Past Programs
Archaeology - 2008
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2004 | 2002 | 2000 | 1999
Chinese archaeology and ancient civilisations
26/07/2008
The Three Gorges Dam project in China has flooded vast areas. Rowan Flad describes some of the thousands of fossil specimens he collected before the waters rose. Now Rowan Flad is using archaeological data to create a picture of an ancient Chinese civilisation. In addition to land lost to flooding, rapid development means lands are being covered and lost for archaeology.
Oldest fossil vertebrate embryo
31/05/2008
John Long describes a 380 million-year-old specimen of an embryo connected by the umbilical cord to its mother. The discovery, a new species in itself, reveals advanced reproductive biology comparable to that of some modern sharks and rays. The placoderms, now long extinct, were a large and diverse group of fishes, thought to be the most primitive known vertebrates with jaws. John Long and colleagues' fossil find shows they were not so primitive that they could not give birth to live young. The relic is from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation of Australia and represents a new species of placoderm preserved in the act of giving birth. Examples in the fossil record of animals giving birth are extremely rare and this new specimen extends the known record of live birth back by some 200 million years.
The authors have named their fossil in honour of Sir David Attenborough, who first drew attention to the Gogo fish sites in the 1979 television series Life on Earth. Includes excerpts from the opening ceremony for Australia's Royal Institution in Adelaide.
Whitby fossils
29/03/2008
Whitby, the historic town in North Yorkshire on the north-east coast of England, is known for its fossils. Paul Willis walks on a rock platform with local palaeontologist, Byron Blessed.
