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Oct 24, 2023 · The final epic chapter for the birds, a dynasty that was almost wiped out. But thanks to the few survivors of the dinosaur family tree, birds rose from the ashes. Over 66 million years, they've reinvented themselves into a myriad of forms.
- Overview
- Synopsis
- Animals featured
- Errors
- Trivia
Chapter 6: Out of the Ashes is the sixth episode of Life On Our Planet. It presents the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of the birds that succeeded them.
The episode opens up 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. Animals of all varieties are shown going about their daily lives. It is the nesting season for Edmontosaurus, who tend to their hungry young in North America's plains. A thousand kilometers south, a female Tyrannosaurus tries to teach her offspring how to ambush, but their impatience costs them the element of surprise and they frustratingly abandon the hunt. To the west, the giant long-necked Alamosaurus feed on the tender pine shoots in the wetlands, as they have for generations. Off the coast of Africa, the oceans are bountiful and ruled by huge marine reptiles such as the plesiosaurs.
The dinosaurs have ruled Earth for over 150 million years, but their rule will soon be over. An asteroid the size of Mount Everest is hurtling towards the planet at the speed of sound. After it strikes the Earth with the power of a billion nuclear bombs, a devastating chain of events is set off. A blast of thermal radiation destroys everything within a thousand kilometers. The Tyrannosaurus heads out to the edge of a cliff to investigate the strange events, but is quickly incinerated by the shockwave. The impact sends out seismic waves that cause off-the-scale earthquakes. Herds of Alamosaurus and other dinosaurs are swept away by huge surges of water.
Debris ejected into space by the impact is pulled back into the Earth by gravity, becoming superheated on re-entry. The Edmontosaurus are slowly cooked to death, as the herd bellows in a panic and tries in vain to shield their young in their nests. Less than 2 hours after impact, the firestorm has engulfed half the planet. Azhdarchid pterosaurs are seen being bombarded by falling ejecta while Triceratops in the forests below are burned alive by the raging wildfires. The oceans were also devastated. Acid rain obliterated ancient reefs, collapsing the food web and killing off the marine reptiles. Arthropods and sharks managed to make it through in the depths, feeding upon the bodies of the dead.
The dinosaurs had all perished, but life had found a way through the extinction. Insects, small reptiles, amphibians, and mammals had made it through in their shelters. Amazingly, one type of dinosaur did manage to survive: the birds. In the post-apocalyptic ashfields of the barren landscapes, a nest of ground-dwelling birds hatch and explore their surroundings. They are kept warm by their feathers and are self-sufficient from their first breath; able to walk within hours and forage for different food sources like insects and seeds. The birds would eventually form a great dynasty, but their story began much earlier.
The episode goes back in time to the Jurassic, 160 million years ago. Among the forests and cliffs of China, dinosaurs roam in huge varieties. One type of small dinosaur had evolved feathers: the bird-like Anchiornis. A female of this genus is shown hunting insects, unaware that a juvenile Sinraptor is creeping up on her through the trees. The Anchiornis manages to dash away in time, but its running speed is hindered by its leg feathers. The hungry theropod corners the smaller creature at the edge of a cliff, but she has run here for a reason: Anchiornis quickly leaps off the cliff and uses her wings to glide away from the predator. The evolution of wings allowed birds to become hugely successful, establishing their million year old dynasty.
Modern birds are shown in the present to reveal how successful they have become. In the Altiplano desert of Chile, flamingos use powered flight rather than gliding to travel in search of food. Their feathers have been specialized for aerial mastery and their teeth have been replaced by beaks to allow for new diets. The flamingos land to start their courtship displays: a series of elaborate dances done in groups to attract females. Another type of bird, the owls, evolved just 5 million years after the asteroid impact. Great gray owls survive in the freezing climate of the pine forests, using their sharp eyesight and deadly claws to hunt small burrowing mammals such as voles. The extinction also allowed for a huge increase in flowering plants, creating extensive tropical rainforests around the world. Hummingbirds thrive in the jungles competing for flower nectar. They had evolved to be just like insects, hovering with their fast-beating wings and using very long beaks to feed on a kaleidoscope of different flowers. Swordbill hummingbirds are extremely specialized, having evolved a very long beak to reach inside of very deep flowers like the angel trumpet.
