Eons

How Two Microbes Changed History

What if I told you that, more than two billion years ago, some tiny living thing started to live inside another living t

The Time Terror Birds Invaded

About 5 million years ago, a new predator made its way from the south and onto the coastal plains of North America. It w

Untangling the Devil's Corkscrew

In the late 1800s, paleontologists in Nebraska found huge coils of hardened sand stuck deep in the earth. Local ranchers

The Great Snake Debate

90 million years ago, an ancient snake known as Najash had...legs. It is by no means the only snake to have limbs either

The Whole Saga of the Supercontinents

The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -

From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying

The first era of our current eon, the Paleozoic Era, is probably the most deceptively fascinating time in Earth’s hist

How Sex Became a Thing

We don’t know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual repr

The Other Explosion You Should Know About

Fossils found around the world suggest that multi-cellular life was not only present before the Cambrian Explosion, it w

How the Turtle Got Its Shell

Where did turtles come from? And how did the they get their shells? The answers to these questions would eventually caus

What a Dinosaur Looks Like Under a Microscope

We traveled to Bozeman, Montana to meet with Dr. Ellen-Thérèse Lamm who explores ancient life by studying it at the ce

The Most Useful Fossils in the World

For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery t

Inside the Dinosaur Library

We're back in Bozeman, Montana this week talking to Amy Atwater, Collections Manager at the Museum of the Rockies. MOR h

What Was the Ancestor of Everything?

The search for our origins go back to a single common ancestor -- one that remains shrouded in mystery. It’s the ances

How the Squid Lost Its Shell

The ancestors of modern, squishy cephalopods like the octopus and the squid all had shells. In ancient times, their shel

How the Chalicothere Split In Two

Two extinct relatives of horses and rhinos are closely related to each other but have strikingly different body plans. H

The Age of Reptiles in Three Acts

Reptiles emerged from the Paleozoic as humble creatures, but in time, they grew to become some of the largest forms of l

The Weird, Watery Tale of Spinosaurus

In 1912, a fossil collector discovered some strange bone fragments in the eerie, beautiful Cretaceous Bahariya rock form

From the Fall of Dinos to the Rise of Humans

After taking you on a journey through geologic time, we've arrived at the Cenozoic Era. Most of the mammals and birds th

That Time It Rained for Two Million Years

At the beginning of the Triassic Period, with the continents locked together from pole-to-pole in the supercontinent of

Why Triassic Animals Were Just the Weirdest

The Triassic was full of creatures that look a lot like other, more modern species, even though they’re not closely re

Where Did Viruses Come From?

There are fossils of viruses, of sorts, preserved in the DNA of the hosts that they’ve infected. Including you. This m

When Fish First Breathed Air

385 million years ago, a group of fish would undertake one of the most important journeys in the history of life and bec

How the T-Rex Lost Its Arms

Tyrannosaurus rex was big, Tyrannosaurus rex was vicious, and Tyrannosaurus rex had tiny arms. The story of how T-Rex lo

FAQs From Our First Year

Over the first season of PBS Eons, we’ve explored the history of Earth from the very origins of life right up to the C

When Insects First Flew

Insects were the first animals to ever develop the ability to fly, and, arguably, they did it the best. But this develop

The Mystery of the Eocene’s Lethal Lake

In 1800s, miners began working in exposed deposits of mud near the town of Messel, Germany. They were extracting oil fro

When Fish Wore Armor

420 million years ago, some fish were more medieval. They wore armor, sometimes made of big plates, and sometimes made o

When Birds Had Teeth

Experts are still arguing over whether Archaeopteryx was a true bird, or a paravian dinosaur, or some other kind of dino

How Horses Took Over North America (Twice)

The ancestors of modern horses became so successful that they spread all over the world, to Europe, Asia, South America,

How a Supervolcano Made the Cenozoic’s Coolest Fossils

One of the most dynamic, transformative, and potentially dangerous features in North America is also responsible for som

The Rise and Fall of the Bone-Crushing Dogs

A huge and diverse subfamily of dogs, the bone-crushers patrolled North America for more than thirty million years, befo

Life, Sex & Death Among the Dire Wolves

This is not a Game of Thrones fan fiction episode. Dire wolves were real! And thousands of them died in the same spot in

When We First Walked

Fossilized footprints have proved that human ancestors were already striding across the landscape 3.6 million years ago.

