We are entranced by the beauty of our planet.
Just take in this view for a moment.
Lush green meadows, thick forest,
jagged mountain peaks -
it's magnificent.
But whilst we appreciate that beauty,
I think sometimes we forget that all
of this is so fleeting.
For the last four-and-a-half billion years,
our Earth has been a constantly
changing ball of rock,
transforming itself over and over again.
It's more fragile than we like to acknowledge.
It's more indifferent to us than we
care to admit.
Now, thanks to pioneering new science,
we can explore our planet's
four-and-a-half-billion-year story
like never before.
In this series, we'll witness five
pivotal moments
in Earth's history...
..moments of drama...
..of crisis...
..and of rebirth...
..events that shaped the planet we
live on.
Wherever you are, you have beneath
your feet the most precious object
in the universe -
a living, breathing, life-sustaining world.
And this is its story.
It can feel as if our living world was
somehow inevitable...
..that ours is a planet with all the
right ingredients
for a rich assortment of life...
..not only to arise, but to flourish
and endure.
But, in fact, it's death that is the
only true inevitability.
There's an uncomfortable truth about
life on Earth.
You see, this great diversity, this
weird, wonderful
and beautiful mix of species, of
plants, animals and fungi
are all only here because something
else has died -
in fact, because an enormous number of
other things have died.
If we were to take the sum total of
every living thing
on our planet today, it would add up
to less than 1% of those
that have ever existed on Earth.
But this colossal loss of life is not
a tragedy.
Extinction is a vital part of
evolution.
If nothing ever went extinct,
there would be no room for new species
to evolve.
Over time, extinction helped create
our rich living world.
But our planet walks a tightrope.
If extinction goes unchecked,
the complex web of life crumbles.
Imagine 90% of species suddenly dying
-
not just a few endangered plants or
animals becoming extinct,
or a handful of ecosystems
disappearing,
but nine out of ten living things
wiped off the face of the Earth.
Imagine what that Earth would look
like in the aftermath -
shattered, broken, bereft of the
beautiful complexity
that we take for granted today.
We may think modern climate change is
our planet's darkest hour,
or the loss of the dinosaurs,
but the Earth has seen worse.
This is the story of the greatest mass
extinction event
in Earth's history.
Something caused our planet's
life-support systems to fail,
wiping out most of the species on Earth.
And this is not an apocalyptic vision,
not a doomsday prophesy.
This actually happened.
252 million years ago,
the Earth turned on the life that it
had nurtured for so long.
What does it take to destroy almost
all life on Earth?
And could it happen again?
Well, the answer lies in Earth's deep history...
..in a time long before humans
transformed the planet's surface...
..before the last Ice Age...
..before the asteroid impact wiped out
the dinosaurs...
..in fact, back to a time before
dinosaurs
even existed at all.
From space, the Earth in the Late
Permian is a strange sight.
From one side, a water world,
no land in sight.
But as the planet turns, something
else creeps into view...
..all the Earth's major landmasses
clustered as one.
This is Pangea...
..a supercontinent rich with life.
Coastal waters teem with weird and
wonderful creatures.
At once both alien,
yet eerily familiar.
And in lush forests, a cacophony of
animal cries fill the air.
In many ways, the Earth in the Late Permian
was like the Earth we have today -
millions of species of plants and
animals, living together
in complex, interconnected webs
which are nurturing and
self-sustaining.
But in other ways, it was a very alien world.
This was a time long before mammals or
even dinosaurs walked the Earth.
But life was no less remarkable.
Scuttling around in the scrub of the
Late Permian,
you might have found one of these.
This is the cast of a beautiful fossil
of Nycteroleter.
It's part of an extinct group of
reptiles, and fed on things
like proto-c*ck, dragonflies, millipedes.
It's got quite large eyes,
suggesting that it might have been nocturnal,
and we also know that it had really
good hearing -
something quite unique for animals of
that time.
But then, look at this chap.
It's Dvinia.
It would've grown to about 50
centimetres.
Looked like a small dog.
Neither a mammal, nor a reptile, it's
got forward-facing eyes.
It was perhaps a predator of some kind.
But, look, from the top, you can see
it's got really wide cheeks,
and the remains here of perhaps a
sagittal crest,
suggesting that it had very powerful
muscles, a powerful bite.
