, I mean, they

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really are these extremely plastic, rambling, scrambling plants that in

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many cases will be in bright sunlit environments. Though there

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are certainly some like what we call Hoypersia and herpersioids

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as a group, these fermases where they branch like true

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tuning forks, where they're they're literally they have what we

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call equal dichotomies, where every branch branches kind of like

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a whisk burn or a wishbone into two equal branches.

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And so they'll grow oftentimes in tufts in forest understories

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and leafy forest under stories of broadley forests. And then

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in the tropics, the vast majority of those species in

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that family, like a podiac are many of them are

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pendent epiphytes that grow in tropical trees.

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Speaker 1: They look like these green really like a pipe clean

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on acid is really that's a really good way to

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put it. You know, you got like a podium anotonym,

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which you get up there in Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula Michigan,

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even greenland up in the northern latitudes, and then the

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Dominican Republic. You know, I remember seeing some there. I

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remember seeing a shit ton of New Zealand too. Oh

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Lycopodiella is like really weird. And so they look like

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this green pipe cleaner. But then when they're getting ready

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to sporulate, they make this little yellow strobolists that cone

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and then you know, you could tap it and it

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actually sends spores out. But so they that's another weird

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thing we should talk about with the silaganella's and ice

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in the ice oweedies. I guess we'll talk about that later.

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But they're heterosporus, which is, you know, people don't know

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what that means. It's basically male and female sportes. But

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the lycopodiums, though, are homosperous, right, just all the same sports,

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just like ferns and mosses.

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Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, okay, so they are homospers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so super super regardless, super diverse group. And

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it's it's all over you know, hot, humid, cold, and

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high latitude whatever, it's they're everywhere, the lycopodiums.

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Speaker 2: They are, they are, and yeah, there's there's a wide

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range of tolerances as you're saying. I mean they're from

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the Arctic to the tropics. I mean, it's really incredible,

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and it's almost you know, they almost would They certainly

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were in Antarctica before it was glaciated, but they now

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get about as far south as you can get in

233
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Tarotl Fuego. I mean, they're often found in the heats

234
00:13:17,879 --> 00:13:21,559
down there and wind swept areas, and they're right on

235
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the edges of glaciers and it's been that way in

236
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the fossil record too. If you go back about you know,

237
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:30,480
about three hundred sixty million years ago, back to the carboniphoros,

238
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there are lycophytes that seem to be kind of on

239
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the verge of the glacial fields in what used to

240
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be these glaciated poles back then. So they've had they

241
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certainly have this ability, and many of them do tolerate

242
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growing in cooler environments, like I think they're centers of

243
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diversity today are at elevation in the tropics, so in

244
00:13:54,039 --> 00:13:57,840
sort of montane zones, mid elevations of tropical regions of

245
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Central and South America, I think where you get the

246
00:14:01,039 --> 00:14:03,759
most of them. But you know, the highest concentrations in

247
00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:07,320
parts of Southeast Asia and through Africa are going to

248
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be pretty much on mountains, like at mid elevation where

249
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there's a lot of rain.

250
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these are not most of these are. Most

251
00:14:14,519 --> 00:14:17,960
of the Lyca podiums are not desiccation tolerant like solagino.

252
00:14:18,080 --> 00:14:22,519
Speaker 2: It is correct. There are certainly some that have quite

253
00:14:22,559 --> 00:14:25,440
a tolerance and a preference for growing in habitats that

254
00:14:25,960 --> 00:14:28,360
get pretty dry in the summer. So many of the

255
00:14:28,399 --> 00:14:32,720
alpine sorts of club mosses, there's a there's a genus

256
00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:36,480
called die Fasiastrum that are basically called the ground cedars,

257
00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:41,159
and they have almost this plastic like, you know, structures

258
00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:45,399
to their their branches. They they really have these these

259
00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:47,879
leaves that are almost fused to the branch and look

260
00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:50,919
like little scales coming off them. They're absolutely gorgeous and

261
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:54,000
you can see them if you're hiking at elevation, I

262
00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:56,080
mean near where I live here in the Cascades. You

263
00:14:56,120 --> 00:14:59,279
can find them at elevation on ski slopes or you know,

264
00:14:59,480 --> 00:15:01,919
going high up in the alpine sloane. They'll often be

265
00:15:02,080 --> 00:15:07,159
tangled with mats of heats basically any sort of heathers

266
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that live up here, but it'll often be very dry

267
00:15:10,600 --> 00:15:13,960
peat that they'll be growing on in dry clayey substrates

268
00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:16,480
coming out of hill sides, on the sides of trails,

269
00:15:16,559 --> 00:15:20,039
so it's quite a They really like a lot of air,

270
00:15:20,360 --> 00:15:23,039
a lot of air movement. And the wonderful thing about

271
00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:27,320
them too is oftentimes they're they're quite a nice indicator

272
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:31,120
that you're in a habitat that has either I guess

273
00:15:31,519 --> 00:15:34,759
from a human perspective, is pretty pleasant to be in oftentimes,

274
00:15:34,799 --> 00:15:37,879
I mean, minus some of the steamy sort of swamps

275
00:15:37,879 --> 00:15:41,360
where it'll be really hot and really sticky. Many of

276
00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:44,960
them grow in very breezy, you know, mountainous, well lit,

277
00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:48,759
you know, really beautiful habitats that are nice to be

278
00:15:48,919 --> 00:15:51,000
So that's a plus if you're studying them.

279
00:15:51,279 --> 00:15:54,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I saw they phase the ast from scariolsam

280
00:15:54,360 --> 00:15:56,720
in New Zealand on the slope of the side of

281
00:15:56,720 --> 00:16:01,559
a fucking volcano. Like beautiful, beautiful thing was I was sprrelating,

282
00:16:01,679 --> 00:16:03,279
so you can tap it in and all this yellow

283
00:16:03,639 --> 00:16:05,720
these yellow spores would come off. But I mean some

284
00:16:05,799 --> 00:16:07,759
of them really, I mean, no, shit, do look like

285
00:16:08,399 --> 00:16:12,399
cedars like a spinning image for like athuia or a

286
00:16:12,759 --> 00:16:16,000
not a true seedar common name sorry, yeah, athuia, or

287
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:20,360
a juniper or some like capressioid weird conifer. It's so

288
00:16:20,960 --> 00:16:22,320
you know, it's so bizarre.

289
00:16:23,559 --> 00:16:29,080
Speaker 2: It really is. Yeah, it's it's it's really it's it's strange.

290
00:16:29,159 --> 00:16:32,440
The level and the degree of parallel evolution that goes

291
00:16:32,480 --> 00:16:36,279
on in these plants with other plants that are completely

292
00:16:36,360 --> 00:16:39,759
unrelated to them is striking. I mean, they're almost sort

293
00:16:39,799 --> 00:16:43,799
of a a chimera like group of plants. And you know,

294
00:16:43,840 --> 00:16:45,840
and the thing too with them is that they they

295
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:49,279
change so much depending on where they are, like where

296
00:16:49,279 --> 00:16:54,799
they're growing, i e. They they modify their morphology quite

297
00:16:55,240 --> 00:17:01,559
quite significantly depending on what they're doing. So sometimes let's

298
00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:04,640
say they're runners, like on those diapheziastroms, so you're describing

299
00:17:05,039 --> 00:17:06,960
a lot of times they'll be growing on the surface

300
00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:08,920
of the ground, but then they'll just dive underground and

301
00:17:08,920 --> 00:17:11,680
they'll just start branching like hydras, and then they'll just

302
00:17:11,799 --> 00:17:12,359
pop up.

303
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 3: And while they're.

304
00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:18,480
Speaker 2: Underground, basically the leaves change shape to become more oppressed,

305
00:17:18,519 --> 00:17:21,079
and it basically is digging through the ground like a worm.

306
00:17:21,839 --> 00:17:25,680
And then it just like spikes out and re has

307
00:17:25,759 --> 00:17:29,160
this new you know, you know, coupressoid sort of growth

308
00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:32,440
Habit just reinvigorate off of this what would have been

309
00:17:32,519 --> 00:17:37,119
a white stem underground. It's just weird.

310
00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:43,480
Speaker 1: Thelycopods too, the gometophyte like the haploid gamatofy one one

311
00:17:43,680 --> 00:17:47,519
copy of the genome. There micorrhizal too, and a lot

312
00:17:47,519 --> 00:17:48,880
of them like they need a fungus.

313
00:17:50,000 --> 00:17:52,960
Speaker 2: Yes, many of them really do need a fungus. They'll

314
00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:57,799
be some will be micoheterotrophic, so they'll they'll basically parasitize

315
00:17:57,839 --> 00:18:02,279
fungui in a way themselves, kind of like some of

316
00:18:02,079 --> 00:18:06,599
the airicacious fellas that you'll see in some of the forests,

317
00:18:06,599 --> 00:18:08,759
like let's say in Sippy Northwest, a lot of the

318
00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:12,720
irricascious plants are all yeared into trying to hijack basically

319
00:18:12,839 --> 00:18:15,480
nutrients from micro rhyzal communities.

320
00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:20,759
Speaker 1: Like ghost pipe or pine ross. So what's up with that?

321
00:18:20,799 --> 00:18:22,759
How does that? How does that? If so a spore

322
00:18:22,839 --> 00:18:25,400
has to land, I mean, so it's got to have

323
00:18:25,440 --> 00:18:28,200
a rich micro hyzal community in the soil already, which

324
00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:32,559
means it's probably growing in a healthy forest or some

325
00:18:32,599 --> 00:18:35,000
sort of setting where the fungus is already abundant or what.

326
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:39,720
Pretty much it really depends on I think the different

327
00:18:39,759 --> 00:18:43,039
club moss or the fermas species and what its ecological

328
00:18:43,079 --> 00:18:47,680
preferences are. Many of them do grow, I mean, there's

329
00:18:47,720 --> 00:18:49,519
quite a few of them that will grow and just

330
00:18:49,599 --> 00:18:54,839
basically very stable forest understory environments, like we think of

331
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:57,400
these sort of hardwood forest understory.

332
00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:03,240
Speaker 2: Plants in the Northeast, and those those certainly I think

333
00:19:03,279 --> 00:19:07,079
are undergoing that sort of process you describe where the

334
00:19:07,079 --> 00:19:10,519
there's already a really rich microhizal community there and they're

335
00:19:10,559 --> 00:19:13,640
able to tap into that. But there's many of them

336
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:20,920
that are really colonizers of disturbed environments that basically they

337
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:23,839
don't face the same sort of competition. Many of these

338
00:19:23,880 --> 00:19:28,559
are very much stress tolerating plants on one way or another,

339
00:19:29,359 --> 00:19:32,400
and it's it's more it's more difficult for me to

340
00:19:32,519 --> 00:19:34,920
envision what exactly is going on for some of those.

341
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:38,680
There's there's certainly been some work done recently on them.

342
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:42,400
I have less familiarity with with what's going on in

343
00:19:43,000 --> 00:19:46,559
many of these, these stress tolerators that will take basically

344
00:19:46,599 --> 00:19:51,079
these erosional you know, like landslides and hillslopes, where the

345
00:19:51,119 --> 00:19:55,559
substrate is is very much it's it's poor in organic material.

346
00:19:56,319 --> 00:20:00,640
But these gametophytes might take you know, years and years

347
00:20:00,640 --> 00:20:06,480
and years, maybe over a decade sometimes to develop subterraneanly underground.

348
00:20:07,359 --> 00:20:11,640
And not only that, many of these will have compartments

349
00:20:11,839 --> 00:20:15,240
within their structure. They're basically places where they can farm

350
00:20:15,279 --> 00:20:20,480
micaridza I can colonize and basically live inside of parts

351
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,000
of the tissue where they have like I think like

352
00:20:23,079 --> 00:20:26,920
these it's really weird. I mean, if you ever get

353
00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:31,079
a chance, definitely look up like an old school picture

354
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:33,680
or like illustration of a gammunified I mean they look

355
00:20:33,759 --> 00:20:38,759
like these demented carots that are white and I don't know, tumorous,

356
00:20:38,799 --> 00:20:40,599
like they're they're bizarre.

357
00:20:40,200 --> 00:20:42,039
Speaker 1: And some of them can live for that long and

358
00:20:42,079 --> 00:20:43,839
they communified stage like years or what.

359
00:20:44,079 --> 00:20:48,359
Speaker 2: With Zero's sun. Yeah, they're basically almost I mean they're

360
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:52,759
basically almost parasitic at that rate for the early stage

361
00:20:52,759 --> 00:20:56,160
of their life. And that then eventually when they do

362
00:20:56,680 --> 00:20:59,839
are able to be you know, form archagonia, and some

363
00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:04,279
be fertilized subterranean, you knowly by these motile sperm that

364
00:21:04,400 --> 00:21:08,160
swim through groundwater and then they can send up this

365
00:21:08,480 --> 00:21:11,920
their first sporofy and then start running over the grounds

366
00:21:12,039 --> 00:21:14,680
once they you know, protrude out the surface of the ground.

367
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:17,079
It's kind of like kind of like an alien life

368
00:21:17,119 --> 00:21:17,920
form in a way.

369
00:21:18,279 --> 00:21:21,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it? But speaking of stressful environments, there

370
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:24,000
was I remember going to this I forget the name

371
00:21:24,160 --> 00:21:28,359
of it. What was it. Was it Taupo or somewhere.

372
00:21:28,359 --> 00:21:30,119
It was somewhere in New Zealand, and you know, there

373
00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:35,200
were fumaroles everywhere and the ground was smoking, steaming. It

374
00:21:35,240 --> 00:21:37,960
was basically you know the crust is extremely thin right there.

375
00:21:38,039 --> 00:21:42,079
There's this huge body of of lava basically beneath the surface,

376
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:45,480
and the ground's really toxic in a lot of places

377
00:21:45,519 --> 00:21:49,960
too because of all these gases being emitted. But there

378
00:21:50,039 --> 00:21:53,559
was there were like four different lycopod species at this

379
00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:56,720
site growing up through the trees, some getting six feet tall,

380
00:21:56,799 --> 00:22:00,279
looking like little yellow ropes dangling down. It was so weird, man,

381
00:22:00,319 --> 00:22:02,000
it was so you know, smelled like sulfur. The whole

382
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:03,000
place smelled like a fart.

383
00:22:03,039 --> 00:22:03,200
Speaker 3: You know.

384
00:22:03,759 --> 00:22:06,079
Speaker 1: It was really and they were thriving it. They loved it. It

385
00:22:06,079 --> 00:22:10,680
was them and then a couple very acid tolerant members

386
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:14,839
of Mrtaesi and yeah, I think that I don't even

387
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,359
think there was and some maybe some apacrids, you know,

388
00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:21,880
the airicacious things. Yeah, yeah, but it was just the

389
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:23,799
often crazy landscape.

390
00:22:23,799 --> 00:22:23,920
Speaker 3: Man.

391
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:25,480
Speaker 1: They were thriving. They were like happy as a pig,

392
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:26,039
and shit.

393
00:22:26,920 --> 00:22:29,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, they love it. I mean, there's there's quite a

394
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:32,240
number of them that, you know, and and many of

395
00:22:32,279 --> 00:22:36,480
them will tolerate just general low nutrient habitats where there's

396
00:22:36,559 --> 00:22:38,720
just not a lot of nitrogen in the soil. There's

397
00:22:38,759 --> 00:22:42,319
maybe not a lot of phosphorous and they'll just you know,

398
00:22:42,359 --> 00:22:44,160
they'll they'll be fine there as long as they have

399
00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:47,119
persistent moisture and they don't fully dry out. A lot

400
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:50,640
of those those club mosses and infirmosses can do okay.

401
00:22:51,559 --> 00:22:55,480
But yeah, there's definitely some that are like extremophiles on

402
00:22:55,519 --> 00:22:58,839
their own, you know, their own class. I mean, the

403
00:22:58,839 --> 00:23:02,559
ones that grow around humerals. One of the really prominent

404
00:23:02,559 --> 00:23:06,400
ones that you'll see is oftentimes they call them nodding

405
00:23:06,559 --> 00:23:10,160
club moss or it's one of these sort of stag

406
00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:13,720
horning horn like plants, but it'll send up these tree

407
00:23:13,960 --> 00:23:19,440
like shoots off of this arcing, arcing runner or stolen

408
00:23:20,359 --> 00:23:23,680
and they will grow, yeah, as you said, right onto,

409
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:27,759
and into the edges and the lips of fumoral vents,

410
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,440
and they'll grow in superheated soil. I was, I was

411
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:34,680
doing fuel work for his National Geographic Project years ago,

412
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:37,880
and I got to this fumeral vent in Hawaii and

413
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:42,480
looked down into it and there were what this this

414
00:23:42,559 --> 00:23:46,039
genus of plants pel Inhey, which was formerly called like Podeela,

415
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:49,119
but it's been split off into its own group, and

416
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:55,200
they are these like beautiful, beautiful pendant Christmas tree, like, uh,

417
00:23:55,720 --> 00:23:59,039
soorts of shoots coming off of these right, these these

418
00:23:59,079 --> 00:24:02,279
stolens that are king down five six feet hanging into

419
00:24:02,279 --> 00:24:07,480
a fumoral bent that's fully green, not charred green. And

420
00:24:07,519 --> 00:24:12,440
then the entire lawn around them was germinating sporophytes coming

421
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:16,319
out of imautophytes that were in the superheated clay inside

422
00:24:16,319 --> 00:24:20,119
the lip of the fumeral bent. That just like, what

423
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,519
are you doing? I thought this was cyanobacteria, but nope, nope,

424
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:26,880
is photosynthetic mutophytes. Do you think it probably needs that?

425
00:24:27,559 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 1: You probably you think it probably needs those fucked up conditions,

426
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:31,599
Like do you think you could grow it like in

427
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:34,319
a lab like and you need that and probably needs

428
00:24:34,319 --> 00:24:38,160
that that extreme condition, that soil temperature.

429
00:24:37,599 --> 00:24:42,160
Speaker 2: And it's a really good question. Actually, it turns out

430
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:44,680
that a lot of these plants, I mean, they'll tolerate

431
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:47,559
those conditions, but if you just find a lot of

432
00:24:47,559 --> 00:24:50,440
times if you give them pretty mild conditions, so like

433
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:52,400
those same ones, Yeah, you can just grow them an

434
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,200
augur in a lab under a grow light basically after

435
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,400
you you've played them, and they'll they'll germinate and they'll

436
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:01,720
grow them. Certain Pacific the auger and beaches.

437
00:25:01,759 --> 00:25:02,079
Speaker 3: Fine.

438
00:25:02,319 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're tolerant be fine. Yeah, so they're like

439
00:25:05,519 --> 00:25:08,640
they're tolerant, they're not obligate like serpentine endemics. There are

440
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,960
a lot of like limestone and endemics, et cetera. Yeah, Like, okay,

441
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:15,720
what is that exact? Before we move on from lycopods,

442
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,119
what's your what's your favorite species? Like a couple of

443
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:22,759
like just the weirdest, the coolest looking whatever.

444
00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 2: I think one of one of them that I can

445
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:30,200
think of offhand is, uh, there's one that grows in

446
00:25:30,319 --> 00:25:31,400
the paramo of.

447
00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:35,039
Speaker 3: Down Ecuador, Peru.

448
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:37,319
Speaker 1: I know it's gonna be. I know it's going to be.

449
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 3: It's weird.

450
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:40,519
Speaker 1: Everything there is cool.

451
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 2: There's so many cool paramo ones. But I would say

452
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:48,680
that one of my my personal favorites is a there's

453
00:25:49,039 --> 00:25:53,680
a like like a podium that is related to basically

454
00:25:53,799 --> 00:25:58,599
the like punk bottom common, very common, widespread species this

455
00:25:59,559 --> 00:26:03,400
this space lineage down there. This species is called I

456
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:07,880
think it's like I'm invested, if I'm remembering correctly, do

457
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:11,359
that are vested? But I think it's based on the

458
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:14,680
root of the end of lico podium and it is

459
00:26:15,559 --> 00:26:18,759
as its name sort of suggests it is silver, is

460
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:24,079
fully white, reflective metallic silver. And it looks like.

461
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it, what the fuck? What the what

462
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:29,240
the fuck?

463
00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:29,519
Speaker 2: Is that?

464
00:26:29,839 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 1: Is that just hair?

465
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:32,039
Speaker 2: It's incredible?

466
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: Is that just hair? Is it just tricombes or what

467
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:34,480
is it?

468
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it basically is kind of like they have

469
00:26:39,799 --> 00:26:43,400
I think they have reflected basically, the the epidermis of

470
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:46,400
the plant probably reflects a lot of it, So they

471
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:49,359
have It must be how the chloroplasts are arranged or

472
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:53,279
something like that. But they certainly have really prominent hairtips

473
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:56,640
that overlap, and those hair tips on the tips of

474
00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:01,319
each owl shaped or these long linear leaves will overlap

475
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:04,000
in this sort of a dense helss.

476
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:07,079
Speaker 1: It looks like it's made out of aluminum. Some of

477
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,079
these look like they're made out of aluminum. Like they're

478
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:12,559
like aluminum pipe cleaners, These eight inch long aluminum pipe

479
00:27:12,599 --> 00:27:15,200
cleaners just coming out of this this cliff wall.

480
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 2: The soil they're in incredible, and they're stuff. They're super stuff.

481
00:27:20,039 --> 00:27:25,680
They're kind of they're very very reinforced. They've got probably

482
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:29,200
a lot of silicon in them, so like they're sometimes

483
00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:31,160
they're hard, like with a pair of prunters are hard

484
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,960
to clip because they're they're kind of bambooi in that way,

485
00:27:35,279 --> 00:27:39,279
because they'll take up silicon from the soil water, and

486
00:27:39,319 --> 00:27:41,880
then they'll deposit their tissues in the form of hytaliths,

487
00:27:42,599 --> 00:27:45,279
and so you know, they have this sort of mineral exo.

488
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,039
Speaker 1: So what what is the what? So what is the

489
00:27:47,079 --> 00:27:49,720
because equiscetum will do that too. Some of the equis

490
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:51,880
which is not related to this. And by the way,

491
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:54,839
if anyone else look this up, like a podium vestidum

492
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:57,839
v E S t I d U M from the

493
00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:02,799
Peramo the high elevation equatorial latitudes of Ecuador as things

494
00:28:02,839 --> 00:28:05,359
fucking would what is it? Why would some plants do that,

495
00:28:05,599 --> 00:28:08,279
you know, take up silica? Is it just protection or what?

496
00:28:09,559 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 2: It's a lot of different reasons that silicon can be

497
00:28:12,319 --> 00:28:15,000
can be taken up by plants, and and different plants

498
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:17,839
use it for different reasons and are and have different

499
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,720
differing abilities to take up silica. So some some ranges

500
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:25,039
of plants, like you mentioned, the horsetails are a famous example.

501
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:30,640
I mean, they really use silica for probably for deterring

502
00:28:30,759 --> 00:28:34,039
herbivores because it's kind of like eating sandpaper. I mean,

503
00:28:34,079 --> 00:28:36,200
it grinds down your teeth. It's not it's not really

504
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:41,359
a great experience. Yeah, but the other you know, there's

505
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:44,799
other reasons too. I mean, silica can also help deter

506
00:28:45,559 --> 00:28:48,759
pathogens too. It can be can really help strengthen and

507
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:53,759
reinforce the cells a little bit if it's there, and

508
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:57,799
so you'll have defensive you'll have structural use of silica,

509
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:02,240
and it'll have benefits against warding off disease sometimes like

510
00:29:02,319 --> 00:29:06,759
bumble attack, depending on where they're storing silicon in their

511
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:08,160
in their cells.

512
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, you probably out there probably need a whole other

513
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:14,920
suite of enzymes to break down silica versus just regular carbon,

514
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:17,039
right right.

515
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 2: So it's so it's interesting because sometimes in large scale horticulture,

516
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,720
crops will be dosed with with silicon dissolve basically silica,

517
00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:30,359
which is really difficult because it binds so easily with

518
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:34,000
other sorts of elements and and so you have to

519
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,599
you're going to dose a plant with silicon in a pot,

520
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:38,799
which you can do for some plants. That actually is

521
00:29:38,839 --> 00:29:41,640
a benefit of other plants. Well, don't try it on

522
00:29:41,759 --> 00:29:44,160
like sphagn of moss. That that was a disaster. You

523
00:29:44,279 --> 00:29:49,599
try that other sorts of plants, they'll actually really, they'll

524
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:52,519
they'll perk up and they'll create a much stronger sort

525
00:29:52,559 --> 00:29:56,680
of structure, so they'll they'll basically strengthen up and stiffen up.

526
00:29:56,799 --> 00:30:00,319
And that sometimes is used when when you're getting ready

527
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:04,279
to go into winter. For some crops and greenhouses. Silicon

528
00:30:04,359 --> 00:30:05,599
can sometimes have benefits.

529
00:30:05,680 --> 00:30:08,559
Speaker 1: But just keep it away from the spagnum. Don't give

530
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:14,160
don't get silicon spagnum, right the public service announcement.

531
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, keep it away from your bogs, your your

532
00:30:18,039 --> 00:30:20,640
local bog. Keep your silicon away from there. Keep it

533
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:21,079
to yourself.

534
00:30:21,359 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: This So what do you think this? What was the

535
00:30:23,319 --> 00:30:26,519
adaptive benefit in this species, like a podium bestetum of of.

536
00:30:26,640 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 2: This silver, well in the silver and the silver itself

537
00:30:30,799 --> 00:30:35,000
is is so is independent of it of silica being

538
00:30:35,079 --> 00:30:40,119
taken up, but that silver reflectance, I mean, the main

539
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:42,880
thought would be that whether it's adaptive or what we

540
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,519
call xaptive, where something evolved for a reason long long

541
00:30:47,559 --> 00:30:50,680
ago that may not be a parent today anymore, but

542
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,519
has become co opted for something today. Probably the best

543
00:30:55,839 --> 00:30:58,279
reason I can think of would be UV reflectants on

544
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:03,359
these guys. Yeah right, so very high elevation, yeah, sunlit

545
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:07,160
sort of as you saw disturbed cliff faces, you know,

546
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:10,440
embankments of trails and mountain sides.

547
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: So is that silver? Is that like a scale or

548
00:31:13,359 --> 00:31:16,079
is it the like a trichome or how what is

549
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:18,119
it exactly? I can't really see from the photos I'm

550
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:18,519
looking at.

551
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:21,839
Speaker 2: I should check really quick. I actually grow it, let

552
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:27,039
me find it. I've got a little bit of this going.

553
00:31:27,279 --> 00:31:29,400
If I were to look at it, I remember correctly.

554
00:31:31,319 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: God, it looks so remarkable now.

555
00:31:34,279 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, So most of what's going on is on the plant.

556
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:42,119
It's it's basically extensions to the margin of the leaf.

557
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:47,160
So basically the leaf margin extends out almost like a wing,

558
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:53,480
and is just this sort of paper like translucent sort

559
00:31:53,519 --> 00:31:55,039
of extension.

560
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:57,079
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to say, like a papery wing.

561
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,759
Or you're looking at like a physical specimen right now?

562
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, looking at it.

563
00:32:03,079 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: You can't get much better than that. That's perfect.

564
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was just Yeah, it's hard for me

565
00:32:08,519 --> 00:32:10,480
to remember, and on the pictures it's hard to sort

566
00:32:10,519 --> 00:32:12,759
of see what's going on because it's it's such a

567
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:14,160
fine minute detail.

568
00:32:14,359 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: Are you at your house or at the university now

569
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:17,119
or what?

570
00:32:18,079 --> 00:32:18,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not my house.

571
00:32:22,359 --> 00:32:24,279
Speaker 1: I bet you've got a lot of nice stuff. Man,

572
00:32:24,359 --> 00:32:27,640
Holy shit, it's like going to visit Martin Grantham, and

573
00:32:27,799 --> 00:32:30,000
it's always fun going to the house. He's got something

574
00:32:30,039 --> 00:32:33,799
new going on, some other weird, rare ass species of

575
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:35,200
plant from god knows where.

576
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, Martin's place is a treat and I've.

577
00:32:39,559 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 3: Not gotten to see.

578
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:44,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, the stuff he's gotten northern California, but but down

579
00:32:44,279 --> 00:32:47,000
at least, visiting where he's at over in the Bay

580
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:48,079
is amazing.

581
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:51,519
Speaker 1: Yeah. God, this thing is, man, this is got that habitat.

