Life on Earth: The Greatest Story Ever Told

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Spriggina fossil, leaf-like impression on sandstone, Ediacaran era (575 million years old), Australia. Beaks come in a variety of shapes depending on a bird's feeding habits: examples given include the pouched bill of a pelican, the hooked beak of the vulture and the elongated mouth of the hummingbird.

The final episode deals with the evolution of the most widespread and dominant species on Earth: humans. Life on Earth, the series and accompanying book, fundamentally changed the way we view and interact with the natural world setting a new benchmark of quality, influencing a generation of nature lovers. Fossil ammonites ( Arnioceras semicostatum), in a sample of rock from the lower Jurassic period (195 to 172 million years ago), Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire, UK. The series is available in the UK for Regions 2 and 4 as a four-disc DVD set (BBCDVD1233, released 1 September 2003) and as part of The Life Collection.

By doing so he replaced a philosophical speculation with a detailed description of a process, supported by an abundance of evidence, that could be tested and verified; and the reality of evolution could no longer be denied. In describing the consequences of this process it is only too easy to use a form of words that suggests that the animals themselves were striving to bring about change in a purposeful way – that fish wanted to climb on to dry land and to modify their fins into legs, that reptiles wished to fly, strove to change their scales into feathers and so ultimately became birds. David Attenborough's unforgettable meeting with gorillas became an iconic moment for millions of television viewers. A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough’s seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet.

Homo erectus gradually spread from Africa and reached Europe some 800,000 years ago, where a drop in temperature led to him inhabiting caves. million), it was an immense project that involved filming over 100 locations around the world and took three years in the making by a team of 30 people with the help of more than 500 scientists. However, the carnivores joined them, and when a drying climate triggered the spread of grass, they followed their prey out on to the plains.

Within the last couple of years, that East African stranglehold has been slightly loosened by fossils in Morocco – we may be moving towards our being a sort of pan-African Gestalt species.