The forces that shaped the British landscape
Tori Herridge is a palaeobiologist at the Natural History Museum, specialising in fossil elephants particularly those which lived in Europe during the Ice Age. However, she is also interested in how and why evolution happens, and this new three-part series sees Herridge build on the format established by pilot The Megaflood That Made Britain and explore exciting subjects such as a huge meteorite that landed in Scotland, the battle of the sea beasts in England’s Jurassic Park and the amazing story of the very last mammoths to graze British grasslands as recently as 14,000 years ago. Dr Herridge begins by exploring north west Scotland, which is often considered a ‘geologist’s Mecca’ “This part of Scotland has been a hot-spot for research for over 100 years, and it is incredibly well studied,” she told Celebrate Scotland. “But one bit of the geology in this place has always puzzled people – the sections of rock known as the Stac Fada Member. “They used to be thought to be the remains of an ancient volcanic deposit, but the evidence didn't quite stack up. “Then, in 2008, researchers from Oxford realised that it had all the hallmarks of rock flung far and wide by an ancient asteroid impact. “Mike Simms, a palaeontologist at the Ulster Museum, read this research and decided he just had to go and make a pilgrimage to the Stac Fada Member to see this evidence for an 1.2billion-year-old asteroid strike himself. “So he went on holiday to Assynt, and checked out the rocks, and in doing so realised he could see something the previous research group hadn’t spotted – that it looked like the Stac Fada Member had been thrown there from the east.” “This meant the asteroid must have hit somewhere inland, and not out to sea. “And this meant that the crater could still be there, somewhere.” So Dr Tori joins Mike to look for evidence of the first ever asteroid impact crater in the UK, and one of the biggest known across the globe. After the success of her aforementioned first show, Herridge is hoping this new series will make people view the world around them a little differently. Each episode of Walking Through Time will use state-of-the-art drone filming to capture the expansive landscapes Herridge investigates. So as well as being educated, viewers will also be captitvated by the sheer beauty of the locations.