Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives

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S01E01: Magic in the Rocks

"Magic in the Rocks", looks at the types of rocks where fossils can be found, from limestone, mudstone and sandstone to coal and amber. We travel from the Dorset coast to a quarry in Leicestershire then across the world to the Dominican Republic and Arizona and back to Glasgow and Edinburgh. We visit mines, petrified forests and swamps and laboratories where fossils are being extracted from their stony matrix, X-rayed, cat scanned and manipulated in 3D computer cross-sections.

Overview

David Attenborough presents a series on fossils and palaeontology.

Episodes

Magic in the Rocks

S01E01 Magic in the Rocks

April 23, 1989 40 min
"Magic in the Rocks", looks at the types of rocks where fossils can be found, from limestone, mudstone and sandstone to coal and amber. We travel from the Dorset coast to a quarry in Leicestershire...
Putting Flesh on Bone

S01E02 Putting Flesh on Bone

April 30, 1989 40 min
"Putting Flesh on Bone", explores what the animals looked like and how they behaved when they were alive. Some of the fossils are preserved in remarkable detail so that you can see the outlines of...
Dinosaur

S01E03 Dinosaur

May 7, 1989 40 min
"Dinosaur", provides the most familiar information. Dinosaurs have been 'done to death' by, seemingly, dozens of speculative and factual documentaries since David made this. But even if this episode is full of facts that have...
The Rare Glimpses

S01E04 The Rare Glimpses

May 14, 1989 40 min
"The Rare Glimpses", examines areas of the fossil record where information is sparse. We visit The Burgess Shales in British Columbia, Canada where there's a rare deposit of soft-bodied animals, the sort that don't usually...

Cast

David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Presenter - Narrator

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