Hosts @fossillibrarian, @westerndigs, @latinxscientist, and @PaleoParadoX take you on a journey through the history of life on Earth at piped.video/eons!
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The shortform video we posted yesterday mistakenly included AI-generated imagery - in violation of our show's policy on the use of AI.
After reviewing our sources, it appears the images were included on a stock photo website without an indication they were generated by AI.
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Happy #WorldFrogDay! Can you believe this frog is ~40 million years old? In 1873 the French naturalist Henri Filhol described this fossil frog discovered from the Quercy Phosphorites of southwestern France. The specimen preserved the frog's soft tissues as an external cast. (1/3)
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For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again. What is it about the crab’s form that makes it so evolutionarily successful that non-crabs are apparently jealous of it?
piped.video/watch?v=wvfR3XLX…
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An invisible barrier runs through the entire Malay archipelago. On the western side: rhinos, elephants & tigers. On the eastern side: a totally different cast of characters.
How did this invisible line come to be? Watch our new video to find out! piped.video/QTK_bC00ilg
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If you think elephants look silly now, their ancient cousins were a lot sillier! But why were the long-jawed proboscideans rapidly replaced by herbivores with long, flexible trunks instead? New video tomorrow!
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Nonetheless, their inclusion in the video was an oversight on our part and we are reviewing our processes to make sure this kind of error doesn't happen again. We're proud to work with talented paleoartists who reconstruct life in the ancient past and will continue to do so.
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We've taken down the video and will repost a corrected version next week - thanks to everyone who brought this to our attention!
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Check out this lion-sized #otter for World Otter Day!
Here's a reconstruction of the otter Enhydriodon omoensis (in background), compared with three current species, left to right: the South American giant otter; the sea otter; and an African otter. (1/3)
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It's #NationalJewelDay! Let's celebrate by enjoying what we think is the most beautiful fossil in the world: Eric.
Eric was a seal-sized, short-necked pliosaur known scientifically as Umoonasaurus demoscyllus and is one of the most complete opalised vertebrates known!
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For National Kitten Day, let's celebrate these tiny Ice Age kittens that sadly didn't make it, but will now provide paleontologists and scientists with a wealth of information about their kind.
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424 million years ago, a small, unassuming organism known as a graptolite drifted through the sea, unaware of how important paleontologists would one day find it. These graptolites would help unlock secrets of the Silurian period. Dive deep with us this week on Eons!
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Happy Museum Selfie Day! We had Kallie, Michelle, and Blake pick just one museum selfie to share...which is hard because they have many. 😉
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Toy manufacturers don't think people want scientific accuracy, but Eons & @Beast_SculptKit know otherwise! We teamed up to create 1/18th scale, hand-painted mammoth action figures!
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Eons just hit one million subscribers! 🥳 Thank you all SO MUCH for being part of this journey with us!! 🎉🦖🦕🎉
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For International Day of Women and Girls in Science, let's celebrate a famous paleontologist - Tilly Edinger (1897-1967). Tilly started her career in 1921 at the University of Frankfurt, researching fossil brains until 1927. (🧵 1/5)
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234 million years ago, rain finally came to the previously hot and dry world. And it stayed for 2 million years. piped.video/watch?v=_1LdMWlN…
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Did you know there used to be red pandas in North America? Pristinailurus bristoli is a wolverine-sized red panda relative known from the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. The site is estimated to be 4.5-5 million years old. (1/3)
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For a long time scientists thought of the mammaliaformes of the Mesozoic Era as small, shrew-like insectivore generalists scurrying in the shadows of dinosaurs. But a 2003 discovery complicated that picture, begging the question 'what makes a mammal a mammal?'
New video out soon!
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After more than 40 years of being a mystery, Deinocheirus turned out to be one of the weirdest dinosaurs ever known. ow.ly/8xRK50y7vJP
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Keep an eye out for a new episode tomorrow! We're learning about a mysterious animal called Toxodon, one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago. Its fossils also inspired a revolutionary thinker— Charles Darwin.
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Indiana Jones is a bad archaeologist. @WesternDigs
Follow us on Tiktok! tiktok.com/@pbseons?lang=en
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Confession: We spend so much time talking about animals here on Eons that sometimes we forget how fascinating plant evolution can be! 🌿 Dig into today's new video to unearth the surprising story of how some plants survived the K-Pg extinction. piped.video/4XmFUWdgKWk
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In this week’s video, we’ll be investigating the story of our venomous relatives, both living and extinct. (Yes, venomous mammals do exist!)
