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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 the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the

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  1. #1 Fan Favorite
    Eons Season 5 Episode 1 - What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?
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    #1 - What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?

    S5:E1

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. Eons Season 5 Episode 2 - The Reign of the Hell Ants
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    #2 - The Reign of the Hell Ants

    S5:E2

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. Eons Season 5 Episode 3 - The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years
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    #3 - The Pandemic That Lasted 15 Million Years

    S5:E3

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  4. Eons Season 5 Episode 4 - When We First Talked
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    #4 - When We First Talked

    S5:E4

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. Eons Season 5 Episode 5 - The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles
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    #5 - The Return of Giant Skin-Shell Sea Turtles

    S5:E5

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. Eons Season 5 Episode 6 - The Genes We Lost Along the Way
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    #6 - The Genes We Lost Along the Way

    S5:E6

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  7. Eons Season 5 Episode 7 - Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative
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    #7 - Our Bizarre, Possibly Venomous, Relative

    S5:E7

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  8. Eons Season 5 Episode 8 - How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld
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    #8 - How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld

    S5:E8

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. Eons Season 5 Episode 9 - How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed
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    #9 - How Humans Became (Mostly) Right-Handed

    S5:E9

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. Eons Season 5 Episode 10 - How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)
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    #10 - How Chilis Got Spicy (and Why We Love the Burn)

    S5:E10

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. Eons Season 5 Episode 11 - How To Survive the Little Ice Age
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    #11 - How To Survive the Little Ice Age

    S5:E11

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. Eons Season 5 Episode 12 - When Crocs Thrived in the Seas
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    #12 - When Crocs Thrived in the Seas

    S5:E12

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. Eons Season 5 Episode 13 - When Trees Took Over the World
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    #13 - When Trees Took Over the World

    S5:E13

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. Eons Season 5 Episode 14 - How Weasels Got Skinny
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    #14 - How Weasels Got Skinny

    S5:E14

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. Eons Season 5 Episode 15 - Where Are All The Squid Fossils?
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    #15 - Where Are All The Squid Fossils?

    S5:E15

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  16. Eons Season 5 Episode 16 - Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?
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    #16 - Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?

    S5:E16

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. Eons Season 5 Episode 17 - The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals
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    #17 - The Traits That Spawned the Age of Mammals

    S5:E17

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. Eons Season 5 Episode 18 - The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths
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    #18 - The Island of the Last Surviving Mammoths

    S5:E18

    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:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. Eons Season 5 Episode 19 - Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?
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    #19 - Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?

    S5:E19

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  20. Eons Season 5 Episode 20 - How the Starfish Got Its Arms
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    #20 - How the Starfish Got Its Arms

    S5:E20

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  21. Eons Season 5 Episode 21 - The Creature That Stumped Darwin
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    #21 - The Creature That Stumped Darwin

    S5:E21

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  22. Eons Season 5 Episode 22 - How Pollination Got Going Twice
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    #22 - How Pollination Got Going Twice

    S5:E22

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  23. Eons Season 5 Episode 23 - How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate
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    #23 - How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate

    S5:E23

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  24. Eons Season 5 Episode 24 - How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon
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    #24 - How a Mass Extinction Event Created the Amazon

    S5:E24

    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?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  25. Eons Season 5 Episode 25 - When Mammals Only Went Out At Night
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    #25 - When Mammals Only Went Out At Night

    S5:E25

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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Season 5 Ratings Summary

"What Happened to the World's Biggest Beaver?" is the best rated episode of "Eons" season 5. It scored /10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 1/13/2021. This episode is rated 0.0 points higher than the second-best, "The Reign of the Hell Ants".