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The Most Groundbreaking Scientist You’ve Never Heard of – TED-Ed | Addison Anderson (2013)

February 11, 2018 at 11:41 am / Evolution, Global Patterns, Natural history

Seventeenth-century Danish geologist Nicolas Steno [11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686] studied anatomical details of many species including cadavers at a young age. Steno’s contributions to geology influenced Charles Lyell, James Hutton and Charles Darwin. Here in this TED-Ed short animation Addison Anderson tells Steno’s little-known legacy. Steno was a groundbreaking scientist demonstrating the power of empiricism a scientific tradition that was started by Aristotle. Steno, in his Dissertationis prodromus of 1669 is credited with four of the defining […]

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Devonian Fossil Forest of Gilboa

January 10, 2018 at 5:23 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

Spectacularly preserved plant remains unearthed at the Riverside Quarry site in Gilboa, NY date from the Middle Devonian period, approximately 390 million years ago. The site of the “oldest fossil forest” was found in the 1920s. Here in this playlist you can watch six videos highlighting the findings. The videos feature two paleontologists William Stein of the Binghamtom University and Christopher Berry of Cardiff University. The Devonian period was a hugely transformational time for land plants evolving towards forest ecosystems. […]

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The Tiniest Fossils – Shelf Life/AMNH (2017)

January 3, 2018 at 9:20 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

Foraminiferans or “forams” are extremely fast responding single-celled shelled organisms to climatic changes. They can be extremely small for one could easily mistake foraminifera fossils for flecks of dust. Over thousands and millions of years these tiny specimens adjusted their shapes based on Earth’s climatic fluctuations. Here in this AMNH production scientific assistant Bushra Hussaini, researcher Ellen Thomas, curator Neil Landman, and intern Shaun Mahmood show how they are preserving this invaluable collection. Forams initially were mistaken for another kind […]

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Collecting the World: Inside the Smithsonian – Great Big Story (2017)

January 2, 2018 at 7:46 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMHM) in Washington D.C. was visited by more than 7.1 million people in year 2016. The museums rich collection has over 144 million different artifacts. Only a very small fraction (less than 1 percent) of these collections are on display to the public. The bottom of the iceberg, the 99 percent of the Smithsonian’s treasures remain behind the scenes. Scientists and curators work with these objects to study and understand the world we […]

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The Lichenologist – Matthew Killip (2017)

November 28, 2017 at 7:56 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

This is the second installment from the filmmaker Matthew Killip following the “-omist/ogist” theme. Evolution of cooperation is a curious subject for biologists. The evolution of cooperation is investigated within the framework of game theory and has been encapsulated in a 1987 BBC documentary called “Nice Guys Finish First” by Richard Dawkins. How do organisms belonging to different kingdoms coordinate to live together? What are the rules of symbiosis? Lichens provide this type of study system where algae and fungi […]

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The Anomalies: Acorn Woodpecker – Nate Dappen & Neil Losin (2017)

November 28, 2017 at 11:48 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) are quite distinctive from other woodpecker species: They are communal. How did the cooperative behavior evolve? Biologists are working on answers for this curious question. Evolution of cooperative behavior is a matter of game theory and has been encapsulated in a 1987 BBC documentary called “Nice Guys Finish First” by Richard Dawkins. One of the most ubiquitous example for cooperative behavior comes from ants. Why do certain individuals altruistically give up their reproduction and help others? […]

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Ice Age Art – Arrival of the Modern Mind

November 23, 2017 at 4:28 pm / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Starting from the middle paleolithic going back to 100 thousand years Human intellect shows strong signs of complex behavior. Cognitive capacity were in place to track seasons, animal movements and resources spatially distributed over large areas. Here you will find a concatenation of short clips compiled from scholarly resources such as the Nature Magazine, the British Museum, the Khan Academy, the Economist and the National Geographic all featuring great examples of art within the last 40,000 years. These include the […]

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Gene Silencing by MicroRNAs – Katharina Petsche (2015)