In fact, it might have been fishing
for shellfish down on the beach
and crunching them up with its
powerful jaws.
But last, and perhaps most impressive,
this is a magnificent specimen of a
super predator, Inostrancevia.
What an animal.
Just look at those sabre-tooth teeth
there.
Now, those are slashing tools.
Those are for wounding prey, waiting
for it to bleed to death,
and then catching up with it and
swallowing large chunks whole.
This animal would've grown to about 3
metres in length
and very fast-moving
and been terrorising the large
herbivores of its time.
What a fantastic beast it must have
been.
But by the end of the Permian,
along with nearly every other living
thing on Earth,
they would be dead.
We're not certain how it started,
but deep inside the ancient Earth,
superheated rock is rising...
..pushing upwards against the solid
outer crust...
..until it can take no more.
The crust fails.
The landscape physically torn apart,
as lava floods onto the surface...
..forming great curtains of fire.
This is just the beginning of the most
deadly volcanic event
in Earth's history.
We can get clues to what these ancient
eruptions were like
by studying modern volcanoes.
This is Tajogaite Volcano, in the
Canary Islands,
and in September of 2021, the ground
here split
and tonnes of lava, ash and toxic
gases exploded,
shaking the entire island.
Over three months,
170 million cubic metres of lava
poured onto the surface.
It was the first eruption on the
island in 50 years.
More than 7,000 people had to flee
their homes.
This volcano spewed out enough lava to
fill around
70,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools,
and that lava covered an area around
ten square kilometres -
which sounds pretty impressive,
but it's just a teaspoon compared to
those at the end of the Permian.
252 million years ago,
around four million cubic kilometres
of lava, ash and toxic gases
erupted in a series of volcanic explosions
that went on for 2 million years.
The Permian eruptions were 1,000 times
greater than
any witnessed by humans.
And the ancient lava is still with us.
In Northwestern Siberia,
beneath a landscape of swamps and
flood plains,
scientists have discovered a colossal
lava field,
dated a little over 250 million years old...
..lava that covers over two-and-a-half million
square kilometres...
..enough to bury the entire continent
of Australia
hundreds of metres deep.
252 million years ago, Northern Pangea
was hell on Earth.
Fire fountains blast volcanic material
over six miles up
into the atmosphere...
..burning millions of square miles of forests.
And clouds bloom high into the atmosphere,
blocking out the sun.
Plants wilt and die...
..ash falls like snow...
..as vast swathes of Northern Pangea
lie in ruins.
These eruptions are on a scale almost
beyond imagination.
But lava still only covers less than
1% of Pangea's surface.
And elsewhere, something curious is happening.
A strange haze hangs in the air.
Nutrient-rich volcanic ash and sulphur,
transported thousands of miles,
reflect the sun's rays...
..pushing global temperatures down...
..and in places, causing a surge of
plant life to flourish.
But death is coming.
I've come to an outcrop in Northern
Italy,
made of rock that formed at the same
time as those ancient eruptions.
It's a fossilised crime scene
with a chilling tale to tell.
Look at this thin, black seam that
runs all the way down here.
It looks like coal to me,
which would indicate that at one point...
..it was full of plant life.
Probably full of lots of other life, too.
Coal is little more than ancient
organic matter
that's been subjected to extreme
temperatures and pressures
over millions of years.
So, where we find coal today,
we know there was once life.
But the rocks above it here tell an
altogether different story.
They're grey, dull, look a bit boring,
a bit of a geological mush.
But that's the point -
because, aside from a few fossil microorganisms,
scientists have found very little
evidence of life in these rocks.
So, what they are telling us is that
252 million years ago,
the landscape here was almost devoid
of life.
In a geological blink of an eye,
almost all life here vanished.
You can't help but feel a certain
sense of sadness.
Holding this makes it so tangible.
This was death on an unimaginable scale.
But there's no evidence of lava here at all.
When these rocks were laid down in
this part of Italy,
they were thousands of miles away from
the eruptions in the north -
certainly too far away for any direct impacts.
But what's interesting is that geologists
have found this line of death all over
the planet -
China, Australia, South Africa.
And no matter how far away from the
lava fields,
there's a deathly silence in the
fossil record.
The question is, what could have
k*lled this many creatures?
What could have wiped out almost all
life on Earth?
Something more than lava was emerging
from the Earth
in Northern Pangea.
