Skip to main content

Up Next

Back to Show
Eons

When Trees Took Over the World

Season 3 Episode 43

420 million years ago, the forest floor of what's now New York was covered with a plant that didn’t look like a tree at all, except its roots were made of wood. Instead of looking up to learn about the evolution of trees, it turns out paleobotanists should’ve been looking down all along.

Support Provided By
Season
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.
The Fiery Rise of Flowering Plants
10:45
For flowering plants to take over, they first helped burn the old world—and then put the fires out.
When Ancient Weeds Fooled Us
11:37
Ancient weeds mimicked crops, tricking farmers into domesticating friends—and enemies—by mistake.
How Brawn Led to Brains
12:14
Brains and brawn aren’t opposites—they’ve been linked far longer than we might think.
When a Tiny Land Bridge Triggered an Ice Age
10:27
Understanding the Isthmus of Panama.
How Chewing May Have Beat Extinction
9:35
Tiny mammals and a group of lizard-like reptiles shared a trait that helped them survive extinction.
How We Figured Out an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs
10:43
Where the space rock came from 66 million years ago that crashed and killed the dinosaurs.
Active loading indicator