Up Next
Back to Show
Eons
How Chewing May Have Beat Extinction
Season 8
Episode 6
66 million years ago, after an asteroid slammed into the Earth and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, the world became a dark wasteland. But among the survivors were two distantly-related groups of animals that, on the surface, seem to have nothing in common: tiny mammals and a group of lizard-like reptiles.
Support Provided By
26:06
Life begins to rebound after the destruction of the mass extinction ending the Permian Period.
25:37
An apocalypse ended the Permian Period 252 million years ago, wiping out more than 80% of species.
25:37
The first saber-teeth and tusks evolve in the Late Permian and our ancestors, the cynodonts, appear.
25:37
An extinction in the Middle Permian decimates life, from a fossil reef to our ancient relatives.
25:37
The first herbivorous vertebrates evolve on the side of the amniote family tree leading to mammals.
25:37
Seed plants and amniotes adapt to dry climates, helping them thrive on Pangea in the Permian Period.
9:11
How did Homotherium evolve to be so successful? The answer may lie in the rise of the Tibetan plate.
10:16
The mystery of what non-flying dinosaurs were doing with their feathered wings has a new hypothesis.
11:45
What did ancient people once know about these bizarre megafauna that we’ve since forgotten?
7:44
5,700 years ago, woolly mammoths crossed a remote tundra island off Alaska.
9:48
Why did vertebrates conquer both the land and the air before the depths of the sea?
8:27
Long-extinct dinosaurs may still haunt us—possibly driving us to age faster than any vertebrate.