The camera pans around a purple mountain rising through a lush green forest. But the film glitches… something is wrong. The scene flickers with a hellish inverse: a deadly volcanic eruption. The Earth's crust splits and red light bleeds from its opening. Deadly rivers of lava veil the now-black rock, and ash and toxic gases spill into the air.
This fiery inferno is the deadliest volcanic event in Earth's history, around 250 million years ago. It's just one of many moments that have brought the planet we call home close to death – and one of the five key events that shape the BBC's new Earth series.
This is the BBC Natural History Unit's usual output reborn as a forensic crime thriller, with fossils as evidence. With Chris Packham presenting, Earth exposes the clues hidden in fossil records that reveal all the times the planet – and our long-gone ancestors – have almost been destroyed over the last 4.5 billion years.
In this way, aims to show that our future has already happened, with the current climate
