Rise Of The Continents

Across the Earth there are traces of a mysterious land - a supercontinent that split apart to create our world. This is the story of how life, land and time came together to create the diversity of the seven continents.

Australia was once part of a supercontinent. Once joined to Antarctica, it split off and moved northwards into warmer climates, whilst Antarctica became an icy wasteland. The evidence can still be found in its wildlife.

Professor Iain Stewart uncovers clues hidden within the New York skyline, the anatomy of American alligators and inside Bolivian silver mines, to reconstruct how North and South America were created. We call these two continents the New World, and in a geological sense they are indeed new worlds, torn from the heart of an ancient supercontinent - the Old World of Pangaea.

Two hundred million years ago the continent we know as Eurasia didn't exist. Prof Iain Stewart shows that where the South of Eurasia is today there was once a ninety-million-square-kilometre Ocean known as the Tethys. It is the destruction of the Tethys Ocean that holds the key to Eurasia's formation. However, the formation of Eurasia is just the beginning of the story.