First Life (TV series)
Encyclopedia
First Life is a 2010 British nature documentary
written and presented by David Attenborough
, also known by the expanded titles David Attenborough's First Life (UK) and First Life with David Attenborough (USA). It was first broadcast in the USA as a two-hour special on the Discovery Channel
on 24 October 2010. In the United Kingdom it was broadcast as a two-part series on BBC Two
on 5 November 2010.
First Life sees Attenborough tackle the subject of the origin of life
on Earth. He investigates the evidence from the earliest fossil
s, which suggest that complex animals first appeared in the oceans around 500 million years ago, an event known as the Cambrian Explosion
. Trace fossils of multicellular organisms from an even earlier period, the Ediacaran biota, are also examined. The naturalist travels to Canada
, Morocco
and Australia
, using some of the latest fossil discoveries and their nearest equivalents amongst living species to reveal what life may have been like at that time. Visual effects and computer animation are used to reconstruct and animate the extinct life forms.
The series was directed by freelance film-maker Martin Williams and series produced by Anthony Geffen, CEO and Executive Producer of Atlantic Productions
, with whom Attenborough is also working on a 3D documentary for the satellite broadcaster Sky
. It was produced in association with the BBC
, the Discovery Channel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
. During production, it had the working title The First Animals.
Attenborough's Journey, a documentary film profiling the presenter as he journeyed around the globe filming First Life, was shown on BBC Two on 24 October 2010. A hardback book to accompany the series, authored by Matt Kaplan with a foreword by Attenborough, was published in September 2010.
, an Ediacaran
lifeformwhose fossil was first found in Charnwood Forest
.
Stromatolites, which still live in Western Australia
are also shown. With the palaeontologist Dr Guy Narbonne, Attenborough visits Mistaken Point where there are hundreds of fossils of Charnia and other animals of which the most common is Fractofusus
(thousands of specimens).
In the Ediacara Hills
Attenborough is shown by palaeontologist Dr Jim Gehling fossils of Dickinsonia
. In the same place there are also fossils of Kimberella
, a slug
-like animal and Spriggina
. These animals are the first to have been mobile and have bilateral symmetry, Spriggina being the first to clearly have a head and a tail. In the same hills palaeontologist Dr Mary Droser shows Funisia
the first animal for which there is evidence of sexual reproduction
.
In Switzerland
Attenborough visits a very large synchrotron
which is used by Professor Philip Donoghue
to take microscopic 3-dimensional pictures of the interior of fossilized embryos, including Markuelia
an animal which lived 20 million years after the animals of Ediacara and one of the first to have a gut.
One of the first big predators was Anomalocaris
, found in the Burgess Shale
in the Canadian Rockies
. Its prey probably included animals such as Opabinia
, Wiwaxia
, Hallucigenia
. Professor Justin Marshall shows mantis shrimp
, which are similar to Anomalocaris
.
The most successful arthropod
s were the Trilobite
s, and one of the biggest was Pterygotus
, of which a large fossil exists in the vaults of the National Museum of Scotland
in Edinburgh
.
Aysheaia
is thought to be the ancestor of the first land animal. A very similar land animal, the velvet worm
, Peripatus
still exists lives in the tropics including the rainforest
in Queensland
, Australia.
The oldest known fossil of an air-breathing arthropod is 428 million years old, similar to millipedes and centipedes.
Nature documentary
A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat...
written and presented by David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...
, also known by the expanded titles David Attenborough's First Life (UK) and First Life with David Attenborough (USA). It was first broadcast in the USA as a two-hour special on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
on 24 October 2010. In the United Kingdom it was broadcast as a two-part series on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on 5 November 2010.
First Life sees Attenborough tackle the subject of the origin of life
Timeline of evolution
This timeline of evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on planet Earth since it first originated until the present day. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations...
on Earth. He investigates the evidence from the earliest fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s, which suggest that complex animals first appeared in the oceans around 500 million years ago, an event known as the Cambrian Explosion
Cambrian explosion
The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively rapid appearance, around , of most major phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record, accompanied by major diversification of other organisms, including animals, phytoplankton, and calcimicrobes...
. Trace fossils of multicellular organisms from an even earlier period, the Ediacaran biota, are also examined. The naturalist travels to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, using some of the latest fossil discoveries and their nearest equivalents amongst living species to reveal what life may have been like at that time. Visual effects and computer animation are used to reconstruct and animate the extinct life forms.
