‘Life can always crawl’: docuseries takes us to the great events of extinction | Notes

AAlmost thirty years have passed since designer Tim Haines reimagined nature with Travel and Dinosaursusing CGI and animatronics to bring to life the monsters that roamed these lands millions of years ago.

With his latest work, Haines is using that same magic to revisit the past. Survival on Earth, a documents starts Thursday at NBCtraces eight episodes of madness going back 450m years through the lives – and ultimate destruction – of creatures that lived or existed alongside the dinosaurs.

But what is actually a list of deaths is actually a list of life, or rather, its resilience – “how life bounced back” from the eruptions, floods and droughts that have repeatedly destroyed almost all life, Haines told the Guardian.

“The biggest message of this show is that the Earth is an incredibly dynamic place and life has evolved, which means that life has evolved to adapt,” Haines said. “No matter what the world has tried to do, life always manages to crawl out and come out the other side stronger.”

Haines worked with more than 300 scientists to bring to life the creatures of Surviving Earth, consulting with paleontologists and paleoclimatologists from around the world over three and a half years. While CGI technology and the visuals of CGI animation are better than they were in 1999, when Walking with Dinosaurs started on the BBC, the process of putting the series together wasn’t that different, Haines said. A paleo-photographer created the animals while the film crew chose locations for the background shots, some of which, such as a Chilean forest with monkey trees, Haines had used for his walk with Dinosaurs. The tech team recreated the scene based on background images and detailed models of the animals created by local artists before creating the creatures and putting them all together.

There will always be debate about what fossils and fossils tell us about life in the past – what these animals looked like, how they moved and what they ate – and because no one has ever seen these animals, their interpretation will always be “what scientists think are the best guesses”, Haines said. “We don’t know when we’re right, but we know when we’re wrong.”

For example, the gorgonopsians of the first group are wild animals that are also distant relatives of mammals. “They’re like a mammal, half reptile, and we had a lot of discussion about whether there should be any hair at all,” Haines said. “I wanted him to have a beard.” Haines was eventually defeated by a scientist who described them as “actually” distant relatives of mammals and in the first episode, they looked similar to modern Komodo dragons.

With any nature show, showrunners have to find a way to entertain human audiences for animals that can’t communicate with them, but stop short of anthropomorphization. “We want you to connect with their stories, but we don’t want to start calling them Eric and Sonia,” Haines said. Another problem that Haines is facing at this time is that although a person who is very young and who thinks that things are old is familiar with dinosaurs, it is unlikely that he has heard of the creatures found in Surviving Earth.

But a good story can overcome any obstacle. “The myths we’re using are universal,” Haines said. “They are parents and babies, they are fathers and mothers, enemies and animals… they are creatures that have their own lives, and what history shows you is that you can find very rich stories.”

The first part ends with the talk of a historical mastodon in the room – known for its weather problems, it is easy to imagine that we are in the middle of an approaching event. Borrowing words from another blockbuster franchise As far as prehistoric creatures are concerned, the Good News of Survival on Earth is that life finds a way. That message becomes even more difficult when you realize that this does not mean that you and your nation will survive. Scientists compare that something like 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct and humans may go the same way.

But as the narrator Josh Goodman points out in the first part, in the pictures of cars, cities and modern life, today’s levels of carbon dioxide, which is driving the extinction of many people, are not high compared to the history of life on Earth – which means that humans are not the only species that have caused the climate crisis. “Other organisms have changed the Earth,” Haines said. “As a living species, we’re not the first to change the climate, but we’re the first to know we’re doing it.”

The concern lies in the speed with which people are managing the climate crisis. But as the first species to learn about this species, Haines said, humans also have a unique opportunity to be the first species to stop damage and find a way to make the Earth more habitable for them.

“This program is not here to teach anyone or tell anyone what to do, but it is clear that when the world changes, you have to accept it and change as much as you can,” said Haines. And if you are responsible for making changes, you would do well to try to reduce the cost of those changes.