Walking with Beasts

The dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, but what on earth happened next? This first episode of the sequel to Walking with Dinosaurs, drops in on our planet 49 million years ago to find it has fully recovered from the extinction and is covered in a mysterious forest. This is a time that the world has almost forgotten: Germany was a hot, sweaty jungle, birds ruled the Earth and preyed on miniature horses, and the ancestors of the whales walked on land.

It is 36 million years ago, and mammals have taken over the world. They are no longer small furry animals, they have grown enormous and dominate the planet. This is an era of animals like Andrewsarchus, the biggest mammal carnivore ever to walk on land, and the Brontotheres, small brained bulldozing herbivores. It is in the sea, however, that the most monstrous mammals of all can be found. This programme follows the fate of a female Basilosaurus, a huge serpentlike early whale. Four times the length of a great white shark, with jaws to match, she is every inch a killer.

This third instalment of Walking with Beasts goes back 25 million years ago to meet the biggest land mammals of all time - the Indricotheres. Up to 7 metres tall and weighing 15 tonnes, adults were too big to be eaten by any predator of the time. In fact it is only in the first few years of life that Indricotheres are vulnerable. This programme follows the fate of a calf from his traumatic birth to see whether he can survive droughts, six foot tall killer hogs and Hyaenodon - a predator the size of a rhino, with jaws that could crush a rock.

This episode travels back in time to Ethiopia 3.2 million years ago to witness the beginnings of mankind. It follows a group of Australopithecus, a type of ape which, just like us, walks upright on two legs. But unlike us, these early members of the human family were not predators, they were prey. Things get worse and worse for the group as they are hunted by a sabre tooth cat called Dinofelis and fall victim to other dangers such as malaria, rival Australopithecus and a rampaging fourteen tonne Deinotherium.

One million years ago, South America was a continent of exotic oversized creatures found nowhere else on earth; nine foot terror birds, giant ground sloths and spiky-tailed relatives of the armadillo as big as cars. But the deadliest animal of them all was Smilodon, the largest of all the sabre tooth cats, with canines like carving knives. This programme follows the fortunes of an individual male - Half Tooth. Ousted from his clan by a pair of rival males, his life suddenly becomes a struggle to survive in this alien world.

In this final episode we go back 30 000 years to the middle of an ice age. The landscape is dominated by the mighty mammoths, living side by side with woolly rhinos, giant deer and two separate species of human. This programme follows the fate of a herd of mammoths in their annual struggle against the harsh ice age conditions. They spend summer on grassy plains in the north, but every winter they are forced to head for the less exposed valleys to the south. It is a journey fraught with danger, and the herd have to run the gauntlet of Ice Age hunters like cave lions and the deadly Neanderthals.