The Incredible Story of Earth's Formation and Evolution

[Music] as far as we know it's the only home to life in the universe

why what is it that makes our planet so special the answers are hidden deep in the

Earth's past to find them we must travel back in time to see the first humans walk the earth to ride continents on a

collision course face killer dinosaurs dive into oceans full of bizarre

life-forms feel the bitter chill of global ice ages and experience the fury of cosmic

missile attacks we must travel back in time until we reach the birth of the earth itself then we can piece together

our planets incredible story and discover why all of this all of us are here

[Applause] [Music] our journey starts almost 5 billion

years ago but this can't be right there's no sign of our beautiful blue

planet just a newborn star our Sun surrounded by all this dust we've arrived too early before the earth

has even formed speed up time and we can see gravity pull the dust into tiny rocks it hardly

seems possible that something as complex as a planet is made from nothing more than dust and rocks

over millions of years gravity pulls these rocks together to form the earth one of at least a hundred planets

circling the Sun [Music] [Music]

[Music] but 4.5 4 billion years ago our planet looks more like hell than home

up close the temperature is over 1,200 degrees Celsius there's no air just carbon dioxide

nitrogen and water vapor it's so hot so toxic but if we got any closer we'd be

incinerated and suffocated in seconds the newborn planet is a boiling ball of quit rock there are virtually no solid

surfaces just an endless ocean of lava a young planet called Theia is heading straight for us

it's the size of Mars and it's traveling at nearly 15 kilometers a second 20 times faster than a bullet

the intruders gravity is distorting the Earth's surface [Music]

the blastwave races out around the planet it's as though both young planets turn

to liquid trillions of tons of debris blast out into space but over the course of just a thousand

years gravity works its magic and turns the rubble into a ring of red-hot dust and rock that circles the earth

and now from this ring of ball for over 3,000 kilometers wide we're watching the birth of our Moon

it's much closer than the moon we recognize just 22,000 kilometers away instead of about 400,000 kilometers

[Music] [Music] the Sun rises over a cool in Earth

[Music] and sex just three hours after advisors the impact has set the earth spinning so

fast that an entire day lasts just six hours the days may pass quickly but the earth changes slowly to understand the

making of our planet we need to fast forward through millions of years [Music]

[Applause] a hail of meteors 3.9 billion years ago and we're under

attack from debris left over from the solar system's formation look at these strange crystals inside

the meteors they look like grains of salt the same salt you'd put on your french fries and

inside these minut droplets of water [Applause] it seems these deadly missiles could

contain the vital ingredient for life on earth there's only a small amount of water

inside each meteorite but as they bombard the earth for over 20 million years pools of water grown the water

collects on solid ground the Earth's core remains Montee but its surface is cooled to around 70 or 80

degrees just enough to form a crust in the future we could swallow this water when we take a drink every sip every

puddle every drop of water in every ocean is billions of years old and it may have traveled millions of

kilometres to reaches carried inside a meteor the earth looks more familiar but this

is still a dangerous place [Music] this wind is as fast perhaps faster than

the most destructive hurricane [Music] it's a mega storm ripped up by the

planets rapid rotation the moon is so close to Earth that it's gravity is overwhelming it creates huge

tides that race across the planet's surface [Music]

[Music] [Music] but over time the moon moves away

the waves calm and the planet spins slower [Music]

700 million years after the planets birth life-giving water covers its surface

[Music] but not just water there's something else down there

tiny islands they seem to have appeared from nowhere [Music]

until molten rock bursts through the Earth's crust and rises up through the ocean

over time the lava cools and forms a volcanic island this is how these islands formed

in the future they will join together to form the first continents [Music]

the infant earth has water and land it's beginning to look like the planet we call home but the atmosphere is toxic

and the temperature is scorching nothing could live here [Music]

meteors they've been raining down since the planets formation but now 3.8 billion years ago the assault has

entered a violent new phase something has disturbed the orbits of these meteorites

[Music] they already brought water to the planet but they're carrying something else too