582
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,680
I bet there's so much other cool shit grown around

583
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,400
it too. There it is apparently so this is really

584
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,119
wet too, right, really wet but high.

585
00:33:00,599 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 2: Very wet, but very well. And it kind of depends too.

586
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:07,880
Sometimes you'll you'll find these sorts of plants that's sort

587
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:10,000
of the margin or the eco tone of where you

588
00:33:10,119 --> 00:33:13,359
get dry, like really dry, so there'll be a lot

589
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:16,400
of fog up there. But sometimes they'll be right near,

590
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:18,720
right at the edge of where you're getting into almost

591
00:33:18,799 --> 00:33:21,480
like this highland desert or grassland.

592
00:33:22,119 --> 00:33:24,839
Speaker 1: It look like thick forest. Here it looks like chaperone,

593
00:33:25,039 --> 00:33:27,160
kind of like a low growing plant community.

594
00:33:27,279 --> 00:33:32,799
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. So the at least people I've talked to

595
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,960
and colleagues who have been doing fieldwork down there, you know,

596
00:33:36,039 --> 00:33:38,160
and some of the people I grow them for basically

597
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,799
are like, yeah, this was this was found and originally

598
00:33:40,799 --> 00:33:43,920
collected somewhere where there was actually pretty paradoxically really dry,

599
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:48,480
but it was you know, cold, and they often had clouds,

600
00:33:48,519 --> 00:33:51,400
and it is very humid, probably cold and humid, which

601
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,559
is a fun combo. And yet these plants can just

602
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:58,519
hang on if it's just if they're not fully desiccated,

603
00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:03,160
their roots are doing a k many times once they're acclimatized.

604
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:06,519
I mean, they're they're pretty tough, but it's just they

605
00:34:06,599 --> 00:34:09,320
don't they often sort of need a lot of consistency

606
00:34:09,639 --> 00:34:12,280
in their habitat environmentally.

607
00:34:12,599 --> 00:34:15,920
Speaker 1: So okay, so this is so this is uh, we

608
00:34:16,039 --> 00:34:19,679
got this this lycopod. What is one more species in

609
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:21,559
this group before we move on from it? You want

610
00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:22,159
to recommend?

611
00:34:23,679 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's I'm trying to think there's there's certainly

612
00:34:31,119 --> 00:34:34,239
yeah in that group. I mean another one that's that's

613
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:41,679
really amazing, that grows really huge, uh that I'm working

614
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:46,800
with currently is uh a flag mary or as Dalhousianus,

615
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:51,079
which is the possibly one of the most endangered of

616
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,199
those sort of lycopods. It's it's one of it's the

617
00:34:55,440 --> 00:35:03,320
largest at least epiphytic Thupersia type relative, and it's gigantic.

618
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:10,679
It's yeah, it's these are amazing plants.

619
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:11,679
Speaker 1: Where is this native?

620
00:35:13,119 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 2: These These range from Australia up through Fiji into parts

621
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:25,280
of uh basically islands in Southeast Asia, So it's it's

622
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,159
kind of it has a wide distribution going up into

623
00:35:28,199 --> 00:35:33,039
Malaysia to down through be Guinea, Australia, Fiji, but it

624
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:36,000
is really uncommon across its entire range.

625
00:35:36,559 --> 00:35:40,239
Speaker 1: Dell d A l h o U s i e

626
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:42,719
A n u s if anybody wants to look it up.

627
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:46,400
Fled mary ers p h l e g m A

628
00:35:46,639 --> 00:35:49,039
r i U r u S. Yeah. That man, it's

629
00:35:49,119 --> 00:35:52,840
like again it's like the silvery, glaucous blue, but it's

630
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:57,039
like these pendent ropes of giant pipe cleaners dangling down

631
00:35:57,119 --> 00:35:58,519
six feet from a tree canopy.

632
00:35:59,679 --> 00:36:02,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's some monster ones out there. I mean,

633
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,239
I've heard rumors of them being able to get tassels

634
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:09,000
that will grow like twenty feet long or something like that.

635
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:10,119
Speaker 1: That's crazy.

636
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:13,559
Speaker 2: And there you know, they'll be the stem itself is

637
00:36:13,599 --> 00:36:17,880
about you know, maybe a centimeter in diameter, which when

638
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:22,119
you have these three almost four centimeter long leaves coming off,

639
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,960
it makes it. It's it's a very robust plant. They're

640
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:31,199
basically like Aracaria are kana like branches in width in

641
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:35,039
that way. But it's as you said, striking silver blue.

642
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,360
I mean, I have I have definitely a soft spot

643
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:40,119
for a lot of like glaucous plants. I collect mansonitos

644
00:36:40,119 --> 00:36:41,000
and things like that at home.

645
00:36:41,159 --> 00:36:41,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, just.

646
00:36:44,199 --> 00:36:47,440
Speaker 2: They're great. It's a beautiful. Yeah, it's really a nice

647
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,519
but it's also such a cool and neat way to

648
00:36:51,599 --> 00:36:55,360
see how how plants will defend themselves from sun and heat,

649
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,559
you know, which, which figures into some of the research

650
00:36:59,599 --> 00:37:02,800
of work done as well. But yeah, the Housianus is

651
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,360
an amazing plant. It's basically, I believe, diverges from the

652
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:10,639
other flag mariurus like it's its own group and it's

653
00:37:10,679 --> 00:37:13,760
the last surviving member I think of it's it's lineage.

654
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:20,400
But it is also greatly imperiled. So they're on the brink.

655
00:37:20,559 --> 00:37:22,280
I mean, they're pretty much, I feel like, on the

656
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:24,480
brink of extinction in a way because they don't they

657
00:37:24,519 --> 00:37:29,239
don't grow fast and they're extremely difficult to cultivate. So

658
00:37:31,199 --> 00:37:34,079
since there's such a gigantic and beautiful plant, they have

659
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:38,840
been prized by plant collectors and so they get ripped

660
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,039
out of the wild and usually die when people try

661
00:37:42,039 --> 00:37:45,079
and grow them. So but once you've you've taken it

662
00:37:45,159 --> 00:37:48,400
out of the tree, I mean again, those spores need

663
00:37:48,559 --> 00:37:51,760
to germinate. If it does spread spore, it will need

664
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,119
to land somewhere that's ideal, have the right sort of

665
00:37:54,159 --> 00:37:58,440
micrhysals ambiance, and it'll take ages to get through the

666
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:01,559
gametophyte stage to generate a parent plant.

667
00:38:01,679 --> 00:38:03,719
Speaker 1: So the gomatify of these is really long. It's not

668
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:05,639
you know, for like anyone listening, doesn't you know, like

669
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,079
your ferns, Well, everything's got to commutify it. But like

670
00:38:08,119 --> 00:38:10,039
on a fern gomatify it looks like a little piece

671
00:38:10,119 --> 00:38:14,280
of lettuce, maybe a centimeter maybe less, and it's not

672
00:38:14,639 --> 00:38:17,559
you know, doesn't last that long before it turns into

673
00:38:17,599 --> 00:38:20,159
a SPORTI fight. But for some of these lycopods, the

674
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,679
gamto fyt that haploid single copy of the genome stage

675
00:38:24,079 --> 00:38:28,320
can last for years, just dependent on micae riise. Not

676
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:33,679
even photosynthesizing just basically parasitizing fung it and the fact

677
00:38:33,679 --> 00:38:35,639
that they need Michael rise too. I mean that already

678
00:38:35,639 --> 00:38:39,440
should tell you it's gonna need like a healthy plant community.

679
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:42,679
It's it's not. It's not like a disturbance species something

680
00:38:42,800 --> 00:38:46,119
like this. You know, it's needs intact forests, right, I

681
00:38:46,199 --> 00:38:50,159
mean this is queen I see Queensland through New Guinea

682
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:53,880
probably up into yeah, so basically Australasia. So what I

683
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:56,880
mean that that's wild too? So is there Michael riise Like,

684
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,440
it's an epiphyte on the is there Michael riiseo rizle

685
00:39:00,519 --> 00:39:03,840
fungus on some of the plants that it's growing on,

686
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:05,280
like the tree bark that it's growing on.

687
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:09,480
Speaker 2: What I think? So, so a lot of these will

688
00:39:09,519 --> 00:39:12,960
basically live in what are termed almost like epiphytic like

689
00:39:13,079 --> 00:39:17,440
peat deposits. So they're basically like peat islands up in

690
00:39:17,519 --> 00:39:17,840
the sky.

691
00:39:18,599 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 3: It is a way to think of it.

692
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:23,320
Speaker 2: And they sort of have I mean that whole group

693
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:25,719
of these, I mean, all these lycophytes, they came from

694
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:27,599
the ground at some point or another. They were all

695
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:30,960
terrestrial at one point or another, and then these epiphytes

696
00:39:31,039 --> 00:39:33,880
diverged from those and were able to find something that

697
00:39:34,119 --> 00:39:37,039
was analogous to the ground, but up up high where

698
00:39:37,119 --> 00:39:40,039
they could beat the competition for light by just becoming

699
00:39:40,079 --> 00:39:44,519
epiphytic and pendent, because again they're slow growing and they're

700
00:39:44,559 --> 00:39:47,800
poor competitors. I mean, for most of the lycophytes tend

701
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:51,119
to be very poor competitors if there's anything else that

702
00:39:51,199 --> 00:39:56,360
can get an edge or get growing fast. There are exceptions,

703
00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:01,199
though there are some invasive Silaginella is like South African

704
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,760
slagno across Siana, which is often soil the garden centers

705
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:07,760
is a terrible weed in New Zealand and a number

706
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:08,519
of other places.

707
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:11,119
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the seleage, but we're gonna

708
00:40:11,199 --> 00:40:13,280
with the whole rest of the podcasts. I want to

709
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,079
talk about Silegia now and about some of the cool

710
00:40:16,159 --> 00:40:19,800
work you've done with these, especially as it relates to

711
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:24,480
major extinction events of the past. But just before we

712
00:40:24,599 --> 00:40:27,639
do that, though this man, this the the god, the

713
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:30,320
habitat that something like this grows in this flag, Mary

714
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:33,559
ears del housenis like I would just love to I mean,

715
00:40:33,599 --> 00:40:36,639
I imagine it's just like a really hot, humid but

716
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:40,119
can also dry out a little bit. Forests probably just

717
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:43,360
really hot. I mean this, this thick white wax on

718
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,519
these lycophyls has got to be it's an adaptation to

719
00:40:47,119 --> 00:40:48,239
heat and sun or what.

720
00:40:49,840 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. For so, I haven't myself been

721
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:56,400
into the field with them, but at least people have

722
00:40:56,519 --> 00:40:59,519
talked to have seen them. Sometimes they'll be they'll be

723
00:40:59,559 --> 00:41:01,920
at elev too a little bit, so like in Fiji.

724
00:41:02,039 --> 00:41:05,559
They'll grow apparently at mid elevation or up a little bit,

725
00:41:05,599 --> 00:41:08,760
but up in high in tree canopies, so they might

726
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,880
be dealing with a little bit higher elevation and sometimes

727
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:14,199
not certainly not all of them, I mean, like I

728
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:17,159
don't I don't think some of the ones like in Queensland.

729
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:20,239
So person to talk to about this species who really

730
00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:22,320
has done a ton of work on them is Ashley

731
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:29,119
Field Australia, and he's really rediscovered basically populations that were

732
00:41:29,119 --> 00:41:31,320
thought to be extinct in Australia.

733
00:41:31,639 --> 00:41:34,320
Speaker 1: Yeah right, they're copyright ar Field. That the photo I'm

734
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:37,760
looking at. God, what a remarkable fucking plant though, Jesus.

735
00:41:38,519 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, they're They're incredible. And I ended up

736
00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:46,639
with a bunch of them this summer which was crazy.

737
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:50,760
I wasn't fully ready to start growing these things, but

738
00:41:51,559 --> 00:41:54,000
I was like, well, I don't have a greenhouse for them.

739
00:41:54,039 --> 00:41:55,800
I guess I'm going to have to figure out how

740
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,119
to grow them under artificial light. And it's been a

741
00:41:59,199 --> 00:42:02,119
bit of a devil, but I mean I haven't lost

742
00:42:02,199 --> 00:42:04,599
them so far, but I'm getting a bunch of new

743
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:08,000
pups coming out from the bases of them, and yeah,

744
00:42:08,079 --> 00:42:09,880
we'll see knock on wood. I mean, they seem to

745
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:13,840
be healthy and rooting and growing and you know, trying

746
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,679
to figure out how to grow them with limited sort

747
00:42:16,679 --> 00:42:19,960
of space. But yeah, there's very few people in the

748
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,000
world growing them. I mean, Ashley is certainly one of them.

749
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:28,159
But they're basically in the US. There was one nursery

750
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,440
growing them for years, and that nursery shut down this

751
00:42:31,639 --> 00:42:35,559
year and so there was a deluge of the specimens

752
00:42:35,679 --> 00:42:40,599
that a person have propagated, and so you know, they

753
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:44,599
basically were out on the market very briefly, and so

754
00:42:45,039 --> 00:42:47,880
I ended up adopting a bunch from the nursery owner

755
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:49,760
and we're.

756
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 3: Hopefully, hopefully some of them will be propagated.

757
00:42:55,079 --> 00:42:57,559
Speaker 2: A bunch of them made it to Thailand, thankfully, so

758
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:00,400
there's a hope that in Thailand they'll be able to

759
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:04,960
be mass cultured and that can alleviate a lot of

760
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,840
the strain on wild populations because if you make it

761
00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:11,719
easier to at least work with an horticulture, it shouldn't

762
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,079
be as much of a problem. Do you know what

763
00:43:13,119 --> 00:43:14,280
would be approaching though.

764
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,679
Speaker 1: With these like with like something like this one of

765
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:20,639
these weird lycopods, since they're homospores, they're basically putting out

766
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:24,639
bisexual spores, right, spores that it can either produce, uh

767
00:43:25,119 --> 00:43:29,079
you know, sperm in the anthidia or the egg and arcagonia?

768
00:43:29,599 --> 00:43:32,079
Is it if you just have one genetic individual, well,

769
00:43:32,159 --> 00:43:34,840
can you get I mean decent genetic diversity from that?

770
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,400
Like are they self fertile? Can you propagate theoretically? I

771
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:40,679
know this is really hard, this one this species really hard.

772
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:44,119
But can you theoretically get new phenotypes, like new genetic

773
00:43:44,199 --> 00:43:46,440
individuals from one or do you need two?

774
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:52,599
Speaker 2: In theory you could get it from one? Yeah, typically

775
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:55,559
with some of these homosporous lycophytes, you could. You could

776
00:43:55,559 --> 00:43:58,840
take us a yield of spores from one one spore

777
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:01,800
cone or at least uh borangia and in one of

778
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:05,320
those Strobel eye and you can get you can get

779
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,119
a lot of gametophytes if if you're doing it right,

780
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,320
I mean, and that's sort of the big key is

781
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:14,559
a lot of these these flake mariuris and these suprasioids

782
00:44:15,079 --> 00:44:18,960
are just a devil to germinate, and because you need

783
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:22,519
the michael a lot of times you do, but you

784
00:44:22,639 --> 00:44:26,800
can still do it on augur apparently depending on the type.

785
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:30,760
But it's it's such a slow process and it also

786
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:33,960
you get I mean, if I remember correctly his studies

787
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:37,719
where people were trying to germinate many of these these

788
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:42,679
homosporous likewides, you get varying success. So there's very low

789
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:48,679
germination rates on some of these, like epiphytic ones. I mean,

790
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:50,159
it can be really difficult in the lab. Do you

791
00:44:50,159 --> 00:44:53,159
get the epithetic ones to behave There was one person

792
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:56,199
by the name of Dean Whittier who really mastered this,

793
00:44:56,599 --> 00:45:01,920
and he was he was germanating paramou pichophytes in his lab.

794
00:45:02,119 --> 00:45:05,800
I mean, he was just it was amazing and agar

795
00:45:06,159 --> 00:45:09,280
I mean, yeah, I think a lot of it is agur,

796
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:13,280
but like you know, some of it took years, uh yours,

797
00:45:14,159 --> 00:45:17,079
and he would just record the ratio of how many

798
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:21,559
of the spores he he sewed with Germany, and he

799
00:45:21,639 --> 00:45:24,239
gave really low germination rates sometimes on these things.

800
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:26,639
Speaker 1: So it's just so fucking weird, man. I mean that

801
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:30,519
for a ammetophyte, for a plant to for a photosynthetic plant,

802
00:45:30,599 --> 00:45:33,760
or a plant that you know eventually produces CHLOROPHYLLM. Cammi photosynthetic,

803
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:35,920
for it to just live in at commutafyte stage not

804
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,760
photosynthesizing for like five years, that's talking last. That's that's

805
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:41,559
like alien shit, what the fuck you know?

806
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:46,599
Speaker 2: He is? Yeah, it's almost And again those sorts of

807
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:49,960
like they basically have some of them can basically have

808
00:45:50,119 --> 00:45:54,159
these compartments where it's like a fungal factory where they

809
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,679
basically are inviting the infection of a microrhysal fungus and

810
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,159
then they'll basically give them space to grow within their tissues.

811
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:06,559
So it's it's almost kind of like some of the

812
00:46:06,639 --> 00:46:09,960
plants in rhiny Chirt where you're back in Scotland and

813
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:12,960
billions of years, like hundreds of millions of years ago

814
00:46:13,039 --> 00:46:16,559
in the Devonian, where you had hot spring plants, early

815
00:46:16,679 --> 00:46:20,360
land plants that were colonized by fungi and had basically

816
00:46:20,559 --> 00:46:25,239
layers of fungal like cultures in their tissues before they

817
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:26,079
had true roots.

818
00:46:26,159 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: I forgot. You're a palaeobotanist too, and you know all

819
00:46:29,519 --> 00:46:32,920
this weird shit that was, you know, extent four hundred

820
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:37,239
million years ago, fucking weird. Yeah, oh my god, it's

821
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,559
my goodness. Might be a long podcast. Jeff buckle in. Okay, Boddy,

822
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:44,960
it's all right, okay, that's all right. Well, yeah, that

823
00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:47,519
that's I mean, god, damn, like could tell everybody about

824
00:46:47,519 --> 00:46:49,440
the riny shirt. First off, let's just just fuck it.

825
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:51,760
It's just going there, tell everybody about the riiny shirt.

826
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 2: What is it? Sure? So the rhine shirt is basically

827
00:46:55,079 --> 00:46:58,880
this fossil deposit that we call Lagerstaton, which is this

828
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:03,159
this basically fossil assemblage that's a moment locked in time

829
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:07,880
that's so exceptionally preserved that we basically have a window

830
00:47:08,039 --> 00:47:15,480
into this this ecosystem like exactly like a three D photo.

831
00:47:15,679 --> 00:47:19,000
This is a this was a hot spring system back

832
00:47:19,119 --> 00:47:26,400
in the early Devonian period, and it basically was capturing

833
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:32,320
through silica, basically preserving everything in three dimensional cellular level

834
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:36,840
detail throughout this hot spring community. And we're we're talking

835
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:42,599
about basically these these wetlands that surrounded hot springs that

836
00:47:42,719 --> 00:47:47,199
were periodically inundated by the hot spring like hot waters,

837
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:53,199
and silica deposited onto the surface of every little plant

838
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,519
and every little animal that get hit with this superheated

839
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:01,719
silica solution would become basically entombed in silicon.

840
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,320
Speaker 1: So what time period was this? This is four hundred

841
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,079
million years ago for thirty.

842
00:48:06,039 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah, so this is like early Devonian period,

843
00:48:10,159 --> 00:48:11,840
So this was the age of fishes.

844
00:48:12,119 --> 00:48:17,199
Speaker 1: This is like soon after land plants above relatively speak, yes, right.

845
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 2: Exactly, relatively speaking, this is basically after the first waves

846
00:48:22,599 --> 00:48:27,079
of basically the diversification of land plants had happened. So

847
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:31,800
we're we're basically looking at these ecosystems where some of

848
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:37,000
the first the early early what we call vascular or plants,

849
00:48:37,039 --> 00:48:40,039
which is a terrible term because everyone I knows days

850
00:48:40,079 --> 00:48:43,239
moss and liverworts is like they also have water in

851
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:47,519
nutrient conducting tissues. But the plants that we call tracheophytes

852
00:48:47,679 --> 00:48:53,719
or have these tracheods, these specialized water conducting cells, they

853
00:48:54,199 --> 00:48:57,360
start diverging right this, you know, before this and this

854
00:48:57,559 --> 00:49:01,519
is really our best look into an early ecosystem of

855
00:49:01,639 --> 00:49:05,480
these seed free plants that didn't have roots yet or leaves,

856
00:49:05,599 --> 00:49:06,119
many of them.

857
00:49:08,119 --> 00:49:11,960
Speaker 1: Just how different did things look yet? There weren't any

858
00:49:12,039 --> 00:49:14,000
trees yet so far as we know, right, like there

859
00:49:14,159 --> 00:49:15,840
was none of this stuff was very large.

860
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:20,760
Speaker 2: Yes, so this was before shade was invented on land,

861
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:28,320
so basically really really sun blasted environments. I mean, it

862
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,199
would have been like another planet, and you would have

863
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:36,400
had substrates that really, for the most part, the organics

864
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,760
weren't built up very solidly yet in the substrates. So

865
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:42,760
the birth of dirt is sort of a way of

866
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:46,119
putting it. Sort of was happening at this time in

867
00:49:46,199 --> 00:49:50,440
the first peat deposits were being laid down, and so

868
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:53,639
a lot of these there was sort of this clone

869
00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:57,280
world where you had this patchwork quilt. If you looked

870
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:02,280
across these sort of lunar landscapes of basically rock stone

871
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:05,840
and clay, where you'd have hot green like acid green

872
00:50:06,079 --> 00:50:11,280
sorts of fields of these tuning fork branching dichopotomously branch

873
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:17,199
a whisk fern like plants among them rhineophytes, a gleophytons.

874
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:18,320
Another famous one.

875
00:50:18,519 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 1: What was the atmosphere like back then, like the atmosphere

876
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:22,519
and the temperature.

877
00:50:23,119 --> 00:50:28,639
Speaker 2: Really good question. So up until recently we've thought that okay,

878
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:30,960
the atmosphere at this time must have had a super

879
00:50:31,119 --> 00:50:35,519
high CO two level, and that the basically the atmosphere

880
00:50:35,599 --> 00:50:38,599
CO two levels would have been really high, and you

881
00:50:38,639 --> 00:50:42,920
would have had really high temperatures, so really hot, steamy,

882
00:50:43,639 --> 00:50:48,320
you know, very very hot, muggy, humid environment from basically

883
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,280
the poles to the equator. So we had a lot

884
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:55,719
less diversity and the latitudinal gradient of climates back then.

885
00:50:56,840 --> 00:51:02,159
But more recent work that was done in Europe by

886
00:51:02,159 --> 00:51:07,039
a team of researchers looking at basically the stomata on

887
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:12,519
lycophytes from this time and comparing them across the world

888
00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:17,760
and then looking relative to modern living flag Marierus growing

889
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:21,639
in greenhouses. They're basically able to calibrate and figure out

890
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:24,360
what the store model densies on lycophytes and response to

891
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:26,880
these CO two levels might have been, and it suggests

892
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:30,079
that the world was actually a lot colder than we

893
00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:34,880
may have initially thought. So there's thought that there were

894
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:38,239
there might have been glaciated area US actually at this time,

895
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:39,920
and it may have been a lot more like today

896
00:51:40,559 --> 00:51:45,719
in some ways, certainly probably a lot hotter, but possibly

897
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:49,119
not quite as steambathy tropical as we initially.

898
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: Thought, not as much oxygen probably right for more oxygen

899
00:51:52,079 --> 00:51:52,239
or what.

900
00:51:54,159 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 2: Back then, I guess relative it probably would have been

901
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:01,840
maybe less proportion relative to CO two, So the CO

902
00:52:02,039 --> 00:52:03,880
two levels should have been a lot higher, I would

903
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:08,480
think back then than relative today, but not so astronomically

904
00:52:08,559 --> 00:52:12,880
high that they wouldn't permit glaciation in the mountains at

905
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:16,800
that time. And it's interesting, I mean that sort of

906
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,599
study that came out. I did a reconstruction for to

907
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:23,119
accompany the study of basically like trying to reimagine what

908
00:52:23,199 --> 00:52:26,480
these landscapes looked like. And you know, it was basically

909
00:52:26,559 --> 00:52:29,119
now like it's basically the same thing, but with with

910
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:32,159
glaciated you know, mountains or snow capped mountains too, which

911
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:35,679
I think is a nice touch, you know, But a

912
00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:37,239
lot of what you would see in a place like

913
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,679
Ranny Churt would be very much just fields of these

914
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:46,880
plants growing in alongside waterways and watercourses and wetlands, how

915
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:52,480
big tall, like just mats of really small yeah, maybe

916
00:52:52,559 --> 00:52:54,719
ten inches tall for some of the really large ones.

917
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:56,679
A lot of them are only a few centimeters tall,

918
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:00,199
like you might have had things like Cooksonia that were

919
00:53:00,679 --> 00:53:03,440
you know, even earlier and are a little more enigmatic

920
00:53:03,519 --> 00:53:04,880
and a little bit more of a waste spin of

921
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:07,480
a plant group where they'd be you know, they'd be

922
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:10,480
like a really large moss almost, but they'd be tiny

923
00:53:10,519 --> 00:53:14,159
little tuning forks with you know, spore bearing you know,

924
00:53:14,599 --> 00:53:18,599
basically sporangia on them, depending on whether they were you know,

925
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,559
actually what we consider to be true tracheophytes and somewhere

926
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,440
what we called paratracheapytes, where they we don't really know

927
00:53:25,519 --> 00:53:27,280
exactly what they were. They might have been me to

928
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:31,239
fight dominant, and yet we've been interpreting them as sporopytes

929
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,559
for a long time. So there's there's a lot of

930
00:53:33,679 --> 00:53:36,719
really topsy turvy things going on evolutionarily for lack of

931
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:39,079
a I mean, it's a really scientific way of putting it,

932
00:53:39,159 --> 00:53:39,719
I guess.

933
00:53:39,559 --> 00:53:42,119
Speaker 1: But it's like I mean, but it's it's such a

934
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:45,360
bizarre I mean, it's like nothing that we can imagine today.

935
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:49,480
Speaker 2: You know, it's so hard to make make what's you know,

936
00:53:49,639 --> 00:53:55,760
make make sense of what's going on. Yet they had

937
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:59,039
that they had only evolved in in lycophytes, so the

938
00:53:59,480 --> 00:54:04,320
forerunner of our modern club mosses we have, we have

939
00:54:04,519 --> 00:54:08,320
the first leaves, however they're not by the time of

940
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:13,039
rhiny chert leaves had already evolved. I think in there's

941
00:54:13,039 --> 00:54:18,679
a plant called Baragwanathia, which was the earliest mega basically

942
00:54:19,239 --> 00:54:22,920
like a fight that enters the fossil record, and it

943
00:54:23,039 --> 00:54:25,119
may have been something that was on its way to

944
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:28,360
maybe it was. It was probably a sister group or

945
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,079
an outgroup to what you looked at the family tree

946
00:54:31,239 --> 00:54:34,280
of the modern like fights, it probably is branching off

947
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,280
of them, but it looks darn like some of these

948
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:42,199
modern big club mosses today. And Bragwanathia was the size

949
00:54:42,199 --> 00:54:46,000
of like a timber bamboo. It was monstrous and I

950
00:54:46,039 --> 00:54:49,159
don't know, you have to like they were big, like

951
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:53,719
the stem was maybe two three centimeters in diameter, and

952
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:56,079
then the leaves would be up to you know, like

953
00:54:56,199 --> 00:54:59,679
basically four centimeters like two inches long. At least it's

954
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:02,119
plain off there. So like the thickness of this thing was,

955
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:06,239
you know, it's like a mid sized bamboo. And we

956
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:09,480
don't really know exactly what its habit was. We think

957
00:55:09,599 --> 00:55:13,119
it was basically this prostrate meaning running along the ground

958
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:17,559
sort of plant. But you know, it's it's a little

959
00:55:17,599 --> 00:55:19,960
hard to make out exactly what's going on because our

960
00:55:20,039 --> 00:55:21,480
fossils are always fragmentary.

