David Attenborough’s Documentary “First Life” on Television this Evening

We have been discussing the new television documentary series produced by the BBC – “First Life” all week.  Tonight at 9pm (GMT) we get the chance to see the first of the two-hour documentaries that make up this programme.

Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, “First Life” completes the series of television documentaries made by the BBC recording life on Earth, the first of which entitled “Life on Earth” we think was shown in 1979.

“First Life”

This new series, explores how life on the planet began and takes viewers through the first few billion years of the history of our planet, known as the Cyrptozoic (hidden life) and into the eon known as the Phanerozoic (visible life), which covers the last 550 million years or so.  The stars of these two programmes are the amazing fossils but there is extensive use of CGI so viewers can look into life in a shallow Cambrian sea.  Some of the bizarre creatures featured have never been animated before.  This gave scientists an opportunity to see how their fossilised charges would have moved, swam or crawled.

Tonight’s opening episode starts with the first signs of life on our planet and provides an account of how the first single-celled micro-organisms kick-started life as we know it.  In the office at Everything Dinosaur, we are having a competition to see how high up the BBC ratings chart the programme will go, we all have drawn a number from a sweep-stake which corresponds to the ranking the programme will get in terms of viewer numbers in that particular week.  I have the number four, so I think I am in with a good chance of winning – not sure what the prize is, but we all can’t wait to watch tonight.

For models and replicas of iconic Palaeozoic animals such as trilobites and ammonites: CollectA Prehistoric Animal Models.