 Do a little bit of a sync. Three, two, one. We're professional here. So hello everyone and welcome to a special episode today. I don't know which camera I'm looking at because there's so many of them. And I am joined here with the one and only Nigel Marvin. Hi. Nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to see you, Jim. I'll tell you what, in my life I'd never met a European beaver. And you're the third European beaver I've met in a month because they've been reintroduced to Devon. So I watched them there, then I went to Slovakia and saw a family of six kids. I'm in Slovakia. Brilliant photographer. So you are the third European beaver this year. Devon, it's a good place to see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The River Otter and they're guaranteed. You'd enjoy seeing them. Is it not a river beaver? No, it's the River Otter which is a bit strange because when I talked about it and I said Otter rather than beaver but got confused, but no, they're in the River Otter. So if anybody doesn't know who Nigel Marvin is, you've starred in what was it? Well, prehistoric part was one of the last dinosaurs, prehistoric things you did, but there was... The land of giants and giant claw. But not only have you done dinosaurs, you've done a lot of other documentaries. You've been all over the world, really. And I'm curious to, how did this all start? Yeah, no, my day job is working with real animals. So I've done most recent series, it was Wild Central America, went to Guatemala to see. Guatemala and beaded lizards and whales in Costa Rica and all of those sorts of things. Hummingbirds, I love hummingbirds, you know, they're marvels of miniaturization so I love being filmed with hummingbirds. And I love seeing new animals. People always say, are you going to run out of ideas like you with paleontology? No, we're not. There's so many new discoveries being made all the time and in the Philippines, got extraordinary wildlife. I dive with fresher sharks, so they're amazing sharks with a long tail and they use it like a scorpion to smash through shoals of fish and then they eat the fish they've stunned with their tail. So I saw them for the first time in the Philippines. I love all of that, but of course all of us would love to travel back in time. If we could really see a T-Rex or a sauropod, it would be fantastic. And it's great because the people that watched my prehistoric shows, they then watched the wildlife shows and the young people are getting an interest in the natural world. Central America was the most recent, the Philippines was the one before that. Right, because that's the one where there's a big eagle in it. Because I remember seeing that, I was like, I've never heard of this bird before. Yeah, no, the Philippine eagle used to be called the monkey-eating eagle because it catches monkeys. So it's a huge bird and it's the national bird of the Philippines. But on the verge of extinction because of the loss of forest habitat, big predators like that need a vast area. Very sad, but hopefully it will be protected. I think lots of Filipinos now are very proud of their eagle and they'll do anything to protect it. I think it's amazing because people in the UK don't know that we have the basking shark, for instance, in our waters, I think we don't have any sharks at all. I think more people knew about it than they'd be proud of and want to protect it. Yeah, and also one of them, they had an injured Philippine eagle, a mani-pakiow. Oh, really? That's what they called it? No, he was its ambassador. So he followed it and saw it released back into the wild. They managed to rehabilitate it. And I just want to hold the hand of the man who's survived countless dinosaur encounters. I mean, it was the Walk With Dinosaurs Aquatic Special where at the very end, there was a family of mosasaur that closed in and sort of left on a cliff hanger. Do we know what happened there at all? Well, we definitely survived. We're definitely here and I survived Primeval as well. Yes, that was another one. It was a Giga, wasn't it? Giga Notosaurus, yeah. So people are still wondering whether I'm... You could know whether you're sort of semi-famous if you look back at it. It's like you might have been died. I think you've got that on yours as well. Oh, they do as well? Oh, dear. I don't know what that is. Yeah, Steve Irwin used to get that all the time, you know. Steve Irwin obviously has sadly passed away. But, yeah, no, I made it. And Sea Monsters was before Pristoric Parks. Yes, it was. He survived and carried on to do Pristoric Park. I remember, because I've been doing YouTube for so long, there was somebody who made a video. It was like a conspiracy. He was like, oh, we could have survived. He could have followed the Giga back into the anomaly or whatever it was. And then that's how Pristoric Parks sort of happened. So there's this whole timeline. I don't know if you're aware of it, that people are theorizing, but... Yeah, no, fun. No, Tim Haynes, he was the executive producer on Pristoric Park and on Primeval. He