PBS
What Happened To The Other Mesozoic Mammals?
New ReviewIn 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...
PBS
Do Thunderbeasts Prove Giant Animals Are Inevitable?
New ReviewThe journey the thunder beasts took to reach such mega proportions from such humble beginnings forces us to ask an important question, one that paleontologists have been asking for more than a century: from an evolutionary perspective,...
PBS
The Huge Extinctions We Are Just Now Discovering
New ReviewWhat graptolites tell us is a story of incredible changes in the ocean, of periods where the oceans became poisonous and suffocating before eventually clearing up again. They unlock extinctions and recoveries that scientists didn't see....
PBS
Beans & Bees (Not Bats) Gave Us Butterflies
New ReviewTurns out, instead of having bats to thank for the existence of butterflies, the groups we should actually be thanking are…bees and beans.
PBS
Why Only Earth Has Fire
New ReviewTo get fire, which exists only on Earth, it took billions of years of photosynthesis – which means fire can’t exist without life. And fire and life have been shaping each other ever since.
PBS
Our Most Mysterious Extinct Cousins
New ReviewThere 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...
PBS
Animals Are Older Than We Thought
New ReviewWhat are animal-like fossils doing in rocks a billion years old, and what does that mean for our understanding of their evolution and geologic time itself? Turns out, there might've been a long, slow-burning fuse that ultimately ignited...
PBS
How The Elephant Got Its Trunk
New ReviewLong-jawed proboscideans were doing pretty well for themselves. That is, until they were all rapidly replaced with proboscideans with long, flexible trunks instead: mammoths, mastodons, and our modern elephants.What suddenly made long...
PBS
How Mountains Make Evolution Weird
New ReviewMountains have a unique effect on diversity, messing with our understanding of animals through time, and pretty much just making evolution weird. And they would eventually reveal something even stranger about a group of mammals even...
PBS
The Graveyard at the Center of the Earth
New ReviewScientists have been trying to solve the mystery of why plate tectonics works the way it does for over a hundred years. And they might have just uncovered a key to cracking it.
PBS
When Red Pandas Roamed North America
New ReviewHow did a relative of the red panda end up in North America? What can this tell us about how long ago – and how many times – North America was connected to Europe and Asia?
PBS
Could This Sperm Whale Eat The Meg?
New ReviewUnlike in fiction, giant whales do not emerge fully-formed from the ocean deep. So, where did Livyatan melvillei come from? How did such a large predator live? And what caused the titan to die out? The answer may lie in an appetite so...
PBS
Darwin's Unexpected Final Obsession
New ReviewAfter having solved the small matter of evolution by natural selection - becoming one of the most famous scientists in the world in the process - Charles Darwin turned his focus to a different personal obsession…
SciShow
Did We Just De-Extinct Dire Wolves?!
So you've probably heard by now that a biotech company called Colossal Biosciences has brought dire wolves back form extinction. Or at least.... they SAY they did. We wanted to break down all the science in their claims, and get to the...
SciShow
Platypuses Aren't Weird, You Are
Look, we all think platypuses are weird. Just one look at these beaver-tailed, egg-laying, duck-billed weirdos makes you wonder how we're even both mammals. But I have news for you - when it comes to mammal lifestyles, monotremes aren't...
SciShow
Here’s the Reason Why Megalodon Got Mega
We've learned a lot about Megalodon by studying its terrifying teeth. But we're just beginning to understand what made this ancient shark so huge. Hosted by: Jaida Elcock (she/her)
SciShow
We Can't Find the Most Important Fossils Ever
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...
SciShow
That Time Our Ancestors Almost Went Extinct
There's a lot of humans on our planet. But our global domination was hardly a given. New evidence suggests that our ancestors were on the brink of total extinction nearly a million years ago. So let's talk about that time when the Homo...
MinuteEarth
How Many Mass Extinctions Have There Been?
Want to learn more about the topic in this week's video? Here are some keywords/phrases to get your googling started: - Mass Extinction Event: a significant, global decrease in the diversity of life - "Big 5": The five biggest mass...
PBS
The Extinction That Never Happened
Natural history is full of living things that were long thought to have gone extinct only to show up again, alive and well. Paleontologists have a word for these kinds of organisms: They call them Lazarus taxa.
SciShow
These Are The Coolest Fossils From 2023
It's that time of year where we round up all our favorite science discoveries of the year, and today, we're talking fossils. From a wild mosasaur with screwdriver teeth, to glittery gold fossils, and even a mammal-versus-reptile fight to...
SciShow
The Rare Fossils We Find By The Thousands
Eurypterids are rare in the fossil record overall. But when we find these 400-million-year-old "sea scorpions," we find LOTS of them.
SciShow
Becoming a Predator Was Hard
Animals eating other animals seems like a tale as old as time, but it's only almost that old. Predation had to evolve in the Ediacaran period -- so let's look at early almost-predators like Auroralumina, Kimberella, Ikaria, and whatever...
PBS
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 possible, thanks to a major revolution...