Peter McClive's List: Study Resources for the video “Life on Earth – a walking tour”

Excellent additional resources to accompany the David Attenborough First Life series

Part One: Arrival (Proterozoic Eon - Pre-Cambrian life) 55min
Single celled organisms, Snowball Earth, extremophiles, cyanobacteria, sponges, Charnia, Fractofusus, Dickensonia, Kimberella, Spriggina, Funisia sexual reproduction (spawning), Markuelia (predatory worm)

Part Two: Conquest (Phanerozoic Eon – Early Paleozoic Era - Cambrian life) 55min
The Burgess Shale, Opabinia, Wiwaxia, Anomalocaris, Hallucigenia, Aysheaia, Trilobites (including incredible 3D fossils from Morocco), giant millipedes, sea scorpions, Meganeura, Pikaia (chordate worm)

Walking with Dinosaurs (Life of the Mesozoic Era)
Six part series (30min episodes).
Using the latest technology the amazing lost world of the Cretaceous,
Triassic and Jurassic periods of Earth's history, when the dinosaurs reigned supreme, is brought stunningly back to life. It describes life from 220 million years ago to 65.5 million years ago.

Walking with Beasts (Life of the Cenozoic Era – the Paleogene and Neogene Periods)
Six part series (30min episodes).
Using the latest digital technology, the era between the dinosaurs and
man is superbly recreated to include the evolution of whales, horses and humans, describing life from 49 million years ago to 30, 000 years ago.

The Walking Whale
50 million years ago, a hungry land animal waded in shallow sea water. Four million years later, it lived permanently in the oceans and seas of planet earth. Using cutting edge CGI, this film follows the extraordinary evolution of a land animal into the modern whale. (48min episode broken into 5 parts).

Walking with Cavemen (Life of the Cenozoic Era – Late Neogene and Quaternary Periods)
Four part series (30min episodes).
Professor Robert Winston explains the story of human evolution using the latest CGI and costuming techniques to describe hominids from 3.2 million years ago to 30,000 years ago.

Melbourne museum experts speak about their studies of early life: Anomalocaris, Victoria’s geology, Reefs, Tetrapod evolution, Victoria’s glaciation, Late Permian mass extinction, Lystrosaurus, Icthyosaur, Whale evolution, Koolasuchus, Megafauna, Victoria’s rainforest, Climate change, Palorchestes, Cretaceous rift valley

The Field Museum of Chicago provides this exceptional site that includes a Tour through Time (also in interactive form), beautiful images of past worlds, videos and a wealth of information and further links.

Exceptional BBC site drawing together images and video on forms of life, geological time periods, mass extinctions and ancient habitats.

Scroll to the link at the bottom of the page and play the Fossilization Video with Windows Media Player or VLC.

Test your interpretations of fossil remains and the animals that gave rise to them.

Useful information about this series of fossils.

Excellent navigation aid through the rich resources of Melbourne Museum

Beautiful poster to download from Geoscience Australia. Includes pictures of Earth’s landmasses and life forms through time (taken from John Gurche’s painting “Tower of Time” at the Smithsonian Institute)

Another great poster from Geoscience Australia. Includes descriptions of life, extinctions, paleogeography and major mineral deposits.

A beautifully constructed interactive poster detailing the evolutionary history of a sample of around 160 life forms.