Wild new world. Mammoths to Manhattan. Season 1, Episode 6

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. Modern day North America is far removed from the continent first encountered by people 13,000 years ago. Today it is dominated by symbols of human culture; then it was dominated by mammoths and sabre-toothed cats. This final programme examines the evidence for the cause of the Ice Age extinctions and takes a journey through time to see how the survivors have adapted to the altered landscape of North America. From mammoth hunting through to the rise of the skyscraper we see how wildlife has adapted to a human-controlled New World. Built for the needs of people, cities have also become home to all manner of North American wildlife. Moose roam through downtown Anchorage during the winter, eating people's garden plants and destroying Christmas tree lights. Manatees gather in their hundreds to bathe in the warm water pumped out by a Florida power plant, and burrowing owls raise their chicks in one of America's biggest urban sprawls - Silicon Valley.

Runtime

54 minutes

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Database

Alexander Street

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