961
00:55:21,679 --> 00:55:24,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it still looked like a green pipe cleaner,

962
00:55:24,119 --> 00:55:24,760
basically just.

963
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 2: A exactly a really really girsy pipe cleaner. But it's

964
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:33,920
coming on the scene. It was discovered in Australia and

965
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:38,880
described from the Silarian the late Solarnian period. This full sized,

966
00:55:38,920 --> 00:55:43,880
full fledge leafed potentially rooted like a fight, so involved

967
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,400
roots and beads infinitely of all other plants, and yet

968
00:55:48,360 --> 00:55:50,679
its date seemed to not line up for a lot

969
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:53,119
of paleobotanists. I mean, there were a lot of people

970
00:55:53,159 --> 00:55:55,280
I think in the Northern Hemisphere were just like, uh

971
00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:58,039
or the Australian's right on this date for this thing.

972
00:55:58,159 --> 00:56:00,480
And as soon as like, yeah this is this is

973
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:03,320
Blade's Learnian. And so there's been a massive back and

974
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:06,559
forth and I think the debate is raged too, even

975
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:10,239
recently about what is the date of these bloody plants.

976
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:14,599
Speaker 1: They pushed have they pushed back the evolution of terrestrial plants?

977
00:56:14,639 --> 00:56:16,800
I know it used to be like four fifty million

978
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:18,920
years and one of like if I teach the stuff,

979
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:20,639
that's something I always tell people. I'm like, you got

980
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:23,039
to have that landmark evolution address real plants four fifty

981
00:56:23,079 --> 00:56:25,360
million years, you know, evolution of just right, just like

982
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:27,639
what you do with you know, evolutionary carreotic life, great

983
00:56:27,679 --> 00:56:30,400
oxygenation event, et cetera. What is it at now? Is

984
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:31,920
it four fifty or did it get pushed back to

985
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:32,760
five hundred or what?

986
00:56:34,320 --> 00:56:36,320
Speaker 2: I think there's been a I think there have been

987
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:39,480
attempts to push it back to about five hundred. There

988
00:56:39,599 --> 00:56:42,039
is more work that's pushing it back I think further.

989
00:56:42,199 --> 00:56:45,239
I might I know some pay bonders. You are currently

990
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:47,480
working on a work to push back the date and

991
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:51,400
may have some new evidence. So yeah, there's certainly it'll

992
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,239
be coming up and I guess in the plant news

993
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:59,079
at some point in the near future dates. But in general,

994
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:02,159
I mean, one of the principles with the fossil record

995
00:57:02,639 --> 00:57:05,559
is in general is that we obviously have sort of

996
00:57:05,639 --> 00:57:09,840
a fragmented view of the world, and what tends to

997
00:57:10,039 --> 00:57:13,800
happen most often in the case of discoveries in Peey

998
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:19,360
Bonny is that you usually will find precocious occurrences of

999
00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,440
things in terms of time going back in time. So

1000
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:26,800
if there's anything that I'm usually not surprised by, it's like, oh,

1001
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:29,800
we found an earlier version of this, Like Okay, I

1002
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:34,760
expected that, Yeah, because it's we're only we're only seeing

1003
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:37,280
you know, like you have such a low chance of

1004
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,639
being fossilized as an organ of a plant that falls

1005
00:57:40,719 --> 00:57:45,000
in just the right environment that you have to figure

1006
00:57:45,039 --> 00:57:47,679
that for every one little fragment of a plant that

1007
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:49,519
you see, there must be a heck of a lot

1008
00:57:49,559 --> 00:57:52,239
of them out there that never got into the fossil record. Yeah.

1009
00:57:52,239 --> 00:57:54,239
Speaker 1: That drives me nuts. I'm thinking about it.

1010
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 2: Does. It's the sort of thing that keeps me up

1011
00:57:57,320 --> 00:57:59,880
at night because I'm just like, well, what have we met?

1012
00:58:01,239 --> 00:58:01,800
What extent?

1013
00:58:01,920 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just like, well what the fuck? Like you're

1014
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:06,320
seeing one percent of everything that was there. You're like, God,

1015
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:07,760
what what was it?

1016
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:07,960
Speaker 2: Like?

1017
00:58:08,079 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: I just want to know what it was like back then?

1018
00:58:10,039 --> 00:58:12,079
I want to know what was going on. Yeah, there's

1019
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:14,480
just so much that will never know, you know, Like

1020
00:58:14,639 --> 00:58:16,320
I deal with that all the time with desert stuff,

1021
00:58:16,400 --> 00:58:19,559
Like a lot of desertsn't produce good fossils. It's just

1022
00:58:19,639 --> 00:58:20,800
not the right environment for it.

1023
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:25,159
Speaker 2: And these are areas where innovation is key. I mean,

1024
00:58:25,239 --> 00:58:31,440
deserts are deserts, uplands are also there, arid lands, those

1025
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:38,360
are key places where you rarely get basically preservation, and

1026
00:58:39,440 --> 00:58:41,199
I have to I mean, I could be butchering this

1027
00:58:41,239 --> 00:58:43,360
spin a little while since I've been looking back at

1028
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:46,639
Rennie shirt type stuff, but my impression was RENI shirt's

1029
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,920
a little bit higher elevation too, is the thought it

1030
00:58:50,119 --> 00:58:54,000
represents an ecosystem wasn't like on the coast. It might

1031
00:58:54,079 --> 00:58:58,599
have been more at upper elevation than typical, which was

1032
00:58:58,679 --> 00:59:02,360
also a really significant part I think of why this

1033
00:59:02,719 --> 00:59:07,320
this fossil sewich was so special for understanding the evolution

1034
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:11,559
of plant life at that time. We just don't get

1035
00:59:11,599 --> 00:59:14,119
those sorts of what they call the hinterland sorts of

1036
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:19,360
preservation as often and especially Yeah, I was.

1037
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: Going to say it might have been too. I mean,

1038
00:59:21,079 --> 00:59:25,079
a hot spring, you know, it's producing this delicious shirt

1039
00:59:25,239 --> 00:59:28,559
material to it probably wasn't you know, it was probably

1040
00:59:28,719 --> 00:59:30,880
a kind of an extreme environment. Like you know, we're

1041
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:34,079
not like what was the just regular old environment during

1042
00:59:34,159 --> 00:59:37,440
the Devonian? You know, what did it look like back then?

1043
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:40,400
Because we're seeing this specialized environment that was great for

1044
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,519
making fossils. It's all this you know, silica rich waters

1045
00:59:44,599 --> 00:59:47,079
being pumped out. But what is you know what it

1046
00:59:47,239 --> 00:59:49,280
just like the normal you know, something that wasn't an

1047
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:51,800
extremeophile environment. What did that look like back then? You know,

1048
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:53,840
did it get fossilized or has it been you know,

1049
00:59:54,119 --> 00:59:55,800
destroyed since then or what you know?

1050
00:59:56,800 --> 01:00:00,519
Speaker 2: And this is absolutely the sorts of questions that definitely

1051
01:00:01,119 --> 01:00:03,559
have have also you know, have have trouble with a

1052
01:00:03,599 --> 01:00:06,239
lot of pay bonus about this kind of system. Is

1053
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:08,840
that are we seeing exactly the ro we are? We

1054
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:11,760
are clearly seeing the effects of an ecosystem that has

1055
01:00:12,119 --> 01:00:14,719
is dominated by extremophiles. And extreme files are not the

1056
01:00:14,800 --> 01:00:17,960
norm usually across much of the planet. They're I mean,

1057
01:00:18,039 --> 01:00:22,480
extreme files are usually not your your typical opportunistic weedy plants.

1058
01:00:22,519 --> 01:00:26,119
They often they often have the ability to tolerate these

1059
01:00:26,159 --> 01:00:29,800
sorts of traits or these these environmental these environmental traits,

1060
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:33,480
but they're they're not usually because they're like, yeah, I

1061
01:00:33,599 --> 01:00:36,119
can grow so much faster and everything else, and I'm

1062
01:00:36,559 --> 01:00:38,199
I'm able to reproduce so quickly.

1063
01:00:38,280 --> 01:00:40,239
Speaker 3: If you do, like I have to be able to

1064
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:41,159
hunker down.

1065
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:45,320
Speaker 2: And live basically at the equivalent of like a hydrothermal vent.

1066
01:00:46,079 --> 01:00:49,599
Like life might be really slow for me because I

1067
01:00:49,719 --> 01:00:53,119
can't access everything because you know, things aren't liberated or

1068
01:00:53,519 --> 01:00:56,559
or they're liberated in excess, like I can't I can't

1069
01:00:56,639 --> 01:00:59,360
take up all the toxins and all the poisonous metals

1070
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,519
heavy metal that are in the soil. You know, like

1071
01:01:02,719 --> 01:01:04,400
I have to limit what I uptake.

1072
01:01:04,599 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: Right.

1073
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:07,760
Speaker 2: It's super hot right now, and so celluar processes are

1074
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:10,679
like going haywire. They're really fast, and it's like no, no, no,

1075
01:01:10,840 --> 01:01:15,960
I need to you limit my inflow. Right, So it's

1076
01:01:16,199 --> 01:01:18,840
a very different strategy. But yeah, Rinie Shirt might not.

1077
01:01:20,159 --> 01:01:23,280
It's not necessarily reflective of everywhere on the planet of

1078
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:28,760
course at that time. And we do get a really

1079
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:31,760
wonderful glimpse too with Rhinny Shirt into the evolution of

1080
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:34,480
a lot of terrestrial arthropods, which is really neat.

1081
01:01:34,719 --> 01:01:37,000
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. What they look like, I mean, what

1082
01:01:37,679 --> 01:01:41,480
a little flee like it's pill bugs or fleas or

1083
01:01:41,639 --> 01:01:41,840
like what.

1084
01:01:42,119 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 2: Was Yeah, you have things that kind of look like

1085
01:01:45,559 --> 01:01:49,440
that sort of ilk. So you have the first actually

1086
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:52,480
the first reproductive organs of an animal are captured in

1087
01:01:52,519 --> 01:01:55,599
the rhiny shirt in three dimensional detail, and that was

1088
01:01:56,199 --> 01:02:01,480
of a harvestman a little basically what people will call

1089
01:02:01,599 --> 01:02:03,920
daddy long legs. They're not the spiders, but they're part

1090
01:02:03,960 --> 01:02:09,280
of the group called opilionaires. They're basically they looked exactly

1091
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:15,639
the same. Cool And there are some fossil deposits I

1092
01:02:15,719 --> 01:02:18,320
don't think they might not be in rhiney chirt, or

1093
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:21,880
maybe they are where the first predator I think that

1094
01:02:22,039 --> 01:02:24,880
we have evidence of in the fossil record, or house centipedes,

1095
01:02:25,599 --> 01:02:29,480
and they look virtually the same as back in the

1096
01:02:29,559 --> 01:02:30,840
Solarium's so.

1097
01:02:31,079 --> 01:02:34,760
Speaker 1: Wild, man, Why does shit just not change? It's so weird, Like,

1098
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:38,199
why does some things just not change? There's no reason to,

1099
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:42,599
you know, it's crazy. Other stuff. Other stuff radiates and

1100
01:02:42,679 --> 01:02:45,119
diversifies and you get all these weird forms evolving and

1101
01:02:45,159 --> 01:02:46,880
then other stuff. He's like, no, I'm just done good

1102
01:02:46,920 --> 01:02:48,840
and I'll just sit like this for five hundred million years,

1103
01:02:49,119 --> 01:02:52,199
you know exactly, Witch, Well, my linea is just fine

1104
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:54,880
like this. It's so bizarre, and it's.

1105
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,039
Speaker 2: It's also crazy with things like that, like the house centipede.

1106
01:02:58,039 --> 01:03:01,079
It's kind of in terms of animal like, it's not

1107
01:03:01,239 --> 01:03:03,159
the sort of thing I would expect to see super

1108
01:03:03,239 --> 01:03:06,119
early on, and like even for the evolution of centipedes

1109
01:03:06,239 --> 01:03:09,320
for instance, like house centipedes, they've got compound eyes, they've

1110
01:03:09,320 --> 01:03:13,719
got fantastic vision, they got like pragmantis like vision, and

1111
01:03:14,119 --> 01:03:18,559
they're they have the most like advanced like respiratory system

1112
01:03:18,599 --> 01:03:22,360
of any terrestrial arthropod. They they're far more efficient at

1113
01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:24,840
taking an oxygen and it causes them to be able

1114
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:30,480
to move at insanely insane speeds and have insane reflexes.

1115
01:03:31,039 --> 01:03:35,280
So it's like this hyper advanced arthropod predator is the

1116
01:03:35,320 --> 01:03:38,079
first thing that pops up, like about the epitome of

1117
01:03:38,239 --> 01:03:41,440
like advanced like metabolism. It's almost kind of like a

1118
01:03:41,519 --> 01:03:48,440
little mammal p Yeah like that. Yeah, Well, at least

1119
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:51,400
the house centipedes are, and that's just this little group

1120
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:53,159
of them. But I mean there's like ones that are

1121
01:03:53,199 --> 01:03:55,559
like you'll see in Borneo rainforest that get like half

1122
01:03:55,599 --> 01:03:58,239
a foot long, I mean, and they are terrifying looking,

1123
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:01,440
look like something out of like a Tim Burton sort

1124
01:04:01,480 --> 01:04:06,199
of like fingers right like those have they can, yeah,

1125
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:10,519
they can the common house speed that people have in

1126
01:04:10,599 --> 01:04:13,760
their houses. That scare the bejeezes out of them are

1127
01:04:14,039 --> 01:04:16,760
are not are actually totally harmless and won't break skin,

1128
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:19,679
and they're they're quite beneficial to have around. So so

1129
01:04:20,119 --> 01:04:22,840
I don't recommend killing them, but if you do see one,

1130
01:04:23,559 --> 01:04:26,000
just remember that, Yeah, these things will probably run around

1131
01:04:26,039 --> 01:04:30,840
right sure, looking exactly like that. It's it's super cool. Yeah,

1132
01:04:31,159 --> 01:04:33,199
So it gives me like a different respect for some

1133
01:04:33,280 --> 01:04:35,679
of the things I see. But mites were really commonly

1134
01:04:35,760 --> 01:04:39,639
preserved in there. There were you know, there's even brancing

1135
01:04:39,719 --> 01:04:42,679
ectid's or the brankie pots. I think it was the

1136
01:04:43,880 --> 01:04:49,679
like clam shrimp and the vernal pool brian shrimp. Basically, yeah,

1137
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:50,280
those things.

1138
01:04:50,920 --> 01:04:54,320
Speaker 1: Sea monkeys like sea monkey, right, yea, like sea monkeys

1139
01:04:54,400 --> 01:04:57,440
basically are are in some of these hot spring environments.

1140
01:04:57,519 --> 01:04:59,719
That doesn't surprise me because those things can drive. They're

1141
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:02,480
also desiccation teleran through their fucking everywhere.

1142
01:05:02,199 --> 01:05:04,920
Speaker 2: Man they are, and that actually you know, and that

1143
01:05:05,039 --> 01:05:07,480
brings that to bear too. That you know, one of

1144
01:05:07,559 --> 01:05:09,119
the one of the things that we think about like

1145
01:05:09,239 --> 01:05:12,280
early terrustrial ecosystems, We're like, oh, these are like all

1146
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:14,960
these like swamp plants that only can grow like with

1147
01:05:15,119 --> 01:05:19,719
wet feet. Basically and yeah, you have all these animals

1148
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:23,719
and plants that have been mastering getting out of the ocean,

1149
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:27,559
out of lakes, onto land. Really everything for them is

1150
01:05:27,599 --> 01:05:32,000
figuring out how to survive in this horrific, horrific planet

1151
01:05:32,239 --> 01:05:35,599
that is new to them. They're basically little astronauts trying

1152
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:38,159
to figure out how to live. And you know, plants

1153
01:05:38,199 --> 01:05:40,280
were just they had to get cuticle, they had to

1154
01:05:40,679 --> 01:05:43,840
develop ways to keep their water in and not release it.

1155
01:05:44,679 --> 01:05:47,559
And it's just like every one of these structural innovations

1156
01:05:47,639 --> 01:05:52,800
creating spores with a uvy basically reflecting coat of flavonoids

1157
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:55,119
and developing spoor oponents.

1158
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 1: Later. Oh yeah, because that's pretty cool. Okay, So let's

1159
01:05:59,239 --> 01:06:03,880
bringing it back to the the three clades of lico lycopods.

1160
01:06:04,719 --> 01:06:08,159
So moving on from lycopods from like the lycopodiums the

1161
01:06:08,599 --> 01:06:12,760
club monsters, and moving on to Selaginella and Isohetes, because

1162
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:15,559
Selaginella and Isohetes are more closely related to each other

1163
01:06:15,639 --> 01:06:18,280
than they are to the lycopods, right, they form their

1164
01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:22,639
own little clade within the lycopods, Lycophytes, Is that true?

1165
01:06:23,679 --> 01:06:26,559
Speaker 2: That is true? So they they form their own clade,

1166
01:06:26,639 --> 01:06:30,880
which is basically dividing from as you're saying, those homosporas

1167
01:06:30,920 --> 01:06:35,039
are one score type to heterosporus having two score types

1168
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:40,440
licophytes and so so Laganella and Isoetes are their own

1169
01:06:40,559 --> 01:06:45,880
two independent branches within that group. And it's likely that

1170
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:50,199
those these sorts of plants that we're developing, what they

1171
01:06:50,239 --> 01:06:54,519
call heterospree, are two types of spores, which is basically

1172
01:06:54,679 --> 01:06:57,760
similar in parallel the evolution of seeds and pollen.

1173
01:06:57,800 --> 01:07:00,440
Speaker 1: Right, but involved in the pillar. That's what's so fucking

1174
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:04,880
weird about it, man, heterospory and endospory. So the gametophyte

1175
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:07,800
is now inside the spot exactly.

1176
01:07:08,159 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 2: So the gamautifyte stays inside the spore like a little

1177
01:07:10,880 --> 01:07:15,320
spaceship and it doesn't like leave, It stays its little capsule,

1178
01:07:16,079 --> 01:07:18,920
and just like a seed, it basically forms an embryo

1179
01:07:19,039 --> 01:07:25,760
inside and it's it's incredible, I mean, once after fertilization. Yeah.

1180
01:07:25,920 --> 01:07:29,599
So these plants probably diverged sometime in the early Devonian,

1181
01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:33,920
is what we think. Oh wow, that's far back, huh So,

1182
01:07:34,480 --> 01:07:37,920
so at least the predecessor to the heterosporous lycophytes was

1183
01:07:38,159 --> 01:07:44,639
probably start already somewhere on the landscape. By then, there

1184
01:07:44,679 --> 01:07:47,760
were scale trees, if I remember correctly, there were homosporous

1185
01:07:47,840 --> 01:07:51,719
scale trees in the Devonian, in the early Devonian. So

1186
01:07:51,840 --> 01:07:55,639
some of the earliest tree lycopods that had developed basically

1187
01:07:55,760 --> 01:08:01,039
secondary growth, they appear to be coming out of lineages

1188
01:08:01,199 --> 01:08:02,960
of these homosporous groups.

1189
01:08:03,079 --> 01:08:05,079
Speaker 1: And these were true these, I mean, these were big,

1190
01:08:05,559 --> 01:08:06,079
big guys.

1191
01:08:06,559 --> 01:08:09,079
Speaker 2: They some of them were, I mean they were probably

1192
01:08:09,280 --> 01:08:11,599
like you know, some of these might have been I

1193
01:08:11,639 --> 01:08:15,039
don't know, like fifteen twenty feet tall, which is good

1194
01:08:15,159 --> 01:08:16,039
size for back then.

1195
01:08:16,199 --> 01:08:18,920
Speaker 1: But we're not adendron yet, not like we're.

1196
01:08:18,760 --> 01:08:22,199
Speaker 2: Not a lapidodendron size. Yeah, we're not like getting a

1197
01:08:22,359 --> 01:08:26,560
six foot diameter trunk yet with one hundred foot long

1198
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:30,800
you know whatever rise off. Like I'm sorry, stig marian

1199
01:08:30,880 --> 01:08:33,760
Acbe's coming out in every direction.

1200
01:08:34,039 --> 01:08:36,199
Speaker 1: That's fucking wild. To think about.

1201
01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:41,880
Speaker 2: Aguaro on steroids, it's like crazy. Yeah, yeah, they're they're wild.

1202
01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:45,359
But yeah, so they diverged sometime early Devonian, and they,

1203
01:08:46,239 --> 01:08:49,920
you know, really diversified. By the late Devonian. You start

1204
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,359
seeing the predecessors of modern ice ese or quill warts.

1205
01:08:53,399 --> 01:08:55,640
Speaker 1: It was like four hundred million years ago about.

1206
01:08:56,479 --> 01:09:00,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is probably well yeah, we're getting getting somewhere

1207
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:03,399
in the four hundred million years ago probably ranges when

1208
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:07,239
everything starts diverging. I think from this, this having this

1209
01:09:07,319 --> 01:09:12,760
homosporous plan, I'd have to check basically what's been out

1210
01:09:12,800 --> 01:09:16,600
there more recent publications, but I think I think by

1211
01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:19,520
then you've already got something going on where you've got

1212
01:09:19,960 --> 01:09:23,439
the route to heterospery has already been established, and there

1213
01:09:23,479 --> 01:09:25,520
are some lineages trending toward that.

1214
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:28,119
Speaker 1: Okay, so what was the benefit of this? Why did

1215
01:09:28,199 --> 01:09:30,920
it evolve and stick around what was selected for?

1216
01:09:32,239 --> 01:09:34,840
Speaker 2: It's a really good question. I mean one of the

1217
01:09:35,319 --> 01:09:38,560
possibilities too, is I mean you really you start limiting

1218
01:09:38,680 --> 01:09:42,800
your ability to basically I think it creates opportunities for

1219
01:09:42,920 --> 01:09:48,239
outcrossing in many cases, but it also generates this sort

1220
01:09:48,279 --> 01:09:54,560
of this differential parental investment on the different sportes. So

1221
01:09:54,880 --> 01:09:57,920
being able to produce sperm is a much less energetic,

1222
01:09:58,239 --> 01:10:02,560
costly process or a parent plant at least to bestow

1223
01:10:02,680 --> 01:10:05,199
on it. It's going to to fight, you know, offspring

1224
01:10:05,760 --> 01:10:08,039
than it is to form an egg or a nova

1225
01:10:08,640 --> 01:10:12,960
basically an ovule, And so you basically have this this

1226
01:10:13,239 --> 01:10:16,720
difference in allocation that where the ovule is getting a

1227
01:10:16,760 --> 01:10:20,399
lot more of that parntal investment in this larger spore

1228
01:10:20,720 --> 01:10:24,720
over time, and basically these microspores are getting a lot

1229
01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:28,359
less and so I don't you know in terms of

1230
01:10:29,560 --> 01:10:33,880
being able to I think ecologically one of the implications

1231
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:37,279
ends up being that, I mean, head osprey really allowed

1232
01:10:37,399 --> 01:10:42,079
plants to move further inland and away from the water

1233
01:10:42,279 --> 01:10:46,800
and have less dependency on water. These these plants are

1234
01:10:46,880 --> 01:10:49,960
sort of in that in a hazy area though, because

1235
01:10:50,760 --> 01:10:53,960
their sperm still is flagulated, it still has a tail,

1236
01:10:54,199 --> 01:10:59,920
and it's still still swim mobile, so you're still dealing

1237
01:11:00,279 --> 01:11:04,079
with this dependency on water, which you know, if you

1238
01:11:04,159 --> 01:11:06,079
look at sort of the evolution of plants through the

1239
01:11:06,119 --> 01:11:09,520
tree of life and through time, you see this decreasing

1240
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:15,119
dependency on water as a key theme in you as

1241
01:11:15,199 --> 01:11:17,960
you look at the divergences of these more and more

1242
01:11:18,039 --> 01:11:22,000
terrestrial plants as you grade toward flowering plants. Now that said,

1243
01:11:22,680 --> 01:11:25,479
that sort of view of how we teach botany classes

1244
01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:30,960
is well, it's teleological. It's basically we basically present I mean,

1245
01:11:31,479 --> 01:11:36,319
two people learning about plants that there's a progression through time,

1246
01:11:36,399 --> 01:11:39,319
which of course an evolution, there's an aimless wanderer a

1247
01:11:39,399 --> 01:11:42,600
lot of times, and that things happen to work and

1248
01:11:42,760 --> 01:11:46,680
happen to stick and then lead to some nice things.

1249
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:49,640
But a lot of times it's not deal in that

1250
01:11:50,319 --> 01:11:53,159
the plant is not necessarily like, oh, I could be

1251
01:11:53,520 --> 01:11:56,920
better at what I do by you know, just you know,

1252
01:11:57,439 --> 01:11:59,880
I don't know. Lamark is sort of this the lum

1253
01:12:00,439 --> 01:12:02,960
sort of evolutionary view of like, well, the giraffe could

1254
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:05,119
just stretch out its neck more and every generation will

1255
01:12:05,119 --> 01:12:08,319
get better at what it does, grabbing bolthornicacias, you know.

1256
01:12:08,600 --> 01:12:12,079
But you know, we kind of teach plants in plant

1257
01:12:12,119 --> 01:12:14,960
biology classes a lot like that, And it's not to

1258
01:12:15,079 --> 01:12:17,359
discredit how we teach, it's just kind of how we

1259
01:12:17,479 --> 01:12:20,479
present it. And why I bring that up in particular

1260
01:12:20,600 --> 01:12:25,640
is that lycophytes are doing these experiments, basically these evolutionary experiments,

1261
01:12:25,760 --> 01:12:29,640
and they're they're converging in these very I mean, I

1262
01:12:29,920 --> 01:12:31,880
guess we would call it like in a quote unquote

1263
01:12:32,399 --> 01:12:37,840
advanced way. They're developing the basically an analogous way of

1264
01:12:37,920 --> 01:12:41,640
reproducing to seed plants, but they're not seed plants. They're

1265
01:12:41,680 --> 01:12:44,560
developing ways to grow into trees, but they don't produce

1266
01:12:45,079 --> 01:12:49,079
the same kind of wood that seed plants or lignophytes do,

1267
01:12:50,359 --> 01:12:54,640
and they've evolved roots independently through independent means of the

1268
01:12:54,680 --> 01:12:58,560
other plants too, And so it's almost like with lycophytes,

1269
01:12:58,600 --> 01:13:01,960
it's kind of like a Mister Potato, Like everything that

1270
01:13:02,159 --> 01:13:05,640
makes it a plant that you see has been evolved

1271
01:13:05,640 --> 01:13:06,960
independently of all the other plants.

1272
01:13:07,279 --> 01:13:09,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how That's the crazy thing. I mean, it's

1273
01:13:09,439 --> 01:13:12,079
just they've been around that long that I mean, every

1274
01:13:12,760 --> 01:13:14,640
god knows what else came up, Like what are the

1275
01:13:14,760 --> 01:13:18,279
mutations came up that the environment is selected for. But

1276
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:20,520
this is what worked, and this is what the environment

1277
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:24,039
kept selecting for, is these traits like the heterospore, the endospory,

1278
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:29,279
the with with with the heterosport, the heterosprey did. So

1279
01:13:29,560 --> 01:13:35,000
every every species of Selaginella and Isoetes will produce both

1280
01:13:35,680 --> 01:13:38,920
a microspore a male sport, and a megasport a female spor. Right,

1281
01:13:39,199 --> 01:13:40,880
they're and they're not dietious in other.

1282
01:13:40,720 --> 01:13:45,399
Speaker 2: Words, yes, they well, to my to my knowledge, they

1283
01:13:45,520 --> 01:13:51,520
all produce megaspores and microspores. So the females the megagametophyte

1284
01:13:51,640 --> 01:13:55,119
carrying a female spore. Quote, you know, in a sense,

1285
01:13:55,239 --> 01:13:58,600
and then you have the microspore which carries the male gametophyte.