invited me to go along for three days to be myself in Primeval, so that was great if I'm working with the actors and everything, because obviously I'm not an actor, I'm a natural history presenter. Yes, and that's how it worked so well. You know, Pristoric Park and the Walk With Dinosaurs, because the way you presented it was such that this was real. And, you know, you did go by... Silly kids watching, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I think... I think because I go hands-on with big snakes, hands-on with cobras and venomous snakes, you know, hands-on with crocodiles, people believe that I would know how to deal with a dinosaur. And in fact, it's so real, I still get people writing in saying, where is Pristoric Park? I want to go and see it. And I think when I'm an old man, Framestore, who did the Harry Potter movies, they did all the computer graphics for Pristoric Park. It's so real, when I'm an old man, I think I will believe I did travel back in time and meet dinosaurs. I mean, you feel a little silly doing it, first of all. You know, I remember Crassie Durianus, Scotticus, that one, you know, in Carboniferous times, and it was a fossil that's only been found in Scotland and amphibian. Oh, right. And I'm wrestling with that for the first time, and it's animatronic, and the animatronics, they're very expensive, you know, like a small car, and the thing's blinking, and you're thinking, this is ridiculous, I'm wrestling in a swamp in Florida. But when you see how they put it all together, I mean, it's completely unbelievable. Even Seamonsters was 17 years ago now, but it's really stood the test of time. They still get emails and things every week of children dressed as me, saying, we want to be you when I grow up. One of the memories I have was I'd go to my grandparents every Sunday, and I think I must have been on it one of those times we went, and we were sort of joking around, and it wasn't until something was said, I don't know what it was about you being in danger or something like that, and then, obviously, with my uncles who knew that it wasn't real, I mentioned that, but then my grandma was adamant that it was. You were in real danger to her. It was amazing, not just kids, but all the people, because the CGI looked so great there. I think the best cliffhanger they did was in Seamonsters when the Megalodon leaps out of the water, and I'm standing on a platform, and then to be continued. That was a really brilliant cliffhanger. That was, yes. The Megalodon is, of course, everyone's favourite sea monster, and I've got the jaws from the movie or from the documentary on the side of my house, so the BBC. The really big one you walk through in the show. The BBC were getting rid of them, and I bought them, and now they're attached to the side of my house, so it's nice to have a souvenir from Seamonsters. Yes, those need to be in a museum or something, because I remember, because it started you with a small great wide on the beach, and then you walk through the big ones to show the scale of it. So those ones are on my house in Somerset, on the side of my house. And that's where you get knocked in the water, and then you call the guy a bloody idiot. Yes, that's it, yes. You idiot! If there's one dinosaur, one prehistoric creature that you could bring back to present time, what would it be? I think micro-raptor. I mean, I love the thought of a four-wing dinosaur gliding from tree to tree, eating earthworms. There's enough trouble with rewilding now. People can't obviously about bringing back leaves. Or, you know, or bear. A beaver's a good now, so they're definitely... There's no controversy there, because they help the waterways. Some people don't like them, but they stop floods, they do all sorts of things, they really aren't eco-engineers, so they're a wonderful addition to our fauna. But wolves and lynx with farmers and sheep and all of that is a difficult problem. So to bring back a T-rex wouldn't go down too well. But a micro-raptor, a lovely little dinosaur the size of a jack-door with feathers, how great that would be. And, of course, I'm sure you've read their thinking they've got a project now to bring back a woolly mammoth. I mean, it won't really be a woolly mammoth, it will be an Asian elephant that can cope with the cold. But even so, to get close to a woolly mammoth would be brilliant. But if I could bring anything back, my favourite dinosaur from the whole prehistoric park series, micro-raptor, favourite sea monster, tannistrophius. I mean, that was a preposterous reptile, you know, with that long neck. It was on a long head. Yeah, and that's the one where I fell from the tail. And it's... Lizards do it today. I'm sure when you were a little boy, you tried to catch a lizard and the tail drops off, it distracts predators, they go for the tail, the lizard escapes. Lots of really great paleontologists help with prehistoric park and sea monsters. And they found fossils with suture lines in the tail just like modern lizards. So they know that tannistrophius could drop the