Extinction is a scary word and a scary topic — but it's one that needs talking about. Why? Because it seems to be happening now. Scientists believe Earth is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction, an event that could devastate ecosystems all over the globe.
Cramming a lot of science into an hour, the project makes good use of computer animation and other graphics to illustrate the K/T Extinction, the asteroid strike that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago; and the Great Dying, which claimed even more species 250 million years ago. Scientist Sean B. Carroll serves as a guide through the research, enlisting various colleagues in what essentially plays like a jigsaw puzzle, involving theory pieced together from the fossil and geologic record.
New York, NY, September 17, 2014 - It’s a mystery on a global scale: five times in Earth’s past, life has been nearly extinguished, the vast majority of plants and animals annihilated in a geologic instant. What triggered these dramatic events? And what might they tell us about the fate of our world? MASS EXTINCTION: LIFE AT THE BRINK, narrated by Jeffrey Wright, a new one-hour special premiering Sunday, November 30 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel, is produced by Tangled Bank Studios, the film and television unit of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
We here at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia were lucky enough to host award-winning filmmaker Sonya Pemberton (who wrote/produced/directed the film)--and her crew in 2012, when they were filming segments of the documentary. A version aired in 2013 as a 90-minute film titled "Jabbed: Love, Fear, and Vaccines." Pemberton interviewed infectious diseases physician, vaccine developer, and College Fellow Paul A. Offit, MD, in our museum, and used images and artifacts from this website, our library, and the Mütter Museum collection.
[BOSTON, MA, July 17, 2014]- Measles. Mumps. Whooping cough. Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago are returning. Across America and around the globe, children are getting sick and dying from preventable diseases- in part, because some parents are choosing to skip their children's shots. How and why do vaccines work? What are the biggest concerns and misconceptions, and what are the risks to the child and society when people decide to forego immunization? The award- winning science series NOVA helps viewers find the answers they need.
Moving downward from the shoulder, the arms of Neil Shubin, fish paleontologist, are built like this: one bone, two bones, lots of bones, digits. The same is true for a bird's wing, a leopard's forward leg and the front fins of Tiktaalik, the ancient fish Shubin discovered in arctic Canada that was one of the first to walk on land.
Ever since Charles Darwin made his way to the Galapagos, we've heard a lot about that fateful moment when some previously water-bound creature pulled itself up from the slowly receding seas, took a breath and began the eons-long march to humanity.
What we didn't know was what that creature looked like and how, specifically, it relates to us.
PBS is bolstering its efforts to woo fans of natural history and science by adding an extra hour to its Wednesday night programming block.
Tonight (April 9), the U.S. pubcaster will premiere the three-part series Your Inner Fish, featuring paleobiologist and author Neil Shubin (pictured above). Produced by Tangled Bank Studios and Windfall Films, the miniseries is based on Shubin’s book of the same name and examines the ways human DNA is similar to shrew-like mammals that existed 165 million years ago.
Ever since Charles Darwin made his way to the Galapagos, we've heard a lot about that fateful moment when some previously water-bound creature pulled itself up from the slowly receding seas, took a breath and began the eons-long march to humanity. What we didn't know was what that creature looked like and how, specifically, it relates to us. Based on the bestselling book of the same name, "Your Inner Fish" is a six-hour, three-part documentary determined to do just that.
The club of scholars named Neil who are good writers and also telegenic is fairly small, with Neil deGrasse Tyson (see “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”) sometimes seeming to be its only member. But let’s not overlook Neil Shubin, a paleontologist who makes an appealing guide to our evolutionary history on “Your Inner Fish,” a three-part exploration, based on his books, that begins on Wednesday on PBS.
