Hey, it's Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Coalas with the body of a lion, elephants, the size of your dog, gigantic eight-foot-tall sloths.

No, these aren't creatures found in a new novel.

They walked our planet a million years ago during the Ice Age.

And that's the focus of the new season of Apple's prehistoric planet series, which uses the

latest paleontology research and photoreal CGI to recreate ancient creatures from the past.

So far, it's focused on dinosaurs, but now it's taking

that same approach to the fantastical and strange-looking animals that walk the tundra and enormous

deserts of the Ice Age. Here to thaw out the new research featured in the show are two of its

scientific consultants. Dr. Darren

Nash, paleontologist and author in Southampton, UK, and Dr. Emily Lindsay, associate curator at the

La Brea Tarpitz and Museum in Los Angeles, one of my favorite places. Welcome back to

Science Friday. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Good to talk to you again.

Darren, we had you on the show a couple of years ago to talk about the science in the first season of

this show, which, as I said before, focused on dinosaurs. What were you excited about with this season

going into the Ice Age?

What did you want to do differently?

That's a great question and a hard one to answer.

As a fan of animals in general, you know, when I knew that we were going to be making an Ice Age series,

even the Ice Age animals that are the most household names of these creatures that

you can think of, you know, woolly mammoths. Who hasn't heard of a woolly mammoth?

Right.

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