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Living Earth, The (7/8)

This is also part of this series: Earth Story Series (8)

Subjects: Anthropology, Archaeology, Environment, General Interest, Geography, Natural History, Nature, Ocean, Science

Grade Level: JrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No

Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No

Copyright Date: 1998
Available in French: No

What are the turning points in the evolution of life? The disappearance of the dinosaurs was just the latest in a series of mass extinctions caused by catastrophic events. And the Earth itself has been the major force shaping the course of evolution. In the Barberton Mountains of South Africa,among the remains of ancient mud pools,the first fossilised bacteria have been found. And the remote outback of Western Australia, says local geologist Maarten de Wit, is home to billions of flies and the rare living fossil, stromatolites. The Burgess Shale, high in the Canadian Rockies, is a paradise for palaeontologists. The area is famous for its 550 million year old fossils, which seem to suggest that life exploded after the first great ice age into all the familiar groups still around today – plus some very strange-looking creatures that didn't quite make it. Back in Africa, Rick Potts, from the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, is finding evidence to suggest that rapid fluctuations in climate stimulated the evolution of a group of upright apes with small brains into large-brained homo sapiens.

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