1286
01:14:01,239 --> 01:14:04,960
There are times where some of these plants will act

1287
01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:08,800
almost a little more like a dioecious plant. Now they

1288
01:14:08,840 --> 01:14:12,600
won't be truly dioecious though, so so there are times

1289
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:15,840
like isuwetes, for instance, and some of the work we're

1290
01:14:15,880 --> 01:14:19,800
currently doing with ice sweetes, we've been finding that there

1291
01:14:20,680 --> 01:14:22,479
and you can see it sometimes in the field, but

1292
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:26,760
sometimes I suetes, which is literally that little basically onion

1293
01:14:26,840 --> 01:14:30,079
looking plant or a little rush looking plant that you

1294
01:14:30,159 --> 01:14:34,560
know grows the bottom of lakes and invernal pools. It

1295
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:38,000
basically the entire plant has been converted to a cone

1296
01:14:38,399 --> 01:14:41,319
to a strobelus. It's reduced to a stroblus on a

1297
01:14:41,399 --> 01:14:46,600
little micro block chunk of a former tree. Basically, yeah,

1298
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:47,880
it is is weird.

1299
01:14:48,720 --> 01:14:51,319
Speaker 1: It's like a spheral arrangement of these leaves, except in

1300
01:14:51,520 --> 01:14:56,279
this case the cone bracts are photosynthetic, right yeah.

1301
01:14:57,039 --> 01:14:59,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so what will happen is effectively you can

1302
01:14:59,800 --> 01:15:04,560
get plants where they'll alter what type of sporophilm or

1303
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:08,840
spore bearing leaf they'll form. So there will be some

1304
01:15:09,119 --> 01:15:11,600
depending on the time of the year that will only

1305
01:15:11,880 --> 01:15:15,600
be developing female spores megaspores, and there's other times you

1306
01:15:15,720 --> 01:15:20,520
know they'll only be developing microsportes. And then if you know,

1307
01:15:20,720 --> 01:15:22,680
you you hit these plants like let's say in a

1308
01:15:22,720 --> 01:15:26,359
vernal pool where you have a very anomalous climatic year,

1309
01:15:26,600 --> 01:15:29,760
like where you know they got basically a certain condition.

1310
01:15:30,079 --> 01:15:33,640
I mean, this is all theoretical. You know, you could

1311
01:15:33,800 --> 01:15:36,479
have the plants basically just produce female spores one year,

1312
01:15:36,760 --> 01:15:39,880
some of them some others might be stuck in producing

1313
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:43,399
a male spore only, and they could effectively be dioecious

1314
01:15:43,439 --> 01:15:45,479
in that way. Yeah, but only temporarily.

1315
01:15:45,520 --> 01:15:48,520
Speaker 1: But yeah, but they've got the potential to produce both, so.

1316
01:15:49,079 --> 01:15:53,000
Speaker 2: To do both exactly. So let's you know how they regulate.

1317
01:15:53,039 --> 01:15:53,520
That's different.

1318
01:15:53,720 --> 01:15:56,560
Speaker 1: So let's talk about So with Selaginella, especially because that's

1319
01:15:56,600 --> 01:15:58,960
what you study, you you've found some pretty weird and

1320
01:15:59,000 --> 01:16:00,880
I think it was selegend that you were studying with

1321
01:16:01,000 --> 01:16:04,600
the extinction events right primarily or was it lycopods too.

1322
01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:07,600
Speaker 2: Or what so? So I've worked, Yeah, I work with

1323
01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:10,640
all all sorts of likecopods, so all the different lineages

1324
01:16:10,800 --> 01:16:14,520
at different times for different projects, depending but for for

1325
01:16:14,640 --> 01:16:20,279
extinction work. I've worked specifically with ice sweeties mostly. Oh wow, okay,

1326
01:16:20,359 --> 01:16:24,279
so tell us about that close to its heterosporous because.

1327
01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:26,920
Speaker 1: This is because this is some really interesting stuff. I mean,

1328
01:16:27,079 --> 01:16:30,279
especially you were working with the Permian extinction, the Great

1329
01:16:30,399 --> 01:16:33,039
Dying right first and foremost, right like that was the

1330
01:16:33,119 --> 01:16:35,960
time period. Tell everybody about this and just tell us

1331
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:36,600
about your work.

1332
01:16:37,880 --> 01:16:40,079
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so my work was sort of the Great

1333
01:16:40,199 --> 01:16:43,079
Dying has been trying to figure out what happened to

1334
01:16:43,279 --> 01:16:48,359
plant communities during yeah, the largest extinction or's history, and

1335
01:16:49,279 --> 01:16:52,720
why did certain changes in plant communities around the world

1336
01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:56,279
happen in the way that they appear in the fossil record.

1337
01:16:57,199 --> 01:16:59,159
And you know, a big part of this is that,

1338
01:17:01,039 --> 01:17:05,000
as you know, almost like ninety percent of multicellular life

1339
01:17:05,159 --> 01:17:08,399
seems to disappear or blip out of most fossil assemblages

1340
01:17:09,199 --> 01:17:13,239
across the planet. We see this tumultuous change in the

1341
01:17:13,319 --> 01:17:19,520
plant communities that really, you know, is unusual in so

1342
01:17:19,680 --> 01:17:24,479
many ways and it's not just like an like one

1343
01:17:24,520 --> 01:17:26,399
of the things we think about with like a mass extinction.

1344
01:17:26,560 --> 01:17:29,640
And probably the most famous example now that you know,

1345
01:17:29,720 --> 01:17:33,199
has really been worked on is the asteroid impact of

1346
01:17:33,239 --> 01:17:35,560
the Cretaceous paleogen R sixty.

1347
01:17:35,319 --> 01:17:37,760
Speaker 1: Six million years ago. Right, first off, let's let's let's

1348
01:17:37,760 --> 01:17:40,119
get our mass extinctions now for anybody who's familiar, So

1349
01:17:40,159 --> 01:17:42,680
there have been five, not including the one that we're

1350
01:17:42,760 --> 01:17:45,880
causing with all our bullshit, there have been five big ones.

1351
01:17:45,920 --> 01:17:48,119
The Permian two hundred and fifty one million years ago

1352
01:17:48,840 --> 01:17:52,159
is like the whopper, like shit almost got totally knocked out,

1353
01:17:52,279 --> 01:17:56,760
like everything died, everything, Like ninety six percent of life

1354
01:17:56,800 --> 01:17:57,479
in the oceans.

1355
01:17:57,479 --> 01:17:57,760
Speaker 2: What was it?

1356
01:17:57,800 --> 01:17:58,119
Speaker 1: How much?

1357
01:17:58,399 --> 01:17:58,720
Speaker 2: What was it?

1358
01:17:58,840 --> 01:18:01,640
Speaker 1: The percentage of life on life? Yeah, and what?

1359
01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:05,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, I mean it varies depending

1360
01:18:05,279 --> 01:18:07,439
on what groups you're looking at, but I mean, you know,

1361
01:18:08,239 --> 01:18:11,720
basically we've said something like, you know, it's it's really

1362
01:18:11,840 --> 01:18:14,079
high up there. I mean it's like eighty ninety percent.

1363
01:18:14,479 --> 01:18:17,479
Speaker 1: Life sucks. Life really.

1364
01:18:19,279 --> 01:18:22,920
Speaker 2: Sucked, and it sucks for a long time too afterward,

1365
01:18:22,960 --> 01:18:27,039
which is partly what has been perplexing. So like with

1366
01:18:27,159 --> 01:18:30,359
the the asteroid impact, you know, much more recent extinction

1367
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:33,720
with the with the dinosaurs dying out than the Permian.

1368
01:18:33,880 --> 01:18:37,479
So the Permian extinction happens, and actually has been argued

1369
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:39,680
that without the Permian extinction, you might not have had

1370
01:18:39,720 --> 01:18:41,119
the age of dinosaurs.

1371
01:18:40,760 --> 01:18:43,159
Speaker 1: Right, because dinosaurs hadn't even involved yet. It was what

1372
01:18:43,319 --> 01:18:46,640
was a synacids or what was what came after the

1373
01:18:47,800 --> 01:18:50,479
those weird There are relatives of mammals, but they had

1374
01:18:50,560 --> 01:18:51,279
that big fan.

1375
01:18:52,880 --> 01:18:56,279
Speaker 2: Exactly. There were, yeah, relatives of mammals like demetrid on,

1376
01:18:56,439 --> 01:19:00,640
the sale backed fan backed sort of mammal life. Reptiles

1377
01:19:00,680 --> 01:19:02,760
we call them, which is a term that I think

1378
01:19:02,760 --> 01:19:04,880
a lot of people who study synoposides are take great

1379
01:19:04,920 --> 01:19:08,720
offense to. But for you know, for the purpose of this,

1380
01:19:08,800 --> 01:19:11,560
I will acknowledge that that's probably it's a it's a

1381
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:15,239
description we use, but I guess it's helpful more for

1382
01:19:15,439 --> 01:19:19,680
just context. These are basically a lineage of reptiles that

1383
01:19:19,840 --> 01:19:24,000
have developed canines, differentiated teeth like mammals. They have whiskers,

1384
01:19:24,079 --> 01:19:27,520
they have fur. Probably many of them were probably warm blooded.

1385
01:19:27,600 --> 01:19:30,520
Speaker 1: There's a lot ofists who are mad at both of

1386
01:19:30,640 --> 01:19:33,680
us right now. You know, the first thing in their

1387
01:19:33,720 --> 01:19:35,279
forehead gritting their teeth.

1388
01:19:35,119 --> 01:19:40,039
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. The aino eruptions going on inside

1389
01:19:40,119 --> 01:19:43,119
the heads of many many creative minds right now, I'm sure,

1390
01:19:43,640 --> 01:19:46,319
And that's always part of that's always part of what's

1391
01:19:46,319 --> 01:19:48,039
fun to be in this field is we always have

1392
01:19:48,880 --> 01:19:52,560
have plenty to argue about, and you know, it's cool

1393
01:19:52,560 --> 01:19:55,000
stuff to actually argue about. It really makes you think

1394
01:19:55,039 --> 01:19:55,640
a lot of Yeah.

1395
01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:57,479
Speaker 1: I wish people argued about this kind of shit instead

1396
01:19:57,479 --> 01:19:59,199
of the dumb shit you see in the comments section.

1397
01:19:59,319 --> 01:20:01,880
But anyway, yeah, going on, So, okay, So this is so.

1398
01:20:02,000 --> 01:20:04,760
But Permian is two fifty one million years ago KT

1399
01:20:05,319 --> 01:20:07,000
or whatever they're calling I know that it's not the

1400
01:20:07,119 --> 01:20:09,279
KT and it's not called the KT anymore as sixty

1401
01:20:09,319 --> 01:20:11,880
six million years ago, but that with that extinction, the

1402
01:20:11,960 --> 01:20:14,520
dinosaur extinction is nothing compared to this one, right, What

1403
01:20:14,720 --> 01:20:17,800
caused the Permian extinction? What is thought to have caused it?

1404
01:20:19,359 --> 01:20:22,199
Speaker 2: A lot probably a lot of things happening at the

1405
01:20:22,279 --> 01:20:25,960
wrong time, is what the thought is so one of

1406
01:20:26,199 --> 01:20:28,319
I mean, this has been a question we've been trying

1407
01:20:28,359 --> 01:20:30,319
to work on for a while, of a least in

1408
01:20:30,359 --> 01:20:33,119
the lab I've been and I am currently working with.

1409
01:20:33,319 --> 01:20:37,840
And so we think that there is a and I

1410
01:20:37,960 --> 01:20:40,239
think when we say we, I mean I think a

1411
01:20:40,319 --> 01:20:44,039
lot of pale biologists and geologists have really seen a

1412
01:20:44,199 --> 01:20:50,520
clear link in time between the formation of the largest

1413
01:20:51,520 --> 01:20:54,359
volcanic Province or Igneus Province in its history of the

1414
01:20:54,439 --> 01:20:58,560
Siberian Traps, at least in the history multicellar life and

1415
01:20:59,319 --> 01:21:03,199
the disappearing of all these lineages of animals and and

1416
01:21:03,399 --> 01:21:07,560
the basically biotic upheavals. So it seems like that the

1417
01:21:07,680 --> 01:21:10,640
formation of the Siberian Traps larger I Gas Province is

1418
01:21:11,000 --> 01:21:17,960
integrally tied with just the wholesale destruction of many ecosystems

1419
01:21:18,479 --> 01:21:21,800
across the planet, both in the marine realm and terrestrially.

1420
01:21:23,560 --> 01:21:27,119
And not only that, there's there is a correlation between

1421
01:21:27,119 --> 01:21:31,039
a specific phase of volcanic activity of the Siberian Traps

1422
01:21:31,079 --> 01:21:34,800
that seems to be connected with the onset of the

1423
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:41,920
real big pulses of extinction that happen so basically initially so,

1424
01:21:42,159 --> 01:21:44,520
so the Siberian Traps are basically this igneous province that

1425
01:21:44,720 --> 01:21:48,439
that spans the continent of like much of the continent

1426
01:21:48,479 --> 01:21:51,399
of Asia through Russia, mostly through Russia in extent.

1427
01:21:51,760 --> 01:21:53,640
Speaker 1: So this is not a volcano. This is like a

1428
01:21:53,920 --> 01:21:56,640
massive right, I mean, this is this is like you

1429
01:21:56,680 --> 01:21:58,960
can't even call this a volcano. It's so fucking human.

1430
01:21:59,119 --> 01:22:02,159
Speaker 2: No, it's like a system of you know, probably a

1431
01:22:02,279 --> 01:22:06,199
thousand gazillions of volcanoes that are in it, I mean

1432
01:22:06,359 --> 01:22:09,359
over time, and they're all you know, there's eruptions, and

1433
01:22:09,399 --> 01:22:14,239
there's massive lava flows going on that are basically forming

1434
01:22:14,319 --> 01:22:17,960
and what is this almost like hydrothermal vent system that's

1435
01:22:18,000 --> 01:22:20,399
happening on Land. It's a little like if you were

1436
01:22:20,479 --> 01:22:24,760
to amplify Greenland's volcanism, like but have a lot more

1437
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:28,000
crazy stuff going on though, I mean, it's really one

1438
01:22:28,039 --> 01:22:35,239
of the things that happen the onset of its development.

1439
01:22:35,319 --> 01:22:38,159
As far as geologists have seen, it's been that there's

1440
01:22:38,199 --> 01:22:42,960
been what's called extrusive volcanism, basically a lot of explosive

1441
01:22:43,039 --> 01:22:47,079
volcanism of volcanoes that are you know, erupting at the

1442
01:22:47,199 --> 01:22:51,640
surface of the planet. But there gets to be this

1443
01:22:51,840 --> 01:22:55,520
point where there appears to be a switchover across much

1444
01:22:55,600 --> 01:23:00,920
of this province from extrusive volcanism to intrusive volcanism basically

1445
01:23:01,319 --> 01:23:04,880
being shut down above ground, and the lava moves laterally

1446
01:23:05,039 --> 01:23:09,399
underground and fans out across Russia and Asia. And as

1447
01:23:09,479 --> 01:23:13,760
it does and that lava moves through there, it basically

1448
01:23:13,920 --> 01:23:19,520
comes into contact with vast, vast coal deposits across the

1449
01:23:19,600 --> 01:23:25,079
area and most latitudely extensive sort of basically dykes and

1450
01:23:25,199 --> 01:23:31,439
sil complex anderous history. And then it also contacts these massive,

1451
01:23:31,560 --> 01:23:37,840
massive evaporated evapor basically evaporated seaways that were formed like

1452
01:23:37,880 --> 01:23:42,119
in the Cambrian in this region. So there were kilometers

1453
01:23:42,359 --> 01:23:47,199
thick salt deposits all over rock salt, and this lava

1454
01:23:47,319 --> 01:23:50,079
was just moving right through them. And as it came

1455
01:23:50,159 --> 01:23:56,239
into contact with salt and coal, it basically was outgassing

1456
01:23:56,960 --> 01:24:01,159
these nasty, nasty halogens and volatile into the atmosphere. So

1457
01:24:02,159 --> 01:24:05,279
the volcano is unleashing tons and tons of CO two

1458
01:24:05,880 --> 01:24:08,199
for a good amount of time. But now that it's

1459
01:24:08,319 --> 01:24:13,039
torching these coal deposits on a massive scale, like synchronously

1460
01:24:13,159 --> 01:24:17,560
across many parts of this province, you have enormous amounts

1461
01:24:17,600 --> 01:24:22,319
of methane and carbon dioxide emissions that are probably driving

1462
01:24:22,399 --> 01:24:25,039
the world into this global warming just hell zone.

1463
01:24:25,239 --> 01:24:30,560
Speaker 1: So a bad problem became exponentially worse. It's just very quickly.

1464
01:24:32,399 --> 01:24:34,880
So how are were these volcanoes erupting for I mean

1465
01:24:34,920 --> 01:24:37,640
it's like a few thousand years, tens of thousands of years,

1466
01:24:37,720 --> 01:24:38,600
millions of years.

1467
01:24:38,479 --> 01:24:42,640
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, there were probably pulses of this volcanism going on, yeah,

1468
01:24:42,720 --> 01:24:45,800
for you know, at least tens of thousands of years

1469
01:24:45,920 --> 01:24:49,720
to I mean, it goes basically there's thoughts that the

1470
01:24:50,079 --> 01:24:53,319
cyberine trafts themselves may may have even been active, like

1471
01:24:53,439 --> 01:24:57,680
from the end of the Permian period into toward the

1472
01:24:57,840 --> 01:25:00,119
end of the early Triassic there might have still and

1473
01:25:00,239 --> 01:25:03,560
pulses of volcanism going on within this region before it

1474
01:25:03,680 --> 01:25:06,680
really quiesced. But I mean this was all sort of this,

1475
01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:09,159
I mean, this was happening sort of in this pulse

1476
01:25:09,319 --> 01:25:13,199
manner across the province. That there would be these these

1477
01:25:13,319 --> 01:25:18,159
periods of probably more quiescent, like you know, less less

1478
01:25:18,239 --> 01:25:19,840
eruptive activity.

1479
01:25:19,640 --> 01:25:22,359
Speaker 1: Right for a little bit, and then start back up again,

1480
01:25:22,399 --> 01:25:22,720
and then it.

1481
01:25:22,720 --> 01:25:24,960
Speaker 2: Would just come back up. But you'd have, you know,

1482
01:25:25,680 --> 01:25:28,319
over and over and over again. The cumulative sort of

1483
01:25:28,359 --> 01:25:31,399
effect on you know, ravaging the atmosphere with this stuff

1484
01:25:31,399 --> 01:25:34,680
would have been horrible. I mean, and the CO two

1485
01:25:34,840 --> 01:25:36,680
is just part of it too. It's like, you know,

1486
01:25:36,800 --> 01:25:39,479
you have the coal is a really big worry. What

1487
01:25:40,800 --> 01:25:42,760
the team that I'm on has been really looking into

1488
01:25:42,880 --> 01:25:45,119
is what's going on with the salt and what are

1489
01:25:45,159 --> 01:25:49,279
the ramifications of the salt contact metamorphism with the lava,

1490
01:25:49,640 --> 01:25:52,680
and that is that when you take rock salt and

1491
01:25:52,760 --> 01:25:56,520
you vaporize it and then inject it into the atmosphere.

1492
01:25:56,960 --> 01:25:59,880
I forgot to mention too that as these basically silcm

1493
01:26:00,039 --> 01:26:05,399
plexes are moving around, you have explosive eruptive pipes that

1494
01:26:05,640 --> 01:26:10,600
form these diatream complexes that basically will just explode through

1495
01:26:10,880 --> 01:26:14,079
the hardened crust of the lavas that were formed from

1496
01:26:14,119 --> 01:26:17,960
the previous forms and then ripped straight into the atmosphere.

1497
01:26:18,239 --> 01:26:21,279
So it literally would inject with fire fountains right into

1498
01:26:21,640 --> 01:26:26,000
the stratosphere basically ozone depleting voltile.

1499
01:26:26,199 --> 01:26:28,239
Speaker 1: So this is like the this is like planet Earth

1500
01:26:28,399 --> 01:26:30,760
ate some bad sushi and then had like you know,

1501
01:26:31,079 --> 01:26:35,600
just violent diarrhea and puking for like fifty thousand years,

1502
01:26:35,960 --> 01:26:38,760
probably longer on and off with, but like a period

1503
01:26:38,800 --> 01:26:41,239
of fifty thousand years, ten thousand years. That's where it's

1504
01:26:41,319 --> 01:26:42,920
really going off, where it's really bad. I mean you

1505
01:26:43,000 --> 01:26:46,880
run into the bathroom every thirty seconds. Yeah, just shitty.

1506
01:26:46,960 --> 01:26:48,960
This sucks. I mean, this is getting bad. But I

1507
01:26:49,000 --> 01:26:50,319
didn't think of it. I mean I knew it was

1508
01:26:50,399 --> 01:26:52,279
a I knew about the deck and trash, but I

1509
01:26:52,319 --> 01:26:54,399
didn't know about all this other stuff, like the lateral

1510
01:26:54,880 --> 01:26:57,000
so like a dike is yeah, like a sill is

1511
01:26:57,079 --> 01:26:59,600
like a lateral sill. Rather, it's like a lateral channel

1512
01:26:59,640 --> 01:27:06,920
of a volcanic material underground, and that's then melting all

1513
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:13,479
these other previously deposited layers of CO two carbon and

1514
01:27:13,560 --> 01:27:16,800
then that produces COEO two and then salt deposits, et cetera.

1515
01:27:16,880 --> 01:27:19,760
And what other weird shit was going to? You said, halogen?

1516
01:27:19,920 --> 01:27:23,319
Speaker 2: What was it? Some? Yeah, so there were just halogens

1517
01:27:23,399 --> 01:27:26,880
being unreleased, unleashed by these lavas. So there's been some

1518
01:27:27,079 --> 01:27:33,399
really neat studies by geochemists in Siberia looking at the

1519
01:27:33,479 --> 01:27:38,359
chemistry of these contact metamorphism areas where you'd have these deep,

1520
01:27:38,600 --> 01:27:44,079
deep eruptive pipes that we'd get through basically erupting through

1521
01:27:44,199 --> 01:27:47,800
these these salt layers, and you'd have, yeah, you'd have

1522
01:27:48,039 --> 01:27:53,600
direct mixing and contact metamorphism between rock, salt and lava,

1523
01:27:54,479 --> 01:27:58,359
and so you'd be getting methyl bromine and methyl chlorine

1524
01:27:58,640 --> 01:28:01,720
unleased straight into the asphere by some of these things.

1525
01:28:01,960 --> 01:28:05,880
And it's really what's really troubling too, is that the

1526
01:28:06,359 --> 01:28:10,640
stratosphere is lower, at least it's much easier to get

1527
01:28:10,720 --> 01:28:14,159
to in the Arctic and the Antarctic like towards the poles.

1528
01:28:14,880 --> 01:28:18,920
That's where basically the tropopause, where our troposphere, where all

1529
01:28:18,960 --> 01:28:22,640
of our weather happens. The boundary between the troposphere and

1530
01:28:22,680 --> 01:28:26,720
the stratosphere is lowest right at the North pole, in

1531
01:28:26,720 --> 01:28:30,720
the South Pole, and so if you position your volcano

1532
01:28:31,399 --> 01:28:36,800
right there, which the Cyberne traps most certainly were, you've

1533
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:41,000
got just a perfect, perfect delivery system for injecting this

1534
01:28:41,399 --> 01:28:44,880
crap right up into the stratosphere and then circulating it

1535
01:28:44,920 --> 01:28:48,560
around the world. So there are there have been studies

1536
01:28:48,600 --> 01:28:51,199
that have been suggesting looking at these lavas that you'd

1537
01:28:51,239 --> 01:28:54,720
have near total destruction of the ozonelier oh during phases,

1538
01:28:54,840 --> 01:28:59,720
especially irene traps. So all that UV just comes pouring in. Now, yeah,

1539
01:29:00,119 --> 01:29:05,119
what's destroying the the methyl bromide. Yeah, so the methyl

1540
01:29:05,199 --> 01:29:08,880
chloride and the methyl bromide together, would you know either

1541
01:29:09,159 --> 01:29:13,880
both of them are fantastic catalysts of ozone destruction. Basically though,

1542
01:29:14,399 --> 01:29:17,720
when those the methyl bromine and the methyl chlorine, those

1543
01:29:17,840 --> 01:29:21,640
volatile compounds, when they get transported up into the atmosphere,

1544
01:29:21,720 --> 01:29:24,520
they can get up there because they're riding together, but

1545
01:29:24,640 --> 01:29:28,119
once up there Basically the chlorine and the bromine have

1546
01:29:28,239 --> 01:29:31,960
a strong affinity for the oxygen, and so they'll basically

1547
01:29:32,239 --> 01:29:36,399
knock an oxygen off of each those three oxygen ozone

1548
01:29:36,800 --> 01:29:41,479
of molecules and create two and just three oxygen radicals.

1549
01:29:41,840 --> 01:29:45,079
And so it's basically like this nasty, horrible like game

1550
01:29:45,199 --> 01:29:48,760
of billiard balls from hell on a on a molectro level,

1551
01:29:48,920 --> 01:29:53,479
so us ripping holes in the ozone layer, and particularly

1552
01:29:53,560 --> 01:29:58,880
too so so methyl chlorine is pretty effective ripping ozone holes.

1553
01:29:58,960 --> 01:30:01,840
You know, in the atmosphere. Ethyl bromide is far more

1554
01:30:01,920 --> 01:30:05,920
potent and far more destructive to ozone than chlorine. And

1555
01:30:06,079 --> 01:30:09,840
it looks like the lavas were the regions. So the

1556
01:30:10,720 --> 01:30:15,119
basically the the the strata that these these sills were

1557
01:30:15,159 --> 01:30:18,640
passing through were very rich and bromine. And so it

1558
01:30:18,800 --> 01:30:22,520
was really really wrong place at the wrong time.

1559
01:30:22,680 --> 01:30:27,479
Speaker 1: Probably damn that's fucked. So so but basically Earth lost

1560
01:30:27,520 --> 01:30:32,359
the ozone there probably for for periods it was close.

1561
01:30:32,760 --> 01:30:35,680
It just just disappeared and then it came back obviously,

1562
01:30:35,800 --> 01:30:38,399
I mean, you know, but for a period, I mean

1563
01:30:38,479 --> 01:30:40,920
it was really really shitty. So not only is that

1564
01:30:41,039 --> 01:30:43,520
there more CO two in the atmosphere, and these massive

1565
01:30:44,159 --> 01:30:47,880
volcanic eruptions that last forever. You've also got all this

1566
01:30:48,079 --> 01:30:50,600
UV starting to pour in because there's no ozone shield.

1567
01:30:50,960 --> 01:30:52,399
There's no UV shield the right.

1568
01:30:53,560 --> 01:30:56,920
Speaker 2: Right exactly, so we're not we're no longer protected from

1569
01:30:56,920 --> 01:31:01,439
a lot of the Sun's radiation on or surface during

1570
01:31:02,000 --> 01:31:06,520
phases of this extinction. And so you know, looking at

1571
01:31:06,600 --> 01:31:09,960
that geologic record, I mean, the geochemical records, it means

1572
01:31:09,960 --> 01:31:13,840
seem pretty persuasive to me at least that you have

1573
01:31:14,119 --> 01:31:18,640
this this stress that's pretty otherworldly literally that makes this

1574
01:31:18,880 --> 01:31:23,600
very different than a normal you know event. And yet

1575
01:31:24,399 --> 01:31:27,720
you really, we really didn't have we didn't have as

1576
01:31:27,760 --> 01:31:31,840
much of an understanding of how how ozone weakening would

1577
01:31:31,840 --> 01:31:36,840
affect basically plant communities worldwide during this sort of event,

1578
01:31:37,039 --> 01:31:40,920
because this is a pre flowering plant time, so the

1579
01:31:41,000 --> 01:31:46,399
forests were all dominated by basically seed bearing, seed bearing

1580
01:31:46,520 --> 01:31:50,920
sorts of conifers and their relatives and seed ferns, and

1581
01:31:51,079 --> 01:31:55,600
so so when I went, I mean, I had originally

1582
01:31:55,720 --> 01:31:57,880
read about this sort of work when I was like,

1583
01:31:58,000 --> 01:31:59,760
I was almost out of high school when I first

1584
01:31:59,760 --> 01:32:03,479
picked up a paper about this, like starting college, and

1585
01:32:03,640 --> 01:32:08,800
I was like, whoa, this is this is weird. One

1586
01:32:08,840 --> 01:32:12,199
of the things that came up was that right around

1587
01:32:12,319 --> 01:32:15,359
and and this sort of before I had as much

1588
01:32:15,439 --> 01:32:17,399
of a knowledge of what was going on with the

1589
01:32:18,039 --> 01:32:22,279
volcanism and the Siberian traps at this time. The first

1590
01:32:22,359 --> 01:32:25,119
thing that got me hooked onto this extinction was that

1591
01:32:25,560 --> 01:32:28,600
they're around the world. As things go to hell and

1592
01:32:28,680 --> 01:32:33,000
hand basket, you have basically these these spol these spore

1593
01:32:33,079 --> 01:32:37,840
spikes of isodes relatives that just start popping up everywhere.

