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Since its creation, the Earth has never stopped changing.
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Colossal forces have hurled ocean floors upwards and made them into towering mountain ranges.
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Incredible collisions have created entire continents.
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These tectonic forces are still at work today.
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We see them in volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
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Tectonics sculpt our landscapes, change our climates, dry up our oceans, and can destroy life.
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The geological history of Europe is mysterious.
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With the help of experts, we'll discover how huge tectonic events created a world of strange
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shapes and vivid colors.
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In the past, Europe has been entirely underwater.
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It has been invaded by strange creatures, and some of them have changed the very shape
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of the continent.
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These transformations in time and space are part of the never-ending voyage of the continents.
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The history of Europe began soon after the Earth was formed.
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Four and a half billion years ago, the Earth was a fiery ball of liquid matter.
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Small bits of crust formed, but soon melted back into the surrounding lava.
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This went on for millions of years until the planet cooled enough for stable ground to form.
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The town of Kirkenes in the far north of Norway is part of what's called the Scandinavian
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Shield.
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This region is ancient and stable.
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One of the first bits of land to survive the destructive forces of the Age of Volcanoes.
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In fact, many geologists believe that the Scandinavian Shield is the very first piece
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of the European continent.
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The rock formations in this region are made of nice, a rock that was formed deep in the
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Earth about three billion years ago.
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Pavel Kepizinskas is convinced these rocks hide a precious secret.
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Pavel isn't just a geologist.
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He's a prospector.
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He travels the world in search of the oldest rock formations and the diamonds they may
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contain.
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To find out if the Kirkenes rocks have diamonds, Pavel is looking for traces of a particular
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type of ancient lava called kimberlite.
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This is a type of lava that can literally spew diamonds from the depths of the Earth
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right up to the surface.
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What we're looking at is a very important indicator of presence of kimberlites in the
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area.
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These are feeder channels, feeder pipes that allow basaltic magma to come to the surface
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from the depth of approximately 150 kilometers.
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It's very important for us because it tells us that kimberlites are somewhere nearby in
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this area and it's just a matter of time for us to discover them.
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Diamonds are still the most precious stones on Earth, but they're also scientific treasures.
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Diamond is a beautiful record of the early Earth, what was going on 3.5, 3 billion years
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ago, and that's absolutely amazing.
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This is just a great piece of geological history.
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We're going to get to these two spots here.
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Pavel is traveling up the Bok Fjord in Fjord, hoping it will lead him to kimberlite deposits.
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But success in diamond hunting is rare.
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Most prospectors, no matter how hard they try, fail to strike it rich.
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However, Pavel thinks his scientific training will make all the difference.
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Freddie, can we go inside there just nearby just to see these things?
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And something catches his eye.
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Look at that.
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Absolutely gorgeous, Dike.
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Look at that.
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I mean, this is the channel.
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This is how the magma is coming up.
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Find the crack, find the empty space, and just boom, go all the way up.
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And maybe if they're lucky they get out, they deserve this form like lava flow or big eruption.
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This is a beautiful feature.
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I mean, it's very rarely consist of like that.
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These basalt walls were created when flowing lava cooled almost instantaneously when it
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came in contact with cold water.
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Pavel hopes the basalt contains diamonds, or at least has rocks that can be accurately
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created.
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The older the rocks, the more likely they've experienced kimberlite eruptions.
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These eruptions have to break through the granite in one fell swoop.
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And then, can the diamonds reach speeds faster than the speed of sound?
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Hundreds of millions of years of erosion have worn down the surface, revealing precious
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diamond dust.
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Pavel has a card up his sleeve, his knowledge that the glaciers which dug the fjord may
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also have transported bits of kimberlite, depositing valuable clues all along the shore.
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He explores a beach where sediment transported by glaciers has accumulated.
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If Pavel's lucky, this shoreline will hold diamond dust.
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Pavel and his team examine the beach with a fine toothed comb.
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We're taking a sample of this sand, because we hope that kimberlite minerals will show
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up in the sand.
