u/yee_qi

Obviously this is well out of budget for literally anyone reasonable, but perhaps it could make for an interesting webcomic...

There are a few goals here - namely, to - yes - tell a narrative about prehistoric ecosystems and their development over time; a grand evolutionary story that aims not to fall into the pitfalls that others might have. Of course the structure would follow individual animals and ecosystems, more like Dynasties than Planet Earth. Another thing is that this time we're going chronologically and leading with Monsters: Another reason this wouldn't work as a TV show...

Walking With Monsters

Ep1: Wonderful Life/Maotianshan Shales, China/Cambrian, 518 mya

Why include it?

• anomalocarids and hurdiids to depict niche partitioning
• interesting ecological information such as Synophalos's chaining, Vetulicola's parasites, skeleton'd ctenophores and shell-dwelling priapulids
• a good opportunity to tell a smaller-scale story about a prehistoric reef, and a good opportunity to explain the dynamics of some of the earliest reef ecosystems
• showstopper Omnidens
• The story of a Haikouichthys that is miraculously lucky enough to survive threat after threat - at the cost of its shoal, which continuously dwindles as predators attack. Now alone, the chordate must find another shoal or its time is up.

Ep2: Deep Freeze/Boda Limestone, Sweden/Ordovician, 450 mya

Why include it?

• I want to show off a glaciation, and Baltica is far south enough that the oceans would freeze
• I can also show off meteors falling from Earth's potential planetary ring; some have landed in Sweden *Ok meteors might still be possible but the ring would probably be faint at best and invisible at worst...
• Brachiopod radiations can be emphasized
• Cameroceras turrisoides (yeah at the end of the day I still want a big charismatic animal, sue me)
• This is where we highlight the trilobites at their peak
• I could also shove in polar giant trilobites like Hungaroides - a bit too early, but surely they existed, right?
• The story of an enormous Cameroceras. She attempts to travel north to escape the encroaching sea ice and intolerable temperatures. However, she knows no other life than the sluggish one forced by the cool water, and as she attempts to make it across the open ocean, a massive storm strands her on a newly-exposed landmass, where she inevitably perishes.

Ep3: One Small Step/Bertie Formation, Ontario/Silurian, 420 mya

Why include it?

• Eurypterids! Jawed fish! Both are probably the things you'd come to the Silurian to see, because it's otherwise a pretty short period.
• Silurian-Devonian terrestrial revolution. We have some of the first true terrestrial scorpions, as well as Cooksonia, here. I might pretend Prototaxites is there as well for the hell of it honestly.
• Graptolites will make for fun setpieces underwater.
• The story of a hatchling Dolichopterus. We follow the animal as it molts several times over the course of its life, changes diets, and crawls onto the beach to lay its eggs. The land is no longer something to fear, and she is one of many lineages that are starting to venture out of the water for longer periods of time...

Ep4: Age of Fishes/Gogo Formation, Western Australia/Devonian, 380 mya

Why include it?

• The Devonian is known as the Age of Fish, and Gogo has basically all the good ones.
• Australian representation.
• We can show off the anoxic basins where things die!
• Materpiscis, Bothriolepis, Eastmanosteus...both lobe and ray-finned fish as well as cartilage-boned ones...
• This is probably a good time to bring up ammonoids, at least for a bit
• The story of an Eastmanosteus. Watch as it cannibalizes other Eastmanosteus, crunches up some placoderms, and makes the mistake of following a corpse into an anoxic basin. Narrowly making it out, he joins a shoal of fellow Eastmanosteus to engage in a feeding frenzy as coastal erosion washes prey into the water. Little does he know that this is the beginning of the end - and he won't have the time to, as after making a social misstep he himself is eaten by a bigger Eastmanosteus.

Ep5: Shake a Leg/Fram Formation, Nunavut/Devonian, 375 mya

Why include it?