1594
01:32:38,359 --> 01:32:42,199
So basically you get these phases where IDEs relatives take

1595
01:32:42,279 --> 01:32:46,479
over the world and they take over sometimes in places

1596
01:32:46,520 --> 01:32:51,199
for millions of years. And this is weird because i

1597
01:32:51,399 --> 01:32:53,920
odes is we know them today and as far as

1598
01:32:53,960 --> 01:32:56,600
we've seen the fossil record, are like the epitome of

1599
01:32:56,640 --> 01:33:00,680
a stress tolerator. They're there are plants that grows super slowly,

1600
01:33:01,159 --> 01:33:03,920
they reproduce, I mean, they don't do anything very quickly.

1601
01:33:04,560 --> 01:33:08,520
They're terrible competitors, and they basically thrive on nothing. So

1602
01:33:09,319 --> 01:33:13,399
they basically can live and they you know, they're also practicing,

1603
01:33:13,840 --> 01:33:16,399
you know, they can they can be a lot more

1604
01:33:16,439 --> 01:33:20,640
plastic in their physiology. So like isot aliens, we call

1605
01:33:20,760 --> 01:33:23,960
them that sort of the group that is modern icouse

1606
01:33:24,039 --> 01:33:27,680
or quillworts are part of this fossil ancient group that

1607
01:33:27,800 --> 01:33:31,000
are what we call quormous lycophytes. So they're basically these

1608
01:33:31,119 --> 01:33:36,920
lycopods or lycophytes that have quorms, these subterranean, fleshy sort

1609
01:33:36,960 --> 01:33:40,600
of storage organs. They're a little bit like a trunk,

1610
01:33:40,760 --> 01:33:44,760
basically underground, and that makes them pretty much kind of

1611
01:33:44,800 --> 01:33:48,399
a geophyte in a way. They the main plant itself

1612
01:33:48,479 --> 01:33:50,600
is actually underground and all we see are the leaves

1613
01:33:50,680 --> 01:33:54,680
protruding through through the surface of the soil or muck

1614
01:33:54,760 --> 01:33:57,920
that they're growing in. And so they can they can

1615
01:33:58,000 --> 01:34:04,000
practice camp photosynthesis just a succulent and so CAM photosynthesis. Yeah,

1616
01:34:04,479 --> 01:34:10,159
solycophytes evolved cam photosynthesis as well, independently like a yeah,

1617
01:34:10,479 --> 01:34:12,520
like a cactus, and they'll and they do it a

1618
01:34:12,560 --> 01:34:15,359
lot of times underwater, which is weird. So they have

1619
01:34:15,640 --> 01:34:21,560
aquatic cam photosynthesis that they've they've developed, you know, probably

1620
01:34:21,800 --> 01:34:25,199
over time, and it looks it's probable that many of

1621
01:34:25,239 --> 01:34:29,720
their extinct relatives did practice camp photosynthesis at times, but

1622
01:34:29,840 --> 01:34:33,960
they facultatively can switch depending on whether they're growing underwater

1623
01:34:34,079 --> 01:34:37,600
or above water. They can develop CAM or C three

1624
01:34:37,640 --> 01:34:41,920
photosynthesis so sometimes there's some isotains that don't even have

1625
01:34:42,000 --> 01:34:45,800
stomata in their leaves, so it's it's wild. So like

1626
01:34:45,880 --> 01:34:49,720
they're bringing up soil carbon through their roots, taking up

1627
01:34:50,119 --> 01:34:54,239
fixing basically root carbon or carbon in the soil, and

1628
01:34:54,319 --> 01:34:56,159
then using that as their co two in a way.

1629
01:34:56,239 --> 01:35:00,560
So they're they're like the quill work group is truly

1630
01:35:00,720 --> 01:35:03,920
alien in so many ways, Like they're just like plants

1631
01:35:03,920 --> 01:35:05,039
from another planet.

1632
01:35:04,840 --> 01:35:07,479
Speaker 1: And they're the only relatives of these things that were

1633
01:35:07,520 --> 01:35:11,319
once enormous and super dominant on Earth. That's even weirder too,

1634
01:35:11,560 --> 01:35:13,840
It's like, why the fuck, it's super weird. This is

1635
01:35:13,880 --> 01:35:15,880
all that made it through all those mass extinctions, just

1636
01:35:15,960 --> 01:35:19,039
this little, this little guy, you know, this little thing,

1637
01:35:19,359 --> 01:35:21,479
and we have these ones that are taking over the

1638
01:35:21,520 --> 01:35:25,840
world during the Permian Crisis or the Permian Triassic extinction.

1639
01:35:26,000 --> 01:35:30,079
And and when I first was picking up papers seeing this,

1640
01:35:31,520 --> 01:35:35,760
basically the person who I contacted, the person who's writing these,

1641
01:35:35,800 --> 01:35:38,920
her name is Cindy Loy, and she's at Smithsonian at

1642
01:35:38,960 --> 01:35:42,680
the time, and I was like, hey, so you are

1643
01:35:42,800 --> 01:35:45,720
describing that there are these there's these spikes of these

1644
01:35:46,880 --> 01:35:51,199
these lycophytes spores, and not only that, but there's spikes

1645
01:35:51,359 --> 01:35:55,199
of what look to be malformations in these fossil sports.

1646
01:35:55,880 --> 01:36:00,399
So these spores basically are released in unseparated clusters of fours.

1647
01:36:00,720 --> 01:36:04,720
Speaker 2: They're like they're niotic products. Like it didn't like the

1648
01:36:04,760 --> 01:36:08,279
plant either, didn't complete meosis properly. But you find across

1649
01:36:08,359 --> 01:36:11,319
the planet like all these like little clusters of four

1650
01:36:11,399 --> 01:36:15,159
spores everywhere in these environments where all the seed plants

1651
01:36:15,199 --> 01:36:18,439
are pretty much blipping out of existence at least temporarily.

1652
01:36:18,520 --> 01:36:21,159
They're not going fully extended. So this extension has already

1653
01:36:21,279 --> 01:36:23,640
been going on. I mean, this is already right.

1654
01:36:23,800 --> 01:36:26,079
Speaker 1: Conditions are already shitty, but these ice of weed, these

1655
01:36:26,119 --> 01:36:28,760
relatives are thriving, but they're making all these kind of

1656
01:36:28,920 --> 01:36:30,159
half dud spores.

1657
01:36:31,640 --> 01:36:35,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least from what we originally were thinking. So

1658
01:36:36,640 --> 01:36:40,239
firston I reached out to you, Cindy. Basically it was like, oh, well,

1659
01:36:40,399 --> 01:36:42,840
you know, it's interesting because here's another paper that I

1660
01:36:42,920 --> 01:36:46,680
wrote and it was looking at I basically section through

1661
01:36:47,079 --> 01:36:50,159
these with colleagues. So she and her colleagues section through

1662
01:36:50,800 --> 01:36:55,680
these spores using transmission electron microscopy techniques where they could

1663
01:36:55,680 --> 01:36:58,439
see basically just how screwed up were these spores, and

1664
01:36:58,840 --> 01:37:01,960
these fossil spores in turns, they morphologically look like they

1665
01:37:02,000 --> 01:37:04,359
would have, you know, were they even mature, were the

1666
01:37:04,439 --> 01:37:09,239
walls matured, they complete maturity. And so they turned out

1667
01:37:09,319 --> 01:37:12,359
that yes, in fact, these spores look like they actually

1668
01:37:12,560 --> 01:37:16,520
fully matured. They looked like they were in every other respect,

1669
01:37:16,560 --> 01:37:19,960
they look okay. They're just linked together by these velcro

1670
01:37:20,199 --> 01:37:25,680
like interlocking, ridiculously complex outer spore wall like filaments. So

1671
01:37:25,760 --> 01:37:28,600
they basically a velcrode together and if you tap them apart,

1672
01:37:28,640 --> 01:37:31,920
they'll just break apartment normal. And so there's a thought

1673
01:37:32,000 --> 01:37:34,720
that maybe this was an adaptation to something weird going

1674
01:37:34,800 --> 01:37:38,560
on back then and the UV sort of idea of

1675
01:37:38,800 --> 01:37:42,520
plants getting blasted with UV radiation. It might be nice

1676
01:37:42,560 --> 01:37:45,600
to have your spores kind of clustered together, especially since

1677
01:37:45,800 --> 01:37:48,680
those spores are coated in glass. They're coded in silica.

1678
01:37:49,479 --> 01:37:52,279
So i SES puts a silicoal air on its spores,

1679
01:37:52,319 --> 01:37:57,720
which is pretty good. Yeah, so there might be adaptive

1680
01:37:57,760 --> 01:38:01,680
benefits to this, And so the story started for me

1681
01:38:01,960 --> 01:38:04,920
was like, well, how didlycophytes take over the planet during

1682
01:38:05,000 --> 01:38:08,359
this time? And as we were saying earlier, you know,

1683
01:38:08,399 --> 01:38:13,000
they need specific environments to survive, and you do need,

1684
01:38:13,079 --> 01:38:15,279
as you were saying earlier, they need some sort of

1685
01:38:15,359 --> 01:38:18,720
a quality of the environment to do, okay, like you

1686
01:38:18,840 --> 01:38:22,000
do need for many of them at least today, some

1687
01:38:22,159 --> 01:38:24,680
microrizon probably should be around, and you should have some

1688
01:38:25,079 --> 01:38:29,079
some healthy intactness of the ecosystem. But here we are

1689
01:38:29,239 --> 01:38:33,239
in this absolute just healthscape where these things are popping

1690
01:38:33,319 --> 01:38:37,479
up like dandelions everywhere and there's nothing else in most environments.

1691
01:38:38,439 --> 01:38:42,520
So I basically went in was like what would allow

1692
01:38:43,159 --> 01:38:47,399
these plants to survive and other things to fail? And

1693
01:38:47,880 --> 01:38:51,159
for that we're talking about like forest suppression in places

1694
01:38:51,199 --> 01:38:54,640
for millions of years. Like there's areas where the forests

1695
01:38:54,680 --> 01:38:56,760
may have been suppressed for as long as the span

1696
01:38:56,840 --> 01:39:01,399
of between the evolution of Lucy and us, like you know,

1697
01:39:01,640 --> 01:39:04,279
hominids and US. No forests in some regions.

1698
01:39:04,079 --> 01:39:07,000
Speaker 1: Like five million, seven million years, like five million years.

1699
01:39:07,439 --> 01:39:08,119
Speaker 2: And this is easy.

1700
01:39:08,600 --> 01:39:10,520
Speaker 1: So you're talking about the foss work. You're looking so

1701
01:39:10,520 --> 01:39:13,520
you're looking at micro fossils, and for like five million years,

1702
01:39:14,079 --> 01:39:18,199
you're seeing a paucity of species diversity in the fossil record,

1703
01:39:18,279 --> 01:39:20,760
like there's just not a lot of stuff, like very

1704
01:39:20,800 --> 01:39:23,159
few things around during this great dying event.

1705
01:39:24,079 --> 01:39:27,920
Speaker 2: Correct and and you and you see similar trends across

1706
01:39:27,960 --> 01:39:30,720
the planet. Now you know, like those sorts of environments

1707
01:39:30,800 --> 01:39:33,039
may not have been the norm where you know that

1708
01:39:33,880 --> 01:39:37,319
the succession would be on halt for that long. I

1709
01:39:37,399 --> 01:39:39,680
mean usually I think things would be in the adders

1710
01:39:40,119 --> 01:39:43,000
manner of like thousands to tens of thousands of years.

1711
01:39:43,079 --> 01:39:45,079
But still that's a heck of a lot of time

1712
01:39:45,680 --> 01:39:49,079
to delay succession, Like that's weird. And you know, for

1713
01:39:49,399 --> 01:39:53,520
for reference, like the the asteroid impact that is correlate

1714
01:39:53,600 --> 01:39:56,359
with the disappearance of non avian dinosaurs, there was a

1715
01:39:56,399 --> 01:39:58,880
fer and spike and it was widespread, but it really

1716
01:39:59,159 --> 01:40:02,960
wasn't that long, Like it was only probably like you know,

1717
01:40:03,039 --> 01:40:06,840
we might be talking decades in terms of when the

1718
01:40:06,920 --> 01:40:10,960
ferns were dominant and then how everything was rebooted thereafter.

1719
01:40:11,159 --> 01:40:13,319
I mean, the folks I've talked to have studied that

1720
01:40:13,520 --> 01:40:16,079
fern spike had been like it's analogus to like if

1721
01:40:16,079 --> 01:40:18,119
you just cut down the rainforest and the ferns came up.

1722
01:40:18,560 --> 01:40:20,079
It's like they kind of just do what they do.

1723
01:40:20,439 --> 01:40:23,039
Speaker 1: And again, this is just looking at micro fossils, at

1724
01:40:23,279 --> 01:40:28,079
fossil spores entombed in rock, right, Yeah, in that period

1725
01:40:28,079 --> 01:40:31,000
of a lot damn So how I didn't know after

1726
01:40:31,039 --> 01:40:32,720
the k the extinction it was that so it was

1727
01:40:33,279 --> 01:40:33,880
not that long.

1728
01:40:34,960 --> 01:40:38,680
Speaker 2: It probably wasn't comparatively like and again we're we're using

1729
01:40:38,760 --> 01:40:41,600
the Permian triacity extinction as a reference here, so like

1730
01:40:41,880 --> 01:40:44,920
we really have a distorted sense like that succession was

1731
01:40:45,199 --> 01:40:48,560
crazy and it was I'm sure a lot more delayed

1732
01:40:48,640 --> 01:40:51,079
because i mean we're talking about years of darkness after

1733
01:40:51,199 --> 01:40:55,399
the asteroid impact. But really the story with that, I

1734
01:40:55,479 --> 01:40:57,840
mean is just can you survive in the dark in

1735
01:40:57,880 --> 01:41:00,640
a spore bank for a while. The answer is yes,

1736
01:41:01,199 --> 01:41:04,399
most things. Yeah, sure, it's nothing for most plants on

1737
01:41:04,479 --> 01:41:07,479
the planet to survive a little while. But you know,

1738
01:41:07,560 --> 01:41:11,239
if you're talking like tens of thousands of years, I

1739
01:41:11,319 --> 01:41:14,880
mean that's where things start falling apart, like in terms

1740
01:41:14,920 --> 01:41:18,800
of like ecosystems, like they just the how we know them,

1741
01:41:18,880 --> 01:41:21,079
Like things just go out of whack and everything gets

1742
01:41:21,199 --> 01:41:24,680
re scrambled and reassembled in a very weird way, and

1743
01:41:24,800 --> 01:41:27,840
you get into what's basically like a new steady state,

1744
01:41:28,359 --> 01:41:32,119
a new baseline where you have these low diversity, persistent

1745
01:41:32,199 --> 01:41:37,159
ecosystems dominated by these like ice eds, relatives, and I think,

1746
01:41:37,399 --> 01:41:39,279
you know, it's kind of business as usual for them,

1747
01:41:39,640 --> 01:41:41,920
like during those periods, they're just like, well, nothing's wrong.

1748
01:41:42,000 --> 01:41:42,680
This is just what we do.

1749
01:41:43,279 --> 01:41:46,279
Speaker 1: That's so cool though, But it was I mean, again

1750
01:41:46,359 --> 01:41:49,800
to re emphasize this was really I mean, the planet

1751
01:41:49,920 --> 01:41:52,720
was essentially almost sterilized, like there was just it was

1752
01:41:52,840 --> 01:41:56,319
so long that conditions were this lousy for life that

1753
01:41:56,520 --> 01:41:59,119
a lot of stuff just started After a while, things

1754
01:41:59,199 --> 01:42:00,239
just start dropping off.

1755
01:42:01,319 --> 01:42:04,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in some interior parts of Pangaea, the

1756
01:42:04,720 --> 01:42:08,279
super continent at this time. Howthough the continents were mainly

1757
01:42:08,359 --> 01:42:12,760
globed together during this time, you probably have temperatures like

1758
01:42:12,760 --> 01:42:16,439
one hundred and thirty fahrenheit plus on average in some

1759
01:42:16,560 --> 01:42:20,760
of these areas cow or what. Yeah, probably from the

1760
01:42:20,840 --> 01:42:23,199
build up of the CO two over time. And then

1761
01:42:23,840 --> 01:42:26,840
one of the really devastating effects in research I think

1762
01:42:26,880 --> 01:42:30,119
that's come out more recently was that really a big

1763
01:42:30,279 --> 01:42:33,319
part of the destruction of the environment comes down to

1764
01:42:33,439 --> 01:42:37,960
deforestation in some ways, at least on land, and it

1765
01:42:38,039 --> 01:42:41,199
certainly had feedback loops with the marine realm, the destruction

1766
01:42:41,319 --> 01:42:45,560
of the forests and the delayed recession or delayed succession

1767
01:42:45,560 --> 01:42:47,960
of them. So the trees weren't around to take up

1768
01:42:47,960 --> 01:42:51,399
that CO two as much. So trees are hanging on,

1769
01:42:51,680 --> 01:42:55,159
but they're hanging on in places like you know, probably Israel, Jordan,

1770
01:42:55,399 --> 01:42:58,960
places like that where we're kind of dealing with paleotropics

1771
01:42:59,399 --> 01:43:02,119
a latitude. It's where you know, you had these plant

1772
01:43:02,600 --> 01:43:06,279
plant lineages. They see plant linages surviving the crisis, but

1773
01:43:06,399 --> 01:43:09,600
they're not in such huge coverage across the plant they

1774
01:43:09,640 --> 01:43:12,119
can bring down the CO two fast enough, and so

1775
01:43:12,199 --> 01:43:16,760
you have this absolute runaway greenhouse from hell, and you know,

1776
01:43:17,239 --> 01:43:20,479
it just really magnifies. In the Triassic and the early Traassic,

1777
01:43:20,640 --> 01:43:22,239
that was a bad time to be around.

1778
01:43:22,560 --> 01:43:25,399
Speaker 1: Most of the Yeah, I was going to say, well,

1779
01:43:25,439 --> 01:43:27,800
first off, and most of them will finished that really quick.

1780
01:43:27,800 --> 01:43:29,520
I want to I want to hear that pure yeah

1781
01:43:29,720 --> 01:43:31,960
a little bit, most of the Yeah.

1782
01:43:32,039 --> 01:43:35,159
Speaker 2: So most of like the synapsids, the like mammal like

1783
01:43:35,199 --> 01:43:38,920
reptiles that survived the crisis were burrowers. They lived underground

1784
01:43:39,119 --> 01:43:41,279
for most of the time and probably were nocturnal for

1785
01:43:41,359 --> 01:43:45,800
all we know. You know, things like Lystrosaurus was probably

1786
01:43:45,840 --> 01:43:48,039
the most common one. It's an adorable it looks like

1787
01:43:48,079 --> 01:43:52,039
a dugone on land with little little cute tusks in

1788
01:43:52,119 --> 01:43:55,359
its mouth like a higher ax meets a dugone with

1789
01:43:55,520 --> 01:43:59,359
a bit of a tail, not much, but very very

1790
01:43:59,800 --> 01:44:03,399
you know, barrel chested, front, front loaded like bulldog like

1791
01:44:03,560 --> 01:44:08,039
build and a little carries adorable features. So what was there?

1792
01:44:08,399 --> 01:44:10,119
Speaker 1: What was going on with the UV at this time?

1793
01:44:10,159 --> 01:44:10,319
Speaker 2: Though?

1794
01:44:10,359 --> 01:44:10,800
Speaker 1: Really quick?

1795
01:44:10,800 --> 01:44:12,319
Speaker 2: I mean is that yeah?

1796
01:44:12,479 --> 01:44:15,560
Speaker 1: I mean basically the ozone was depleted for a while,

1797
01:44:15,640 --> 01:44:17,359
so you just had UV pouring in. I mean, is

1798
01:44:17,399 --> 01:44:20,279
that still the case or what we think?

1799
01:44:20,399 --> 01:44:23,079
Speaker 2: So we think that there probably would have been pulse

1800
01:44:23,159 --> 01:44:27,319
destruction of the ozone layer, repeated pulses and cyclical pulses,

1801
01:44:27,479 --> 01:44:30,479
so the the ozone layer will repair itself very quickly.

1802
01:44:31,039 --> 01:44:34,640
So when when we when we started like pulling the

1803
01:44:34,680 --> 01:44:39,479
plug on putting CFC's like chlorofluorocarbons from our refrigerators back

1804
01:44:39,520 --> 01:44:44,239
in the eighties with the Montreal protocol, the ozone over Antarctica,

1805
01:44:44,319 --> 01:44:47,359
the ozone hole that really forms that was man made

1806
01:44:47,560 --> 01:44:50,880
back in the eighties really started he healing pretty quickly,

1807
01:44:51,000 --> 01:44:54,039
like we're now currently on track to you know it

1808
01:44:54,199 --> 01:44:57,239
healing I think on the level of several decades from now,

1809
01:44:58,319 --> 01:45:00,680
so you know, it's on the order of tens of

1810
01:45:00,800 --> 01:45:05,560
years to healing from from an input of you know, volatiles.

1811
01:45:06,520 --> 01:45:09,279
But the problem is, again, you've got thousands and tastins

1812
01:45:09,319 --> 01:45:12,520
of these eruptive pipes that are forming all over the

1813
01:45:12,640 --> 01:45:17,600
Ciberne traps at different times randomly. So each one of

1814
01:45:17,720 --> 01:45:20,439
these eruptive pipes might have had the capacity to rip

1815
01:45:20,520 --> 01:45:24,560
a massive hole zone hole and it just and you're

1816
01:45:24,640 --> 01:45:29,039
also basically combining with with global warming, you might have

1817
01:45:29,399 --> 01:45:33,199
some exacerbation of some of those holes persisting longer. There's

1818
01:45:33,359 --> 01:45:36,520
there's some anecdotal it's not acdotal, but there's actually some

1819
01:45:36,920 --> 01:45:40,359
some work that's been suggesting that you know, wildfires and

1820
01:45:40,399 --> 01:45:43,960
things like that will prolongozone holes. So you know, there's

1821
01:45:44,239 --> 01:45:47,079
there's a concoction of these positive feedback loops that are

1822
01:45:47,119 --> 01:45:50,079
probably going on that are making this what should be

1823
01:45:50,159 --> 01:45:54,720
a short termed stress possibly persist longer than it should

1824
01:45:55,520 --> 01:45:56,079
is I think the.

1825
01:45:56,119 --> 01:46:00,439
Speaker 1: Thought but isoeatees that these isoetes relatives are doing fine.

1826
01:46:00,479 --> 01:46:02,840
What's going on with their sports where their sporm sports

1827
01:46:02,880 --> 01:46:06,079
seemingly uh bound together or be formed or whatever.

1828
01:46:07,199 --> 01:46:09,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thought the thought originally was that they were mutated,

1829
01:46:10,199 --> 01:46:13,039
and so there was a hypothesis that was proposed called

1830
01:46:13,079 --> 01:46:17,720
the mutagenesis hypothesis, where basically the world went to hello

1831
01:46:17,800 --> 01:46:21,159
handbasket because of mass mutations going on. That the world

1832
01:46:21,239 --> 01:46:27,199
was being like just completely you know, radiated, and mutations

1833
01:46:27,239 --> 01:46:29,800
were just you know, running a mock and a lot

1834
01:46:29,880 --> 01:46:33,560
of things, and that the the lycophytes were one of

1835
01:46:33,640 --> 01:46:36,399
the few things that were surviving and giving us something

1836
01:46:36,439 --> 01:46:39,479
in the fossil record to see. Now, you know, the

1837
01:46:39,960 --> 01:46:42,840
work I currently am doing is on figuring out what's

1838
01:46:42,920 --> 01:46:46,000
going on with those lycophytes. But the work I did

1839
01:46:46,159 --> 01:46:50,039
previously during my graduate school years was looking at what

1840
01:46:50,119 --> 01:46:53,640
happened to the forests and how did basically the forest

1841
01:46:53,720 --> 01:46:56,760
collapses happen and allow for these licopytes to do well.

1842
01:46:57,119 --> 01:47:01,199
And what we did find was, I mean, about a

1843
01:47:01,279 --> 01:47:07,359
year after the publication that talked about these global abnormalities

1844
01:47:07,359 --> 01:47:10,800
and the spores of the lycophytes came out, a year

1845
01:47:10,920 --> 01:47:15,319
later a paper came out by another group of researchers saying, hey,

1846
01:47:15,720 --> 01:47:19,159
we found seed plant pol that's malformed in China and

1847
01:47:19,239 --> 01:47:23,079
Russia right around this time too, and seems really abundant

1848
01:47:23,159 --> 01:47:27,319
in these places as these forts are collapsing and lo

1849
01:47:27,439 --> 01:47:30,039
and behold over time. You see this trend in a

1850
01:47:30,119 --> 01:47:32,359
lot of different parts of the world. Not every part

1851
01:47:32,359 --> 01:47:34,760
of the world, but you do see them pretty often

1852
01:47:36,039 --> 01:47:38,880
in many different assemblages that you'll see what looks to

1853
01:47:39,000 --> 01:47:44,439
be what they were calling mutagenic pollen of disappearing forest trees.

1854
01:47:44,520 --> 01:47:48,720
So the trees basically show a spike in these malformations

1855
01:47:48,760 --> 01:47:52,359
and then they blip out, which is very, very troubling.

1856
01:47:53,000 --> 01:47:55,119
And these are the same types of malformations you see

1857
01:47:55,119 --> 01:47:59,960
at Chernobyl in the pines and at Chernobyl same time,

1858
01:48:00,000 --> 01:48:02,600
types of deviations in morphology.

1859
01:48:02,960 --> 01:48:07,560
Speaker 1: So they were getting it was getting weird. They were

1860
01:48:07,680 --> 01:48:10,079
making this weird pollen and then they just go extinct.

1861
01:48:10,239 --> 01:48:12,680
They just disappear from the fossil record.

1862
01:48:12,960 --> 01:48:16,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and well and when they disappear to the

1863
01:48:16,680 --> 01:48:19,600
funny part is, so we have these like these repeated

1864
01:48:19,760 --> 01:48:24,800
cycles of deforestation and slow recovery, and what tends to

1865
01:48:24,880 --> 01:48:27,359
happen is that the animals blip out really quickly. Like

1866
01:48:27,479 --> 01:48:31,680
the big crisis for the marine realm is these pulses

1867
01:48:31,720 --> 01:48:33,680
of extinction are huge for the animals and they just

1868
01:48:33,760 --> 01:48:36,680
don't come back. But the plants are kind of stuck

1869
01:48:36,720 --> 01:48:40,079
in this weird like they're almost like in limbo in

1870
01:48:40,199 --> 01:48:42,960
a way. They go through this weird limbo type cycle

1871
01:48:43,199 --> 01:48:47,560
like cycle of hell where they keep getting whacked over

1872
01:48:47,680 --> 01:48:50,119
and over and over again by something in the environment.

1873
01:48:50,199 --> 01:48:53,199
And maybe u V played a part in this, maybe

1874
01:48:53,279 --> 01:48:56,439
other things did too. We don't fully know yet. I mean,

1875
01:48:56,640 --> 01:48:58,600
it could have been a combination of a lot of factors.

1876
01:48:59,239 --> 01:49:02,920
But you know, it seems that the tree the tree

1877
01:49:03,159 --> 01:49:06,600
like lineages and woody seed plants are just not doing

1878
01:49:06,680 --> 01:49:08,920
well over and over again. And then every time they

1879
01:49:09,000 --> 01:49:13,199
get blipped out, the licophytes move in, and they're moving

1880
01:49:13,279 --> 01:49:15,479
in from these spore banks that they left behind from

1881
01:49:15,520 --> 01:49:22,479
their last insurgencies. So it's this very dynamic ecological seesaw

1882
01:49:22,800 --> 01:49:28,000
or teeter totter where you're either it's like conifers versusleopods.

