The Permian: and the Earth faced the biggest catastrophe it had ever seen. One cataclysmic event kick-started a chain reaction that wiped out 95% of all the animal and plant species on the planet. Tony Robinson, Catastrophe III: Planet of Fire
This layer marks the moment when the world changed; below the line grey rocks full of fossils, full of life; above in the red rocks nothing. Life had almost ceased to exist. ibid.
An impact from out of space: could it have been an asteroid strike? ibid.
The extinction happened over a period of 100,000 years. Far too long to be the result of a meteor strike. The Greenland team’s discovery means that something else must have caused the extinction. ibid.
Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid the size of Mount Everest smashed into the Earth at sixty times the speed of sound. It unleashed a series of events that wiped out 70% of all species including the dinosaurs. Tony Robinson, Catastrophe IV: Asteroid Strike
Scientists have found this same layer all around the world. Below it fossils from countless species, above it 70% of them are gone including the dinosaurs. ibid.
The iridium suggested that sixty-five million years ago a massive asteroid hit the planet. At the exact same time as the death of the dinosaurs. ibid.
Sudden and dramatic climate change: dust and ash blocked out the sun; temperatures dropped like a stone and kept on dropping thanks to the impact’s location; the blast generated incredible heat; it vaporised the rock and blasted tons of sulphur dioxide into the air; it mixed with water in the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid droplets: and that was a disaster. ibid.
Carbon dioxide choked the planet. Temperatures increased by around 20 degrees Celsius over the next hundred years. It was global warming on a fast track. ibid.
It was the meek – the burrowers and the scavengers – who inherited the Earth. ibid.
The world has suffered from a series of global catastrophes. Disasters that have wiped out 99% of all the species that have ever lived. But the forces that wiped out many of our ancestors are still at work today. All we have to protect us is a wisp of atmosphere, and all we have to stand on is a thin crust. Mankind could be the next dominant species to face extinction. This is the story of how vulnerable we really are. Tony Robinson, Catastrophe V: Survival Earth
Finally, and under a minute to midnight, a tough new species marched toward world domination. They spread rapidly adapting to every challenge. This new species was Homo sapiens – us. ibid.
In India genetic diversity is much much lower than it should be. [Dr Stephen] Oppenheimer believes some kind of disaster must have struck India’s early settlers. ibid.
Toba is an Indonesian super-volcano. Its last eruption is described by volcanologists as mega-colossal – that’s as big as it gets. The date: 74,000 years ago. ibid.
The Ring of Fire is the chain of volcanoes that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. It’s the world’s most volcanically active region. ibid.
The Toba eruption was the biggest on Earth for two million years. ibid.
The bigger the magma chamber the bigger the eruption. ibid.
The real killer would be volcanic ash. It’s thought that Toba’s eruption column reached the very edge of space. ibid.
Our earliest ancestors were rescued from extinction by global warming. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson: Triumph of the Homo Sapiens, Channel 4 2009
Just how close to extinction Homo sapiens came has recently become shockingly clear. ibid.
But the dinosaurs days of grazing were about to end abruptly. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid ten kilometres wide across killed them off. The grasses survived. But they in turn would face their own crisis. Professor Iain Stewart, How to Grow a Planet II: The Power of Flowers, BBC 2012
Amidst the vicissitudes of the Earth’s surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology
There was a time when we shared this planet with other, very different types of human. By the time our ancestors left Africa 100,000 years ago most of these others had gone extinct. But not all. Other species have made the journey out of Africa before us. Planet of the Apemen I: Battle for Earth BBC 2011
For thousands of years [Homo] Erectus had been one of Asia’s most successful predators. The arrival of modern humans would have threatened their world. ibid.
The first human species to walk fully upright, [Homo] Erectus would have made formidable opponents. ibid.
There is no evidence Homo Erectus made spears ... Their palms faced forwards. ibid.
The spear wasn’t our ancestors’ only weapon. At some point in the distant past they developed something very new: the slingshot like the spear gave our ancestors the ability to strike and kill at a distance. ibid.
This ability to plan ahead was something our hominid rivals lacked. ibid.
Another advantage we had was language. ibid.
Imagination, the ability to visualise what can’t be seen, would prove another defining advantage for our species. ibid.
Like us, [Homo] Erectus are believed to have lived in small family groups; there is evidence they cared for each other and looked after the sick and injured. ibid.
Recent studies suggest that [Homo] Erectus were infected with tapeworms which you get from eating raw meat. It seems Erectus liked his food red and bloody, even though he could have cooked it. ibid.
Above the ash only our tools are found. The lack of evidence of Erectus after the Toba eruption suggests that they might have been wiped out of India never to return. In other parts of Asia they hung on. Fossilised skulls from Indonesia show Homo Erectus living here as recently as 30,000 years ago. A descendant of theirs – Homo Floresiensis, nicknamed the Hobbits – lived until about 18,000 years ago. ibid.
Socially too Toba left a mark on our species. Evidence reveals that social networking in surviving humans increased. ibid.
This is our world. We have shaped it in our image. Made it our own. We are now the only humans in existence. Absolute rulers of the Earth. Planet of the Apemen II: Battle for Earth
Why against the odds did we win the battle of planet Earth? ibid.
32,000 years ago a new species of human was spreading out across Europe. Southern France. The colour of their skin betrayed their African origins. Homo sapiens hadn’t been here very long and there wasn’t very many of them. These people were modern humans. They were our ancestors. As they spread out across our continent they entered the territory of another species – the Neanderthals. ibid.
That physical power was complimented by another vital asset. So as well as having significantly larger bodies Neanderthal had considerably larger brains. Making them a formidable enemy. ibid.
Mankind faces a battle against extinction. Mankind: The Story of All of Us V, History 2012
The problem then was not only how and why do species change, but how and why do they change into new and well-defined species, distinguished from each other in so many ways; why and how they become so exactly adapted to distinct modes of life; and why do all the intermediate grades die out (as geology shows they have died out) and leave only clearly defined and well-marked species, genera, and higher groups of animals? Alfred Russel Wallace, autobiography
It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more quickly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species, since evidently they do not increase regularly from year to year, as otherwise the world would long ago have been crowded with those that breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, Why do some die and some live? And the answer was clearly, on the whole the best fitted live ... and considering the amount of individual variation that my experience as a collector had shown me to exist, then it followed that all the changes necessary for the adaptation of the species to the changing conditions would be brought about ... In this way every part of an animal's organization could be modified exactly as required, and in the very process of this modification the unmodified would die out, and thus the definite characters and the clear isolation of each new species would be explained. ibid.
The action of this principle is exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident; and in like manner no unbalanced deficiency in the animal kingdom can ever reach any conspicuous magnitude, because it would make itself felt at the very first step, by rendering existence difficult and extinction almost sure soon to follow. Alfred Russel Wallace, paper 1858