Did Raptorex Really Exist?

Paleontologists have been studying and drawing totally different conclusions about the fossil LH PV18 for almost a decad

Can We Get DNA From Fossils?

In 1993, scientists cracked open a piece of amber, took out the body of an ancient weevil, and sampled its DNA. Or, at l

When Giant Amphibians Reigned

Temnospondyls were a huge group of amphibians that existed for 210 million years. And calling them ‘diverse’ would b

Your Place in the Primate Family Tree

Purgatorius, a kind of mammal called a plesiadapiform, might’ve been one of your earliest ancestors. But how did we ge

The Two People We're All Related To

Due to an odd quirk of genetics and some unique evolutionary circumstances, two humans who lived at different times in t

When Rodents Rafted Across the Ocean

The best evidence we have suggests that, while Caviomorpha originated in South America, they came from ancestors in Afri

When Birds Stopped Flying

Ratites have spread to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. And there are fossils of Ratites in Europe, As

When Camels Roamed North America

Camels are famous for adaptations that have allowed them to flourish where most other large mammals would perish. But th

How Sloths Went From the Seas to the Trees

The story of sloths is one of astounding ecological variability, with some foraging in the seas, others living undergrou

When Sharks Swam the Great Plains

If you’ve ever been to, or lived in, or even flown over the central swath of North America, then you’ve seen the rem

When Apes Conquered Europe

Today, our closest evolutionary relatives, the apes, live only in small pockets of Africa and Asia. But back in the Mioc

Why Megalodon (Definitely) Went Extinct

For more than 10 million years, Megalodon was at the top of its game as the oceans’ apex predator...until 2.6 million

When Humans Were Prey

Not too long ago, our early human ancestors were under constant threat of attack from predators. And it turns out that t

How Blood Evolved (Many Times)

Blood is one of the most revolutionary features in our evolutionary history. Over hundreds of millions of years, the way

The Humans That Lived Before Us

As more and more fossil ancestors have been found, our genus has become more and more inclusive, incorporating more memb

The Island of Shrinking Mammoths

The mammoths fossils found on the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California are much smaller than their relat

The Evolution of the Heart (A Love Story)

In order to understand where hearts came from, we have to go back to the earliest common ancestor of everything that has

How 7,000 Years of Epic Floods Changed the World

Strange geologic landmarks in the Pacific Northwest are the lingering remains of a mystery that took nearly half a centu

The Island of Huge Hamsters and Giant Owls

Back in the late Miocene epoch, there was an island--or maybe a group of islands-- in the Mediterranean Sea that was pop

The Giant Bird That Got Lost in Time

The California condor is the biggest flying bird in North America, a title that it has held since the Late Pleistocene E

When We First Made Tools

The tools made by our human ancestors may not seem like much when you compare them to the screen you’re looking at rig

When Giant Scorpions Swarmed the Seas

Sea scorpions thrived for 200 million years, coming in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Over time, they developed a n

When We Tamed Fire

The ability to make and use fire has fundamentally changed the arc of our evolution. The bodies we have today were, in m

The Mystery Behind the Biggest Bears of All Time

The short-faced bears turned out to be remarkably adaptable, undergoing radical changes to meet the demands of two chang

The Croc That Ran on Hooves

In the Eocene Epoch, there was a reptile that had teeth equipped for biting through flesh, its hind legs were a lot long

When We Took Over the World

From our deepest origins in Africa all the way to the Americas, by looking at the fossils and archaeological materials w

The Ghostly Origins of the Big Cats

All of today’s big cat species evolved less than 11 million years ago and yet their evolutionary history remains an al

The History of Climate Cycles (and the Woolly Rhino) Explained

Throughout the Pleistocene Epoch, the range of the woolly rhino grew and shrank in sync with global climate. So what cau

The Hellacious Lives of the "Hell Pigs"

Despite the name, we don’t know where the so-called “hell pigs” belong in the mammalian family tree. They walked o

How Evolution Works (And How We Figured It Out)

As a scientific concept, evolution was revolutionary when it was first introduced. With the help of all three of our hos

