NaN/100 votes#1 - What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?
Season 5 Episode 1 - Aired 1/13/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#2 - The Reign of the Hell Ants
Season 5 Episode 2 - Aired 1/21/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#3 - The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years
Season 5 Episode 3 - Aired 1/28/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#4 - When We First Talked
Season 5 Episode 4 - Aired 2/11/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#5 - The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles
Season 5 Episode 5 - Aired 2/17/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#6 - The Genes We Lost Along the Way
Season 5 Episode 6 - Aired 2/24/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#7 - Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative
Season 5 Episode 7 - Aired 3/10/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#8 - How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld
Season 5 Episode 8 - Aired 3/18/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#9 - How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed
Season 5 Episode 9 - Aired 3/24/2021
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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NaN/100 votes#10 - How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)
Season 5 Episode 10 - Aired 4/7/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#11 - How To Survive the Little Ice Age
Season 5 Episode 11 - Aired 4/20/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#12 - When Crocs Thrived in the Seas
Season 5 Episode 12 - Aired 4/29/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#13 - When Trees Took Over the World
Season 5 Episode 13 - Aired 5/12/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#14 - How Weasels Got Skinny
Season 5 Episode 14 - Aired 5/20/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#15 - Where Are All The Squid Fossils?
Season 5 Episode 15 - Aired 6/3/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#16 - Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?
Season 5 Episode 16 - Aired 7/14/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#17 - The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals
Season 5 Episode 17 - Aired 7/21/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#18 - The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths
Season 5 Episode 18 - Aired 7/29/2021
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.
Director: N/A
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- NaN/100 votes
#19 - Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?
Season 5 Episode 19 - Aired 8/12/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#20 - How the Starfish Got Its Arms
Season 5 Episode 20 - Aired 8/24/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#21 - The Creature That Stumped Darwin
Season 5 Episode 21 - Aired 9/1/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#22 - How Pollination Got Going Twice
Season 5 Episode 22 - Aired 9/16/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#23 - How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate
Season 5 Episode 23 - Aired 9/23/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#24 - How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon
Season 5 Episode 24 - Aired 9/29/2021
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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- NaN/100 votes
#25 - When Mammals Only Went Out At Night
Season 5 Episode 25 - Aired 10/7/2021
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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The Best Episodes of Eons Season 5
Every episode of Eons Season 5 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Eons Season 5!
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...
Genre:Documentary
Season 5 Ratings Summary
"What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?" is the best rated episode of "Eons" season 5. It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 1/13/2021. This episode is rated NaN points higher than the second-best, "The Reign of the Hell Ants".