episodes
- 1. That Time the Mediterranean Sea Disappeared How could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just...disappear? It would take decades and more than 1,000 research studies to even start to figure out the cause -- or causes -- of one of the g...
- 2. The Neanderthals That Taught Us About Humanity Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Neandertals were thought to have been…primitive. Unintelligent, hunched-over cavemen, for lack of a better word. But the discoveries made in that Iraqi c...
- 3. The Giant Dinosaur That Was Missing a Body From end to end, its forelimbs alone measured an incredible 2.4 meters long and were tipped with big, comma-shaped claws. But other than its bizarre arms, very little material from this dinosaur had b...
- 4. How South America Made the Marsupials Throughout the Cenozoic Era -- the era we’re in now -- marsupials and their metatherian relatives flourished all over South America, filling all kinds of ecological niches and radiating into forms tha...
- 5. A Short Tale About Diplodocus' Long Neck Long necks gave sauropods a huge advantage when it came to food, but not in the way you think. And this benefit would allow them to become the biggest terrestrial animals of all time!
- 6. When the Rainforests Collapsed The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse set the stage for a takeover that would be a crucial turning point in the history of terrestrial animal life. If it weren’t for that time when the rainforests col...
- 7. How a Hot Planet Created the World's Biggest Snake About 59 million years ago, the largest animal lurking in the ancient forests of Colombia by far was Titanoboa - the largest snake ever known. It’s only been in the past few years that we’ve put toget...
- 8. When the Sahara Was Green The climate of the Sahara was completely different thousands of years ago. And we’re not talking about just a few years of extra rain. We’re talking about a climate that was so wet for so long that an...
- 9. When Penguins Went From The Sky To The Sea Today, we think of penguins as small-ish, waddling, tuxedo-birds. But they evolved from a flying ancestor, were actual giants for millions of years, and some of them were even dressed a little more ca...
- 10. How the Egg Came First The story of the egg spans millions of years, from the first vertebrates that dared to venture onto land to today’s mammals, including the platypus, and of course birds. Like chickens? We’re here to t...
- 11. How Dogs (Eventually) Became Our Best Friends We’re still figuring out the details, but most scientists agree that it took thousands of years of interactions to develop our deep bond with dogs. When did they first become domesticated? Where did t...
- 12. When a Billion Years Disappeared In some places, the rocks below the Great Unconformity are about 1.2 billion years older than those above it. This missing chapter in Earth’s history might be linked to a fracturing supercontinent, ou...
- 13. The Risky Paleo Diets of Our Ancestors We can track our history of eating just about anything back through the fossil record and see the impact it’s had on our evolution. Throughout time, part of the secret to our success as a species has...
- 14. How the Andes Mountains Might Have Killed a Bunch of Whales At a site known as Cerro Ballena or Whale Hill, there are more than 40 skeletons of marine mammals -- a graveyard of ocean life dating back 6.5 million to 9 million years ago, in the Late Miocene Epoc...
- 15. How Plants Caused the First Mass Extinction In the middle of the Cambrian, life on land was about to get a little more crowded. And those newcomers would end up changing the world. The arrival of plants on land would make the world colder, drai...
- 16. The Two Viruses That We’ve Had For Millions of Years There’s one kind of herpesvirus that’s specific to one species of primate, and each virus split off from the herpesvirus family tree when the primate split off from its own tree. But of course, humans...
- 17. How We Identified One of Earth’s Earliest Animals Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian lif...
- 18. When Dinosaur Look-Alikes Ruled the Earth There were a huge number of croc-like animals that flourished during the Triassic Period. Dinosaurs had just arrived on the scene but it was these animals that truly ruled the Earth, becoming both abu...
- 19. The World Before Plate Tectonics There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact, it set the stage for our modern ver...
- 20. When Dinosaurs Chilled in the Arctic All told, the Arctic in the Cretaceous Period was a rough place to live, especially in winter. And yet, the fossils of many kinds of dinosaurs have been discovered there. So how were they able to surv...
