Episodes
- 1
1. How our deadliest parasite turned to the dark side
11 Jan 2022 · 10 min
Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa, a microscopic parasite made a huge leap. With a little help from a mosquito, it left its animal host - probably a gorilla - and found its way to a new host: us.
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2. Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)
19 Jan 2022 · 10 min
The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates, including us - an evolutionary consequence of the danger snakes have posed to us over millions of years.
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3. How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs
27 Jan 2022 · 10 min
We often think of dinosaurs as either preying on other dinos or mammals, or as plant-eaters -- but in ecosystems today, those aren’t the only two options. So why would we expect dinosaurs to have only been carnivores or herbivores, with the occasional omnivore thrown in the mix?
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4. How Vertebrates Got Teeth... And Lost Them Again
8 Feb 2022 · 10 min
As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?
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5. How Horses Went From Food To Friends
16 Feb 2022 · 10 min
Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it turns out, the history of humans and horses has been a pretty wild ride.
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6. Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It's a Long Story)
23 Feb 2022 · 10 min
Today, all mammals from humans to bats have five fingers or fewer. Yes, even whales, whose finger bones are hidden in their fins. Birds have four or fewer and amphibians get the best of both worlds, often having four digits on their “hands” and five on their “feet.” But no species of vertebrates have more than five digits, let alone eight!
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7. Sharks nearly went extinct 19 million years ago #shorts
2 Mar 2022 · 1 min
There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?
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8. Dire wolves aren’t wolves at all #shorts
3 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.
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9. Could humans survive if they traveled back in time 3 billion years? #shorts
4 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Could humans survive during the Precambrian?
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10. Some trees are more closely related to broccoli than to other trees #shorts
7 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.
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11. Human knees are the worst and we have evolution to thank for that #shorts
8 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Why do human knees suck?
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12. A crater in Turkmenistan has been on fire for about 50 years #shorts
10 Mar 2022 · 1 min
And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?
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13. When a Giant Pterosaur Ruled the European Islands
15 Mar 2022 · 10 min
The ecological niche of apex predators was empty on Hateg Island, waiting to be occupied by something large, mobile, and powerful enough to fill it.
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14. Only one human has been excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits #shorts
17 Mar 2022 · 1 min
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15. Could humans survive a giant space rock colliding with Earth 66 million years ago? #shorts
18 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?
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16. The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal
22 Mar 2022 · 10 min
A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years of taking to the water - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.
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17. The Tasmanian tiger is definitely extinct. So why do people keep report sightings of them? #shorts
25 Mar 2022 · 1 min
Thylacines are definitely extinct!
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18. The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last
29 Mar 2022 · 10 min
Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.
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19. Who forged one of the most famous fake fossils of all time? #shorts
31 Mar 2022 · 1 min
- 20
20. After this bird went extinct the first time, evolution just hit replay #shorts
4 Apr 2022 · 1 min
The bird that evolved twice!
- 21
21. Someone lost the only fossil from what might’ve been the biggest dinosaur ever #shorts
5 Apr 2022 · 1 min
- 22
22. Would you have survived the biggest mass extinction of all time? #shorts
6 Apr 2022 · 1 min
- 23
23. An ancient insect trapped in amber has a parasitic mushroom erupting out of it? #shorts
8 Apr 2022 · 1 min
I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks
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24. How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple
13 Apr 2022 · 8 min
We tend to think that evolution only goes in one direction— toward getting bigger and more advanced. But that’s not always the case. This tiny, simple animal, the Myxozoans, (yes, animal!) evolved from something bigger and more complex.
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25. We know a lot about dinosaurs but...what was the first dinosaur? #shorts
14 Apr 2022 · 1 min
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26. Why Sour May Be The Oldest Taste
20 Apr 2022 · 8 min
While sour taste's original purpose was to warn vertebrates of danger, in a few animal groups, including us, its role has reversed. The taste of danger became something it was dangerous for us to avoid.
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27. The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body
27 Apr 2022 · 10 min
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?
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28. Are there dinosaur fossils in space? #shorts
2 May 2022 · 1 min
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29. Why don’t rabbits get really, really big? #shorts
3 May 2022 · 1 min
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30. An extinct human species was discovered deep within a cave system #shorts
4 May 2022 · 1 min
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31. When Ants Domesticated Fungi
10 May 2022 · 10 min
While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 million years. So when, and how, and why did ants start … farming?
