Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives is a 1989 four-part BBC documentary series concerning the discovery of fossils.

With the help of expert palaeontologists, fossil hunters and (for the time) modern animation techniques, Attenborough attempts to show how life evolved in Earth's distant past.

A picture of prehistoric life emerges, as Attenborough unearths several major clues in the form of fossilised remains that were undiscovered for millennia.

Attenborough explores vanished lives of prehistoric creatures and using the latest evidence, scientists reconstruct a pterodactyl in the form of a model aircraft—to see if such a beast could indeed have flown.

With the aid of dinosaur skeletons, he demonstrates how they existed in real life, and speculates about the reasons for their sudden demise.