Episode 35

Beyond Avocados: Megafauna Fruit

It's another sponsored episode! This week, we bring you the fascinating (and sometimes delicious) topic of evolutionary anachronisms. What happens when two species co-evolve to support one another, but one goes extinct? What's up with that obscure, hipster fruit, the paw-paw, and why is Amber mad at NPR? What can blue jays tell us about human impulsivity? All this and more!

Gallery of Megafauna Fruits

Forgotten fruits: Or, megafaunal dispersal syndrome and the case of the missing herbivores (Scientopia’s Guest Blog)

Zerega, N.J.C., D. Ragone, and T.J. Motley. 2006. Genetic diversity and origins of domesticated breadfruit. In Darwin’s Harvest: New Approaches to the Origins, Evolution, and Conservation of Crops, ed. T.J. Motley, N.J.C. Zerega, and H.B. Cross. Columbia University Press, New York.

Barlow, Connie. 2000. The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and other Ecological Anachronisms. Basic Books, New York, NY.

This Once-Obscure Fruit Is On Its Way To Becoming PawPaw-Pawpular (NPR)

Human diets drive range expansion of megafauna-dispersed fruit species (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Impulsive behavior may be relict of hunter-gatherer past (EurekAlert!)

Mischel, Walter; Ebbesen, Ebbe B.; Raskoff Zeiss, Antonette (1972). "Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 21 (2): 204–218. doi:10.1037/h0032198. ISSN 0022-3514. PMID 5010404.

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.