In "The Fossil Files", a pair of palaeontologists delve into the latest discoveries from the world of palaeontology and seek to bring fossils to back to life. Each episode, Susie and Rob will discuss an interesting new research paper ranging from topics of what dinosaurs ate, how plesiosaurs swam, where we came from, and the science of de-extinction. Whilst doing so, we peek under the hood of how the science of palaeontology is done and how research gets to see the light of day. It is for anybody interested in palaeontology and past life whether that is students, researchers themselves...
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Sep 29, 2026 · 13:29
New finds in palaeontology are dependent on people getting out in the field and digging up fossils, but are the next generation of palaeontologists getting to do that?…
Sep 22, 2026 · 36:40
Sounds play such an important ecological role, but palaeontologists have always had to use their imagination when reconstructing the sound of extinct landscapes: Until now! For…
Sep 8, 2026 · 47:57
The origin of turtles has long been a scientific mystery. Not only do they have super weird things going on with their ribs, head, and teeth, but also its unclear if they were…
Aug 28, 2026 · 19:30
What happens when fossils that have been faked or 'enhanced' end up being used in scientific studies? Why does it happen? How can we spot them? How do researchers, preparators,…
Aug 18, 2026 · 45:09
As well as tasting good, fruit play a really important role in ecosystems across the world. But when did they evolve? Were dinosaurs eating them and dispersing them? In a fossil…
Aug 4, 2026 · 44:12
The deep sea environment holds many mysteries but yields hardly any fossils. A new mindblowing finding at the bottom of the Indian ocean challenges the way we think about life in…
Jul 28, 2026 · 21:50
Studying for a PhD is in an important step towards becoming a scientist, but the process of finding and applying for a PhD programme is mysterious and inaccessible. In this bonus…
Jul 21, 2026 · 37:17
Where, when, and how did the animals first appear? The fossil record holds some tantalising insights from well-preserved sites in Canada, Australia, Russia (and Leicester). This…
Jul 14, 2026 · 49:15
The first animals turned up in the Ediacaran as simple frond-like organisms that didn't do much of anything. Why was this Pre-Cambrian 'Avalonian biota' so static and boring for…
Jun 30, 2026 · 48:20
Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous dinosaur and maybe even the most famous fossil animal. It has long been a source of curiosity as to why is has such small arms…
Jun 23, 2026 · 9:51
Digging up dinosaur fossils is a complicated and unpredictable business. But how does it feel to be one of the scientists on the ground doing the exploring? What can you do when…
Jun 16, 2026 · 33:37
The Fossil Files is one year old! Thank you everbody for your support! To mark the occasion, Susie and Rob take a look back at the last year and put together some of their…
Jun 9, 2026 · 40:31
400 million years ago, before the rise of forests, the land was covered in mossy carpets, loomed over by weird 8 meter tall columns called Prototaxites. These weird giants have…
May 26, 2026 · 44:40
Cretaceous oceans have long been accepted as a dangerous place full of massive mosaurs and other predators. Now some new fossils from Japan have upended this with the suggestion…
May 12, 2026 · 8:59
Are we alone? For decades a global effort has been made to search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), but have we been looking in the wrong place? A new paper suggests that…
May 5, 2026 · 36:02
Smell defines so much of animal's life from finding a mate, to tracking down food sources and avoiding predators. Genetics and behaviour can offer us rich insights for modern…
Apr 21, 2026 · 30:32
Fossilised vomit can provide direct, yet disgusting, evidence of past ecosystems and interactions between long extinct organisms. This week we take a look at "the earliest…
Apr 14, 2026 · 13:24
Getting a fossil species named after you is an unsual way to acheive quasi immortality, especially so for a species of human. In this preview of our second bonus episode we take…
Apr 7, 2026 · 38:24
How and when did mammoths go extinct? This week we take a look at two bizarre mammoth related "fossil fails". The first is some unexpected results from from the "adopt-a-mammoth"…
Mar 31, 2026 · 12:23
How and when and why do you become a palaeontologist? Biology, Geology, something else? Childhood, undergraduate, PhD? Susie and Rob discuss the different routes and offer their…
Mar 23, 2026 · 31:31
The idea that dinosaurs were all scaley beasts got a massive challenge in 2000s when a variety of feather-like structures were found in fossils in China and other places. An even…
Mar 11, 2026 · 52:22
What (and when) is an animal? They are thought to have first arrived about 500 million years ago and immediately underwent an explosive diversifcation at the beginning of the…
Feb 24, 2026 · 48:22