Billions of tonnes of gases are
injected high into the atmosphere.
Water vapour, sulphur dioxide...
..but primarily a gas we all know too
well -
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
We're all becoming depressingly
familiar with what happens
when you pump huge quantities of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
It's an experiment we've been running ourselves
for more than 100 years.
And the more the CO2, the more the
heat is locked in,
and the hotter our Earth becomes.
Global warming isn't a localised effect.
The whole planet feels the burn.
Here we are, yeah, dead ahead.
No creature is safe.
You've got a little feeding party
taking place here at the moment.
Oh, look at that!
Oh, yes, yes!
Sorry to be a child, but it's always...
Oh, oh, oh, oh!
Oh, I just saw it catch a fish!
Oh!
There are several species here.
Bottlenose...
..common, rough tooth, spotted.
And dolphins, of course, can live in
much warmer waters than these.
So, you might imagine they're not the
sorts of creatures
that would be harmed by global warming.
But sadly, I've got to tell you, these
dolphins are in trouble.
It's not always the temperature that
poses a danger to life.
In fact, for some, the heat is a blessing.
Let's see what I've managed to catch.
Wow, rather a lot.
This mass of detritus here is plankton,
much of it phytoplankton, algae.
Now, most of the organisms wouldn't
hurt anything,
but there is one species, Karenia Brevis -
well, that's an algae with a superpower.
You see, when the water warms up here,
it goes into a reproductive frenzy,
producing blooms many hundreds of
times greater
than it normally would.
But what's good for the algae, it
turns out,
is not so good for the dolphins.
Because recent research has shown that
this is extremely toxic.
So, the small fish eat the algae,
the bigger fish eat the small fish,
the dolphins the larger fish.
And this organism has been implicated
in the deaths of dozens of dolphins,
found dead floating in the sea here.
Rising temperatures affect different
parts of the food chain
in different ways,
throwing ecosystems out of balance...
..often with deadly results.
You see, when it comes to global warming,
it's not the actual heat that kills
those creatures.
It's the increases or decreases in
plant or animal populations
which disrupt those long-evolved,
stable, beautiful ecosystems.
Death by global warming is not short,
sharp, and painless.
It's prolonged and torturous.
As the temperatures rise across
Pangea...
..trees begin to die.
Holes appear in the once-thick canopy,
bathing the ground in sunlight.
For some, it's an opportunity.
Weed-like plants flourish,
like spore-bearing lycophytes.
No longer struggling in the shadows,
in times of stress, they thrive.
And foreign species appear.
Woody, seed-bearing cycads that once
only grew in the tropics
are now abundant closer to the Poles.
Surprisingly, some areas are now more
diverse
than before the warming began.
But this is an ecosystem out of
balance.
A few more degrees' warming,
and the living world will crumble.
But then something strange happens.
Red hot rivers of lava...
..turn to solid rock.
Just as quickly as they started,
the eruptions fall silent.
The CO2 released from the Permian lavas
likely dwarfed human emissions to date.
But even that may have been just part
of the story.
These eruptions would have produced
an inordinate amount of carbon dioxide
-
gigatons of the stuff,
certainly enough to manifest some
global warming,
perhaps in the realm of an increase of
5 or 6 degrees Celsius,
something like that.
Now, that's a substantial amount of heating,
but it's not significant enough to
account for all of the deaths
that we see in the fossil record.
Yes, there would have been extinctions,
but not 90% of all life on Earth.
The effects of carbon dioxide can be
lethal.
But some scientists think there was
another k*ller.
The volcanism hadn't stopped.
It had just entered a terrifying new phase.
Beneath the desolate lava field...
..hot magma still flows,
forming great reservoirs
underground...
..and slowly baking the Earth's crust.
The rocks underground were older -
hundreds of millions of years older
than the land above.
And amongst them,
there was plenty of this stuff -
coal and other rocks rich in carbon.
Now, what happens when magma meets coal?
Well, the coal burns, releasing yet
more dangerous carbon dioxide.
But that was just the half of it.
You see, it wasn't just coal.
There was also lots of salt.
And salt like this can form when
ancient lakes and seas dry up.
And when magma comes into contact with
salt,
things get really nasty.
The salt begins to bake,
releasing toxic halogen gases rich in
bromine and chlorine -
archenemies of the Earth's fragile
ozone layer,
that thin layer that protects us from
the sun's most harmful rays.
