I love that they make a 500k video when they're a stone's throw from 600k

Man this is so much better than the 10 subscriber special. Jokes aside, thank you so much for putting so much work on this man. I am on work break right now and cannot wait to indulge in this beautiful piece of media.

I remember the 100k special. Congratulations on 500k and can’t wait to see what Earth was like a million years ago.

Your channel definitely was a big component of things that helped me get my mind off of my PTSD in the worst time in my life. To say I love your guys videos is an understatement. I needed something to focus on and keep my mind off of shit that I couldn't get off my mind. Thanks mate. Keep up the good work. You guys are fuckin awesome.

The greatest blessing of the internet is the way it connects passionate people who otherwise never could have shared with each other. This is such an amazing channel and here's to the next 500k! You certainly deserve it. ❤

I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was a kid BUT.....I run bowling alley so here I am glued to the screen for your awesomeness

Just so you know I re-listen to your 100k and 300k specials all the time! Really appreciate the hard work that goes into such long videos, and I can’t wait to listen and re-listen to this one over and over again!

its so crazy how much there is to learn. even about such relevantly recent times as half a million years ago

OMG What are you doing Step-Bison

Woooo! This is fantastic! .. so glad I am here to see it! 😍 You guys DESERVE even more subs than this.. you’ve been an absolute favorite of mine for years now.. and.. These specials are worth waiting for.. love them! Thanks guys.. you’re awesome as always!

What about seasonal hair growth like other mammals do, shedding off in the spring and growing in the late summer and fall? That seems reasonable to me,and I am a biologist. Great show by the way. How long to get to that million subscribers level?

I just wanna say I love and appreciate your longer form content on this channel! Thanks for your hard work!

Congratulations both on your degrees! I remember the 100k and 300k specials and I have very much enjoyed all of them. Congratulations on all your new subscribers. Its a testament to all your hard work. Well done boys!

Speaking as a boomer paleontologist, who can't get in the field like I used to, I appreciate the diversity of your stories, just the right level of taxonomy and detail, your production quality, but most importantly your individual and group energy. My wife just wants to pinch Ben's rosy cheeks. I'm not at all surprised by your number of subs. Of course it would raise the status of your channel by an order of magnitude (at least one, proportional to size differences) if you covered some micropaleontology discoveries as well

Congratulations to the whole 7DOS team, you deserve this! You rekindled a love of all things "dinosaur" in an older man! Thanks and here's to 1 million!

You are literally teaching all these people things they will never be taught anywhere else. We love your videos keep up the good work, Bubba, your friends from Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

Hi! From Malaysia here. Your videos have been really informative and educational for a non-science person like me (I read law). Keep up the great work and looking forward to the 1 million subscriber special haha

As if australian fauna wasn't scary enough, here comes the giant bipedal primate-faced kangaroo with clawed hands. Imagine meeting one at night. 😳

Only recently found your channel and, I must say, I’m absolutely loving it. Fascinating, informative, easily digestible, and fun. Congrats on 500,000 and here’s to that climbing. ❤

How about a trip to my favorite paleontological site: the La Brea Tar Pits. Think about it. Take care, and may God bless. Cheers!

I actually learned the difference between a Mammoth and a Mastodon pretty recently at one of my local museums!

I would love to see how mastodons changed their environments. Did they increase the spacing between trees in boreal forests? Did they push trees over in swamps and end up changing the way water flowed or evaporated, like a less focused beaver? In the same way that there were mammoth-engineered "mammoth steppes", were there mastodon-engineered "mastodon forests"? Paleoecology and paleoethology is just so cool to think about!

Thank you for your hard work and dedication during the years!🎉

Can't wait until you get 10 billion subscribers and we get a big bang episode!

It is so nice to see your channels success. We all see the work your team puts in. Thank you.

