Earth's Deadliest Eruption
A look back 250 million years ago when a massive volcanic eruption, (in what is now Siberia), spewed lava one mile thick over an area the size of Texas and caused intense climatic change that killed 95% of the life on the planet; paving the way for the next dominant species – the dinosaurs.
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More from this season
S2 E1
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is nearly 300 miles long and over a mile deep. You could stack four Empire State buildings one on top of the other and they still wouldn't reach the lip of the Canyon. As vast tectonic plates clash and grind against one another a giant plateau has been pushed up over a mile in the air. The Colorado river, flowing from high in the Rockies and carrying a thick load of sediment, has carved an amazing canyon in the rising plateau.
S2 E2
Vesuvius
Mt Vesuvius is the world's most dangerous volcano, and it threatens three million people. It was responsible for the most famous natural disaster of ancient history, the eruption that destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii. And its most recent blast was caught on film in 1944. Today Vesuvius is the most densely populated volcano in the world. Now recent scientific discoveries show that it is capable of an eruption larger than ever before thought possible and that hidden beneath Vesuvius there is a vast magma chamber of boiling hot rock, ready to come out.
S2 E3
Birth of the Earth
The creation of the Earth is explored. Included: a study of the planet's oldest rocks and meteorites to see what they reveal about the birth of the Earth and its continued existence after it was first formed.
S2 E4
Sahara
Africa's Sahara Desert is the size of the United States, making it the largest desert in the world. It's also the hottest place on the planet. But now an astonishing series of geological discoveries has revealed this searing wasteland hides a dramatically different past. Scientists have unearthed the fossils of whales, freshwater shells and even ancient human settlements. All clues to a story that would alter the course of human evolution and culminate in biggest climate change event of the last 10,000 years.