So, what I'm trying to say here is
that the magma had found its way
into the worst possible place on the
planet.
It had created a time b*mb.
That magma begins to heat up the coal
and salt
to a temperature of 800 degrees Celsius.
A poisonous c*ck of gases begins
to build...
..until the land above can take no more.
More CO2 floods the atmosphere,
pushing global temperatures even higher.
But this time, there were also those
toxic halogen gases.
We've seen the Earth's ozone layer
damaged in recent history,
when artificial chemicals created a
so-called ozone hole.
But in the Permian, the halogens may
have eroded
the ozone layer away entirely...
..bathing all life in deadly UV
radiation.
Scientists have noticed something
strange going on with the pollen
at the end of the Permian.
Take a look at this.
This is a highly-magnified image of a
modern pine pollen grain.
And you can see it's got two essential
parts to its structure -
the central circular part here, the
corpus,
and then these winged sacchi.
These are wind-pollinated pollen species,
and these help it float through the air.
But have a look at this.
This is an image of a fossilised
coniferous pollen grain
from the time of those eruptions.
It's got three of these wing
structures.
This one has four.
These pollen grains are malformed,
misshapen and, in fact,
if you look at this last one,
this appear to have been in the
process of dividing,
but somehow it's failed.
These are mutant pollen grains,
and it's thought that the mutation was
caused by
the excessive UV radiation -
evidence that those gases had really
damaged the Earth's ozone layer.
Now, other theories are available.
Others believe that, in fact, it was
acid rain
that caused these mutations, or merely
the extreme heat.
But whatever the cause,
what's clear is that at this point,
life was on the brink.
At first glance, it seems nothing has
changed.
But this already fragile ecosystem
has taken a lethal dose of UV radiation.
Healthy-looking plants are now sterile.
As individuals die, they aren't
replaced.
Once-lush forests become ravaged wastelands.
The collapse in the oceans is even
more dramatic.
Carbon dioxide reacts with sea water,
which begins to turn to acid.
And oxygen levels plummet -
in some places, dropping to zero.
Algae blooms across the planet.
As it decomposes, it poisons the ocean
with toxic hydrogen sulphide...
..until the seafloor becomes a foetid
bed of slime.
Sulphurous tides lap barren shores,
and a smell like rotten eggs hangs in
the air.
The Earth's rich complexity has vanished,
seemingly for good.
It's been called many things -
the Great Dying, the mother of all
mass extinction events
or, simply, when life nearly died.
The details are still a bit hazy.
Was it a single short, sharp, giant catastrophe,
or a wave of smaller catastrophes?
To what extent did the extinctions
occur on land
versus extinctions in the water?
The fossil record is patchy,
so there's plenty of room for academic debate.
But the one thing that almost everyone
agrees upon
is that these ancient eruptions caused extinctions
on an unprecedented scale.
Figures frequently cited suggest that
70% of land vertebrates
and 96% of marine life
vanished off the face of the Earth forever.
By the time the eruptions finally stop,
the average global temperature has
risen by over 10 degrees Celsius.
Vast areas of the Earth's surface are
completely uninhabitable,
and nearly all species are gone.
The End-Permian extinction has a
virtually undisputed claim
to being the worst moment in the
history of the Earth.
But from the ashes, there was a
glimmer of hope,
because life had survived somewhere.
It must have. Otherwise, we wouldn't
be here.
In a way, we are all survivors of the
Great Dying.
You see, every living organism on the
planet has an ancient ancestor,
perhaps millions, perhaps billions of
generations back,
that not only survived that mass
extinction event
but then went on to prosper in the
aftermath
and then to repopulate the Earth.
The Great Dying may have been the end
of one world,
but it was also the beginning of a new
one.
The Triassic Earth is a shadow of its
former self.
Many creatures seek refuge underground...
..sheltering from blistering temperatures
and lethal UV radiation.
Above ground, a single plant species
dominates the landscape.
Pleuromeia - a weed-like plant lucky
enough to make it
through the apocalypse and find itself
with few competitors.
It helps provide sustenance for the c*ck,
who also made it through unscathed.
But just because the eruptions have stopped
doesn't mean that life's troubles are over.
The Early Triassic was dominated by
extreme heat.
