What Was Earth Like When Giant Insects Ruled the Land? | Documentary For Sleep

Settle in, get comfortable, and let the day fall away. Tonight we travel back more than three hundred million years, to a world of swamp forests without end, where the air itself was richer than the air you breathe tonight. Rich enough to grow dragonflies with the wingspan of seagulls, millipedes longer than a person is tall, and scorpions as long as your arm. We will walk that green world slowly. Its towering scale trees, its still black water, the coal it left buried under our feet, and the long rains that finally brought it down. This is the Carboniferous, the age when insects ruled the land. Chapters: 0:00 The Forest Before Flowers 18:54 A World Still Joining Together 39:36 Trees That Were Not Quite Trees 59:41 How a Forest Becomes Coal 1:19:53 The Air Itself Was Different 1:40:33 Wings Over the Swamp 2:01:14 The Long Body on the Forest Floor 2:21:39 Life in the Shallows 2:41:26 The Egg That Left the Water 3:02:15 When the Rain Forests Fell Narration: AI-generated voice (Pocket TTS). Music: "Lightless Dawn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Thumbnail image: Meganeura in the primeval forest diorama, Milwaukee Public Museum — Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and graded). Image and video credits (all via Wikimedia Commons): Coal-forest dioramas (Milwaukee Museum), Meganeura diorama, Anthracosaurus diorama — Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0 Pangaea maps — Fama Clamosa; Taxon34, CC BY-SA 4.0 Appalachian ridges; Glossopteris fossil; Stigmaria root; charcoal debris in coal; fossil charcoal in coal; crinoid diorama; Neuropteris fossil — James St. John, CC BY 2.0 Forested Appalachian ridges — Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0 Lepidodendron fossil — Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 Lepidodendron reconstruction — Falconaumanni, CC BY-SA 3.0 Sigillaria fossil; Calamites fossil; Meganeura type fossil; Meganeura fossil wings — Ghedo, CC BY-SA 4.0 Coal seam at a mine face — Peabody Energy, Inc., CC BY 3.0 Coal seam outcrop, Swansea Heads — TrimmerinWiki, CC BY-SA 4.0 Peat bog, Mer Bleue — cjuneau, CC BY 2.0 Bog forest, Ergaki — Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0 Fusain fossil charcoal — Paul Stocksdale, CC BY-SA 3.0 Charcoal close-up — Tim Brunauer (for GIZ), CC BY-SA 4.0 Meganeura model, Toulouse — Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 Meganeura reconstitution — Eunostos, CC BY-SA 4.0 Arthropleura fossil; Arthropleura reconstruction — Prehistorica CM, CC BY 4.0 Arthropleura model; Mastodonsaurus skull; Hylonomus model — Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 3.0 Diplichnites trackway; Joggins lycopsid trunk — Michael C. Rygel, CC BY-SA 3.0 Pulmonoscorpius reconstructions — Jason A. Dunlop & Russell J. Garwood, CC BY 4.0 Eryops restoration — Dmitry Bogdanov, CC BY-SA 3.0 Rhizodus restoration — DiBgd, CC BY-SA 4.0 Crinoid fossils, Iowa — Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 3.0 Hylonomus fossil (MUSE Trento) — CC BY-SA 3.0 Hylonomus type specimen — Natural History Museum, London / Pardo, Lennie & Anderson (2020), CC BY 4.0 Joggins Fossil Cliffs — Larry, CC BY 2.0 Fossil tree stump — Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0 Dimetrodon restoration — TotalDino, CC BY 4.0 Permian paleoclimate map — Massimo Bernardi, MUSE Trento / Michael J. Benton, CC BY 4.0 Coal mine aerial, Tagebau Hambach — dronepicr, CC BY 2.0 Milky Way over hills — ForestWander, CC BY-SA 3.0 us Beneath the Milky Way — ESO/Luis Calçada/Herbert Zodet, CC BY 4.0 Public domain / CC0 images: coal-age wall-chart landscapes; Wells swamp-forest illustration; Knight early-Earth painting; Wegener Pangaea map; Pecopteris fossil; forest-fire and coal-seam-fire photographs; cypress swamp in mist. Video clips (via Wikimedia Commons): Rainforest aerial, Rio Doce — Jobimetal, CC BY-SA 4.0 Dragonflies over a pond — Dennis.insect.filmer, CC BY-SA 4.0 McSorley Creek outlet — Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0 Forest stream, Rosochacz — Jolanta Dyr, CC BY-SA 3.0 Waterfall, Dingle — Maoileann, CC BY-SA 4.0 Khunkorn waterfall — Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0 Glowing embers — Hedwig Storch, CC BY-SA 3.0 Cloud timelapse, New Mexico — John Fowler, CC BY 2.0 Night sky, La Silla — ESO/José Francisco Salgado, CC BY 4.0 Waves at Kalaloch — Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0 Mowich rainstorm — Mount Rainier National Park, CC BY 3.0 CC0 / public-domain clips: mist creek rays; creek mouth at dusk; Fern Canyon; Mission Creek; Joshua Tree clouds and night sky.