From PBS Eons. These odd rodents belong to a genus known as Ceratogaulus, but they’re more commonly called horned gophers, because, you guessed it, they had horns. And it turns out the horns probably had a purpose – one that rodents would likely benefit from today. Samantha Hopkins’ 2005 paper on Ceratogaulus with figures featured in…

From PBS Eons. In 1977, a farmer was plowing his field on a plateau high in the Andes mountains when he stumbled upon a giant fossilized skeleton. How did this giant marine reptile end up high in the Andes Mountains? Spanish subtitles/CC by Carlos J. Pardo De la Hoz. Thanks as always to Ceri Thomas for…

From PBS Eons. Check out Self-Evident on PBS Voices: https://youtu.be/B6QeZ07Fagg Beneath layers of rock art are drawings of animals SO strange that, for a long time, some anthropologists thought they could only have been imagined. But what if these animals really had existed, after all? Thanks to the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, Professor Bruno David, Monash…

From PBS Eons. Check out our new poster! https://store.dftba.com/collections/eons/products/supercontinent-poster To figure out how Thrinaxodon and Broomistega became entombed together, scientists looked at the burrow itself, along with their fossilized bones. And it looks like their luck ran out, when a behavior that usually would’ve helped them survive just didn’t work. Special thanks to Julio Lacerda…

From PBS Eons. Thanks to a recent adaptation, instead of getting sick from the boozy, fermented fruits, one of our primate ancestors could digest them safely, and get more calories at the same time. This new superpower would open up a whole new nutritional landscape for us: fermented foods. Special thanks to Julio Lacerda (https://twitter.com/JulioTheArtist)…

From PBS Eons. Paleontologists have been studying nodosaurs since the 1830s, but nobody had ever found a specimen like Borealopelta before. The key to its exceptional preservation was where it ended up after it died and how it got there. Thanks to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology for providing us with images for this…

From PBS Eons. Untangling the origins of Beelzebufo — the giant frog that lived alongside the dinosaurs — turns out to be one of the most bedeviling problems in the history of amphibians.  Thank you to these paleoartists for allowing us to use their wonderful illustrations: Ceri Thomas: http://alphynix.tumblr.com/ Nobu Tamura: https://spinops.blogspot.com/ Julio Lacerda: https://252mya.com/gallery/julio-lacerda…

From PBS Eons. To try to solve the puzzle of Lark Quarry, experts have turned to a special subfield of paleontology — paleoichnology, or the study of trace fossils — to reconstruct exactly what happened on that spot, on that day, nearly 100,000 millennia ago. Thanks to Fabrizio de Rossi for the excellent reconstruction(s) of…

From PBS Eons. The rise and fall of ancient walruses, and how modern ones got their tusks, is a story that spans almost 20 million years. And while there are parts of the story that we’re still trying to figure out, it looks like tusks didn’t have anything to do with how or what these animals…

From PBS Eons. All told, the Arctic in the Cretaceous Period was a rough place to live, especially in winter. And yet, the fossils of many kinds of dinosaurs have been discovered there. So how were they able to survive in this harsh environment? Thanks to Nathan E. Rogers for the really great reconstruction of…

From PBS Eons. Watch Prehistoric Road Trip! http://pbs.org/prehistoricroadtrip There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact, it set the stage for our modern version of plate tectonics – and probably for the rise…

From PBS Eons. Check out Prideland on PBS Voices: https://to.pbs.org/3hep3fo There were a huge number of croc-like animals that flourished during the Triassic Period. Dinosaurs had just arrived on the scene but it was these animals that truly ruled the Earth, becoming both abundant and diverse. Thank you to these paleoartists for allowing us to…

From PBS Eons. Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian life was a tiny bit of fossilized fat.  Thanks to Ilya Bobrovskiy for allowing us to use photos from his…

From PBS Eons. There’s one kind of herpesvirus that’s specific to one species of primate, and each virus split off from the herpesvirus family tree when the primate split off from its own tree. But of course, humans are a special kind of primate. Here are the two studies we discuss in this episode: Wertheim,…

From PBS Eons. Check out Journey to the Microcosmos: https://youtube.com/microcosmos In the middle of the Cambrian, life on land was about to get a little more crowded. And those newcomers would end up changing the world. The arrival of plants on land would make the world colder, drain much of the oxygen out of the…