1883
01:49:28,279 --> 01:49:30,880
Either your your seed your seed plants are doing well

1884
01:49:30,960 --> 01:49:33,520
and your diverse fern and seed plant and horse tale

1885
01:49:33,560 --> 01:49:36,640
communities are doing fine, or your locopods are doing well.

1886
01:49:36,680 --> 01:49:38,800
Speaker 1: It's crazy that you can tell so much about this

1887
01:49:38,960 --> 01:49:43,439
ecosystem from so like phenomena long ago, like two hundred

1888
01:49:43,439 --> 01:49:46,840
and fifty one million years ago. That's insane, Like before

1889
01:49:46,920 --> 01:49:47,840
the dinosaurs of all.

1890
01:49:48,000 --> 01:49:51,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, and it's really comes down to a lot

1891
01:49:51,119 --> 01:49:56,520
of the work that the paleopalinologists, people who stay fossilized pollenancepores.

1892
01:49:57,319 --> 01:49:59,760
Really that ends up being most of the information we

1893
01:49:59,840 --> 01:50:02,880
get comes from the pollen and the spora records, and

1894
01:50:04,000 --> 01:50:07,880
basically the places where this got sort of triangulated I

1895
01:50:07,920 --> 01:50:13,239
think the most are some deposits like in Greenland. My

1896
01:50:14,399 --> 01:50:17,319
colleague Cindy Layer, who I had talked to and eventually

1897
01:50:17,359 --> 01:50:20,520
worked in the lab of on these questions, she went

1898
01:50:20,600 --> 01:50:25,760
in earlier in her career and looked at basically describing

1899
01:50:25,920 --> 01:50:29,079
with colleagues what was going on with plant communities in

1900
01:50:30,079 --> 01:50:34,000
pollen and spore assemblages that landed in the ocean, in

1901
01:50:34,560 --> 01:50:38,439
the dead zones of the ocean. So as basically the

1902
01:50:38,520 --> 01:50:42,199
fossil record of the ocean is capturing these events going on.

1903
01:50:42,399 --> 01:50:45,560
The pollen raining down from the nearby coast is raining

1904
01:50:45,600 --> 01:50:48,960
down synchronously to see what's going on the plant commune

1905
01:50:49,000 --> 01:50:51,720
is the same time the animals are blipping out, And

1906
01:50:51,880 --> 01:50:54,199
that was sort of where this you know, you could

1907
01:50:54,239 --> 01:50:56,600
get this correlation of what's going on on land with

1908
01:50:56,680 --> 01:50:58,279
plants and in the ocean with animals.

1909
01:50:58,359 --> 01:51:01,159
Speaker 1: Yes, permian permian took out the trilobites, right, that's when

1910
01:51:01,199 --> 01:51:02,079
they flip out.

1911
01:51:02,199 --> 01:51:06,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was an unfortunate casualty. I must say

1912
01:51:06,239 --> 01:51:08,079
that would have been a darn cool thing to see.

1913
01:51:08,159 --> 01:51:10,760
Speaker 1: Still, yeah, I wish, man. Can you imagine if there

1914
01:51:10,880 --> 01:51:15,319
was their fucking so every kid knows what the trilobytes are. Man,

1915
01:51:15,359 --> 01:51:17,640
it's like the coolest fossils, you know.

1916
01:51:17,920 --> 01:51:21,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would have been probably like, yeah, you'd be

1917
01:51:21,359 --> 01:51:24,159
out there, I don't know, snorkeling or something like, damn

1918
01:51:24,159 --> 01:51:29,720
the trilobites, yeah, or trilobytes, ah, stupid trilobites. Are there

1919
01:51:29,720 --> 01:51:33,239
any macro fossils from these these Isoetes relatives? Like, do

1920
01:51:33,279 --> 01:51:35,239
you have any idea what they looked like? If they

1921
01:51:35,279 --> 01:51:37,439
were small? And they were probably big because the pollen

1922
01:51:37,479 --> 01:51:40,000
seems like it's so abundant, right, But I mean, is

1923
01:51:40,159 --> 01:51:42,840
did you have any good like tissues like leaf tissues

1924
01:51:42,960 --> 01:51:46,560
or stems or anything? There are? Yeah, And in fact,

1925
01:51:46,720 --> 01:51:50,319
there's only like maybe a handful of genera of these

1926
01:51:50,640 --> 01:51:53,920
is odes relatives that were preserved and they've been found,

1927
01:51:54,119 --> 01:51:57,000
you know, macro fossils of them, the most probably the

1928
01:51:57,079 --> 01:52:01,119
most popularized of these, I guess within the extinction community

1929
01:52:01,239 --> 01:52:05,560
is called plural Maya and pleur Maa is is basically

1930
01:52:05,600 --> 01:52:08,079
another one of these sorts of pipe cleaners on acid

1931
01:52:08,159 --> 01:52:10,840
in a way, but it's basically like a little Christmas

1932
01:52:10,880 --> 01:52:14,720
tree pipe cleaner. It's a it's a plant that actually

1933
01:52:14,800 --> 01:52:18,279
functions a lot like a silver sort in ways. It's

1934
01:52:18,319 --> 01:52:22,560
a monocarp, so it basically would form a big anchor

1935
01:52:22,720 --> 01:52:27,079
like corm underground that had little lobes, and from that

1936
01:52:27,319 --> 01:52:30,800
corm it would grow slowly early on in life, throwing

1937
01:52:30,840 --> 01:52:34,479
out these big fleshy basically great white shark tooth shaped

1938
01:52:35,199 --> 01:52:38,000
leaves that would just kind of splay on the ground

1939
01:52:38,039 --> 01:52:41,399
like a well witched early on, and then over time

1940
01:52:41,479 --> 01:52:44,199
is switched from this like big juicy icy wds looking

1941
01:52:44,279 --> 01:52:47,520
thing to suddenly would spike up and bolt and form

1942
01:52:47,640 --> 01:52:51,479
this one big strobelus at the top of spore cone.

1943
01:52:51,680 --> 01:52:54,840
Speaker 1: God, yeah, I'm looking at a photo online plural Maya

1944
01:52:54,880 --> 01:52:56,680
for anyone Elms to look at up p L e

1945
01:52:57,000 --> 01:52:59,800
U R O M e I A. Yeah, it looks

1946
01:52:59,800 --> 01:53:02,079
like a silver sword, you're right, like a wine silver sord.

1947
01:53:03,159 --> 01:53:05,079
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they would have functioned a lot like that.

1948
01:53:05,279 --> 01:53:08,600
They're they're simil paris so they basically they'll they'll reproduce

1949
01:53:08,720 --> 01:53:12,319
once and then they die. And as far as we know,

1950
01:53:12,760 --> 01:53:19,479
and you know, my colleagues Cindy Loy and Evo Downstay

1951
01:53:19,560 --> 01:53:22,079
did a super cool paper I think back in twenty

1952
01:53:22,159 --> 01:53:26,279
twenty one where they basically looked at these fossils all

1953
01:53:26,319 --> 01:53:29,720
over Europe of these you know plurimia from like Sandstone

1954
01:53:29,840 --> 01:53:32,680
and places from the crisis, where they could see how

1955
01:53:32,720 --> 01:53:36,439
the leaves were arranged on the stems and they were

1956
01:53:36,479 --> 01:53:40,720
able to basically figure out that the growth basically that

1957
01:53:41,000 --> 01:53:44,039
the growth rate changed across the life cycle this plant.

1958
01:53:44,119 --> 01:53:48,439
Looking at the insertion points basically as units of time,

1959
01:53:48,640 --> 01:53:50,960
like how distant the leaves were spaced on the stem

1960
01:53:51,560 --> 01:53:55,399
became a measure a proxy of how quickly they were growing.

1961
01:53:55,640 --> 01:53:59,560
And they were finding that they start out slow, really

1962
01:54:00,000 --> 01:54:02,439
growing probably for a while, building up a lot of

1963
01:54:02,720 --> 01:54:06,720
mass netcorn, and then they bolted eventually right before basically

1964
01:54:06,800 --> 01:54:10,960
spawn and die. Had this like real fast like spike

1965
01:54:11,039 --> 01:54:13,520
that's a lot like a flower spike in a nagave maybe,

1966
01:54:14,239 --> 01:54:16,880
and then they would set spores and then yeah, they'd

1967
01:54:16,920 --> 01:54:17,239
be done.

1968
01:54:17,359 --> 01:54:20,680
Speaker 1: They're mostly like six foot tall, about six to nine feet.

1969
01:54:21,479 --> 01:54:23,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, something like that. You know, some of the

1970
01:54:23,680 --> 01:54:26,439
might have been only three feet lot. We're probably small,

1971
01:54:26,479 --> 01:54:29,039
but some could have gotten about six feet. Cool.

1972
01:54:29,079 --> 01:54:30,960
Speaker 1: Oh geez, I love thinking weird.

1973
01:54:30,800 --> 01:54:32,079
Speaker 2: To walk through a field of these things.

1974
01:54:32,239 --> 01:54:35,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's another genus? What's another genus? You know that

1975
01:54:35,880 --> 01:54:38,000
I could look up right now. That was going off.

1976
01:54:38,359 --> 01:54:41,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another another one that was back then was called

1977
01:54:41,439 --> 01:54:45,840
Anna Lepis, and it has a N N a l

1978
01:54:45,960 --> 01:54:50,079
e pis. And some of them, and some of the

1979
01:54:50,159 --> 01:54:55,000
Pleuramaya species may have been leafless even if I remember correctly.

1980
01:54:55,119 --> 01:54:57,800
So there's some of these where they're just leafless stalks

1981
01:54:57,840 --> 01:55:02,000
almost where they're just photosynthesizing stem. It's very weird, very reduced.

1982
01:55:02,279 --> 01:55:02,880
Speaker 1: How big was.

1983
01:55:05,600 --> 01:55:07,439
Speaker 2: I don't think it might not have been quite as

1984
01:55:07,439 --> 01:55:10,279
big as plural maya, or it might have been might

1985
01:55:10,319 --> 01:55:12,359
have been a few feet tall, some of them small,

1986
01:55:12,479 --> 01:55:13,920
maybe two feet some of them.

1987
01:55:14,439 --> 01:55:22,520
Speaker 1: The Triassic like cops. It's Pleuri Maya and Analepis. Relationships

1988
01:55:22,560 --> 01:55:25,359
evolution and origin. God man, that's so cool. That's like

1989
01:55:25,439 --> 01:55:26,800
a fucking sci fi novel.

1990
01:55:28,960 --> 01:55:33,159
Speaker 2: They're all and they're desert plants too, so these are

1991
01:55:33,279 --> 01:55:40,119
these are succulentlycopods, so they're living in Xeric doing probably

1992
01:55:40,199 --> 01:55:44,920
doing camphotosynthesis. There's research I think that is being done

1993
01:55:45,000 --> 01:55:48,159
currently to looking into this that will be coming out soon.

1994
01:55:48,199 --> 01:55:52,720
At LISTA saw a presentation on recently. They're it seems

1995
01:55:52,760 --> 01:55:56,039
like they're practicing camp photosynthesis. Uh, and they're they're living

1996
01:55:56,039 --> 01:55:59,640
in the desert, like just chilling in. I mean, I

1997
01:55:59,680 --> 01:56:02,279
don't know if they were tolering one hundred and thirty degrees.

1998
01:56:02,359 --> 01:56:05,199
But you know, some of these things might not have

1999
01:56:06,119 --> 01:56:07,800
I might have had a colleague who was telling me

2000
01:56:07,880 --> 01:56:10,079
I thought that some of them might not even have

2001
01:56:10,159 --> 01:56:14,880
had stomata. At times they were right through the tissue

2002
01:56:15,000 --> 01:56:18,119
the roots. Oh, right through the roots, possibly harvesting out

2003
01:56:18,119 --> 01:56:21,159
of the ground, kind of like modern ice swetes at

2004
01:56:21,159 --> 01:56:24,239
the bottom of some lakes or in the Andes. There's

2005
01:56:24,279 --> 01:56:26,800
one I sweeties up there and Dick Cola that does

2006
01:56:26,880 --> 01:56:30,079
that what used to be called stilites, and it I

2007
01:56:30,159 --> 01:56:33,640
think it lacks stomata, but it lives in like water

2008
01:56:33,800 --> 01:56:40,000
log soils high up the andies. Yeah, weird things like

2009
01:56:40,119 --> 01:56:43,079
we really just know so little about them at the

2010
01:56:43,159 --> 01:56:44,560
end of the day, like this, what we do know

2011
01:56:44,640 --> 01:56:46,760
about them is weird, bizarre and confusing.

2012
01:56:46,920 --> 01:56:49,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're but they're opportunistic during this extremely shy

2013
01:56:49,960 --> 01:56:50,680
period on Earth.

2014
01:56:50,720 --> 01:56:55,079
Speaker 2: They're thriving, right exactly, They're thriving. And it's a time

2015
01:56:55,159 --> 01:56:58,800
again when like ferns are doing badly. Ferns are Ferns

2016
01:56:58,840 --> 01:57:01,840
are not able to take this stuff. Horse tales aren't

2017
01:57:01,840 --> 01:57:04,600
doing great. Like there's there's some places where horse tales

2018
01:57:04,600 --> 01:57:07,319
are kind of eking it in there with Plurimea as

2019
01:57:07,359 --> 01:57:10,720
odd bedfellows, but it's kind of like even those plants

2020
01:57:10,760 --> 01:57:14,560
are having a hard time. So it's like, yeah, you

2021
01:57:14,720 --> 01:57:17,479
really these things had to be tough as nails for

2022
01:57:17,640 --> 01:57:19,319
whatever they were surviving.

2023
01:57:20,159 --> 01:57:23,680
Speaker 1: But also somewhere in there the ancestor of conifers was

2024
01:57:24,439 --> 01:57:26,520
hanging out to I mean, it's like, yeah, I love

2025
01:57:26,560 --> 01:57:27,439
this stuff already.

2026
01:57:28,359 --> 01:57:32,560
Speaker 2: Well already there were the conifers had already been diversifying early.

2027
01:57:33,079 --> 01:57:35,399
So there was something like I thought there was something

2028
01:57:35,520 --> 01:57:40,560
like twenty or thirty lineages of early early conifer that

2029
01:57:41,159 --> 01:57:45,079
it went into the extinction, So started in the Permian.

2030
01:57:45,399 --> 01:57:47,479
Going into the extinction, you had something like twenty or

2031
01:57:47,520 --> 01:57:51,279
thirty lineages of early conifer groups and I think only

2032
01:57:51,399 --> 01:57:53,199
one of them made it through the crisis alive.

2033
01:57:53,399 --> 01:57:56,159
Speaker 1: What was what was what what lineage was it? Was

2034
01:57:56,199 --> 01:57:59,119
it Eric Carrier or Potocarpesi or the ancestor of both

2035
01:57:59,159 --> 01:58:00,399
of them are in idea.

2036
01:58:00,720 --> 01:58:03,600
Speaker 2: I think it was something even even earlier diversion than that.

2037
01:58:03,760 --> 01:58:06,319
There was probably I think the what was it the

2038
01:58:06,399 --> 01:58:09,439
Walkian So there was a group called Walkian confers. They're

2039
01:58:09,600 --> 01:58:14,399
super super beautiful things. They look like Norfolk Island pines reconstructions.

2040
01:58:14,760 --> 01:58:16,560
So it's spelled w A L.

2041
01:58:18,199 --> 01:58:23,399
Speaker 1: C h I A n Wulkian.

2042
01:58:23,720 --> 01:58:23,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

2043
01:58:24,319 --> 01:58:26,319
Speaker 1: Fuck, but these are I mean, these are there's good

2044
01:58:26,399 --> 01:58:28,399
macro fossils of these obviously.

2045
01:58:28,239 --> 01:58:30,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, great macro fossils. These you can find them some

2046
01:58:30,680 --> 01:58:33,399
places in the southwestern United States. You can find them.

2047
01:58:33,680 --> 01:58:34,680
Oh wow, oh.

2048
01:58:34,760 --> 01:58:37,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it does. It looks like it looks like

2049
01:58:37,600 --> 01:58:40,000
a Norfolk Island kind of. Yeah.

2050
01:58:40,239 --> 01:58:42,840
Speaker 2: They're beautiful things and the fossils are, Yeah, the fossils

2051
01:58:42,880 --> 01:58:47,760
are just absolutely jaw dropping. They're gorgeous, gorgeous, feathery planated

2052
01:58:47,840 --> 01:58:53,079
Norfolk Island pine like branches, bows that would dehiss off

2053
01:58:53,119 --> 01:58:56,720
of the plants basically as probably a fire adaptation was

2054
01:58:57,000 --> 01:58:59,520
recent research was done in the lab I was in

2055
01:58:59,640 --> 01:59:04,680
even and yeah, so like things like I think the walkins,

2056
01:59:04,720 --> 01:59:07,520
I think drop out or blip out then, But you know,

2057
01:59:07,600 --> 01:59:10,600
you have the extinction of all of these other sort

2058
01:59:10,640 --> 01:59:16,279
of oddball early conifer relatives and forerunners too. But interestingly enough,

2059
01:59:16,399 --> 01:59:19,239
coming out of the crisis, you already have something that's

2060
01:59:19,520 --> 01:59:24,520
in the potocarp lineage that was discovered I think in Jordan,

2061
01:59:25,159 --> 01:59:30,159
suggesting that basically potocarp lineage plants may have actually predated

2062
01:59:30,199 --> 01:59:33,600
the extinction and made it through. Wow, so already it

2063
01:59:33,760 --> 01:59:36,520
was quite a bit of And if that's the case,

2064
01:59:36,600 --> 01:59:39,279
you would have thought that the pine, the pines and

2065
01:59:39,439 --> 01:59:42,640
their their lineage would have already been around because they

2066
01:59:43,119 --> 01:59:46,039
break off his sister group from all the other conifers earliest.

2067
01:59:46,319 --> 01:59:49,960
Speaker 1: Right, they're more closely related to like need thems and stuff,

2068
01:59:49,960 --> 01:59:51,640
aren't they, I think?

2069
01:59:51,760 --> 01:59:53,159
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, need them.

2070
01:59:53,399 --> 01:59:53,600
Speaker 1: Yeah.

2071
01:59:54,399 --> 01:59:57,960
Speaker 2: I have to look back at the Nali's biologies. I

2072
01:59:57,960 --> 02:00:01,239
always am wondering what where are they placed in conifers.

2073
02:00:01,279 --> 02:00:02,920
But it would make yeah, I mean, if that's my

2074
02:00:03,039 --> 02:00:06,479
recent stuff, I wouldn't be surprised total caps were that's crazy,

2075
02:00:06,600 --> 02:00:10,880
so ancestors of Remus and total Carpus, Yeah, was already

2076
02:00:10,920 --> 02:00:12,479
around and somehow made it through.

2077
02:00:12,600 --> 02:00:14,680
Speaker 1: That really really brutally.

2078
02:00:14,319 --> 02:00:18,119
Speaker 2: Extinctively did yeah, and and well which ya was? You know,

2079
02:00:18,159 --> 02:00:20,560
well witchia and E fedra and those sorts of things.

2080
02:00:21,159 --> 02:00:24,800
You know, there were there were fedrin type pollen types.

2081
02:00:24,840 --> 02:00:27,079
There was well which well which you like pollen types

2082
02:00:27,119 --> 02:00:30,000
around the crisis, those things were already well established. Well

2083
02:00:30,039 --> 02:00:32,880
whichia used to be a huge group, right, weren't there

2084
02:00:33,079 --> 02:00:37,880
There were like dozens of species and then oh yeah, yeah,

2085
02:00:38,359 --> 02:00:42,439
and they they have these if I remember correctly, I

2086
02:00:42,720 --> 02:00:44,800
wonder if it was like they had like football pollen

2087
02:00:44,920 --> 02:00:47,920
shapes or something like that. But like I remember colleagues

2088
02:00:47,960 --> 02:00:50,960
being in lab being like, okay, yep, pollen here. It's like,

2089
02:00:51,079 --> 02:00:55,439
oh my gosh, so it's super distinct, yeah, extinct ones.

2090
02:00:55,720 --> 02:00:57,600
When you guys are looking at fossil pollen, how do

2091
02:00:57,640 --> 02:00:59,159
you I mean, how do you do that? Do you

2092
02:00:59,199 --> 02:01:01,800
have to dissolve the rock with something first? Or is

2093
02:01:01,840 --> 02:01:04,479
it yeah, you got to use I mean a lot

2094
02:01:04,520 --> 02:01:09,199
of people use hydrofluoric acid to break down rocks to

2095
02:01:09,319 --> 02:01:11,640
get to this stuff. I mean, it's just it's gnarly.

2096
02:01:11,800 --> 02:01:16,600
I myself have not done I personally haven't done fossil

2097
02:01:17,279 --> 02:01:20,840
pollen and spore prep myself, But I mean all my

2098
02:01:20,960 --> 02:01:24,640
colleagues who do it, it's just like, oh my god. Yeah,

2099
02:01:24,680 --> 02:01:27,319
they're suiting up to go down the acid lab to really.

2100
02:01:28,920 --> 02:01:29,319
Speaker 1: I mean.

2101
02:01:31,920 --> 02:01:35,640
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's really scary. I mean there's a buddy

2102
02:01:35,720 --> 02:01:38,680
system involved, like it's you know, you've got to work

2103
02:01:38,720 --> 02:01:40,760
with HF to break down a lot of these rocks.

2104
02:01:40,800 --> 02:01:43,960
Speaker 1: Yes, though, it's so, I mean, you're unlocking this time capsule.

2105
02:01:44,319 --> 02:01:48,000
So what So the pollen doesn't get eaten, but the

2106
02:01:48,119 --> 02:01:51,119
matrix that it's in gets eaten by the acid exactly.

2107
02:01:51,520 --> 02:01:54,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, the matrix gets eaten by the acid and leaves

2108
02:01:54,479 --> 02:01:55,640
behind the pollen, and.

2109
02:01:55,680 --> 02:01:58,920
Speaker 1: The pollen is like permenalized with silica or something or what.

2110
02:02:00,279 --> 02:02:03,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in many cases, I'm trying to remember

2111
02:02:03,840 --> 02:02:09,439
if it hydrofluoric probably takes out the silica too, probably, know,

2112
02:02:09,880 --> 02:02:12,159
because yeah, like hydrofluoric, you have to you have to

2113
02:02:12,359 --> 02:02:15,760
store the acid in plastic like nalgene. Basically, you can't

2114
02:02:15,760 --> 02:02:17,520
stor it in glass because it'll eat through the glass.

2115
02:02:17,760 --> 02:02:18,960
Speaker 1: God damn Jesus.

2116
02:02:18,960 --> 02:02:22,479
Speaker 2: It's nasty stuff. Hydrofluoric is scary, Like a drop of

2117
02:02:22,560 --> 02:02:24,880
that stuff and you're like dead, like before you know it.

2118
02:02:25,479 --> 02:02:29,920
Like it's horrible. Yeah, yeah, like there will be times

2119
02:02:30,039 --> 02:02:33,199
like there's these horror stories about palnology laps where it's

2120
02:02:33,239 --> 02:02:35,119
been used and there'd be like some of it got

2121
02:02:35,199 --> 02:02:36,880
out of the humut or some of it was dropped

2122
02:02:36,920 --> 02:02:39,359
on the floor, and it's like they evacuate the building.

2123
02:02:39,479 --> 02:02:42,119
Like it's like Lily Scott Alien, Like it's gonna go

2124
02:02:42,279 --> 02:02:42,840
through the floor.

2125
02:02:42,920 --> 02:02:45,159
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I thought of the Alien movies.

2126
02:02:45,199 --> 02:02:47,960
Speaker 2: Man, I'm like, what, Yeah, it's like right from that,

2127
02:02:48,439 --> 02:02:52,439
like it'll just keep going. Yeah, I think yeah, I mean,

2128
02:02:52,720 --> 02:02:55,319
I know, like for like glassic can certainly go. I

2129
02:02:55,359 --> 02:02:57,960
don't know for other structures, like how the chemistry is.

2130
02:02:58,000 --> 02:03:01,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy about But what you're left with is

2131
02:03:01,479 --> 02:03:04,039
basically so the matrix dissolves and then you're left with

2132
02:03:04,159 --> 02:03:06,000
these little I mean, can you see them with the

2133
02:03:06,119 --> 02:03:08,880
naked eye even or what some of them?

2134
02:03:09,279 --> 02:03:13,000
Speaker 2: Some of them you can, so the the io Italians

2135
02:03:13,720 --> 02:03:17,359
or the ice sweeties spores you can on some things

2136
02:03:17,760 --> 02:03:20,159
so like modern for instance, modern i sweetz has the

2137
02:03:20,239 --> 02:03:22,119
largest spores of any plant in the world.

2138
02:03:22,560 --> 02:03:23,720
Speaker 1: No huge, Wow.

2139
02:03:24,199 --> 02:03:25,560
Speaker 2: You just pick them up in your hand. They're like

2140
02:03:25,720 --> 02:03:28,279
micro micromant dip and' do you know what?

2141
02:03:28,479 --> 02:03:31,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, my friend, my friend Matt Berger, got really good

2142
02:03:31,520 --> 02:03:34,319
photos of one, like took him under a microscope too.

2143
02:03:34,359 --> 02:03:36,359
But even like at the base of the little you know,

2144
02:03:36,399 --> 02:03:39,319
then this is like a two inch tall inch tall plant,

2145
02:03:39,720 --> 02:03:42,479
at the base of those leaves, you could, you know,

2146
02:03:42,560 --> 02:03:46,000
you could already see the spores. It was kind of wild,

2147
02:03:46,119 --> 02:03:48,560
like they are really large. I remember that because, yeah,

2148
02:03:48,560 --> 02:03:50,960
they're at the base of those like if you imagine onion,

2149
02:03:51,239 --> 02:03:53,359
you know, they're like the base of the onion sheath,

2150
02:03:53,640 --> 02:03:54,840
the leaf sheaths.

2151
02:03:54,880 --> 02:03:59,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, and you'll see and many times in ice,

2152
02:04:00,119 --> 02:04:05,199
these they'll they'll disintegrate, so they'll they'll basically the leaves

2153
02:04:05,279 --> 02:04:08,319
might stay on the plant and they might disintegrate over time,

2154
02:04:08,520 --> 02:04:10,840
and that's what opens up and a niches the spores.

2155
02:04:10,960 --> 02:04:13,159
But the spores will often be buried in the ground

2156
02:04:13,199 --> 02:04:16,079
around the parent plant and they can wait there, you know,

2157
02:04:16,159 --> 02:04:18,720
and the dormant for quite some time. I mean, megaspores

2158
02:04:18,760 --> 02:04:23,239
and icuds have quite a bit of longevity, and so

2159
02:04:23,640 --> 02:04:25,640
you know, that may have figured into the extinction for

2160
02:04:25,720 --> 02:04:26,079
all we know.

2161
02:04:26,520 --> 02:04:28,960
Speaker 1: But for but for a spora fight to be created,

2162
02:04:29,000 --> 02:04:32,399
you need a male sport, a microsport, and a female sport.

2163
02:04:32,439 --> 02:04:34,840
A megasport to land next to each other or what.

2164
02:04:35,239 --> 02:04:39,720
Speaker 2: Just yeah, a lot of times probably in close vicinity.

2165
02:04:40,199 --> 02:04:43,119
But once there's a film of water or water in

2166
02:04:43,199 --> 02:04:46,520
the ground, groundwater that they can move through, imagine they

2167
02:04:46,560 --> 02:04:49,920
could travel little ways. I mean, these these megaspores, so

2168
02:04:50,000 --> 02:04:53,319
that the female gametophyte probably is releasing some sort of

2169
02:04:53,319 --> 02:04:57,079
an attractant for the sperm to come to it. And

2170
02:04:57,199 --> 02:05:02,159
then in many cases too particularly I mean I'm less

2171
02:05:02,159 --> 02:05:05,199
familiar with like solajanelle in terms of the breeding system

2172
02:05:05,840 --> 02:05:09,680
with with regards to basically the movement of microsportes. But

2173
02:05:09,760 --> 02:05:13,239
I know that in ice ds, in aquatic systems where

2174
02:05:13,279 --> 02:05:16,840
they're in the water and they're submerged, the microspores end

2175
02:05:16,960 --> 02:05:21,239
up often sticking to the the exterior of the megaspore,

2176
02:05:22,079 --> 02:05:24,640
and so they'll just it's almost like this little spaceships

2177
02:05:24,760 --> 02:05:28,119
docking on a big like little death start. Yeah.

