Leaves. They’re everywhere. They’re the main photosynthesizing organs of plants, and they’re the main source of green on our green-and-blue planet. Leaves come in a truly dizzying variety of shapes, sizes, and specialized functions, and their early evolution laid the foundation for terrestrial ecosystems as we know them. This episode, Aly joins us yet again to talk about the anatomy and diversity of leaves and the incredible information we can learn from leaves in the fossil record.

In the news: croc cousins, horned dinosaurs, dinosaur myths, and fish brains.

Time markers:

Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00

News: 00:07:40

Main discussion, Part 1: 00:42:30

Main discussion, Part 2: 01:36:00

Patron question: 02:54:30

Follow Aly online at @PaleoLorax

Check out our website for this episode’s blog post and more: http://commondescentpodcast.com/

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The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org

Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0