Sometimes the answer to palaeontological mysteries can actually be right in front of our faces, if only we know how, or where, to look. This week we take a look a two cases by…
Feb 10, 2026 · 33:34
Life nearly died 252 million years ago in a mass extinction at the end of the Permian. It was long thought that it took 10s of millions of years into the Triassic for life to…
Jan 27, 2026 · 42:11
Lead is a well known pollutant affecting human health over the course of our urbanisation and industrialisation. But what about before this? Analysis of a range of fossil hominid…
Jan 13, 2026 · 47:58
Having large body sizes conferred all sorts of advantages on dinosaurs, but it potentially made breeding a bit complicated. This week we take a look at some weird pathologies in…
Dec 23, 2025 · 31:51
Part 2: Around 66 million years ago an enormous asteroid barrelled into the earth and wiped out ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs*. Debate has raged back and forth as to…
Dec 16, 2025 · 39:31
Around 66 million years ago an enormous asteroid barreled into the earth and wiped out icthyosaurs, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs*. Debate has raged back and forth as to whether the…
Dec 2, 2025 · 48:59
Artificial Intelligence seems to be changing everything, everywhere, all at once. But how will the science of studying the very old be transformed by the technology of the new?…
Nov 21, 2025 · 38:20
In the last of our series from the massive Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, Susie and Rob finally manage to catch up for a gossip. In this episode with get a…
Nov 15, 2025 · 36:25
New fossil discoveries keep coming thick and fast, but we managed to sit down with the researchers as they present them. In this episode Susie and Rob catch up (in person!) on…
Nov 13, 2025 · 29:47
The Fossils Files are on Tour! Susie and Rob are in Birmingham for the massive Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference which has made a rare trip to Europe. We will be…
Nov 3, 2025 · 36:30
A newly discovered fossil from the Cretaceous of Mongolia tells us an interesting story about the purported head butting behaviour of dinosaurs. Pachycephalosaurs are famous for…
Oct 21, 2025 · 36:31
Cordyceps is a weird fungus that can take over the brain of ants and spiders causing them to go zombie and commit suicide in order to spread disease. Weirder still, some new…
Oct 7, 2025 · 44:00
Discovery of the smallest ever dinosaur acheived quite a splash when it was publised on the front cover of Nature in 2020. The new critter, Oculodentavis , was the size of a…
Sep 23, 2025 · 33:20
In the first of two episodes on notorious fossil fails, Rob and Susie take a look at how a serious case of mistaken identify unfolded for some Ediacaran 'fossils'. Herein lies a…
Sep 8, 2025 · 32:21
Perhaps the weirdest dinosaur ever has just been described in Nature, by The Fossil Files' own Susie Maidment. In a worldwide EXCLUSIVE*, Susie gives as the unvarnshed truth…
Sep 2, 2025 · 45:45
This new discovery is WEIRD. Mirasaura (the 'marvellous lizard') has been described from the Triassic of France, and it has mad projections coming out of its back, far longer…
Aug 25, 2025 · 12:47
Squid are a really important part of marine ecosystems, but their fossil record is close to non-existent - their squishy bodies are just really unlikely to be fossilised. In this…
Aug 19, 2025 · 31:13
The origin of our own group, the vertebrates, has received quite the shake up. One of the important fossil players has been found to be an invertebrate imposter, and this…
Aug 5, 2025 · 43:00
Pterosaurs dominated Mesozoic skies but it has always been a mystery where these flying reptiles came from. This week Susie and Rob discuss Pterosaur controveries and a cool new…
Jul 22, 2025 · 40:08
Why do we collect fossils and who were the first fossil collectors? Cretaceious fossils have been found in a cave in Northern Spain alongside the Neanderthals that were living…
Jul 9, 2025 · 34:35
Our evolutionary timeline just leapt back an additional 40 million years into the past. Some new fossil trackways from the early Carboniferous of Australia have been interpreted…
Jul 1, 2025 · 38:24
Can we bring extinct organisms back to life? Colossal Biosciences caused quite the stir earlier this year when claimed they could do just that, and indeed have done with Dire…
Jun 24, 2025 · 32:41
How did dinosaurs rise to supremacy? This difficult question is given "fresh" insights from new data from a motherload of fossils from Poland. Over 500 bromalites - fossil vomit,…
Jun 13, 2025 · 37:19
For our first paper, we look at some exceptional preservation of soft tissue in Jurassic plesiosaur (large marine reptiles). Detailed preservation of soft tissues to the…
Jun 13, 2025 · 4:04
In "The Fossil Files", a pair of palaeontologists delve into the latest discoveries from the world of palaeontology and seek to bring fossils to back to life. Each episode, Susie…
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