[Music] as the meteorites dissolved they release their minerals and transport carbon and

primitive proteins amino acids from outer space to the bottom of the ocean [Music]

it's dark the sun's rays can't reach beyond 300 meters and it's close to freezing

[Music] this must be a mirage a city of underwater chimneys

[Music] it's not smoke it's some kind of hot liquid

see water has seeped down into the earth through cracks in the crust getting hotter collecting minerals and gases on

the way it's this potent mixture that's spewing back out into the ocean building these

towers add to this all those minerals and chemicals from the meteorites and the

water has become a chemical soup it's impossible to know how or when but somehow these chemicals have come

together to create life the water is now full of microscopic organisms these single-celled bacteria are the earliest

forms of life on Earth this is a defining moment in the making of the planet

[Music] microscopic life is underway [Music]

to find more complex life we need to travel forwards through time to 3.5 billion years ago and a shallow ocean

these look like rocks or even plants they seem to grow out of the seabed [Music]

each is a mountain of living bacteria a colony called a stromatolite [Music]

as if by magic these bacteria turns sunlight into food this process called photosynthesis

uses the power of sunlight to transform carbon dioxide and water into glucose a simple form of sugar and similar to the

stuff we put in our coffee and this magical transformation releases a byproduct a gas called oxygen

underwater the stromatolite slowly fill the oceans with oxygen the oxygen turns traces of iron in the

water into rust this falls to the ocean floor to form deposits of iron rich rock

one day we'll use this mineral to build bridges ships and skyscrapers [Music]

above the waves the oxygen transforms the atmosphere these stromatolites are creating the single most important

element for life on Earth without them virtually every living thing wouldn't exist

when we take our next breath we're doing it thanks to these colonies of ancient bacteria

over the next two billion years oxygen levels continue to rise and as the planet spins slows the days

get longer now they last at least 16 hours we're discovering it takes a long time to make

a planet 1.5 billion years ago three billion years after the planets birth and there's no complex life no plants no

dinosaurs no humans but the earth has something that no other planet has a force with the power to change

everything our planet a beautiful blue ball dotted with volcanic islands one and a half

billion years ago it's home to primitive life over millions of years we can see

something is rearranging the islands hidden beneath the ocean the Earth's crust is broken into vast plates deeper

still the Earth's core is at work it's hotter than the surface of the Sun so hot it generates movement in the rock

beneath the crust these movements push and pull the plates around the globe and carry the oceans and the islands with

them millions of years raced by seeing it like this our planet seems active changing alive over 400 million years a

vast new supercontinent takes shape called Rodinia in the shallow waters around rodinia

stromatolites have been working their magic for over two billion years pumping oxygen into the atmosphere the

temperature is 30 degrees Celsius and the days are 18 hours long [Music]

but this looks more like Mars than earth to find life here we need to move on through time

[Music] [Music] the state of Washington

750 million years ago some force from deep inside the planet itself is whipping the crust to pieces

it's as though the world is tearing apart and there's only one force powerful

enough to do this heat it escapes from the Earth's molten core stretching and weakening the crust

[Music] centimeter by centimeter year by year the great supercontinent is splitting in

two [Music] [Applause]

the intense geological activity has spawned a mass of volcanoes these pump carbon dioxide into the

atmosphere there's smoke and gas everyday all that carbon dioxide mixes with water

to make acid rain the rocks absorb the acid rain including its carbon dioxide and there are a lot

of rocks on the earth right now exposed when the continent tore apart so many that vast quantities of carbon

dioxide are absorbed out of the atmosphere and locked up in the Earth's rocks

there's not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to trap the sun's heat around the planet

in just a few thousand years the temperature plummets to around minus 50 degrees

[Applause] this frozen wasteland is southern Australia

650 million years ago it's the start of what some scientists call snowball earth a period they

believed to be the longest coldest ice age ever to grip the planet a vast wall of ice thousands of meters

high the ice is unstoppable the more ice there is the more sunlight

it reflects away from the planet and the faster the ice spreads and there's a second ice sheet just as

