NOVA: Australia's First 4 Billion Years

—One of the strangest landscapes on Earth reveals our planet's complex history—

Episodes become available for streaming on demand after each broadcast.

Of all the continents on Earth, none preserves a more spectacular story of its origins than Australia. NOVA’s four-part miniseries takes viewers on a rollicking adventure from the birth of the Earth to the emergence of the world we know today.

With high-energy host and geologist Richard Smith, meet titanic dinosaurs and giant kangaroos, sea monsters and prehistoric crustaceans, disappearing mountains and deadly asteroids. Epic in scope, intimate in nature, this is the untold story of the Land Down Under, the island continent that has it all.

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Drive with dinosaurs graphic for NOVA's "Australia's First 4 Billion Years." Explore how one of the strangest landscapes on Earth reveals our planet’s complex history.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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This old block of rock in the boondocks of Western Australia is older than the hills around it. Hidden inside are the oldest bits of the planet ever found: tiny zircon crystals that celebrated their first birthday 4,400,000,000 (4.4 billion) years ago.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Pyramid in the Pilbara, Australia.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Host and geologist, Dr. Richard Smith at Uluru.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Uluru, the glowing heart in Australia’s Red Centre isn’t all it appears. It’s really quite grey on the inside and only rusty red on the outside. In fact, most of the great redness that defines the Australian Outback comes from the iron minerals that started rusting way back when the Earth’s first forests pumped up the planet’s oxygen level.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Stromatolites - You might not see the resemblance, but these muddy mounds are your oldest living relatives. Sure, they are positively petrified, but bacterial stromatolites like these were some of the first beachgoers you would have encountered on a seaside holiday in the prehistoric past.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Stromatolites at Shark Bay.

Courtesy of Richard Smith/Blue Planet

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Dr. Richard Smith and Stomatolites at Shark Bay.

Courtesy of Chris Taylor

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Emu Bay, Trilobite Fossils (Redlichia takooensis).

Courtesy of Naomi Mitchell

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Emu Bay, Trilobite Fossils (Redlichia takooensis).

Courtesy of Naomi Mitchell

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Edicaran Community

Courtesy of Mirage VFX

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Modern Man meets Ancient Mollusc: Presenter Richard Smith and the Nautilus.

Courtesy of Eye Candy Animation

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Anomolocaris on the hunt (Anomolocaris Briggsi).

Courtesy of Eye Candy Animation

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Australia's fierce southern hunter on the prowl in Banjo Forest.

Courtesy of Eye Candy Animation

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Small dinosaurs at waterhole.

Courtesy of Eye Candy Animation

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Boyds Forest Dragon in Daintree.

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Musky Rat Kangaroo

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

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Australian Pademelon

Courtesy of Dr. Richard Smith

EPISODE GUIDE:

Episode 1: "Awakening" repeats Wednesday, June 17 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, June 21 at 2 p.m. on KPBS TV + June 21 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Hidden in the red hills of Australia are clues to the mysteries of Earth’s birth, how life arose and how it transformed the planet into the world we now live in. Experts unveil the earliest forms of life: an odd assortment of bacterial slime. Life like this would flood the atmosphere with oxygen and spark the biological revolution that conquered the planet. Travel with NOVA and host Dr. Richard Smith to meet the cast in the first scenes of the great drama of life on earth.

Episode 2: "Life Explodes" repeats Wednesday, June 24 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, June 28 at 2 p.m. on KPBS TV + June 28 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2 - How did life storm the beaches and dominate planet Earth? Ancient Australian fossils offer clues. While the oceans were teeming, the world above the waves remained an almost lifeless wasteland — until the Silurian period, when the conquest of the land began. Host Richard Smith introduces Earth’s forgotten pioneers: the scuttling arthropod armies that invaded the shores and the waves of green revolutionaries whose battle for the light pushed plant life across the face of a barren continent. Join NOVA’s prehistoric adventure as four-legged animals walk onto dry land, with the planet poised for disaster.

Episode 3: "Monsters" repeats Wednesday, July 1 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, July 5 at 2 p.m. on KPBS TV + July 5 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2 - Host Richard Smith comes face-to-face with the previously unknown reptilian rulers of prehistoric Australia. NOVA resurrects the giants that stalked the land and discovers that some of them were among the largest ever to have walked the Earth. Others were some of the most dangerous. In the dry desert heart, scientists unearth an ancient inland ocean, full of sea monsters. But reptiles didn’t have the world all to themselves. Mammals like the enigmatic platypus lived alongside them, ready for their day in the sun. And 65 million years ago, that day arrived.

Episode 4: "Strange Creatures" repeats Wednesday, July 8 at 9 p.m. & Sunday, July 12 at 2 p.m. on KPBS TV + July 12 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2. - After the asteroid impact 65 million years ago — believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs — Australia was set adrift on a lonely voyage in southern seas. With host Richard Smith at the wheel, NOVA travels this walkabout continent to uncover how it became the strange island it is today. Australia’s many unusual creatures, like the kangaroo and the cassowary, tell a tale of isolation, change and resilience. Australia’s long history has seen mountains rise and fall, seas come and go, and whole kingdoms of life triumph and disappear. In this final episode, NOVA races down the last 65 million years to the present day.

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