Tag: PBS Eons
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PBS Eons: Our Ancient Relative That Said ‘No Thanks’ to Life on Land
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about a particular tetrapod that seems to have returned to the ocean after venturing onto 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.
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PBS Eons: Where Did Water Come From?
PBS Eons has a new episode over on Youtube. This one is about early Earth and where did we get our liquid water. 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…
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PBS Eons: The Only Human Found in the La Brea Tar Pits
PBS Eons posted an episode of their podcast to Youtube. It's about the La Brea Tar Pits in Las Angeles, CA. And, the unexpected discovery of a human skeleton in the deposit. While we work on new longform YouTube episodes, we wanted to make the first episode of our podcast available here on YouTube! More…
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PBS Eons: The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies
PBS Eons has a new episode on Youtube. This one is about a fungus that can control ants. 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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PBS Eons: How Whale Evolution Kind of Sucked
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the evolution of whales and how and when baleen appeared. 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…
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PBS Eons: Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?
PBS Eons has a new episode over on Youtube. This one is about the evolution of mammals and how we came to not have alpga-gal. 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…
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PBS Eons: Why Does Caffeine Exist?
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the origins of caffeine and why it evolved. 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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PBS Eons: How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles
PBS Eons has a new episode over on Youtube. This one is about the geology and paleontology of Los Angeles. 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…
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PBS Eons: When Giant Millipedes Reigned
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the giant millipede Arthropleura, which lived during the Carboniferous Period. Arthropleura fossils are rare and this is one of the largest and the oldest. This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??
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PBS Eons: Giant Viruses Blur the Line Between Alive and Not
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the evolution of giant viruses. 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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PBS Eons: How to Build a Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about Woolly Mammoths. Could and should we bring them back… 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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PBS Eons: Is This the Oldest Dad in the Fossil Record?
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about fossil evidence of early mammals and how they raised their young, 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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PBS Eons: When Ants Domesticated Fungi
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about one of Earth's first farmers… ants! 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?
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PBS Eons: The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the Denisovans, a group of ancient humans from Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. 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? Listen to Eons: Mysteries…
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PBS Eons: Why Sour May Be the Oldest Taste
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. It's about the evolution of sour taste. 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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PBS Eons: How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about mxyozoans, the simplest known animals. They are an example of how the process of evolution can produce some big (or small in this case) surprises.
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PBS Eons: The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about ichthyosaurs, how and why they arose.
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PBS Eons: Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It’s a Long Story)
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one discusses the evolution of vertebrate limbs, especially hands and feet. So, how did we get to fix fingers and toes? 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…
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PBS Eons: How Horses Went from Food to Friends
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the domestication of horses. 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…
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PBS Eons: How Vertebrates Got Teeth… And Lost Them Again
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the origin of teeth… did they start as teeth on skin or teeth in mouth? As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?
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PBS Eons: How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about a group of dinosaurs called alvarezsaurs that some researchers think might have eaten insects. 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…
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PBS Eons: Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the “Snake Detection Hypothesis”. 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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PBS Eons: How Our Deadliest Parasite Turned To The Dark Side
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the origin of malaria. Did you know that Plasmodium is a plant?!? 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 –…
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PBS Eons: The Fossil Record In Your Mouth
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about fossils in your mouth! Ever have your teeth cleaned? The hardened residue scraped off your teeth at the dentist is called your dental calculus, and your dental calculus is the only part of your body that actually fossilizes while you’re alive! And scientists have…
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PBS Eons: Why the Paleo Diet Couldn’t Save the Neanderthals
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about Neanderthals and their diet and how it ultimately affected their fate. These relatives of ours lived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years. They were expert toolmakers, using materials like stone, wood, and animal bone. They were also skilled hunters and foragers, and may even…
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PBS Eons: When It Was Too Hot for Leaves
There is a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about environmental change the evolution of early plants. Plants first made their way onto land at least 470 million years ago but for their first 80 million years, leaves as we know them today didn’t exist. What held them back?
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PBS Eons: How Dinosaurs Coupled Up
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. Birds do it… bees do it, even dinosaurs do it! Remember birds are dinosaurs, so…. Dinosaur mating behavior has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but what can we actually say about it from the fossil record?
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PBS Eons: How Ancient Whales May Have Changed the Deep Ocean
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about how whales changed the ocean. It looks like the evolution of ocean-going whales like Borealodon may have affected communities found in the deep ocean, like the ones found around geothermal vents. And it turns out that when a whale dies, that’s just the beginning…
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PBS Eons: Fossil Feud: Eons vs SciShow!
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. It's a quiz show content with their take on Family Feud… PBS Eons vs SciShow! This is their celebration of National Fossil Day. You’ve heard of Family Feud… but how about Fossil Feud? Join us for a National Fossil Day livestream to watch the Eons team compete…
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PBS Eons: When Mammals Only Went Out At Night
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons over on Youtube. This one is about mammal evolution and our adaptations for being active at night. For decades, scientists believed dinosaurs were diurnal and tiny mammals were nocturnal. But as researchers have uncovered more mammalian fossils and studied the biology of different dinosaur species, they’ve found…
