It’s
#AnkylosaurWeek
! While clubs are practically synonymous with ankylosaurs, we’ve only started to get to the bottom of how they worked and how this unusual anatomy developed in the first place. Watch here:
Whenever the world starts to seem too big and complex and scary, just remember that a goddamned boat turned sideways can drive the whole global economy to a halt. Sometimes, things are really very simple.
It arose from rhino ancestors that were a lot smaller, but Paraceratherium would take a different evolutionary path. Believe it or not, it became so big that it probably got close to what scientists think might be the actual upper limit for a land mammal.
These "hell pigs" walked on hooves, like pigs do, but had longer legs, almost like deer. They had hunched backs, a bit like rhinos or bison. But as is often the case, there is some evolutionary method to this anatomical madness.
#NationalPigDay
For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again. What is it about the crab’s form that makes it so evolutionarily successful that non-crabs are apparently jealous of it?
Recently went head to head with
@FossilLibrarian
on a new episode of
@SciShow
Quiz Show.
@hankgreen
kept it a clean fight. And I'm not allowed to say who won, but I think our faces say it all.
Me, to a black friend in Minneapolis: I don't understand what's happening to our country.
Black friend in Minneapolis: It's always been like this. You just never noticed until now.
New episode!
While clubs are practically synonymous with ankylosaurs, we’ve only started to get to the bottom of how they worked and how this unusual anatomy developed in the first place.
It’s important to us that you understand how big this beaver was. Just like modern beavers, it was semiaquatic. The difference is that today’s beavers do a pretty special thing - one that the giant beaver probably didn't, or couldn’t, do.
“That Time It Rained for Two Million Years”
“When Giant Scorpions Swarmed the Seas”
A lot of stuff has happened in 4.5 billion years.
I prompted GPT-3 with epic
@EonsShow
episode titles to see what the next billion years might hold.
For those of you who have been asking about how things are going in my personal life, here's an update:
I have a crush on Goldie, and Apollo is the mentor I never had.
#AnimalCrossing
Paleontologists have been studying nodosaurs since the 1830s, but nobody had ever found a specimen like Borealopelta before. The key to its exceptional preservation was where it ended up after it died and how it got there.
Untangling the origins of Beelzebufo -- the giant frog that lived alongside the dinosaurs -- turns out to be one of the most bedeviling problems in the history of amphibians.
How could a body of water as big as the Mediterranean just... disappear? It took decades to start to figure out what caused one of the greatest vanishing acts in Earth's history:
Flight attendant: Is there a doctor onboard?
Ma: *nudges me* Should've been you, hon
Me: Ma, stop
Ma: Not asking for a content manager, are they?
Me: Ma, the man's having a medical emergency
Ma: You want to see if he's having a problem with his narrative arc?
#youtube
Our early human ancestors were under constant threat of attack, and it turns that this time when we were prey may be responsible for the adaptations that allowed us to become so successful.
Strange landmarks in the Pacific Northwest are the result of one of the most powerful and bizarre episodes in geologic history. We collaborated with
@SciShow
to tell you the story of floods that devastated this region for 7,000 years:
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird and kind of upsetting that NASA has started referring to all of its rovers with female pronouns? Weren't Spirit and Opportunity just ... machines? Like, what is this, the Shipping News?
perennial grasses can live 500 years and they pump carbon into the soil to feed soil microbes. They co-evolved with large herds of grazing animals which help cycle their biomass (with the help of dung beetles) and with proper planning, cows can do that same work...
girls love it when you die in a layer of exposed mud and quickly fossilize as you're covered in silt until three million years later a paleoanthropologist describes your mandible as "robust"
The rise and fall of ancient walruses, and how modern ones got their tusks, is a story that spans almost 20 million years. And it looks like tusks didn’t have anything to do with how or what these animals ate.
Amazing that
#Instagram
realized its platform was so toxic and phony that it had to make a kids' version. Then stopped the kids' version and ... is keeping the original as toxic and phony as ever.
Next week's video is one of the most ambitious we've ever attempted on
@okaytobesmart
in both depth of research and the enormity of the question. Our friends from
@PBSSpaceTime
and
@EonsShow
will be helping us bring it to you. Very excited for everyone to see this!
Are you in
#Valentines
mood already? Or do you just wonder where your heart comes from - evolutionary speaking? This is the only ❤️Love Story ❤️you need to watch today: from
@EonsShow
!
#ScienceIsMyLoveLanguage
A computer generated image of Caesar dressed today, based off the "Chiaramonti Version" (16th cent.)
The bust portrays Caesar at about the age of 45, showing some wrinkles, broad forehead, direct eyes, Roman nose, smallish jawline with a slightly prominent chin (pic HistoryLeak).
The reason Cambrian creatures look so foreign to us is that most of the organisms we're regularly exposed to today have different body plans. BUT! Every now and then we're reminded that body plans that are a HALF BILLION years old are still around.
@sithiche_sgith
@EonsShow
A tough question but a fair one. I do have a rather ruddy complexion, and it definitely intensifies in the summer, as will happen. But if you look at last week's episode (When Humans Were Prey), you'll note that I seem more pasty than usual. Better or worse?
✨ TOMORROW! ✨
Will you be tuning in for our
#NationalFossilDay
livestream? The Eons team will compete against some of our friends from
@SciShow
in a game of Fossil Feud! (Think Family Feud, but... paleontology). We can't wait!
I’m screaming that these brothers are literally having an argument on live telly about who’s their mum’s favourite son,amongst an international pandemic I-
We did it!!! We hit our first Patreon goal! We'll celebrate with a livestream just for patrons, date TBD! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Join the party over at 🎉
Ah, yes, the three types of science communicators:
- man with lab coat and bad puns
- woman with fun earrings and warm personality
- “I am going to have this venomous animal bite me on purpose.”
Pro tip: It seems that reading at length about mass extinction events is pretty good and getting you through a bout of
#anxiety
. Like, it could be so much worse.
How did two microbes change the world? By basically inventing endosymbiosis. And this happened, not once
not twice
but THREE times in the history of life on Earth.
Check it out!
#paleontology
#fossils
#nature
#pbs
#YouTube