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Specifically, if you look at the sand, it's white, but then there are some black things
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here.
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It's dark, so kind of a blackish.
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Black typically means we might have some spinels here, some chrome-rich spinels like chromite,
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which is a very good kimberlite indicator mineral.
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Some of this sand probably came from some of the mountains.
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Once the sample taking is finished, the stones gathered in Kierkenes will be transported to
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a laboratory in Finland.
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The lamb technician split the samples into fragments using electromagnetic shocks.
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It takes time, money, and energy to find kimberlites and the diamonds in them.
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But most of all, it takes luck.
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It's actually amazing that kimberlites can be right next to each other.
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One can be diamondiferous, and the other can be completely free of diamonds.
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So we know that the sampling is actually quite by chance, and that there's no rule about
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which kimberlites can be diamondiferous and which is not.
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After the samples are cleaned, they're examined under the microscope.
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Unfortunately, the Kierkenes samples contain neither kimberlites nor diamonds.
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But it's not all bad news.
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Although he hasn't found diamonds, Pavel has found a zircon crystal almost four billion
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years old.
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The rocks that protected it all those years are the oldest formations in Europe.
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In fact, this remarkable discovery means that Europe is 200 million years older than scientists
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previously thought.
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It's a proof that the Scandinavian shield is the cornerstone for the construction of
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all of Europe.
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500 million years ago, the Scandinavian shield is part of a continent geologists call Baltica.
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To the west of Baltica lies the second mass of the Earth's crust, Larentia, which later
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becomes North America.
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More than 400 million years ago, tectonic forces pushed these two giants together.
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The result is the first major stage in the building of the European continent.
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Rob Butler of the University of Aberdeen is studying the collision that left gigantic
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pieces of America in what's now northern Europe.
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Coming to Larentia, these nices are 1.8 billion years old.
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Sounds old, but they're actually the youngest part of the Larentian continent.
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And it's this continent that collided with Baltica.
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We've come here to find out what happened when Larentia met Baltica.
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These are the highlands of the northwest of Scotland.
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The dramatic landscapes here have long mystified geologists.
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But Rob Butler is able to read these rock formations and to recreate the collision between Europe
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and America.
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An event that created a once towering mountain range, the Caledonian.
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Collision between continents is about one of the most dramatic things that can happen
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in tectonics, and it can change the face of the Earth and make great mountain ranges.
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But the trouble with ancient mountain ranges is they're gone.
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So we need to look for the geological clues for how those mountain ranges formed.
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And that's why we come up here to L'Occlain Coole.
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The way it usually works is that younger rocks are deposited on top of older ones.
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But at L'Occlain Coole, something completely different happened.
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Those are the quartz sandstones, and they're forming a layer coming up from the sea all
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the way up to the top of the mountain there.
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Now they're half a billion years old, and they're sitting on top of the Laurentian
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Nicese.
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Those are really old Laurentian Nicese.
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Those are three billion years old.
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It's quite a difference.
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But what's that on top?
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It's the Laurentian Nicese again.
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Look at them, all the way back here, all the way back, all the way back, and they've been
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carried right over the top of the quartzite, of the quartz sandstone.
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How can we explain the strange sandwich of rock layers?
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When Baltica and Laurentia crash into each other, tectonic forces push part of the American
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plate on top of Europe, heaving pieces of North America tens of kilometers over the surface
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of Scotland.
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Evidence of a geological collision like this is normally hidden far under the Earth's surface.
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But proof of this can be seen in the open air not far from here.
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Discovered in the 19th century, the moine thrust belt extends for almost 200 kilometers.
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Here we can see the front line between the continents of Laurentia and Baltica.
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But unlike the Laughlin Cool Fault, here, Europe lies on the edge.
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On top of America.
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Well these cream-colored rocks, they're the top of the Cameron sequence, about 500 million
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years old.
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Those green rocks on top, that dark mass, that's a unit called the moine.
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It's a thousand million years old.
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So older rocks on top of younger.
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But more importantly, those moine rocks have been cooked and sheared deeper in the crust,
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deeply buried and have been brought up across the sedimentary rocks of Canberra in age that
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are part of Laurentia.
