BBC Dinos 24/7

Though the ancient powers have endured for centuries, their destruction is close at hand. However, some will leave lasting legacies that will continue to shape the world long after their downfall.

Anatomist Professor Alice Roberts and biologist Dr George McGavin go on an extraordinary evolutionary journey to meet our ancient ancestors. They start with our closest prehistoric relative - a Neanderthal. To make the reconstructions as accurate as possible Alice and George have travelled the globe, gathering evidence from the world's leading scientists.

The team go back 1.5 million years to meet one of the earliest humans, Homo erectus. They walked the earth far longer than any other human species and were the first ancestors to look a lot like we do today. The team reveal the latest research that suggests Homo erectus were good hunters, were skilled at making stone tools and could probably control fire.

The team looks at probably the most famous of all our early ancestors. She is called Lucy from the species Australopithecus afarensis and she lived 3.2 million years ago. Lucy's species had traded life in the trees for life on the ground, but this ability to routinely walk upright came at a price and it is one we are still paying today.

In a time when monstrous creatures ruled the earth, South America was the land of the giants. Nigel Marven walks among these gigantic creatures, on a quest to witness the largest predator bringing down the largest prey.

Nigel Marven journeys back to the sand dunes of Mesozoic Mongolia to track the owner of the largest claws of all time, the Therizinosaurus. His adventure yields a series of surprising clues, a nest, footprints, dung, and more.

Scientists study the perfectly preserved remains of an adolescent allosaurus they call Big Al.

This scientific detective story traces the evidence for Big Al the allosaur's existence, using clues from climate change studies, forensics, and fossil records to bring him back to life.

Animatronics, computer animation and science re-create the dinosaurs' world.

Featured species are the coelophysis and the diplodocus.

Featured species are the opthalmosaurus and the ornithocheirus.

Featured species are the leaellynasaura and the tyrannosaurus.

Chris Packham is out to determine whether the Himalayan Yeti and the Sumatran Orang Pendek exist.

Chris Packham embarks on a mission to investigate the existence of the mythical giant squid.

Chris Packham searches for clues related to the existence of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. He also visits Australia to learn about a giant lizard called Megalania.

Chris Packham sets out in search of stories about Bigfoot, a mythical ape-like creature that has been the focus of many fiction novels, movies and documentaries over the years.

Chris Packham explores the English countryside to learn about mythical big cats such as the Beast of Bodmin and Beast of Exmoor.

Chris Packham investigates whether the thylacine, aka Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, have truly gone extinct. The species lived in Australia and Tasmania.

Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles explores the roots of civilisation in the first episode of a series that runs from the creation of the first cities in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Starting in Uruk, the `mother of all cities', in southern Iraq, Richard travels to Syria, Egypt, Anatolia and Greece, tracing the birth and development of techn

Richard looks at the winners and losers of the great Bronze Age collapse, and the new powers that emerged in the harder-edged Age of Iron.

Richard Miles explores the power and the paradox of the `Greek Thing' - a blossoming in art, philosophy and science that went hand-in-hand with political discord, social injustice and endless war. He paints a fascinating picture of the internal and external pressures that fuelled this unique political and social experiment, one that would pioneer many of the political systems that we still live wi

Richard Miles traces the battle-scarred career of Alexander the Great, from Greece through Turkey, Syria and Lebanon to Egypt and ultimately Pakistan, where he discovers fascinating traces of a city in which Greek west and Buddhist east were united in an intriguing new way. However it would be Alexander's successors, the Hellenistic Kings, who had to make sense of the legacy of this charismatic ad

Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles examines the phenomenon of the Roman Republic, from its fratricidal mythical beginnings, with the legend of Romulus and Remus, to the all too real violence of its end, dragged to destruction by war lords like Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar.

Richard Miles examines the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The material benefits of the `good order' delivered by Roman rule provided its citizens and subjects with the security to ask profound questions about the meaning of life, questions that the Roman belief system was ill-equipped to answer. Christianity grew to fill the spiritual vacuum, and the City of Man was eclipsed the City of God.

Archaeologist Richard Miles presents a series charting the history of the breakthroughs and watersheds in our long quest to understand our ancient past. He begins by going back 2,000 years to explore how archaeology began by trying to prove a biblical truth - a quest that soon got archaeologists into dangerous water.

Archaeologist Richard Miles shows how discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries overturned ideas of when and where civilisation began, as empires competed to `own' the past.

Richard Miles shows how 20th-century attention turned from civilisation and kings to the search for the common man against a background of science and competing political ideologies.

Dr Iain Stewart looks at how earthquakes and faults have shaped human history by bringing both life and death.

Dr Iain Stewart looks at how rocks have influenced the architecture of the Mediterranean, from the pyramids of Egypt to the squares of ancient Greece.

Tracing the history of cave paintings.

Dr Iain Stewart examines how the rocks beneath our feet played a crucial role in determining the beliefs of ancient civilisations.

Dr Iain Stewart looks at how ancient civilisations learned to exploit the water around them, from the flooding of our Stone Age ancestors' hunting grounds to the fall of the Roman Empire.

Dr Iain Stewart looks at how salt has played a crucial role in the history of the Mediterranean, from the ice ages to the preservation of food and dead bodies in ancient Egypt.

Veteran archaeologist Ned Kelly and a team of scientists investigate the find of a mummified body in the boglands of Cashel, Ireland.

A dig hopes to excavate the 2000-year-old tomb of Qin Shihuang, China's First Emperor.

Part 1/4. David Attenborough shows us how ancient creatures have come to be preserved as fossils and how those fossils can shed light on characteristics of these creatures' lives, and even their death.

Part 2/4. Could pterodactyls fly? And why did trilobites have such good eyes? David Attenborough investigates the secret lives of animals from the past, as told in the fossil record.

