Fossil wonderlands. Episode three, The mammal hothouse /
In this revelatory series, Professor Richard Fortey, Britain's foremost chronicler of ancient worlds, tells the extraordinary history of palaeontology through three of the world's greatest fossil sites. These fossil 'time capsules' contain entire eco-systems of now-vanished world...
| Other Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Video |
| Language: | English |
| Language Notes: | In English. |
| Published: |
London, England :
BBC Worldwide,
2014.
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| Series: | Academic Video Online
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to this streaming video (Alexander Street Press) |
| Summary: | In this revelatory series, Professor Richard Fortey, Britain's foremost chronicler of ancient worlds, tells the extraordinary history of palaeontology through three of the world's greatest fossil sites. These fossil 'time capsules' contain entire eco-systems of now-vanished worlds. Only a handful of them exist in the world, but each one of them has overturned generations of paleontological thinking and reconfigured our understanding of the past. These 'super-sites' are uniquely special not just because of the scale of the life preserved but because each location reveals a history of evolution of one type of creature and highlights three key evolutionary moments: early life in the seas, feathered dinosaurs and the rise of birds and the birth of mammals. Together they tell a story not just of the ancient past, but how that past was discovered. In this final episode, Professor Richard Fortey investigates the remains of an ancient volcanic lake in Germany where stunningly well-preserved fossils of early mammals, giant insects and even perhaps our oldest known ancestor have been found. Among the amazing finds are bats as advanced and sophisticated as anything living today, more than 50 million years later, dog-sized 'dawn' horses, the ancestor of the modern horse, and giant ants as large as hummingbirds. |
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| Item Description: | "Nature's hidden treasures". Title from resource description page (viewed March 06, 2019). |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (50 minutes) |
| Playing Time: | 00:49:10 |