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Ancient Earth

Season 1 leaves PBS Documentaries in 55 min
Season 1
Dive into the most dramatic events in Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, from its birth to the emergence of humanity. How did a hellscape of molten lava transform into a lush, green, watery planet filled with life? With dazzlingly realistic animation based on the latest research, each of these five episodes brings to life long-lost worlds that ultimately led to the one we know today.
20235 episodesTV-PG
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Episodes

  1. S1 E1 - Ancient Earth: Birth of the Sky
    October 3, 2023
    53min
    TV-PG
    Early Earth was a hellscape of molten lava and barren rock, bombarded by meteors, with no atmosphere at all. How did our familiar blue sky – the thin, life-giving band of gasses protecting our planet – come to be? Discover how life itself helped create the air we all breathe today.
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  2. S1 E2 - Ancient Earth: Frozen
    October 10, 2023
    53min
    TV-PG
    700 million years ago, Earth was a giant snowball cloaked in ice from pole to pole – a global deep freeze threatening the survival of the earliest complex life. How did life manage to hold on in this forbidding world? Leading scientists investigate how this catastrophe may have become a catalyst for life to evolve in creative new ways--setting the stage for the astonishing complexity we see today.
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  3. S1 E3 - Ancient Earth: Life Rising
    October 17, 2023
    53min
    TV-PG
    For billions of years, life teemed in the oceans of planet Earth while the land was desolate and inhospitable. So how did life make the leap to land? Scientists explore how some of the earliest life emerged and invaded a barren, rocky landscape, eventually transforming it into a verdant, green world.
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  4. S1 E4 - Ancient Earth: Inferno
    October 24, 2023
    53min
    TV-PG
    252 million years ago, a devastating mass extinction wiped out about 90% of all species on Earth. Follow scientists as they piece together evidence to discover how life survived and set the stage for a new dominant life form: the dinosaurs.
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  5. S1 E5 - Ancient Earth: Humans
    October 31, 2023
    53min
    TV-PG
    How did Earth give rise to humans? With stunningly realistic animation, witness the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs, the spread of primates across the planet, and the geologic events that made our species' existence possible. Explore the power and paradox of humanity’s profound impact on our planet, and ponder the question of how we may shape its future.
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