American paleontologist Pete Larson and his team discovered the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever found (nicknamed 'Sue') while digging in the badlands of South Dakota. However the skeleton was seized from Larson by the federal government, followed by a ten-year-long battle with the FBI, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Maurice Williams, on whose property the bones were discovered. Pete Larson also spent 18 months in prison." After the film aired, The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a society of professional academic paleontologists, issued a statement of full support for legally protecting fossils on public land and criticized Dinosaur 13 for implying that government regulations impede paleontological science

David Attenborough asks three key questions: how and why did Darwin come up with his theory of evolution? Why do we think he was right? And why is it more important now than ever before? David starts his journey in Darwin's home at Down House in Kent, where Darwin worried and puzzled over the origins of life. David goes back to his roots in Leicestershire, where he hunted for fossils as a child, and where another schoolboy unearthed a significant find in the 1950s. And he revisits Cambridge University, where both he and Darwin studied, and where many years later the DNA double helix was discovered, providing the foundations for genetics. At the end of his journey in the Natural History Museum in London, David concludes that Darwin's great insight revolutionised the way in which we see the world. We now understand why there are so many different species, and why they are distributed in the way they are. But above all, Darwin has shown us that we are not set apart from the natural world, and do not have dominion over it. We are subject to its laws and processes, as are all other animals on earth to which, indeed, we are related.

Where did we come from? What makes us human? Groundbreaking investigation explores how new discoveries are transforming views of our earliest ancestors. Featuring interviews with world-renowned scientists, footage shot in the trenches as fossils were unearthed, and stunning computer-generated animation, Becoming Human brings early hominids to life, examining how they lived and how we became the creative and adaptable modern humans of today. In the first episode Selam, the amazingly complete remains of a 3 million year-old child, packed with clues to why we split from the apes, came down from the trees, and started walking upright.

After eight grueling years of hunting in the hot, wind-scoured desert of central Africa, an international team of researchers has uncovered one of the most sensational fossil finds in living memory: the well-preserved 7 million years old skull of a chimp-size animal, probably a male, that doesn't fit any known species. According to paleontologist Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France, whose team reported the find in Nature last week, there is no way it could have been an ape of any kind. It was almost certainly a hominid — a member of a subdivision of the primate family whose only living representative is modern man.

The BBC has made an extraordinary new documentary, presented by Sir David Attenborough, which will reveal the discovery of a fossilised skeleton that may be a vital ‘missing link’ in human evolution. The centrepiece of the programme is the unveiling of the first-ever complete skeleton of an extinct animal called an adapid

Attenborough's journey continues in Canada's Rocky Mountains, where fossils document an explosion in animal diversity never seen before or since. Travelling from there to North Africa, the rainforests of Australia and the east coast of Scotland, Attenborough discovers how animals evolved to conquer not only the oceans but also the land and air. These remote and fascinating creatures are brought to life as never before with the help of cutting-edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first large predators to the first legs on land, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.