Walking with Beasts

[Last lines.]

Kenneth Branagh:
[narrating] We have since built museums to celebrate the past, and spend decades studying prehistoric lives. And if all this has taught us anything, it is this: no species lasts forever.

[first lines]

Kenneth Branagh:
Out of the darkness emerges a twelve ton giant. She is an Indricothere, and she is about to give birth.

Kenneth Branagh:
It is a time called the Oligocene. The world has just been through years of catastrophic climate change, that led to the extinction of one species in five.

Kenneth Branagh:
In the Oligocene, large parts of the world have become highly seasons. Here in Mongolia, long dry seasons are broken by short violent wet seasons. The climate has shaped not only the environment, but also the animals.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Enteldont] The bully of the plains. These are distant relatives of the pig. Two metres tall, aggressive, built like tanks, but with a brain no bigger than an orange.

Kenneth Branagh:
The calf is now strong and surefooted enough to venture out on the open plains, where he will spend the rest of his life.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Indricotheres] Not since the dinosaurs has nature got this big!

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Hyaenodon] Hyaenodon's jaws have a bone-shattering force of over one thousand pounds per square inch. One bite breaks the Chalicothere's neck.

Kenneth Branagh:
The dry season has transformed the landscape. It's as if the whole lifeblood has drained out of the plains. This is what it means to be a seasonal world.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Indricothere calf] It is time to make his own way in the world. This is the hardest lesson of all.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Indricothere calf] He is never again going to have the protection of his mother. The rest of his life, he will spend alone.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Neanderthal] The Neanderthals are supreme hunters, which is why they have lasted over two hundred and sixty thousand years. But they have a weakness; they do not adapt well to change. As a result of the harsher climate, the arrival of other humans, Neanderthals are fast disappearing. In another two thousand years, they'll be gone altogether.

Kenneth Branagh:
Mammoths will last another twenty-four thousand years. They are superbly adapted for this cold world. But when it gets warm again, the grassy plains they depend on will disappear.

Kenneth Branagh:
For the first and only time in its history, birds rule the earth.

Kenneth Branagh:
The last dinosaurs were already living on a sick planet, when their nemesis arrived- from space. A meteor ten kilometres wide slammed into Earth to mark the end, of the reign of dinosaurs. [Footage of storms, then a clear dark sky view] This series is about what happened next.

Kenneth Branagh:
The dinosaurs might be long gone, but the left the world a vicious legacy. Their direct descendants are the birds.

Kenneth Branagh:
At this time in Europe's history, Germany is at the center of much volcanic activity, and this whole forest is riddled with geothermal springs.

Kenneth Branagh:
[as Gastornis tears at a Propalaeotherium's corpse] This is a world where birds eat horses!

Kenneth Branagh:
[the Gastornis has returned to her nest only to see what the ants have done] The biggest predator here, humbled by the smallest.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Ambulocetus] Although his ancestors hunted on land, Ambulocetus has evolved to be far more at home in the water. In fact, his descendants will take this to a greater extreme: you are looking at the very earliest form of whale. Ambulocetus in fact means 'walking whale'.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the early form of monkeys] Among their descendants in millions of years time, will be a hairless type of ape called man.

Kenneth Branagh:
Today the Leptictidium is the survivor, but ironically the future holds a different outcome for these mammals. The Leptictidium and her kind are destined to become extinct when this hot wet world gets cooler and drier, and the world's forests start to disappear. Ambulocetus is the one with the big future: he is the ancestor of the whales, the most magnificent dynasty of mammals, and mammals are about to take over the world!

Kenneth Branagh:
This is the northern end of the Great African Rift Valley: a staggering landscape, created by fractures in the continent. This is the cradle of evolution for mankind!

Kenneth Branagh:
One reason that our origins begin here in Africa is that it's an ideal habitat for an upright ape. A patchwork of forest and savannah.

[first lines]

Kenneth Branagh:
Some animals can show emotion. These unique creatures are reacting to the death of one of their group with what can only be described as grief.

Kenneth Branagh:
The world has been transformed in the last few million years by one small plant. Where once there was forest, there are now vast tracks of grassland. And with grass have come new species of grazing mammals.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Australopithecus] A type of ape has evolved that clearly shows the first signs of becoming more human. What makes them closer to us than other apes is not their brains, which are only one third of the size. It's not their skin, which is hairy. It's something they do that other apes just don't: something that will one day lead them to be described as a missing link. These apes walk upright!

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Deinotherium] They are as tall as giraffes, but weigh fourteen times as much.