2178
02:05:28,199 --> 02:05:30,640
Speaker 1: So once that sperm emerges from the microsport, there's not

2179
02:05:30,720 --> 02:05:31,439
too far to sort.

2180
02:05:31,520 --> 02:05:35,000
Speaker 2: You just go right into the Yeah, right to the archagonia.

2181
02:05:35,520 --> 02:05:37,359
Speaker 1: Is what does the sperm look like in isowheedies. I

2182
02:05:37,399 --> 02:05:40,239
mean it doesn't look like human sperm, like a weird

2183
02:05:40,640 --> 02:05:41,479
I should look that up.

2184
02:05:42,479 --> 02:05:44,920
Speaker 2: It's another thing that looks like it's Averridley Scott movie.

2185
02:05:45,159 --> 02:05:49,199
Like it's it's really it's insane. It's got multiple tales.

2186
02:05:49,840 --> 02:05:52,439
Speaker 1: So kind of like Ginko. It's so funny. So many

2187
02:05:52,479 --> 02:05:55,119
people don't know. So many people don't know, and I

2188
02:05:55,479 --> 02:05:57,159
can't say I blame them, because how would you know

2189
02:05:57,239 --> 02:05:59,680
unless you're looking under a microscope. But I mean, like

2190
02:05:59,760 --> 02:06:04,920
game Goes, psychads, ferns, mobile sperm. They're moving sperm. It's

2191
02:06:05,359 --> 02:06:07,920
sperm that swims. You normally don't think of plant parts,

2192
02:06:08,319 --> 02:06:12,720
you know, with mobility exactly, And that's that's a huge part. Yeah,

2193
02:06:12,880 --> 02:06:16,119
that's that's a that is a mind bending sort of

2194
02:06:16,199 --> 02:06:17,119
thing to think about.

2195
02:06:17,319 --> 02:06:20,239
Speaker 2: That. Yeah, they move in real time like animals. I mean,

2196
02:06:20,920 --> 02:06:23,319
the sperm moves just like an animal would or an

2197
02:06:23,319 --> 02:06:28,239
animal sperm would. It's it's insane, like just oh, yeah,

2198
02:06:28,399 --> 02:06:29,279
I think I found one.

2199
02:06:29,319 --> 02:06:33,000
Speaker 1: I think I found an image. Wait, iso, I think

2200
02:06:33,119 --> 02:06:34,960
that's it. What does it look like? Does it look

2201
02:06:35,039 --> 02:06:35,920
like some sort of weird.

2202
02:06:37,439 --> 02:06:41,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably yeah, probably something like that. Yeah. I don't

2203
02:06:42,000 --> 02:06:44,560
remember how many tails some of these things have, but like,

2204
02:06:46,039 --> 02:06:48,920
I mean, years ago, I might have seen something where

2205
02:06:48,920 --> 02:06:50,920
they're like, yeah, this has like twenty tails on it.

2206
02:06:51,279 --> 02:06:55,880
Speaker 1: Jesus, it's like same jeez is, Like what what.

2207
02:06:55,920 --> 02:06:58,319
Speaker 2: Do you do with all of those different Like how

2208
02:06:58,680 --> 02:07:01,960
how do you coordinate that movement at that size and

2209
02:07:02,079 --> 02:07:05,560
dealing with like the what like the I don't know

2210
02:07:05,800 --> 02:07:08,800
Richardson's number or whatever it is, like basically how you're

2211
02:07:08,800 --> 02:07:14,119
dealing with like how water is, how viscous water is

2212
02:07:14,199 --> 02:07:18,239
when you're microscopic, how water sticks to things differently at

2213
02:07:18,279 --> 02:07:20,760
those sizes. I mean, it's just it's bizarre to me.

2214
02:07:21,680 --> 02:07:23,479
Speaker 1: God, I'd love to see I can't find a good

2215
02:07:23,520 --> 02:07:25,399
picture of quillwarts sperm.

2216
02:07:26,199 --> 02:07:28,960
Speaker 2: Of like, yeah, this needs to happen. There needs to

2217
02:07:29,000 --> 02:07:31,279
be somebody out there who's gotten under the scope and

2218
02:07:31,399 --> 02:07:34,560
gotten this. I can't recall seeing like videos of it

2219
02:07:34,720 --> 02:07:40,720
anywhere ever. But horsetails are draw equised them spermatozoids of equisitum.

2220
02:07:40,760 --> 02:07:43,319
That looks fucking weird. Those things, I mean, those they're crazy.

2221
02:07:43,479 --> 02:07:49,520
Later they h they move their God, yeah, there's.

2222
02:07:49,520 --> 02:07:52,880
Speaker 1: Spores themselves in equism because the spores themselves in equisitam

2223
02:07:52,920 --> 02:07:53,199
moved too.

2224
02:07:53,439 --> 02:07:56,359
Speaker 2: Scores themselves have eas yeah, and they can and they

2225
02:07:56,439 --> 02:08:00,000
move themselves. Yeah, I mean, God talk about an underappreciate

2226
02:08:00,119 --> 02:08:02,800
a group of plants those are and for how much

2227
02:08:02,840 --> 02:08:04,960
they're aligned, Like there's such wonderful things to.

2228
02:08:05,439 --> 02:08:07,800
Speaker 1: People have beef with them really just because they're weedy.

2229
02:08:08,279 --> 02:08:12,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, well exactly, Yeah, like you know there and I mean,

2230
02:08:12,960 --> 02:08:15,479
and it's it's difficult. It's it's this love hate thing.

2231
02:08:15,600 --> 02:08:18,399
Like I I personally right now building up this like

2232
02:08:18,560 --> 02:08:21,800
repository of like all of the horse tales of the

2233
02:08:21,880 --> 02:08:23,760
world that I can get my hands on right now

2234
02:08:24,239 --> 02:08:27,680
and cultivating them so that they're accessible to researchers if

2235
02:08:27,720 --> 02:08:31,159
they ever need them. But it's like, I don't know,

2236
02:08:31,520 --> 02:08:35,159
it takes I have to really consciously think about everything

2237
02:08:35,199 --> 02:08:38,199
I'm doing around those plants in pots, Like I got

2238
02:08:38,319 --> 02:08:40,319
to make sure I know where I'm situating them, how

2239
02:08:40,399 --> 02:08:43,680
close are they to each other? Are these developing spores?

2240
02:08:44,279 --> 02:08:47,239
You know? Like I have to really do make sure

2241
02:08:47,319 --> 02:08:49,279
that they're not like setting spore and stuff like that.

2242
02:08:49,399 --> 02:08:50,920
So it is it's quite a labor blood.

2243
02:08:50,920 --> 02:08:53,039
Speaker 1: And this is you're talking about.

2244
02:08:54,079 --> 02:08:55,680
Speaker 2: These are actually these are horse tales.

2245
02:08:58,960 --> 02:09:01,640
Speaker 1: I I heard a weird outside, like the fucking guy

2246
02:09:01,800 --> 02:09:04,479
was mowing my neighbor was mowing my launch or my

2247
02:09:04,600 --> 02:09:07,159
lack of a lawn. I ripped it all up. I

2248
02:09:07,319 --> 02:09:08,199
was curious. I love it.

2249
02:09:09,560 --> 02:09:12,720
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Sorry, oh no, but that I was just thinking,

2250
02:09:12,840 --> 02:09:14,800
that's that's the way you could. Yeah, if you, if

2251
02:09:14,840 --> 02:09:18,279
you ever really really didn't like lawn and yeah, I

2252
02:09:18,479 --> 02:09:20,840
was really gonna get back at people from all the lawns.

2253
02:09:20,880 --> 02:09:23,640
It's like, just sprinkle a bunch of horsetail scores out there.

2254
02:09:24,000 --> 02:09:26,720
It'll just hate it forever, and then the great pars

2255
02:09:26,760 --> 02:09:28,159
it will eat up the mower head.

2256
02:09:28,239 --> 02:09:29,920
Speaker 1: Hey you are a kid man. I've seen those things

2257
02:09:30,000 --> 02:09:31,720
growing in the fucking out of comm of desert like

2258
02:09:31,800 --> 02:09:33,640
they were growing in a seat that they were growing

2259
02:09:33,800 --> 02:09:36,439
in a really barren, really barren spot. I think it

2260
02:09:36,479 --> 02:09:39,680
was equisitam giganteum or one of the other things in

2261
02:09:39,760 --> 02:09:42,279
northern Chile. Yeah, and I was there was nothing around,

2262
02:09:42,399 --> 02:09:45,560
it was barren, and there was just this fucking horsetail

2263
02:09:45,640 --> 02:09:47,840
and like a handful of other species growing in this

2264
02:09:48,000 --> 02:09:51,399
little green creek and everything else was just pink and

2265
02:09:51,560 --> 02:09:52,640
the sight totally barren.

2266
02:09:53,840 --> 02:09:54,159
Speaker 2: Wow.

2267
02:09:54,399 --> 02:09:56,439
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it was nuts.

2268
02:09:56,479 --> 02:09:56,640
Speaker 2: It was.

2269
02:09:56,800 --> 02:09:57,880
Speaker 1: I was really surprising.

2270
02:09:57,920 --> 02:09:59,199
Speaker 2: But it's cool there what is there?

2271
02:09:59,479 --> 02:10:01,960
Speaker 1: What's there out adaptation? The aquisinums?

2272
02:10:02,239 --> 02:10:06,520
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't. I don't know too much about it.

2273
02:10:06,600 --> 02:10:09,760
I mean, they they seem so I mean many of

2274
02:10:09,840 --> 02:10:13,880
them seem so able to deal with drought once they're

2275
02:10:13,960 --> 02:10:16,239
rooted deep into the ground. I mean they have such

2276
02:10:16,359 --> 02:10:20,399
deep rhizomes too. That part of it probably has to

2277
02:10:20,479 --> 02:10:22,560
do with that they're they have some area where they

2278
02:10:22,600 --> 02:10:26,880
can pull moisture within that sort of risosphere, would be

2279
02:10:26,960 --> 02:10:30,000
my guess. But there's other horsetails out there that that

2280
02:10:30,199 --> 02:10:33,840
deal so like the tropical ones, like like giganteum. I

2281
02:10:33,920 --> 02:10:37,079
mean you're dealing with a plant that's not seasonal, like

2282
02:10:37,199 --> 02:10:40,520
it's not necessarily got seasonality to it. There are other

2283
02:10:40,600 --> 02:10:43,319
horsetails that form like bowbills and things that you know,

2284
02:10:43,399 --> 02:10:48,119
like some of the northern equisdems that they'll just go

2285
02:10:48,520 --> 02:10:51,319
dormant for the winter. And I would imagine that in

2286
02:10:51,399 --> 02:10:53,840
the past there were ones that probably could go dormant

2287
02:10:53,880 --> 02:10:54,800
during dry seasons.

2288
02:10:56,000 --> 02:10:58,560
Speaker 1: I mean, like just like isolades. I mean, these are

2289
02:10:58,640 --> 02:11:01,640
this is a linear is that once had huge forests

2290
02:11:01,720 --> 02:11:03,640
like it was you know, members of this lineage were

2291
02:11:03,680 --> 02:11:08,680
once composed huge forests. The calamities then, yeah, so do

2292
02:11:08,760 --> 02:11:11,079
they have some way to seal themselves off from the atmosphere,

2293
02:11:11,239 --> 02:11:12,439
like if it gets super dry.

2294
02:11:13,760 --> 02:11:17,439
Speaker 2: You know, I don't remember what their stow model regulation

2295
02:11:17,680 --> 02:11:23,000
is like offhand. I mean there's some there's there's certainly

2296
02:11:23,079 --> 02:11:25,159
some of these seed tree plants where the stow model

2297
02:11:25,199 --> 02:11:29,199
regulations just not quite to snuff when compared to seed

2298
02:11:29,279 --> 02:11:32,840
bearing plants where they can really using ebsizic acid, they

2299
02:11:32,880 --> 02:11:36,720
can regulate the aperture of their stomata to release and

2300
02:11:37,199 --> 02:11:40,880
release water, vapor and take in oxygen, and a lot

2301
02:11:40,960 --> 02:11:45,479
of these will oftentimes have passive control their stomada more

2302
02:11:45,600 --> 02:11:48,319
or less, and so they're kind of like an open pipe.

2303
02:11:48,319 --> 02:11:50,520
I mean, they're bringing water up and it's just evaporating

2304
02:11:50,600 --> 02:11:55,399
getting pulled by gravity out their stomata. Yeah, but horsetails

2305
02:11:55,439 --> 02:12:01,960
are such such champs that probably just moving water. It's incredible.

2306
02:12:02,079 --> 02:12:06,640
And they also inside them they have basically currents. As

2307
02:12:06,800 --> 02:12:09,720
I thought, well, it might have been contested since but

2308
02:12:09,800 --> 02:12:12,079
I remember seeing a paper a while back that there

2309
02:12:12,199 --> 02:12:17,359
was high velocity winds that moved through the inner channels

2310
02:12:17,479 --> 02:12:20,920
hollowed out chambers of horsetails. So they have like this

2311
02:12:21,199 --> 02:12:23,600
countercurrent exchange thing going on with gases.

2312
02:12:23,680 --> 02:12:28,039
Speaker 1: I think, oh, yeah, because they're hollows. Yeah, I mean,

2313
02:12:28,119 --> 02:12:29,760
there's a reason the way I see it, there's a

2314
02:12:29,840 --> 02:12:33,279
reason all these lineages, you know, these old ass lineages

2315
02:12:33,319 --> 02:12:35,600
have made it to the present day. You know through however,

2316
02:12:35,720 --> 02:12:39,159
many mass extinctions and all the many extinctions and all this.

2317
02:12:40,119 --> 02:12:41,720
It's fascinating shit to think about.

2318
02:12:41,800 --> 02:12:42,479
Speaker 2: And even more.

2319
02:12:42,439 --> 02:12:45,520
Speaker 1: Fascinating is all the stuff that you know, you've we've

2320
02:12:45,560 --> 02:12:47,760
only got a few fossils of there's like you could

2321
02:12:47,800 --> 02:12:49,560
get an idea of what it is, but you're not

2322
02:12:49,720 --> 02:12:52,399
really sure, you know, and then all the shit that

2323
02:12:52,520 --> 02:12:56,000
just never got fossilized. It's just so man, this planet's

2324
02:12:56,039 --> 02:12:57,680
just been through some crazy shit.

2325
02:12:58,359 --> 02:13:01,600
Speaker 2: Like it's been hard. Yeah, it's been a rough it's

2326
02:13:01,600 --> 02:13:02,960
been a rough ride for this planet.

2327
02:13:03,279 --> 02:13:05,600
Speaker 1: So with you and go ahead, Sorry, what are you

2328
02:13:05,640 --> 02:13:09,920
going to say? Oh no, I'm yeah with you on

2329
02:13:10,119 --> 02:13:12,560
your work with the permean, you know and these plants

2330
02:13:12,600 --> 02:13:14,960
that the made it through. I guess where are you

2331
02:13:15,079 --> 02:13:17,800
at right now? And what do you yeah, where do

2332
02:13:17,800 --> 02:13:19,159
you want to go with that? Like what and what

2333
02:13:19,239 --> 02:13:22,439
do you think? Well you'll discover? I mean, so Isoetes,

2334
02:13:22,680 --> 02:13:25,760
these Isoeides relatives were thriving. What was Silaganella doing? Was

2335
02:13:25,800 --> 02:13:27,479
there Selaginella around yet?

2336
02:13:27,600 --> 02:13:31,000
Speaker 2: Or what. There were slaganella around at that time too,

2337
02:13:32,319 --> 02:13:34,640
and there are some of them that may have been

2338
02:13:34,680 --> 02:13:37,680
doing okay, firing all right in some of these ecosystems

2339
02:13:37,760 --> 02:13:42,359
alongside pleuri maya on occasion. Uh, those that were around

2340
02:13:42,479 --> 02:13:46,039
may have also been desiccation plants, tolerant plants. There might

2341
02:13:46,079 --> 02:13:49,479
have been some resurrection ones, I think, uh, and a

2342
02:13:49,520 --> 02:13:51,640
lot of the resurrection lineages are thought, I think to

2343
02:13:51,720 --> 02:13:54,920
have diverged before Gondwana broke up. So so the a

2344
02:13:54,960 --> 02:13:56,960
lot of these ones we see in this that really

2345
02:13:57,039 --> 02:14:00,439
have the nexus and their diversification is sent in the

2346
02:14:00,479 --> 02:14:05,359
southwestern United States going into central, Central and South America.

2347
02:14:07,039 --> 02:14:10,000
Really you know, they have origins that go back to

2348
02:14:10,199 --> 02:14:13,880
before the continents were splitting up, and so they've been

2349
02:14:13,920 --> 02:14:17,279
doing this for a while. Some of those really you know,

2350
02:14:17,680 --> 02:14:22,800
primely adapted ones to the deserts. But in terms of yeah,

2351
02:14:23,279 --> 02:14:26,000
basically where the work has gone and where it's going.

2352
02:14:27,039 --> 02:14:30,199
When I had originally encountered a lot of these studies

2353
02:14:30,359 --> 02:14:34,920
about the fossil record and the extinction, really all we

2354
02:14:35,039 --> 02:14:37,800
could do was kind of come up with ideas and

2355
02:14:38,880 --> 02:14:40,840
it's really the best we could do. We were just like, well,

2356
02:14:41,000 --> 02:14:43,479
we see a new trend in the fossil record, Well,

2357
02:14:43,520 --> 02:14:45,399
this is what must have happened, and we see a

2358
02:14:45,439 --> 02:14:48,439
correlation in the geologic record. Okay, this is what probably

2359
02:14:48,520 --> 02:14:51,399
did it, and this is probably how it happened. But

2360
02:14:51,520 --> 02:14:55,479
that's not science. That's that's saying correlation equals causation. It's

2361
02:14:55,560 --> 02:14:59,000
not the sign of method. It's not true science. So

2362
02:14:59,239 --> 02:15:02,399
like as someone who was trying to go into science,

2363
02:15:02,439 --> 02:15:05,279
as like, I don't really want to conduct my research

2364
02:15:05,399 --> 02:15:08,640
this way. I would like to instead of drawing trend

2365
02:15:08,680 --> 02:15:13,039
lines and comparing over time, I want to actually start

2366
02:15:13,119 --> 02:15:17,119
testing these ideas. Because we have so many different hypotheses

2367
02:15:17,399 --> 02:15:21,279
ideas for how this happened that we're never going to test,

2368
02:15:21,720 --> 02:15:23,479
why don't I pick one? And so I ended up

2369
02:15:23,520 --> 02:15:28,640
choosing the ozone weakening hypothesis because it just it made

2370
02:15:28,720 --> 02:15:31,199
sense logically from a lot of things that was going

2371
02:15:31,239 --> 02:15:35,039
on in the fossil record. And thankfully, many of these

2372
02:15:35,119 --> 02:15:38,680
plant lineages that did survive the extinction, or the ones

2373
02:15:38,720 --> 02:15:44,520
that did among them were Isueetes made it, you know,

2374
02:15:44,600 --> 02:15:47,720
at least the Isooitalians made it and left behind cool works.

2375
02:15:47,960 --> 02:15:52,600
So we have a really good analogue for and developmental

2376
02:15:52,840 --> 02:15:58,640
group to work with experimentally to pleurma, which is super

2377
02:15:58,720 --> 02:16:02,600
fortunate because if if I sweets was extinct, we probably

2378
02:16:02,640 --> 02:16:05,560
wouldn't know what to make of those things, Like it

2379
02:16:05,600 --> 02:16:07,720
would not make a lot of sense to us, I think.

2380
02:16:08,000 --> 02:16:09,520
Speaker 1: I mean when you look at them now, I mean

2381
02:16:09,920 --> 02:16:13,119
you can't tell, like undoubtedly just when they're morphology like

2382
02:16:13,239 --> 02:16:14,600
that these things are related.

2383
02:16:14,680 --> 02:16:18,279
Speaker 2: This is the same, right, right, But I do I

2384
02:16:18,399 --> 02:16:21,279
do wonder, you know, it would be strange. But you know,

2385
02:16:21,359 --> 02:16:23,880
if they if we didn't have ices modern modern wants

2386
02:16:23,880 --> 02:16:27,000
to compare with, it'd be like, what what was going

2387
02:16:27,039 --> 02:16:30,079
on evolutionarily with these things? And why? Why? What are

2388
02:16:30,199 --> 02:16:32,079
these things? I mean, I'm sure people would come to

2389
02:16:32,120 --> 02:16:34,559
the conclusion they rely like of fights, but you know

2390
02:16:34,639 --> 02:16:40,000
it's kind of like, uh, I don't know, so so

2391
02:16:40,559 --> 02:16:43,479
you know, there's that side and then the other side

2392
02:16:43,479 --> 02:16:46,799
of this. You know, what happened to the forests was

2393
02:16:47,239 --> 02:16:49,440
was very much of interest to me, and so I

2394
02:16:49,639 --> 02:16:52,520
ended up basically being like, Okay, well we've got modern

2395
02:16:52,600 --> 02:16:56,440
conifers that form similar types of pollen and have a

2396
02:16:56,479 --> 02:16:59,559
similar life cycle to what was growing then, and we

2397
02:16:59,639 --> 02:17:05,120
have the sweeties, and I basically start testing how U

2398
02:17:05,239 --> 02:17:09,799
v radiation in extremely high doses, like if you obliterate

2399
02:17:09,879 --> 02:17:13,920
the atmosphere, how would small forests placed under those conditions,

2400
02:17:14,680 --> 02:17:19,000
you know, respond, And how would basically reproduction be affected.

2401
02:17:19,120 --> 02:17:22,120
How would the development of spores and pollen be affected

2402
02:17:22,719 --> 02:17:27,760
between lycophytes and you know, these seed plants, and so

2403
02:17:28,719 --> 02:17:30,799
you know, I originally I took a look at the

2404
02:17:30,840 --> 02:17:35,360
forests and was doing research on basically Mugo pine, just

2405
02:17:35,440 --> 02:17:42,399
Pinus mugo, basically the alpine pine from Europe that's really

2406
02:17:42,479 --> 02:17:45,600
common in a lot of northern gardens as a horticultural writing.

2407
02:17:47,319 --> 02:17:50,639
And then I stuck those under basically atmospheres where or

2408
02:17:50,799 --> 02:17:55,159
like into environmental chambers under these lamps that basically simulated

2409
02:17:55,280 --> 02:17:57,719
something like you know, if you knocked out the ozone

2410
02:17:57,799 --> 02:18:01,920
layer almost and you know, variable of you b and

2411
02:18:02,239 --> 02:18:06,840
growing them for just a season under that, We found

2412
02:18:06,920 --> 02:18:09,760
that the same types of malformations we've seen the fossil

2413
02:18:09,799 --> 02:18:14,399
record are produced in these modern modern pines. And then

2414
02:18:15,000 --> 02:18:18,920
what was really weird though, was that while the pollen

2415
02:18:19,120 --> 02:18:21,760
is wacky, and we kind of thinking originally that well,

2416
02:18:22,639 --> 02:18:25,200
seems like mutated pollen would not be a good thing

2417
02:18:25,280 --> 02:18:28,479
for reproduction because your sperm probably wouldn't be swimming and

2418
02:18:28,520 --> 02:18:31,280
wouldn't be doing so well. Well if it was a

2419
02:18:31,360 --> 02:18:34,120
conifer that was German like pollen it that way. Most

2420
02:18:34,120 --> 02:18:36,239
of them are not. They have pollen t nation tubes.

2421
02:18:37,360 --> 02:18:40,840
And then we realized that all of the seed cones

2422
02:18:40,959 --> 02:18:44,719
were killed on every single tree under every single permian

2423
02:18:45,559 --> 02:18:50,239
UV simulation, like even the lowest one. The trees gave

2424
02:18:50,360 --> 02:18:53,879
up reproduction entirely. They just sterilized the forests.

2425
02:18:54,440 --> 02:18:57,120
Speaker 1: So that's why they stopped appearing in the fossil record.

2426
02:18:57,159 --> 02:18:59,159
That's why they went out probably, or it could be

2427
02:18:59,399 --> 02:19:02,840
it could be one of the yeah, yeah, and that

2428
02:19:03,040 --> 02:19:06,639
was yeah, just where do you get the UV lights?

2429
02:19:06,719 --> 02:19:09,760
I mean they're just UV lamps that are super.

2430
02:19:09,559 --> 02:19:12,719
Speaker 2: Strong or what super strong UV lamps? So we got

2431
02:19:12,799 --> 02:19:17,440
these Xeon arc lamps from this company in Whales and

2432
02:19:17,719 --> 02:19:21,079
had them shipped over and then we had a custom

2433
02:19:21,200 --> 02:19:26,280
radiometer that was designed for detecting UVB specific like wavelengths

2434
02:19:26,799 --> 02:19:29,799
as well, which was Yeah, it was quite an ordeal

2435
02:19:29,959 --> 02:19:30,879
to get those lamps.

2436
02:19:31,040 --> 02:19:32,840
Speaker 1: What do they make those lamps for? Like, what are

2437
02:19:32,879 --> 02:19:33,680
they made for?

2438
02:19:34,799 --> 02:19:37,559
Speaker 2: A lot of times they use them, so they use

2439
02:19:37,680 --> 02:19:41,159
ones that are nastier, so that emit UVC as sterilization

2440
02:19:41,319 --> 02:19:46,319
lamps like in chemical like in UH in flow hoods

2441
02:19:46,520 --> 02:19:49,840
or no in fume hoods basically, so you could sterilize

2442
02:19:49,879 --> 02:19:52,920
your your cultures of like microbes and stuff for extinctions.

2443
02:19:53,319 --> 02:19:55,680
So they'll have kill lamps and they'll have other ones

2444
02:19:55,760 --> 02:19:58,079
that are not as intents that are you know, using

2445
02:19:58,200 --> 02:20:01,920
UVA radiation that are used for are basically like checking

2446
02:20:02,040 --> 02:20:05,479
currency and things like that, and you know governmental uses

2447
02:20:05,639 --> 02:20:08,280
and like t s A and stuff like that, I guess,

2448
02:20:08,399 --> 02:20:12,799
But and then you have these UVB levels that are

2449
02:20:13,479 --> 02:20:16,319
reason we had to kind of finagle things like in

2450
02:20:16,440 --> 02:20:19,559
terms of get everything custom was that v B had

2451
02:20:19,639 --> 02:20:21,879
less of a there's less of a market for it

2452
02:20:22,079 --> 02:20:24,760
because it's kind of like, well, it mutates things, but

2453
02:20:24,920 --> 02:20:26,719
it's not like fully deadly, so we don't use it

2454
02:20:26,760 --> 02:20:30,360
for a kill lamp. But it's pretty deleterious and it

2455
02:20:30,440 --> 02:20:35,600
will kill you know, slowly. But yeah, some of these lamps,

2456
02:20:35,680 --> 02:20:37,799
like we used to I used to do experiments with

2457
02:20:37,959 --> 02:20:42,639
like daphnia, these little relatives of fairy shrimp and UH

2458
02:20:43,239 --> 02:20:46,239
and trups with a grad student who was looking at

2459
02:20:46,319 --> 02:20:48,479
EUV effects on and sometimes they'd be dead in like

2460
02:20:48,600 --> 02:20:52,239
five minutes under one of these lamps. Like it's nasty.

2461
02:20:52,319 --> 02:20:55,319
Speaker 1: There's the sun, there's the sun. Emit uv C or

2462
02:20:55,440 --> 02:20:57,559
just uv A and v B or does UVC get

2463
02:20:57,600 --> 02:20:58,319
blocked by the.

2464
02:20:58,680 --> 02:21:02,200
Speaker 2: Atmosphere, Yeah, you're correct and saying it gets blocked by

2465
02:21:02,239 --> 02:21:04,959
the atmosphere. Yeah, so it does get produced by on,

2466
02:21:05,239 --> 02:21:08,159
but it's blocked by the fact there's any oxygen in

2467
02:21:08,239 --> 02:21:12,280
the atmosphere, and particularly ozone. Usually you won't get UVC

2468
02:21:12,680 --> 02:21:18,680
hitting or surfaced, but you know, and and so so yeah,

2469
02:21:18,799 --> 02:21:21,440
uv B is gonna be with with an ozone hole.