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And the contact is the moine thrust.
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It's up here.
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So that's the moine thrust.
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A thousand million year old moine on top of 500 million year old Canberra in sediments,
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older on younger.
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And it's happened on this knife edge contact, this knife edge thrust.
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And it's moved, this thrust has moved 100 kilometers.
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Probably took a few million years.
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It all happened about 420 million years ago.
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It was the final act in when the Laurentian continent met Baltica.
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It was here in the Scottish Highlands that scientists first understood that the highest
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mountains in the world are created by horizontal movements of tectonic plates.
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The Caledonian mountains are now just a shadow of their original selves.
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But the rocks that form this range are still here.
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And they can be found not only in Scotland, but also in the mountains of Scandinavia and
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the Appalachians of North America.
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420 million years ago, the collision between Baltica and Laurentia not only raises up mountains,
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it creates a whole new continent, Lurasia, which combines Northern Europe and North
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America.
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Meanwhile, the rest of the Earth's crust forms a single continent, Gondwana.
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Soon tectonic forces begin to push these two mammoth formations toward each other.
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On a tiny stretch of land off the coast of Brittany and France, we can still see vestiges
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of this second great collision that profoundly changed the continent of Europe.
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The island of Gua still bears witness to the massive buckling, twisting changes that occurred
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when Lurasia and Gondwana came together.
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This was a cataclysm of an unprecedented scale, and it formed the heart of Europe as we know
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it today.
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Geochemist Pascal Filippo has come to Gua to look for rocks that tell of this extraordinary
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encounter between Europe, America and the rest of the world.
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L'Inde groix is the best place to study the history of the collision of Gondwana and Lurasia.
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The collision closed the ocean between the two continents.
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As Gondwana and Lurasia come closer together, kilometers of ocean floor sink below the Earth's
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crust.
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Some minerals turn into precious stones and are later pushed up to the surface.
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There are many signs on Gua of the interchanges between the inside and the outside of the
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Earth.
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These vertical voyages created garnets, precious stones, and other minerals that were crystallized
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many kilometers under the Earth's surface.
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Come and look at this.
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There's garnet here.
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Come closer and you'll see the blue shift, a matrix of glycophane studded with garnet,
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the red crystals.
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You can see how the molten glycophane swirled around the garnet.
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This shows the direction the two plates were moving.
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So here, on a tiny scale, are traces of a process that must have gone on for tens of
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millions of years.
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Luras garnets have allowed scientists to figure out what happened next in the tectonic history
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of Europe.
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These stones reveal that after the disappearance of the ancient ocean that lay between Lurasia
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and Gondwana, the two supercontinents collided.
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And it happened about 300 million years ago.
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The collision of Gondwana and Lurasia created a huge mountain chain called the Hercinian
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Belt.
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It's around 800 kilometers wide and several thousand kilometers long, and runs across
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Europe from Poland through Germany and France, and down to southern Portugal, then over to
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North Africa.
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It also runs along the eastern seaboard of present-day North and South America.
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For millions of years, the Hercinian Belt rose, eventually becoming as tall as today's
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Himalayas.
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Not much of it is left today.
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Evidence of these old mountains can be seen in granite formations found in Pluminaq in
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the north of Brittany.
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These rocks were formed when tectonic forces pushed minerals deep into the earth, where
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they melted into magma.
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That magma crystallized and solidified into granite in the underlayer of the Hercinian
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Belt.
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When the mountains eroded, the granite was exposed, becoming natural artworks, and virtually
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all that remains of the ancient Hercinians.
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The collision between Gondwana and Lereja brings together all the land on the globe
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into a single supercontinent, Pangea.
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Many of these land masses are situated at the South Pole and covered by ice.
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But Europe, located closer to the equator, had a different history.
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Life that had been confined to the seas rose above the water and developed at a dizzying
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speed.
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In the Champ-Clois-en-Forest in the south of France, Jean Gaultier, professor emeritus
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at France's National Center for Scientific Research, imagines what it would have been
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like here in prehistoric times.