tail. And that was great fun. Again, I still get children writing and you were cruel to that tannistrophius, you made it drop its tail, but of course I didn't really... I was going to say, I've seen those comments as well. Like, it doesn't grow back, Nigel, do you know? Obviously. It would grow back. It's done your research. I mean, we've talked about if you could bring one back, what would it be now? Be the micro-raptor. But there's efforts nowadays to try and make them. I mean, I assume you're aware of Jack Horner and his chickenosaurus project. Yes, yes. Birds with tails. Yes, or a tail that doesn't stop growing, apparently. What are your thoughts on the efficacies of that, for instance? I think it's great. I mean, it's brilliant that we just saw a buzzard flying over, there's a pigeon over there. We are actually laying eyes on the descendants of dinosaurs. They didn't become extinct, they transformed into birds, which is tremendous. So, to actually see how that process happened by ontogenesis, ontogenesis as they're doing, it would be great to see. And if they can, you know, backbreed, as it were, to get a bird with a tail that never stops growing, it would be brilliant to see. I never thought about that, actually. You're right, though. Because, I mean, the feathered or avian dinosaurs did eventually evolve into birds, and to see that process. Because I'm just thinking, eventually, we'll get to the point where we have a Jurassic Park, for instance, where we have these scaly dinosaurs that maybe aren't, you know, accurate. Are you a fan of the Jurassic Park franchise or films at all? And if so, what's your favourite one? Yeah, no, I enjoy them. The first one, of course. I mean, Spielberg, that's never been seen before, things like that, you know, so it's great. And I fancied Laura Dern, to be honest, in that movie. So, yeah, no... All honesty in that, it was fine. But no, when, you know, in the mirror, you know, items may appear larger than they are. And then, you know, the coffee vibrating when the dinosaurs are approaching, I mean, he's obviously an incredibly clever director. And that was always the best, but the others are good fun. If you had a chance to appear in one, would you say no? Oh, yeah, no, I'd definitely appear in one. If I got a chance to be eaten in one of those, I'd definitely do it. Me, too. Me, too. There was a competition not too long ago, but it was only, I think, American people who could apply for it and see how it's a bit unfortunate. So, you've been everywhere, basically. You always film, you were telling me that you barely spent any time at home, you were always out travelling. What's been your favourite place? Oh, that's a very difficult question. I love the Philippines. I loved Guatemala. Guatemala, you know, you can walk to volcanoes and see volcanic lava streaming down the sides of the volcanoes. You know, not very difficult. It's got an amazing bird called a horned guam that looks very prehistoric, you know, and it's... You can see why paleontologists, they're all in agreement that dinosaurs didn't become extinct, they are birds, which is fantastic. So, whenever anyone calls me a geek or a nerd for watching birds, I say, well, actually, I'm watching dinosaurs. And also, a top fact is, James Bond is named after a bird watcher. So, if you get the book, The Birds of the West Indies, the author is James Bond, and Ian Fleming was a bird watcher. He wrote the Bond book, saw that book and named 007 after a bird watcher. I had no idea. If you're interested in birds as a young person, you're actually looking at dinosaurs and James Bond was named after birders. Are you obviously being very fascinated by animals your whole life? How did that lead into pursuing a career in being a documentary film presenter or, you know, that sort of thing? How did that sort of slowly... Yeah, I did botany and zoology at Bristol University and then the natural history unit is based there. That's obviously the Hollywood of wildlife filmmaking. I got a job there as a worm wrangler, so I caught earthworms and made a move in the right direction for the camera. And then I worked on Realms of the Russian Bear. I went to Kamchatka to film bears and all of those sorts of things. And at that time, ITV had lost the right to show Steve Irwin shows and they needed a British Steve Irwin, a snake wrestler. I'd never thought about being in front of the camera. I was too shy to do that, but they said, oh, can you do a real? So I did a real and that's how giants happened where I compared myself to the biggest animals alive today. I had spiders walking on my face and wrestle anacondas and all of those things. And then Tim Haines, who'd done walking with dinosaurs, saw that and he thought it would be brilliant to give scale to our creations, our dinosaurs. That's us Nigel to do that. And I remember going to a meeting, the first meeting was actually as we were having the meeting, the planes were going into the Twin Towers. So obviously I remember exactly where I was when that tragedy happened and he said, do you want to