Of all the animals that live on our planet, one extraordinary group dominates. It has produced the largest, the fastest, the most intelligent creatures that have ever lived. They’re known as the vertebrates and they all share one vital feature: a backbone.
I’m travelling back in time to look for the key advances that drove their remarkable success. So far, I have seen the vertebrates grow from tiny origins to dominate the oceans, colonize the land and take to the skies.
In this program, I’m going to track the rise of a whole new branch of vertebrate life, the most complex animals yet to appear on Earth.
They started as a group of tiny little creatures scarcely bigger than my little finger, nocturnal animals, but they were to develop into the biggest creatures the planet has ever seen. It’s a group that also contains us. This is the story of the mammals.
I want to investigate how the mammals acquired a new set of key features that allowed them to thrive in every corner of our planet, features we also have inherited. We’ll find the evidence in a series of thrilling fossil discoveries and in living animals. With the latest scientific analysis, we’ll be able to bring our ancient ancestors back to life.
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