The series was directed by freelance film-maker Martin Williams and series produced by Anthony Geffen, CEO and Executive Producer of Atlantic Productions
Atlantic Productions
Atlantic Productionsis a television production company creating programmes for broadcasters in the UK, USA and European Union, both commissions and co-productions...
, with whom Attenborough is also working on a 3D documentary for the satellite broadcaster Sky
British Sky Broadcasting
British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....
. It was produced in association with the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, the Discovery Channel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
. During production, it had the working title The First Animals.
Attenborough's Journey, a documentary film profiling the presenter as he journeyed around the globe filming First Life, was shown on BBC Two on 24 October 2010. A hardback book to accompany the series, authored by Matt Kaplan with a foreword by Attenborough, was published in September 2010.
Animals featured in the series
The first ancient living being mentioned in the series is CharniaCharnia
Charnia is the genus name given to a frond-like Ediacaran lifeform with segmented ridges branching alternately to the right and left from a zig-zag medial suture. The genus Charnia was named after Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, England, where the first fossilised specimen was found.- Diversity...
, an Ediacaran
Ediacaran
The Ediacaran Period , named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia, is the last geological period of the Neoproterozoic Era and of the Proterozoic Eon, immediately preceding the Cambrian Period, the first period of the Paleozoic Era and of the Phanerozoic Eon...
lifeformwhose fossil was first found in Charnwood Forest
Charnwood Forest
Charnwood Forest is an upland tract in north-western Leicestershire, England, bounded by Leicester, Loughborough, and Coalville. The area is undulating, rocky and picturesque, with barren areas. It also has some extensive tracts of woodland; its elevation is generally 600 ft and upwards, the area...
.
Stromatolites, which still live in Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
are also shown. With the palaeontologist Dr Guy Narbonne, Attenborough visits Mistaken Point where there are hundreds of fossils of Charnia and other animals of which the most common is Fractofusus
Fractofusus
Fractofusus misrai is a fossil discovered in Newfoundland, Canada.- Discovery of vendian fossils in the Avalon Peninsula :In the summer of 1967, S.D.Misra an Indian graduate student at Newfoundland's Memorial University discovered a rich assemblage of imprints of soft bodied organisms on the...
(thousands of specimens).
In the Ediacara Hills
Ediacara Hills
Ediacara Hills are a range of low hills in the northern part of the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, around 650 km north of Adelaide. The area has many old copper and silver mines from mining activity in the late 19th century...
Attenborough is shown by palaeontologist Dr Jim Gehling fossils of Dickinsonia
Dickinsonia
Dickinsonia is an iconic fossil of the Ediacaran biota. It resembles a bilaterally symmetrical ribbed oval. Its affinities are presently unknown; most interpretations consider it to be an animal, although others suggest it may be fungal, or a member of an "extinct kingdom".-Species variety:A...
. In the same place there are also fossils of Kimberella
Kimberella
Kimberella is a monospecific genus of bilaterian known only from rocks of the Ediacaran period. The slug-like organism fed by scratching the microbial surface on which it dwelt in a manner similar to the molluscs, although its affinity with this group is contentious.Specimens were first found in...
, a slug
Slug
Slug is a common name that is normally applied to any gastropod mollusc that lacks a shell, has a very reduced shell, or has a small internal shell...
-like animal and Spriggina
Spriggina
Fossils of Spriggina are known from the Ediacaran period, around . The segmented organism reached about 3 cm in length and may have been predatory...
. These animals are the first to have been mobile and have bilateral symmetry, Spriggina being the first to clearly have a head and a tail. In the same hills palaeontologist Dr Mary Droser shows Funisia
Funisia
Funisia is a genus containing the single species F. dorothea, a fossil upright worm-like animal from the Ediacaran biota. Funisia stood about 0.3 metres tall. Because individuals grew in dense collections of animals the same age, it is believed to have reproduced sexually...
the first animal for which there is evidence of sexual reproduction
Sexual reproduction
Sexual reproduction is the creation of a new organism by combining the genetic material of two organisms. There are two main processes during sexual reproduction; they are: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the...
.
In Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
Attenborough visits a very large synchrotron
Synchrotron
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator in which the magnetic field and the electric field are carefully synchronised with the travelling particle beam. The proton synchrotron was originally conceived by Sir Marcus Oliphant...
which is used by Professor Philip Donoghue
Philip Donoghue
Philip Conrad Donoghue is a British palaeontologist, Reader in Geology at the University of Bristol.- Selected publications :Donoghue, P. C. J., and M. A. Purnell. 2005. Genome duplication, extinction and vertebrate evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20:312-319.Donoghue, P. C. J., S....
to take microscopic 3-dimensional pictures of the interior of fossilized embryos, including Markuelia
Markuelia
Markuelia is a genus of fossil worm-like bilaterian animals allied to Ecdysozoa and known from strata of Lower Cambrian to Lower Ordovician age containing five species....
an animal which lived 20 million years after the animals of Ediacara and one of the first to have a gut.
One of the first big predators was Anomalocaris
Anomalocaris
Anomalocaris is an extinct genus of anomalocaridid, which are, in turn, thought to be closely related to the arthropods. The first fossils of Anomalocaris were discovered in the Ogygopsis Shale by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, with more examples found by Charles Doolittle Walcott in the famed...
, found in the Burgess Shale
Burgess Shale
The Burgess Shale Formation, located in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, is one of the world's most celebrated fossil fields, and the best of its kind. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils...
in the Canadian Rockies
Canadian Rockies
The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains range. They are the eastern part of the Canadian Cordillera, extending from the Interior Plains of Alberta to the Rocky Mountain Trench of British Columbia. The southern end borders Idaho and Montana of the USA...
. Its prey probably included animals such as Opabinia
Opabinia
Opabinia is an animal genus found in Cambrian fossil deposits. Its sole species, Opabinia regalis, is known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada. Fewer than twenty good specimens have been described; 3 specimens of Opabinia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed,...
, Wiwaxia
Wiwaxia
Wiwaxia is a genus of soft-bodied, scale-covered animals known from Burgess shale type Lagerstätte dating from the upper Lower Cambrian to Middle Cambrian. The organisms are mainly known from dispersed sclerites; articulated specimens, where found, range from to a little over 50.8 millimeters in...
, Hallucigenia
Hallucigenia
Hallucigenia is an extinct genus of animal found as fossils in the Middle Cambrian-aged Burgess Shale formation of British Columbia, Canada, represented by the species H. sparsa, and in the Lower Cambrian Maotianshan shale of China, represented by the species H. fortis...
. Professor Justin Marshall shows mantis shrimp
Mantis shrimp
Mantis shrimp or stomatopods are marine crustaceans, the members of the order Stomatopoda. They are neither shrimp nor mantids, but receive their name purely from the physical resemblance to both the terrestrial praying mantis and the shrimp. They may reach in length, although exceptional cases of...
, which are similar to Anomalocaris
Anomalocaris
Anomalocaris is an extinct genus of anomalocaridid, which are, in turn, thought to be closely related to the arthropods. The first fossils of Anomalocaris were discovered in the Ogygopsis Shale by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, with more examples found by Charles Doolittle Walcott in the famed...
.
The most successful arthropod
Arthropod
An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...
s were the Trilobite
Trilobite
Trilobites are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period , and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before...
s, and one of the biggest was Pterygotus
Pterygotus
Pterygotus is the second-largest known eurypterid, or sea scorpion and one of the largest arthropods of all time.-Description:...
, of which a large fossil exists in the vaults of the National Museum of Scotland
National Museum of Scotland
The National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the Royal Museum next door, with collections covering science and technology, natural history, and world...
in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
.
Aysheaia
Aysheaia
Aysheaia was a genus of soft-bodied, caterpillar-shaped organisms average body length of 1–6 cm. The genus name commemorates a mountain peak named "Ayesha" due north of the Wapta Glacier. This peak was originally named Aysha in the 1904 maps of the region, and was re-named Ayesha after the heroine...
is thought to be the ancestor of the first land animal. A very similar land animal, the velvet worm
Velvet worm
The velvet worms are a minor ecdysozoan phylum. These obscurely segmented organisms have tiny eyes, antennae, multiple pairs of legs and slime glands. They have variously been compared to worms with legs, caterpillars and slugs...
, Peripatus
Peripatus
Peripatus is a genus of Onychophora . It is an invertebrate which gives birth to live young rather than laying eggs. It is said to be a living fossil because it has been unchanged for approximately...
still exists lives in the tropics including the rainforest
Rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...
in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, Australia.
The oldest known fossil of an air-breathing arthropod is 428 million years old, similar to millipedes and centipedes.
External links
- Official website for David Attenborough's First Life
- The First Animals BBC website
- First Life at the BBC Press Office website (see "Nature" panel on right hand side of page)