All language subtitles for Evolution.2026.S01E03.The.Bat.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

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...