Last year, the BBC released a documentary titled Dinosaurs: The Final Day, presented by English biologist David Attenborough. Using CGI, the program recreates the last days of dinosaurs through the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that wiped them off the Earth. Another tool, Ancient Earth, allows you to travel even more backward in time to see our planet’s surface 750 million years ago. This advanced technology was created with the help of engineer Ian Webster and multiple paleogeographic maps. So, sit comfortably as we embark on a million-years journey through the transformation of planet Earth!
Cryogenian period–750 million years ago
Let’s start with the etymology of the word. “Cyogenian” derives from the Greek words kryros (cold) and génesis (birth). In this period, glaciers may have covered the entirety of Earth during the greatest ice age known to geologists. There exists a scientific debate over how much planetary surface was covered by these glaciations.
While some maintain that our planet’s whole surface was frozen (the Snowball Earth hypothesis), others believe that a band of open sea survived near the equator (the Slushball Earth theory). Interestingly, it was during this period that new types of life, like green algae, first appeared.