Kenneth Branagh:
Walking on two legs is an efficient way to travel. It gives the Australopithecus a higher view point than other apes. This means predators are easier to spot.

Kenneth Branagh:
[as the group travels] Eight pairs of eyes are better than one.

Kenneth Branagh:
They very nearly lost another member of the group.

Kenneth Branagh:
Apes have a long road to travel yet. Outwardly they are almost human, but their brains are no bigger than a chimpanzee's. It will be at least another two million years, before any ape has a decent conversation.

Kenneth Branagh:
Later members of the human family will rise up the food chain to become top predators, but in this era, our relatives are prey.

Kenneth Branagh:
Meat is only a small part of the Australopithecus diet, but it will become more important in the future, for more human-like apes. An increase in meat eating will go hand in hand with an increase in brain size. Meat contains nutrients vital for big brains. Intelligent apes will develop special tools to get meat, until eventually they'll make weapons, and won't be scavengers, but predators.

[last lines]

Kenneth Branagh:
Smilodon were very successful predators, and survived up until as recently as ten thousand ago. But eventually, the world around them changed too much. The climate became cooler and drier. The larger prey they specialized in killing disappeared. The saber tooth world came to an end.

[first lines]

Kenneth Branagh:
For forty million years, the plains of South America have been ruled by an awesome group of predators. The aptly named 'Terror Birds'. [after a long pause] But recently all this has changed. A new breed of killer has arrived, one fierce enough to terrorize the Terror Birds. Smilodon, the famous saber tooth. The most powerful big cat of all time!

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Smilodon] Originally from North America, they came to South America two million years ago. The balance of life here changed as they took over the role of top predators.

Kenneth Branagh:
Since splitting from Antarctica thirty million years ago, South America has been isolated from the rest of the world, and as a result, its animals are unique.

Kenneth Branagh:
Across a land bridge, came new groups of mammals to colonize this exotic world. Life here would never be the same again.

Kenneth Branagh:
Life for a lone male is a grim battle for survival.

Kenneth Branagh:
[as the cats creep up on their prey] One false move, and they will have to start all over again.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Terror Birds] South America is not the only place Terror Birds are doing well. Once the land bridge opened up to North America, they were one of the few creatures to spread north successfully. While these Terror Birds pick over Smilodon's leftovers, their cousins are running riot in Texas and Florida. They only died out just before modern humans appeared.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about the Giant Ground Sloth] They might be herbivores, but they will eventually go for carrion to supplement their diet, and when they do, nothing gets in their way.

Kenneth Branagh:
The short, violent reign of the brothers is over.

Kenneth Branagh:
[talking about a mass extinction that is going to occur] Twenty percent of living things on Earth will die out. Whales as a group will survive, but Basilosaurus and her kind will not be among them.

Kenneth Branagh:
Every whale, is a killer.

Kenneth Branagh:
[talking about the masses of mangrove swamps] Believe it or not, you are looking at what will become the driest areas on the planet. The Sahara desert!

[first lines]

Kenneth Branagh:
When the dinosaurs disappeared, so too did the gigantic marine reptiles which once terrorized the oceans. For almost twenty-five million years, there was nothing around to eat the sharks. But there are now awesome new monsters of the deep.

Kenneth Branagh:
It is the late Eocene, and the world is still a hot one. However it is drier than before, and so where once the land was completely covered in lush rain forest, there are now more open spaces. Freed from the constraints of living in dense forests, some mammals have started to get larger. Here on the scrub plains, big is beautiful.

Kenneth Branagh:
Like dinosaurs before them, mammals dominate the planet. But they are about to undergo their severest challenge. The climate change the world has seen so far is mild compared to what is coming.

Kenneth Branagh:
[Indicating an ocean] This is the legendary Tethys, a tropical sea that stretches almost halfway around the world, and has connected Asia with the Atlantic since the time of the dinosaurs. It is now home to one of the mammals' biggest success stories.

Kenneth Branagh:
[about Basilosaurus] Four times the length of a great white shark, this female weighs sixty tons. Incredible to think then, that their ancestors were tiny, furry, shrew-like animals that lived in trees!

Kenneth Branagh:
For the first time in hundreds of millions of years, the sea is freezing at the Poles, throwing ocean currents into turmoil. For a whale that needs on average eighty kilograms of food a day, the slightest change in fish stocks is bad news. She is at the top of a food chain that is about to collapse, and she has just become pregnant.

Kenneth Branagh:
Dry land and safety are only temporary things in the mangroves. The water still has some way to rise, and most solid ground will become sea bed in just a few hours time, as the high tide sweeps in.

Kenneth Branagh:
This is what it means to be top of the food chain.