Wild new world. Edge of the ice. Season 1, Episode 4

Description

"We're trying to imagine what it was like to be the very first people to arrive on the continent almost 14,000 years ago," explains series producer, Miles Barton. This is the first attempt in television to discover the landscape and wildlife of America after the last Ice Age. The series features amazing re-animations of such animals as the sabre-toothed tiger and woolly mammoth and, using computer graphics, returns lions, cheetahs and zebras to North America where they lived thousands of years ago. This look at the past provides a unique perspective on North American wildlife of today, including those creatures who now depend upon people and cities for their survival. Thirteen thousand years ago, the north-west corner of the New World was a place where animals survived at edge of the ice. The elephant-like mastodon and its biggest predator, the ferociously fanged scimitar-toothed cat, were just two of the most impressive beasts that lived here. Coastal fringes and islands were an important ice-free sanctuary while much of the continent was buried under ice. And the latest research suggests that this may be the place where the first people entered North America, possibly using boats to travel down the north-west coast. Their arrival occurred around the time of one the biggest floods of the ice age, when a towering 600-metre-high wave wiped out millions of animals and created a waterfall that makes Niagara Falls look puny by comparison.

Runtime

53 minutes

Series

Subjects

Geography

Genre

Database

Alexander Street

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