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From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying

Season 1 Episode 30 | 10m 28s

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.

Aired: 02/19/18
Extras
For flowering plants to take over, they first helped burn the old world—and then put the fires out.
Ancient weeds mimicked crops, tricking farmers into domesticating friends—and enemies—by mistake.
Brains and brawn aren’t opposites—they’ve been linked far longer than we might think.
Understanding the Isthmus of Panama.
How we might borrow genes from that ancient past of Greenland to help us adapt to the future.
Tiny mammals and a group of lizard-like reptiles shared a trait that helped them survive extinction.
Where the space rock came from 66 million years ago that crashed and killed the dinosaurs.
Fish evolved terrestrial traits to...stay fish?
We're the only ones with chins, and we don't know why.
Why did sharks get so incredibly diverse and odd during the Golden Age?
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For flowering plants to take over, they first helped burn the old world—and then put the fires out.
Ancient weeds mimicked crops, tricking farmers into domesticating friends—and enemies—by mistake.
Brains and brawn aren’t opposites—they’ve been linked far longer than we might think.
Understanding the Isthmus of Panama.
How we might borrow genes from that ancient past of Greenland to help us adapt to the future.
Tiny mammals and a group of lizard-like reptiles shared a trait that helped them survive extinction.
Where the space rock came from 66 million years ago that crashed and killed the dinosaurs.
Fish evolved terrestrial traits to...stay fish?
We're the only ones with chins, and we don't know why.
Why did sharks get so incredibly diverse and odd during the Golden Age?