November 21, 2017 at 8:25 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Welcome to another post of Molecular Nature series highlighting a gene silencing mechanism known as RNA interference. The animation was produced by Katharina Petsche. The discovery was made by Craig Mello and Andrew Fire who shared 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Please keep in mind that this video is quite advanced in content and assumes the viewers know about basic molecular biological concepts such as the Central Dogma of Biology. RNA interference (RNAi) is a process used by […]

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Development of a Salamander Embryo – Yale University Department of Anatomy (1920s)

November 10, 2017 at 4:08 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Technical Notes, Video

Everyone of us started life from one single cell formed by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell gave rise to every structure in our bodies. How did that happen? Salamanders are known to be able to regenerate limbs while frogs and lizards cannot. How and why? The time lapsed footage of salamander embryos developing from single fertilized eggs forms the basis of our morphological understanding of animal development. The footage recorded by Yale University researchers […]

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Dingo of the Australia – Adam Geiger (2013)

October 30, 2017 at 12:35 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Dingo (Canis lupus dingo) appears in the archaeological record of Australia at 4230 years before present. They ruled the continent as apex predators together with the now extinct Tasmanian tiger within the last few thousand years. Dingoes successfully colonized the continent spreading into diverse habitats including tropical rainforests, temperate Eucalyptus forests, mountainous highlands and grasslands. The only exception is the dry inhospitable central deserts. Dog domestication is the earliest among other animals going back to 40,000 years ago. The Dingo […]

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Parasitoid Wasp (Labena grallator) Ovipositing

July 20, 2017 at 11:09 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Recorded at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA on July 18th 2017. Here you can see a parasitoid Ichneumon wasp (Labena grallator) searching for a prey living inside a dead branch. She uses her antennae to locate the prey and sets out to drill with her ovipositor straight into the wood. She does a few exploratory oviposition exercise before committing to a full injection. At multiple instances the wasp is chased away by ants. Indeed, in the last […]

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The Cuckoo – Artur Homan (2013)

June 7, 2017 at 12:42 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

In the James Bond movie Spectre there’s a reference to the cuckoo bird in two scenes. The evil villain Spectre leers: “I see you! Cuckoo!” when he detects Bond in the classic evil assembly room scene. In the other scene towards the end of the movie Spectre reveals why he considers Bond as a cuckoo. In order to understand the reference we must know the biology of the Common cuckoo bird (Cuculus canorus). The European common cuckoo is a well […]

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Genesis: Final Point – Fernando Gonzalez-I. Sitges (2000)

May 16, 2017 at 7:23 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Galapagos archipelago occupies a special place in our quest to understand nature. It sits right on the junction of the Pacific ocean current where warm and cold water shifts. The nutrient levels reaching the islands by cold Humboldt current show a drastic decline when warm surface waters engulf the archipelago. The Galapagos lies at the southeast trade winds. When the current shifts the rainfall pattern changes drastically. The

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Six Ways to Prepare a Coelacanth – Shelf Life – AMNH (2015)

April 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history

The Coelecanth was thought to be extinct. Its presence as a living species was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. It is an immensely important species for evolutionary biology, especially in understanding tetrapod evolution. The story of the discovery of Coelecanth has been covered by many high profile magazines. Since its discovery from fossil remains the Coelecanth has been considered as the closest example for what could be as our last fish ancestor. This means that, it may have been […]

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Your Inner Fish – Neil Shubin – PBS (2014)

March 24, 2017 at 4:06 pm / Evolution, Nova Documentaries, PBS Nature, Video

Your Inner Fish, is the first installment of a three part PBS series by Neil Shubin. After a quick review of our shared anatomy with the fish and a whirlwind tour along the evolutionary timeline, the program plunges us into the fascinating saga of discovery of the tetrapods that explains how limbs of the terrestrial vertebrates came to be. Watch how the legendary 375 million year old (Devonian) tetrapod fossil Tiktaalik was discovered after a series of adventurous Arctic expeditions. […]

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