The Life Scientific - Nick Fraser on Triassic reptiles

Download Nick Fraser on Triassic reptiles

Nick Fraser regularly travels back in time (at least in his mind) to the Triassic, a crazily inventive period in our evolutionary history that started 250 million years ago. Wherever there are ancient Triassic creatures buried underground, Nick is never far behind; and his 'fossil first' approach to life has been richly rewarded. In 2002, he unearthed a new species of gliding reptile in Virginia, USA. Last year in southern China, he identified the remains of a creature so utterly odd that the paleontologists who studied this species before him had got it all wrong. And earlier this year he was part of a tiny but hugely exciting discovery much closer to home, hidden in the Scottish borders in rocks that are over 350 million years old: an ancient amphibian, imaginatively named Tiny, that is the earliest known example of an animal with a backbone to live on land. It may even have had five fingers.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Published on Tuesday, 11th April 2017.

Available Podcasts from The Life Scientific

Subscribe to The Life Scientific

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the The Life Scientific webpage.