do it? And of course, it was the most brilliant thing that anyone had ever asked me to actually meet dinosaurs and travel back in time. I went to his garden, he put a tennis ball on a stick and he said, Nigel, imagine that's the eye of a T-Rex and talk about it and that's how it all happened. So it was because of my dealing with giant animals in contemporary times was why I ended up becoming a time-travelling zoologist. Did you ever meet Steve Irwin you mentioned before? I met his family and they were very kind. And Terry said she was in the kitchen once and Steve was watching TV and he said, oh, come, come here. And it was me with Komodo dragons. I was laying next to Komodo dragons and she says he'd never done that before but he really liked your shows. I really liked his as well, so it was great. But I never met him before the Stingray and a great show because he was a brilliant conservationist. Whatever anyone said about him being a showman, you need to be a showman nowadays to get wildlife seen on TV. You know, there's gardening shows, there's reality shows, there's Love Island, so you need people like Steve Irwin to get people watching shows like that and his message was always conservation. I remember him saying in Madagascar, look, we've got to do something about this because otherwise if this forest disappears we're going to lose all these snakes and lemurs and everything else I've showed you. So he was a great man, a great conservationist. What was your first snake then? If this was your first ever time being in front of the camera then you were to wrestle snakes. Do you remember that first time vividly or is it a blur now? Yeah, my first ever film was a producer at the BBC Naturalist and it was a snake film and we were in Kenya and I was a guy from North London who had never handled a venomous snake at that time and I wanted to show that mongooses don't attack big snakes. They actually try to get them away from their territory. So we were in Kenya in Sarvo East National Park and I saw a snake swimming by the swimming pool, or crawling by the swimming pool. So I chased it into the pool to call it down. It reared up as it came out and I realised it was a cobra. So I didn't think, well, I'm a kid from North London, I don't know how to do it. I thought this is even better for the sequence. So I push it in again to call it down. As it comes out I go pfft and I feel all this venom on my cheek. I think, oh, it's a spitting cobra, even better for the sequence. So I push it in again, try to catch it and it rears up, blasts me in the eyes with venom. Most extraordinary pain, like having acid poured into your eyes. And I jumped into the swimming pool, washed my eyes, the cobra slithered off, of course. I knocked on the door of the camera and look, I've been spat at by a cobra and took me to hospital. It was a three hour drive past Lyons. I was screaming, I completely blinded and I had contact lenses on so I was worried that they may damage my eyes. The venom may have affected them. The doctors are getting my contact lens out. As a Masai tribeswoman is giving birth, she's screaming, I'm screaming, the baby comes out, my contact lenses come out. Always good, I was blinded for 24 hours, they said. As long as you haven't got lacerations or cuts, the venom can't get into your bloodstream. So they use that as a form of defence. And they found that that spitting, that spraying of venom, evolved when early hominids evolved. So it is a defence against primates, against us. Right, wow. But it's very painful. No wonder you remember that. So were you given any training? Were you just like, here's a snake. I just learnt on the job. And obviously I stress in my films, when we go to the Philippines, I work with Filipino naturalists and they appear in the films. I can't come from England and find all the wonderful things they know about. And I've learnt from great herpetologists how to handle snakes. I'm a jack of all trades. I know a little bit about dinosaurs, a little bit about birds, a little bit about snakes. I'm not an expert on anything. I didn't do paleontology at university, so there's kids at seven years of age that know more scientific names of dinosaurs than I do. But I know a little bit about everything. So speaking of dangerous incidents you've had, you've just mentioned anything that happened in a prehistoric park? Obviously everyone remembers when the Euryptorid, the sea scorpion, got me with its pincers and children again are still writing, are you okay, did it hurt? Obviously there was false blood and it was an animatronic sea scorpion. But if you remember, when I grabbed the mononicus, this was in the giant claw, so mononicus was one that had ragged scales, so it was a bird ancestor. I've got like a bandage around my finger and they said it was because I was bitten by the mononicus or it was injured by the mononicus. In fact, what happened, for one of the scenes in giant claw, I was climbing a tree and for some reason I put my boot on my finger and pulled the nail out right from the base. So obviously