Handfast Point

Wallpaper Description:

Photo Alan Holiday
From around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period countless skeletons of plankton began to drift to the bottom of a tropical sea here Over the course of roughly 35 million years this process formed a thick blanket of white limestone known as chalk At this time the ecosystems of the world were under pressure Life was vulnerable struggling with natural changes in global climate
Disaster came 65 million years ago when an asteroid six miles across crashed into the Gulf of Mexico In the cataclysm that followed around 75% of species were wiped out including the dinosaurs This event brought the Mesozoic Era to a close and made the world we recognise today a possibility After the extinction event mammals freed from the tyranny of the dinosaurs rose to dominate the world We are their descendants possessed of the unique ability to transport ourselves back to those ancient days with little more than a white cliff face and our imagination