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The 40 Million-Year-Old Ecosystem In Your Mouth

Season 4 Episode 15 | 8m 14s

The hardened residue scraped off your teeth at the dentist is called your dental calculus, and your dental calculus is the only part of your body that actually fossilizes while you’re alive! And scientists have figured out how to study & trace the evolutionary history of these microbes over tens of millions of years.

Aired: 12/08/21
Extras
Why are our teeth so sensitive? The answer originates in the armored skin of ancient fish.
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.
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Why are our teeth so sensitive? The answer originates in the armored skin of ancient fish.
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.