All language subtitles for BBC.Evolution.3of5.The.Bat.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org

Look at this!

What an extraordinary place.

These caves are home to a creature
that is undeniably

one of evolution's weirdest.

Oh, my goodness, look at that.

That is spectacular!

The cave is caked in bats.

Using ultrasonic clicks, they can
navigate in darkness.

And with elongated finger bones
covered in a membrane of skin...

..bats are the only mammals that can
fly.

But there's something even weirder
about them.

Each evening, they begin swarming...

Oh, my goodness me, look at that!

..driven by an impulse they just can't
deny...

..an almost unrivalled need to feed.

Flight is an enormously energetically
expensive exercise,

and as a consequence, these bats have
a gargantuan appetite.

Each one of them's going to need to
find thousands

of tiny insects tonight, eat half of
its own body weight.

A bit like me eating 70 pizzas in just
a few hours!

Their whole existence is governed by a
drive to find food,

and a lot of it.

So, how did the bat become one of the
hungriest animals on the planet?

To answer that question, we must go
back in time...

..way back in time,

..to meet a handful of ancient
relatives of the bat...

..who, between them, hold the
evolutionary secrets...

..to how the bat's giant appetite...

..came to be.

Our story begins in the shallows of an
ancient ocean...

..where today, a new life is emerging.

This is a distant ancestor of the bat

and all of us.

Its home is an alien-looking
ecosystem,

known as the Ediacaran Garden...

..and its neighbours are some of the
strangest animals

to ever live on our planet.

Now, I know it might not look like
much,

but this little creature is about to
play a pivotal role

in the story of life on Earth...

..one that would change eating
forever.

Now, the Ediacaran is one of the most
enigmatic periods

in our Earth's history,

not least because it's the first time
that we find fossils

of large, complex animals in the
geological record,

and I've got some casts of some of
those in here.

Just look at this.

That's pretty good, isn't it?

This is Charnia.

I know it looks a little bit like a
plant, perhaps like a fern,

but scientists can tell that at least
some of these specimens

were living in depths of water where
plants couldn't prosper,

so we think that it was an animal.

Now, take a look at Dickinsonia.

Now, that is special.

That is a beautiful fossil.

550 million years ago,

these bizarre animals are thriving,

because they have plenty to eat.

Why was that?

Well, I can show you with a third
fossil.

And I know what you're thinking -

"Well, that's not very special at all.

"That just looks like some ripples on
the beach."

But you've got to look more closely.

These are traces of millions,

billions, trillions of tiny microbes.

These microscopic organisms are the
secret ingredient

of the Ediacaran Garden.

So numerous, they form a nutritious
green mat,

several centimetres deep,

that carpets the seabed in every
direction.

For the animals that live here,

the floor is literally made of food.

A 24-hour, all-you-can-eat buffet
means no-one goes hungry here,

including, of course...

..the bat's ancestor.

Officially, its name is the
Urbilaterian.

It spends its days leisurely grazing,

hoovering up microbial mat into its
mouth...

..digesting and then, a while later,
regurgitating the leftovers.

Not terribly pleasant!

And the evidence we have for all of
this comes not from a fossil,

but from a creature alive today.

This blobby animal is called an acoel.

It's a marine organism.

They normally measure only a few
millimetres in length,

and you can find them all over the
world.

This particular species is called
Hofstenia miamia,

and it's a favourite of scientists
that study early life.

You see, acoels are what we call basal
animals.

A long time ago,

they went down a certain evolutionary
road different than

other animals, and they've retained
some ancient characteristics.

Acoels have a mouth, opening into a
very basic gut,

shaped a bit like a sack.

And we think that this kind of gut was
common in the Ediacaran.

So, for the Urbilaterian,

the simplest route for waste to come
out

is the same way the food came in.

But this way of feeding was about to
get an upgrade.

Compared to the rest of its kind,

this individual has a genetic
difference,

a mutation...

..that almost imperceptibly lengthens
its body.

A difference so trivial, it doesn't
cause it any harm...

..but, when passed on, will change the
destiny

of a tiny reproductive pore.

Over many generations, subsequent
mutations lengthen the body further,

driving the pore and the gut closer
and closer together, until...

..they connect...

..forming a continuous tube through
its body...

..a tube that changes everything.

This new animal was, to all intents
and purposes, a worm.

You see, unlike the simple creature
that came before it,

it had a new body part.