When the Synapsids Struck Back

Synapsids were the world’s first-ever terrestrial megafauna but the vast majority of these giants were doomed to extin

When Ichthyosaurs Led a Revolution in the Seas

The marine reptiles Ichthyosaurs arose after The Great Dying, which wiped out at least 90 percent of life in the oceans,

When We Met Other Human Species

We all belong to the only group of hominins on the planet today. But we weren’t always alone. 100,000 years ago, Euras

How Volcanoes Froze the Earth (Twice)

Over 600 million years ago, sheets of ice coated our planet on both land and sea. How did this happen? And most importan

How Earth's First, Unkillable Animals Saved the World

They have survived every catastrophe and every mass extinction event that nature has thrown at them. And by being the li

When Giant Deer Roamed Eurasia

Megaloceros was one of the largest members of the deer family ever to walk the Earth. The archaeological record is full

Was This Dinosaur a Cannibal?

Paleontologists have spent the better part of two decades debating whether Coelophysis ate its own kind. It turns out, t

The Missing Link That Wasn’t

The myth of the Missing Link--the idea that there must be a specimen that partly resembles an ape but also partly resemb

The Raptor That Made Us Rethink Dinosaurs

In 1964, a paleontologist named John Ostrom unearthed some fascinating fossils from the mudstone of Montana. Its discove

When Bats Took Flight

Bats pretty much appear in the fossil record as recognizable, full-on, flying bats. And they show up on all of the conti

How Pterosaurs Got Their Wings

When pterosaurs first took flight, you could say that it marked the beginning of the end for the winged reptiles. Becaus

When Giant Lemurs Ruled Madagascar

Just a few thousand years ago, the island of Madagascar was inhabited by giant lemurs. How did such a diverse group of p

When Antarctica Was Green

Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago--Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South

The Case of the Dinosaur Egg Thief

Paleontologists found a small theropod dinosaur skull right on top of a nest of eggs that were believed to belong to a p

When Hobbits Were Real

Its discoverers named it Homo floresiensis, but it’s often called “the hobbit” for its short stature and oddly pro

Were These Monsters Inspired by Fossils?

People have been discovering the traces and remains of prehistoric creatures for thousands of years. And they’ve also

How We Domesticated Cats (Twice)

A 9,500 year old burial in Cyprus represents some of the oldest known evidence of human/cat companionships anywhere in t

When Giant Hypercarnivores Prowled Africa

These hyaenodonts gave the world some of its largest terrestrial, carnivorous mammals ever known. And while these behemo

Why Male Mammoths Lost the Game

Woolly mammoths, our favorite ice age proboscidean, disappeared from Europe and North America at the end of the last ice

The Forgotten Story of the Beardogs

Because of their strange combination of bear-like and dog-like traits, they’re sometimes confusingly called the beardo

The Fuzzy Origins of the Giant Panda

How does a bear -- which is a member of the order Carnivora -- evolve into an herbivore? Despite how it looks, nothing a

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 resear

The Neanderthals That Taught Us About Humanity

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Neandertals were thought to have been…primitive. Unintelligent, hunched

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

How South America Made the Marsupials

Throughout the Cenozoic Era -- the era we’re in now -- marsupials and their metatherian relatives flourished all over

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 al

When the Rainforests Collapsed

The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse set the stage for a takeover that would be a crucial turning point in the history

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 lar

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 year

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 g

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 ma

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 dev

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 missi

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 o

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 oce

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 cha

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 herpesv

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

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 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,

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 m

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 year

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,

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

The Dinosaur Who Was Buried at Sea

Paleontologists have been studying these dinosaurs since the 1830s, but nobody had ever found a specimen like Borealopel

How We Figured Out Fermentation

Thanks to a recent adaptation, instead of getting sick from the boozy, fermented fruits, one of our primate ancestors co

The Oddest Couple in the Fossil Record

To figure out how Thrinaxodon and Broomistega became entombed together, scientists looked at the burrow itself, along wi

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 c

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 fossilize

When Rodents Had Horns

These odd rodents belong to a genus known as Ceratogaulus, but they’re more commonly called horned gophers, because, y

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

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

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 an

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

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

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. Bel

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

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 us

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

The Triassic Reptile With "Two Faces"

Figuring out what this creature’s face actually looked like would take paleontologists years. But understanding this w

What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?

