The Late Devonian Extinction
In Our Time11 Maalis 2021

The Late Devonian Extinction

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of species disappeared. Scientists are still trying to establish exactly what happened, when and why, but this was not as sudden as when an asteroid hits Earth. The Devonian Period had seen the first trees and soils and it had such a diversity of sea life that it’s known as the Age of Fishes, some of them massive and armoured, and, in one of the iconic stages in evolution, some of them moving onto land for the first time. One of the most important theories for the first stage of this extinction is that the new soils washed into oceans, leading to algal blooms that left the waters without oxygen and suffocated the marine life.

The image above is an abstract group of the huge, armoured Dunkleosteus fish, lost in the Late Devonian Extinction

With

Jessica Whiteside Associate Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton

David Bond Professor of Geology at the University of Hull

And

Mike Benton Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Bristol.

Jaksot(1081)

Memory and Culture

Memory and Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss memory. At the start of the twentieth century Freud put memory at the centre of our psychology, and as the century has worn on what a nation remembers and what it shoul...

27 Touko 199928min

The Universe's Origins

The Universe's Origins

Melvyn Bragg examines the history of what we know about the origins of the universe. Some four hundred years ago in Rome, one Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his belief in other inhabited wo...

20 Touko 199928min

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss multiculturalism. The divisions between people provoked and exploited because of differences in religion, culture, nationality and race seem to beset the planet the mor...

13 Touko 199928min

Mathematics

Mathematics

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century, the nature of mathematical ability, and what mathematics can show us about how...

6 Touko 199928min

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? Some argue so. And is consciousness, as we are, with headaches and tiffs and moods and small pleasures a...

29 Huhti 199928min

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the roots and the consequences of religious fundamentalism. It still surprises many Western liberal intellectuals that religion survives at all. That fundamentalism flo...

22 Huhti 199928min

Evolution

Evolution

Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Are we continuing to evolve? If so, what are the signs and if not, why not? And those apes, so very very near us ...

15 Huhti 199928min

Writing and Political Oppression

Writing and Political Oppression

Melvyn Bragg examines how two writers’ work have been shaped by political oppression and explores whether writers have a political role in modern society. The connection between writers and politics h...

8 Huhti 199928min

Suosittua kategoriassa Historia

olipa-kerran-otsikko
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
mayday-fi
huijarit
mystista
rss-ikiuni
totuus-vai-salaliitto
konginkangas
tsunami
rss-kirkon-ihmeellisimmat-tarinat
rouva-diktaattori
rss-i-dont-like-mondays-2
rss-peter-peter
rss-sattuu-sita-suomessakin
apinan-vuosi
rss-subjektiivinen-todistaja
sotaa-ja-historiaa-podi
maailmanpuu
historian-nurkkapoyta
rss-kalmakabinetti