Season 2022

2022-01-11 · 10m

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.

2022-01-19 · 10m

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.

2022-01-27 · 10m

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?

2022-02-08 · 10m

As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?

2022-02-16 · 10m

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.

2022-02-23 · 10m

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!

2022-03-02 · 1m

There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?

2022-03-03 · 1m

Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.

2022-03-04 · 1m

Could humans survive during the Precambrian?

2022-03-07 · 1m

Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.

2022-03-08 · 1m

Why do human knees suck?

2022-03-10 · 1m

And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?

2022-03-15 · 10m

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.

2022-03-17 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-03-18 · 1m

Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?

2022-03-22 · 10m

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.

2022-03-25 · 1m

Thylacines are definitely extinct!

2022-03-29 · 10m

Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.

2022-03-31 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-04-04 · 1m

The bird that evolved twice!

2022-04-05 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-04-06 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-04-08 · 1m

I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks

2022-04-13 · 8m

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.

2022-04-14 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-04-20 · 8m

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.

2022-04-27 · 10m

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?

2022-05-02 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-05-03 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-05-04 · 1m

No episode synopsis available yet.

2022-05-10 · 10m

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?

2022-05-17 · 9m

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?

2022-05-26 · 8m

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.

2022-05-27 · 1m

There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.

2022-05-31 · 1m

Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?

2022-06-01 · 1m

Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.

2022-06-02 · 1m

What was this ancient pup’s last meal?

2022-06-03 · 1m

The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal

2022-06-08 · 8m

In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.

2022-06-15 · 11m

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?

2022-06-29 · 10m

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.

2022-07-06 · 1m

Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!

2022-07-07 · 1m

Spinosaurus had dense bones!

2022-07-08 · 1m

Guemesia: a new no-arm dino

2022-07-13 · 8m

This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??

2022-07-21 · 14m

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.

2022-07-28 · 11m

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?

2022-08-03 · 1m

One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.

2022-08-03 · 1m

We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.

2022-08-05 · 1m

Flesh-eating bees exist!

2022-08-05 · 1m

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop

2022-08-11 · 9m

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.

2022-08-18 · 11m

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?

2022-08-23 · 9m

This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…

2022-08-31 · 1m

Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease

2022-09-08 · 1m

Disaster in the great plains!

2022-09-09 · 1m

80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.

2022-09-13 · 1m

Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.

2022-09-14 · 1m

Wisdom teeth can be such a pain

2022-09-16 · 1m

Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard

2022-09-17 · 1m

We didn’t always wear clothes!

2022-09-22 · 1m

Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board

2022-09-27 · 12m

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.

2022-10-04 · 10m

Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.

2022-10-05 · 1m

We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked

2022-10-07 · 1m

Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.

2022-10-10 · 1m

Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends

2022-10-14 · 1m

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.