Rise of the Mammals
2019 · 54m · Documentary
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs in a fiery global catastrophe. But we know little about how their successors, the mammals, recovered and took over the world. Now, hidden inside ordinary-looking rocks, an astonishing trove of fossils reveals a dramatic new picture of how rat-sized creatures ballooned in size and began to evolve into the vast array of species—from cheetahs to bats to whales to humans—that rule our planet today.
More Like This
Polar Extremes
2020 · ★ 5
Renowned paleontologist Kirk Johnson takes us on an epic adventure through time at the polar extremes of our planet. Following a trail of strange fossils found in all the wrong places—beech trees in Antarctica, hippo-like mammals in the Arctic—Johnson uncovers the bizarre history of the poles, from miles-high ice sheets to warm polar forests teeming with life. What caused such dramatic changes at the ends of the Earth? And what can the past reveal about our planet’s climate today—and in the future?
More info →
Out Of Europe
2020 · ★ 8
Looking at whether the history of early human evolution should be rewritten. For decades, most experts have been convinced that Africa is the cradle of mankind and many fossil finds from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Chad seemed to prove it.
More info →
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life
2009 · ★ 7.7
Darwin's great insight – that life has evolved over millions of years by natural selection – has been the cornerstone of all David Attenborough’s natural history series. In this documentary, he takes us on a deeply personal journey which reflects his own life and the way he came to understand Darwin’s theory.
More info →Mastodon in your Backyard
2001
A documentary about the 1999 discovery of a Mastodon skeleton in a Hyde Park backyard.
More info →
The Complete History of the Earth: Everything Before the Dinosaurs SUPERCUT
2023 · ★ 9
Content creator Paleo Analysis explores the Precambrian and the Paleozoic era on his quest to evolve back into a human.
More info →
The Great Dyings: The Supercut
2024
A supercut of the five part YouTube miniseries The Great Dyings. Content creator Angel of Death explores the five mass extinctions and the effects they had on life on Earth.
More info →
Dinosaurs on Ice
2008
Deep inside the arctic, scientists are experimenting with extreme palaeontology methods to unlock the secrets of polar dinosaurs, and perhaps the key to our own survival on Earth. On Alaska's north slope there are dinosaur bones, lots of them. But they're trapped in an icy tomb - an impenetrable wall of permafrost. Dinosaurs on Ice follows the journey of two scientists, Dr Tom Rich and Dr Tony Fiorillo, who undertake separate expeditions to the Colville River in Alaska's far north to uncover the dinosaurs' bones and break the ice on a prehistoric world that until now has been unreachable. But the task is not easy. The weather is extreme, the location remote.
More info →
After Man
1989
A stop-motion adaptation of the 1981 novel by geologist Dougal Dixon of the same name, which explores the speculative paths of evolution of modern animals into the far future.
More info →
When Whales Could Walk
2024
In Egypt's Sahara Desert, massive skeletons with strange skulls and gigantic teeth jut out from the sandy ground. This fossil graveyard, millions of years old, is known as the "Valley of the Whales." Now, paleontologists have unearthed a whole new species of ancient whale dating to 43 million years ago, and this predator wasn't just able to swim – it also had four legs and could walk. Follow scientists as they search for new clues to the winding evolutionary path of mammals that moved from the land into the sea to become the largest animals on Earth.
More info →