Aside from a mouth to take food in -

just like you, just like me,

just like everything that walks, flies
and slithers -

it had another hole to excrete the
waste.

It had a bottom.

It had a bum!

Technically speaking, it had an anus.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

If you're running through a list of
evolution's greatest innovations,

the anus is probably not scoring near
the top of it.

But then think about the alternative,

and the advantages become immediately
clear.

I mean, imagine that you have a lovely
lunch and that you digest it,

but before you can have your dinner,
you've got to throw it up.

See what I mean?

The anus was a breakthrough.

With a mouth leading to a gut that
goes all the way through its body,

this new worm can do something that no
animal has ever done before.

It can poo!

And this is a superpower!

You see, it means the worm can feed
continually...

..eating more than any animal that
came before.

In their quest for food,

the ravenous worms burrow into the
microbial mat,

devouring it and churning it up...

..disrupting an ecosystem that had
dominated the Earth

since life's inception.

And as the microbial mat declines...

..almost all of the strange animals
that rely on it for food die out.

The evolution of the anus may well
have led

to the first mass extinction of animal
life on Earth.

But the legacy of the anus would prove
to be more than just

an extinction event.

It helped animal life take on a bold
new form.

The sea anemone and the nudibranch,
the sea slug,

are two soft-bodied marine organisms.

They look pretty similar.

But the extraordinary thing is that I
am more closely related

to that nudibranch than it is to that
anemone.

So, why is that?

Well, it's because the anemone doesn't
have an anus.

It's descended from a group of animals
that found its own

evolutionary path before the
development of that through-gut.

But the nudibranch, like myself, has a
mouth, a through-gut and an anus.

It can poo,

and the ability to poo has a profound
effect on our body plans.

The anemone has a circular body
plan...

..but the nudibranch is symmetrical
down the middle.

It has what we call bilateral
symmetry...

..just like our shared ancestor, that
ancient worm.

And the through-gut unleashed the full
potential

of this bilateral body plan.

Then you've got an animal with a
mouth, the gut and an anus.

Essentially, you've got a front and a
back,

and the front, where the mouth is, is
the bit that wants to find food.

So, think about it.

That's the best place to put any
sensory organs,

like eyes to look for that food.

And then if you've got the sensory
organs there, that would be

the best place to have the brain, so
they could react quickly

when they find that food.

So then you've got a mouth, eyes and a
brain in the same place.

What you've got is a head.

A head!

And I absolutely love the fact that
for life to evolve a head,

it had to evolve an arse first!

I love that!

A head end and a tail end,

joined by a through-gut,

proved to be a winning formula...

..one that means, today, we see
bilateral symmetry everywhere.

99% of known animal species on the
planet have this body plan...

..all of us descendants of that
world-changing little worm.

It is hard to understate what a
revolutionary moment

the evolution of the anus was.

Microbial mats, which for three
billion years had been

the dominant ecosystem on Earth, all
but disappeared.

Today, we find them in environments
which are inhospitable to animals -

beneath the ice in Antarctica or in
steaming-hot volcanic springs.

And for animals,

the development of the through-gut had
far-reaching consequences.

Its increased efficiency meant they
could grow bigger,

move more purposefully.

And it cemented the bilaterally
symmetrical body plan

over other options.

The drive to find food had changed the
course of life on Earth,

and it wouldn't be the last time.

The worms unleash a new era of eating.

Fuelled by the extra energy they're
gathering...

..their descendants develop more
complex bodies...

..and keener senses for finding food.

Just 35 million years later,

one of those descendants is a worm no
more.

We might even call it a fish.

A small fish, living in a very big
pond.

The oceans of the Cambrian Period are
dominated by giant arthropods -

early cousins of insects.

Among them, Earth's first top
predators.

And the secret to survival for this
little fish

comes down to its strange mouth.

Now, take a look at this. It's the
fossil of that primitive fish,

about five centimetres long. It's
called Metaspriggina.

Just look at the detail that you can
see here,

particularly at the front of its head.

These two black dots, those are its
eyes.

And under scrutiny, scientists have
discovered

that they are pointing upwards, so it
could be that this little fish

was swimming along on the bottom,
using those eyes to look up into

the water column for any potential
predators -

perhaps those giant arthropods -

that might have made a tasty snack out
of a tiny fish like this.

There's another photograph here.

This time, we're looking down on it,

and what appear to be ribs here, we
think are not ribs but gill arches -

structures which support gills.

As it swims,

a constant stream of water flows into
the fish's open mouth.

