Summary: When a species stakes a claim in new surroundings, it often spells bad news for the native flora and fauna. This program presents invasive species case studies and highlights methods for ousting such unwanted guests. Viewers visit Florida's Gasparilla Island, where a burgeoning black iguana population of Guatemalan ancestry has wrecked ecological havoc. Diving into the Great Lakes, the program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Long ago, the oceans were home to all living things. Then some creatures moved ashore. But how? This program outlines the stages of natural selection that enabled water-dwelling animals and plants to survive, and then thrive, on land. Key evolutionary innovations such as exoskeletons and endoskeletons, legs and feet, cold blood and warm blood, lungs, hard-shelled eggs, fur, and live young are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: 160 million years ago, a massive lava flow in China's Junggar Basin resulted in an eerily preserved "community" akin to the ruins of Pompeii-in this case, not a scene of human domesticity but a spectacular dinosaur graveyard. This program explores the site and evokes one of the most exciting questions in paleontology: how and why did dinosaurs become gigantic? Viewers are shown specimens from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The oceans are life's laboratory, the global test tube where trial and error meet cause and effect. By focusing on pivotal animals-ammonites, flatworms, sea squirts, frog fish, and bottlenose dolphins, to name only five-and anatomical adaptations such as the eye, the brain, the backbone, and fins, this program illustrates how life populated the seas. Evidence of humankind's evolutionary past is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He's found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissue, but never intact DNA. Trying a new approach, Horner has now been taking living descendants of the dinosaur - chickens - and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits. In this TEDTalk, Horner discusses...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Did the ancestors of the human race go through a crucial semi-aquatic phase? This balanced program examines the latest evidence that water played a major role in human evolution and assesses how it stands up to the traditional Savanna Theory proposed by Darwin. Preeminent critics and adherents of the Aquatic Ape Theory discuss such key points as humans' unique diving reflex and voluntary breath...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Is the key theory about how we evolved from apes based on mistaken evidence? Since 1974, the 3.2-million-year-old fossil dubbed "Lucy" has been considered humankind's prime ancestor. Now, a fossil recently unearthed in Kenya by distinguished paleontologist Dr. Meave Leakey is rewriting the theories. This program examines the implications of Flat-Faced Man, a bipedal hominid just as old as Lucy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program provides arguments in favor of continental drift and the one-time existence of a supercontinent, shows how isolation can give rise to different species and how species develop in response to their environments, and explains clines and suggests the reason for their existence. After viewing the program, students should understand the significance of the continental drift theory, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Nearly everything we know of dinosaurs comes from bones and teeth-usually the only body parts durable enough to fossilize. This program highlights the scientific rewards resulting from a 1999 discovery of a virtually intact dinosaur mummy. Viewers will learn about the conditions that preserved the 67-million-year-old hadrosaur specimen as well as exciting details of what the creature looked...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This episode of the award-winning PBS series NOVA explores an intriguing question: how did warm-blooded dinosaurs survive and even thrive in frigid polar regions? A field expedition seeks the answer at Alaska’s North Slope, tunneling into the permafrost to excavate dinosaur fossils. This documentary shows reconstructions and animations of the fossils and discusses the many questions raised by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: All other life forms except humans exist to propagate themselves and pass on their genes; humans alone work to other ends. In this lecture, Richard Dawkins distinguishes between the result of eons of natural selection which has resulted in, say, a bird's tail, whose purpose is to enable the bird to fly-purpose with a survival value-and deliberate design, like an airplane's tail. Dawkins shows...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: When paleontologist Per Ahlberg discovered a strange fossil overlooked for decades at a museum in Latvia, he knew he was onto something. In this astounding program, Ahlberg and Jenny Clack, of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology; Ted Daeschler, of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences; and Keith Thomson, of the Oxford University Museum, reexamine the evolution of the first...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Science Screen Report explains how biologists help endangered species. It highlights captive breeding techniques that have strengthened populations of Malayan tapirs and southern white rhinos; it also examines the artificial insemination of giant pandas and the teaching of survival skills to orphaned orangutans. Emphasizing that humans can learn and benefit from these experiences-for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Across the world, plants and animals are silently finding their way into places where they don't belong. These interlopers, upon which scientists frequently bestow the term invasive species, have been known to display fearsome powers-including uncanny abilities to spread disease, damage soil, even devour buildings. This program examines the dangers posed by invasive species and the roles they...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010