Walking with Monsters

[first lines]

Himself- Narrator:
After millions of years of evolution, our distant ancestors have filled the oceans and crawled out onto land. They have survived the giant insects of the swamps, and mushroomed into massive reptiles armoured to the teeth. But now they've waged so long is now much more than a battle between predator and prey. The whole planet is entering a different kind of crisis. One that will destroy most of these monster reptiles and wipe out 90% of life on Earth.

Himself- Narrator:
All the continents on Earth have now drifted together to create one giant land mass called Pangaea. And at its center lies the largest desert the world has ever seen.

Himself- Narrator:
The wet season arrives, but there's no rain. With life under such pressure, species are dying out at a rate that won't be matched until humans evolve in two hundred and fifty million years' time.

Himself- Narrator:
[about the water hole] Within a few days they have drunk it dry.

Himself- Narrator:
The global drought is now obliterating millions of years of evolution. Life everywhere is on the brink.

Himself- Narrator:
As millions of years go by, the climate shifts again, and the reptiles are among the first to recover and repopulate the empty Earth.

Himself- Narrator:
These tough forerunners of mammals seemed poised to seize control for good, but they are in fact set to play out their final scene.

Himself- Narrator:
[about Lystrosaurus] Astonishingly, their vast herds make up more than half of all life on Earth. Never again will a single species do so well.

Himself- Narrator:
The dominance of these strange, mammal-like reptiles is short-lived. As the planet recovers, so does competition. The brief glory days of Lystrosaurus will soon be gone. This is followed by a decline in all mammal-like reptiles, confining our ancestors to the shadows for millions of years.

[last lines]

Himself- Narrator:
Welcome to the Age of Dinosaurs!

Himself- Narrator:
Three hundred million years ago, much of the Earth was covered in vast swamp forests. Here nothing is as it seems.

Himself- Narrator:
Even the air is alien. Over a third is oxygen, much higher than at any time in Earth's history. This oxygen-rich atmosphere has fueled the growth of new, super-sized arthropod predators.

Himself- Narrator:
There are other dangers in the swamp apart from predators: the water levels can change rapidly.

Himself- Narrator:
A lightening strike can trigger an explosion. The clock is ticking for the swamp.

Himself- Narrator:
The rising water levels suit one group of hunters: amphibians. They've continued thriving over the last sixty million years. Their thin skin still restricts them to the water's edge, but they're now powerful predators, with a devastating pair of jaws, ready to ambush anything that wanders within reach.

Himself- Narrator:
[about Earth's sustenance of life] But who would inherit this blue planet?

Himself- Narrator:
[about the monsters] Amongst them were our own earliest ancestors, whose survival would decide whether we humans would exist at all!

Himself- Narrator:
An epic war for our world, a war between monsters!

Himself- Narrator:
This is our planet, five hundred and thirty million years ago. Nothing yet lives on land, but in the ocean, it's a different story.

Himself- Narrator:
Evolution takes over.

Himself- Narrator:
He may not look like you or I, but this odd fish is becoming the blue print for our own bodies.

Himself- Narrator:
Land at this time is like an alien planet. It's a barren expanse of roasting rock hotter than the Sahara. The air would be toxic to us: it has much less oxygen, and three hundred times more carbon dioxide than today.

Himself- Narrator:
It is the arthropods, and not our ancestors, who have taken the first momentous steps out of the sea onto dry land.

Himself- Narrator:
Brain has triumphed over brawn, and soon, they won't be such soft targets. Evolution starts to give them weapons to fight back.

Himself- Narrator:
They're the first ever true vertebrate landlubbers. The very first reptiles. But as they move inland, they'll face an ancient enemy, more deadly than ever before: the arthropods are back!