Frozen in Time

Award-winning Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson brings usFrozen in Time, his newest film exploring the mysteries of evolution through the story of Natalia Rybczynski. A star in the field of paleontology, a traumatic brain injury stopped the scientist in her tracks. Before her injury, Natalia made fascinating discoveries in the Arctic, including the land-walking ancestor of seals, the first appearance of dam-building beavers, even the evolutionary origins of desert camels in Arctic snows. Her work suggests the Arctic was once a kind of evolutionary hub for species we now associate with much warmer climates. Despite her damaged brain, Natalia has never lost her curiosity and continues to study the high Arctic, once a rich forest world full of surprising creatures that thrived there before the Ice Age.