Up Next
Back to Show
Eons
How Ancient Microbes Rode Bug Bits Out to Sea
Season 6
Episode 11
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.
Support Provided By
Season
11:55
What was the first ever drink?
9:45
How did the "false horse," Thoatherium, and its relatives survive?
10:21
Did you know volcanoes created the Atlantic Ocean that we know today?
8:04
Learn about how researchers have discovered a piece of a weird, but critical, time in the deep past…
10:46
Maybe there wasn’t just one so-called "cradle of humankind"?
10:18
How did such a strange plant like cannabis come to be in the first place?
9:34
We’re taking a look towards the deep future. After all, the story is far from over.
7:59
When did we start practicing medicine in its varied, complex forms?
9:11
For some, the rise of venomous elapid snakes was an almost apocalyptic catastrophe.
12:07
When you only have fossils, how do you know if a dinosaur is female or male?
11:57
What are animal-like fossils doing in rocks a billion years old?
9:41
Paranthropus lived alongside our ancestors. If we are still here, why aren’t they?