With every passing day, scientists learn more about the Earth's past, but the future always remains a mystery. Is the extinction of species being accelerated by mankind, or is it part of nature's plan?
For more than century, the Galapagos Islands have provided a crucible for studying how certain species evolved and how they are affected by changes in the environment. On "Chikyu Sosei Mystery" (The Mystery of Earth's Creation; TBS, Mon., 9 p.m.), actor Yutaka Takenouchi travels to the isolated group of islands in the Pacific Ocean to see what's going on there.
He discovers that certain species have exhibited clear signs of evolution within the last decade. One theory for these startling changes is the enormous effect the climate phenomenon known as El Nino has had on the environment of the Pacific Ocean — much greater in the last century than scientists first thought. The turtle population around the Galapagos is believed to have dropped from about a million at the turn of the 20th century to about 15,000 now.