The fossil record shows us that ocean
temperatures could have been
up to 14 degrees centigrade warmer
than they were prior to the eruptions.
In some places, the water was as warm
as it is in a hot tub -
too extreme for most marine organisms.
And on land, things weren't faring
much better.
There were probably heatwaves of up to
60 degrees centigrade -
a temperature that would have
seriously inhibited photosynthesis.
In fact, for the 10 million years
following the mass extinction event,
we see no significant coal reserves
laid down anywhere on Earth.
There simply weren't enough trees.
For life to bounce back, the planet
needed to cool down.
In normal times, the Earth can cool itself -
over thousands of years, removing
carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere, in part through
reacting with rainwater.
But vast areas of Pangea are desert.
Little rain falls.
So, it takes millions of years for
temperatures to drop.
And even then, recovery is slow.
The living world's struggling to
regain the diversity it once knew.
But salvation was coming.
High in the Dolomite Mountains is
evidence for a bizarre event,
one that may have helped life rebound.
Look at this.
Absolutely stunning.
And these mountains were formed very
shortly after the extinction event,
and they're made up of sedimentary
rock -
layers of sediment on top of one
another,
each corresponding to a time in the
Earth's history.
The oldest rocks are at the bottom,
around 238 million years old.
The youngest at the top,
about 200 million years old.
Now, you might imagine that if we
wanted to uncover the secrets
in these rocks, we'd take some, break
them open
and look for some details - but not
here.
The secrets in these rocks are held in
plain view.
The key is the shape of the mountains.
It hints at a planetary intervention
that, just a few decades ago,
we had no idea happened.
Look, it starts steep at the bottom,
rises sharply,
and then there's a shallow shelf,
and then it rises steeply again to the peak,
currently in the clouds.
But the bit that we're interested in
is that shallow slope,
which corresponds to about 2 million
years in the Earth's history,
and to a very strange period of time.
This shallow slope is evidence of a
softer rock type
that's been eroded over the years.
Here we go.
This is a lump of sandstone.
It's a soft sedimentary rock.
The key is in the name.
It's made up of sediments, like sand,
which wash off of the land,
down into the rivers and then down
into the sea.
So, what I'm holding here is evidence
of rain -
rather a lot of rain,
because in places, this layer is about
80 metres deep.
Sandstone is a common rock,
but scientists have discovered similar layers
right across the planet,
leading some to think this was the
result of a global deluge.
Now, we're not precisely sure why it started.
It could have been underwater volcanic activity
disrupting the water cycle.
But at some point in the Triassic,
a time famed for being excruciatingly
hot and arid,
it started to rain.
And, boy, did it rain - because that rain
defined the Earth's climate for almost
2 million years.
18 million years after the mass extinction,
the heavens open...
..a sudden increase in rainfall across Pangea.
The rain causes more extinctions...
..but the planet is reborn.
Where arid shrub land once stood...
..lush forests now grow.
It's been called the greening of
Triassic Earth,
and it marked the beginning of much of
the life we know today.
There were new species of crocodiles...
..amphibians...
..even early ancestors of modern mammals.
But the mammals would have to wait in
the wings.
Other creatures were set to inherit
this renewed world.
Look at this.
See this impression in the rock here?
Look, there are one, two, three toes.
This is a dinosaur footprint,
and I love the fact that I can put my hand
where a dinosaur once put its foot.
Now, whether dinosaurs existed before
the rains, we can't be sure.
If they did, it was only as an obscure group
in the south of Pangea.
But in the millions of years after the rains,
they certainly prospered.
In some places, 90% of the vertebrate
fossils are dinosaurs.
Why did they suddenly do so well?
Well, it could be down to the food.
They could use it more efficiently to
grow bigger more quickly.
But whatever the reason,
dinosaurs went on to dominate the Earth.
I love this!
By the end of the Triassic,
the stage is set for the reptiles to
rule supreme.
This will be their world for the next
140 million years.
The age of the dinosaurs is dawning.
In one way, the End-Permian extinction
exposed the fundamental fragility of life.
Countless species of plants and
animals were wiped out
by those volcanic eruptions,
and it took millions of years to recover.
But perhaps the event also taught us
another lesson
about the tenacity of life -
because the living world did bounce
back, to be just as complex
and just as beautiful, in fact, maybe
even more so.
But there's a big unspoken question here.
