Walking with Monsters – 05 Nov 2005

VHiStory

Jan 1

Happy New Year!

Today, having finished all the extra DVDs I found recently, it's back to the Media Centre recordings. Today we're heading back a week or so from the last day we looked at, because I've also recovered a few more of my archive hard drives, and there's an extra programme that's appeared from November 2005.

It's an episode of Walking with Monsters. This was the sequel series of Walking with Dinosaurs, and looked at other forms of prehistoric animals that preceded the age of dinosaurs.

Here's Anomalocaris - Earth's first super-predator.

At a much smaller scale, this is one of the first fish, and first vertebrates.

Wales wasn't as welcoming in those days.

But there's always a bigger scorpion.

Brontoscorpio take the first steps onto land.

Much later, (360 million years ago) here's Hynerpeton, An amphibian, the prototype land dweller.

The huge marine predator grabbing land animals has been a staple of natural history films for a long time.

We're up to 300mya, and we have the early land-based reptiles.

But don't imagine they have it all their own way. They have to deal with Giant Spiders!

I love the way the animals just get bigger and scarier. There's also giant dragonflies - with a wingspan of a metre.

And the ones that genuinely made my jaw drop - an ancestor of the millipede that THE SIZE OF A CAR.

moving to 280mya, and the first giant reptiles have arrived.

This is Dimetrodon, which I'm sure when I was young was classed as a dinosaur - although it seemed that everything prehistoric was a dinosaur when I was growing up.

248mya and there's another adaptation of reptiles, Gorgonopsid.

And the giant Scutosaurus.

Hang on - a while back they were telling us that 248mya was the Late Permian era, now it's the Triassic era. They're making this up as they go along, aren't they? This is Lystrosaurus, actually another ancestor of mammals.

I do love the way the show has actually made this as if was actually being shot live - like here where the animals bump into the camera and give it a sniff.