PBS Eons

The Rise and Fall of the Permian’s Strangest Predators

310K views · 3d ago · 26:06

This is episode 3 of our 6-part series, Eons: Life and Death on Pangea. You can watch the whole series right now on or if you prefer to watch on YouTube check back here weekly for new episodes! Life in the Middle Permian Period flourished. Gigantic reef complexes stretched for hundreds of kilometers in what’s now the Texas desert, while strange mammal-relatives and huge reptiles thrived on land. But this epoch ends in a crushing extinction.

Topics: The Permian Reef · The Middle Permian · Fossils Below Our Feet · Helicoprion · Dinocephalians · Therocephalians

The First Apex Predator on Land

559K views · 10d ago · 26:06

This is episode 2 of our 6-part series, Eons: Life and Death on Pangea. You can watch the whole series right now on or if you prefer to watch on YouTube check back here weekly for new episodes! The first herbivorous vertebrates evolve on the side of the amniote family tree leading to mammals. Alongside them come apex predators, like Dimetrodon. But the Early Permian Period ends in a mystery: is it an extinction event or just a fossil gap?

Topics: The First Herbivores · The Food Chain · The First Apex Predators · Olson's Gap · Rise of the Therapsids · Next Time

Pumpkins Shouldn't Exist

931K views · 17d ago · 14:03

Take the PBS Digital Studios Annual Survey Pumpkins only survived thanks to an unlikely partnership they forged with another type of mammal. One that still found them to be toxic and disgusting at first, but could see the potential in the relationship. Us.

National Fossil Day 2026

70K views · 1mo ago · 1:27:05

Join Kallie, Blake, MB, and Gabriel for a livestream to celebrate our favorite holiday: National Fossil Day! We're getting nerdy about all things natural history from topics like fossil smuggling and the Montana dinosaur trail, to the accuracy of dinosaur cards in Magic The Gathering.

The Biggest Extinction You’ve Never Heard Of

1.2M views · 1mo ago · 13:47

In the early 20th century, it was discovered there was a point in the fossil record where most European mammals just...vanished, only to be replaced with others native to Asia. While you’ve probably never heard of this extinction, it was the biggest one since the end of the dinosaurs, nearly taking out our primate ancestors, and by extension, us.

Why the Permian Matters

81K views · 1mo ago · 1:21

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. A.B. Heckert, Aaditya Mehta, Albert Folsom, Alex Hackman, Alli and Harry Meneses, AllPizzasArePersonal, anaïs wren, Annemiek Arkema, Betsy Radley, Brian Bertrand, Brian Clubb, Christopher Samuel, Collin Dutrow, Concavenator Amigo, Deanna Hernandez, Dennis Dawson, Douglas B, Duane Westhoff, Eric Edwards, Eric Franklin, Eric Younge,…

I Was A Museum Kid

33K views · 1mo ago · 1:21

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. Alli and Harry Meneses, Brian Bertrand, Zach L, TranquiliT, Rachel Godwin, Dennis Dawson, Sarah Ellis, Sara Lance, Stephen A Muth III, tara thara, Mary Sammartino , Melodie Chen-Glasser, Susan Freund, William Sunderland, Kerry Conneely, Nick A, Lycoperdon perlatum, Lea Nisay, Eric Younge, Elyssa, John D Elias, Annemiek Arkema, Willie,…

Did the Ozone Collapse 252 Million Years Ago?

595K views · 1mo ago · 12:43

Watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea on the free PBS App or on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. What was it about the Great Dying that caused a global age of mutant plants? And could figuring it out help us avoid triggering the next one?

This Mountain Is A Reef

127K views · 2mo ago · 1:21

Watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea on the free PBS App or on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios.

Why Were Sails So Popular 300 Million Years Ago

996K views · 2mo ago · 9:31

Watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea on the free PBS App or on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. This is a tale about sails, and the enigma of why, for a brief but critical phase in the history of life, sporting a big biological billboard was all the rage.

It was a giant predatory amphibian

54K views · 2mo ago · 1:21

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. Alli and Harry Meneses, Zach L, Brian Bertrand, TranquiliT, Rachel Godwin, Dennis Dawson, Sarah Ellis, Lea Nisay, tara thara, Casey Hague, Lianne Lairmore, raus , Douglas B, Eric Franklin, Jennifer Courtemanche, Susan Freund, Nick A, Eric Younge, IAmHere, SKS PHD, William Sunderland, Stephen A Muth III, HannahCQ, John D Elias, Sarah…

What Drove Life Into The Trees?

214K views · 2mo ago · 12:11

Watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea on the free PBS App or on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. How and when did tetrapods move into the trees? And why? Turns out, the story of climbing may have less to do with trees and more to do with their leaves.

When Earth Was a Toxic Wasteland

426K views · 3mo ago · 11:03

Watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea on the free PBS App or on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. For 3 million years, microbes ruled the Earth. But were these tiny survivors just lucky? Or did they play a more sinister role in the greatest disaster our planet has ever faced?

