Late_Cretaceous

They have done walking with seires for the mesozoic (dinosaurs), the tertiary (prehistoric beasts), and hominid evolution (cavemen).
How about the paleozoic?
Probably, they could think of a better name, but it would be facinating anyhow. There are many interesting and important evolutionary events in the paleozoic. Starting with the Cambrian explosion, the first tetrapods, the first reptiles, the permian extinction... Plus, there are so many strange creatures from that era that many people probably don't even know existed.
Anyways, I think it would be a nice addition.
Any thoughts?

Jesse

They may just keep making little mini-specials about dinosaurs like Allosaurus...on their BBC page I found two more dino specials (which apparently have already aired on BBC), Land of Giants and The Giant Claw. I'd love to see a Paleozoic series though, especially about the mammal-like reptiles in the Permian and Triassic, many of which were pretty crazy-looking. A Cambrian explosion episode could be interesting too, although TV viewers might prefer watching vertebrates.

capsaicin67

My prediction is that they will continue to make 'em until they have exhausted the possibilites, or the audience, or both! There is a lot more material, as you say, and the shows are so darned fun even for kids!

I am greatly encouraged by these shows because I think they are one of the most effective, yet indirect, ways that science is fighting back in the cultural war that the fundamentalists and religious extremists are waging......

lpetrich

They could show how land plants emerged from algae that would get high and dry every so often.

Or show the fish-to-amphibian transition. If you were a fish that liked to live in a swamp, wouldn't it be convenient to be able to clamber across the debris? Thus, fins to legs. And when decay organisms consume the oxygen in the water, then where else to get it but the air? And getting to other swamp areas may require crossing terra firma. But if one can live there, then there is a whole new world to inhabit.

They could also try being a paleontological Jacques Cousteau.

Try swimming with early cetaceans in the Eocene. Or ichthyosaurs in the Mesozoic.

Or watch some trilobites scurry across the seafloor during the Paleozoic.

Or watch an Anomalocaris trying to catch some trilobites way back in the Cambrian.

The Precambrian wouldn't be quite as interesting, but it might be fun to dramatize the difficulty of exploring the Archean Earth.

You put on a flight suit and an oxygen tank, and use a rebreather to avoid breathing the CO2-enriched air. You go out in a warm summer's day after a rainstorm, but the landscape looks totally bleak, like Antarctica or some Arctic areas. Nothing but bare rock and soil.

Jayjay

Or they could make a documentary about grass growing.

Seriously speaking, I think that the reason why dinos and mammals get the spotlight is because they're big land animals that the average viewer can relate to. It would be somewhat harder to make algae or fish interesting. So, I'm not really holding my breath for "Walking with Algae" or "Sleeping with the Fishes" series.

Jesse

They already did both of these, actually...

lpetrich

Thanx, Jesse. I don't watch The Tube very much -- the only display devices that I ever view are those whose display content are supplied by nearby computers.

So some of these programs did go on paleo-Cousteau expeditions after all. And given Mr. Cousteau's success at making undersea documentaries, I'm sure that a paleo-Cousteau expedition could be made very visually interesting.

There would not be much trouble doing that in all of the Phanerozoic, and even a bit in the latest Precambrian. But the rest of the Precambrian has a certain problem: stromatolites are not very visually interesting, unless one likes the sight of weird-looking rocks.

Joe Meert

JM: How about "The Colonials: Building with the Blue-Greens" or "Living without a Backbone: The Invertebrates" or "Dancing with Dickinsonia: The Ediacarans".

Cheers

Joe Meert

Jesse

I still think mammal-like reptiles are the way to go...they're our ancestors (or close cousins of ancestors), they probably had high metabolism, and there's a lot of variety in how they looked. Check out this series of pages on the therapsids, with lots of illustrations...hit "enter" on the first page, and then hit the "more details" button at the bottom of each subsequent page:

http://www.sunshine.net/www/2100/sn2192/default.htm

Secular Pinoy

Awww, those reptiles are cute, so colorful! I hope the BBC would do more shows on Mammalian Megafaunas. Walking with Beasts was insufficient, I want more!