This was an absolutely epic special. I've seen a lot of specials from a lot of people celebrating 500k, but none that come to mind have been quite as good as this one. I have to wonder what your world premiere on the Beeb will be like, with that level of funding. That probably won't happen, and besides, if it did, it would probably come with restrictions of various sorts for various reasons. Being able to go into the depth you feel is necessary using the amount of time you feel is necessary lends a freedom to this project which makes it something far better than one could ever encounter on the tele. I hope that this channel will continue to produce and thrive for the next ten or fifteen years, but not for entirely altruistic reasons. I'd just like it to be around and interesting me for the rest of my life. I've seen enough seasons go by that every day that I awaken is a bonus. Every day that a new episode comes out is just sweet cream and fresh berries on the scone. Thank you for all the hard work and effort you put in to bringing us these videos, as well as the 7DoS videos. You are much appreciated!

I’ve been around here for a while, your commitment to excellence shines through since the beginning

1:50 Considering that paleontology was still in its infancy (and even that is being very generous) it's kind of impressive that they recognized this as a new species. If you showed a mastodon skeleton to someone who didn't know any better, they would probably think it was an elephant.

I've been here since you had only 15k subs & got my degree in the meantime. This channel has become my main source of paleonews since it's so consistent & spot on. 500k is definitely deserved, here's to 1M

Congratulations! Thank you for great info, well-presented. 🎉

I am with you almost from the start and it was a great pleasure to watch your guys grow :)

I'm glad you enjoy what your doing an you really make the topics intresting and easily understandable.

Just found your channel. Great video. Keep up to good work.

Been watching this channel for years, it's incredible how much progress you and the team have made. Congrats and to many more years of paleontology/science news!

Tons of congratulations to you all. I was one of the first and knew a good thing when I saw it (I even contributed to the Africa trip). So a big 'good job' from a guy out here in a 64 million year dry sea bed.

Now on 600k! Congratulations! Of course we will wait as this kind of videos take a lot of research to do. Greetings from Spain.

Congratulations on this milestone and on this high quality video. Well done team, I'm proud to play my small part. (Mainly transport coordinator!).

I hope you realize that you will have a problem with this kind of video when your channel will reach 4.54 billion subscribers...

Congratulations...GRETTINGS from Puerto Rico 🇵🇷my friend

Absolutely amazing, thanks for this vid. I just discovered your channel &: subscribed.

Can wait until you get 65 million subscribers. Love to see a video on KT extinction.

Almost 600000, congratulations!

Seriously, this channel is such a gem! Thank you so much for everything you create and gift us with ☺️

The quality of these videos is incredible. I'm so glad these exist and FOR FREE. I never would have found such an interest in this kind of thing if not for videos like this

Well done! You truly deserve every one of them and I'm looking forward to when you hit your million mark.

How far back do we have to go before we have Antarctic animals to cover?

Best work you do is long format, great job!!

I can’t believe that more people have not subscribed than this. You make the science fun, even for those of us who only have a cursory education and understanding of paleontology, which makes learning more about everything so wonderful; from comparative dentition setting the stage for inquiry, to mandibular similarity being possibly convergent evolution without further evidence from full cranial comparison. There is so much gold for the imagination in what you do.

Wow I had to look, 5 years ago was the 10k special. You have been doing a consistently great job and presenting fascinating content. Keep up the good work.

Oh man, guys. I've been waiting for this for so very long. I just re-watched the one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and 300,000 subscribers episodes, and they're still as good as they were the first time I watched them. I seriously can't wait for this, please don't disappoint.😊

Quality is always worth waiting for. Thank you.

Procoptodons sounded adorable until you described how they got around. A smush-faced kangaroo walking around on two tippytoes sounds horrifying.

john sibbick has such beautiful art I'm so glad he's being represented❤

Congratulations! I hope you keep growing as the work you do and the videos you put out are incredibly interesting and educational.

Been waiting for the next one!!!! Love you guys!

grats man. 500k is a lot. gj team!

No lie, I've been constantly checking for the 500,000 subscriber specials over the past year! Thank you Ben!

What are you doing Steppe bison?