• Tetrapods making their way onto land. Need I say more? We have Tiik and its waterbound relative Qikiqtania.
• We can use this to showcase a Devonian forest, and then display how this transitions into a Carboniferous forest in the next few episodes.
• The Late Devonian extinction would have been impacted by the formation of forests, and would have hit riverine bodies hard. The story practically writes itself!
• The story of a Tiktaalik. She has deposited her eggs in a slow-moving river, and she guards them ferociously. But in recent years, it's grown murkier - and what's worse, toxic algae is building up in the water. Abandoning her eggs, she is forced to travel overland if she is to successfully reproduce ever again. And so she marches, keeping herself moist in the wet forests, crawling over obstacles and breathing the fresh air as everything she leaves behind is left to die. The placoderms will asphyxiate. The lobe-fins that can't make the journey will starve. Perhaps not even she will survive the extinction event ahead, but her adaptations give her a fighting chance.

Ep6: High and Dry/Mecca Quarry, Indiana/Carboniferous, 310 mya

Why include it?

• Potentially an extremely bizarre shallow-water environment covering a ghost forest and filled with predatory fish that are often trapped and desperate to survive
• I can highlight a few eugeneodonts; I want to show that the placoderms are GONE gone
• I've heard of records of fish being sliced in two by these things and I want to depict that
• Iniopteryx and Stethacanthus too
• The story of an unfortunate Ornithoprion. Having come to a shallow-water lagoon in an inland sea to give birth, along with a bunch of other Ornithoprion, the eugeneodonts left their young to their fates. But then a dry season hit, and the water levels receded - cutting them off from the ocean and cutting the ocean off from them. Trapped in a pool with little to eat, and stressed by the heat and rapidly increasing salinity levels, a massacre begins. Stethacanthus, Iniopteryx, all sorts of invertebrates engage in a violent frenzy as everyone rushes to survive with what they have and kill off the competition. The dry season starts to end and some water comes back, but that just washes in the new king of the oceans: A massive Edestus who kills basically everything else before stranding itself on the shore. What was intended to be a place of birth becomes a mass grave.

Ep7: Swamp Kings and Giant Trees/Coal Measures, France/Carboniferous, 305 mya

Why include it?

• We need to show coal swamps
• We need to show big bugs and big amphibians
• We can look at amniote evolution here
• Big forest fires!!
• The story of a Meganeura larva who witnesses her home burn down in a fire. Kept relatively safe in a deep lake, she and her kin emerge a few weeks later to witness the beginning of a world recovering from the fire. Luckily, as a hawker dragonfly, she doesn't need to live in a coal forest to survive, and simply flies off to an adjacent area with medium-tall ferns. But the fleeing temnospondyls and reptiles that do need to live there can't find another forest, and now they pose a threat. She is agile and she is tenacious, and if she is to survive, she must continue to be, because the Rainforest Collapse shows no signs of letting up...

Ep8: Red Bed Redemption/Arroyo Formation, Texas/Permian, 280 mya

Why include it?

• Sailbacked "pelycosaurs" are staples of the Early Permian
• To show off the rising prominence of amniotes on the ecological stage
• A wet and dry season that can be exploited for story structure
• An overall distinct set of fauna from later periods
• The story of an unusual leucistic Dimetrodon. In his youth, he is far too often attacked by predators due to his conspicuous nature. During his second year on this planet, he learns that he's better at catching fish than other Dimetrodon due to his pale nature, and leans into that before being bullied away by Secodontosaurus. Barely eking out an existence by stealing their scraps (with difficulty) and scavenging on their kills (with difficulty), he also becomes extremely proactive when it comes to finding buried Diplocaulus when the dry season rolls around. Needing less food to survive, he is able to take the spot of a big male and grow larger, but he can't attract mates due to his white sail. Nevertheless, he eventually rises to power by chasing away Secodontosaurus smaller than him to become a sort of "fisherman-king," and spends the rest of his life as a bizarre, isolated figure that hunts the greatest of aquatic game.

Ep9: Winter Warning/Abrahamskraal, South Africa/Permian, 260 mya

Why include it?