very painful and I was worried about infection so they had to put a bandage on. So Tim Haines, the director, thought, oh my goodness, how can we explain this? I find out he was injured by mononicus, but in fact, what happened was I trod on my finger and pulled the nail out. That's why I had the bandage, not because of the mononicus. So you were climbing a tree? Climbing a tree. So how, I mean, was it like this sort of thing? Like I don't know how to say that and when you put your foot and push. Yeah, it was a small tree and my foot was as high as my hands and that's how it happened. That wasn't the first time you were in a tree though because I remember seeing you hiding from, there's sarcastic on us of the cave bear. The thing was you had to hide up a tree for that one but you were okay with that tree. Yeah, yeah, most trees I can climb very well but that one was an accident. Have you got a dangerous encounter, your most dangerous encounter, or was the spitting cobra the most dangerous encounter? No, I think the most dangerous one, everyone will remember there's a famous discovery show called Anatomy of a Shark Bite and what happened there was I was doing a film about bull sharks and I was with an expert called Eric Ritter who sadly passed away. He was guiding me, we were in the water and he was saying, look, there's all these bull sharks around there, two meter bull sharks. So he said, look, they're not harmful, are they? Look, they can tell, they're not attacking us and what we were going to do was put a bit of fish in my mouth, he was going to put a heart monitor on me and the bull shark was going to take the fish from there but as we were talking, he suddenly lets out a cry. The cameraman, Pete Zuccherini, he's now gone on to do parrots with the Caribbean underwater cameraman, was filming. A shark came in and took our 45 centimetres of Eric Ritter's thigh in one bite. 50 square metres of blood in the water, the cameraman, camera assistant, jumped in to help pull him out and I couldn't always remember it. It was like you or I biting into a watermelon. It wasn't like the shark had injured the leg, it had taken a chunk out of his leg. It was like a perfect cartoon shape, almost gone. Yeah, and it wasn't like all the other sharks skedaddled, all of this feeding frenzy stuff was nonsense. They don't know human blood, if it was a fish blood, maybe they would have all got him, but they all swam away. He was taken to Miami in a small plane from the Bahamas and was in intensive care for three months and they managed to rebuild his leg by using muscle from his buttocks. So I was standing a metre away from him in the water so it could have easily been me. So that was the scariest moment. Normally when we work with dangerous animals, we're spending a lot of time with them so we're taking calculated risks, we know exactly. If you swim a white shark, it will swim away from you. We know that, you know, and you won't go in the water with a great white shark unless it's very good visibility. You need to see them, they need to see you. If I'm working with a cobra, I know how far it can strike, I know when it's getting annoyed, so I know how to deal with snakes now. But that was a very, very scary moment. And, you know, we wouldn't go in the water at all. If sharks wanted to get us, they'd got such an array of super sensors, they can detect electricity, smell a molecule of blood in a whole swimming pool of water. So they're not out to get us and it was an unlucky accident. But that was my most frightening moment for sure. And it didn't happen to you, though. It didn't happen to me, no, just there. But you kept waking up at night thinking it could have easily been. I was talking to him just a metre away. Everyone always asks, what's the most dangerous thing of filming, whether it's Prius Storyt Park or wildlife? It's travelling to the location. You know, if you're making a film in Iran or the Philippines or in Britain where there's, you know, narrow roads and everything, the most dangerous thing is driving to the location. So you're more worried about driving than you are the snake or the shark. Yeah, much more dangerously than the animals, the travel to the location. He started up again as a kid. You're like, oh, I'd love to, you know, be with Alan Grant or something. But you were doing it. You were like, that's what we would want to have done as kids with dinosaurs. You were running away from them. You were tracking them down. It was like, I'm not a carer in the world. It was like a fantasy. You're like, oh, I wish I could go along with them. Well, no egos involved. So all the other people, I mean, other than Bob, the parkkeeper, they were just like members of the crew that were in the background. So you haven't got loads of actors. So that's why it worked, really, you know, and they could afford to do it. So it was Bob Geordie? Yeah, he's in the uk... He plays the ukulele. I think he was in Doctor Who as well after that. So, and I saw him in a Vera recently. Oh, right, yeah. So yeah, I'm sure he's... I wouldn't see him