Part 3/4. David Attenborough uncovers dinosaur bones in the Sahara desert and visits the biggest, most spectacular dinosaur displays in the world.

Part 4/4. David Attenborough uncovers bizarre creatures of the earliest seas, tiny horses the size of spaniels and an animal that's half bird and half reptile - the rarest of them all.

Part 1/3. As life starts evolving in the oceans, our bizarre earliest ancestors battle against 3m long sea scorpions and giant carniverous fish. Their ability to survive will determine the shape of life on Earth and whether humans will exist at all. As our amphibian ancestors struggle onto land the monsters they face are even more deadly.

Part 2/3. Millions of years before the dinosaurs, a world full of giant sabretooth reptiles and huge armoured herbivores was obliterated when global temperatures soared and vast deserts blanketed the land. As the environment recovered, populations of one species of tough reptile exploded until it alone dominated the planet, but its reign was short-lived.

Part 3/3. The struggle for survival moves onto land in the shape of early reptiles such as Petrolacosaurus. In the carboniferous swamps, insects and arthropods have taken over and grown into giants, from the giant spider Mesothelae to millipede-like monsters. As the swamps dry up, the world becomes dominated by the first ever giant reptiles - the huge, sail-backed Edaphosaurus.

Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and we have hardly ever found a complete skeleton. So how do we turn a pile of broken bones into a dinosaur exhibit? Dr Alice Roberts finds out how the experts put skeletons back together, with muscles, accurate postures, and even - in some cases - the correct skin colour.

This episode explains how the 120-million-year reign of the dinosaurs ended when mammals became the fastest and fiercest creatures on the planet.

A look at the science that has proved Darwin's idea that intelligent, sophisticated humans have an ancestral connection with the ape.

Alastair Sooke tells the story of Ancient Egyptian art and how it reflected the civilisation's religion, through thirty extraordinary masterpieces.

Alastair Sooke explores the sumptuous treasures of the Golden Age of Egyptian art, starting with troubling psychological portraits of tyrant king Senwosret III, and ending with the golden mask of boy-king Tutankhamun.

Alastair Sooke looks at how, despite political decline, the final era of the Egyptian Empire saw its art enjoy revival and rebirth. From the colossal statues of Rameses II that proclaimed the pharaoh's power to the final flourishes under Queen Cleopatra, Sooke discovers that the subsequent invasions by foreign rulers, from the Nubians and Alexander the Great to the Romans, produced a new hybrid ar

Exploring fresh archaeological excavations that shed new light on the lives of those who worked tirelessly on the pyramids.

Exploring the world of pet preservation.

Dan meets the mummies of Tutankhamun's parents at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and discovers that they were actually brother and sister. CT scans reveal how this incestuous relationship could have been responsible for Tutankhamun's poor health. Raksha heads underground to a rare tomb excavation in the Valley of the Kings which has never been seen before on television.

Picking up the story in 1323BC, the pharaoh sustains the injury that would eventually kill him. On a scan of Tutankhamun's skeleton, Dan sees a break to his thigh bone which could have been a battle injury. John visits Howard Carter's house and probes the 1920s craze of `Tutmania', when the Western world went crazy for all things Egyptian.

Dan discovers a series of curious anomalies in Tutankhamun's burial, and spots that the faces on his coffins and canopic jars do not match that of the famous golden mask. Raksha looks at Seti's tomb, which shows how low quality and hurried Tutankhamun's was in comparison. John learns how to dance like an Egyptian at a funeral, and investigates the truth of the `Curse of Tutankhamun'.

In a brutal world where nature is both friend and foe, the ancient powers are just beginning. They must use all their skill and ingenuity to shape their territory and establish their cultures.

In an unpredictable world, the ancient powers must lay down the foundations of their societies to show their strength, protect their people and ultimately build their way to glory.

To pay for armies and other costs, the ancient powers had to tax territories and monetise their assets. But in this world of commerce, ancient societies stored their wealth in different ways.

In a world where enemies watch for weakness, the ancient powers must use all their strength and cunning to defend their people, conquer new lands, and rise to the challenge of the battlefield.

In an unruly world, the ancient powers must lead their people, create ways to govern and keep rebellion at bay. To achieve this, they may invent caste systems, organise gladiatorial games or turn to gods.

Though the ancient powers have endured for centuries, their destruction is close at hand. However, some will leave lasting legacies that will continue to shape the world long after their downfall.

The life of the first reptilian carnivores on Earth, told through computer animation.

This programme travels 152 million years into the past to a planet dominated by mighty, long-necked sauropods - the largest animals ever to walk the earth. There were no birds, flowers or grass, and the land was carpeted by fern prairies and coniferous forests.

A look at the world as it was 149 million years ago - in the late Jurassic Period. The old continents have broken up and much of the land is under water. Huge shallow seas have supported a revolution in marine life.

A mind-expanding trip back through time to look at how the skies of 127 million years ago were dominated by huge flying reptiles, some as large as aeroplanes. The programme also follows the extraordinary journey of the pterosaur, which flew for thousands of miles in order to reach its breeding site. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh.

This programme looks at the Cretaceous period, 106 million years ago. Volcanic activity forces the continents apart, and dinosaurs diversify into a range of species to cope with environmental extremes. The landmass that will become Australia and Antarctica is in sunlight for half of the year, and in frozen darkness for the rest.

Looking at the closing chapters of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, when the world is poisoned by massive volcanic activity. Among the fields of burning ash, the dinosaurs struggle for survival, oblivious to the Earth's impending collision with a giant comet.

David Attenborough learns that descendants of the dinosaur age are alive and well. David explores how they survived the catastrophes that wiped out other species.