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Rise of Animals

David Attenborough embarks on a journey to unravel the rise of the vertebrates. This episode details their origins which lie in primitive, ancient fish.

Of all the animals that live on our planet, one extraordinary group dominates. It has produced the largest… the fastest, and the most intelligent creatures that have ever lived. They are known as the vertebrates, and they all share one vital feature. A backbone.

Now, I want to travel back in time to explore their ancient origins. And investigate the key advances that led to their amazing success. Advances that can also reveal how we came to acquire the characteristic features of our own vertebrates bodies. Jaws that bite, lungs that breathe, ears that can hear. Because the story of the rise of animals is also the story of how you and I came to be as we are.

I will find evidence in a series of spectacular fossil discoveries around the world and within living animals. With the latest scientific analysis, we can bring our ancient ancestors back to life.

And understand how, over 500 million years, they developed the bodily features needed to master the seas… colonise the land, and take to the skies. – This is the story of the rise of animals.

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Animal World Triumph Vertebrates Early Steps Land Transition Lung Development Power of Flight Dawn of Mammals Nocturnal Advantage Monotremes Placental Young Dinosaur Extinction Arrival of Giants

The history of life on Earth been known in outline for many years, but there were a number of tantalising gaps in it, particularly in the history of animals with backbones. When, for example, did the first signs of a backbone appear? And is it really true that dinosaurs developed feathers and turned into birds? Well, in recent decades, answers have been found to those extraordinary questions, here, in China, and I’m here to look At them.

China is the new frontier for fossil discoveries. Excavations here are unearthing links in the story of the vertebrates that have so far eluded us.

I have long wanted to see this sensational evidence for myself.

I will be travelling to the frozen north of the country, and to the capital, Beijing. But to search for the first step in our journey, I’m heading South, to Yunnan Province. This is the site of a thrilling discovery that has given us new evidence for the very first vertebrates. Excavators here are exposing a rich seam of rocks known as the Chengjiang fossil beds. Remarkably, they contain the remains of creatures that once swam in the ancient seas 525 million years ago.

Palaeontologist Hou Xianguang, was the first to discover the unique features of these beds, an astonishing perfection of preservation. To find complete bodies like this is extremely rare.

When an animal dies in the sea, normally bacteria destroy the soft parts very quickly so that all we can find afterwards are the hard parts, bone or shell. Why that didn’t happen here in this particular part of this particular sea is something of a mystery. It may be something to do with the lack of oxygen, but whatever it was, it has given us a privileged view into one of the most exciting chapters in the whole history of life.

The beds have so far yielded over 200 separate species. This was the time period known as the Cambrian. The land was still bare and lifeless, but, underwater, it was exploding into a multitude of forms.

The major animal groups we know today were appearing on the planet for the very first time. They built their bodies entirely of soft tissue. Some protected and supported it with a hard outer casing. But none had anything that resembled a backbone. These were the invertebrates.

Then, Professor Hou and his team found one intriguing exception. It’s a fossil called Myllokunmingia. But to examine it in detail, you’ve got to look at it under the microscope. Its features reveal evidence of a new type of support, not outside the body, but inside.

This is one of about 30 specimens that have already been found of this tiny little creature. Under the microscope, it contains an extraordinary amount of detail. Those marks are marks that have been made by the excavator’s needle. This is the animal itself. This is its head, the top of its back. And nearly every one of them have these two little blackspots at the front, eye spots. Looking farther down the animal, there are just some striations here, little bars which are thought to have been the gill bars, the little constructions that carry blood vessels which enabled the animal to extract oxygen from the waters it flowed over and breathe. And behind them, farther down the animal, there are these bars… bands of muscle, and they were probably attached to a gristly rod somewhere in the middle there. This is called the notochord, which was the forerunner of the backbone.

Myllokunmingia is the earliest creature we know of that we can truly call a vertebrate. And it seems clear that it used its strong inner rod to move in an entirely new way. As the muscles contract, they bend the rod from side to side. This movement pushes against the water and creates forward thrust.

Here was a revolutionary new way to get around. It allowed Myllokunmingia to roam far and wide and escape the dangerous invertebrate predators that were prowling the seas.

The vertebrates would diversify over millions of years to create the spectacular variety of backboned creatures we see today in every environment on the planet.