high the two sheets spread away from the poles towards each other to meet at the

equator an ice sheet up to three kilometers thick and Tunes the entire planet

[Music] first the planet was a molten ball of fire now it's a frozen ball of ice

[Music] virtually all the sun's light and warmth reflects back into space

[Music] but it can't last forever something must release the earth from this frozen

prison and when it does who knows whether life will have survived beneath the ice the surface is frozen but the

core is still hotter than the sun's surface volcanoes have been erupting since the

world began to freeze but up until now even their heat and power made no impact on the ice

volcanoes pump out billions of tons of carbon dioxide before the big freeze the Earth's rocks absorb most of the co2 but

now with the rocks smothered in ice there's nothing to absorb the gas so it fills the atmosphere

like a blanket it traps the sun's warmth around the planet temperatures rise until now after 15 million years the ice

begins to melt [Music] it's thought that during snowball earth

the ice pushed the cross down now as it melts the crust bounces up this creates fissures and weak spots and

more and more volcanoes these volcanoes release more carbon dioxide and push the temperature up even

higher the melt gathers momentum oxygen levels rocket

through a series of chemical reactions the ice has created oxygen while the planet was frozen the sun's

ultraviolet rays reacted with water molecules in the ice to produce a chemical rich in oxygen

hydrogen peroxide the same chemical that bleaches [Music]

now as the ice melts the hydrogen peroxide breaks down and releases massive amounts of oxygen

[Music] the earth is waking up and it's a very different place

[Music] now 600 million years ago the atmosphere is warmer it feels like a summers day

and the days are about 22 hours long [Music] add all this water and it's the perfect

recipe for life before snowball earth primitive bacteria had emerged in the oceans but surely

they couldn't have survived an ice age 75 times longer than the entire span of human history if something has survived

then our best chance of finding it is where we last saw life in the ocean [Music]

now 540 million years ago in an ocean full of oxygen those primitive bacteria have evolved

a handful must have clung on for the big fries there are plants everywhere and something else

[Music] it looks like some kind of armored slug it's called we wax eeeh it's one of a

new generation of complex multi-celled organisms [Music]

we're entering one of the most dynamic periods in the earth story the Cambrian explosion

increased oxygen levels allow creatures to grow larger and develop bony skeletons

[Music] there are worms [Music]

sponges and these they're trilobite distant relatives of insects lobsters even scorpions

[Music] life in the oceans is blossoming [Music]

from microscopic bacteria to a monster like this this is a normal occurrence it's about 60 centimeters long look at

its large eyes its razor-sharp teeth and grasping limbs [Music]

all anomalocaris has to do is take its book [Music]

the trilobite guard right itself it's soft belly is exposed [Music]

[Music] these a pacaya they're just five or so centimeters long but they've got what

may be the first ever spine over millions of years this simple structure will evolve into the spine that keeps us

standing erect and creatures are beginning to take on familiar forms [Music]

beneath the waves there are already tens of thousands of plant and animal species the advance of life seems unstoppable

[Music] we're looking for life on land 460 million years ago and the plates have

moved again below lies a new continent Gondwana [Music]

it's a warm 30 degrees Celsius oxygen levels are close to those in which we live

[Music] the land should be covered with plants crawling with creatures

but there's not much here beside a few patches of algae there's only one explanation

the son it lasts the surface with deadly radiation

the complex life we've seen in the ocean doesn't stand a chance on land but 50 kilometers our weather rays enter

the Earth's atmosphere something strange is happening when oxygen meets the sun's radiation the oxygen turns into another

kind of gas called ozone this gas forms a blanket around the planet this ozone layer absorbs the lethal radiation

[Music] over 120 million years the ozone layer gets thicker and stops more and more

radiation from reaching the Earth's surface without this layer life on land simply wouldn't exist

