In this final blog post I will review and discuss my opinions on the 9th episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmos, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth”. In this episode Tyson covers the history and physical landscape (also known as Palaeogeography) of planet earth. He starts by covering how most of the worlds coal sources were made; by lignin rich trees that lived untouched by herbivores. He then goes on to explain how these coal sources later helped caused, along with volcanic activity the Permian Triassic extinction event. While these topics don’d directly relate to astronomy it does help to know how certain aspects of a planets biology can lead to its own destruction if left unchecked.
As the episode progresses Tyson moves to focus on plate tectonics and how they create and change the landmasses of the world. He also covers a lot of the history and theories that scientists of the past had on landmasses. He covers how plate tectonics work in an adequate way though I wouldn’t have been adverse to a bit more detail. In total I think this added greatly to the value of the episode and compliments what we are learning in astronomy quite well.
As the episode moves towards conclusion Tyson changes focus once more to explain the extinction event that lead towards the rising of the mammals and while this section of the episode was quite interesting It had little to do with astronomy. Though he does later explain some of the effects the astral bodies of out solar system can have on our planet. In total this episode of cosmos was a great addition to my knowledge of Astronomy, Palaeogeography and Ecology and I would highly recommend it.
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