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How Eating Plants Shaped Life on Land | Life and Death on Pangea

Season 9 Episode 2 | 25m 37s

The first herbivorous vertebrates evolve on the side of the amniote family tree leading to mammals. Alongside them come apex predators, like Dimetrodon. But the Early Permian Period ends in a mystery: is it an extinction event or just a fossil gap?

Aired: 07/28/26
What about the Great Dying caused a global age of mutant plants?
During the Permian Period many tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates, took to life in the trees.
Around 300 million years ago sails were all the rage, but we're still not sure what they were for.
For millions of years after the Great Dying microbes ruled the Earth.
How did Homotherium evolve to be so successful? The answer may lie in the rise of the Tibetan plate.
The mystery of what non-flying dinosaurs were doing with their feathered wings has a new hypothesis.
What did ancient people once know about these bizarre megafauna that we’ve since forgotten?
5,700 years ago, woolly mammoths crossed a remote tundra island off Alaska.
Why did vertebrates conquer both the land and the air before the depths of the sea?
Long-extinct dinosaurs may still haunt us—possibly driving us to age faster than any vertebrate.