“Evolution — Triassic Titans” plunges audiences into a vanished ocean — the Panthalassa — and an evolutionary saga 50 million years in the making. At its heart: the ichthyosaur, a creature that began on land, returned to the sea, and became the largest predator our planet has ever produced. This is the most mysterious, least told chapter of prehistoric life — and the most spectacular. This is also a story of natural selection and convergent evolution: long before whales, ichthyosaurs were the first to push this body plan all the way to gigantism — a feat the ocean would only see repeated once, 200 million years later.

Guiding this journey is palaeontologist Erin Maxwell — a specialist in marine reptiles — who steps through shimmering walls of water, conjured by state-of-the-art visual effects, carrying the audience from today’s dig sites straight into the vanished ocean she has spent her career reconstructing, and into the deeper story of natural selection that connects these ancient giants to the whales of today.

From small, tentative beginnings to giants of the deep, these animals mastered an impossible transition: breathing air, hunting in darkness, sleeping in open water, giving birth without shore. Two hundred million years later, whales would face the same challenge — and convergent evolution would arrive, unprompted, at the same giant answer.