Mysterious • 2017 • episode "S1E1" • Big Pacific

52:18

David discovers the plants that have evolved to shed their dependency on water enabling them to survive in the driest environments. The story begins at midnight in midsummer as David steps into the Princess of Wales Conservatory to witness the extraordinary nocturnal blooming of a cactus. The Queen of the Night, with its giant flowers, is the centre piece of a stunning symphony of cacti blooms that burst open in the desert (and at Kew) at night. In a mesmerizing 3D slow motion sequence, we discover the extraordinary connections between cacti and their natural ...

S1E3 • Kingdom of Plants • 2012 • Nature

58:59

Fortey is on Hawaii to investigate how life colonises a newly-born island. The most remote island group in the world, by some estimates only one new species successfully colonised Hawaii every 35,000 years - yet the Hawaiian Islands teem with a great diversity of life. In search of the evolutionary secrets of how one species becomes many, Fortey encounters beautiful honeycreeper birds whose evolution rivals that of the Darwin's famous finches; carnivorous caterpillars who now can't eat leaves; and giant silversword plants that thrive in parched volcanic soil at 10,000 feet.

Part 1 • Nature's Wonderlands: Islands of Evolution • 2016 • Nature

10:03

After the Permian period, the epic saga of evolution and extinction on Earth produced the world's first dinosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs. They dominated land, sea and air until another period of extreme volcanism generated vast waves of lava and toxic gas and killed roughly 75% of all species.

S1E2 • Ancient Earth • 2017 • Nature

53:37

This programme focuses on birds. The feather is key to everything that is crucial about a bird: it is both its aerofoil and its insulator. The earliest feathers were found on a fossilised Archaeopteryx skeleton in Bavaria. However, it had claws on its wings and there is only one species alive today that does so: the hoatzin, whose chicks possess them for about a week or so. Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the probable movement of its ancestor. It may have taken to the trees to avoid predators, and over time, its bony, reptilian tail was replaced by feathers and its heavy jaw evolved into a keratin beak.

8/13 • Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature

58:54

Professor Richard Fortey investigates the remains of ancient volcanic lake in Germany where stunningly well-preserved fossils of early mammals, giant insects and even perhaps our oldest known ancestor have been found. Among the amazing finds are bats as advanced and sophisticated as anything living today, more than 50-million-years-later; dog-sized 'Dawn' horses, the ancestor of the modern horse; and giant ants as large as a hummingbird.

S1E3 • Fossil Wonderlands: Nature's Hidden Treasures • 2014 • Nature

48:03

Canada's Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island in the world--and with good reason. Temperatures below freezing for nine months of the year and an annual rainfall comparable to the Gobi Desert leave the icy landscape so barren that NASA uses it to simulate conditions on Mars. Take an exhilarating expedition into a land where only the most experienced Inuit hunters dare set foot.

S1E2 • Arctic Secrets • 2015 • Nature