This is how Metaspriggina breathes -

passing water over its gills,

supported by those gill arches.

But this mouth is multipurpose.

Something else is extracted at the
same time.

Metaspriggina is a filter feeder.

And getting both oxygen and food into
their bodies fast

is critical if they want to survive
these perilous waters.

This is survival of the fittest in
action,

and it means this fish,

its strange mouth and those gill
arches hidden deep within

are already on a path that will shake
up the world of eating

all over again.

Scientists have found that
Metaspriggina's front gill arches

are actually thicker

and appear to lack oxygen-absorbing
gill filaments,

a tantalising hint that they may have
jettisoned their old role

for a new one - keeping the fish's
gaping mouth wide open.

Because thick gill arches lead to a
wider mouth,

more food and oxygen and more energy
to escape...

..it's an advantage that's passed on.

Across countless generations,

the gill arches continue to thicken
and strengthen.

New structures erupt...

..and after tens of millions of
years...

..what was once a gill arch...

..becomes a revolutionary new body
part...

..which means this fish...

..can bite!

Many body parts have been lost to the
passage of time.

Whales and dolphins have lost limbs,

and fish that have been marooned in
pitch-dark cave systems

have lost their eyes.

Even the not-so-humble anus has
disappeared on multiple occasions.

But jaws, never.

Jaws are simply too useful.

Look, jaws didn't just change how
animals ate,

but where they ate.

This little creature is a mud skipper,

one of around 25 species of fish

that you can find all over the world,

typically in intertidal mangrove
swamps like this.

Now, what's extraordinary about them

is the amount of time that they can
spend out of the water...

..some of them 90% of their lives, and
they're able to do that

because they've got some remarkable
adaptations.

Firstly, this little fish is breathing
through its skin.

It also has jointed pectoral fins,

which means that it can skip across
the surface of the mud,

almost as if it were walking.

So there are some behavioural
comparisons there that we can make

with those fish that struggled out of
water, onto land,

375 million years ago,

to begin an amphibious lifestyle.

But here's one thing.

They couldn't have done it without
jaws.

Just think about it.

If these and those fish were dependent
upon filter feeding,

dependent upon that water carrying
morsels of food into their mouth,

that would mean that no matter how
much time they could spend on land,

they would have to return to water to
feed.

The difference is they've got jaws -
they can bite.

And you can bite just as well out of
water as you can in the water.

Thanks in part to the evolution of the
jaw,

fish were no longer reliant on feeding
in water...

..opening up a new world of
possibilities.

Now, I know it's going to sound
absurd...

..but from an evolutionary perspective
at least,

these elephants are - wait for it -
jawed fish.

Of course, they're highly modified
jawed fish, but fish nevertheless.

But then so am I, so are you,

so is every other terrestrial animal
that's got a backbone and a jaw.

So, here in Borneo,

that means 300 species of reptile, 150
amphibians, 650 birds

and 250 species of mammal,

all of whom are descended from those
fish

that made that leap out of the water.

ELEPHANT GRUNTS

Globally, there are at least 30,000
species of vertebrates

living on land, with a dizzying array
of jaws,

adapted to many different ways of
feeding.

Some are lined with teeth, others have
become beaks.

And some open so far,

their owners can swallow meals wider
than their bodies.

What began as a tiny Ediacaran
creature...

..gave rise to a through-gut

and a worm with an appetite that
upended the world...

..and led to a fish

with a jaw that could finally take a
bite.

From their aquatic origins,

jawed animals spread to all corners of
the globe...

..and diversify to exploit new sources
of food.

Until, 200 million years later,

we find one of them on the move.

This is Agilodocodon.

It's a female, and she's tiny...

..the size of a shrew.

With warm blood and fur, she's a
primitive mammal

who spends most of her time hunting
insects in trees.

But right now, it's not her own hunger
she's concerned with...

..it's theirs.

Mammals have a quirky advantage over
many other types of animal.

You see, we don't have to find food
for our babies.

We don't abandon them to find their
own.

We make it, and milk is the perfect
food for a growing infant.

And it's perfect, unlike so many other
types of food,

because evolution has driven it to be
so.

Of course, milk, made by mammary
glands,

has given us mammals our name.

But the evolution of milk impacted
more than just babies.

It's changed how mammals feed at every
age.

I've got a couple of lovely skulls
here.

This is from a crocodile, and this one
from an orangutan.