Keep an eye out for the episode later this week!
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We often think of dinosaurs as preying on other animals, or eating plants. But what about insects? In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking about a group of dinosaurs that some paleontologists think may have been specialized insect eaters.
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Happy unearth day @SUEtheTrex!
#OTD in 1990, one of the worlds most famous dinosaur was discovered by fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson near Faith, South Dakota. Her discovery was nickenamed "SUE" and its /still/ the largest most complete T. rex ever found.
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The mystery of the mysticete: what is the reason behind the diversity and gigantism of baleen whales? That's the question we're exploring in tomorrow's episode! 🐋
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A new video will be up tomorrow! We’ll be telling you the story of Hatzegopteryx, a colossal pterosaur. A unique ecological situation turned this pterosaur into a giant apex predator, and the dinosaurs it hunted into dwarfs.
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Check out this awesome display called "Brickosaurus" for #NationalLegoDay! This is the largest touring LEGO brick dinosaur model ever made – the staggering Tyrannosaurus rex is 8 m (~26 ft)!
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In this week's episode, we'll explore an interesting evolutionary relationship between whales and communities in the deep ocean. And this isn’t because of anything the whales did when they were alive… In fact, when a whale dies, it’s just the beginning of the story.
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We’re back! A new episode is coming this week, and we’re talking about Tanque Loma, where at least 22 giant ground sloths met their end. How did they die? Well, it may have had to do with… their poop.
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Happy National Velociraptor Awareness Day!
Velociraptors lived about 74-70 million years ago during the Cretaceous and were found mainly in Mongolia. They were small-ish, possibly weighing up to 100 lbs (45 kg) and they had feathers.
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Its #EarthDay! 🌎 Did you know that fossils are non-renewable resources? That means areas that are productive and have a lot of valuable fossils should be protected. (1/4)
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Its Mary Anning's 221st birthday! Today she's a well known paleontologist, but in her day she was barely a footnote.
However, she made some of paleontology's biggest finds while fossil hunting in the Jurassic Blue Lias cliffs in Dorset, England, including: the 1st ichthyosaur,
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👀 Something big is coming.
David Silva of Creative Beast Studio @Beast_SculptKit has been creating his own line of action figures & resin model kits focusing on dinosaurs & prehistoric animals since 2009.
What will we create together? We'll let you in on the action soon!
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Legends will be unearthed…
The iconic Walking with Dinosaurs is returning in a major new @BBCStudios production for @BBC and @PBS, co-produced with ZDF and @FranceTele.
Find out more ⤵️
bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/bbcstu…
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The Himalayan giant honey bee (Apis laboriosais) is the largest honey bee in the world today at almost 3 cm long. But, so far, the largest fossil honey bee is Apis lithohermaea. 🐝 #NationalHoneyBeeDay (1/4)
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#OTD in 1979 the 'good mother' dinosaur was named!
Maiasaura peeblesorum was made famous by a 76 million year old site called Egg Mountain near Bynum, Montana. Here, the first baby dinosaurs were discovered, as well as multiple eggs in nests.
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It’s #AnkylosaurWeek! While clubs are practically synonymous with ankylosaurs, we’ve only started to get to the bottom of how they worked and how this unusual anatomy developed in the first place. Watch here: piped.video/lRt-4SdzWrk
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This week's Eons episode is here to tell you that birds are not normal, folks. In fact, flight feathers are just about the weirdest and most complex things to ever sprout from vertebrate skin. Learn about the failed experiments in the evolution of wings: piped.video/HxA38gH8Gj4
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Nautiloids have survived all 5 mass extinction events and the emergence of almost every major group of marine predators. But these survival experts now only exist in one small corner of the oceans. Find out later this week in our new video!
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Two humans who lived at different times in the distant past managed to pass on a small fraction of their genomes to all of us. piped.video/watch?v=YNQPQkV3…
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The first episode of our podcast, Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time, is here! While the La Brea Tar Pits are well-known for Ice Age megafauna, like sabertooth cats and dire wolves, a lesser-known discovery from the Pits is the partial skeleton of a human woman. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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Paleontologists may have found evidence of dinosaurs doing a mating dance. @WesternDigs
Follow us on Tiktok here: tiktok.com/@pbseons?lang=en
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In this week’s episode, we're going to be talking about Diictodon. 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.
