The Incredible Life of
Sir David Attenborough Written by Sally Morgan
Contents A modern-day naturalist Early days A fossil collector Zoos and conservation Discovering life Animals and their surroundings Animal behaviour Life at the Poles Amazing plants Ocean life Amphibians and reptiles Saving nature Bringing nature to everyone Glossary Index Sir David’s life in dates
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A modern-day naturalist Sir David Attenborough is one of the most travelled people who has ever lived. Yet he’s not an explorer like Sir Walter Raleigh or James Cook, but a writer and television presenter. David has travelled around the world in search of wildlife, from the North and South Poles to the tropical jungles, from deserts to the deep ocean and almost everywhere in between.
me there is no deeper pleasure than “theForcontemplation of the natural world. �
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Over the last 60 years, he’s presented some wonderful wildlife programmes showing us the beauty of the world and explaining why we need to save it for future generations. Many people consider him to be one of the world’s greatest naturalists.
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Early days David Frederick Attenborough was born in West London in 1926, and grew up in Leicester. One of three boys, his oldest brother was Lord Richard Attenborough, the actor and Oscar-winning film director. David loved exploring, rock climbing and looking at nature. When he was ten years old, he attended a talk by Archibald Belaney, a well-known conservationist who was fighting to save the beaver from extinction in Canada. His message that the actions of people were endangering wildlife has stayed with David ever since. David wanted to go to university, but his father told him that the only way the family could afford that was if he got a scholarship. In 1945, he won a scholarship to study Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. 4
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Archibald Belaney, also known as “Grey Owl”
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A fossil collector As a child, David was passionate about collecting fossils and rocks. By the time he was 12 years old, he’d built up his own “museum” of fossils including ammonites, belemnites and brachiopods. It also included some pieces of Roman pottery and the skin of a huge grass snake. David remembers clearly the day he found his first fossil lying in the gravel outside the front door of his house. It was a “Devil’s Toenail”, a fossil of a type of oyster called Gryphaea.
This extinct oyster called the Devil’s Toenail lived on the sea bed between 60 and 250 million years ago.
When I was a boy … I would get on my “ bicycle and be gone all day looking for fossils up in the Leicestershire countryside. ” 6
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David became a regular visitor to Leicester Museum to learn the names of the different fossils he’d found. When he was older, he volunteered at the museum and helped with their fossil collection. The dinosaur gallery at Leicester Museum was opened by Sir David in 2011.
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Secrets of amber Fossil hunters like David love amber because there is a chance they’ll find an animal or a bit of plant trapped inside. These fragments teach us about the life that lived many millions of years ago. The animals and plants found in amber are perfectly preserved, showing us exactly what they looked like when they were alive. By identifying the different animals and plants, scientists can work out which animals and plants lived together. When he was 12 years old, David was given a beautiful piece of amber, which he still has today. Trapped inside was an insect. This piece of amber fascinated him as it was a window into a past world that he wanted to learn more about. This interest took him to university and later to make programmes about the living world, both past and present. 8
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How amber is made Amber looks like stone, but it is actually fossilised resin. Resin is a sticky substance made by trees such as pines. If the bark of a pine tree is damaged, the tree produces a lot of resin which oozes out to seal the wound. Resin is so sticky that any small animal walking on it gets stuck. When the resin hardens, it traps the animal inside and prevents the body from rotting. When the tree dies and falls to the ground, it may become buried along with any resin. The weight of all the overlaying layers of soil, built up over millions of years, causes the resin to turn into amber.
A tiny insect is trapped in this piece of amber.
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