Eons: Surviving Deep Time

By the end of the Devonian Period, the land had exploded with plant life and ancient invertebrates. There was also Tiktaalik - one of the first known vertebrates able and willing to move from the water to land. Our distant relative figured out how to survive in this dramatically different environment, can you? 

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Introducing Eons: Surviving Deep Time! Season 2 of the Eons podcast is a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past? 

--

Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios.

If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards!

Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet?
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Instagram 

Season 2 of the Eons podcast is coming soon! This season will be a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past? 

Studies have found Neandertal DNA in people living in - and descended from - populations in Europe, Asia, and, most recently, Africa. So, in a way, these ancient relatives of ours are somehow both here and gone. We know we shared the planet with them in the not-so-distant past… But what happened to them?

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

The Denisovans are a human relative discovered just over a decade ago. The DNA from the very small number of fossils found suggest they were around as long as the Neanderthals. Yet anthropologists have gathered way more evidence for Neanderthals. Where are the Denisovans hiding?

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

How do we start to reconstruct the soundscapes of the past? Using modern environments, living representatives of ancient groups, and fossil anatomy, paleontologists have attempted to figure out what the past sounded like. And so far we’ve found the lead singers change, but the backup singers remain familiar.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

Between 1927 and 1937, paleontologists excavated fossils from about 40 members of the species that today we call Homo erectus from a site in China known as Dragon Bone Hill. And then World War II broke out and the fossils were lost. In this episode, we trace their path as far as the historical record will take us and explore what might’ve happened to them after their last sighting in early December, 1941.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

Former host of Eons and our current boss Hank Green joins Kallie, Michelle, and Blake for a Q&A episode where we discuss everything from why all this matters to what specifically did sauropods taste like?

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

There's something strange about the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The fossils found there date back to the Late Jurassic Period and one species accounts for roughly two-thirds of all the bones: Allosaurus fragilis. But what killed all these big predators? Was the site itself a deadly trap, like the La Brea Tar Pits? Or was it a poisoned spring? Or was it simply a watering hole? This episode will dig into the mystery of this dinosaur graveyard.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

Deep in the Rising Star Cave system lies a mystery of paleoanthropology: a chamber filled with the bones of Homo naledi. How this species evolved, how it’s related to us and other human relatives, and how it got so deep in the caves are among the many open questions researchers are trying to answer, and what they’re starting to uncover might mean changing our minds about what behaviors we think of as uniquely human.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

Exactly where and when dinosaurs first evolved are still open questions in paleontology; it’s hard to even say what the first dinosaur was. In this episode, we dig into the evidence for dinosaur origins in the Triassic Period (between 252 and 201 million years ago) and try to understand the world they lived in. Being able to point to the first dinosaur might tell us something about how the biggest mass extinction of all time influenced the course of life on our planet.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and explore how this hoax impacted the study of human origins.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

While the famous La Brea Tar Pits are well-known for charismatic Ice Age megafauna, like sabertooth cats and dire wolves, a lesser-known discovery from the Pits is the partial skeleton of a human woman. In this episode, we walk through what the Tar Pits can tell us about the ecosystem of Los Angeles over the last 50,000 years and why La Brea Woman remains such a mystery.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

Dig into the past and explore the greatest mysteries of natural history with the team behind the hit YouTube series PBS Eons. From the dawn of the dinosaurs to downtown Los Angeles, we’re covering what we know — and what we still don’t know — about the history of life on Earth.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.