Eons

Science and Nature Series / 7 Seasons

Join hosts Michelle Barboza-Ramirez, Kallie Moore, and Blake de Pastino as they take you on a journey through the history of life on Earth. From the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the Mesozoic Era — the so-called “Age of Dinosaurs” -- right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age.

6m 46s

The Facts About Dinosaurs & Feathers

S1 E21 / 10m 1s

Over the past 20 years, dinosaurs of all types and sizes have been found with some sort of fluff or even full-on plumage. These fuzzy discoveries have raised a whole batch of new questions so we're here to tell you everything we know about dinosaurs and feathers.

The Last Time the Globe Warmed

S1 E22 / 9m 54s

Imagine an enormous, lush rainforest teeming with life...in the Arctic. Well there was a time -- and not too long ago -- when the world warmed more than any human has ever seen. (So far)

What Happened to the World's Greatest Ape?

S1 E23 / 7m 1s

Probably twice the size of a modern gorilla, Gigantopithecus is the greatest great-ape that ever was. And for us fellow primates, there are some lessons to be learned in how it lived, and why it disappeared.

When Giant Fungi Ruled

S1 E24 / 6m 37s

420 million years ago, a giant feasted on the dead, growing slowly into the largest living thing on land. It belonged to an unlikely group of pioneers that ultimately made life on land possible -- the fungi.

How Two Microbes Changed History

S1 E25 / 7m 39s

What if I told you that, more than two billion years ago, some tiny living thing started to live inside another living thing … and never left? And now, the descendants of both of those things are in you?

The Time Terror Birds Invaded

S1 E26 / 5m 32s

About 5 million years ago, a new predator made its way from the south and onto the coastal plains of North America. It was a giant, flightless, carnivorous bird and came to be known by one of the coolest and most richly earned nicknames in all of paleontology: the terror bird.

Untangling the Devil's Corkscrew

S1 E27 / 6m 11s

In the late 1800s, paleontologists in Nebraska found huge coils of hardened sand stuck deep in the earth. Local ranchers called them Devil's Corkscrews and scientists called them Daemonelix. It was clear these corkscrews were created by some form of life, but what?

The Great Snake Debate

S1 E28 / 6m 28s

90 million years ago, an ancient snake known as Najash had...legs. It is by no means the only snake to have limbs either. But what’s even stranger: we’re not at all sure where it came from.

The Whole Saga of the Supercontinents

S1 E29 / 8m 40s

The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -- because the ground beneath your feet is always moving. So if we want to know how we got here, we have to understand how "here" got here.

From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying

S1 E30 / 10m 28s

The first era of our current eon, the Paleozoic Era, is probably the most deceptively fascinating time in Earth’s history. With near constant revolutions in life, punctuated by catastrophic extinctions, it is also one of the most chaotic.

How Sex Became A Thing

S1 E31 / 5m 39s

We don’t know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual reproduction but we can follow the history of how (and why) sex became a thing.

The Other Explosion You Should Know About

S1 E32 / 6m 25s

Fossils found around the world suggest that multi-cellular life was not only present before the Cambrian Explosion, it was much more elaborate and diverse than anyone thought. This is the story of the sudden burst of diversity that marked the dawn of truly complex life on our planet.

How the Turtle Got Its Shell

S1 E33 / 8m 29s

Where did turtles come from? And how did the they get their shells? The answers to these questions would eventually cause scientists to rethink the entire history of reptile evolution.

What a Dinosaur Looks Like Under a Microscope

S1 E34 / 8m 9s

We traveled to Bozeman, Montana to meet with Dr. Ellen-Thérèse Lamm who explores ancient life by studying it at the cellular level. Kallie and Dr. Lamm discuss how she does this, and what she’s learned by putting dinosaur bones under a microscope.

The Most Useful Fossils In The World

S1 E35 / 5m 49s

For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious fossils could basically be used to tell time in the deep past.

Inside the Dinosaur Library

S1 E36 / 7m 19s

We're back in Bozeman, Montana this week talking to Amy Atwater, Collections Manager at the Museum of the Rockies. MOR has among the largest collections of North American dinosaurs in the United States. We talk to Amy about her job and the collection she manages.

What Was the Ancestor of Everything?

S1 E37 / 11m 6s

The search for our origins go back to a single common ancestor -- one that remains shrouded in mystery. It’s the ancestor of everything we know and today scientists call it the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA.

How the Squid Lost Its Shell

S1 E38 / 8m 5s

The ancestors of modern, squishy cephalopods like the octopus and the squid all had shells. In ancient times, their shell was their greatest asset but it eventually proved to be their biggest weakness.

How the Chalicothere Split In Two

S1 E39 / 7m 3s

Two extinct relatives of horses and rhinos are closely related to each other but have strikingly different body plans. How did two of the same kind of animal, living in the same place, end up looking so different?

The Age of Reptiles in Three Acts

S1 E40 / 10m 45s

Reptiles emerged from the Paleozoic as humble creatures, but in time, they grew to become some of the largest forms of life ever to stomp, swim, and soar across the planet. This Age of Reptiles was a spectacular prehistoric epic, and it all took place in a single era: the Mesozoic.

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