• Temperate polar environment is fundamentally interesting and a subversion of expectations. I walked into this assuming it would be tundra, but turns out winters were probably frost-free based on plant rings.
• I wanted to show off a polar forest.
• Dinocephalians deserve a spot here.
• Last varanopids and declining "pelycosaurs"
• The story of an old female Anteosaurus. She has lived here for many years, defending her territory against a variety of rivals, and she has the scars to show for it. Last time she engaged in combat against a young male, a bite got infected, and she lost her front foot. She is still smart and strong enough to hunt the Styracocephalus and Moschops that browse in the area, even with her injuries, but this year she is on edge. Winter is coming, and she knows that winter is when the leaves die, and when food becomes scarcer, and when the plucky upstarts come out to challenge her because they desperately need the resources - well, so does she. It's also the beginning of the Capitanian extinction, so it's been getting a bit drier every year, stressing her out more. She surplus kills a small herd of herbivorous synapsids and stocks them in a secluded area to ensure she can survive. As winter falls and the nights grow long, that same young male arrives. He fights her under the aurora australis - and initially, she has the upper hand, even despite her wound, but as the fight drags on she grows more and more angry, more and more desperate, until in a blind rage her foot gets lodged in a Diictodon burrow. Her fate is sealed.

Ep10: Ashes to Ashes/Vyazniki, Russia/Permian, 252 mya

Why include it?

• Siberian traps, duh!
• Late Permian needs some rep. No gorgons, alas, but Megawhaitsia and Archosaurus instead.
• They live in the middle of an apocalypse. This could be an incredibly cool 70-or-so-minute episode with two halves to it.
• We follow two groups of animals this time. One is Elginia, a parieasaur. Another is Interpresosaurus, an elphid dicynodont.
• Elginia has fallen on tough times. The small group she lives in is running out of food, and to make things worse, she is haunted by the specter of a Megawhaitsia that has been stalking them over the past few days. It took one of the group, and everyone is on the lookout for the predatory monster. Interpresosaurus, meanwhile, has been stockpiling food for the past several months. He lives in a small colony of burrowing dicynodonts, and his adaptations to food scarcity allow him to eke out a living in such a hostile environment. For the past few months, an Archosaurus has been camping outside the burrows, and every now and then she snags one. But it's winter right now, and so they haven't been out in a while. Eventually, Elginia is the last of her group, and she, too, is being chased. Desperate and scared, she looks for shelter, and is able to scramble into the Interpresosaurus burrow right as the Megawhaitsia catches up to her. Hungry and tired, she finds the stockpile and begins to feast on it, not realizing its owner is in the burrow right now...but hibernating. Needing a safe place to lay her eggs, the Elginia decides to stay in the burrow and excavates her own side chamber for her young. The young eventually hatch, and as the Interpresosaurus wake up, they realize the food is gone, and realize that they've been invaded. They eat her babies and rush at her from behind. They shove her towards the exit, but she refuses to leave - as the snout of the Archosaurus pushes into the burrow. It just can't get around her armored head. The Interpresosaurus don't particularly realize or care that this may be useful, and so they nip the hell out of her tail and try shoving her out of the hole, but the Archosaurus is still pushing her inwards. Eventually, it's chased away by the Megawhaitsia, and the Elginia stays no matter how irritating the burrow's owners may be for the sake of shelter. Months later, lava comes spewing out of a crack in the ground. The smoke suffocates everyone inside, and the lava buries the burrows. The Elginia, Interpresosaurus and Megawhaitsia, who all made the mistake of settling down in a deeply inopportune location at the wrong time, perish. The Archosaurus, who was chased away, now has a short and desolate life in which she finds a mate, and seeing the clouds of smoke over the horizon, makes the choice to travel even further west. Her lineage will survive, at least for the time being.

If this "documentary" was a Surviving Earth-like (8 eps) I'd probably get rid of the Gogo and Abrahamskraal episodes, if it was a WWD-like (6 eps) I'd probably also get rid of the Arroyo and Mecca episodes.