Prehistoric Animals•Edmontosaurus
•Tyrannosaurus (last appearance as recurring)
•Alamosaurus
•Cretaceous plesiosaur
•Triceratops (last appearance as recurring)
•Anchiornis
•Life is continuously mentioned throughout the series as a "war" between "dynasties" to "dominate the Earth". This is in fact inaccurate, as there is no one dominant species on the planet, and no one animal group is "superior" to another. Freeman states “Scanning for fish, [the penguin] hovers like a hummingbird with perfect poise. In contrast, the cold-blooded iguanas are slow and sluggish, restricted to feeding on low-energy kelp at the whim of the currents. The warm-blooded penguins couldn't be more different with their speed and agility, chasing down fish with ease.” This implies that birds are superior to reptiles, which is not true since the lifestyle of marine iguanas has been a successful one that uses far less calories to survive.
•The series repeatedly uses predation as a way of showing how each animal clade is superior to another (Phorusrhacos hunting Theosodon to show avian dominance over mammals, and Smilodon hunting Titanis to represent the opposite, etc.) Predator/prey relationships and a species' position in its environment's food web are not the same thing as evolutionary or Darwinian fitness, leading to the misinterpretation of predators being "more fit" than prey.
•The same inaccuracy from Chapter 1 applies to this episode: Smilodon gracilis was much smaller than Titanis, which was over twice as heavy and tall as the saber-toothed cat. Due to this, it is highly unlikely that Smilodon preyed upon the terror bird.
•The creators behind this documentary openly admit that many of the designs for the creatures (ex. Titanis, Tyrannosaurus) were more focused on being appealing to audiences (notably, looking scary) rather than being scientifically accurate. Meaning that a number of animals presented are visually inaccurate to how they would've been in real life.
•The Tyrannosaurus has too many teeth packed together in the front of the Maxilla region in the skull.
•The Edmontosaurus shown had a head crest. The only species of Edmontosaurus known to have had a head crest is E. regalis, which died out millions of years before the K-PG extinction.
•To provide a unique opening scene, the filming crew filmed the post-asteroid ash filed in Iceland. Much of this was accomplished with props and set dressing instead of VFX, including burnt trees and a half-size Triceratops head made by a prop house with expertise in dinosaurs.
•The asteroid sequence was filmed in locations all over the world, including a canoe park in the UK for the scene of Alamosaurus getting swept away by currents.
•To film the hummingbirds Emmy-winning camera team Matt Aberheard and Joe Fereday employed a cutting edge set of filming techniques. They worked with world champion racing drone pilot Alex Jordan, who used state of the art FPV micro-drone technology combined with miniature 4K cameras to weave his way through the forest canopy, perfectly to the millimeter in a way never attempted before. To capture the speed of hummingbird flight, super high-speed cameras were combined with new rotational rigs and camera pivot systems to fly with the birds and experience them feeding on flowers on the fly at up to 1,000 frames a second.
•The terror bird chase was shot in central Marrakech in a historic palm forest near the city center. Due to COVID, the bustling location was free of all people and vehicles, and an abandoned football pitch served as the location for Director of Photography Jamie McPherson to track at 40 miles per hour with his gyrostabilized vehicle rig. It was the only time in history this has happened, and it made filming the sequence possible.
Summary: “1978”. Attenborough decides “to leave the BBC once again” in order to produce and host his own series, which he would pitch to “whoever my successor might be” (54). He is impressed by the format pioneered by BBC2, in which roughly hour-long programs would detail “big and important subjects,” though he felt that the ...
Oct 25, 2023 · Chapter 6: Out of the Ashes - "The dramatic story of the day the dinosaurs were wiped out by a planet-killing asteroid and the ride of the most unlikely survivors in the aftermath of the apocalypse." Chapter 7: Inheriting the Earth - "This is the story of the rise of our dynasty: the mammals.
- Martin Shore
S01E06 Chapter 6: Out of the Ashes Summary. The dinosaurs met their end with a cataclysmic asteroid impact. Rising from the ashes, birds reinvented themselves into a dynasty 10,000 species strong.
Analyze and interpret data for patterns in the fossil record that document the existence, diversity, extinction, and change of life forms throughout the history of life on Earth under the assumption that natural laws operate today as in the past.
Life on Our Planet – Season 1, Episode 6. The dinosaurs meet their end with a cataclysmic asteroid impact; rising from the ashes, birds reinvent themselves into a dynasty 10,000 species...
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