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2021
2021x1
What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?
Episode overview
It’s important to us that you understand how big this beaver was. Just like modern beavers, it was semiaquatic -- it lived both on the land and in the water. The difference is that .. show full overview
2021x2
The Reign of the Hell Ants
Episode overview
This ancient species had the same six legs and segmented body that we’d recognize from an ant today. But it also had a huge, scythe-like jaw and a horn coming out of its head. This .. show full overview
2021x3
The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years
Episode overview
Our DNA holds evidence of a huge, ancient pandemic, one that touched many different species, spanned the globe, and lasted for more than 15 million years.
2021x4
When We First Talked
Episode overview
The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s taken several million years to get to this moment where we can tell you about how it took several million years for us to get here.
2021x5
The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles
Episode overview
The biggest turtle ever described wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles or any other living sea turtles. But it looks like there are some things about being a giant, .. show full overview
2021x6
The Genes We Lost Along the Way
Episode overview
Our DNA holds thousands of dead genes and we’ve only just begun to unravel their stories. But one thing is already clear: we’re not just defined by the genes that we’ve gained over the .. show full overview
2021x7
Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative
Episode overview
It's possible Euchambersia possessed venom about 20 million years before the first lizards and over 150 million years before the first snakes evolved. We’ve teamed up Sarah Suta from .. show full overview
2021x8
How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld
Episode overview
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.
2021x9
How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed
Episode overview
No other placental mammal that we know of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate relatives. But being right-handed may have deep evolutionary roots in .. show full overview
2021x10
How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)
Episode overview
Today, chilis are the most widely cultivated spice crop in the world - grown everywhere from their native home in the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia. But how and why did chilis .. show full overview
2021x11
How To Survive the Little Ice Age
Episode overview
Nunalleq, a village in what’s today southwest Alaska, seemed to have thrived during the Little Ice Age. How did this village manage to survive and prosper during this time period? And what caused this period of climate change in the first place?
2021x12
When Crocs Thrived in the Seas
Episode overview
While dinosaurs were dominating the land, the metriorhynchids were thriving in the seas. But taking that plunge wasn’t easy because it takes a very special set of traits to fully dedicate yourself to life at sea.
2021x13
When Trees Took Over the World
Episode overview
420 million years ago, the forest floor of what's now New York was covered with a plant that didn’t look like a tree at all, except its roots were made of wood. Instead of looking up to .. show full overview
2021x14
How Weasels Got Skinny
Episode overview
Weasels have an extreme body plan that may push the boundaries of what’s metabolically possible. So when and how did this happen? Why'd the weasels get so skinny?
2021x15
Where Are All The Squid Fossils?
Episode overview
It might surprise you but cephalopods have a pretty good fossil record, with one major exception. If squids were swimming around in the same oceans as their closest cousins, where did all the squids go?
2021x16
Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?
Episode overview
At Tanque Loma, at least 22 giant ground sloths in the genus Eremotherium met their end. Of the five hypotheses that researchers proposed for what killed the sloths, the best supported one right now is that they died surrounded by their own poop.
2021x17
The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals
Episode overview
Lots of the traits we think of as defining us as mammals show up pretty early, during the time of the dinosaurs. And, in some cases, they show up a lot earlier and in things that weren’t mammals at all.
2021x18
The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths
Episode overview
The Wrangel Island mammoths would end up being the final survivors of a once-widespread genus. In their final years, after having thrived in many parts of the world for millions of .. show full overview
2021x19
Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?
Episode overview
The remains of medium-sized predatory dinosaurs are pretty rare in places where giant predators like T. rex existed. Which is weird, because that’s just not how ecosystems work today.
2021x20
How the Starfish Got Its Arms
Episode overview
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.
2021x21
The Creature That Stumped Darwin
Episode overview
Toxodon was one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago after thriving in isolation for millions of years. And its fossils would inspire a revolutionary thinker to tackle a bigger mystery than Toxodon itself: evolution.
2021x22
How Pollination Got Going Twice
Episode overview
The world of the Jurassic was a lot like ours - similar interactions between plants and insects were happening, but the players have changed over time. Because it looks like pollination by insects actually got going twice.
2021x23
How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate
Episode overview
The Toba supervolcano was the biggest explosive eruption of the last 2.5 million years. And humans were around to see it, or at least feel its effects! But what were those effects?
2021x24
How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon
Episode overview
The Amazon rainforest of South America is a paradise for flowering plants. But long ago, the landscape that we now think of as the Amazon looked very different. And would you believe that the entire revolution of the Amazon began with just one day?
2021x25
When Mammals Only Went Out At Night
Episode overview
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 some surprising results.
2021x26
How Ancient Whales May Have Changed the Deep Ocean
Episode overview
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 of the story.
2021x27
How Dinosaurs Coupled Up
Episode overview
Dinosaur mating behavior has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but what can we actually say about it from the fossil record?
2021x28
When It Was Too Hot for Leaves
Episode overview
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?
2021x29
Why The Paleo Diet Couldn't Save The Neanderthals
Episode overview
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 .. show full overview
2021x30
The Fossil Record In Your Mouth
Episode overview
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 .. show full overview
2021x31
When Pterosaurs Walked
Episode overview
If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they’re flyers. And while pterosaurs may be well-known for their domination of the skies in the Mesozoic Era, they didn’t live their .. show full overview

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