Science

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Islands of Evolution episode 3 - Madeira

Islands of Evolution episode 3 – Madeira

Islands of Evolution episode 3 – Madeira: In the final episode, Richard Fortey travels to Madeira to examine what happens to a volcanic island as it nears the end of its life cycle and starts sinking back into the sea. Here, in the island’s laurisilva forest, he examines the remains of an ancient forest that once carpeted all of Europe, finds island lizards that live to be four times older than their mainland counterparts, and meets a huge wolf spider. With the help of local divers, he also discovers an unexpectedly rich marine habitat populated by whales, dolphins and unusual […]

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Islands of Evolution episode 2 - Madagascar

Islands of Evolution episode 2 – Madagascar

Islands of Evolution episode 2 – Madagascar: Professor Richard Fortey travels to the rainforests of Madagascar – an ancient island that has spawned some of the most extraordinary groups of plants and animals anywhere in the world. From beautiful Indri lemurs, toxic frogs, and the cat-like giant mongoose called the fossa, to evolutionary oddities like the giraffe-necked weevil and the otherworldly aye-aye, he uncovers the secrets of the evolutionary niche – examining how, given millions of years, animals and plants can adapt to fill almost any opportunity they find.       Three-part series in which Professor Richard Fortey investigates

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Your Inner Fish An Evolution Story episode 3

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 3

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 3: In the final episode, Neil tracks our hands, feet, colour vision, spine and upright gait to our primate and hominid progenitors, who also passed on perhaps the most important legacy of all – a path to the human brain.         It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates, the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that

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Islands of Evolution episode 1 - Hawaii

Islands of Evolution episode 1 – Hawaii

Islands of Evolution episode 1 – Hawaii: Richard Fortey investigates why islands are laboratories of evolution. On Hawaii he finds honeycreeper birds, carnivorous caterpillars and silversword plants. In the first episode, Fortey is on Hawaii to investigate how life colonises a newly born island. According to some estimates, Hawaii has been successfully colonised by only one new species every 35,000 years due to its remote location – 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

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Your Inner Fish An Evolution Story episode 2

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 2

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 2 traces our hair, skin, teeth, jaws and sense of hearing back to reptilian ancestors – from ferocious beasts that ruled the Earth, to a little shrew-like animal that lived 195 million years ago.         It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates – the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that lived hundreds of millions of

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Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 1

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 1

Your Inner Fish: An Evolution Story episode 1: It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. Anatomist Neil Shubin reveals how our bodies are the legacy of ancient fish, reptiles and primates, the ancestors you never knew were in your family tree. Our bodies carry the anatomical legacy of animals that lived hundreds of millions of years ago.         Journeying to the Arctic, South Africa and Ethiopia, Neil uncovers an astonishing story spanning hundreds of millions of years, a tale full of strange facts and remarkable insights. Using fossils, embryos and

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The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2

The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2

The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2: Professor Jim Al-Khalili carries us into the distant future to try to discover how the universe will end – with a bang or a whimper? He reveals a universe far stranger than anyone imagined and, at the frontier of our understanding, encounters a mysterious and enigmatic force that promises to change physics forever.   Prof Jim Al-Khalili tackles the biggest subject of all, the universe, through a series of critical observations and experiments that revolutionised our understanding of our world.   The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 2  

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The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 1

The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 1

The Beginning and End of the Universe episode 1: Professor Jim Al-Khalili takes us back in time to tackle the greatest question in science: how did the universe begin? Uncovering the origins of the universe is regarded as humankind’s greatest intellectual achievement. By recreating key experiments Jim unravels the cosmic mystery of science’s creation story before witnessing a moment, one millionth of a second, after the universe sprang into existence.       Prof Jim Al-Khalili tackles the biggest subject of all, the universe, through a series of critical observations and experiments that revolutionised our understanding of our world.  

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The Incredible Human Journey episode 5

The Incredible Human Journey episode 5 – The Americas

The Incredible Human Journey episode 5 – The Americas: Alice Roberts investigates how humans may have reached North and South America, looking at routes across the Canadian ice sheet and from Australia across the Pacific. For Stone Age people, reaching North and South America seems impossible – on each side vast oceans, and to the north an impenetrable ice sheet that covered the whole of Canada. So how did the first Americans get there?       Dr Alice Roberts discovers evidence for an ancient corridor through the Canadian ice sheet that may have allowed those first people through. But

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The Incredible Human Journey episode 4

The Incredible Human Journey episode 4 – Australia

The Incredible Human Journey episode 4 – Australia: Dr Alice Roberts looks at our ancestors’ seemingly impossible journey to Australia. There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet.      

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The Incredible Human Journey episode 3 - Europe

The Incredible Human Journey episode 3 – Europe

The Incredible Human Journey episode 3 – Europe: In Europe, Dr Alice Roberts investigates how our species coped with the rival Neanderthals and the Ice Age. There are seven billion humans on Earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo Sapiens came to

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The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 - Asia

The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 – Asia

The Incredible Human Journey episode 2 – Asia: There are seven billion humans on earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet.       The journey continues into Asia, the world’s greatest land mass, on a

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