[Music] now shielded from radiation life blossoms

[Music] those small mossy lumps are the first land plants and they're pumping out even

more oxygen levels so [Applause] 375 million years ago

[Music] there's something down there in the water it's moving swimming

[Music] it's a strange fish called a Tiktaalik [Music]

it's neck allows it to raise itself up [Music] it uses its fins as if their legs

and moves out of the water where Clarke life is exploding over 15 million years these creatures

call tetrapods evolve they grow stronger limbs and spend more time out of the water until 360 million years ago they

make the land their home [Music] it's from a creature like this that all

four-legged vertebrates will evolve dinosaurs birds mammals and eventually you and me

we've come a long way from a lump of burning rock and dust to a Bluegreen planet bursting with life

there are still no humans but there are fish plants and this it's a dragonfly a dragonfly the size of

an eagle this giant is called meganula [Music]

what were once legs have evolved into wings extending the dragonflies hunting territory over a vast area

[Music] there are millipedes spiders all sorts of bugs down there

these creatures called arthropods were among the very first to set foot on land they've already been around for hundreds

of millions of users they look almost identical to the bugs that invade our homes today except for one big

difference like mega Noura they're monsters [Music]

we've stumbled into a lost world of giants where millipedes are 2 meters long and scorpions the size of wolves

all the oxygen in the atmosphere allows their respiratory systems to be more efficient and frees up space for their

bodies to grow a lizard-like creature called anonymous the creatures we've seen so far laid

their eggs in the water but these eggs contain all the water and nutrients the developing Heil anima

Sneed's the babies are growing in their own self-contained pond the egg is a major evolutionary

breakthrough [Music] now animals can leave the water behind

and conquer the land [Music] this baby hi Lana mas will lead the

advance it's a new kind of creature a reptile [Music]

inevitably with life comes death there's so much dead plant matter it builds up and decays into dense soggy layers

[Music] [Applause] over hundreds of millions of years rocks

will cover these layers heat from the Earth's core and pressure from the overlying rocks will transform the

layers of dead plants into seams of coal [Applause] each lump of coal we burn today to warm

our homes and fire our power stations is made of plants that died 300 million years ago

[Applause] amidst the decay hidden from sight life is stir

Tsun seeds will germinate plants will grow and this wasteland will live again life seems to have conquered the planet

[Music] a herd of creatures graze the Siberian Plains they're not dinosaurs

they won't set foot on earth for at least another 20 million years but they're big evolution has taken a huge

leap forwards the small lizards we saw earlier and now giant reptiles these are scooter soars the distant

relatives of turtles they're plant eaters and if the plant eaters looked this tough the carnivores must be

seriously me [Music] it's a Gorgon opposite

a perfectly engineered prehistoric killing machine the gorgonopsids saber teeth have

wounded the SCOOTER soul [Music] the predator is watching as its prey

grows weak from blood loss until hold on it's backing off something strange is happening the

ground is getting hot [Music] there must be enormous pressure beneath

the surface there's larvae but this isn't one single volcano the entire landscape is erupting

it's a flood basalt eruption a massive plume of mantle is rising up from deep inside the earth pushing molten rock out

through fissures in the Earth's crust the lush paradise is now a lifeless hell the scooter soars and the gorgonopsids

are dead they're the first casualties in the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen the Permian extinction

[Music] on the other side of the continent of Gondwana it's as if nothing happened

snoo but the temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius it's not snow it's ash fallout

from the eruption some 16,000 kilometers away the ash burns suffocates and kills

animals around the world the atmosphere is full of sulfur dioxide from the eruptions that it rains the gas

turns to sulfuric acid and burns everything it falls on at first it seemed like this was a local

disaster but now it's gone global the Siberian eruptions increase the Earth's carbon dioxide levels