Now, they're clearly very different in
terms of their size and shape,

but also their teeth.

Let's take a look at the crocodile
first.

Its teeth are very simple, and they're
pretty much all the same -

cylindrical at the base, peg-like and
sharp, ideal for grabbing

and then gripping their prey.

But, look, you can see that they don't
fit together terribly well.

There are large gaps in between them.

Contrast that with the skull of the
orangutan.

Its teeth are not so simple.

They come in a range of forms.

You've got these at the front here.

These are the incisors that are used
for slicing and nibbling.

And then you've got these very
powerful canines

for piercing and gripping.

And lastly, when I fit the jaw on as
it would sit in life,

look at these teeth at the back here.

They fit together almost perfectly.

These are the molars,

and one of the major reasons that
molars have been able to evolve

comes down to milk.

The ancestors of mammals

had simple, reptilian-like teeth

that were replaced continually

as the animals grew.

But when they started to evolve milk,

babies were no longer reliant on teeth
to feed.

Fewer sets were needed throughout
life,

so this allowed more complex teeth to
evolve.

In the mid Jurassic,

it's thought that the young of species
like Agilodocodon,

now sustained entirely on milk,

are born toothless.

It's only because their adult molars
don't emerge

until their jaws are almost fully
grown

that they are some of the first to
interlock perfectly.

And this helps today's mammals do
something

that's surprisingly rare in the animal
kingdom.

Take a look at this beautiful
orangutan here.

A female with a nursing youngster.

But put her beauty to one side and
concentrate on what she's doing.

She is chewing.

We can chew.

Those gentle movements of the lower
jaw,

those molars grinding up that fruit.

Imagine you had to take that fruit
into your kitchen

and cut it up into chunks that you
could swallow.

You'd have to slice it, you'd have to
dice it,

and then you'd have to mash it.

But she's doing all of that with
consummate ease.

Her teeth are highly efficient
food-processing machines,

and what they're trying to do is grind
that food up

to increase its surface area,

so that when it reaches the stomach
and the gut,

the digestive juices can act upon it
far more quickly.

It massively speeds up the rate of
digestion.

I mean, contrast it with those
crocodiles.

They swallow their food whole, or in
massive chunks,

and it takes weeks to digest it.

But me, you and the orangutan,

we can have a meal and digest it in
just a matter of hours.

For primitive mammals like
Agilodocodon...

..this ability to chew helps drive a
surprising evolutionary change.

Over generations,

a lower jaw, made of several bones, is
gradually reconfigured.

One bone gets larger...

..whilst the others shrink...

..until a single, powerful lower jaw
evolves.

The old jawbones wither away,

but not all are lost.

These are the remnants of those
jawbones.

They're called the malleus and the
incus,

although you might know them as the
hammer and the anvil.

They're two of the smallest bones in
our body,

and they're disconnected from the rest
of our skeleton.

But the key thing is, when we were in
the womb,

they started off as part of our jaw
and then migrated up to our ear,

where they are joined by this bone,

and this one is called the stapes, or
the stirrup.

And together, they connect our eardrum
to our inner ear,

greatly enhancing our capacity to
hear,

particularly a wider range of
frequencies.

The evolution of the middle ear bones,
known as the ossicles,

transformed hearing for modern
mammals, meaning that today,

mammals have some of the most
sensitive hearing of all animals.

It's remarkable to think that over 400
million years ago,

these tiny bones were part of an
ancient fish's gill arches.

This is the power of evolution, right
here in the palm of my hand.

No designer was involved in making
these bones, which are currently

floating in your head, allowing you to
hear what I'm saying.

All that was needed was life's
relentless drive to find food.

That and quite a bit of time!

And time, of course, keeps ticking...

..and mammals, now with acute hearing,
keep evolving...

..for tens of millions of years...

..until, one morning...

..a little mammal picks up a sound
it's never heard before...

..a sound that, once again, would
change everything.

By the time we get to the Cretaceous
Period,

when T-Rex was on the prowl, most of
those traits that we consider

to be typically mammalian are already
there -

warm-bloodedness, fur, complex teeth
in powerful jaws and acute hearing.

And that acute hearing meant that
mammals had already conquered

the night, and it was going to prove
to be significant.

You see, that classic myth that
mammals at this time were living

in the shadow of the dinosaurs, it may
not have been like that.

That hearing contributed to the fact
that they could find more food.

Those jaws could catch it and process
it.

They were getting more energy.

They were able to build bigger bodies.

