By the end of the Devonian Period, the land had exploded with plant life and ancient invertebrates. There was also Tiktaalik - one of the first known vertebrates able and willing to move from the water to land. Our distant relative figured out how to survive in this dramatically different environment, can you? -- Eons is a production of Complexly f…

Introducing Eons: Surviving Deep Time! Season 2 of the Eons podcast is a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past? -- Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios. If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pl…

Season 2 of the Eons podcast is coming soon! This season will be a longform exploration of a question we’re often asked: how long could a human survive if they were dropped into a particular period of the geologic past?De către PBS

In this episode you’ll learn the dates, location and exciting line up of speakers at the 15th BCPA Symposium

In this episode, you'll hear about some wonderful free Zoom Fossil Talks in March and May 2024. There is no need to register. You can head on over to www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com and note the talk dates and times. The link will be shared live on the site on the day of the talk. Upcoming Free Fossil Lectures via Zoom: Sun, March 24, 2024, 2PM PS…

Victoria is a vertebrate palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist and is the leading expert on the palaeobiology of the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs. She has named several new species of ankylosaurs, studied how they used and evolved their charismatic armour and weaponry, and investigated how their biogeography was shaped by dispersals…

Vancouver Island holds many wonderful fossils and incredible folk excited to explore them. The Dove Creek Mosasaur, which includes the teeth and lower jawbone of a large marine reptile was discovered by Rick Ross of the Vancouver Island Palaeontological Society, during the construction of the Inland Highway, near the Dove Creek intersection on Vanc…

A Taste for Studies: Tortoise Urine, Armadillos, Fried Tarantula & Goat EyeballsWhile eating study specimens is not in vogue today, it was once common practice for researchers in the 1700-1880s. Charles Darwin belonged to a club dedicated to tasting exotic meats, and in his first book wrote almost three times as much about dishes like armadillo and…

In the late 1930s, our understanding of the transition of fish to tetrapods — and the eventual jump to modern vertebrates — took an unexpected leap forward. The evolutionary a'ha came from a single partial fossil skull found on the shores of a riverbank in Eastern Canada. Meet the Stegocephalian, Elpistostege watsoni, an extinct genus of finned tet…

North America's Rocky Mountain Trench, also known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks, is a large valley on the western side of the northern part of North America's Rocky Mountains. This massive rift valley stretches all the way from the British Columbia-Yukon border south to the St. Ignatius area and can be seen from space.…

We sometimes find fossils preserved by pyrite. They are prized as much for their pleasing gold colouring as for their scientific value as windows into the past. If you have pyrite specimens and want to stop them from decaying, you can give them a 'quick' soak in water (hour max) then wash them off, and dry them thoroughly in a warm oven. Cool, then…

This is a blast from the past and the tale of how I was bitten and smitten by the mineral bug. I hope you enjoy this story from my youth growing up on the northern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada—and the minerals that can be found there.

Extinct Giants: The Woolly Mammoths. These massive beasts roamed the icy cold tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago making a living by digging through the snow and ice to get to the tough grasses beneath. The last known group of woolly mammoths survived until about 1650 B.C.—over a th…

Learn all about the gear you might need out in the field fossil collecting. What you'll need depends on where you collect and what time of year you go but this will get you started and set up for success.

Join in for a chilly visit to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard between mainland Norway and the North Pole. This one of the world’s northernmost inhabited areas with rugged terrain, glaciers and polar bear. The rocks here house beautiful Triassic ammonoids, bivalves and primitive ichthyosaurs. To see some of the fossils from here, visit: https:…

Joe Moysiuk is a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, with research interests in macroevolution, evolutionary developmental biology, and the origin of animal life. He has extensive experience with fossils from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada, one of the world’s most significant fossil sites.As part of his continuum of Burgess S…

Studies have found Neandertal DNA in people living in - and descended from - populations in Europe, Asia, and, most recently, Africa. So, in a way, these ancient relatives of ours are somehow both here and gone. We know we shared the planet with them in the not-so-distant past… But what happened to them? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by …

Welcome to Season Seven of the Fossil Huntress Podcast. In this episode you’ll hear about the many yummy fossil projects and field trips over the past few months including a trip to Vancouver Island’s Wild West Coast, great talks & a TV project.

