This video description is brought to you by language. But how long have humans been able to use our gift of gab? The answer is a lot more complicated than you might think. From studying fossil brains and ear bones to DNA migration...

All crocodilians look more or less the same today, but to survive two different mass extinctions, they've had to change a lot. Here's how they pulled it off.

Tiny exoskeleton fragments may have allowed some of the most important microbes in the planet’s history to set sail out into the open ocean and change the world forever.

There was a group of hominins, those creatures more closely related to us than to chimpanzees, that did take a different, parallel journey from our ancestors. Our paths ran beside each other - and potentially even crossed at times - but...

In 2003, a fossil belonging to a mammaliaform was discovered in an ancient lakebed in what's now China. It was an almost complete skeleton the size of a platypus, a find that complicated the history of mammaliaforms. It painted a picture...

Spiders and their ancestors have been driving an arms race that began before either stepped foot onto land and resulted in the first powered flight on Earth. But how did this competition of webs versus wings drive such a massive...

You might have heard that a quarter of your skeleton is in your shoes, and that's true, as long as they're closed-toe. So why do we need that many foot bones? The answer is more complicated than you think, and to get to the bottom of...

About 360-ish million years ago, some tetrapods moved onto land and changed the course of history. So we'd love to know more about these guys, and what it took to get there. But the thing is, the fossils we need to understand this...

Why do we have wisdom teeth? They're just going to come in wrong and cause problems. Wisdom teeth are a souvenir from our early human ancestors, and we actually understand less about them than you might think.



Hosted by: Reid...

What’s a human? And how did we become humans, anyway? In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll meet some of our closest relatives and trace how we evolved into the brainy, inventive, complex species we are today.

The ancestors of gars, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths looked almost the same as their modern relatives. Darwin called species like these “living fossils'' because they seem like they are evolutionarily frozen in time. But Darwin was wrong.

“Being on a voyage forces you to unplug,” says TED Fellow and third-generation captain Lehua Kamalu. Sharing ancient knowledge from traditional Hawaiian ocean voyaging, she reflects on the transformational power of seafaring journeys —...

David Kwong is a magician and a New York Times crossword puzzle constructor who believes that magic tricks are like puzzles, designed to intrigue and challenge our minds. To him, the essence of wonder lies in experiences that defy...

In a part of the United States with more than 17,000 years of human history, cultural preservation advocate Tracie Revis is working to turn the Ocmulgee Mounds into Georgia's first national park and preserve. This park would be...

So we know that humans are pretty good at making fires, but how long have we been barbecue pit masters? Turns out the evidence is hardly a smoking gun.

We know that fossils are fragile, and volcanoes are destructive. So you wouldn't think that volcanoes are really any help when preserving fossils... but you'd be wrong! From the Laetoli Footprints to the Blue Lake Rhino, here are five...

In the future, humans will likely die of a very different suite of causes than we do now, thanks to advances in healthcare, an aging population, and changes in the environment.

The Acheulean handaxe was the most common tool of early humans, but we still don’t know what the heck they used it for.

There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.

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 tell you: The egg came first.

From our deepest origins in Africa all the way to the Americas, by looking at the fossils and archaeological materials we have been able to trace the path our ancestors took during the short window of time when we took over the world.

The ability to make and use fire has fundamentally changed the arc of our evolution. The bodies we have today were, in many ways, shaped by that time when we first tamed fire.

We all belong to the only group of hominins on the planet today. But we weren’t always alone. 100,000 years ago, Eurasia was home to other hominin species, some of which we know our ancestors met, and spent some quality time with.

The tools made by our human ancestors may not seem like much when you compare them to the screen you’re looking at right now but their creation represents a pivotal moment in the origin of technology and in the evolution of our lineage.