Surviving Earth traces mass extinctions and life’s resilience

Almost three decades after Tim Haines reimagined natural history with Walking with Dinosaurs, he has applied the same visual techniques to look even further into the past. Surviving Earth, a docuseries that begins on NBC on 11 June, explores eight mass extinction events stretching back 450m years through the lives—and eventual annihilation—of the creatures that preceded or lived alongside the dinosaurs.

Rather than dwell only on endings, the series focuses on recovery and resilience. Haines frames the show as being about "how life bounced back" and says the "biggest message of the show is that the Earth is an incredibly changeable place and life has evolved on it, which means that life has evolved to cope with change.

No matter what the Earth has tried to do, life has always managed to crawl through it and come out the other side stronger." The production drew on more than 300 scientists over three and a half years.

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