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At more than 2 meters long, Aegirocassis may have been the biggest animal in the Early Ordovician. This bizarre marine giant may have only been possible thanks to a major revolution among some of the tiniest organisms in the world.
piped.video/watch?v=G0oKBPZO…
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In the 1800s the extinct dodo bird was described so bizarrely that British naturalists thought it might be a mythical creature! It wasn't until 2005 that we understood the dodo in its ecological context for the first time. This week we're setting the record straight on dodos! 🦤
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Did you know that some fossils are also considered gemstones? For National Jewel Day, let's check out one of the most famous gem fossils: Ammolite. This iridescent opal-like gemstone is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites.
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It arose from rhino ancestors that were a lot smaller, but Paraceratherium would take a different evolutionary path. Believe it or not, it became so big that it probably got close to what scientists think might be the actual upper limit for a land mammal.
piped.video/watch?v=SDk1Ft50…
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We’re the only primate without a coat of thick fur. It turns out that this small change in our appearance has had huge consequences for our ability to regulate our body temperature, and ultimately, it helped shape the evolution of our entire lineage.
piped.video/watch?v=E76vqlhm…
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It's our birthday!!! 🥳 We launched Eons 2 years ago today, and this channel has been everything we'd hoped and more. The best part is the DINO-MITE community that's sprung up around these videos. We can't thank you all enough for being part of this with us!! 💙🦕🦖
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Where did turtles come from? How did the they get their shells? The answers to these questions would eventually cause scientists to rethink the entire history of reptile evolution. piped.video/watch?v=fLjXIFva…
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Beginning June 26, join us as we take you through the fascinating history of life on Earth!
PBS Digital Studios
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In tomorrow’s video we’re exploring the Toba Supervolcano, and the biggest explosive eruption of the last 2.5 million years. Humans were around to see it, or at least feel its effects! But what were those effects?
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Megalodon is definitely extinct, but don't worry, there's still plenty of weird stuff down there.
Just look at this terrifying footballfish:
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If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they flew. But their fossils have shown us that there was a whole other side of their lives beyond flying. So what were they like when they finally came down? New episode coming soon!
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Mammoths are probably the most famous prehistoric proboscidean, but for much of their history, proboscideans were missing one of the key features of modern elephants: a long, grasping trunk. So, how did we get here? New video on YouTube now! 🦣
piped.video/B9B7kPJ1i0M
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~30 million years ago, Nautilus fossils began to vanish from the fossil record of marine environments across the world. Whatever caused this population contraction seems to still be active today. Who is the nautiloids' unexpected predator? Find out now! piped.video/3vQ55ToQeWI
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Most synapsids were doomed to extinction, but some lived on, culminating in what is arguably the world's dominant form of life on land today: the mammals. piped.video/watch?v=w6YX8AWX…
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To solve the mystery of why most mammoths in the fossil record are male, we brought in @TheTierZoo! piped.video/fr0Ifw8TJVw
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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? We'll talk about it in this week's episode!
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Anybody else love podcasts?
Well, we have good news…. An Eons podcast is in the works! Keep an eye out for more info about Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time, coming soon. 👀
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New episode! 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. piped.video/getaQoYBD28
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New episode tomorrow!
We’ll be telling the story of when crocs had flippers. These aquatic reptiles were secondarily aquatic, meaning that their terrestrial ancestors evolved from aquatic animals millions of years earlier, making this their 2nd time around as marine animals.
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Hey Hey its International #Sloth Day!🦥
At Tanque Loma, at least 22 giant ground sloths in the genus Eremotherium met their end.
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Did you know that many fossils owe their existence to water? 💧 For #WorldWaterDay let's check out one of the most common ways a fossil is formed. 🧵
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In this week’s episode, we’re taking a look at nocturnal mammals and how the difference between mammal and dinosaur behavior during the mesozoic era wasn’t as clear cut as day and night. 🌓 Stay tuned!
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Get your tuxedos ready….its #PenguinAwarenessDay! There have been some pretty large penguins found in the fossil record and the newest was announced in 2021! 🐧 (1/4)
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We're sure many of you are familiar with the giant arthropods of the Carboniferous. But do you know about the giant ants of the Eocene? For #WorldAntDay let's check out one of the largest ants known - Titanomyrma lubei. (1/5)
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Are you a writer with a background in natural history? Come work with us!
