Eons

How Ancient Microbes Rode Bug Bits Out to Sea

Between 535 and 520 million years ago, a new kind of biological litter began collecting in the ancient oceans of the Cambrian period. Exoskeletons helped early arthropods expand in huge numbers throughout the world’s oceans. And tiny exoskeleton fragments may have allowed some of the most important microbes in the planet’s history to set sail out into the open ocean and change the world forever.

How Ancient Microbes Rode Bug Bits Out to Sea

8m 42s

  • When The Atlantic Ripped Open A Supercontinent: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    When The Atlantic Ripped Open A Supercontinent

    S6 E21 - 10m 21s

    While the eruptions of the volcanoes along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge usually don't trouble us, their birth was once responsible for ripping a supercontinent apart and creating the Atlantic Ocean that we know today.

  • The Second Time Sponges Took Over The World: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    The Second Time Sponges Took Over The World

    S6 E20 - 8m 4s

    Researchers have discovered a piece of a weird, but critical, time in the deep past…a time when the first-ever mass extinction may have turned Planet Earth into Sponge World.

  • No Single Cradle of Humankind: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    No Single Cradle of Humankind

    S6 E19 - 10m 46s

    It would take decades for paleontologists to realize that maybe there wasn’t just one so-called "cradle of humankind," and realize that maybe they’d been asking the wrong question all along.

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