PBS
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!
PBS
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 at all, except its roots were made of wood. Instead of looking up to learn about the evolution of trees, it turns out...
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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 animals and humans alike made...
PBS
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 of evidence that our ancestors lived alongside and interacted with these giant mammals for millennia. But what...
PBS
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 abundant and diverse.
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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 are a special kind of primate.
PBS
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 been our early - and sometimes fatal...
PBS
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 scientists think might be the actual...
PBS
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 lasted for more than 15 million years.
PBS
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 that usually would’ve helped them...
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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 cave provided some of the earliest...
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The Neandertal Burial That Taught Us About Humanity
If we can see ourselves in the way our ancient cousins dealt with death…what else could we have in common?
PBS
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 on hooves, like pigs do, but had longer legs, almost like deer. They had hunched backs, a bit like rhinos or bison. But as...
PBS
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 almost total mystery. But scientists have recently discovered a major clue about the origins of the big cats, one that...
PBS
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 about the history of the giant panda is black and white.
PBS
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.
PBS
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 of years. And its fossils would inspire a revolutionary thinker to tackle a bigger mystery than Toxodon itself:...
PBS
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.
PBS
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 us to reconstruct their morphology, right?
PBS
The (Ovi)Raptor That Paleontologists Got Wrong
Paleontologists found a small theropod dinosaur skull right on top of a nest of eggs that were believed to belong to a plant-eating dinosaur. Instead of being the nest robbers that they were originally thought to be, raptors like this...
PBS
Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative
This video contains images and video of snakes and spiders. It's possible Euchambersia possessed venom about 20 million years before the first lizards and over 150 million years before the first snakes evolved. We’ve teamed up Sarah Suta...
PBS
Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Land
Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.
PBS
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 this happen? Why'd the weasels get so skinny?
PBS
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, it looks like tusks didn’t have...