Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman, the series focuses on the evolutionary history of complex life on Earth.

Upon its release, the series received generally mixed reviews, with praise for its visual effects, cinematography, soundtrack, and scale, but criticism for its presentation, format, script and inaccuracies of prehistoric life and events.

Each episode also features modern taxa that can trace their ancestry back to the geologic time periods shown, with several live-action segments akin to traditional nature documentaries, showing footage of some of the unique modern adaptations that some of these taxa have evolved.Covers the origin of life and the rules of evolution, including natural selection, adaptation, interaction and speciation, in addition to an overview of the series.

By the Ordovician, trilobite armor has become even more advanced to deal with new predators, but is no match for the beaks of cephalopods such as Cameroceras, while Arandaspis, an early vertebrate and fish, lives in the shadow of the invertebrates.

The Late Ordovician mass extinction sees a massive global cooling that wipes out a majority of life on Earth, causing many invertebrates to retreat to the deep sea and leaving the vertebrates with a path to dominance.

In the water, several young lobe-finned fish[d] narrowly escape a hungry adult by moving onto land, but one is eaten by an early amphibian tetrapod, Anthracosaurus.

However, reptiles continue to evolve on the arid margins of Pangaea, and future Lystrosaurus populations find themselves at the mercy of predators such as erythrosuchids, like Erythrosuchus, who are one of the reasons for their extinction.

Back in the Triassic, a massive precipitation event brings an end to the Pangaean desert, turning the world lush and green.

On the last day of the Cretaceous, Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Alamosaurus, azhdarchid pterosaurs and a plesiosaur go about their daily lives just before an asteroid the size of Mount Everest hits the Earth, causing the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

Megatsunamis, burning ejecta from the impact, an overheated atmosphere, and acid rain wipe out a majority of life on Earth, bringing to an end the reign of non-avian dinosaurs and destabilizing the marine food web.

However, in the middle of the Paleogene, the separation of Antarctica and South America drives a global cooling and drying event, leading to new adaptations in mammals such as large sizes.

In early Quaternary South America, a curious young Smilodon investigates a herd of Doedicurus and attempts to prey on a juvenile, but is warded off by their tails.

Mammals conquer both the sky and the sea; in a flashback to the Paleogene, Maiacetus, a semiaquatic early whale ancestor, evades the giant shark Otodus.

On their migration through the steppe, a herd of Woolly Mammoths is ambushed by a pride of Cave Lions, who successfully take down a subadult individual member.

However, Freeman notes that no matter what future awaits the Earth, "life has always found a way",[i] as a dragonfly metamorphosizes and flies through a lush, post-apocalyptic London.

[9] Jack Seale of The Guardian praised the series' cinematography and visual effects with some exceptions, noting that "footage of animals that are real (...) and sequences conjured from scratch on a computer are nearly indistinguishable".

[10] Biologists Tim Rock and Matthew Wills of The Conversation gave a more positive review, praising the series for its ambition and referring to it as "hugely entertaining", although it was accused of occasionally adopting adaptationism for its narrative.