32. The Curious Case of the Cave Lion
17 May 2022 · 9 min
A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?
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33. Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?
26 May 2022 · 8 min
Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.
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34. Why did so many predators die at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry? #shorts
27 May 2022 · 1 min
There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.
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35. What is the most successful human species? #shorts
31 May 2022 · 1 min
Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?
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36. Sharks have antibacterial skin. Can we use that to save lives? #shorts
1 Jun 2022 · 1 min
Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.
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37. This Ice Age pup's last meal was a woolly rhino #shorts
2 Jun 2022 · 1 min
What was this ancient pup’s last meal?
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38. What came first, the sabertooth or the cat? #shorts
3 Jun 2022 · 1 min
The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal
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39. How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)
8 Jun 2022 · 8 min
In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.
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40. Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years
15 Jun 2022 · 11 min
Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the organism itself. So… what could it be?
41. Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not
29 Jun 2022 · 10 min
In 2003, microbiologists made a huge discovery. One that would force us to reconsider a lot of what we thought we knew about the evolution of microbial life: giant viruses.
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42. This new giant bacterium is visible to the naked eye #shorts
6 Jul 2022 · 1 min
Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!
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43. Another Spinosaurus study, another opportunity to debate if Spinosaurus was aquatic #shorts
7 Jul 2022 · 1 min
Spinosaurus had dense bones!
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44. There were dinosaurs with basically no arms at all, just hands! #shorts
8 Jul 2022 · 1 min
Guemesia: a new no-arm dino
45. When Giant Millipedes Reigned
13 Jul 2022 · 8 min
This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??
46. How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles
21 Jul 2022 · 14 min
Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still visible - and even striking - if you know where and how to look for it.
47. Why Does Caffeine Exist?
28 Jul 2022 · 11 min
Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?
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48. This was the biggest earthquake humans ever experienced #shorts
3 Aug 2022 · 1 min
One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.
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49. Someone stole two of the most important documents in the history of science #shorts
3 Aug 2022 · 1 min
We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.
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50. You can thank evolution for flesh-eating bees #shorts
5 Aug 2022 · 1 min
Flesh-eating bees exist!
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51. This is one of the oldest art workshops ever discovered! #shorts
5 Aug 2022 · 1 min
Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop
52. Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?
11 Aug 2022 · 9 min
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.
53. How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked
18 Aug 2022 · 11 min
Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?
54. The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies
23 Aug 2022 · 9 min
This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…
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55. Did you know that fossils can get sick? #shorts
31 Aug 2022 · 1 min
Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease
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56. A supervolcano in Idaho once caused a disaster 900 miles away. #shorts
8 Sept 2022 · 1 min
Disaster in the great plains!
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57. A bunch of very important fossils disappeared during WWII. #shorts
9 Sept 2022 · 1 min
80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.
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58. Did this animal poop cubes? Giant cubes? #shorts
13 Sept 2022 · 1 min
Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.
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59. Are wisdom teeth a problem for us because of evolution? Or because of our development? #shorts
14 Sept 2022 · 1 min
Wisdom teeth can be such a pain
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60. Our extinct relative was an ancient leopard’s lunch. #shorts
16 Sept 2022 · 1 min
Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard
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61. When did we start wearing clothes? #shorts
17 Sept 2022 · 1 min
We didn’t always wear clothes!
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62. Did Megalodon go after whale faces specifically? #shorts
22 Sept 2022 · 1 min
Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board
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63. Where Did Water Come From?
27 Sept 2022 · 12 min
Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We think our water came from a few unlikely sources: meteorites, space dust, and even the sun.
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64. Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Life On Land
4 Oct 2022 · 10 min
Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.
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65. Imagine a cat's mouth fully covering up their saber teeth. #shorts
5 Oct 2022 · 1 min
We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked
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66. Darwin correctly predicted an animal existed without ever seeing it. #shorts
7 Oct 2022 · 1 min
Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.
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67. Neandertals weren’t dumb cavemen. In lots of ways, they were just like us. #shorts
10 Oct 2022 · 1 min
Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends
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68. Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you. #shorts
14 Oct 2022 · 1 min
Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.
Eons Season 2022: quick answers
How many episodes are in Eons Season 2022?
Season 2022 of Eons has 68 episodes, about 5 hours in total.
When did Eons Season 2022 come out?
Season 2022 premiered on 11 Jan 2022.