[Music] the atmosphere gets hotter water evaporates

vegetation dies we saw what life had finally found a foothold [Music]

now it looks like we were wrong [Music] there are no signs of life on land but

in the oceans this can't be right the oceans are turning pink

and the plants the trilobite the Predators everything's gone everything except for this pink algae

the new hotter atmosphere must have heated the oceans and stripped them of oxygen

now nothing except algae can survive in the stagnant water the Siberian eruptions are transforming

the entire planet nothing not even the deepest ocean floor is beyond their reach

[Music] look bubbles but it's not oxygen it's meat eh

escaping from vast pockets of methane gas beneath the seabed methane is a greenhouse gas at least 20

times deadlier than carbon dioxide until now the gas has been frozen but as the sea temperature rises the gas begins

to melt [Music] released into the atmosphere this

powerful gas pushes up temperatures even further up to almost 40 degrees six degrees

hotter than before the Siberian eruptions now even the creatures that have made it

this far are doomed it's 500,000 years since the eruptions first began and all this time for half a

million years the lava has been pouring out by now it covers an area the size of the United States with a layer of molten

rock nearly six kilometers deep 250 million years ago we're back where we started on a lifeless planet

almost [Music] it's 50 million years since virtually

all life on Earth was wiped out and the planet has been transformed [Music]

it's now 200 million years ago and there's just one supercontinent called Pangea stretching from pole to pole

after the trauma of the mass extinction the planet is healing temperatures are stabilizing the acid

rain is neutralizing and vegetation returning and with 95% of all life on Earth wiped

out the field is open for a new species to emerge one that will dominate the planet like no other before or since

the dinosaurs these dinosaurs are called Amazon's like all dinosaurs they've evolved from the

handful of reptiles that survived the Permian extinction at four and a half meters tall their

size makes them slow and vulnerable a gala for Soros two of them they're small and fast

[Applause] [Applause] the AMA Soros is too big a meal for one

Dilophosaurus but not for too [Music] [Applause]

[Music] [Applause] the dinosaurs have repopulated the earth

but no species contain this Restless volatile planet the Earth's crust is thinning here it's

releasing lava shaking with earthquakes as though it's being stretched by some unseen force

and the same thing is happening all the way down what will be North America's eastern seaboard

the Earth's plates are on the move again 190 million years ago the great supercontinent of Pangaea breaks up

a vast slab of land has broken away it creates a chasm and this fills with a new ocean called the Texas over what

will one day be the Middle East currents are pushing nutrients up into the coastal waters running along what

will be Saudi Arabia Iraq and Iran and the nutrients attract fish in their Millions

and with so much life also comes death dead fish and plankton carpet the ocean floor

over the next 10 million years layers of rock will bury and heat the dead creatures ancient fish and plankton will

become oil [Music] [Applause]

[Music] every litre of fuel in our cars every piece of plastic on the planet the paint

on our walls the carpet under our feet even the soap we wash with almost all originated in this way

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

[Music] 180 million years ago and further west the North American plate is still moving

away from the European and Asian plate it happens slowly at about two and a half centimeters each year the same

speed as our fingernails grow but hit fast-forward and a new ocean forms right beneath us and new

continents Montreal moves away from Marrakesh New York from West Africa

the world as we know it is taking shape the chasm between the two continents fills to create a vast ocean

the Atlantic they're in the middle a volcano we've seen plates move before we know it's

caused by currents deep beneath the earth's crust this process is happening down there right now

[Music] the entire seafloor has been torn into and pushed up into a ridge of mountains

and volcanoes it's growing higher than the Himalayas and longer than the Rockies

the waters hot here molten lava is forcing its way out from deep inside the earth

[Music] as the lava cools it's creating a new range of volcanic mountains and new

ocean floor this is what's pushing the plates and Pangaea apart

and rearranging our world [Music] it's this geological activity that makes

the earth Restless creating unique and every time the planet reinvents itself the things that live on it must

adapt and evolve [Music] things like these there akia sores

they're reptile ancestors lived on land but as the planet changed so did they they grew fins and moved into the newly

formed Atlantic Ocean this one is six meters long and fast it travels at about forty kilometres an

hour it's the oceans fastest creature the most efficient predator and it's ruled

the Earth's oceans for 50 million years [Music] but now there's a new contender for the

crown [Music] applies

longer than a bus as heavy as a truck its jaws are immense over eight times more powerful than a great white sharks

and its teeth are 30 centimeters long the earth and the creatures that live on it has changed beyond recognition

this was once solid ground now it's the Atlantic Ocean it was on this very spot that we stood

