The Hunt for the Oldest DNA (2024)
• February 21st, 2024 • 0h 54min
Documentary
Overview
Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet
Released on: 2021-06-04
Documentary
David Attenborough and scientist Johan Rockström examine Earth's biodiversity collapse and how this ...
King Tut: A Century of Secrets
Released on: 2022-10-19
Documentary
The world's leading Egyptologists are on a quest to uncover the secrets of Howard Carter's history-m...
What Killed the Roman Empire?
Released on: 2022-11-19
Documentary, History, TV Movie
Why did the Roman Empire, which dominated Europe and the Mediterranean for five centuries, inexorabl...
Pompeii: Secrets of the Dead
Released on: 2019-11-24
Documentary
Forensic experts scan Pompeii’s victims to investigate why they didn’t escape the eruption.
The Forest
Released on: 2024-12-16
Documentary, Crime
The story of a brilliant ecologist with a plan to save the world by restoring the planet's forests. ...
The Real Beauty and the Beast
Released on: 2013-06-14
Documentary
It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform...
Black Far West
Released on: 2022-10-15
Documentary, History, TV Movie
Did you know that the first cowboys were black? Using magnificent archives and testimonies from hist...
Meine alles außer gewöhnliche Familie
Released on: 2021-07-07
Documentary
It is normal for 15-year-old Linn to have two mothers. But when she finds out that there are still n...
Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth
Released on: 2021-07-05
Documentary, TV Movie
Chris Hemsworth has a real passion for sharks. The Hollywood star talks to experts to find out more ...
Searching for Planet 9
Released on: 2022-09-17
Documentary, TV Movie
At the edge of our solar system supposedly lies an immense planet. Five to ten times the size of the...
Venus: Death of a Planet
Released on: 2021-08-28
Documentary, TV Movie
Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Ea...
What Darwin Never Knew
Released on: 2009-12-29
Documentary, History
Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fi...
The Real T Rex with Chris Packham
Released on: 2018-01-02
Documentary, History, TV Movie
A documentary examining what the Tyrannosaurus Rex was really like - both appearance and behaviour -...
Dinolandia
Released on: 2025-04-07
Documentary, History
A mechanic discovers the fossil of a huge carnivorous dinosaur, unleashing a war between scientists,...
Prehistoric Worlds
Released on: 2020-01-23
Documentary
Five times, Earth has faced apocalyptic events that swept nearly all life from the face of the plane...
Humanzee: The Human Chimp
Released on: 2003-01-14
Documentary
Oliver is a chimpanzee who not only can walk upright, but does of his own accord. For years there ha...
Watch Out for Orcas! Danger Off Gibraltar?
Released on: 2024-02-03
Documentary
Since the summer of 2020, boats along the Atlantic coast from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bay of ...