Eons poster

TV series

Eons

2017TV-Y76 seasons

Join hosts Hank Green, Kallie Moore, and Blake de Pastino as they take you on a journey through the history of life on Earth. From the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the Mesozoic Era — the so-called “Age of Dinosaurs” -- right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age. The evolutionary history of mammals including humans and other modern species is explored with these amazing paleontology experts.

Availability

Not streaming in United States

Checked Jul 22, 2026

Eons premiered June 26, 2017. We don't have a confirmed streaming, rental or purchase option yet.

Synopsis

Join hosts Hank Green, Kallie Moore, and Blake de Pastino as they take you on a journey through the history of life on Earth. From the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the Mesozoic Era — the so-called “Age of Dinosaurs” -- right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age. The evolutionary history of mammals including humans and other modern species is explored with these amazing paleontology experts.

Season 5 episodes

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Episode 1

What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?

10m

It’s important to us that you understand how big this beaver was. Just like modern beavers, it was semiaquatic -- it lived both on the land and in the water. The difference is that today’s beavers do a pretty special thing - one that the giant beaver probably didn’t, or couldn’t, do.

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Episode 2

The Reign of the Hell Ants

10m

This ancient species had the same six legs and segmented body that we’d recognize from an ant today. But it also had a huge, scythe-like jaw and a horn coming out of its head. This bizarre predator belonged to a group known as “hell ants.” But they’re gone now, and we’re still trying to figure out why.

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Episode 3

The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years

10m

Our DNA holds evidence of a huge, ancient pandemic, one that touched many different species, spanned the globe, and lasted for more than 15 million years.

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Episode 4

When We First Talked

10m

The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s taken several million years to get to this moment where we can tell you about how it took several million years for us to get here.

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Episode 5

The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles

10m

The biggest turtle ever described wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles or any other living sea turtles. But it looks like there are some things about being a giant, skin-shelled sea turtle that just work, no matter where, or when, you lived.

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Episode 6

The Genes We Lost Along the Way

10m

Our DNA holds thousands of dead genes and we’ve only just begun to unravel their stories. But one thing is already clear: we’re not just defined by the genes that we’ve gained over the course of our evolution, but also by the genes that we’ve lost along the way.

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Episode 7

Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative

10m

It's possible Euchambersia possessed venom about 20 million years before the first lizards and over 150 million years before the first snakes evolved. We’ve teamed up Sarah Suta from Bizarre Beasts to explore the story of venomous mammals, both living and extinct.

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Episode 8

How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld

10m

Elongated tubes, flat ribbons, and other “worm-like” body plans were so varied and abundant that a part of the Ediacaran is sometimes known as Wormworld. But in the end, the ancient Wormworld was ended by the actions of its very own worms.

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Episode 9

How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed

10m

No other placental mammal that we know of prefers one side of the body so consistently, not even our closest primate relatives. But being right-handed may have deep evolutionary roots in our lineage. And yet, being a leftie does seem to come with some unexpected advantages.

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Episode 10

How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)

10m

Today, chilis are the most widely cultivated spice crop in the world - grown everywhere from their native home in the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia. But how and why did chilis evolve this weird, fiery trick in the first place? And why did we learn to love that spicy burn?

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Episode 11

How To Survive the Little Ice Age

10m

Nunalleq, a village in what’s today southwest Alaska, seemed to have thrived during the Little Ice Age. How did this village manage to survive and prosper during this time period? And what caused this period of climate change in the first place?

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Episode 12

When Crocs Thrived in the Seas

10m

While dinosaurs were dominating the land, the metriorhynchids were thriving in the seas. But taking that plunge wasn’t easy because it takes a very special set of traits to fully dedicate yourself to life at sea.

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Episode 13

When Trees Took Over the World

10m

420 million years ago, the forest floor of what's now New York was covered with a plant that didn’t look like a tree at all, except its roots were made of wood. Instead of looking up to learn about the evolution of trees, it turns out paleobotanists should’ve been looking down all along.

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Episode 14

How Weasels Got Skinny

10m

Weasels have an extreme body plan that may push the boundaries of what’s metabolically possible. So when and how did this happen? Why'd the weasels get so skinny?

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Episode 15

Where Are All The Squid Fossils?

10m

It might surprise you but cephalopods have a pretty good fossil record, with one major exception. If squids were swimming around in the same oceans as their closest cousins, where did all the squids go?

