The idea of "Walking with Beasts" was to close part of the gap between the end of "Walking with Dinosaurs" (ending in the late Cretaceous) and today.
The story begins in the early Eocene (~55 million years ago). Why the Paleozoic (the 10 million years between the Cretaceous and the Eocene) have been left out I don't know. This was also a quite exciting time in Earth's history, just after the fall of the dinosaurs.
The series give a nice overlook of the animals that lived during the specified time. These are just short windows however, sometimes just single days within an epoch, which doesn't give much insight into the development of animals.
The amount of speculation in this series seems to be even greater than in "Walking with Dinosaurs". While we still don't know if the animals of the Eocene were single-coloured, or had spots or stars or stripes, most animals in this series had very distinct markings on their fur or feathers. But this goes even further with information about social behavior among early primates and tales of gases trapped within the local pond. These things all MIGHT have been, but watching the series gives you the impression that someone went back in time to study these animals (for a few years).
There are a few animals that have left us not only bones, but also fur and dung, like the mammoth, some sabre toothed cats and the giant ground sloth (megatherium). These creatures were recreated wonderfully.
This is another edutainment documentation from the BBC where the emphasis was put a little to much on the entertainment side. Just the same, it's not really bad (just not as good as "Life on Earth" was for example), a lot of fun to watch and it also contains a nice insight into the world of mammals.
The story begins in the early Eocene (~55 million years ago). Why the Paleozoic (the 10 million years between the Cretaceous and the Eocene) have been left out I don't know. This was also a quite exciting time in Earth's history, just after the fall of the dinosaurs.
The series give a nice overlook of the animals that lived during the specified time. These are just short windows however, sometimes just single days within an epoch, which doesn't give much insight into the development of animals.
The amount of speculation in this series seems to be even greater than in "Walking with Dinosaurs". While we still don't know if the animals of the Eocene were single-coloured, or had spots or stars or stripes, most animals in this series had very distinct markings on their fur or feathers. But this goes even further with information about social behavior among early primates and tales of gases trapped within the local pond. These things all MIGHT have been, but watching the series gives you the impression that someone went back in time to study these animals (for a few years).
There are a few animals that have left us not only bones, but also fur and dung, like the mammoth, some sabre toothed cats and the giant ground sloth (megatherium). These creatures were recreated wonderfully.
This is another edutainment documentation from the BBC where the emphasis was put a little to much on the entertainment side. Just the same, it's not really bad (just not as good as "Life on Earth" was for example), a lot of fun to watch and it also contains a nice insight into the world of mammals.