The KT Boundary
In Our Time23 Jun 2005

The KT Boundary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the KT Boundary. Across the entire planet, where it hasn't been eroded or destroyed in land movements, there is a thin grey line. In Italy it is 1 cm thick, in America it stretches to three centimetres, but it is all the same thin grey line laid into the rock some 65 million years ago and it bears witness to a cataclysmic event experienced only once in Earth's history. It is called the KT Boundary and geologists believe it is the clue to the death of the dinosaurs and the ultimate reason why mammals and humans inherited the Earth.But exactly what did happen 65 million years ago? How was this extraordinary line created across the Earth and does it really hold the key to the death of the dinosaurs?With Simon Kelley, Head of Department in the Department of Earth Sciences, Open University, Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology, University of Leeds; Mike Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

Episoder(1085)

The Bluestockings

The Bluestockings

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Bluestockings. Around the middle of the eighteenth century a small group of intellectual women began to meet regularly to discuss literature and other matters, ...

5 Jun 201446min

The Talmud

The Talmud

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and contents of the Talmud, one of the most important texts of Judaism. The Talmud was probably written down over a period of several hundred years, beg...

29 Mai 201447min

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1859 the poet Edward FitzGerald published a long poem based on the verses of the 11th-century Persian scholar Omar Khayyam. Not a s...

22 Mai 201447min

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and many other organisms use sunlight to synthesise organic molecules. Photosynthesis arose very early in evoluti...

15 Mai 201446min

The Sino-Japanese War

The Sino-Japanese War

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. After several years of rising tension, and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, full-scale war between Japan and China broke out ...

8 Mai 201446min

The Tale of Sinuhe

The Tale of Sinuhe

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tale of Sinuhe, one of the most celebrated works of ancient Egyptian literature. Written around four thousand years ago, the poem narrates the story of an Egypt...

1 Mai 201447min

Tristram Shandy

Tristram Shandy

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. Sterne's comic masterpiece is an extravagantly inventive work which was hugely popular when first published in 1759. Its of...

24 Apr 201447min

The Domesday Book

The Domesday Book

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Domesday Book, a vast survey of the land and property of much of England and Wales completed in 1086. Twenty years after the Battle of Hastings, William the Con...

17 Apr 201447min

Populært innen Historie

rss-dette-ma-aldri-skje-igjen
henrettelsespodden
rss-katastrofe
med-egne-oyne
historier-som-endret-norge
rss-benadet
sektledere
rss-nadelose-nordmenn-gestapo
aftenposten-historie
rss-frontkjemperne
historier-som-endret-verden
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
rss-gamle-greier
historiepodden
rss-historiske-romanser-svik-drap-og-kjarlighet
rss-bisarr-historie
taakeprat
rss-historier-fra-gudbrandsdalen
historiepodden-ww2
vare-historier