Prehistoric Life

VHS cover

*Prehistoric Life* is the twelfth episode of the third season of Eyewitness. The topic of the episode is about the evolution of life on Earth, from its beginnings to the present day. The episode first aired on 1st July 1996.

*Prehistoric Life* is based on a book title that was first published in 1994, and has been republished on several occasions including in 2000 and 2012.

## Episode

### Introductory sequence

The camera cuts between a close-up of an American cockroach and a brush taking sand off a rock slab. The camera then cuts to an above view, showing the cockroach walking on a giant cockroach fossil before it fades to white.

### Episode outline

Click here for the full transcript for Prehistoric Life.

Prehistoric life comprises the living things that appeared on Earth long before we did. Prehistory is a time before written human history. The earliest cultures envisaged a time when there was no life, including the ancient Chinese and Australian aborigines.

The formation of the Earth, and attempts by early scholars and scientists to provide an age of our planet is explored next, . It took about a billion years before the Earth was able to support the simplest life.

The next section looks at how fossils are formed, and also the fossils of the earliest ever lifeforms – simple strand-like algae at least 3.5 billion years old.

Another billion years passed between the first life and more complex creatures, and another billion years followed before complex life became abundant. This was the age of soft-bodied creatures such as jellyfish and sea pens, as well as more unusual invertebrates including *Hallucigenia* and *Cothurnocystis*.

These invertebrates shared the seas with the first fish. One of the first creatures to see the world was the trilobite, with a pair of compound eyes. After another 100 million years, large predators arrived that combined eyes and biting jaws including *Dunkleosteus*, which resembled a great white shark in full body armour.

When a fossil is unearthed, it needs a date. It was Marie Curie whose work with radioactivity made it possible to apply dates to rocks. Just before the age of fishes, the first living things made landfall. These were simple plants that were soon followed by invertebrates that would eventually evolve into arthropods. At this time, the continents were very different to how they are today.

The land was next claimed by the amphibians, evolved from fishes. Fossilised coelacanths contain the bone structure of the earliest fishes to make landfall. They were once thought to be extinct, but were rediscovered alive in 1938. Stories of sea monsters that might be prehistoric relics are touched upon here.

Coal is certainly dead and buried, being the compressed remains of ancient plants. The age of coal saw the arrival of the cockroach, the episode’s hero. The ancient cockroaches had some large neighbours, including *Gigantoscorpio*, the huge centipede *Arthropleura* and gigantic dragonflies. At this time, the first reptiles evolved from the amphibians.

Fossils have long been searched for by fossil hunters. Among the first to profit from fossils was Mary Anning who, when eleven years old, found an ichthyosaur fossil and sold it for the price of a small house.

Around 280 million years ago, the continents were bunched together into a supercontinent called Pangaea, explaining how fossil animals have been found on continents now remote from each other. None of the fossil creatures have so captured the imagination as Tyrannosaurus rex. Giant pterosaurs lived at the same time, and a model replica is shown flying over the Nevada desert. Around this time, the cockroach continued to adapt its successful lifestyle. Around 65 million years ago, some event wiped out the dinosaurs. This was not the worst extinction event, which happened before the dinosaurs existed and wiped out 95 percent of all life on Earth.

Cockroaches survived both of these extinctions. Benefiting most from the disappearance of the dinosaurs were the mammals, which adopted a new way of breeding and were able to colonise much of the planet. Other survivors from the dinosaur age were the magnolia, crocodiles and birds.

Scientists were searching for an explanation of the diversity of life on Earth, when Charles Darwin in 1859 proposed evolution by natural selection on the basis of his observations in the Galapagos. Evolution could even explain a three-toed foot on a prehistoric horse. As a time closer to our own came about, familiar animals evolved with unfamiliar forms including giant ground sloths, giant elk, elephant birds and a mixed-up South American mammal. By 50 million years ago, the continents were nearly at their current locations.

The stage was set for the arrival of a new type of mammal. In 1974 a find of *Australopithecus afarensis*, named Lucy after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, was made. About three million years after Lucy came the modern human. It wasn’t an easy ride with at least seven variations of the human evolving and becoming extinct, including the Neanderthals.

We’ve only scratched the surface of our Earth’s past, and even in the present discoveries are being made. A whole new branch of life, the *Symbion pandora*, was discovered in 1995. It is likely that life on Earth will continue, as resilient as a cockroach. The episode ends by considering the possibility of life beginning on other planets. Their prehistoric life could be getting started now.

