Listen to Episode 95 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or just search for it in your podcast app!
Most famous extinction events are very animal-focused, but the end of the Carboniferous saw one of the worst plant mass extinctions in Earth history. In this episode, we discuss the specifics, the background, the causes, and the impacts of the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse.
Listen to Episode 85 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever podcasts are sold!
We’ve talked about mass extinction many times, and indeed we’ve covered four out of the famous “Big Five” that so shaped the history of life on Earth. This time, we’re completing the set, discussing the earliest of the five, exploring the setting, causes, and results of the Ordovician Mass Extinction.
Listen to Episode 75 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast place!
The history of life on Earth is marked by tragedy. Life as we know it only exists because more ancient life lost the fight for survival. In this episode, we discuss the most mysterious – and possibly the most tragic – extinction event in Earth history, the most important transformation our planet has experienced since its formation: the Great Oxidation Event.
Listen to Episode 65 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you’d like!
It’s Episode 65, and you know what that means … extinction! This time, we address what is traditionally considered one of the “Big 5,” but doesn’t seem to be “one” extinction at all. Geologists and paleontologists continue to work at piecing together the various causes and consequences that create an extended series – several millions years long – of very unfortunate events that altogether comprise the Late Devonian Extinction(s).
Listen to Episode 55 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere they have podcasts!
Usually, when we talk about mass extinction, we’re referring to events long past. But scary levels of extinction are a fact of our current world, as well. In this episode, we discuss just how bad our current ecological crisis is, what’s causing it, what we can do about it, and whether or not the current state of affairs truly deserves to be called The Sixth Extinction.
Listen to Episode 45 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or other podcast providers.
252 million years ago, there was an event so dramatic that it wiped out almost all life on the planet; so dramatic that it brought an end to the entire 300-million-year-long Paleozoic Era; so dramatic that it has come to be known as “The Great Dying.” In this episode, we discuss Earth history’s worst mass extinction: The Permian Extinction.
Listen to Episode 35 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast-place!
It’s time for another extinction episode!
Is extinction truly forever? In this episode, we discuss the stirrings of the real-life science seeking to bring back some semblance of the creatures of the past: De-extinction.
Listen to Episode 25 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other place you get podcasts!
Episode 5 and 15 were both about major extinction events of the past. Now, another ten episodes later, we’re back on the subject. This time, it’s the most recent major prehistoric extinction event, the one that took out the mammoths and other Ice Age giants, the first such event that our own species may have had a hand in: the Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction.
Listen to Episode 15 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or that other place you get podcasts!
In Episode 5, we talked about the K-Pg mass extinction – the one that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. This episode, we discussed the extinction that started the Age of Dinosaurs: The end-Triassic mass extinction.
Listen to Episode 5 on PodBean, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast source of choice!
66 million years ago, the planet experienced one of the most devastating – and famous – events in its 4.6-billion-year history. On this episode … The K-Pg Mass Extinction.
The Common Descent Podcast 