Season 6
Season 2022
Season 6
Season 2022
- Air date:2022-01-11
- User score:0.0
- Number of episodes:68
List of Episodes
Air date: 2022-01-11
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-01-19
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-01-27
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-02-08
Runtime: 10 min
As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?
Air date: 2022-02-16
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-02-23
Runtime: 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!
Air date: 2022-03-03
Runtime: 1 min
Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.
Air date: 2022-03-10
Runtime: 1 min
And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?
Air date: 2022-03-15
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-03-22
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-03-29
Runtime: 10 min
Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.
Air date: 2022-04-08
Runtime: 1 min
I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks
Air date: 2022-04-13
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-04-20
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-04-27
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-05-10
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-05-17
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-05-26
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-05-27
Runtime: 1 min
There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.
Air date: 2022-06-01
Runtime: 1 min
Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.
Air date: 2022-06-08
Runtime: 8 min
In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.
Air date: 2022-06-15
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-06-29
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-07-13
Runtime: 8 min
This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??
Air date: 2022-07-21
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-07-28
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-08-03
Runtime: 1 min
One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.
Air date: 2022-08-03
Runtime: 1 min
We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.
Air date: 2022-08-11
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-08-18
Runtime: 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?
Air date: 2022-08-23
Runtime: 9 min
This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…
Air date: 2022-08-31
Runtime: 1 min
Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease
Air date: 2022-09-09
Runtime: 1 min
80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.
Air date: 2022-09-13
Runtime: 1 min
Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.
Air date: 2022-09-22
Runtime: 1 min
Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board
Air date: 2022-09-27
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-10-04
Runtime: 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.
Air date: 2022-10-05
Runtime: 1 min
We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked
Air date: 2022-10-14
Runtime: 1 min
Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.
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