BBC - Europe A Natural History - 1 - Genesis.avi

Europe's natural history is the product of a complex history stretching back half a billion years. Its most ancient mountains, the Caledonites and Urals, were formed during the collision of continental plates from which modern Europe is assembled, described as "the first act of European union". During the Carboniferous period, Europe's equatorial jungles harboured giant predatory invertebrates, and the landmarks of Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin would have stood amid unbroken primeval forests. By 270 million years ago, Europe had drifted north and become part of the supercontinent Pangaea. The forests of the interior, cut off from life-giving rains, turned to desert, their remains forming the rich coal seams deposited in Europe's rocks. The Swiss Jura and other limestone regions are formed from the remains of marine creatures deposited as shallow seas evaporated. This was a time when reptiles ruled, and Oxford would have been roamed by dinosaurs. Rising sea levels triggered by a warming climate would have submerged much of Europe around 100 million years ago: only London's tallest buildings would have risen above the waves. The demise of the dinosaurs created opportunities for birds and mammals, evidence of whose ancestors has been unearthed at Messel pit. The subsequent break up of Pangaea, the birth of the Atlantic and Mediterranean and the creation of the Alps and Pyrenees were driven by tectonic forces which continue to this day in Iceland. The cyclic draining and flooding of the Mediterranean was the last geological act in the genesis of the continent.