It’s important to us that you understand how big this beaver was. Just like modern beavers, it was semiaquatic -- it l

The Reign of the Hell Ants

This ancient species had the same six legs and segmented body that we’d recognize from an ant today. But it also had a

The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years

Our DNA holds evidence of a huge, ancient pandemic, one that touched many different species, spanned the globe, and last

When We First Talked

The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s taken sev

The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles

The biggest turtle ever described wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles or any other living sea turtles.

The Genes We Lost Along the Way

Our DNA holds thousands of dead genes and we’ve only just begun to unravel their stories. But one thing is already cle

Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative

It's possible Euchambersia possessed venom about 20 million years before the first lizards and over 150 million years be

How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld

Elongated tubes, flat ribbons, and other “worm-like” body plans were so varied and abundant that a part of the Ediac

How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed

No other placental mammal that we know of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate rel

How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)

Today, chilis are the most widely cultivated spice crop in the world - grown everywhere from their native home in the Am

How To Survive the Little Ice Age

Nunalleq, a village in what’s today southwest Alaska, seemed to have thrived during the Little Ice Age. How did this v

When Crocs Thrived in the Seas

While dinosaurs were dominating the land, the metriorhynchids were thriving in the seas. But taking that plunge wasn’t

When Trees Took Over the World

420 million years ago, the forest floor of what's now New York was covered with a plant that didn’t look like a tree a

How Weasels Got Skinny

Weasels have an extreme body plan that may push the boundaries of what’s metabolically possible. So when and how did t

Where Are All The Squid Fossils?

It might surprise you but cephalopods have a pretty good fossil record, with one major exception. If squids were swimmin

Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?

At Tanque Loma, at least 22 giant ground sloths in the genus Eremotherium met their end. Of the five hypotheses that res

The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals

Lots of the traits we think of as defining us as mammals show up pretty early, during the time of the dinosaurs. And, in

The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths

The Wrangel Island mammoths would end up being the final survivors of a once-widespread genus. In their final years, aft

Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?

The remains of medium-sized predatory dinosaurs are pretty rare in places where giant predators like T. rex existed. Whi

How the Starfish Got Its Arms

The story of how the starfish got its arms reminds us that even animals that might be familiar to us today can have incr

The Creature That Stumped Darwin

Toxodon was one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago after thriving in isolation for millions

How Pollination Got Going Twice

The world of the Jurassic was a lot like ours - similar interactions between plants and insects were happening, but the

How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate

The Toba supervolcano was the biggest explosive eruption of the last 2.5 million years. And humans were around to see it

How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest of South America is a paradise for flowering plants. But long ago, the landscape that we now think

When Mammals Only Went Out At Night

For decades, scientists believed dinosaurs were diurnal and tiny mammals were nocturnal. But as researchers have uncover

How Ancient Whales May Have Changed the Deep Ocean

It looks like the evolution of ocean-going whales like Borealodon may have affected communities found in the deep ocean,

How Dinosaurs Coupled Up

Dinosaur mating behavior has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but what can we actually say about it from the fo

When It Was Too Hot for Leaves

Plants first made their way onto land at least 470 million years ago but for their first 80 million years, leaves as we

Why The Paleo Diet Couldn't Save The Neanderthals

These relatives of ours lived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years. They were expert toolmakers, using materials like

The Fossil Record In Your Mouth

The hardened residue scraped off your teeth at the dentist is called your dental calculus, and your dental calculus is t

When Pterosaurs Walked

If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they’re flyers. And while pterosaurs may be well-known for their d

How our deadliest parasite turned to the dark side

Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa, a microscopic parasite made a huge leap. With a little help from a mosquit

Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)

The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates

How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs

We often think of dinosaurs as either preying on other dinos or mammals, or as plant-eaters -- but in ecosystems today,

How Vertebrates Got Teeth... And Lost Them Again

As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?

How Horses Went From Food To Friends

Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answeri

Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It's a Long Story)

Today, all mammals from humans to bats have five fingers or fewer. Yes, even whales, whose finger bones are hidden in th

Sharks nearly went extinct 19 million years ago #shorts

There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?

