Synapsids were the world’s first-ever terrestrial megafauna but the vast majority of these giants were doomed to extinction. However some lived on, keeping a low profile among the dinosaurs. And now our world is the way it is because of...

Sea scorpions thrived for 200 million years, coming in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Over time, they developed a number of adaptations--from crushing claws to flattened tails for swimming. And some of them adapted by getting so big...

This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??

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.

Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago--Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South America. And it turns out that a lot of what we recognize about the southern hemisphere can be traced back to that...

There was a time in Earth’s history that was so stable, geologists once called it the Boring Billion. But the fact is, this period was anything but boring. In fact, it set the stage for our modern version of plate tectonics - and...

A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years of taking to the water - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.

Back in the late Miocene epoch, there was an island--or maybe a group of islands-- in the Mediterranean Sea that was populated with fantastic giant beasts. It’s a lesson in the very strange, but very real, powers of natural selection.

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...

The story of the egg spans millions of years, from the first vertebrates that dared to venture onto land to today’s mammals, including the platypus, and of course birds. Like chickens? We’re here to tell you: The egg came first.

In the middle of the Cambrian, life on land was about to get a little more crowded. And those newcomers would end up changing the world. The arrival of plants on land would make the world colder, drain much of the oxygen out of the...

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...

In 1977, a farmer was plowing his field on a plateau high in the Andes mountains when he stumbled upon a giant fossilized skeleton. How did this giant marine reptile end up high in the Andes Mountains?

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.

Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.

A massive new study has just been released showing that human activities are threatening Earth’s other life forms in some very bad ways. One million species may be at risk of extinction. Just let that sink in. Isn’t the Anthropocene...

Reading. You’re doing it right now. I bet you don’t even have to think about it. But have you ever wondered what’s happening in your brain to turn all these weird symbols into meaning? This video will teach you how to read all over...

The developing world is most affected by climate change but has contributed the least to the problem. Meanwhile, rich countries historically exacerbated the environmental crisis and grew wealthy as a result -- but aren't helping...

2023 Audacious Project grantee Wanjira Mathai is at the forefront of re-greening the planet. Through the forest restoration initiative Restore Local, she's working to help both Africa's people and its landscapes flourish. Learn more...

From the 1650s through the late 1800's, European colonists descended on South Africa. They sought to claim the region, becoming even more aggressive after discovering the area's abundant natural resources. To support their claims to the...

Ah, spring. As Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, it's your favorite season. Humans and animals look to you to balance the bounty of the natural world which, like any self-respecting Goddess, you do with a pair of magical dice. But then,...

When we picture the first tetrapods, or land vertebrates, crawling out of the ocean, we probably imagine they need legs. But evolution also had to bestow another important adaptation before they could leave the water: blinking!

You'd think that the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would be basically symmetrical -- that since our planet is a ball, the climate, temperature, and weather patterns would be the same on top as on the bottom. But there are some...

If you see an acorn sprout under an oak tree, you're seeing that tree's grandchild. Here's why half of all higher plants are invisible, and why it works for them.