Congratulations on 500K!! 🎉🎈🎊

"Mastodon" = "Mastos" (breast) + "Odon" (tooth) 🤯 I have a soft spot for etymology and this one blew my mind. Reminds me of the etymology of "hysterical" which is quite striking too to say the least (uterus). Now the best etymology I've ever come across in my book is the French word "travail" (work), which comes from the Latin "tripalium" which was a medieval torture instrument. Never has an etymology been more fitting :) Anyway, just saying, keep up the good... torture instrument!

Ben, I shared this video with my Facebook friends. This is what I told them: "Ben Thomas now has over half a million subscribers to his very successful KZfaq science channel. I subscribed to his channel years ago when he was just starting. I recognized that this young man has a gift for explaining complex scientific topics in biology and paleontology to the public, much like Anton Petrov does with astronomy and physics." Keep on pursuing your education and career goals, and keep on producing such amazing content. I will continue supporting you on Patreon.

Funny story about ive age fossils/bones in America, when Thomas Jefferson sent out Loius and Clark one of the things they were supposed to look out for were things like mammoths and such since no one had actually studied the American interior yet he’d hoped that maybe they were still alive.

600k soon! Congrats guys! Love your content so much!!! 🎉🎉🎉

Just found your channel and I am so enjoying your videos!

Congrats guys! You produce some good quality content and you well deserve the achievement, well done!

Was impatiently waiting for 500k years ago special. Now 600k on the corner

Excellent video yet again! I need you guys to go back to South Africa! That content was phenomenal!!

I and 499,999 others say congratulations and thank you for an excellent channel and this sparkling episode! Cheers!

Really impressive research and I appreciate the clarity of what is evidenced and what is supposition or proved to be false. Thank you

Been waiting for this vid for so long! I love the subscriber milestone series!

The 100k specials are some of my favorite long form content on all of youtube. Superb stuff guys. Cant wait for the next one

Mastadons didn't live in places that were as cold as mammoths did but were still fairly cold anyway, at least during winter. For example, in the spruce forests of the eastern United States south of the ice sheets. It should be a given that they'd need at least a moderately long coat of fur to survive just as animals living in boreal forests do today.

Thanks for sharing this massage about Early history and it's environmental zoo

Congrats on reaching 500k subs👍hope you reach 1m sooner then later

Oh what lovely animals, thank you.

Congratulations guys! Great job.

🎉🎉. Congratulations 👏👏 love from Australia 😊

New subscriber here. Great job on the video! Looking forward to see what comes next.

Congrats 500K, I see you're already in 596K! Wow! BTW, great shirt!

Welldone 💪💪💪 Great vid too!

I appreciate your pointing out the uncertainty of the theories as well as the possibilities.

For me one of the best and most informative paleontology channels on YuoTube. Thanks for that.

Congrats on hitting 500,000 and graduating! Now for the real life adventure to begin!

OUTSTANDING documentary!!!!

Congrats guys. You deserve countless more!

BTw this is one of the best ways to do subscriber specials, can't wait for a playlist.

Congratulations on graduation & thank you for putting so much effort into your channel even when you're busy!!

U guys teach in this feel good way that I love

Congratulations man 👏🏾👍🏾✨✨✨🎊🎉

My new comforto video. BTW CONGRATZ

pretty cool about the very large kangaroos not hopping

Dude’s shirt game remains undefeated

Talking about nature is always so interesting to me, it was an interesting story.

Please make a playlist with all the videos. 50 000, 100 , 000 years ago etc. Love your videos so much.

Awesome. I have been thinking alot of mastodons. From central northern U.S. and as someone who uses shovel alot, we always get excited when digging, hoping we find mastodon fossil.

So interesting and put in terms that the non-specialist can understand. Could you do a quick lesson on the precise relationship between the terms 'species', 'family', 'clade' etc please.

great ep

interesting hearing about all those differences between mastodons and mammoths which become clearer and clearer, I was unfamiliar with most of them until now

Nahhhh I thought mastodon was the coldest name in a paleontology, but this whole time it meant booby tooth 😭😭😭

I love this time period ❤