A New History of Life

Learn the history of life in a dramatic new way with this fascinating course that draws upon biology, earth science, and other disciplines to explain life's mysterious origins.

• By This Professor
• 01: The Interconnected Earth
• 02: The Vast Depths of Earth Time
• 03: Fossil Clocks
• 04: Paleontologists as Detectives
• 05: The Shifting Surface of Planet Earth
• 06: Earliest Origins-Formation of the Planet
• 07: Origins of Land, Ocean, and Air
• 08: The Early Chemical Evolution of Life
• 09: Hints of the First Life Forms
• 10: How Life Transformed the Early Earth
• 11: Snowball Earth-Another Crisis
• 12: Metazoans-Life Grows Up
• 13: Incredible Variety-The Cambrian Explosion
• 14: Window to a Lost World-The Burgess Shale
• 15: The Forgotten Fossils in Earth's Story
• 16: Introduction to the Great Mass Extinctions
• 17: The Collapse of Earth's First Eden
• 18: Making the Break for Land
• 19: Getting a Backbone-The Story of Vertebrates
• 20: The Evolution of Jaws
• 21: These Limbs Were Made for Walking?
• 22: Tiktaalik-The Search for a Fishapod
• 23: Carboniferous Giants and Coal
• 24: Amniotes-The Shape of Things to Come
• 25: Permian Extinction-Life's Worst Catastrophe
• 26: Finding the Killer-The Greenhouse Earth
• 27: The Dinosaurs Take Over
• 28: Letting the Dinosaurs Speak-Paleobehavior
• 29: Conquering the Air-The Evolution of Flight
• 30: Monsters of the Deep-Mesozoic Oceans
• 31: The Cretaceous Earth-A Tropical Planet
• 32: The Sky Is Falling-End of the Dinosaurs
• 33: The Collision of North and South America
• 34: The Rise of Mammals and the Last Ice Age
• 35: The Humble Origins of Human Beings
• 36: The Conscious Earth