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If I were walking in this forest 300 million years ago, the trees would be completely different.
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They'd be as tall as these or even taller.
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But we wouldn't see any pines or walnut trees.
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Instead, there would be trees with large spiny leaves called sigillaria, many varieties
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of fern, and whole groups that no longer exist.
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The ancient forests were so lush because Europe was almost at the equator, so the climate
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was tropical, very hot, and plant life was perfectly adapted to that environment, nothing
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like the plants we know today.
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Underneath its vegetation, Champ-Clois-en is a graveyard for the remains of a tropical
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forest that grew hundreds of millions of years ago during the Carboniferous Period.
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While the plants of the Carboniferous Period were developing at full speed, plant remains
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accumulated, and they formed the seams of pit coal that would be mined hundreds of millions
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of years later.
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What I find most remarkable are these ancient tree trunks, several meters high, still standing
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where they grew when they were alive.
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This fossil forest was created when a sudden massive mudslide encased the trees and hardened,
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taking an imprint of their surfaces.
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Over millions of years, the original trees rotted away.
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The space then filled up with clay, which solidified.
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Much later, the surrounding sediment eroded, revealing perfect three-dimensional replicas
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which can tell us a lot about the biology of these trees that could tower up to 20 meters
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tall.
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This sigillaria trunk is one of the largest in the quarry.
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It's part of a tree that is almost a meter across at the base.
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The tree trunks of Champ-Clois-en have been preserved for an astonishing 300 million years.
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The remains of a tropical forest in the northern hemisphere are undeniable proof that our continents
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have drifted around the planet's surface.
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During this same period, the once mighty Hercinian Belt ceased to rise and quickly began to erode.
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After 50 million years of this intense erosion, an ancient sea called Tethys finds a way into
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the southeast of Pancrasia.
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This sea, which eventually becomes the Pacific Ocean, floods the heart of Europe.
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The waves of the Tethys carried with them huge quantities of sediment, which formed beaches
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on the shores.
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In the red peaks massive on the Swiss-French border, time has turned the former sandy beaches
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into clay.
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Around the Amazon Valley, the power of tectonics has pushed these clay beaches right up the
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sides of the mountains.
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Lionel Cavern and his colleague walk towards a former beach that is now located at an altitude
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of 2400 meters.
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The site is so well preserved that we can still see the undulations made by waves 240
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million years ago.
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It's not uncommon to find rocks with ripple marks, but what is rare, particularly in the
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Alps, is finding these little depressions among the ripple marks.
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These are dinosaur footprints.
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Here we see a three-toed footprint, three toes pointing in this direction, left by an
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animal who walked along this beach 240 million years ago.
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There are no bones at this site, so we have no direct evidence of what the animal looked
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like.
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To figure out what kind of dinosaur or reptile could have left these footprints, we have
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to compare the footprints to bones collected at other sites.
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The researchers who did that 20 years ago determined that it was some sort of very primitive
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dinosaur.
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We're looking at these findings again, and we now think it may have been a proto dinosaur,
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a line of reptiles that eventually evolved into dinosaurs, but not technically a true
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dinosaur.
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Tectonic forces, climate, and erosion all had to act together perfectly for these traces
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of early dinosaurs to survive until today.
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When the reptiles left these footprints on the beach, the sand was very soft, and a lot
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of factors had to fall into place for these prints to be preserved for over 240 million
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years.
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First, the sand had to be the right consistency, soft but not mushy, so it could hold the prints
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for a couple of hours.
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Then the surface of the beach had to dry out and harden quickly, in order to preserve them
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for a few days.
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00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:23,080
And then, the biggest stroke of luck, the entire surface was covered by another layer of mud
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and sand that completely sealed in the footprint layer.
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00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:32,840
The pressure of the overlying layer turned the surface with the footprints to clay, and
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the hardened clay has preserved the footprints in the sand for millions of years.
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Some of these are nice, but the best ones are down there.
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Between the Ice Age, glaciers formed in the Alps.
