Stunning image from Sir David Attenborough's new series Seven Worlds
It's not a fair fight but this gentoo penguin in the frozen wilderness of Antarctica makes a defiant stand against its main predator the leopard seal.The stunning image is from Sir David Attenborough’s new series Seven Worlds, One Planet, celebrated with a glorious picture special in today’s Daily Mail Weekend.Other photos released before the series, which begins next Sunday, show a cameraman filming elephant seals in Antarctica, and a group of golden snub-nosed monkeys huddling together in eastern China. Sir David in Kenya with one of only two northern white rhinos, both female, which survive in the wild. His new show, Seven Worlds, One Planet, starts on BBC One later this month Why don't polar bears eat penguins? The riddle is probably as old as any other that you will find in a Christmas cracker. And the answer is not difficult to work out: penguins and polar bears live at opposite ends of the world and never meet. Pictured, in mortal danger, a penguin tries desperately to escape the clutches of a leopard seal in AntarcticaThe series, which has been four years in the making, puts a conservation message ‘at the heart’ of each episode.Speaking at its launch, Sir David said the influence of humans on the planet was ‘everywhere… and we made a tragic, desperate mess of it so far’. But he added: ‘At last nations are coming together and recognising that we all live on the same planet... and we are dependent on it.’Asked what can be done to save the Earth, Sir David, 93, said: ‘The best motto is not to waste things.‘Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food – live the way you want to live but just don’t waste.’The Ultimate Variety Show Planet Earth is home to an extraordinary range of life, differing wildly between continents. Scientists have wondered for centuries how our natural world came to be so diverse, yet interconnected. And now we know that the mystery can be explained by a dinosaur called mesosaurus.With its long, thick tail, powerful jaws and stumpy, frog-like legs, mesosaurus was a strange creature – like a newt the size of a small crocodile, living in freshwater lakes 280 million years ago. But the strangest thing about mesosaurus is that its fossils have been found on both sides of the Atlantic. Clear evidence of this early underwater reptile has been found in southern Africa as well as in South America.How can this be? There was no way it could swim across the south Atlantic. So why are its fossils found on two continents, 4,000 miles apart? The answer is that Africa and the Americas were once one, along with all the land mass on the planet – one supercontinent called Pangaea. But about 200 million years ago, it was ripped in two and then began to break up into the seven 'worlds' we know today – North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and Antarctica.That's why, if you look at a map, the western bulge of Africa looks as though it would fit neatly into the Caribbean, between the Americas. Once upon