Eons: Surviving Deep Time

Just because our ancestors have made it through every major period of upheaval in the Earth’s history so far doesn't mean that our survival through future changes is guaranteed. Humans have become a force of nature, but will we survive ourselves? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! W...

We’ve reached the present! Before we take one look into the future in our final episode, all four Eons hosts have gathered to reflect on their survival experiences - and answer some of your questions. -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet?...

Today, we Homo sapiens are used to being the only hominin on the planet, but in the Early Pleistocene Epoch, other upright-walking, tool-wielding, large-brained hominins roamed the Earth. In a time when behavior might be the key tool to survival, could you? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool...

In the Late Miocene Epoch, tectonic forces uplifted the Earth's crust, blocking off the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. A once-thriving marine ecosystem was replaced by an endless salty, desolate landscape. Is it possible for you to survive here? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool...

66 million years ago, an asteroid hit our planet triggering global wildfires, an impact winter, and the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Could you make it through the darkest days of planet Earth? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook...

There was an island in the Late Cretaceous Period in the fragmented European archipelago that turned out to be the hunting ground of a terrifying apex predator unlike any other: a giant pterosaur. Could you manage to survive on this island? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to...

In the aftermath of the Great Dying, rapid evolutionary radiation resulted in the rise of a bunch of weird creatures in the Triassic Period. But life at the end of the period, including the earliest dinosaurs, faced yet another catastrophic extinction event. Could you survive in this strange time period? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the sho...

A catastrophic volcanic event in the Late Permian Period caused the biggest mass extinction of all time - known to us as the Great Dying. As a result, a large majority of terrestrial life would disappear, but our ancestors had the adaptations (and the healthy dose of luck) needed to survive – but would you?  -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the...

The swamps of the Late Carboniferous Period teemed with giant insects, but it’s time for the amniotes - the ancestors of all reptiles, birds, and mammals to come - to earn the title of Fully Terrestrial Vertebrates. It’s getting more crowded on land - could you survive? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge...

The End-Ordovician Extinction was the first of the so-called ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth - more than 80% of species in the oceans died out. But could you survive its aftermath? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the in...

In the ocean, the Cambrian Period was one of startling evolutionary innovations, but on land, it was barren, with no vegetation of any kind. In this strange world before plants made their way onto land… could you survive? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewh...

By the end of the Devonian Period, the land had exploded with plant life and ancient invertebrates. There was also Tiktaalik - one of the first known vertebrates able and willing to move from the water to land. Our distant relative figured out how to survive in this dramatically different environment, can you?  -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support...

Introducing Eons: Surviving Deep Time! Season 2 of the Eons podcast is a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past?  -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons e...

Season 2 of the Eons podcast is coming soon! This season will be a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past? 

Studies have found Neandertal DNA in people living in - and descended from - populations in Europe, Asia, and, most recently, Africa. So, in a way, these ancient relatives of ours are somehow both here and gone. We know we shared the planet with them in the not-so-distant past… But what happened to them? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights reserved...

The Denisovans are a human relative discovered just over a decade ago. The DNA from the very small number of fossils found suggest they were around as long as the Neanderthals. Yet anthropologists have gathered way more evidence for Neanderthals. Where are the Denisovans hiding? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

How do we start to reconstruct the soundscapes of the past? Using modern environments, living representatives of ancient groups, and fossil anatomy, paleontologists have attempted to figure out what the past sounded like. And so far we’ve found the lead singers change, but the backup singers remain familiar. Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights rese...

Between 1927 and 1937, paleontologists excavated fossils from about 40 members of the species that today we call Homo erectus from a site in China known as Dragon Bone Hill. And then World War II broke out and the fossils were lost. In this episode, we trace their path as far as the historical record will take us and explore what might’ve happened to them after their last sighting in early Decembe...

Former host of Eons and our current boss Hank Green joins Kallie, Michelle, and Blake for a Q&A episode where we discuss everything from why all this matters to what specifically did sauropods taste like? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.

There's something strange about the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The fossils found there date back to the Late Jurassic Period and one species accounts for roughly two-thirds of all the bones: Allosaurus fragilis. But what killed all these big predators? Was the site itself a deadly trap, like the La Brea Tar Pits? Or was it a poisoned spring? Or was it simply a watering hole? This episode wil...

Deep in the Rising Star Cave system lies a mystery of paleoanthropology: a chamber filled with the bones of Homo naledi . How this species evolved, how it’s related to us and other human relatives, and how it got so deep in the caves are among the many open questions researchers are trying to answer, and what they’re starting to uncover might mean changing our minds about what behaviors we think o...

Exactly where and when dinosaurs first evolved are still open questions in paleontology; it’s hard to even say what the first dinosaur was. In this episode, we dig into the evidence for dinosaur origins in the Triassic Period (between 252 and 201 million years ago) and try to understand the world they lived in. Being able to point to the first dinosaur might tell us something about how the biggest...

This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and exp...

While the famous La Brea Tar Pits are well-known for charismatic Ice Age megafauna, like sabertooth cats and dire wolves, a lesser-known discovery from the Pits is the partial skeleton of a human woman. In this episode, we walk through what the Tar Pits can tell us about the ecosystem of Los Angeles over the last 50,000 years and why La Brea Woman remains such a mystery. Eons: Mysteries of Deep Ti...

Dig into the past and explore the greatest mysteries of natural history with the team behind the hit YouTube series PBS Eons. From the dawn of the dinosaurs to downtown Los Angeles, we’re covering what we know — and what we still don’t know — about the history of life on Earth. Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.