We're looking for a freelance writer with a strong background in natural history (paleontology, geology, evolutionary biology, etc) to help shape the content for @EonsShow. Apply by 5/28 at complexly.com/jobs
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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?
piped.video/5Ier8c9WFzE
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The rise and fall of ancient walruses, and how modern ones got their tusks, is a story that spans almost 20 million years. And it looks like tusks didn’t have anything to do with how or what these animals ate.
piped.video/BKDGYGV2LK8
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New video! 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, it's just the beginning of the story. piped.video/1vb00-gcdtA
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Until the late 1950s, it was common knowledge that complex, multicellular organisms didn't emerge until the Cambrian era. But when a teen girl took a walk through the forest, she found a fossil that changed everything. Get the whole story on YouTube now! piped.video/ipkBmbi6k5c
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Hope you have an ~elevated~ International Mountain Day! 🏔️
Did you know that summit of Qomolangma (Mt. Everest) is made up of a Middle Ordovician limestone? This means that 450 million years ago, it was a warm, shallow-water sea.
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Happy #DinosaurDay! Here's a behind the scenes look at our trip to the Museum of the Rockies back in Febuary 2018.
Collections Manager Amy Atwater is showing us teeth from B-rex (MOR 1125). This specimen was discovered in 2000 in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana
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Cats have achieved world domination, with some help from humans along the way. piped.video/CYPJzQppANo
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The dodo: a fat, flightless bird that's been the butt of jokes and a prime example of extinction for centuries. But a 2005 discovery made us realize that almost all of our assumptions about the dodo were wrong.
New video on YouTube now! piped.video/Juci-kAqjes
#pbseons #science
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You may have noticed we’ve been on a hiatus, but new episodes are coming soon (with 3 hosts!)
We have great topics coming up: we'll tell the story of the giant sloths that made a fatal mess, the ancestors of all living mammals, & a group of woolly mammoths trapped on an island.
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New episode!
Early primates not only lived in North America -- our primate family tree actually originated here! So what happened to those early relatives of ours?
piped.video/WNL9Jp9oeYA
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#OTD in 1993, Jurassic Park was released in the United States!
It became the highest grossing film in 1993 and was inducted to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 2018, as a culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant film.
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Today is Eon’s third birthday!!!
To celebrate we have added a new tier on Patreon! Our team will be watching dinosaur/monster movies and sharing a recording of their commentary once a month.
Sign up at patreon.com/eons
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New episode! While pterosaurs may be well-known for their domination of the skies in the Mesozoic Era, they didn’t live their entire lives in the air... So how did we figure this out? And what were they like when they finally came down? piped.video/esjGK-NsUJM
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It's National Bean Day! Beans or legumes have been around at least 60 million years, but maybe as long as 90 million years. Here is a bean from the Paleocene aged (60-58 MYA) Bogotá Formation in Colombia. This unnamed bean has around eight seed chambers. The scale bars are 1 cm.
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New research suggests that dinosaurs may have had body fat like penguins!
... Just kidding! In the spirit of #AprilFoolsDay, here are some chonky dinosaurs to make you smile. 🦖[Photos: imgur.com/gallery/yoFfJwP]
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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 bizarre predator belonged to a group known as “hell ants.”
piped.video/watch?v=eQPAH9Ku…
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We just hit 2 MILLION subscribers!! 💫 To all of you who watch Eons and are a part of this community, thank you so much! 🥳
Here’s a thank you video from @FossilLibrarian, @latinxscientist, and @WesternDigs!
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Mammals have the largest brains relative to body size in the vertebrate world, but it turns out that the journey toward braininess in mammals was far from straightforward or inevitable. Learn more later this week with our new video!
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Trilobites were everywhere! It took the worst catastrophe in the history of life on Earth to wipe them out. piped.video/watch?v=Aji2VnQF…
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The life and evolution of Therizinosaurus cheloniformis (“turtle-shaped scythe lizard”) was just as weird as their mixed-up anatomy. New video on YouTube now!
piped.video/RsqcKgyctYU
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In tomorrow's new video we're talking about some one-toed weirdos with features so strange that in the early 1900s scientists called their legs and toes “inadaptive modification” – basically saying that they were a bizarre mutation and weren't shaped by evolution at all.
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New episode! At Tanque Loma, at least 22 giant ground sloths in the genus Eremotherium met their end. Of the 5 hypotheses that researchers proposed for what killed the sloths, the best supported one right now is that they died surrounded by their own poop. piped.video/au4klKI9rG4
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