Life on Earth
Life on Earth: A Natural History by David Attenborough is a BBC nature documentary series about a study of the evolution of life on the planet. The series consists of thirteen episodes and begins with David Attenborough's opening narration: "There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world.
Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive. This is the story of how a few of them came to be as they are." The first episode is devoted to illustrating the diversity and origins of life on Earth. And then through the next 12 episodes the series looks at the evolution of living creatures including
the sea-living creatures, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, primates and humans.
Episode 08 - Lords of the Air. This episode focuses on birds. The feather is key to everything that is crucial about a bird: it is both its aerofoil and its insulator.
The earliest feathers were found on a fossilised Archaeopteryx skeleton in Bavaria. However, it had claws on its wings and there is only one species alive today that does so: the hoatzin,
whose chicks possess them for about a week or so. Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the probable movement of its ancestor. It may have taken to the trees to avoid predators,
and over time, its bony, reptilian tail was replaced by feathers and its heavy jaw evolved into a keratin beak.
(from wikipedia.org)
| Episode 08 - Lords of the Air |
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