Dinosaurs - A BBC Documentary (6 parts)

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1....Dinosaurs Episode - New Blood
When dinosaurs first appeared about 230 million years ago the world was very different to as we know it. There were very few representatives of any animal groups alive today - no mammals, birds or lizards (although there were some lizard like reptiles).

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2....Dinosaurs Episode - Time or the Titans
The earliest dinosaurs were pretty small. Eoraptor was about 1 m long, its contemporary Herrerasaurus grew no more than 4 m long and Coelophysis was about 3 m long. And in all cases the length was mostly tail.

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3....Dinosaurs Episode - Cruel Sea
The Mesozoic truly was the age of giants. While there were huge dinosaurs dominating the land there were also large marine reptiles ruling the seas. Ichthyosaurs (fish reptiles) actually appeared much earlier than the dinosaurs; they are first found in the Early Triassic, and they are already very specialised, clearly recognisable as ichthyosaurs, with limbs modified into flippers. Jurassic ichthyosaurs looked very like dolphins. They even had a dorsal fin and a big vertical tail fluke - we know this from some fossils in Germany which have the body outline preserved as a carbonised film. Ichthyosaurs propelled themselves through the water with strong side to side movements of their tails, steering with their flippers

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4....Dinosaurs Episode - Giant of the Skys
The Early Cretaceous period was a time of great change in animal life on land - new types of dinosaurs were appearing that would later be some of the most numerous on land - the ornithopods.

Small versions of these dinosaurs had actually been around since the Early Jurassic period, but only now did they come into their own. Iguanodon was one of the earliest of these large plant eating ornithopods; there were several species in Europe, Asia and North America.

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5....Dinosaurs Episode - Spirits of the Ice Forest
There is considerable evidence for the existence of dinosaurs in polar latitudes. This episode is based on remarkable finds made at two sites in Australia. The evidence for that part of Australia being then within the Antarctic Circle and being seasonally very cold is based on several lines of evidence. We can determine the palaeolatitude from magnetised particles in certain rocks. Evidence for the climate being seasonally cold comes from both plant fossils and sedimentary structures which form when the ground freezes.

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6....Dinosaurs Episode - Death of a Dynasty
At the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago, all the dinosaurs died out. The question of why the dinosaurs went extinct is one of the most frequently asked questions to all dinosaur palaeontologists. There have been many different ideas put forward as an explanation from the serious to the ridiculous. Probably the two most likely are: the regression and habitat loss hypothesis (gradualistic) or, the extraterrestrial impact hypothesis (catastrophic).

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