in a play. But, you know, he's a really nice man, but yeah, played the ukulele. And then Suzanne was a real vet. Right. Oh, she was a real vet? Yeah, she's a real vet. So she was a good actor then, I guess. She was actual vet then. Yeah, no, she was good. She did a good job. Yeah, yeah. The only vet that's ever worked on a dinosaur. Nigel, are you ready for our little game show, I guess? We could call it. Yeah, no, I'm not sure, but I'll try my best. I have taken a few quotes from your... I'm walking with Seamon Suspecials as well as maybe one from Prehistoric Park. I'm not going to say which one. So I'm going to read these out, see if we can guess what the creature is. Shall we? So, are you ready for the first one? I'm ready. One of the most grotesque predators. And look at that tail curling. That's how they get their name. There's no venom in there, and there's pinces at the front. Oh, this must be the Eurypterid. There's... Yes, it is, yes. Yeah, no, of course. And that was great. They were all coming onto the land like horseshoe crabs do nowadays, you know, horseshoe crabs and living fossils. That's a brilliant thing to see if you ever get the chance in the Eastern United States. Oh, but horseshoe crabs. Yeah, I didn't realise those were still alive, but they are, they were. They've got blue blood, they've got copper in the blood, so they're an amazing living fossil. And they're all over the US. I was lucky enough to film the mass spawning ones, and it's amazing. The whole beach is covered with these horseshoe crabs. I've got to put that in my book at least. Just like the sea scorpions. Yeah, no, it's well worth seeing. Delaware Bay is a great place to see that. Are you ready for the second one? Yeah, ready. OK, these fish have got these massive jaws with big, sharp shears sticking out. And with that, they can cut through anything. Oh, yeah, everyone's favourite, Dunkleosteus. That's right. Of course, brilliant, brilliant. You know, of all of the sea monsters, that's one I'd love to have seen. They're so bizarre, and quite often, I do zoom calls now with fans, and if it's children, they've always got a model Dunkleosteus. I have a little toy. Yeah, they want me to see. I think I have that one. Yeah. It's all like the Pappos, and then it's got a little jaw that opens. And of course, anyone who's watching can also have a guess. It is a surreal creature with a funny name. These creatures have extraordinary horns. You can tell it's a male because they splay out. I think that is my favourite mammal, actually, that I did arse in aetherium. That's it, yeah. And what a great name, arse in aetherium. Arse in aetherium, yeah. I've got to think, like, is that the reason why they put that in the show? No, I'm not sure. There was something, I saw something about it the other day. I mean, a great, a great man. We filmed that in Egypt. Oh, wow. On the Red Sea, so there was a mangrove area there. So, yeah, one of my favourites, arse in aetherium. Some of the pronunciations were very difficult. It took me ages to be able to say Parasaurolophus. So, and nobody's quite sure, of course, with scientific names, how to pronounce them, but we spent a lot of time. Hopefully I got it right. Did you see the thing about that where it supposedly could have breathed fire? There was an illustration. It must have been very early on in dinosaur discoveries where they have this Parasaurolophus breathing fire in a car where it's like, oh, no. And apparently, they thought it was a bit like the Bombardier beetle or something with its horn. Like, that was where it would mix the chemicals and splay out. Yeah, I haven't seen that. No, that would be weird. Well, you're doing... I thought you might have tripped up on arse in aetherium there. It didn't. They haven't got as big a brain as modern whales. They're not such social animals. In this warm water, it didn't need it. It looked for all the world like a whale on diet pills. Yeah, no, bacillosaurus. So the whale ancestor, that was great using hydrophones under a boat and it was coming in close. And of course, because we'd never seen one, because we can't really travel back in time, could they be dangerous? An orca has never killed a human being, ever, other than in captivity. They don't hit people in the wild, so would bacillosaurus? I mean, it was very primitive. Maybe you could have been chomped by it. Who knows? Well, the theory, I think, with orcas is that maybe they're just so good at it in the wild that they cover all their tracks. Yeah, that's it. They're so clever. Fiendishly clever. Yeah, no, they're amazing animals. Right, this one's very short, because I think you'll get this one quite easily, but maybe it'll trip you up. The biggest carnivorous fish that has ever lived. Oh, Leedsick these? Or... No, Megalodon, of course. Yes, it is kind of carnivorous, though. But I don't think it's as big as Megalodon. I'm going to see it. I need to find that picture. Everyone knows my house, for sure. Second to last one, you've got them all right so far. That is one grotesque fish. It's more