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Episode 3

Series following on from Walking with Dinosaurs. One million years ago, the deadliest animal in South America was smilodon, the largest of all the sabre-tooth cats.

Back one million years ago, South America was a continent of exotic oversized creatures found nowhere else on Earth - huge terror birds, giant ground sloths and spiky-tailed relatives of the armadillo as big as cars.

The deadliest animal of them all was smilodon, the largest of the sabre-tooth cats, with canines like carving knives. The 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.

Travelling forward in time to 30,000 years ago, it's the middle of an ice age. The landscape is dominated by mighty mammoths, living side-by-side with woolly rhinos, giant deer and two separate species of human.

The programme follows the fate of a herd of mammoths in their annual struggle against the harsh ice-age conditions. Every summer they spend on the grassy plains of what will one day become the bottom of the North Sea, but every winter they are forced to head for the less exposed valleys further south. It is a journey fraught with danger: mammoths can get trapped in frozen bogs, and the herd must run the gauntlet of hunters like cave lions and the deadly Neanderthals.

1 hour

Last on

Fri 18 Jun 2010 20:00

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Credits

Role Contributor
Narrator Kenneth Branagh
Producer Nigel Paterson
Director Nigel Paterson

Broadcast