In fact, some scientists think that
those early mammals

could have been well on the way to
standing shoulder to shoulder

with those giant reptiles.

But, of course, as we know, that story
was going to be cut short.

The sound the mammal heard

had its origins thousands of
kilometres away...

..where, an hour or so earlier,

a rock, 12km wide,

had plunged into the Gulf of Mexico.

In a moment, the world is changed
irrevocably.

The day that asteroid plummeted into
the Gulf of Mexico

was probably the worst single day for
life since it arose

around four billion years ago, because
in that one chance moment,

life's progress was stopped dead -
quite literally -

and millions of years of evolutionary
tinkering

were wiped out in an instant.

And it was such a twist of fate.

Had that asteroid impacted just 30
seconds later,

the Earth would have spun on its axis.

It would have smashed into much deeper
water

and caused far less devastation.

You never know - those giant reptiles
might not have died out.

We might have had mammals, but not the
mammal fauna that we've got now.

There might have been no humans on
Earth.

Standing here in this oil palm
plantation...

..I'll leave you to make of that what
you will.

And whatever happens, life will find a
way.

Although in the 15-year winter that
follows the impact...

..three quarters of species are erased
from the face of the Earth.

A tiny fraction of mammal species
endure.

We know this, of course, because I'm
here, because you're here,

because all the mammals we currently
share our planet with are here.

But what do we know about our shared
ancient ancestors,

those creatures that survived the
storm of all storms,

the almost endless night?

Well, we think they were small,
rodent-like animals -

not a single species, but a group of
them.

And they carried those traits like
complex teeth,

which would have enabled them to eat a
broad diet -

everything from rotting vegetation to
insects,

which would have bounced back quite
quickly after that near catastrophe.

They might have also been burrowing
animals,

so they could get beneath the ground
to avoid all of that climate chaos

which was causing so many other
species to become extinct.

Just a few hundred thousand years
after that apocalyptic day,

we start to see the descendants of
those surviving mammals

in the fossil record.

In a world vacated by dinosaurs,

mammals rapidly diversified.

Among them, a remarkable new group...

..that would use their acute mammalian
hearing

in a truly innovative way.

This is a replica fossil of an
approximately

52-million-year-old creature called
Icaronycteris.

And you might be able to guess what
type of animal it is.

Firstly, look at its fingers here -
very long and narrow, extended.

I'll give you another clue by turning
it up this way.

Yes, those fingers have transformed
into wings.

This animal could fly.

This is the fossil of a bat.

Now, there's a lot more we need to
learn about the evolution of bats.

There's a big gap between that period
when the asteroid hit

and this, 14 million years later.

And the reason for that is that these
delicate, light, little bones

don't fossilise terribly well. We
don't find many fossil bats.

But scientists have X-rayed this skull

and they found that inside its inner
ear, it has an enlarged cochlea.

And that, alongside the fact it had
ossicles,

might suggest that this creature could
echolocate.

What about that?!

Quite when creatures like this started
to echolocate,

we're not sure.

Perhaps just after they could fly,
perhaps at the same time.

But it's a beautiful specimen. I covet
this.

I might actually steal it!

Because bat fossils are so rare...

..we don't know exactly why bats first
evolved powered flight.

But combined with echolocation, it's
an adaptation that pays off.

Despite being so energetically
demanding,

flight allowed access to a great,
untapped source of food

in the night sky.

Today, they're one of the most
successful

mammalian lineages on Earth...

..with over 1,000 species of
echolocating bat...

..inhabiting every continent except
Antarctica.

Here in Borneo, there are more bats
than any other type of mammal.

Among them, those wrinkle-lipped bats

that roost in Gomantong Caves in their
hundreds of thousands.

But bats don't just live in caves.

You can find them in the most
unexpected of places.

Oh, yes, yes, yes! Look at that!

It's a little cluster of bamboo bats.

And this is where they like to roost -

in these hollow stems of bamboo.

One of the smallest bat species in the
world,

one of the smallest mammals in the
world, they can weigh up to 5g.

That's about the same size as a large
bumblebee.

Look at them all in there.

Oh! I honestly didn't think we were
going to find any.

Any minute now, when these bats emerge
to hunt,

they will be able to fly at speeds of
several metres per second,

and they're able to do that because
they can digest their insect prey in

about 30 minutes - quick enough to
power their fiery metabolism,

the metabolism that allows them to
fly.

And then, of course, they've got that
extremely acute hearing.

