Skip to main content
Back to Show
Eons

When It Was Too Hot for Leaves

Season 4 Episode 13

Plants first made their way onto land at least 470 million years ago but for their first 80 million years, leaves as we know them today didn’t exist. What held them back?

Support Provided By
Season
How Eating Plants Shaped Life on Land | Life and Death on Pangea
25:36
The first herbivorous vertebrates evolve on the side of the amniote family tree leading to mammals.
How The Formation of Pangea Changed The World | Life and Death on Pangea
25:36
Seed plants and amniotes adapt to dry climates, helping them thrive on Pangea in the Permian Period.
How A Geological Event Created The Ultimate Cat
9:11
How did Homotherium evolve to be so successful? The answer may lie in the rise of the Tibetan plate.
Did These Feathered Wings Evolve to Be Scary?
10:16
The mystery of what non-flying dinosaurs were doing with their feathered wings has a new hypothesis.
We Can't Remember What Giant Sloths Were Like
11:45
What did ancient people once know about these bizarre megafauna that we’ve since forgotten?
Did These Mammoths Dig Their Own Grave?
7:44
5,700 years ago, woolly mammoths crossed a remote tundra island off Alaska.
When Fish (Finally) Conquered the Deep Sea
9:48
Why did vertebrates conquer both the land and the air before the depths of the sea?
Why Do Humans Age Fast?
8:27
Long-extinct dinosaurs may still haunt us—possibly driving us to age faster than any vertebrate.
When the Earth Had Supermountains
9:34
Only twice in Earth's history have supermountains risen, and both times reshaped life forever.
Does The World's Most Famous Dinosaur Have The Wrong Name?
12:32
Was the T-Rex given the wrong name?
Did Ancient Storms Kill These Pterosaurs?
10:05
500+ pterosaur fossils found at Solnhofen may be hiding a dark secret distorting our view of them.
Sensitive Teeth? Blame This Fish
11:08
Why are our teeth so sensitive? The answer originates in the armored skin of ancient fish.
Active loading indicator