E3: New Species— a 60 Million-Year-Old “Alligator” from Texas, USA!

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Adam Cossette, is a vertebrate paleontologist and an Assistant Professor of Anatomy working in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Dr. Cossette talks to us about his recent description of a 60 million year old fossil that is a new species of “alligator,” Bottosaurus fustidens. We talk about how this fossil from Texas was found in an Iowa museum collection, how fossils form, why calling this an “alligator” isn’t technically correct, how the new species got its name, and how a vertebrate paleontologist becomes an anatomy professor for medical students.

The paper was published in the January issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, and the title of the paper is “A new species of Bottosaurus (Alligatoroidea: Caimaninae) from the Black Peaks Formation (Palaeocene) of Texas indicates an early radiation of North American caimanines.”

You can see the abstract of the paper at https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/191/1/276/5815831?redirectedFrom=fulltext , or contact Dr. Cossette through his university profile page and ask for a copy that he assure me he is willing to give you for free! https://www.nyit.edu/bio/acossett