like a bulldog than a fish. And this is one of my prized possessions. I've got a fossil that I got in Los Angeles. It's 95% authentic of Zifactinus, the bulldog fish. Yeah, yeah. They were around in ancient Texas, I don't know, 75 million years ago, in my sitting room on the wall. I have this big, amazing fossil of Zifactinus. I've got the Megalodon Jaws Zifactinus. I like getting souvenirs of the films that I make. I would, too. I've done all this. It was great fun. Not long ago, there was somebody who had a lot of the walk away dinosaur puppets and stuff, and he was selling it up, and one of them was the Basilosaurus's head, like almost like a trophy mount. Yeah, wow. Was that ever used? Do you remember that at all? Because as far as I'm aware, it was all CG in the series. So was there ever like an interaction with the head? No, no, no, I don't remember. Definitely not, because I would remember that. If it was in another one of franchise, walking with dinosaurs or something, I mean, it's not a dinosaur course, but if it had been... One with beasts or something. Yeah, walking with beasts or something. But yeah, I never interacted with a Basilosaurus head. And the final one, its name means bird mimic. This is my favourite bit. A technique for catching them is to slip a sock over their head and as soon as they cover their eyes, they calm down. Yeah, I know, this was my first meeting with T-Rex after I'd caught an orphaned... How do you pronounce it? ...an orphaned... So that was the ostrich dinosaur, a great long neck like ostriches had. To calm down an ostrich, if you ever need to do one, you do take your sock off and put it over their heads and when they're in the dark, it's like what falconers do with birds of prey. They put a hood on their head. Oh, it was unsuccessful. They suddenly ran back and T-Rex came after me and that's where I did my first thing. Well, you did it. I think that's all of them. Maybe the Megadon or the Orthodonomimus, especially Arsynetherium, might have tripped you up that one because that was only a brief second, really, when you're on land. Congratulations. I'm looking more impressive than I am, but I can remember the prehistoric beasts that I met in Seamonsters or the prehistoric part, or most of them, anyway. I feel honoured that, thank you for obviously taking the time out of your busy schedule because it is a busy schedule, like you previously mentioned, to meet with me and I also feel like there's a lot of people out there that if they could have the chance to say anything to you, to give them a sort of a voice. So I put it out on YouTube, asked there for some comments and we've got a few here. A few, don't mind answering some questions. No, of course not. So this is from dead evil Mason who says, he's literally my inspiration for everything dinosaurs. I'd probably just ask him how he got into the position of being able to do dinosaur TV shows and what things he studied and places he worked at together? I really wasn't a dinosaur fan when I was a kid. You know, I'm amazed at what the kids know nowadays. I was always into reptiles and creepy crawlies, but because I did the series Giants, where I met the biggest animals alive today, the makers of Walking with Dinosaurs said, this is a great guide to go back and meet dinosaurs, and then I really started getting interest in them. I am so elated, I'm so thrilled to get questions like that, because I have inspired paleontologists to start studying at university or whatever, because they saw prehistoric part when they were children. And that's brilliant. If my enthusiasm can get people fired up about paleontology, even though I'm not a paleontologist myself, that's brilliant stuff. Question number two comes from Loco, I think I'm saying that right. What was his favourite moment while filming all those shows, including Sea Monsters, Chased by Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Park and Prime Evil? Also, thanks to Nigel, making my childhood awesome. Yeah, it's a difficult one, because it was all good fun. So every episode of Prehistoric Park took about 30 days to film. It wasn't in the studio, it was in a natural environment. So Fraser Island in Australia was perfect. Fraser Island, my first ever filming with Tim Haynes. That was when I ran across the sand dunes with the breeding colony of Protoceratops, and I'm waving the red flag, and we're talking about color vision in dinosaurs. I think that was my favourite. And Fraser Island was a brilliant place to stay. I remember there's a lake in the middle, I went swimming there, snorkeling there, and you could catch snake neck turtles for real. I obviously let them go, so that was great. There was Dingos on the beach, they're big swarms of red crabs. So, you know, it was great fun doing the filming, and Fraser Island was a fantastic place to stay. Number three, we've kind of got two here, because they kind of cover the same thing. King Dracar says if we, or if you had the choice, would he bring back Prehistoric Park? I'm assuming that is the series. And A-Rock says I'd