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
View online at AVOD
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: 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
View online at AVOD
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
View online at AVOD
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: 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