Check the fingers and toes of your favorite vertebrate animals and you’re likely to find claws or something similar at the ends. These digit-caps come in a variety of shapes – claws, nails, even hooves – for a variety of functions. In this episode, we discuss the close relationship between claw form and function, how we study claws in the fossil record, and the intriguing questions of how claws came to be as we know them today.

In the news: swimming temnospondyls, ants and plants, Troodon eggs, and cooked snails.

Time markers: Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00 News: 00:05:30 Main discussion, Part 1: 00:38:15 Main discussion, Part 2: 01:17:45 Patron question: 01:45:45

Listen to us on I Know Dino! https://iknowdino.com/sinotyrannus-episode-437/

Will was a guest on Sprites of Life! https://open.spotify.com/episode/7KmiNQcKWgpT6Nn0FRrMMp

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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/