and watched a masseuse graze and I'll office or stalk their prey the dinosaurs world may be different but they're as

dominant as ever they appear invincible [Music] it's a shrew-like mammal and it's

evolved from the small number of mammals that survived the mass extinction 185 million years ago it's also prey for the

dinosaurs this is why most mammals live in the trees or underground and venture out at night mammals are no threat to

the dinosaurs nothing on earth can challenge their dominance

nothing on earth [Music] it's a lump of space rock a large one

[Music] this asteroid is about ten kilometers across bigger than Mount Everest

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

and it's traveling at over 70,000 kilometers an hour straight towards the earth

it's heading for the Gulf of Mexico just off the Yucatan Peninsula it travels so fast blink and we'd miss

the impact unless we slow down time it's a split-second that will change the world forever

at the moment of impact the asteroids back edge is still at nearly 11,000 meters the same height as a commercial

aircraft flies [Applause] the asteroid strikes with such immense

force it destroys everything it hits even the asteroid itself instantly vaporizes

[Applause] the impact unleashes the energy of millions of nuclear weapons

[Applause] nowhere is safe not even way up here [Applause]

some of these boulders are as big as entire city blocks [Music]

[Applause] the blastwave races out from the impact zone like shrapnel from an exploding

bomb [Applause] [Music]

[Applause] and minutes after impact thousands of kilometers from where the asteroid

struck the earth is under attack from every direction bodis rain down

earthquakes shake the ground [Music] and tsunamis batter the coasts

but the onslaught has only just begun the plume of molten rock and dust spreads out and engulfs the planet

the entire sky is acting like a giant sunlit the Earth's surface heats up to 275

degrees vegetation begins to spontaneously ignite

even months after the impact smoke and ash still block out the sun's rays with less sunlight plants died and the

animals that eat them starve against this onslaught it's hard to see how anything can survive

the dinosaurs a hundred and sixty-five million year reign is over but the dinosaurs demise is an

opportunity for another species mammals by living underground they've avoided the heat in the fires and by eating

anything and everything they thrive while more selective eaters die [Music]

these are the unlikely inheritors of the dinosaurs crowd [Music]

and as one story ends another begins with the dinosaurs out of the way this could be our ancestors chance the

dinosaurs are long dead the planet is peaceful in this new world our mammal ancestors

are evolving [Music] [Music]

this lake 47 million years ago in what will one day be Germany should be the perfect place to spot them

[Music] this isn't like the mammals we saw earlier its eyes and brain are bigger

this is Darwinian smasher lay or EDA she looks nothing like us but fossil evidence from our own time tells us

these creatures could evolve into monkeys apes and eventually humans [Music]

we're looking back through 47 million years of evolution to what may be one of our earliest known ancestors

[Applause] the lake sits on a volcanic crater it belches out noxious gas

[Music] now the lakes had killed her will preserve her in its oxygen-depleted

deaths [Applause] [Music]

one day when the water has gone and Eder is fossilized in stone we will discover them and recognize in this primitive

primate what could be the very beginning of our own story the story of human life [Music]

we're closer to understanding how everything we've seen promotion bacteria through walking fish and subterranean

rodents leads to us and to understanding how our planet was made [Music]

47 million years ago and the atmosphere is much like our own the temperature is 24 degrees Celsius

and a day lasts just under 24 hours the earth we're looking at now is almost identical to the planet we call home

almost the Earth's plates have been on the move again with the continents on their backs

India moves north towards Asia [Music] the Indian and Asian plates are locked

in a titanic struggle [Music] neither plate is winning both plates

begin to buckle what was once owned for contorts upwards along a two and a half thousand

kilometer line a vast mountain range rises up 1,500 meters 4,500 meters

now over 8,000 meters [Music] these are the Himalayas

[Music] and there it is the highest mountain of all Mount Everest

when the snow on the peaks melts it feeds great rivers the Ganges Indus Yangtze and yellow rivers

[Music] the Himalayas are like a vast water tower one day their rivers will supply

water for almost half the world's population you

you