ask if he'd ever considered doing another season of Prehistoric Park, or maybe even a spin-off. I would love, before I retire, to do another time-travelling series. It won't be Prehistoric Park, there'll never be a Prehistoric Park, too, because that name is owned by Impossible Pictures, and they don't want to do a sequel, they moved on to doing Prime Evil, and things like that. But, you know, hoping Netflix, or Amazon, or Apple TV, because they're so popular, because they're looking for family entertainment, would do another one. A time-travelling series, yes, and it could easily be like Prehistoric Park, but it just won't have that name. Oh, thank Christ for that. Great. Oh, just wait. He looks good if I go on there. Oh, will he? I'm joking, hopefully not. Has he turned it off before yet? No. Oh, no, that could be the end. Prehistoric Park, yeah. I get confused with the kingdom you're doing now as well. Prehistoric Park. At the very end, they sort of leave it on a little bit of a cliffhanger to say, until it's next adventure, and you're pointing at something on the desk, and then, obviously, you go through the time pole. But I saw that the dinosaur that's in front of you, or Prehistoric Park, which I should say, is a quetzal of some sort of Pteranodon. So was there ever any, like, season two on the cards for something like that, or was that just something that was thrown together for the ending? I wanted to do it, but ITV didn't want another one, and all of the producers moved on to do other projects. So that was the shame of it. There's so many dinosaurs and new dinosaur discoveries that we could include. I've never met a spinosaurus. Just imagine snorkeling with those new theories about spinosaurus being under the water and everything. It would be totally fantastic. I'd love... Everyone remembers the sequence when I'm in a microlight flying with pterosaurs. I'd love to do more of that, love to go into the details of flying reptiles. There's so much more to do, and I really hope that, you know, there'll be a chance to make another series. Well, definitely bringing you into it adds that sense of scale. And it's very easy, because, I mean, I've played dinosaur games, and when there's just dinosaurs walking about, you don't know the scale. Like, oh, well, he's bigger, he's a little bit bigger than me. When you see a person, your whole scale gets changed. You're like, oh, okay, that's how big that is, because you've got something you can draw to in real life. We've got here Kjors Zork. My question would be, what's his favourite time period? Can be eras or periods, et cetera. Mesozoic, Cambrian period, all that. I think carbon, if the age of insects was fantastic to see Arthur Plurah, there's incontrovertible evidence that Arthur Plurah was in prehistoric Scotland. If you go to the Isle of Arran, there's trackways just above the high tide, so to see a millipede that was as long as I'm tall, nearly two metres would be fantastic. Not for some people, though. I think the giant spider might put some people out. The King of Spooky, the final question we've got here. How the hell did you survive getting swarmed by that Mosasaur family? Yeah, no, again, we're good. Here I am, speaking to you. Movie secrets. So I'm very excited about the new things coming up, you know, prehistoric kingdom, as you say. Yes, yes, that's true. First time I've been in a dinosaur game, so I'm very excited about it. There's a great team working on that. Through the power of genetic technology, biological marvels from a bygone era roam the earth once more. And I'm going to be in a Minecraft game, Nigel and Dinosaurs. Done the voice over for that. Join me as I travel back in time, 95 million years, to watch for one day become the UNCLE formation of Argentina. I'll be really hip then. If you're in a Minecraft game, that's what I'd really want to do. Well, Minecraft never ages, it's always in. You're going to be down on the crookids. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Well, when that releases, I'll definitely cover it on the channel. Or if we can get you to play it, maybe. That would be quite interesting. Yeah, no, it would be. And if there's any shout-outs that you want to give or where people can find you, say... Yeah, if you want to go to nigelmarvin.com, there's lots there, or Nigel on Twitter, at Nigelmarvin, lots there. You can come and meet me. I do wildlife weekends in Devon. You can have a one-to-one Zoom call with me from anywhere in the world. You know, I can do messages for birthdays with Zifactinus in the background, the fossils. So it'd be great to contact you, but nigelmarvin.com or at Nigelmarvin or on Instagram, Nigelmarvin official, that's the way to get me. Well, thank you, it's been lovely talking to you. And if you've enjoyed this video, do check out Nigelmarvin at all his Twitters, Instagrams. And until next time, join the video with me, Blake, and I'll see you later. Oh, bye-bye. Oh, yes, that's me. I'll take the microphone off you. Yeah, that's a good thing not to forget. They're expensive, aren't they?