For over 100 years, we've been pumping
carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere and watching as global
temperatures creep up.
So, what can the mass extinction 252
million years ago teach us
about our own climate change event?
I think the big lesson we've just
learned is that the living world
will ultimately be fine.
Even if we don't address our climate
and biodiversity crisis,
if we burn every last lump of coal and
drop of oil,
if we leave this place as a complete hellscape,
whilst we might perish, life will
bounce back,
and this will all be beautiful again -
which begs the question,
"Should we bother to preserve and
protect it?"
Well, that extinction event 252
million years ago
was part of a planetary process.
It was a chance volcanic eruption.
Think of all of that suffering.
Think of all of that wastage.
Do we want those sorts of extinctions
on our conscience?
I don't think so.
In this episode, we saw how an
Earth-shattering eruption
destroyed almost all life on Earth.
- This is the closest our planet has
ever been
to going back to square one.
- To understand the scale of the event,
scientists mapped the Permian lava
fields of Russia -
known as the Siberian Traps.
- I have actually been to the Siberian Traps
and flown helicopters.
The helicopter is right, mm...there.
Floated on boats, hiked,
ridden on trains all over Arctic Siberia,
looking for remnants of the Siberian Traps.
And these lava flows go distances that
boggle the mind.
The 1 million cubic miles that we have
is probably a minimum number,
and it's a minimum because not all of
the rocks
are exposed at the surface.
We also sampled the rocks of the
Siberian Traps
with sledgehammers and rock hammers
and a lot of hard work.
- The rock samples were key to
understanding
why the Earth's climate changed so dramatically.
- When magma comes up from deep within
the Earth,
it has gases dissolved in it,
gases like carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
These gases come out into bubbles,
a bit like when you take the lid off a
soda bottle and it fizzes.
- But these gases told a contradictory story.
- Sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide
have opposite effects
on the Earth's atmosphere.
Sulphur dioxide reflects sunlight back
into outer space,
causing global cooling,
whereas carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas
and can lead to global warming.
- It turns out that different volcanic
gases hang around in our atmosphere
for different amounts of time
because of their different chemical properties.
- Sulphur dioxide tends to stay in the atmosphere
for a shorter period of time,
because it can get rained out.
- But carbon dioxide can stay in the
Earth's atmosphere for hundreds,
if not thousands of years.
- Scientists think that heat-trapping
carbon dioxide
would have built up in the atmosphere,
warming the planet.
And there were other clues in the
fossil record.
- So, we can measure what temperatures
were like in the past
by the study of fossils,
and particularly fossil bone material.
So, when the bone is formed,
it's partly controlled by the temperature.
And so by studying these bones, we're
able to see
what the temperatures were like back
in the past.
- Temperature rises of up to 7 degrees
brought a deluge of rainfall.
Known as the Carnian Pluvial Episode,
some scientists think these conditions
were essential
to the success of the dinosaurs.
- My research suggests that more rain
means it's better for the plants.
This era of warm, wet conditions
really boosted plant diversity.
More plants equals more insects, more plant-eaters,
and then you get more meat-eaters as well,
and dinosaurs are part of that growth.
So, this is Herrerasaurus.
This is one of the first dinosaurs to appear.
And as you can see by the sharp teeth here,
this was a meat-eater, one of the top predators.
- The evidence for this growth is
written in the rock record.
- The success of the dinosaurs after
this event is seen in
just an abundance of their fossils,
but also in their sort of indirect
records that they leave in the forms
of their footprints as well.
- Before the Carnian Pluvial Episode,
dinosaurs and their relatives only
made up around 5% of the footprints
at these different fossil sites.
After the Carnian Pluvial Episode, we
see a big increase -
it jumps up to 70%.
- The expl*si*n in the population of dinosaurs
is a brand-new area of research.
- We can see that the ecosystems were changing,
but what actually would've affected
the dinosaurs,
what would've caused them to be successful,
we don't know yet.
This is why there's so many palaeontologists
doing active research.
- Next time...
..we journey deeper into the past,
to witness one of the strangest
moments in history...
..a global deep freeze..
..that transformed the Earth...
..into an ice world.
If the Earth could talk, what would it
tell us?
Well, the Open University imagine how
it might answer
some of our questions.
To experience this interactive presentation,
go to the website on the screen and
follow the links
to The Open University.
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