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...
Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives
S01E04: The Rare Glimpses
"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 fossilize. The animals of The Burgess Shale are beautiful, unlikely and bizarre. The most common creatures preserved 500 million years ago, were trilobites. But what did the trilobites eat and what ate the trilobites? The creatures that trilobites preyed upon and those that preyed upon trilobites are found here, at The Burgess Shale. After the time of the dinosaurs, there's another period when small, delicate mammals only rarely fossilized and we see a rare glimpse of them at sites in Germany: one where the famous Archaeopteryx fossil was discovered and another where the mudstone is a mere 48 million years old and hasn't finished solidifying into rock.
Overview
David Attenborough presents a series on fossils and palaeontology.
Episodes
S01E02 Putting Flesh on Bone
"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...
S01E03 Dinosaur
"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...
S01E04 The Rare Glimpses
"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
Presenter - Narrator