Watch Party and Q&A: Life and Death on Pangea Episode 2

27K views · 3mo ago · 1:06:05

Or you can watch it on the web here: ← use this link if you are outside of the U.S. Join Eons hosts and your fellow natural history fans to watch episode 2 of the Eons broadcast special, Life and Death on Pangea. Afterwards, we'll do a Q&A about the show!

When Mammals and Reptiles Split

894K views · 3mo ago · 26:37

You can also watch on - in particular if you're outside of the US This is the first our our six-part series on life and death during the Permian period. In the Late Carboniferous Period, predatory amphibians and giant arthropods ruled the swamps. But ancient seed plants and amniotes were evolving adaptations to drier climates. These will help them thrive on Pangea in the Permian Period to come.

Topics: Where to Watch · The Great Dying · The History of Complex Life · The Late Carboniferous Period · The Seed · The Rise of Amniotes

We Made a TV Show About The Permian Period

183K views · 3mo ago · 3:49

Hey Eons fans, after 8 seasons of exploring deep time we have some very important news to share... Get the PBS App to watch Eons: Life and Death on Pangea for free starting July 29th! If you're outside of the US and want to watch the show, you can check it out on .

How the Tibetan Plateau Created the Ultimate Cat

481K views · 4mo ago · 10:14

How did Homotherium evolve to be so successful, and so different from basically all other cats, living and extinct? Well the answer may lie in a huge geological event: the rise of the Tibetan plateau. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to

The Terrifying Reason Flightless Dinosaurs Grew Feathers

331K views · 4mo ago · 11:29

The question of what non-flying dinosaurs were doing with their feathered wings – and why they originally evolved in the first place – has been a mystery since they were discovered. But thanks to what might just be one of the strangest experiments in the recent history of paleontology – involving a makeshift robot-dino – a new hypothesis has emerged...

Humanity Has Amnesia About Giant Sloths

281K views · 5mo ago · 12:48

Even though we once knew them pretty well, firsthand knowledge of giant sloths is now lost to time – including some of the most basic aspects of their biology and behavior. So, what did ancient people once know about these bizarre megafauna that we’ve since forgotten?

The Second-to-Last Mammoths Ever

450K views · 5mo ago · 9:43

About 5,700 years ago, on a small, isolated island off the coast of Alaska, a herd of woolly mammoths crossed a treeless tundra. But these weren’t just any mammoths. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to

The Mystery of the Missing Deep-Sea Fish

412K views · 6mo ago · 10:52

Despite starting out in the water, the fossil record suggests that vertebrates conquered both the land and the air before they conquered the depths. So what took them so long? PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to

How Dinosaurs May Have Cursed Us With Aging

901K views · 6mo ago · 9:31

Even though the dinosaurs that once hunted us are long gone, we still, in a sense, may be living in their shadows... Because, it turns out, those terrible lizards might be the reason we age faster than any other vertebrate group.

When the Earth Had Supermountains

1.5M views · 7mo ago · 10:51

Supermountains are so ridiculously enormous that, as far as we know, they’ve only ever formed twice, far back in deep time, and they lasted for just a small fraction of our planet’s history. And both of the times when Earth had supermountains seem to coincide with some of the most profound evolutionary shifts in the history of life.

▶️ Mentioned videos: Weathered's over on PBS Terra

Does T. rex Have The Wrong Name?

179K views · 7mo ago · 13:48

Of all the names given to this dinosaur over the years, maybe T. rex shouldn't have been the one that stuck at all... PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios.

The Lagoon That Puzzled Paleontologists for 250 Years

444K views · 8mo ago · 12:04

At the Solnhofen formation in Germany, over 500 fossils of 15 pterosaur species have been found. But it might be hiding a dark secret, one that’s been massively distorting our view of who was living and dying there, and why they left so much evidence behind.

Your Teeth Went From the Outside In

382K views · 8mo ago · 12:07

If you’ve ever experienced dental pain, you've probably wondered why our teeth would evolve to function like an oversensitive alarm system. To find the answer, we have to go way back to when teeth first evolved, as part of the armored skin of ancient fish.

130 Million Years Ago, the World Caught Fire

441K views · 9mo ago · 12:13

It seems that for flowering plants to take over the world, first they may have had to help burn the old one away...and then put those fires out. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to

When Ancient Weeds Fooled Us

658K views · 9mo ago · 13:27

To try everything Brilliant has to offer, visit Ancient weeds began mimicking early crops again and again over the course of the agricultural revolution, as ancient farmers made similar mistakes in different places at different times.And it turns out, some of our closest plant friends today actually started out as uninvited guests that hid their true identity. From a certain evolutionary point of view, these plants tricked us into domesticating them.

How Brawn Led to Brains

722K views · 10mo ago · 13:19

While we often think of brains as some kind of triumph over brawn, it turns out that those two things might not be mutually exclusive, and in fact, they’ve been linked for far longer than we might imagine. PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to

When a Tiny Land Bridge Triggered an Ice Age

909K views · 11mo ago · 12:40

To try everything Brilliant has to offer, visit On land, the Isthmus of Panama kicked off possibly the greatest natural experiment in the history of life on Earth. In the water, this narrow strip of land did something completely different: it divided.