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
11:25
What did life look like when the Amazon watershed flowed backwards?
12:10
Did you know the evolution of the butthole was a major breakthrough in animal development?
12:28
Learn about the complicated the history of mammals and their disappearance.
9:19
Where are all the east coast dinosaurs?
10:50
Where did our moon come from? The origin is even stranger than you may imagine.
10:04
The Himalayas changed everything.
11:53
What led to the creation of the trunk?
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"?