The record
Every chapter
Newest layers first. Each chapter stands on its own — start anywhere.
Chapter 077
Brazilichthys: the 280-million-year-old fish with jaw holes
Chapter 076
White Sands: Dunes Made From 280-Million-Year-Old Gypsum
Chapter 075
Mesosaurus: a 278-million-year-old embryo inside its mother
Chapter 074
Prehistoric Trackways: 280-million-year-old prints like a baby's hand
Chapter 073
Hallett Cove: a boulder a glacier carried more than 50 km
Chapter 072
Gaiasia: a giant hunter longer than a person, 280 million years old
Chapter 071
Pollen fossil insects: the oldest found, 280 million years old
Chapter 070
Fossil Footprints: A Tortoise Walked on Pie Crust in 1828
Chapter 069
Seymouria: the most primitive reptile that was not a reptile
Chapter 068
Fossil Bite Marks: Oldest Sign Big Predators Ate Big Prey
Chapter 067
Cycads: an ancient family of young species
Chapter 066
Bronze Age Tin: Lost Off Israel, Most Likely From Cornwall
Chapter 065
Jharia Coal Fire: Burning Beside an Indian Town Since 1916
Chapter 064
Wolfcamp Shale: 3 Million Barrels a Day From Permian Mud
Chapter 063
Reptile mummy: skin and ribs from 289 million years ago
Chapter 062
Lizard tail trick: a reptile did it 289 million years ago
Chapter 061
Fossil robot: it walks footprints 294 million years old
Chapter 060
Pangaea: The Largest Desert Earth Has Ever Had
Chapter 059
Giant Amphibians: Two-Meter Hunters of the Coal Swamps
Chapter 058
Meganeura: A Dragonfly as Big as a Hawk
Chapter 057
Chemnitz Petrified Forest: Buried Standing in One Eruption
Chapter 056
Appalachians: You're Standing Inside a Lost Mountain Range
Chapter 055
Hadrian's Wall: Romans built on 297-million-year-old magma
Chapter 054
The Ice Age Before the Dinosaurs: A Fjord in the Desert
Chapter 053
Tully Monster: Every Known Fossil Came From One Coal Pit
Chapter 052
Insect fossil: a landing print 310 million years old
Chapter 051
Fossil Tree: Inside It, the Oldest Reptile Anyone Had Found
Chapter 050
Fossil Fish Brain: 319 Million Years Old, Still Inside the Skull
Chapter 049
Coal: Why About Half of It Is the Same Age
Chapter 048
The Golden Age of Sharks: One Grew an Anvil on Its Back
Chapter 047
The Second Mass Extinction: Between Trilobites and Dinosaurs
Chapter 046
Horseshoe Crabs: 445 Million Years at the Edge of the Sea
Chapter 045
Dunkleosteus: A Bite With the Weight of a Horse
Chapter 044
How Fish Came Onto Land: The Fish That Did a Push-Up
Chapter 043
Prototaxites: The Biggest Thing on Land for 40 Million Years
Chapter 042
The First Forests: From Finger-High Plants to 20-Meter Trees
Chapter 041
Sea Scorpions: A 2.5-Meter Hunter Known From One Claw
Chapter 040
Lungfish: The Fish That Survives a Year in Dry Mud
Chapter 039
The First Mass Extinction: When the Ocean Left the Shore
Chapter 038
Earth's Ring: Our Planet Had a Ring Like Saturn's
Chapter 037
Anomalocaris: The Half-Meter Hunter of the Cambrian Sea
Chapter 036
Hallucigenia: Scientists Thought It Was the Weirdest Animal
Chapter 035
THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION - nobody agrees what switched the animals on
Chapter 034
THE FIRST ANIMAL - seventy years to prove a smear was alive
Chapter 033
THE GARDEN - the seafloor was crowded, and almost nothing had a face
Chapter 032
THE BIG FREEZE - the ice reached the equator, and it happened twice
Chapter 031
A Billion Years Are Missing From the Grand Canyon
Chapter 030
MITOCHONDRIA - the cell that got swallowed and never left
Chapter 029
THE NUCLEAR REACTOR - it ran itself on and off for 100,000 years
Chapter 028
A Billion Years - the day stopped getting longer
Chapter 027
THE DEEP BIOSPHERE - life that survives inside rock
Chapter 026
Sudbury: A Canadian City Built Inside an Asteroid Crater
Chapter 025
The Asteroid - it hit South Africa, and the hole is too big to see
Chapter 024
The Great Oxidation Event - Earth's first pollution disaster
Chapter 023
How Continents Formed: 3 Billion Years of a Moving Map
Chapter 022
Alien Earth - you get about one minute
Chapter 021
The Deepest Hole - we dug for 22 years and the planet won
Chapter 020
The Purple Earth - why life is green, and what it was before
Chapter 019
Photosynthesis - the invention that will poison the world
Chapter 018
VIRUSES - fifty million in a teaspoon, and not one on the family tree
Chapter 017
Every Protein in You Is Left-Handed. Nobody Knows Why.
Chapter 016
The Parts of Life Arrived Already Made
Chapter 015
LUCA - every living thing has the same grandparent
Chapter 014
Life - a battery at the bottom of the ocean
Chapter 013
Mars: Too Small to Keep Its Atmosphere
Chapter 012
The Late Heavy Bombardment - the apocalypse that may never have happened
Chapter 011
The Water - Earth was born too dry
Chapter 010
The First Rain - Earth's entire ocean fell out of the sky
Chapter 009
Zircon - the oldest thing on Earth is smaller than a grain of sand
Chapter 008
The Core: What Is Inside the Earth, All the Way Down
Chapter 007
Earth - why didn't a planet built from collisions just stay molten?
Chapter 006
The Second Moon - it may still be up there, splattered across the far side
Chapter 005
The Moon - it saved Earth before life existed
Chapter 004
Theia - the day Earth had a twin, and ate it
Chapter 003
Jupiter - the wrecking ball that nearly ate the inner solar system
Chapter 002
METEORITE - you can hold something older than the Earth
Chapter 001
The Sun - the day a cloud fell in on itself