Before the Dinosaurs: Walking with Monsters

Walking With Monsters is the story of the bizarre beasts who ruled our planet millions of years before dinosaurs. The series explores the surprising truth of how life on earth first began and how we humans owe our existence to monsters more strange than we could ever have imagined. This is the story of an evolutionary battle which raged on our planet for billions of years, of the strange creatures who fought for their lives and ultimately our own. Using real, organic footage, the series goes inside the body of our monster ancestors for the first time to learn who gave us our very first limb, our heart and even our brain. Witness the struggle for the fittest as it has never been seen before - a war between animals more strange, savage and successful than any dinosaur. For the first time, morphing technology is used to reveal how our ancestors, the vertebrates, evolved. Watch the first amphibian develop from a fish; the first-ever reptile grow into the giant Sail-Backs which dominated the landscape for millions of years, and even the development of the first sabre-tooth - a creature who was half reptile, half mammal.

Episode 1 - Around 550 million years ago (the Cambrian period), a revolution happened. Our distant, soft-bodied ancestors evolved teeth, claws, graspers, hooks, spines and all manner of other weapons. This was evolution of the predators. As a consequence, life went through an explosion of variety.

In the Cambrian sea, every body plan you could possible imagine stalked, shuffled and swam through the sunlit waters. No sooner did thick armour evolve for defence, but creatures like the mighty Anomalocaris evolved a round, crushing mouth to destroy it. In this sea, the segmented Tuzoia gave rise to all crabs and insects, the round Arkarua became ancestor of starfish and sea urchins, and the small harmless Pikaia ancestor to everything with a backbone, from the Great White shark to the dinosaurs and even us!

As the Cambrian world fades, the worm-like Pikaia slowly morphs and changes, growing a solid spine, scales, fins and a hard, thickened head. It has become Alaspis, a Silurian jawless fish... Around 410 million years ago (the Silurian period), the first sea creatures were beginning make forays onto the land. The first group to successfully do so were the scorpions. For some time, they had been successful predators in the sea, with only the squid’s ancestors threatening them. But then, some swarmed onto land, while others grew so large (3 metres or more in length) in the sea that they had no natural enemies. This was Scorpion World, where huge shoals of trilobites were food, and fish had to be heavily armoured to escape giant claws.

We follow the perilous journey of a shoal of Alaspis, our distant fishy ancestors, as they attempt to migrate from the sea to a lake to spawn. At the end, we see an Alaspis morph and transform, growing in size and stature until it becomes Acanthostega, a Devonian amphibian...

Episode 2 - By 360 million years ago (the Devonian period), the scorpions had had their day. Next it was turn of the fish to grow large and take over the role of top predator. Some armoured fish, such as Dunkleosteus, grew to ten metres or more and even hunted the recently evolved sharks.

Meanwhile, other types of fish were tempted onto land, lumbering aquatic beasts slipping and sliding after the creepy-crawly colonialists that had tried to escape the water. One or two found this new environment, with its dense moss forests, so attractive that their fins became firmer and five digits grew at the end. This was Acanthostega, the ancestor of all mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs.

But land was no sanctuary. Lying in wait for Acanthostegsa was the deadly 'sliding fish' that could grow to 30 feet long and two tons in weight. They would hide on the top of mud banks, waiting to slide downwards onto a hapless victim. As the Devonian period ends, Acanthostega elongates and lengthens until it has evolved into Petrolacosaurus, the first reptile...

By 300 million years ago (the Carboniferous period), the plants had finally got a grip on the Earth’s soil. This was the age of the coal-forests, a bizarre world of dense, impenetrable swamps filled with club-mosses and tree-ferns.

Although amphibians were making inroads along the rivers, the main forests were ruled by the insects and they grew enormous with their success. Three-foot-long dragonflies battled with two-foot-wide spiders, but the most deadly of all was Arthropleura, an animal that looked like a ten-foot-long woodlouse but which hunted like a deadly anaconda.

In this terrifying world, the first reptiles, such as Petrolacosaurus, fought to save their eggs. At the end of our visit to the coal forests, we watch as Petrolacosaurus transforms into the gigantic and terrifying carnivorous reptile Dimetrodon...

Episode 3 - By 280 million years ago (the early Permian period), an Ice Age had wiped out the dense coal-forests and with them most of the giant insects and amphibians. A new group of animals and plants took over. Foremost among these were the reptiles, whose bodies could cope with the new dry, cold conditions. They became the giants of the early Permian.

Heat was at a premium and the mornings saw a race between predator and prey to see who could warm up faster. Giant sail-finned reptiles, such as Dimetrodon, wandered this desolate landscape, snapping at anything that came within range, including each other. As we watch, Dimetrodon twists and shrinks, becoming more sleek and wolf-like until it eventually turns into gorgonopsid, a predatory mammal-like reptile...

By 240 million years ago (the Late Permian period), the Earth had turned into a desert planet, precipitating the largest mass extinction event of all time. Conditions were merciless and eventually less than 5% of life on Earth would survive.

The landscape was dominated by herds of herbivorous Lystrosaurus, whose numbers represented 80% of all life on Earth. With so much meat on offer, predators were never far away - in particular, the fearsome sabre-toothed gorgonopsids, who were just looking for the chance to strike.

Bizarrely, all these creatures were more closely related to mammals than to dinosaurs. Instead, the dinosaurs forebears clung on during this grim period, desperately trying to escape the gorgonopsid's jaws.

At the end of the Permian, the gorgonopsid morphs into a small, furry, ferret-like animal (the first mammal), which in turn becomes bigger and stronger, going through a multitude of recognisable forms before, finally, it rises onto two feet and takes - a human form...

Before Humans...Before Dinosaurs...Our Planet Was Ruled By Monsters...

From the makers of Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts comes the prequel: the epic and entertaining story of life on Earth before the dinosaurs and beasts. It's life, but not as we know it.
Before dinosaurs a succession of fantastic animals and plants ruled the planet. Many of us are completely unaware that these creatures ever existed, or believe our planet was home to just worms and bugs. Yet there was a time when two-tone predatory fish came on land to hunt, when 26-foot sea scorpions sliced sushi in the shallows, when just one species of lumbering reptile represented eighty percent of all life. State-of-the-art digital technology breathes life into these creatures that dominated both land and sea for 250 million years. This is the final program in the phenomenally successful, multi award-winning Walking with...series.