What Was The First Dinosaur?

04/11/22 • 18 min

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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 dinosaur might tell us something about how the biggest mass extinction of all time influenced the course of life on our planet.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

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The Case of the Most Famous Fake Human Fossil

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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 to unravel the identity of the fraudster, and explore how this hoax impacted the study of human origins.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.

Next Episode

The Extinct Human Species Discovered Deep Within A Cave System

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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 changing our minds about what behaviors we think of as uniquely human.

Eons: Mysteries of Deep Time is produced by Complexly for PBS.