Today we’re exploring the world of the Boonie Bears, China’s biggest animation brand. In the sixth feature film, the bears Blast into the Past—30 thousand years, to be exact, to a time when dinosaur skeletons dotted the landscape and humans were at war with wolves... and giants pandas took their name literally, and rainbow terror birds defied the physics of flight, and cavemen punched lava bombs out of the air with their bare hands!

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In this episode:

Watch Boonie Bears: Blast into the Past on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vwcaf6aj90

Eucladoceros (the bush-antlered deer): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucladoceros

Homotherium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotherium

Megacerops... or Brontops, or Brontotherium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacerops

Phorusracids (terror birds): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae

Kumar et al. (2017) The evolutionary history of bears is characterized by gene flow across species: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46487

Wu et al. (2022) High-precision U-series dating of the late Pleistocene – early Holocene rock paintings at Tiger Leaping Gorge, Jinsha River valley, southwestern China: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2021.105535

Fu et al. (2025) Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin cranium: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.05.040

Callaway (2021) Oldest DNA from a Homo sapiens reveals surprisingly recent Neanderthal ancestry: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00916-0