Horizon - 2002-2003 - The Day the Earth Nearly Died

It was the mother of all catastrophes. 250 million years ago, 95% of all life on Earth was wiped out in the greatest disaster our planet has ever experienced. Yet the cause of this cataclysm has long remained a mystery. No one knew what had done it, or whether it could happen again. Now, Horizon can reveal what really happened on the day the Earth nearly died. It occurred in an era long before the dinosaurs, when strange, half-forgotten reptiles roamed the Earth. It was as complete a world back then as ours is today. Then, the fossil record shows, everything died out in a geological instant. When palaeontologists looked for the reason, they could find almost nothing. The Permian killer had left no fingerprints. But there were a few clues. There were signs that the entire continent of Siberia had caught fire in massive volcanic eruption, filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In the Antarctic there were hints of a meteor the size of Manhattan. Perhaps the Permian creatures had met the same fate as the dinosaurs. But a trip to Greenland may have finally revealed the truth. It seems that there was not one Permian killer, but two - including a strange and terrifying force from deep within the oceans.