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Eons
Season 2 • Episode 11 • The Most Useful Fossils in the World
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Eons Season 2, Episode 11: The Most Useful Fossils in the World
For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious fossils could basically be used to tell time in the deep past. Watch Eons Season 2, Episode 11 The Most Useful Fossils in the World in HD free online. Enjoy high-quality streaming of Eons Season 2, Episode 11 and share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Episodes
45 episodesHow Two Microbes Changed History
What if I told you that, more than two billion years ago, some tiny living thing started to live inside another living thing … and never left? And now, the descendants of both of those things are in you?
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The Time Terror Birds Invaded
About 5 million years ago, a new predator made its way from the south and onto the coastal plains of North America. It was a giant, flightless, carnivorous bird and came to be known by one of the coolest and most richly earned nicknames in all of paleontology: the terror bird.
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Untangling the Devil's Corkscrew
In the late 1800s, paleontologists in Nebraska found huge coils of hardened sand stuck deep in the earth. Local ranchers called them Devil's Corkscrews and scientists called them Daemonelix. It was clear these corkscrews were created by some form of life, but what?
10 min
The Great Snake Debate
90 million years ago, an ancient snake known as Najash had...legs. It is by no means the only snake to have limbs either. But what’s even stranger: we’re not at all sure where it came from.
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The Whole Saga of the Supercontinents
The study of natural history is the study of how the world has changed but Earth itself is in a constant state of flux -- because the ground beneath your feet is always moving. So if we want to know how we got here, we have to understand how "here" got here.
10 min
From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying
The first era of our current eon, the Paleozoic Era, is probably the most deceptively fascinating time in Earth’s history. With near constant revolutions in life, punctuated by catastrophic extinctions, it is also one of the most chaotic.
10 min
How Sex Became a Thing
We don’t know which living thing was the very first to arrive at the totally revolutionary process that is sexual reproduction but we can follow the history of how (and why) sex became a thing.
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The Other Explosion You Should Know About
Fossils found around the world suggest that multi-cellular life was not only present before the Cambrian Explosion, it was much more elaborate and diverse than anyone thought. This is the story of the sudden burst of diversity that marked the dawn of truly complex life on our planet.
10 min
How the Turtle Got Its Shell
Where did turtles come from? And how did the they get their shells? The answers to these questions would eventually cause scientists to rethink the entire history of reptile evolution.
10 min
What a Dinosaur Looks Like Under a Microscope
We traveled to Bozeman, Montana to meet with Dr. Ellen-Thérèse Lamm who explores ancient life by studying it at the cellular level. Kallie and Dr. Lamm discuss how she does this, and what she’s learned by putting dinosaur bones under a microscope.
10 min
The Most Useful Fossils in the World
For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious fossils could basically be used to tell time in the deep past.
10 min
Inside the Dinosaur Library
We're back in Bozeman, Montana this week talking to Amy Atwater, Collections Manager at the Museum of the Rockies. MOR has among the largest collections of North American dinosaurs in the United States. We talk to Amy about her job and the collection she manages.
10 min
What Was the Ancestor of Everything?
The search for our origins go back to a single common ancestor -- one that remains shrouded in mystery. It’s the ancestor of everything we know and today scientists call it the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA.
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How the Squid Lost Its Shell
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How the Chalicothere Split In Two
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10 min
The Age of Reptiles in Three Acts
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10 min
The Weird, Watery Tale of Spinosaurus
In 1912, a fossil collector discovered some strange bone fragments in the eerie, beautiful Cretaceous Bahariya rock formation of Egypt. Eventually, that handful of fossil fragments would reveal to scientists one of the strangest dinosaurs that ever existed -- the world’s only known semi-aquatic dinosaur.
10 min
From the Fall of Dinos to the Rise of Humans
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That Time It Rained for Two Million Years
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10 min
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The Triassic was full of creatures that look a lot like other, more modern species, even though they’re not closely related at all. The reason for this has to do with how evolution works and with the timing of the Triassic itself: when life was trapped between two mass extinctions.
10 min
Where Did Viruses Come From?
There are fossils of viruses, of sorts, preserved in the DNA of the hosts that they’ve infected. Including you. This molecular fossil trail can help us understand where viruses came from, how they evolved and it can even help us tackle the biggest question of all: Are viruses alive?
10 min
When Fish First Breathed Air
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10 min
How the T-Rex Lost Its Arms
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10 min
FAQs From Our First Year
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10 min
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10 min
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In 1800s, miners began working in exposed deposits of mud near the town of Messel, Germany. They were extracting oil from the rock and along with the oil, they found beautifully preserved fossils of animals from the Eocene. What happened to these Eocene animals? And why were their remains so exquisitely preserved?
10 min
When Fish Wore Armor
420 million years ago, some fish were more medieval. They wore armor, sometimes made of big plates, and sometimes made of interlocking scales. But that armor may actually have served a totally different purpose, one that many animals still use today.
10 min
When Birds Had Teeth
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How Horses Took Over North America (Twice)
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10 min
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10 min
The Rise and Fall of the Bone-Crushing Dogs
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Life, Sex & Death Among the Dire Wolves
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10 min
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10 min
When Giant Amphibians Reigned
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10 min
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Purgatorius, a kind of mammal called a plesiadapiform, might’ve been one of your earliest ancestors. But how did we get from a mouse-sized creature that looked more like a squirrel than a monkey -- to you, a member of Homo sapiens?
10 min
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Due to an odd quirk of genetics and some unique evolutionary circumstances, two humans who lived at different times in the distant past managed to pass on a very small fraction of their genomes to you. And to me. To all of us.
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10 min
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Ratites have spread to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. And there are fossils of Ratites in Europe, Asia, and North America too. That’s a lot of ground to cover for birds that can’t fly. So how did Ratites end up all over the world?
10 min
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Camels are famous for adaptations that have allowed them to flourish where most other large mammals would perish. But their story begins over 40 million years ago in North America, and in an environment you’d never expect: a rainforest.
10 min
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The story of sloths is one of astounding ecological variability, with some foraging in the seas, others living underground, and others still hiding from predators in towering cliffs. So why are their only living relatives in the trees?
10 min
When Sharks Swam the Great Plains
If you’ve ever been to, or lived in, or even flown over the central swath of North America, then you’ve seen the remnants of what was a uniquely fascinating environment. Scientists call it the Western Interior Seaway, and at its greatest extent, it ran from the Caribbean Sea to the Canadian Arctic.
10 min
When Apes Conquered Europe
Today, our closest evolutionary relatives, the apes, live only in small pockets of Africa and Asia. But back in the Miocene epoch, apes occupied all of Europe. Why aren’t there wild apes in Europe today?
10 min
Why Megalodon (Definitely) Went Extinct
For more than 10 million years, Megalodon was at the top of its game as the oceans’ apex predator...until 2.6 million years ago, when it went extinct. So, what happened to the largest shark in history?
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