From PBS Eons. We’re still figuring out the details, but most scientists agree that it took thousands of years of interactions to develop our deep bond with dogs. When did they first become domesticated? Where did this happen? And what did the process look like, in terms of genetics and anatomy? Special thanks to Jack…

From PBS Eons. The story of the egg spans millions of years, from the first vertebrates that dared to venture onto land to today’s mammals, including the platypus, and of course birds. Like chickens? We’re here to tell you: The egg came first. Thanks to Fabrizio de Rossi for the Hylonomus and Casineria illustrations! https://www.facebook.com/ArtofFabricious/…

From PBS Eons. Thank you for The Great Courses Plus for supporting PBS. To learn more click http://ow.ly/DIED30qpmFa Today, we think of penguins as small-ish, waddling, tuxedo-birds. But they evolved from a flying ancestor, were actual giants for millions of years, and some of them were even dressed a little more casually. Thank you to…

From PBS Eons. Check out Antarctic Extremes on PBS Terra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvRAuy1ZmTc The climate of the Sahara was completely different thousands of years ago. And we’re not talking about just a few years of extra rain. We’re talking about a climate that was so wet for so long that animals and humans alike made themselves at…

From PBS Eons. About 59 million years ago, the largest animal lurking in the ancient forests of Colombia by far was Titanoboa – the largest snake ever known. It’s only been in the past few years that we’ve put together the many pieces of this puzzling creature, but it turns out that the greatest snake…

From PBS Eons. Check out Animal Wonders! https://youtu.be/tyK21xUnGrk The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse set the stage for a takeover that would be a crucial turning point in the history of terrestrial animal life. If it weren’t for that time when the rainforests collapsed – in an extinction event that you probably haven’t heard of – our…

From PBS Eons. Check out PBS Zest: https://www.youtube.com/pbszest Long necks gave sauropods a huge advantage when it came to food, but not in the way you think. And this benefit would allow them to become the biggest terrestrial animals of all time! Thanks to Nathan E Rogers (https://252mya.com/gallery/nathan-e-rogers) and Julio Lacerda (https://twitter.com/juliotheartist) for their dinosaur…

From PBS Eons. Throughout the Cenozoic Era — the era we’re in now — marsupials and their metatherian relatives flourished all over South America, filling all kinds of ecological niches and radiating into forms that still thrive on other continents. Thanks to Darin Croft and Velizar Simeonovski for allowing us to use illustrations that can…

From PBS Eons. From end to end, its forelimbs alone measured an incredible 2.4 meters long and were tipped with big, comma-shaped claws. But other than its bizarre arms, very little material from this dinosaur had been found: no skull, no feet, almost nothing that could give experts a fuller picture of what this dinosaur…

From PBS Eons. Eons socks, shirts, pins, and more! https://store.dftba.com/collections/eons Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Neandertals were thought to have been…primitive. Unintelligent, hunched-over cavemen, for lack of a better word. But the discoveries made in that Iraqi cave provided some of the earliest clues that Neanderthals actually behaved — and likely thought…

From PBS Eons. Download the PBS Video App: https://www.pbs.org/pbs-video-app/ How could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just…disappear? It would take decades and more than 1,000 research studies to even start to figure out the cause — or causes — of one of the greatest vanishing acts in Earth’s history. Special thanks…

From PBS Eons. To discover more go about the LEGO Ideas Tree House set go to  https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tree-house-21318?CMP=SOC-PBSEons21318 How does a bear — which is a member of the order Carnivora — evolve into an herbivore? Despite how it looks, nothing about the history of the giant panda is black and white. Thanks to Ceri Thomas…

From PBS Eons. Because of their strange combination of bear-like and dog-like traits, they’re sometimes confusingly called the beardogs. And even though you’ve never met one of these animals, the beardogs are key to understanding the history of an important branch of the mammal family tree. Thanks to Ceri Thomas (http://alphynix.tumblr.com) and Julio Lacerda (https://twitter.com/JuliotheArtist)…

From PBS Eons. Eons Socks! https://store.dftba.com/products/eons-socks Check out Ours Poetica: https://youtu.be/8NK2gXouhBU Woolly mammoths, our favorite ice age proboscidean, disappeared from Europe and North America at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. Today, we’ve teamed up with TierZoo to solve one of the mysteries about these charismatic megafauna: why do most remains…

From PBS Eons. Thanks to Raycon wireless earphones for supporting PBS. Go to http://buyraycon.com/eons to learn more. These hyaenodonts gave the world some of its largest terrestrial, carnivorous mammals ever known. And while these behemoths were the apex predators of their time, they were no match for a changing world. Thanks to Dr. Matthew Borths…