- 21. How the Walrus Got Its Tusks The rise and fall of ancient walruses, and how modern ones got their tusks, is a story that spans almost 20 million years. And while there are parts of the story that we’re still trying to figure out,...
- 22. The Story of the Dino Stampede To try to solve the puzzle of Lark Quarry, experts have turned to a special subfield of paleontology -- paleoichnology, or the study of trace fossils -- to reconstruct exactly what happened on that sp...
- 23. The Biggest Frog that Ever Lived Untangling the origins of Beelzebufo -- the giant frog that lived alongside the dinosaurs -- turns out to be one of the most bedeviling problems in the history of amphibians.
- 24. The Dinosaur Who Was Buried at Sea Paleontologists have been studying these dinosaurs since the 1830s, but nobody had ever found a specimen like Borealopelta before. The key to all of this exceptional preservation was where ended up af...
- 25. How We Figured Out Fermentation Thanks to a recent adaptation, instead of getting sick from the boozy, fermented fruits, one of our primate ancestors could digest them safely, and get more calories at the same time. This new superpo...
- 26. The Oddest Couple in the Fossil Record To figure out how Thrinaxodon and Broomistega became entombed together, scientists looked at the burrow itself, along with their fossilized bones. And it looks like their luck ran out, when a behavior...
- 27. How Ancient Art Captured Australian Megafauna Beneath layers of rock art are drawings of animals SO strange that, for a long time, some anthropologists thought they could only have been imagined. But what if these animals really had existed, afte...
- 28. The Sea Monster from the Andes In 1977, a farmer was plowing his field on a plateau high in the Andes mountains when he stumbled upon a giant fossilized skeleton. How did this giant marine reptile end up high in the Andes Mountains...
- 29. When Rodents Had Horns These odd rodents belong to a genus known as Ceratogaulus, but they’re more commonly called horned gophers, because, you guessed it, they had horns. And it turns out the horns probably had a purpose -...
- 30. The First and Last North American Primates Early primates not only lived in North America -- our primate family tree actually originated here! So what happened to those early relatives of ours?
- 31. How Plants Became Carnivores How and why does botanical carnivory keep evolving? It turns out that when any of the basic things that most plants need aren’t there, some plants can adapt in unexpected ways to make sure they thrive...
- 32. How Ankylosaurs Got Their Clubs While clubs are practically synonymous with ankylosaurs, we’ve only started to get to the bottom of how they worked and how this unusual anatomy developed in the first place.
- 33. Why Do Things Keep Evolving Into Crabs? For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again. What is it about the crab’s form that makes it so evolutionarily successful that non-crabs...
- 34. How Plankton Created A Bizarre Giant of the Seas At more than 2 meters long, Aegirocassis was not only the biggest radiodont ever, but it also may have been the biggest animal in the Early Ordovician. This bizarre marine giant may have only been pos...
- 35. The Rise and Fall of the Tallest Mammal to Walk the Earth It arose from rhino ancestors that were a lot smaller, but Paraceratherium would take a different evolutionary path. Believe it or not, it actually became so big that it probably got close to what sci...
- 36. How Humans Lost Their Fur We’re the only primate without a coat of thick fur. It turns out that this small change in our appearance has had huge consequences for our ability to regulate our body temperature, and ultimately, it...
- 37. When Lizards Took Over the World Lizards are incredibly widespread and diverse but it took them a long time to get to where they are now. Because they used to face some pretty stiff competition from a group of lizard look-alikes.
- 38. When the Earth Suddenly Stopped Warming For decades, scientists have been studying the cause of the Younger Dryas, and trying to figure out if something like it could happen again. And it turns out that what caused this event is the subject...
- 39. The Triassic Reptile With "Two Faces" Figuring out what this creature’s face actually looked like would take paleontologists years. But understanding this weird animal can help us shine a light on at least one way for ecosystems to bounce...