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As the glaciers grew and advanced and retreated, they scoured out these valleys we see today.
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Essentially, the glaciers scraped away the rock overlay, revealing the surface containing
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00:28:01,360 --> 00:28:03,680
these reptile footprints.
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Once exposed to the elements, this layer will quickly erode, and the prints will be destroyed,
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00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:24,120
but 20 years from now, other footprints may be uncovered.
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00:28:24,120 --> 00:28:30,160
About 50 million years ago, the Tethys reaches southern Germany, and Bavaria becomes an archipelago
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of islands surrounded by a shallow sea.
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00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:43,160
The climate was hot and dry at that time, and the waters of the ancient ocean evaporated
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00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,840
quickly, leaving layers of sediment.
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The marine species that came this far suffocated in the stagnant water.
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The Sohnhoffen region was soon transformed into a marine graveyard.
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For millions of years, the Sohnhoffen ocean floor turned into limestone.
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Nineteenth-century laborers who used the limestone as building material discovered fossils that
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astonished and disconcerted scientists.
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Martina Kobel Ebert studies the period when Germany was a marine environment.
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The limestone in this quarry was precipitated in one of the basins.
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If we had a bird's eye view, we would see higher ground all around here, mounds of mud
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or reefs, or even coral islands sticking out of the sea.
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Here in these deeper basins, we find fossil fish.
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But what makes this quarry so special is that many of the species we're finding are unknown
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to science.
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They've never been seen before, and they are beautifully preserved, the most gorgeous fossils
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00:30:05,919 --> 00:30:09,719
I've ever seen.
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Today, Bavaria hardly resembles an ocean.
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00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:20,479
But the Jura Museum at Eichstadt has fossils that take us back 150 million years into a
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tropical world inhabited by strange creatures.
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This is one of the fish from our excavation site.
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But of course, they don't come out of the quarry like this.
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This needed several hundred hours of preparation work.
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But once it's finished, you can see it is in a near-perfect state of preservation.
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If you look closely, you can see that all the scales are in place.
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You can make out the color pattern on the scales.
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And these dark shadows are the remnants of the internal organs.
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So a biologist could tell quite a lot about the physiology of the fish.
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This fossil shark is an extraordinary specimen.
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It has soft body preservation with all the fins in place, as you can see here.
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Not just the skeleton has been preserved, even that would be remarkable, because sharks
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don't have actual bone, their skeletons are made of cartilage.
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00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:35,520
Usually when people talk about fossil sharks, they're referring to a few isolated teeth.
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The marine fossils of Solnhoffen have surprised researchers.
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But not as much as the discovery of an archaeopteryx, a close cousin of the dinosaurs and the first
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bird known to have lived on Earth.
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When you look at the skeleton, you can see that it's part dinosaur and part bird.
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The spinal column extends into a long tail, the teeth in the mouth.
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It also has claws on the limbs.
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So it is like a dinosaur skeleton.
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It also has imprints of feathers.
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It has wings, just like a bird.
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The Solnhoffen archaeopteryx probably flew over the ever advancing waters of the Tethys
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Ocean.
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In the same period, 200 million years ago, a major event occurs that affects the whole
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planet.
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Tectonic forces begin to tear the single continent of Bangea apart.
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The land masses of the Earth will never again be fully joined.
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00:32:44,879 --> 00:32:49,000
An ocean opened up, separating North America and Europe.
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While to the south, the future Alps were covered by a shallow sea.
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00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:06,399
On Mount CheneyƩ, in the Quera Massif on the French-Italian border, geologists are
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searching for signs of the era when the Alps were underwater.
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00:33:13,639 --> 00:33:21,679
Jean-Marc Lardo and Raymond Ciriot study rocks that contain traces of life.
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It's absolutely superb.
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These rocks are fantastic because they clearly demonstrate oceanic affinity.
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It's amazing.
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00:33:31,199 --> 00:33:36,919
The sedimentary rocks at this location have a very particular chemical composition.
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They are rich in silica and full of nanofossils.
