Skip to main content

Dinosaurs: The Final Day With David Attenborough review – a thrilling slice of time-travelling detective work

The awe-inspiring broadcaster vividly brings dinosaurs’ last terrifying minutes to life in this slick, gripping and elegiac feature-length documentary

The last day of the dinosaurs probably began as a morning like any other. On a sandbank bounded by a river and warm wet forests in what’s now the dusty North Dakota prairies, triceratops and tyrannosaurs laid eggs, roamed, did their late Cretaceous thing. Thescelosaurs and turtles swam in the river. Pterosaurs flew overhead and furry mammalian creatures burrowed underground. On one of the most important days in Planet Earth’s history, as only David Attenborough can so portentously pronounce it, life went on in abundance. Until an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest hit what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula with an explosion whose force was greater than that of a billion Hiroshima bombs. In less than two hours, the world as we never knew it was for ever changed.

We don’t know exactly when the asteroid hit. But within 40 minutes, the consequences 2,000 miles away at Tanis – the name given to the Dakotan sandbank by the palaeontologists who have been digging there for a decade – were profound. Dinosaurs: The Final Day With David Attenborough (BBC One) recreates those last terrifying minutes as wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis and seismic waves ravaged the globe and all life at Tanis was swiftly entombed in sediment. For context, this was 60m years before we pitched (or rather stood) up. And we’re seeing in real time how that’s panning out.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/VA3sifI
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

JD Vance says US needs control of Greenland to fend off China and Russia

Vice-president criticises Denmark’s treatment of Arctic island and says it should come under US ‘security umbrella’ JD Vance told troops in Greenland that the US has to gain control of the Arctic island to stop the threat of China and Russia as he doubled down on criticising Denmark, which he said “have not done a good job”. Under increasingly strained relations between the White House and Greenland and Denmark, the US vice-president said during a visit to Pituffik space base on Friday: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass.” Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ANDJCac
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more