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First Life : Season 1
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Air date: 05 Nov '10 - 2 episodesFirst Life is a 2010 British nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, also known by the expanded titles David Attenborough's First Life and First Life with David Attenborough. It was first broadcast in the USA as a two-hour special on the Discovery Channel on 24 October 2010. In the United Kingdom it was broadcast as a two-part series on BBC Two on 5 November 2010.First Life sees Attenborough tackle the subject of the origin of life on Earth. He investigates the evidence from the earliest fossils, which suggest that complex animals first appeared in the oceans around 500 million years ago, an event known as the Cambrian Explosion. Trace fossils of multicellular organisms from an even earlier period, the Ediacaran biota, are also examined. The naturalist travels to Canada, Morocco and Australia, using some of the latest fossil discoveries and their nearest equivalents amongst living species to reveal what life may have been like at that time. Visual effects and...
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List of Episodes (2)
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First Life (2010)
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1. Arrival
05 Nov '10The first ancient living being mentioned in the episode is Charnia, an Ediacaran lifeform whose fossil was first found in Charnwood Forest. Stromatolites, which still live in Western Australia are also shown. With the palaeontologist Dr Guy Narbonne, Attenborough visits Mistaken Point where there are hundreds of fossils of Charnia and other animals of which the most common is Fractofusus (thousands of specimens). In the Ediacara Hills Attenborough is shown by palaeontologist Dr Jim Gehling
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First Life (2010)
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2. Conquest
12 Nov '10One of the first big predators was Anomalocaris, found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies. Its prey probably included animals such as Opabinia, Wiwaxia, Hallucigenia. Professor Justin Marshall shows mantis shrimp, which are similar to Anomalocaris. One of the most successful arthropod groups were the Trilobites. Some of the biggest were the Eurypterids, or sea scorpions, such as Pterygotus, of which a large fossil exists in the vaults of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
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