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00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:48,080
Sediments like these form only in the ocean and in specific areas of the deepest ocean,
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in the ocean and nowhere else.
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00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:56,040
So we know precisely the type of environment where these sediments were deposited.
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00:33:56,040 --> 00:34:01,920
They are red, they are full of nanofossils that we call radiolaria.
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What's amazing about radiolaria is that they are timepieces.
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What I mean is that by studying their morphology in detail under the microscope, we can date
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00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:12,880
them.
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We've done that here.
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These fossils were deposited on the sea floor at a depth of 2,000 to 3,000 meters 160 million
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00:34:22,639 --> 00:34:24,239
years ago.
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00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:25,840
That was in the Jurassic.
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00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:39,120
So we are standing here on the muddy bottom of the Tethys Sea.
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00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:45,280
The presence of tiny animals who can live only at great depths is proof that these rocks,
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00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:52,280
now over 3,000 meters high, used to be 2,000 meters below sea level.
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00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:57,640
Back when this undersea world was still young and unstable, volcanic eruptions broke through
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00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,640
the ocean floor of the future Alps.
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00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:07,960
These gushes of lava are found on the flanks of today's Mount Chonaille.
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00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:09,360
Here we are.
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00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,080
This is a spectacular formation.
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00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,160
These are lava tubes.
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00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:18,480
These rocks are basalt, the rock that forms the sea floor.
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00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:24,640
We normally find basalt in the form of lava flow, but this basalt could not spread out
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00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:29,040
because the lava was immediately cooled by the seawater.
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00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:32,320
When it erupts underwater, it's unable to spread.
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00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,000
It's confined within the tubes.
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00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:40,520
It'll crack the tube open and slop out, but it immediately congeals.
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00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:50,520
And here we find all the characteristics of oceanic lava, called pillow lava.
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00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:57,280
At the birth of the Alps, lava which had been solidified in seawater was lifted high above
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the ocean.
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00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:04,600
One way to look at it is that the Alps, like all other mountain chains on Earth, contain
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00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:11,240
the memory of vanished oceans.
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00:36:11,240 --> 00:36:16,839
When the highest mountains in Europe were still only a distant dream, the continents, after
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00:36:16,839 --> 00:36:24,200
being joined for hundreds of millions of years, started to break free of each other.
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00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:32,440
The enormous breach between North America, Europe and Africa creates the Atlantic Ocean.
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00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:38,520
The cold seawater of the Atlantic aids the growth of new microscopic organisms.
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00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:48,760
These living beings are so numerous they transform the geography of England and France.
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00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:54,520
In the Nor-Padecalei region, in the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Lille,
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00:36:54,520 --> 00:37:01,640
sedimentologist and geochemist Nicola Tribovia specializes in the oceans of the past and
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00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,520
the living organisms that colonize them.
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00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:06,160
Hello Nicola, come in.
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00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:07,560
How's it going?
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00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:08,560
Fine.
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00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:13,080
So, what have we got?
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00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:19,120
Nicola is studying microscopic algae which protect themselves with limestone armor called
409
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,560
cockaliths.
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00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,440
A cockalith is this tiny object.
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00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:28,960
This line indicates the scale of the image and it's two microns long.
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00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,480
In other words, it's minute.
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00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:36,200
This cockalith is what makes chalk, a rock typical of the Cretaceous.
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00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:38,840
In fact, Cretaceous means chalky.
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00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,560
So, what is a cockalith?
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00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:47,600
It's a tiny part of a cockosphere, which is the arrangement of these discs or plates
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00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:54,440
into a sphere.
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00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:59,960
So chalk is nothing more than the accumulation of these little round skeletons, these unicellular
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00:37:59,960 --> 00:38:08,280
algae that colonized every ocean and continue to do so.
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00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:13,800
Descending the steps of the Laezen quarry, Nicola is diving 30 million years into the
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00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:15,400
past.
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00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:21,840
Down here he can see the remains of the first algae to colonize the Atlantic.
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00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:26,640
Cockalith skeletons weigh only a few micrograms each, but there are billions and billions
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00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:29,840
of them covering the bottom of the sea.