Dire wolves aren’t wolves at all #shorts

Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.

Could humans survive if they traveled back in time 3 billion years? #shorts

Could humans survive during the Precambrian?

Some trees are more closely related to broccoli than to other trees #shorts

Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.

Human knees are the worst and we have evolution to thank for that #shorts

Why do human knees suck?

A crater in Turkmenistan has been on fire for about 50 years #shorts

And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?

When a Giant Pterosaur Ruled the European Islands

The ecological niche of apex predators was empty on Hateg Island, waiting to be occupied by something large, mobile, and

Only one human has been excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits #shorts

Could humans survive a giant space rock colliding with Earth 66 million years ago? #shorts

Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?

The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal

A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years o

The Tasmanian tiger is definitely extinct. So why do people keep report sightings of them? #shorts

Thylacines are definitely extinct!

The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last

Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.

Who forged one of the most famous fake fossils of all time? #shorts

After this bird went extinct the first time, evolution just hit replay #shorts

The bird that evolved twice!

Someone lost the only fossil from what might’ve been the biggest dinosaur ever #shorts

Would you have survived the biggest mass extinction of all time? #shorts

An ancient insect trapped in amber has a parasitic mushroom erupting out of it? #shorts

I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks

How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple

We tend to think that evolution only goes in one direction— toward getting bigger and more advanced. But that’s not

We know a lot about dinosaurs but...what was the first dinosaur? #shorts

Why Sour May Be The Oldest Taste

While sour taste's original purpose was to warn vertebrates of danger, in a few animal groups, including us, its role ha

The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body

Only a handful of Denisovan fossils have been identified. In the absence of actual body fossils, it’s impossible for u

Are there dinosaur fossils in space? #shorts

Why don’t rabbits get really, really big? #shorts

An extinct human species was discovered deep within a cave system #shorts

When Ants Domesticated Fungi

While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 mil

The Curious Case of the Cave Lion

A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and

Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?

Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their youn

Why did so many predators die at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry? #shorts

There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.

What is the most successful human species? #shorts

Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?

Sharks have antibacterial skin. Can we use that to save lives? #shorts

Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.

This Ice Age pup's last meal was a woolly rhino #shorts

What was this ancient pup’s last meal?

What came first, the sabertooth or the cat? #shorts

The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal

How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)

In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for buildi

Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years

Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the

Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not

In 2003, microbiologists made a huge discovery. One that would force us to reconsider a lot of what we thought we knew a

This new giant bacterium is visible to the naked eye #shorts

Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!

Another Spinosaurus study, another opportunity to debate if Spinosaurus was aquatic #shorts

Spinosaurus had dense bones!

There were dinosaurs with basically no arms at all, just hands! #shorts

Guemesia: a new no-arm dino

When Giant Millipedes Reigned

This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??

How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles

Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still

Why Does Caffeine Exist?

Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce thi

This was the biggest earthquake humans ever experienced #shorts

One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.

Someone stole two of the most important documents in the history of science #shorts

We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.

You can thank evolution for flesh-eating bees #shorts

Flesh-eating bees exist!

This is one of the oldest art workshops ever discovered! #shorts

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop

Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?

There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the mon

How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked

Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen w

The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies

This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, some

Did you know that fossils can get sick? #shorts

Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease

A supervolcano in Idaho once caused a disaster 900 miles away. #shorts

Disaster in the great plains!

A bunch of very important fossils disappeared during WWII. #shorts

80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.

Did this animal poop cubes? Giant cubes? #shorts

Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.

Are wisdom teeth a problem for us because of evolution? Or because of our development? #shorts

Wisdom teeth can be such a pain

Our extinct relative was an ancient leopard’s lunch. #shorts

Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard

When did we start wearing clothes? #shorts

We didn’t always wear clothes!

Did Megalodon go after whale faces specifically? #shorts

Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board

Where Did Water Come From?

Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We

Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Life On Land

Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and divi

Imagine a cat's mouth fully covering up their saber teeth. #shorts

We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked

Darwin correctly predicted an animal existed without ever seeing it. #shorts

Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.

Neandertals weren’t dumb cavemen. In lots of ways, they were just like us. #shorts

Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you. #shorts

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.