Podcast 63 - Meaty; The Evolution of Hypercarnivory

The gang discusses two papers about the evolution (and loss) of hypercarnivory in mammals. Meanwhile, Amanda shares more equine history, Curt does his best to kill a trend, and James goes "nuclear". Please bear with us.... BEAR.

"Batty McFaddin" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) 
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Up goer five" text summary

The group talks about big animals with hair that eat other animals. The first paper looks at different types of things like dogs that have by themselves got big to eat other animals and then died; this has happened three times in the past. The second paper is looking at even bigger animals that live in parks and cold places. It shows that some bad animals became good by eating things that grow in the ground. This change has also happened many times.

References

Van Valkenburgh, Blaire, Xiaoming Wang, and John Damuth. "Cope's rule, hypercarnivory, and extinction in North American canids." Science 306.5693 (2004): 101-104.

Figueirido, B., et al. "Shape at the cross‐roads: homoplasy and history in the evolution of the carnivoran skull towards herbivory." Journal of evolutionary biology 23.12 (2010): 2579-2594.