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00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:36,800
On the coast of the English Channel, this limestone graveyard is almost 700 meters thick.
426
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:44,560
In the era when these chalk masses were forming, the sea level was much higher.
427
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,280
Why did sea level rise?
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00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:52,240
Because Pangea, the supercontinent, was breaking up and the pieces were sliding away from
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00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:54,600
each other.
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00:38:54,600 --> 00:39:01,920
The breakup of Pangea and the associated tectonic movement began the creation of the sea floor.
431
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:06,839
Material wells up from the mantle and forms mid-ocean ridges, which expand from all the
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00:39:06,839 --> 00:39:10,360
hot material flowing in.
433
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:12,759
They take up a lot of space.
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00:39:12,759 --> 00:39:16,560
When I get into my bathtub, the water level rises.
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00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:21,600
So in the same way, when the underwater mountain chain expands in what is, no matter how large
436
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:30,000
the scale, a confined space, sea level has to rise, probably up to 200 or 250 meters above
437
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,839
present-day sea level.
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00:39:34,839 --> 00:39:41,360
When the sea level eventually went down, the famous white cliffs of Dover, made of cockaliths,
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00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:45,759
were left 80 meters above sea level.
440
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:53,760
These cliffs are so fragile that erosion wears them down about 30 centimeters a year.
441
00:39:53,760 --> 00:40:04,600
100 million years ago, a small piece of Africa breaks off.
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00:40:04,600 --> 00:40:07,680
This land mass is pushed northward towards Europe.
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00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:23,240
It will later become Croatia and Italy.
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00:40:23,240 --> 00:40:30,680
This collision between Africa and Europe changed over 300,000 square kilometers of the continent,
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00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:38,520
an area as large as the United Kingdom.
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It lifted up the Alps, folded the ocean floors, and twisted the continent into surprising
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shapes.
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The tectonic power that created these mountains was immeasurable.
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Eventually, they became Europe's largest mountain range, with peaks up to 4,800 meters.
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First Michel Martellet is heading for Zermatt in the Swiss Alps.
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He's on his way to an exceptional site with a sweeping view of the collisions that created
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the Alps.
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This is a remarkable spot, because here we're standing on sea floor, which was 3,000 meters
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underwater during the Mesozoic, long, long ago, and it's now high in the mountains.
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This is the perfect place to explain how the Alps were formed.
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All around us are the remains of an ocean, but there's a paradox, because this magnificent
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massif, the Monte Rosa, is made up of granite and nice, much older continental rock, around
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400 million years old.
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It's more than twice as old as this crust.
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And there's a third partner in this dance as well.
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There, with its peak hidden in the clouds, is another chunk of continental crust sitting
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on top of this bit of ocean floor.
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That's the Matterhorn.
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Yet, and other mountains we've been in the distance started out in Africa.
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So people can come to this one small location and visit Europe, the sea right here, and
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over there, Africa.
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00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:08,400
The Matterhorn is not the highest peak of the Alps, but its distinctive shape makes
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it one of the easiest to recognize.
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And a magnet for mountaineers from around the world, 500 of whom have lost their lives,
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attempting to reach its summit.
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From the birth of the Scandinavian shield to the raising of the Alps, Europe has never
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stopped changing.
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It's become bigger and higher.
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Tectonic changes in Europe have helped create life, and they've also been responsible for
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the extinction of species.
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Today Europe's 733 million people live in 51 countries.
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Tectonic forces have never stopped changing and reinventing Europe, and researchers are
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00:44:02,720 --> 00:44:10,319
still trying to understand the recent past, the present, and most importantly, the future
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of the European continent.
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As Africa continues to push into Europe, Europe continues to change.
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Tectonic forces will keep altering the continent, slowly erasing the Mediterranean Sea, forming
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majestic underground galleries, causing volcanoes, and earthquakes.
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And these are only some of what will come from the continual battle of Tectonic forces
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in Europe.
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Tectonic forces will keep altering the continent, and will continue to change.
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Tectonic forces will continue to change.
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