They can hear frequencies five times
higher than I can.

That means they can detect their
echolocation calls,

find those tiny insects metres away,
out there in the darkness.

In so many ways, they are
extraordinary organisms...

..but then, in some ways, they're
really quite ordinary.

Just like their Ediacaran ancestor
that lived half a billion years ago,

they're bilaterally symmetrical.

They've got a head end, a back end,
and a through-gut

running in between, like 99% of all of
the animals that live on Earth.

And just like all of the vertebrates
living on this island,

they've inherited a jaw from that
ancient fish

that struggled onto land.

Their ears have those ossicles, just
like ours.

We're both born helpless, completely
dependent upon our mothers,

and the hormones that make them hungry

are the hormones that make me hungry,
too.

From the humblest beginnings...

..millennia by millennia,

mouthful by mouthful...

..the need to feed transformed life on
Earth.

Evolution is at times brutal,

but also exquisitely beautiful...

Wow!

..as echoes of these ancestors live
on...

Oh! So good.

..and not just in the bat.

Now, I share about 92% of my genes
with these little bats,

so you could say that their
evolutionary story

is my evolutionary story, is your
evolutionary story.

And so many of the things that make
them extraordinary

are the things that make you
extraordinary, too.

And it's not a story that's come to an
end.

Life goes on. Evolution goes on.

So I want to ponder at this point -

what if our species can finally get a
grip on all the terrible damage

that it's doing to this, our one
beautiful home?

Just where might evolution take us all
next?

Next time...

..how did the dolphin get so smart?

Absolutely amazing!

From the first animals to set eyes on
our world...

..to the land-based ancestors who
stepped back into the oceans,

reshaping their minds,

giving rise to the dolphin and its
brilliant brain.

Oh! My goodness me!

I've just been to dolphin heaven!

But first...

..how do we bring ancient creatures to
life?

- Oh! It's so cute!

- HE CHUCKLES

- I love the mouth.

- Such a weird creature as well, isn't
it?

- Throughout Earth's history,

animals have evolved into all manner
of weird and wonderful forms...

..but how do we know what they looked
like

when they lived millions of years ago?

In this episode, we met the delightful
oddity Metaspriggina.

- Looks like he's screaming for his
life.

- To paint a picture of this ancient
animal,

scientists have to start with the
evidence.

And in the case of Metaspriggina,

that evidence came in the form of a
fossil site unlike any other.

- The Burgess Shale is an exceptional
preservation site,

and that's because there was a big
underwater mudslide

that swept all the animals away into
anoxic waters.

And without oxygen in the water,

the microbes couldn't decay their
bodies.

- Meaning they were perfectly
preserved,

trapped under layers of silt, until
500 million years later,

their faces saw the light of day once
again.

- It's almost like they have been
caught by surprise.

- Entire shoals of Metaspriggina,
preserved perfectly.

- Most of the fossils we know and are
familiar with

are things with hard parts, things
like bones and shells.

But the Burgess Shale was
exceptionally different

in that you get soft body
preservation.

- Everything from muscles to
cartilage, even internal organs.

- Metaspriggina...is tiny.

The fact that we were able to get so
much detail off of them,

after so many hundreds of millions of
years, is mind-boggling.

- With this knowledge,

we can begin to reconstruct exactly
what Metaspriggina looked like.

- This was an animal with visible
gills, eyes,

even something you might call a face.

- But understanding the appearance of
an extinct animal

isn't the only challenge.

- Fossils don't tend to move, and so
bringing these animals,

these organisms, back to life is
actually...

It's a massive endeavour.

- The preservation is really, really
exceptional.

We can see so much of the details of
the muscles.

We can actually reconstruct how they
moved and how they swam.

- Looking closer, scientists noticed
distinct W-shaped muscle lines

in the fossils, identical to those
found in some modern-day fish...

..meaning Metaspriggina must have swum
in a similar way,

swishing its body from side to side.

- I think the VFX reconstruction is
outstanding

and is true to how this animal would
have moved in the water.

- Thanks to these discoveries, we can
bring Metaspriggina back to life.

- Metasprigginas really did change our
understanding of the story

of the evolution of life.

- It's incredible to think these
simple, tiny little forms

are the ancestors of such diversity of
life today.

- Do you want to know how an elephant
is related to a clownfish?

Discover more in a poster from the
Open University on the tree of life.

To get your free copy,

scan the QR code on screen,

or ring...

..or visit...