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The 500-Million-Year History of the Human Brain

Season 1 Episode 3 | 3m 19s

Even though your brain enables you to do some amazing things, its evolutionary story runs deep. Biologists Peter Holland and Neil Shubin go hunting for Amphioxus, a tiny, simple animal, whose genes show us just how ancient our brain truly is.

Extras
Find out which beneficial traits our primate progenitors bequeathed us.
Find out which traits our primate progenitors bequeathed to us.
Learn which parts of our bodies we’ve inherited from our reptilian ancestors.
Learn which parts of our bodies we’ve inherited from our reptilian ancestors.
Paleontologist Holly Dunsworth shows us fossil evidence for the disappearance of our tail.
As Bruce Latimer explains, our evolutionary history has some consequences for our back.
Meet an ancient primate with a hand eerily similar to your own.
Our relationship to living primates can be seen in their anatomy and genes.
Don Johanson recounts the discovery of an iconic human ancestor in Ethiopia.
Neil Shubin finds a tiny fossil that represents an important time in our evolution.
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