The Denisovans are a human relative discovered just over a decade ago. The DNA from the very small number of fossils found suggest they were around as long as the Neanderthals. Yet anthropologists have gathered way more evidence for Neanderthals. Where are the Denisovans hiding? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 …

How do we start to reconstruct the soundscapes of the past? Using modern environments, living representatives of ancient groups, and fossil anatomy, paleontologists have attempted to figure out what the past sounded like. And so far we’ve found the lead singers change, but the backup singers remain familiar. Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced…

Between 1927 and 1937, paleontologists excavated fossils from about 40 members of the species that today we call Homo erectus from a site in China known as Dragon Bone Hill. And then World War II broke out and the fossils were lost. In this episode, we trace their path as far as the historical record will take us and explore what might’ve happened …

Former host of Eons and our current boss Hank Green joins Kallie, Michelle, and Blake for a Q&A episode where we discuss everything from why all this matters to what specifically did sauropods taste like? Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.De către PBS

There's something strange about the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. The fossils found there date back to the Late Jurassic Period and one species accounts for roughly two-thirds of all the bones: Allosaurus fragilis. But what killed all these big predators? Was the site itself a deadly trap, like the La Brea Tar Pits? Or was it a poisoned spring? …

Deep in the Rising Star Cave system lies a mystery of paleoanthropology: a chamber filled with the bones of Homo naledi. How this species evolved, how it’s related to us and other human relatives, and how it got so deep in the caves are among the many open questions researchers are trying to answer, and what they’re starting to uncover might mean c…

Exactly where and when dinosaurs first evolved are still open questions in paleontology; it’s hard to even say what the first dinosaur was. In this episode, we dig into the evidence for dinosaur origins in the Triassic Period (between 252 and 201 million years ago) and try to understand the world they lived in. Being able to point to the first dino…

This episode is a mystery in the most classic literary sense of the word. It’s a whodunit detective story that spans more than a century - the saga of the Piltdown Man Hoax. From a gravel pit in Sussex, we follow the faked fossils through history, to what’s now the Natural History Museum in London, where scientists are using new technologies to try…

Kirk Johnson is a geologist, paleobotanist, and the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs, and he is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists. Bright, funny and a deli…

While the famous La Brea Tar Pits are well-known for charismatic Ice Age megafauna, like sabertooth cats and dire wolves, a lesser-known discovery from the Pits is the partial skeleton of a human woman. In this episode, we walk through what the Tar Pits can tell us about the ecosystem of Los Angeles over the last 50,000 years and why La Brea Woman …

Dig into the past and explore the greatest mysteries of natural history with the team behind the hit YouTube series PBS Eons. From the dawn of the dinosaurs to downtown Los Angeles, we’re covering what we know — and what we still don’t know — about the history of life on Earth. Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS. © 2022 P…

2022 Palaeontology / Paleontology Lecture Series with all of you. Zoom Link: www.fossiltalksandfieldtrips.com SPRING 2022 Kicking off 2022 is Danna Staaf, the Cephalopodiatrist with Cephalopods are the New Dinosaurs, Sun, February 12, 2022 at 2PM PST. Cephalopods, Earth's first truly substantial animals, are still among us. Their fascinating family…

The Rocky Mountain Trench is one of the few geologic wonders we can see from space. It is known as the Valley of a Thousand Peaks or simply the Trench — a large valley on the western side of the northern part of North America's Rocky Mountains.

A mighty marine reptile was excavated on the Trent River near Courtenay on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The excavation is the culmination of a three-year palaeontological puzzle. The fossil remains are those of an elasmosaur — a group of long-necked marine reptiles found in the Late Triassic to the Late Cretaceous s…

Nothing says Happy 2022 like free prizes. Thank you to each and every one of you who spent time with me in 2021. It is time to wrap up the year and welcome in 2022. I wish you health, happiness and many fossils.... perhaps as prizes. That's right. It is time to celebrate you! We're starting off 2022 with some great giveaways. Head on over to the AR…

Love the Wild: Moose. One of the most impressive mammals of the Pacific Northwest and the largest living member of the deer family are Moose. They are taller than everyone you know and weighs more than your car. You may encounter them lumbering solo along the edge of rivers and lakes, taking a refreshing swim or happily snacking on short grasses, w…

Fossil Field Trip to the Cretaceous Capilano Three Brothers Formation — Vancouver has a spectacular mix of mountains, forests, lowlands, inlets and rivers all wrapped lovingly by the deep blue of the Salish Sea. When we look to the North Shore, the backdrop is made more spectacular by the Coast Mountains with a wee bit of the Cascades tucked in beh…