Prehistoric stars

Forget about designer dresses, personal groomers and luxury living, to make it big in the States in prehistoric times ferocious tusks and shaggy coats were the must- have accessories.

A new BBC documentary series, Wild New World, takes viewers back in time to a land where woolly mammoths ruled the Hollywood Hills.

We spoke to Adam White, one of the directors of this fascinating series . He said:

The series is like a detective programme - they use clues from the present to unlock the past. Through merging the past and present, the series creates a vivid picture of what the landscape would have been like, which animals existed and how they would have lived and died.

We came across a pair of mammoth skulls where the tusks were interlocked, they must have been fighting in much the same way as African elephants do today, but because of the slightly longer tusks they must have encountered problems and perhaps couldn't separate themselves. There may well have been a winner in the battle, but they both perished as a result of this fight.

Click here to watch our interview with Adam White.

Wild New World starts this Thursday on BBC2 at 9pm

A BBC book also called Wild New World, published by BBC Worldwide on Thursday 19 September, accompanies the series.

---

Wild New World takes us on a journey into the prehistory of North America, to a time 14,000 years ago when people were first entering this vast continent.

Using the latest scientific research, modern filming techniques and computer-generated imagery, Wild New World takes us back to the land of these first North Americans.

We follow in their footsteps on a detective story, using clues from the wildlife and landscapes of the present to build a picture of the distant past and bringing long-extinct animals back to life.

Viewers of this epic series discover that these first 'North Americans' lived side-by-side with sabre-toothed cats, elephant-like mammoths and mastodons, giant short-faced bears, tree-sized ground sloths and heavily armoured glyptodonts.

There are also some familiar 'faces', such as the musk ox, cougar and bison, that have survived the test of time.

Long-extinct animals are brought back to life and come face-to-face with the modern-day animals they once shared this land with.

Lions encounter woolly mammoths, a jaguar attacks a bone-plated glyptodont, and a sabre-toothed cat comes off somewhat worse for wear following a confrontation with a humble skunk!

Families of woolly mammoths brave the blizzards of the north, and giant ground sloths browse the tree tops in the tropical south. Sabre-toothed cats hunt camels and Columbian mammoths do battle with their enormous tusks.

For the first time, viewers experience North America just as it was seen by the first people there, and sheds new light on the country we see today.

Each week, the programme moves across North America, visiting prehistoric regions which evolved into sprawling US cities and states. Among the discoveries unveiled, Denver airport is situated on the site of what was once a vast grazing ground for wildlife, while the sunshine state of Florida was inhabited by giant sloths and armoured glyptodonts.

Wild New World took three years to produce and involved a team of 14 designers and animators. Working with scientists' drawings and the knowledge of the producers, the team created models of creatures such as the woolly mammoth and the sabre-tooth tiger, which were then combined with real-life footage.