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.

What 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...

It's a hard world out there, especially for a little guy. So what's a soft-bodied animal to do? Turns out that marine invertebrates basically figured out the best defense system of all time, and nobody's a better demonstration of that...

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.

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...

Hidden in rocks once thought too old to contain complex life we may have found the animal kingdom’s oldest known predator.

Elongated tubes, flat ribbons, and other “worm-like” body plans were so varied and abundant that a part of the Ediacaran is sometimes known as Wormworld. But in the end, the ancient Wormworld was ended by the actions of its very own worms.

Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian life was a tiny bit of fossilized fat.

The story of how the starfish got its arms reminds us that even animals that might be familiar to us today can have incredibly deep histories - ones that stretch back almost half a billion years.

In the middle of the Cambrian, life on land was about to get a little more crowded. And those newcomers would end up changing the world. The arrival of plants on land would make the world colder, drain much of the oxygen out of the...

In some places, the rocks below the Great Unconformity are about 1.2 billion years older than those above it. This missing chapter in Earth’s history might be linked to a fracturing supercontinent, out-of-control glaciers, and maybe the...

Blood is one of the most revolutionary features in our evolutionary history. Over hundreds of millions of years, the way in which blood does its job has changed over and over again. As a result, we animals have our familiar red blood....

From the astonishing evolutionary advances of the Cambrian explosion to our present-day computing revolution, the trend of dramatic growth after periods of stability can be explained through the theory of the "adjacent possible," says...

About 1.8–0.8 billion ago, the Earth went through a period known as the Boring Billion, where not a lot changed in terms of geology, evolution, or even the number of hours in a day. Some scientists call it “the dullest period in Earth’s...

For the last hundred and fifty years or so, geologists have been trying to wrap their heads around the mystery: in some places, the geologic record just seems to jump by over billion years. And last week, a paper was published that may...

Right at the beginning of the Paleozoic, there was a huge explosion of more complex life. And that’s when things started to get really interesting. This is our second installment on the history of life, but you can watch in any order you...

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...

Trilobites are famous not just because they were so beautifully functional, or because they happened to preserve so well. They're known the world over because they were everywhere!

October 11, 2017 is National Fossil Day! Kallie Moore, the collections manager at UM’s Paleontology Center, talks to Hank today about why fossils are important, and how you can get involved in this national holiday! (Psst. at 12:20,...

What is the world's favorite fossil? Why the orthoceras of course! Hank will tell why that is in this episode of SciShow. Find out how you can get your very own orthoceras fossil.

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.

There was a massive data breach in the United States, and chances are you're probably affected by it. While Hank can't undo what was done, he can give you some insight into how it all went down.

Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to point at a fossil and know that it’s the first, say, plant? Well... yeah! But it's not that easy! Scientists are always making new discoveries that throw all our old assumptions into...

In the Zagros Mountains of Iran lie some strange, multi-colored glaciers that don’t melt, even in the heat of summer. But, in a rainstorm, these glaciers will start to dissolve away.