## Animal species filmed for the programme

### Studio footage

* American cockroach, *Periplaneta americana*
* Rusty millipede, *Trigoniulus corallinus*
* Imperial scorpion, *Pandinus imperator*
* Nile crocodile, *Crocodylus niloticus*
* Scarlet macaw, *Ara macao*
* European lobster, *Homarus gammarus*

### Stock footage

* Comb-jelly, Ctenophora
* Galapagos giant tortoise, *Chelonoidis niger*
* Fruit fly, *Drosophila melanogaster*
* Jellyfish, Scyphozoa
* Cigar comb-jelly, *Beroe cucumis*
* Sea squirt, Ascidiacea
* Sea pen, Pennatulacea
* Lancelet, *Branchiostoma lanceolatum*
* Ornate wrasse, *Halichoeres ornatissimus*
* Tomato frog, *Dyscophus antongilii*
* Morelet’s tree frog, *Agalychnis moreletii*
* Sand tiger shark, *Carcharias taurus*
* House centipede, *Scutigera coleoptrata*
* Army ant, *Eciton burchellii*
* Bichir, Polypteridae
* Chinese giant salamander, *Andrias davidianus*
* West Indian Ocean coelacanth, *Latimeria chalumnae*
* American cockroach, *Periplaneta americana*
* Flat rock scorpion, *Hadogenes troglodytes*
* Emperor dragonfly, *Anax imperator*
* Nile crocodile, *Crocodylus niloticus*
* Tiger salamander, *Ambystoma tigrinum*
* Grey short-tailed opossum, *Monodelphis domestica*
* Banded mongoose, *Mungos mungo*
* Grey wolf, *Canis lupus*
* Marsh mongoose, *Atilax paludinosus*
* Meerkat, *Suricata suricatta*
* Tasmanian devil, *Sarcophilus harrisii*
* Indian flying fox, *Pteropus giganteus*
* Sea otter, *Enhydra lutris*
* European polecat, *Mustela putorius*
* Cheetah, *Acinonyx jubatus*
* Brown bear, *Ursus arctos*
* Tiger, *Panthera tigris*
* Leopard, *Panthera pardus*
* Hoffman’s two-toed sloth, *Choloepus hoffmanni*
* Marine iguana, *Amblyrhynchus cristatus*
* Plains zebra, *Equus quagga*
* Wapiti, *Cervus canadensis*
* Rhinoceros iguana, *Cyclura cornuta*
* Thorny devil, *Moloch horridus*
* Flying fish, Exocoetidae
* White-eared kob, *Kobus kob leucotis*
* Flame angelfish, *Centropyge loricula*

## Stock footage sources

* The Lost World (1925) - Leopard, sloth, canoe passing snake
* Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives
	+ Magic in the Rocks (1989) – Fruit flies trapped in amber
	+ Putting Flesh on Bone (1989) – Trilobite fossils, flying foxes, flying pterosaur model
* Life on Earth
	+ The Infinite Variety (1979) – Jellyfish and comb-jellies
	+ The Conquest of the Waters (1979) – Lancelet, sand tiger shark, bichir
	+ Invasion of the Land (1979) – Coelacanth, giant salamander
* Prehistoric Beast (1984) - T. rex

## Credits

* Director - Justin Hardy
* Producer - Richard Thomson
* Writer - Anne MacLeod
* Music - Guy Dagul
* Graphics Director - Dean Stockton
* Graphics Design - Stan Peplinski
* Camera - Sean Bobbitt and Matthew Poynter
* Set Design - John Brace and Mark Dadswell
* Production Co-ordinator - Nicola Melluish
* Production Assistants - Tilly Colaco and Quin Jessop
* Researcher - Sue Hartridge Gray
* Archive Researchers - Zimena Percival, Philippa Graves and Anuschka de Rohan
* Graphics - Simon Kilroe, Kim Aldis and Kate Hood
* Editors
	+ Offline - Nick Scullard
	+ Online - Richard Wilding
* Dubbing Mixer - Steve Cookman
* Special thanks to:
	+ NASA

## Making this programme

For Prehistoric Life, the crew had their model-makers build a model of the moon before the studio was plunged into darkness. While the moon and planets were 3D models, a spotlight filled in for the sun and allowed the creation of a total eclipse of the moon. To capture 100 million years of continental drift in a single shot, large model continents on wheels were made and lit from below. A fish-eye lens was used to give a curved globe-like perspective, dry ice was used to create fog and so the camera could sweep overhead and show a vision of prehistoric Earth. The primordial soup was made of wallpaper paste dyed yellow and red. A network of pipes bubbled gas and air through the paste to make it churn, while dry ice fog was used to suggest sulphurous steam. The set was then ready for flyover filming, showing a subject that precedes the aeroplane and photography by four billion years.

