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Livyatan and Megalodon lived at the same time...so who are you picking to win a fight between them? (More on the extra hungry Livyatan in our new video:  https://youtu.be/NNF6zoWwtgc ) 

We can partially thank a cooling climate for not having to deal with Livyatan and megalodon. But how have we humans dealt with dropping temperatures, even fairly recent ones? Check out our episode, “How To Survive the Little Ice Age” to learn more about a roughly 450 year old village in southwest Alaska that thrived during this time. 

Today's new video is about Livyatan melvillei: a sea monster so hungry it might have eaten itself to extinction. ( https://youtu.be/NNF6zoWwtgc ) While modern sperm whales use suction feeding, what type of feeding technique did Livyatan use? 

Give us your best, your weirdest, your most honest feedback! At Complexly, helping you understand the world is our thing, so getting a chance to learn about you is a big deal for us. Help us understand who you are by filling out this short survey:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2025SurveyEons 

Webby's voting closes this Thursday 4/17! Can you help us win? Vote for Eons: Surviving Deep Time as best science/education podcast at  https://complexly.info/eonswebby . We really appreciate your support! 

Happy Earth Month from PBS! Join us in celebrating our incredible planet—PBS style! We’re rolling out brand new Earth Month-themed episodes this month. Check out the full playlist here:  https://to.pbs.org/EarthMonth2025 

In this week's episode we talked about the red panda and one of its ancient relatives. Red pandas are NOT related to giant pandas, despite both being named "panda," having false thumbs, and eating bamboo. And if you're thinking, "Bamboo? Aren't bears carnivores?" you're right! So how did the giant panda, a member of the carnivorous Ursidae family, evolve into an herbivore? Despite how it looks, nothing about the history of the giant panda is black and white.
 Find out more in our episode, “The Fuzzy Origins of the Giant Panda” 

The type of landscape where water interacts with the subsurface that creates features like caves and sinkholes is called what? (Find the answer in our new video:  https://youtu.be/knh8skpSQLs ) 

A red panda in... East Tennessee? Pristinailurus, a red panda relative also known as Bristol’s Appalachian panda, had similarities to the red pandas we know today – like in its overall build. But it was much larger in size. It’s estimated that Pristinailurus weighed between 8 and 15 kilograms, compared to the average living red panda at 5 kilograms.

We know this because, unlike the otherwise sparse fossil record of the red panda and its relatives found mostly in Eurasia, a fossil site in Gray, Tennessee preserves two nearly complete skeletons. This rich fossil material gives us insight into the evolution of the red panda family, like the fact that both Pristinailurus and its close relative, the modern red panda, probably descended from an older relative shared with the mountain lion-sized Simocyon. 

Learn more about the discoveries from the Gray fossil site in our new video!  https://youtu.be/knh8skpSQLs 



Image credits: 
Lauren Lyon: photo of a modern red panda and Dr. Steven C. Wallace
Mauricio Anton: reconstruction sketches 

How did Pristinailurus compare in size to modern Red Pandas? ( https://youtu.be/knh8skpSQLs )