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Episode 16

Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?

10m

At Tanque Loma, at least 22 giant ground sloths in the genus Eremotherium met their end. Of the five hypotheses that researchers proposed for what killed the sloths, the best supported one right now is that they died surrounded by their own poop.

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Episode 17

The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals

10m

Lots of the traits we think of as defining us as mammals show up pretty early, during the time of the dinosaurs. And, in some cases, they show up a lot earlier and in things that weren’t mammals at all.

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Episode 18

The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths

10m

The Wrangel Island mammoths would end up being the final survivors of a once-widespread genus. In their final years, after having thrived in many parts of the world for millions of years, the very last mammoths that ever lived experienced what’s known as a mutational meltdown.

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Episode 19

Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?

10m

The remains of medium-sized predatory dinosaurs are pretty rare in places where giant predators like T. rex existed. Which is weird, because that’s just not how ecosystems work today.

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Episode 20

How the Starfish Got Its Arms

10m

The story of how the starfish got its arms reminds us that even animals that might be familiar to us today can have incredibly deep histories - ones that stretch back almost half a billion years.

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Episode 21

The Creature That Stumped Darwin

10m

Toxodon was one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago after thriving in isolation for millions of years. And its fossils would inspire a revolutionary thinker to tackle a bigger mystery than Toxodon itself: evolution.

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Episode 22

How Pollination Got Going Twice

10m

The world of the Jurassic was a lot like ours - similar interactions between plants and insects were happening, but the players have changed over time. Because it looks like pollination by insects actually got going twice.

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Episode 23

How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate

10m

The Toba supervolcano was the biggest explosive eruption of the last 2.5 million years. And humans were around to see it, or at least feel its effects! But what were those effects?

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Episode 24

How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon

10m

The Amazon rainforest of South America is a paradise for flowering plants. But long ago, the landscape that we now think of as the Amazon looked very different. And would you believe that the entire revolution of the Amazon began with just one day?

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Episode 25

When Mammals Only Went Out At Night

10m

For decades, scientists believed dinosaurs were diurnal and tiny mammals were nocturnal. But as researchers have uncovered more mammalian fossils and studied the biology of different dinosaur species, they’ve found some surprising results.

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Episode 26

How Ancient Whales May Have Changed the Deep Ocean

10m

It looks like the evolution of ocean-going whales like Borealodon may have affected communities found in the deep ocean, like the ones found around geothermal vents. And it turns out that when a whale dies, that’s just the beginning of the story.

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Episode 27

How Dinosaurs Coupled Up

10m

Dinosaur mating behavior has been the subject of a lot of speculation, but what can we actually say about it from the fossil record?

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Episode 28

When It Was Too Hot for Leaves

10m

Plants first made their way onto land at least 470 million years ago but for their first 80 million years, leaves as we know them today didn’t exist. What held them back?

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Episode 29

Why The Paleo Diet Couldn't Save The Neanderthals

10m

These relatives of ours lived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years. They were expert toolmakers, using materials like stone, wood, and animal bone. They were also skilled hunters and foragers, and may even have created cave art. So what caused the decline and disappearance of their population? Well, in a way...it could’ve been us. But maybe not in the way you might’ve heard.

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Episode 30

The Fossil Record In Your Mouth

10m

The hardened residue scraped off your teeth at the dentist is called your dental calculus, and your dental calculus is the only part of your body that actually fossilizes while you’re alive! And scientists have figured out how to study & trace the evolutionary history of these microbes over tens of millions of years.

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Episode 31

When Pterosaurs Walked

10mfinale

If you know one thing about pterosaurs, it’s that they’re flyers. And while pterosaurs may be well-known for their domination of the skies in the Mesozoic Era, they didn’t live their entire lives in the air. So how did we figure this out? And what were they like when they finally came down?

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Episode information updated Jul 25, 2026

More about Eons

Cast

Kallie MooreSelf
Blake de PastinoSelf
Michelle Barboza-RamirezSelf
Hank GreenSelf

Credits

Created by
Hank Green

Production details

Status
Returning Series
Series type
Scripted
Episodes
246
Original language
English

Networks & production

  • PBS Digital StudiosUnited States
  • YouTube
  • PBS Digital StudiosUnited States

Themes

cenozoicdinosaurfossilmesozoicpaleontologistpaleontologypaleozoic