## Home media releases

As well as being released on VHS, Prehistoric Life was also released as an interactive DVD (here titled Prehistoric), as part of the DVD release in America.

The programme on the interactive DVD release included fifteen hotspots (represented by a CAT scan of a brain)

1. Birth of the solar system (from Planet) – Linked to formation of Earth
2. The origin of life (from Life) – Linked to beginning of life
3. The evolution of reproduction (from Life) – Linked to earliest algal life
4. DNA (from Life) – Linked to DNA encouraging evolution
5. The evolution of the earliest fishes (from Fish) – Linked to first fish
6. The evolution of sharks (from Shark) – Linked to Dunkleosteus
7. Evolution of amphibians (from Amphibian) – Linked to fish moving onto land
8. Evolution of insects (from Insect) – Linked to evolution of cockroach
9. Reptile eggs (from Reptile) – Linked to first reptiles
10. Sea turtles (from Reptile) – Linked to splitting of the continents
11. Pterosaurs and Archaeopteryx (from Bird) – Linked to flying pterosaur model
12. Crocodilians (from Reptile) – Linked to crocodiles surviving the extinction of the dinosaurs
13. Hoatzin (from Jungle) – Linked to birds surviving the extinction of the dinosaurs
14. Evolution through mutations (from Life) – Linked to Charles Darwin’s Galapagos observations
15. Evolution of the horse (from Horse) – Linked to dog-sized ancient horses

The interactive DVD also includes a ten-question quiz:

1. What do scientists say Earth looked like four billion years ago? Correct answer: Lifeless soup
2. Did the earliest fish have…? Correct answer: A spine
3. What does amphibian actually mean? Correct answer: Double life
4. Who do scientists say evolved last? Correct answer: Reptiles
5. How many millions of years before the dinosaurs did sharks appear on Earth? Correct answer: 150
6. Which living creature shows how prehistoric fish crawled onto land? Correct answer: Coelacanth
7. How many million years ago did dinosaurs die out? Correct answer: 65
8. What creature survived from before the dinosaurs? Correct answer: Crocodile
9. Who suggested that natural selection explains how species survive? Correct answer: Charles Darwin
10. Who was on Earth first? Correct answer: Lucy

The quiz in Prehistoric is unique among the interactive DVDs, being the only one where questions are sourced from the hotspots as well as the main episode.

The Prehistoric interactive DVD includes a Dinosaur Photo File, in which photographs of twelve dinosaur species are included:

1. Baryonyx
2. Brachiosaurus
3. Deinonychus
4. Diplodocus
5. Giganotosaurus
6. Hadrosaurus
7. Hypsilophodon
8. Spinosaurus
9. Stegosaurus
10. Triceratops
11. Tyrannosaurus rex
12. Velociraptor

The interactive DVD also has approximately 15-20 minutes of the episode Dinosaur inserted into its runtime.

Prehistoric Life America-release DVD coverEyewitness Prehistoric interactive DVD coverEyewitness Prehistoric interactive DVD alternative cover

**Writing staff**: Anne MacLeod • Ben Southwell • Ben Steiner • Brian Meehl • David Hanson • David Stafford • David Helton • George Bloom • Lynette Singer • Mike Tomlinson • Paul Thomas • Stan Cullimore
**Directors**: Gavin Maxwell • Justine Kershaw • David Hutt • Andrew Jackson • Justin Hardy • Ludo Graham • Jerry Foulkes • Derek Hall • Sanjida O'Connell • Caius Julyan • Bonni Cohen • Leanne Pooley • Edwina Vardey • Alexandra Beazley • Sam Hodgkin • Karen Walsh • Jack Weber • Richard Simkin • Alex Hearle • Brian Cummins • Ben Southwell
**Composers**: Guy Michelmore (season one) • Guy Dagul (seasons two and three)

**Season One**: Cat • Fish • Horse • Dog • Jungle • Bird • Amphibian • Insect • Shark • Elephant • Reptile • Dinosaur • Skeleton
**Season Two**: Desert • Tree • Ape • Mammal • Butterfly and Moth • Volcano • Rock and Mineral • Seashore • Pond and River • Weather • Arctic and Antarctic • **Prehistoric Life** • Shell
**Season Three**: Flight • Bear • Sight • Island • Survival • Mountain • Monster • Human Machine - Plant • Ocean • Planets • Life • Natural Disasters