Podcast 331 - Reef It Up

The gang discusses two papers that investigate ancient bioherms. The first paper looks at the formation of early Phanerozoic reefs, and the second paper investigates patterns of reef building and collapse in the late Devonian. Meanwhile, James is being advertised to, Amanda plans unique roadtrips, and Curt solicits legal advice.

Up-Goer Five (Amanda Edition): Today our friends talk about animals that have green friends that make hard bits. These animals that make hard parts are really important today because they make good places for other animals to live. But we don't know all about them and where they first came from and how they first started making hard parts for places to live. So the first paper looks at where these animals that make hard parts for other animals to live in come from. They look at really early animals that make hard parts and show what kinds of places they live in, and also how they stick themselves to the bottom. It looks like different animals got started in different ways, then went out to all sorts of different places and got better at making hard parts for other animals to live in, until that was all they could do. The second paper talks about a bad time when everything died and how animals that make hard parts for other things to live in all died and tiny things we can't see without making them look big took over from them. At this time there were different animals that made hard parts for other animals to live in that lived together to make big areas of hard parts, but then they all died and never came back. But when we look at the rocks we find that tiny things we can't see without making them look big are all over the place while the animals that make hard bits for other animals to live in all die. This paper talks a lot about rocks, but the important thing is that they think the tiny things we can't see without making them look big might be the kind of thing that takes over all the places when times are bad and everything dies, but that might not be the case.

References: Zhuravlev, Andrey Yurevich, and Rachel Wood. "On the origin of metazoan reefs." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 293.2068 (2026). Xinsong, Zhang, et al. "How microbes replaced metazoans in reef ecosystem during the Late Devonian mass extinction: new insights from platform facies in South China." Lethaia 58.4 (2025): 1-22.