Horizon TV - 60 Years in the Wild II & David Attenborough TV - Walking with Dinosaurs TV - James Burke TV - Iain Stewart TV - Jean Andre Deluc - Edward Bullard - The Land That Time Forgot 1977 - Richard Dawkins -
Fossil magnetism also helped solved the problem of continental drift. Horizon: Message in the Rocks, BBC 1978
Further evidence of continental drift has come from earthquakes and volcanoes ... Plate Tectonics. ibid.
Maybe it wasn’t the frogs that moved; maybe it was the continents. 60 Years in the Wild II: Understanding the Natural World, BBC 2012
Two hundreds million years ago our planet looked very different than it does today. It was entirely covered by sea which surrounded one super continent we call Pangea. And then Pangea began to break up. Life was cast adrift on fragments of land. And these fragments eventually became our seven continents. David Attenborough, Seven Worlds, One Planet I: Antarctica, BBC 2019
We are changing the world so rapidly that wildlife is now facing of its greatest challenges yet. ibid.
Of all the continents, one was sighted by humans just two hundred years ago. ibid.
Only one mammal can live this far south: the Weddell seal. ibid.
One of the richest feeding ground in all the world’s oceans. ibid.
The frozen surface of the sea hides a great secret: it may be hostile above the ice, but below it conditions are so stable that life over millennia has had time to diversify. Creatures here grow to a great size … ibid.
Asia: the largest of all the world’s continents. It stretches from the Equator to beyond the Arctic Circle. This is a continent of extremes. Here, temperatures can drop to bellow minus sixty degrees Celsius. On land, survival is almost impossible. But for a few weeks of summer the ice melts, and the coast is transformed. David Attenborough, Seven Worlds, One Planet II: Asia
Pacific walrus … 100,000 of them: almost the entire world population is here. They are gigantic. ibid.
Asia has the hottest deserts, highest mountains and tallest jungles on our planet. This is a continent of incredible variety. ibid.
Meet the blue-faced, golden-coated snug-nosed snow monkey. They are among the heftiest of monkeys … The whole group snuggles together at the slightest opportunity to keep warm. ibid.
The bird was mistaken. It was a viper with a lethal bite. This species has only recently been discovered … On its tail movable scales have been modified to look like a spider’s legs, and its tip like an abdomen. ibid.
Montana 65,500,000 B.C. It is the end of the Cretaceous period and the continents are taking on their modern forms. Walking with Dinosaurs: Death of a Dynasty, BBC 1999
[Alfred] Wegener’s crackpot idea is the continental drift theory; thinks it all up in 1912 when he’s out here in Iceland. (Civilisation & Continent) James Burke, Connections s3e8: Fire From the Sky, BBC 1997
The two continents divided by the Bosphorus Strait ... This notion that Europe and Asia are separate is a bit of a nonsense. Professor Iain Stewart, Rise of the Continents IV: Eurasia, BBC 2013
Eurasia was assembled in a series of monumental collisions. ibid.
India’s journey north was a key moment in the formation of Eurasia. ibid.
According to the conclusion of Dr Hutton, and of many other geologists, our continents are of definite antiquity, they have been peopled we know not how, and mankind are wholly unacquainted with their origin. According to my conclusions drawn from the same source, that of facts, our continents are of such small antiquity, that the memory of the revolution which gave them birth must still be preserved among men; and thus we are led to seek in the book of Genesis the record of the history of the human race from its origin. Can any object of importance superior to this be found throughout the circle of natural science? Jean André Deluc, An Elementary Treatise on Geology, 1809
The transition from sea-floor spreading to plate tectonics is largely a change of emphasis. Sea-floor spreading is a view about the method of production of new oceans floor on the ridge axis. The magnetic lineations give the history of this production back into the late Mesozoic and illuminate the history of the new aseismic parts of the ocean floor. This naturally directed attention to the relation of the sea-floor to the continents. There are two approaches: in the first, one looks back in time to earlier arrangements of the continents; in the second, one considers the current problem of the disposal of the rapidly growing sea floor. Edward Bullard
A continent full of cavemen and dinosaurs? The People That Time Forgot 1977 starring Patrick Wayne & Sarah Douglas & Doug McClure & Dana Gillespie & Thorley Walters & Shane Rimmer & David Prowse et al, director Kevin Connor, opening scene on ship
The theory of ‘continental drift’ as it used to be called, was first championed by the German climatologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Wegener was not the first to look at a map of the world and notice that the shape of a continent or island often matches the coastline opposite. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth p273