According to unofficial figures, about 51% of the audience - or 13.2 million viewers - watched the inaugural episode on Monday evening.

BBC One controller Peter Salmon said: "Walking With Dinosaurs may be the biggest thing on television in 200 million years. It is great that viewers have voted it a monster hit."

Walking With Dinosaurs uses the latest in computer animation and scientific findings to recreate creatures which last walked the Earth 65 million years ago.

Peter Salmon: BBC One's controller "thrilled" with the programme's ratings

It cost BBC Science £6m to make. Its early success will be seen as a welcome vindication for the channel, which has recently lost out to programmes such as the ITV quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Salmon added: "BBC One is unique in bringing quality science programmes to a mainstream audience, so I am absolutely thrilled that a science series of scale and ambition has been rewarded with such an enthusiastic response from viewers."

Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, the six-part series uses the latest in scientific thinking to reproduce the long-extinct creatures and their entire eco-system.

It features familiar favourites like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Dipodocus and the Stegosaurus, as well as lesser-known prehistoric creatures such as Liopleurodon, the world's largest carnivore.

Unlike the dinosaurs themselves, the backgrounds in the series are real - they were filmed in remote locations, such as the monkey puzzle forests of Chile.

The first programme looked at how the dinosaurs evolved and came to dominate the planet.