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| View Larger Image | How the Earth Was Made (History Channel) | DVDStarring: How the Earth Was Made
Directed By: Peter Chin
| List Price: | $24.95 | | Price: | $13.99 | | You Save: | $10.96 (44%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | DVD | | Rating: |  | | Run Time: | 94 minutes | | Format: | Color, DVD, NTSC | | Studio: | A&E HOME VIDEO | | Number of Discs: | 1 | | Aspect Ratio: | 1.33:1 | | Release Date: | April 15, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 2,038nd |
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FEATURES | - From a once seething, hellish mass of molten rock to the world that inhabits life today, take a rollercoaster ride through the entire history of Planet Earth. Its 4.5 billion year epic, a story of unimaginable timescales, earth-shattering forces, incredible life forms, radical climates and mass extinctions. Discover how the continents were formed, canyons were carved, and why the world's anima
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
From a once seething, hellish mass of molten rock to the world that inhabits life today, take a rollercoaster ride through the entire history of Planet Earth. Its 4.5 billion year epic, a story of unimaginable timescales, earth-shattering forces, incredible life forms, radical climates and mass extinctions. Discover how the continents were formed, canyons were carved, and why the world's animals live where they do.DVD Features: Additional Scenes; Bonus Documentary Inside the Volcano |
Amazon.com
There's a lot of information in How the Earth Was Made, but perhaps the most interesting relates to time. Quite often, the numbers are so staggering that scientists refer to it as "deep time," an appropriate term when one grapples with the notion that our planet is 4.5 billion years old, or that the oceans were formed by rainfall that lasted literally millions of years, or that 700 million years ago, Earth was completely covered by ice that was a mile thick, with surface temperatures reaching minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other end of the scale are numbers that seem surprisingly small: for instance, it wasn't until 220 years ago that the accepted church doctrine regarding the planet's age (no more than 6000 years, according to the Bible) was seriously challenged and that the key to its past was found in rocks, not scripture, while the discovery that dinosaurs once ruled the Earth came considerably later than that. Using a combination of computer graphics and animation, various drawings and diagrams, photos, location footage, and expert commentary, this fascinating, 94-minute History Channel production takes us from the very beginning, when the planet was formed by meteors colliding in space, through numerous major events (including the appearance of water, granite, and oxygen) and mind-boggling catastrophes (such as mass extinctions caused by volcanic eruptions or the enormous meteor that wiped out 75% of all living things, including the dinosaurs, some 65 million years ago), right up to the present; there's even a glimpse into the future, when Earth will likely end up as barren and lifeless as Mars (no need to hit the panic button yet, though--a few billion more years will pass before that happens). Bonus features include additional scenes and a documentary entitled "Inside the Volcano." --Sam Graham |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 28 reviews)
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Very enjoyable and informative by magellan (Santa Clara, CA)  5 Stars
October 23, 2009
As I had a modest background in geology from college (I minored in earth science), which was all the way back in the early 70s, I was interested to see how much the field had changed. I knew a bit about recent developments but you know how it is, what with job and career and stuff you lose track of your old interests so I was out of date on many things.
This series made it dramatically clear that much had changed in the 35 years since I was in school. Back then, the oldest rocks known were in the Canadian Shield and the monzonite sands of Tanzania, which were a mere billion years old. Now they can go back over 3.5 billion years. Continental drift is now firmly established, but in my historical geology text by Dott and Batten, orogenesis (mountain building) was still discussed as possibly being explained by the geosynclinal theory of deposition of deep strata through erosion with mountains occurring from crustal isostatic rebound.
But the most striking thing is how they can now interpret and date many of the most dramatic events in the earth's past, such as the "Snowball Earth" phase which started 1.5 billion years ago when all the continents came together in the southern hemisphere and stopped the ocean currents, which led to a prolonged cooling phase. It's end and the eventually warming phase eventually led to the Cambrian explosion. There there was the Siberian crustal eruption in the Permian which wiped out even more life (80%) than the iridium meteor strike that killed off the dinosaurs, and so on. This was the biggest volcanic event in earth's history.
It was also fascinating to hear how the earth's atmosphere had changed; one reason Carboniferous insects and the later dinosaurs grew so big was that there was a greater percentage of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere than now (30% then compared to about 20% now).
The show features on site footage of many of the most important geological finds around the world and their rocks, with expert commentary by the geology professors, of course. I thought this was a nice touch, having once hiked up to the location of the Burgess Shales in the Canadian Rockies and seen a few of these important geological locations myself.
Overall a truly fascinating and informative series and one of the best nature documentaries ever done.
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Inspirational DVD on the creation of Planet Earth. by Willy Wagtail (Australia) 5 Stars
October 06, 2009
How the Earth was Made is extremely important viewing for today. The DVD presents a graphic account of the changes to the Earth over time. Most importantly it clearly presents the processes that made life on Earth possible and therefore any human interference with the Earth can have dire consequences. It is an amazing and skillful presentation of the Earth as a living Earth with its own agenda for its healthy functioning. For anyone interested in the state of the Earth today, due to human activity, it is a very worthwhile look for it is imperative to know the Earth story and the human story in order to appreciate the cocktail of conditions vital to a healthy Earth.
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consistent technical glitches rendered it unviewable by Anne Cushman (San Francisco)  1 Stars
August 10, 2009
This looked like an absolutely fascinating program and I ordered it for my son's ninth birthday present--but to my (and his) dismay when we started to watch it the DVD froze and jumped to the point that the program was unwatchable. I returned it for a replacement from Amazon--and had the same problem with the replacement. We watched another video immediately afterwards so I'm sure the problem was not with my DVD player. Too bad...it looks fascinating but they need to check their quality control.
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Awesome video!!! 5 Stars
July 10, 2009
This program gives a quick synopsis of the major events that occur in each time period. There is a good mix of cgi and real life footage. The narration really keeps the viewer's interest. Quite possibly the best and most informative geology/earth science video I have ever seen.
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GREAT FILM by Sam Lakey (Montpelier, VT.) 5 Stars
July 09, 2009
This film explained how the earth was made in very plan english and the whole family enjoyed it. Very interesting and informative. So glad I got it.
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