2470
02:21:21,600 --> 02:21:23,680
Usually UVB is the one you're going to worry about.

2471
02:21:23,760 --> 02:21:27,159
There might be very minute traces of UVC that can

2472
02:21:27,200 --> 02:21:29,879
get through, but it's not I don't think it's it's

2473
02:21:30,040 --> 02:21:33,479
usually like you know, cause for absolute panic and warms.

2474
02:21:33,559 --> 02:21:36,319
Speaker 1: So like you, UVA is like a black light flashlight

2475
02:21:36,399 --> 02:21:38,879
you used to look at scorpions. Uv be's a little

2476
02:21:38,920 --> 02:21:42,799
bit stronger, shorter wavelength than than uvcs, like the nastier

2477
02:21:43,159 --> 02:21:45,879
uv really yeah wavelength compared to.

2478
02:21:45,840 --> 02:21:50,159
Speaker 2: The really short lavelength stuff. Yeah, exactly, and so yeah

2479
02:21:50,239 --> 02:21:53,360
that be that b whay. You know, the wavelengths within

2480
02:21:54,159 --> 02:21:57,479
uv B spectrum are enough to get the plants to

2481
02:21:57,559 --> 02:22:02,399
basically just give up on reproduction entire and it's it

2482
02:22:02,600 --> 02:22:06,520
was so weird because every one of these populations of

2483
02:22:06,600 --> 02:22:11,559
trees looked super healthy, like really happy little potted trees

2484
02:22:11,959 --> 02:22:15,799
like conifers, and you'd never think they were stuck under

2485
02:22:16,040 --> 02:22:19,600
like blasted with v radiation for like half a year. Wow.

2486
02:22:19,760 --> 02:22:22,440
Speaker 1: So they didn't they didn't display they didn't display any

2487
02:22:22,479 --> 02:22:26,959
other like negative phrase from just aborting. Yeah, that was it.

2488
02:22:27,159 --> 02:22:30,200
Speaker 2: That was the only sign aside from the pollen was

2489
02:22:30,360 --> 02:22:33,159
was getting wacky. So they were kicking out a lot

2490
02:22:33,280 --> 02:22:36,879
more malformed pollen, like significantly more than they normally would.

2491
02:22:37,000 --> 02:22:39,719
Speaker 1: Was it the clumping like the isohedes fossils or was

2492
02:22:39,799 --> 02:22:43,040
it just weird looking pollen like mutated pollen.

2493
02:22:43,360 --> 02:22:46,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was more often the sort of weird looking poem.

2494
02:22:46,840 --> 02:22:51,840
And and you know where basically in pines and a

2495
02:22:51,920 --> 02:22:54,280
lot of these conifers that were back you know in

2496
02:22:54,360 --> 02:22:58,319
the Permian they had pollen that was called sack eate pollen.

2497
02:22:58,479 --> 02:23:02,239
So they basically the pollen two little air bladders on it,

2498
02:23:02,479 --> 02:23:04,120
and I mean it really looks like a little Mickey

2499
02:23:04,200 --> 02:23:07,760
mouse head in a way like in Silhouette. They're they're

2500
02:23:07,799 --> 02:23:10,680
cute little things. But uh, you know, these these weird

2501
02:23:10,719 --> 02:23:14,479
little air bladders, the sac guy would sometimes be produced.

2502
02:23:14,879 --> 02:23:17,159
You know, there'd be more than two of them, there'd

2503
02:23:17,200 --> 02:23:19,600
be like maybe three or four, you know, five, and

2504
02:23:20,079 --> 02:23:23,079
sometimes they'd be twisted or enveloping the pollen grains so

2505
02:23:23,159 --> 02:23:26,879
it couldn't crack open to Germany, so you had just

2506
02:23:27,040 --> 02:23:29,559
and then you'd have misshapen ones or ones where the

2507
02:23:29,959 --> 02:23:33,559
sack guy were really small in size or really large.

2508
02:23:34,399 --> 02:23:38,600
So it's kind of a whole gamut of variation in form.

2509
02:23:40,680 --> 02:23:44,360
And you know, we we subsequently actually went through and

2510
02:23:44,559 --> 02:23:47,680
basically after this experiment, we wanted to find out okay,

2511
02:23:47,799 --> 02:23:52,040
well we see we proposed at this point that hey,

2512
02:23:52,399 --> 02:23:54,879
you know, you could have had the largest mass extinction

2513
02:23:54,959 --> 02:23:59,040
Aariy's history happen without anti kill mechanism if this was around,

2514
02:23:59,639 --> 02:24:02,000
Because all you'd need to do is basically just screw

2515
02:24:02,120 --> 02:24:05,639
up meiosis or you know, of the seeds or the

2516
02:24:05,920 --> 02:24:09,440
ovules of the dominant tree lineages across the planet, and

2517
02:24:09,520 --> 02:24:13,600
your entire food web collapses really quick. Yeah. Act, it

2518
02:24:13,680 --> 02:24:17,959
wouldn't take many forest collapses on that scale to knock

2519
02:24:18,040 --> 02:24:21,920
out a lot of the animal lineages. I think and

2520
02:24:22,040 --> 02:24:24,440
the plants just keep going through this. So like the plants,

2521
02:24:24,920 --> 02:24:26,840
and that was the other thing was really fascinating about

2522
02:24:27,120 --> 02:24:30,440
just this experiment, Like we had no idea we would

2523
02:24:30,440 --> 02:24:33,399
see something like that. That was a total Like I

2524
02:24:33,520 --> 02:24:36,760
remember the day that I started noticing these mummy cones,

2525
02:24:36,920 --> 02:24:40,479
like these little shriveled, mummified little cones coming out. Basically,

2526
02:24:41,360 --> 02:24:44,440
these little seed cones would emerge and at about three

2527
02:24:44,600 --> 02:24:47,120
or so millimeters in diameter, they would just shrivel up

2528
02:24:47,159 --> 02:24:50,040
and turn black. And there were some of these cones

2529
02:24:50,399 --> 02:24:54,360
and some branches these conifers would ooze out resin over

2530
02:24:54,760 --> 02:24:57,799
their cones, healing it like sealing it like it's a

2531
02:24:57,879 --> 02:24:59,559
wound and tuning it.

2532
02:25:00,000 --> 02:25:02,920
Speaker 1: But otherwise growing, Yeah, otherwise looking fine. That's so weird.

2533
02:25:03,000 --> 02:25:05,399
So so basically, and you can see how if this

2534
02:25:05,639 --> 02:25:08,159
lasted for as long as it did, and the premium,

2535
02:25:08,600 --> 02:25:11,879
like you said, lasted pretty long, eventually stuff just stops

2536
02:25:11,959 --> 02:25:15,920
reproducing and just starts disappearing from the landscape. Yeah.

2537
02:25:16,239 --> 02:25:18,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, you halt your succession and you got a point

2538
02:25:18,840 --> 02:25:21,040
where you have you know, it really becomes a Children

2539
02:25:21,120 --> 02:25:25,799
of Men scenario where you just get you stop reproduction

2540
02:25:26,120 --> 02:25:28,920
and suddenly you're facing a real crisis suddenly.

2541
02:25:30,120 --> 02:25:33,159
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't seen that at Yes, it's.

2542
02:25:33,200 --> 02:25:35,000
Speaker 2: A great movie, but you know, when I watched it,

2543
02:25:35,079 --> 02:25:36,520
I was like so creeped out, and I was like,

2544
02:25:36,959 --> 02:25:39,600
oh my god, this is having so many parils what

2545
02:25:39,719 --> 02:25:42,600
I've been seeing in the lab. But like with with

2546
02:25:42,760 --> 02:25:44,799
a plant level or a plant sort of you know,

2547
02:25:44,959 --> 02:25:48,000
emphasis of it, and it's like, you know, it really

2548
02:25:48,120 --> 02:25:51,120
is disturbing that you you could I mean we we

2549
02:25:51,200 --> 02:25:53,280
sort of proposed at the end of our first paper

2550
02:25:53,399 --> 02:25:56,399
on this that you could probably be just taking a

2551
02:25:56,479 --> 02:25:59,639
stroll through a in Permian forest and you wouldn't know

2552
02:25:59,680 --> 02:26:02,799
anything was wrong, and you might be like, right as

2553
02:26:02,840 --> 02:26:06,000
things are getting bad, it's just that the forests are,

2554
02:26:06,360 --> 02:26:09,920
you know, they're kind of stuck. Like the older trees

2555
02:26:09,959 --> 02:26:13,760
are just keep living, but they wouldn't be reproducing anymore.

2556
02:26:13,959 --> 02:26:16,360
And if you kept having this for thousands of years

2557
02:26:16,440 --> 02:26:20,040
on replay, I mean even your most like ra calcic

2558
02:26:20,399 --> 02:26:22,959
trees are going to get trialed, like they're not going

2559
02:26:23,040 --> 02:26:23,639
to be doing well.

2560
02:26:23,719 --> 02:26:26,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then and like you said, like the cascade

2561
02:26:26,159 --> 02:26:29,120
of effects then too, because everything that depends on them

2562
02:26:29,280 --> 02:26:33,399
is just suddenly there's there's no tree cover anymore, there's

2563
02:26:33,479 --> 02:26:36,120
no you know, who knows that the ecological relationships of

2564
02:26:36,719 --> 02:26:39,120
those lamps life, but all of a sudden the animals start.

2565
02:26:39,120 --> 02:26:41,440
I mean, it's just nuts to think about that. So

2566
02:26:41,760 --> 02:26:44,840
why did isoes? Why do these isoez relatives like plurimea

2567
02:26:44,879 --> 02:26:48,520
and analypus, why did they what do you what do

2568
02:26:48,600 --> 02:26:50,639
you hypothesize? Why did they make it through? Why were

2569
02:26:50,680 --> 02:26:51,319
they inaffected?

2570
02:26:52,440 --> 02:26:54,879
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there's there's a couple ideas. We're in

2571
02:26:54,959 --> 02:26:58,239
the midst right now of trying to figure that out

2572
02:26:58,479 --> 02:27:00,920
right now with a series of experiens that we've been

2573
02:27:00,959 --> 02:27:03,920
doing over the past few years. And I mean it's

2574
02:27:04,040 --> 02:27:08,760
really yeah, I think what the culmination of a lot

2575
02:27:08,799 --> 02:27:11,639
of work that's been done and a lot of people

2576
02:27:11,760 --> 02:27:14,600
thinking about it today prior to I mean, the things

2577
02:27:14,639 --> 02:27:16,799
that we're working on in the lab right now behind

2578
02:27:16,840 --> 02:27:21,479
the scenes seem to be that there's certainly this stress

2579
02:27:21,639 --> 02:27:26,760
tolerating extremophilic ability in these plants. So they're able to

2580
02:27:27,239 --> 02:27:29,280
they're able to take whatever.

2581
02:27:30,520 --> 02:27:31,120
Speaker 3: They're hit with.

2582
02:27:32,680 --> 02:27:34,799
Speaker 2: In this environment, and they seem to be able to

2583
02:27:34,959 --> 02:27:39,079
either they're able to survive it. The sort of hypothesis

2584
02:27:39,239 --> 02:27:43,280
that we had proposed at least in our first work

2585
02:27:43,360 --> 02:27:46,959
on the forest collapses, is that really all you need

2586
02:27:47,079 --> 02:27:51,360
I sweets to probably do in theory would be they'd

2587
02:27:51,399 --> 02:27:54,479
be doing better than conifers in trees if they could

2588
02:27:54,479 --> 02:27:59,360
actually reproduce under those same conditions that sterilize the tree lineages,

2589
02:28:00,159 --> 02:28:02,840
and they you know, and then you know, everything else

2590
02:28:03,000 --> 02:28:06,040
kind of doesn't even matter. Almost like they can survived

2591
02:28:06,120 --> 02:28:09,639
long enough and they can persist to reproduce, they might

2592
02:28:09,719 --> 02:28:13,680
be okay. And so we've been doing experiments to try

2593
02:28:13,719 --> 02:28:17,719
and test whether that happens and whether we can we

2594
02:28:17,879 --> 02:28:21,920
can get those kind of signals. But you know, it's

2595
02:28:22,200 --> 02:28:26,120
it's a it's complicated though. I mean, it's these sorts

2596
02:28:26,159 --> 02:28:29,360
of experiments we've been doing. I mean, while the you know,

2597
02:28:29,440 --> 02:28:32,079
we're we're really close to i think public trying to

2598
02:28:32,120 --> 02:28:35,639
at least submit our first paper into publication about you know,

2599
02:28:35,719 --> 02:28:38,280
what happened on the ICBD side of it in terms

2600
02:28:38,360 --> 02:28:42,520
of you know, reveals and things. But it seems like

2601
02:28:43,360 --> 02:28:47,559
to me that the way we've looked at mass extinctions

2602
02:28:47,639 --> 02:28:52,920
for so long seems so shaped by like biblical like culture,

2603
02:28:53,799 --> 02:28:56,920
like the way we look at how things die, like

2604
02:28:57,040 --> 02:29:01,639
even uniformitarianism, like well, just some of the basic geological

2605
02:29:01,760 --> 02:29:05,159
sort of under pittings from early in the development of

2606
02:29:05,200 --> 02:29:08,399
field of geology really had to have been influenced by

2607
02:29:08,680 --> 02:29:10,879
you know, like just our thought of the church and

2608
02:29:11,639 --> 02:29:15,879
how we think things happen and how there's armageddon and extinction.

2609
02:29:16,120 --> 02:29:18,600
Biology kind of goes into that area. We we kind

2610
02:29:18,639 --> 02:29:20,319
of think of the world goes to hell in a

2611
02:29:20,360 --> 02:29:24,319
hand bask and it's kind of judgment day. But you know,

2612
02:29:24,639 --> 02:29:28,440
and I almost feel like it's it's great that we

2613
02:29:28,840 --> 02:29:30,799
we are working on things, like you know, there's there's

2614
02:29:30,840 --> 02:29:34,799
people working on the asteroid impact and we talk about them.

2615
02:29:34,879 --> 02:29:38,319
We've we've made that more accessible to the public. But

2616
02:29:38,399 --> 02:29:41,159
there's also this double ended sword that you know, like

2617
02:29:41,319 --> 02:29:45,159
the popularization of when the asteroid impact was discovered, you know,

2618
02:29:45,600 --> 02:29:49,360
as as a potential leading driver and the dinosaur extinction,

2619
02:29:50,159 --> 02:29:53,760
it suddenly made the whole view. I think of a

2620
02:29:53,799 --> 02:29:55,840
lot of these extinctions as oh, this could be like

2621
02:29:55,920 --> 02:30:01,520
this holocaust that happens overnight and everything dies, right, that

2622
02:30:01,799 --> 02:30:05,159
sort of idea though, like, well, it does play out

2623
02:30:05,440 --> 02:30:07,360
on you know, on ecosystem levels, and we see it

2624
02:30:07,440 --> 02:30:11,040
certainly today in places where you have mass mortality of

2625
02:30:11,120 --> 02:30:16,879
some things to disease or a freak climate event. At

2626
02:30:16,920 --> 02:30:18,840
the other end of the spectrum, it's like you you

2627
02:30:19,000 --> 02:30:21,040
pan out and some of these events like the Permian

2628
02:30:21,079 --> 02:30:22,600
are happened over millions of years.

2629
02:30:22,719 --> 02:30:25,920
Speaker 1: Right, It's not as simple. It's not as simple as

2630
02:30:26,719 --> 02:30:30,159
overnight end game. Yeah, yeah, the apocalypse. I could see

2631
02:30:30,200 --> 02:30:32,840
that it taints the view, you know, Oh, it's got

2632
02:30:32,920 --> 02:30:34,239
to be this way. When I was like, no, you

2633
02:30:34,319 --> 02:30:35,680
got to zoom out, you got to think of it

2634
02:30:35,719 --> 02:30:36,440
a little differently.

2635
02:30:36,520 --> 02:30:40,120
Speaker 2: You know, it's so true and and yeah, and when

2636
02:30:40,159 --> 02:30:42,360
you look at sign of papers that come out to

2637
02:30:42,440 --> 02:30:45,959
this date, I think the troubling part for me from

2638
02:30:46,040 --> 02:30:49,959
sort of the botanical nerdy perspective is that, well, you know,

2639
02:30:50,600 --> 02:30:53,399
when people who are looking at the extinction, they're looking

2640
02:30:53,479 --> 02:30:56,280
for the smoking gun. They want to find what was

2641
02:30:56,360 --> 02:30:58,959
the bullet that shot life in the face and killed it,

2642
02:30:59,680 --> 02:31:02,120
And it's like they're looking for the kill mechanism. And

2643
02:31:02,399 --> 02:31:05,559
you know, immediately when we started seeing these sterilized for us,

2644
02:31:06,360 --> 02:31:08,879
I was like, we're probably looking at the wrong thing

2645
02:31:09,079 --> 02:31:12,399
this whole time, Like this is probably not how this happens.

2646
02:31:13,000 --> 02:31:15,399
And you know, part of that was kind of going

2647
02:31:15,479 --> 02:31:18,680
back to like just what I was learning in undergraduate

2648
02:31:18,920 --> 02:31:22,920
like an introductory biology class. I think it has to

2649
02:31:23,079 --> 02:31:27,719
lay it out as straightforward to students than anywhere I

2650
02:31:28,000 --> 02:31:30,799
had experienced it elsewhere, like as a scientist, And I

2651
02:31:30,879 --> 02:31:33,680
still remember lectures of my biology teachers saying, you know,

2652
02:31:33,799 --> 02:31:36,959
like when we talk about evolution, we talk about natural selection,

2653
02:31:37,120 --> 02:31:39,440
we're not talking about you know, and we're talking about

2654
02:31:39,520 --> 02:31:43,000
like fitness, right. You know a lot of people will

2655
02:31:43,040 --> 02:31:45,879
say fitness is that Well, we construed it as like

2656
02:31:46,079 --> 02:31:49,399
in our our way that fitness something is strong, like

2657
02:31:49,520 --> 02:31:53,600
it's it's fit. But the biological term for fitness is

2658
02:31:53,959 --> 02:31:58,319
being able to maintain your reproductive capacity over a long

2659
02:31:58,399 --> 02:32:03,520
period of time and having a greater reproductive capacity over

2660
02:32:03,600 --> 02:32:07,239
time to pass on genes, to pass on generations and

2661
02:32:07,680 --> 02:32:09,040
continue a lineage over time.

2662
02:32:09,200 --> 02:32:11,879
Speaker 1: Right, And the quality of fitness too is dependent. It's

2663
02:32:12,000 --> 02:32:14,239
it's different for every environment. Well, like when I am

2664
02:32:14,440 --> 02:32:17,159
telling people about this stuff, what might be what might

2665
02:32:17,239 --> 02:32:19,639
convey fitness in a desert environment is going to be

2666
02:32:19,840 --> 02:32:24,520
completely antagonistic and maladaptive in a swamp environment. You know,

2667
02:32:24,680 --> 02:32:27,479
having hairs on your leaves is beneficial in a desert.

2668
02:32:27,760 --> 02:32:30,399
In a swamp, your leaves are going to rot, you know.

2669
02:32:30,600 --> 02:32:34,719
So it's it's totally the environment decides what is fit,

2670
02:32:35,479 --> 02:32:37,399
you know, and that's that according to the list of

2671
02:32:37,520 --> 02:32:40,000
character character traits in that environment, and that's different for

2672
02:32:40,079 --> 02:32:43,479
every environment. So it sounds like the permean what was

2673
02:32:43,600 --> 02:32:46,799
going on. Mean, yeah, there was a suite of really

2674
02:32:46,879 --> 02:32:49,239
fucked up circumstances that were going on, and it was

2675
02:32:49,399 --> 02:32:53,079
just that you know, that's selected for only a handful

2676
02:32:53,159 --> 02:32:55,319
of things making it through, you know, acting acting like

2677
02:32:55,360 --> 02:32:59,440
a filter and deciding what gets to what gets to

2678
02:32:59,559 --> 02:33:03,200
continue existing, and what goes extinct. But I definitely think

2679
02:33:03,280 --> 02:33:05,920
that the UV thing is pretty cool because a lot

2680
02:33:06,000 --> 02:33:10,159
of people don't associate, you know, the loss of the

2681
02:33:10,239 --> 02:33:14,680
ozone layer with extinction events. I mean, a lot of

2682
02:33:14,680 --> 02:33:17,440
people don't even know what CO two is linked to

2683
02:33:17,479 --> 02:33:19,799
a lot of extinction events, you know, a rise in

2684
02:33:19,879 --> 02:33:22,760
CO two or a drastic decrease in CO two. But

2685
02:33:23,639 --> 02:33:25,719
but yeah, man, the Permian I mean, it's it's yeah,

2686
02:33:25,760 --> 02:33:27,639
it's one of those I remember when I first learned

2687
02:33:27,639 --> 02:33:30,840
about it, the couple, I must have been twenty or something,

2688
02:33:30,879 --> 02:33:33,600
and I was just it was it's it's enigmatic, you know,

2689
02:33:33,680 --> 02:33:37,360
it's really mysterious. It's it's a cool thing to think about.

2690
02:33:37,440 --> 02:33:42,079
And so this group of plants thriving, it's fucking wild,

2691
02:33:42,399 --> 02:33:43,239
you know, like why.

2692
02:33:43,319 --> 02:33:46,760
Speaker 2: It's really weird. Yeah, and it really was. I mean

2693
02:33:46,840 --> 02:33:48,719
for me it was the gate my gateway into this

2694
02:33:48,879 --> 02:33:52,760
extinction and studying it was just like, well why, likea

2695
02:33:52,799 --> 02:33:57,319
fights and you know, that simple question sort of like

2696
02:33:57,440 --> 02:34:00,559
took me down this path of like the entire eco systems.

2697
02:34:00,639 --> 02:34:04,639
And yeah, it became so much bigger than that too.

2698
02:34:04,920 --> 02:34:08,399
But yeah, I mean it really this is one of

2699
02:34:08,479 --> 02:34:11,360
those instances and in the history of life where you know,

2700
02:34:11,680 --> 02:34:14,399
knowing an obscure group of plants actually makes a huge

2701
02:34:14,440 --> 02:34:19,840
difference in understanding how you know, the entire biosphere almost

2702
02:34:19,920 --> 02:34:20,639
came to its knees.

2703
02:34:21,000 --> 02:34:24,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got to ask, did you guys blast iso

2704
02:34:24,360 --> 02:34:27,000
etes with UVB with those UVB lamps yet?

2705
02:34:27,440 --> 02:34:30,440
Speaker 2: Did you have Yeah, we have done it.

2706
02:34:30,840 --> 02:34:32,719
Speaker 1: I don't want to give away. I don't want to

2707
02:34:32,799 --> 02:34:33,319
go I.

2708
02:34:33,319 --> 02:34:37,120
Speaker 2: Won't give away the results. But we're you know, we

2709
02:34:37,440 --> 02:34:39,879
we're in the process of we've got a paper and

2710
02:34:39,959 --> 02:34:43,520
prep right now that we're hoping to submit soon. Yeah,

2711
02:34:44,200 --> 02:34:45,239
it's going to be weird, but.

2712
02:34:45,559 --> 02:34:47,440
Speaker 1: Let me know when it comes out, man, because I

2713
02:34:47,479 --> 02:34:49,200
want to Yeah, I want to share that. That's really cool.

2714
02:34:49,200 --> 02:34:53,120
I'm really curious what you find, so absolutely happy to

2715
02:34:53,239 --> 02:34:55,079
do so yeah, man, well thanks for being down to

2716
02:34:55,159 --> 02:34:58,719
do this. Uh we just did two and a half hours.

2717
02:34:58,799 --> 02:35:01,959
It's awesome. So I appreciate that I could talk to

2718
02:35:02,000 --> 02:35:03,680
you for another three man, because I know you're into

2719
02:35:03,719 --> 02:35:06,120
conifers and all that shit was what got me in

2720
02:35:06,200 --> 02:35:09,040
the bond and the first place, just thinking about these

2721
02:35:09,159 --> 02:35:12,000
past time periods and how different they were, and just

2722
02:35:12,079 --> 02:35:15,079
how fucking weird things looked. I mean, not even thinking

2723
02:35:15,120 --> 02:35:17,239
about the animals that were alive back then, you know,

2724
02:35:17,680 --> 02:35:21,159
just those forests just looked so cool, even if you're

2725
02:35:21,200 --> 02:35:23,479
looking at like I forget the name of the the

2726
02:35:23,600 --> 02:35:25,600
guy who's well known, he's dead, but he's a painter

2727
02:35:25,639 --> 02:35:28,319
who was always painting these weird landscapes with dinosaurs in

2728
02:35:28,399 --> 02:35:31,639
him and the trees he would always put in the background.

2729
02:35:31,719 --> 02:35:33,879
I just remember, like, you know, oh God, look at him,

2730
02:35:33,879 --> 02:35:36,639
just being like what the fuck? But all based on

2731
02:35:37,159 --> 02:35:39,159
actual fossils, you know, known fossils.

2732
02:35:39,280 --> 02:35:43,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah they are. It's it's absolutely wild. And actually

2733
02:35:43,680 --> 02:35:46,440
today I was us on social media and saw a

2734
02:35:46,520 --> 02:35:50,959
picture that just blew my mind of an aracaria I

2735
02:35:51,040 --> 02:35:53,760
think somewhere and may have been somewhere in Brazil, but

2736
02:35:53,879 --> 02:35:57,920
it had an entire lawn of red cataleia orchids, just

2737
02:35:58,680 --> 02:36:03,879
distuning the entire trunk going blood red cataleas on an

2738
02:36:03,920 --> 02:36:05,760
our car. And I thought it was such a beautiful

2739
02:36:05,840 --> 02:36:09,719
image of how life has changed so much with time,

2740
02:36:10,159 --> 02:36:11,920
but in some ways not so much.

2741
02:36:12,639 --> 02:36:16,719
Speaker 1: So they're still with us, Eric carry Is Man especially. Yeah,

2742
02:36:16,799 --> 02:36:18,360
that's like a whole accat I could. I'm a right,

2743
02:36:18,360 --> 02:36:22,559
I gotta stand myself because I'll drag this podcast half hour.

2744
02:36:22,879 --> 02:36:25,200
All right, Jeff Banker, thanks so much, man, I appreciate it.

2745
02:36:25,200 --> 02:36:28,120
And where can people, uh, you know, learn more about

2746
02:36:28,120 --> 02:36:29,959
your work. You got a website or just you got

2747
02:36:30,000 --> 02:36:31,000
a couple of papers out right?

2748
02:36:32,159 --> 02:36:33,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got it. I got a couple of papers

2749
02:36:33,840 --> 02:36:37,159
out yeah. So some of those are on like Google,

2750
02:36:37,200 --> 02:36:41,000
scholar research Gate, those sorts of places. And then yeah,

2751
02:36:41,120 --> 02:36:44,680
and I often am posting all sorts of weird plants

2752
02:36:44,719 --> 02:36:49,920
that I'm growing and backing up and researching on social.

2753
02:36:49,559 --> 02:36:53,360
Speaker 1: Media, so Instagram or Facebook or what I do it

2754
02:36:53,440 --> 02:36:53,879
on both.

2755
02:36:54,120 --> 02:36:56,920
Speaker 2: So yeah, so just by my name, you know, Jeff

2756
02:36:56,959 --> 02:37:00,799
Banker on there, and yeah, there they're there. So if

2757
02:37:00,840 --> 02:37:03,319
you like a lot of weird Lika fights and conifers

2758
02:37:03,360 --> 02:37:05,799
and strange things, I've always got some strange stuff up there.

2759
02:37:05,920 --> 02:37:08,520
Speaker 1: Cool many. I'll share your Instagram page in the in

2760
02:37:08,600 --> 02:37:10,920
the podcast details. So man, thanks again for coming on.

2761
02:37:10,959 --> 02:37:14,120
I appreciate it anytime. Thanks so much, Joe, it's a

2762
02:37:14,200 --> 02:37:15,920
lot of fun talking about this. Yeah, you too, Man.

2763
02:37:15,920 --> 02:37:17,639
All right, everybody else go find us up by Jeff.

2764
02:37:17,639 --> 02:37:20,600
Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Take care, take care, right,