Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that natural disasters have had a significant influence in moulding the Earth's geological features. In 1822 William Buckland, the first reader of Geology at the University of Oxford, published his famous Reliquae Diluvianae, in which he ascribed most of the fossil record to the effects of Noah's flood. Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology challenged these writings, arguing that geological change was slow and gradual, and that the processes responsible could still be seen at work today - a school of thought known as Uniformitarianism. But in the 1970s the idea that natural catastrophes were a major factor in the Earth's geology was revived and given new respectability by the discovery of evidence of a gigantic asteroid impact 65 million years ago, believed by many to have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
With:
Andrew Scott Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London
Jan Zalasiewicz Senior Lecturer in Geology at the University of Leicester
Leucha Veneer Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:49.2 | Hello 65 million years ago a massive object from outer space slammed into what is now the |
| 0:54.0 | Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. A five mile wide asteroid made a crater 12 miles |
| 0:59.2 | deep and 180 across which is still visible today. Many scientists believe this |
| 1:04.3 | catastrophic event killed three quarters of life on earth and caused the |
| 1:07.9 | extinction of the dinosaurs. When the evidence for this impact was first |
| 1:11.7 | discovered in the early 1980s, |
| 1:13.6 | it reawaked interest in the theory of geology which had long fallen out of fashion, |
| 1:18.1 | catastropheism. Catastrophism is the idea that the Earth's surface has been shaped by a series of drastic events. |
| 1:25.0 | The term is particularly associated with the 19th century French geologist George Cuvier, |
| 1:30.0 | who believed that fossils of extinct creatures proved that the world had undergone some major catastrophes in its past. |
| 1:37.0 | All those ideas have been long disregarded by scientists, recent discoveries suggest that he may have had a point. |
| 1:43.0 | With me to discuss catastroism are Andrew Scott, |
| 1:47.0 | Lebehum Ameritus Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway University of London, |
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