Wild New World

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title: "Wild New World" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["2000s-english-language-films", "bbc-television-documentaries-about-prehistoric-and-ancient-history", "documentary-films-about-nature", "documentary-films-about-prehistoric-life", "prehistoric-north-america", "2000s-british-documentary-television-series", "2002-british-television-series-debuts", "2002-british-television-series-endings", "discovery-channel-original-programming"] topic_path: "arts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_New_World" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::data[format=table title="Infobox television"]

Field	Value
image	Prehistoric america.png
alt	Prehistoric America title card
caption	Series title card from US broadcast
alt_name	Prehistoric America
野性新世界 (Chinese)"
先史時代のアメリカ (Japanese)"
genre	Nature documentary
narrated	Jack Fortune
Joe Morton (US)
composer	Barnaby Taylor
country	United Kingdom & Japan and China
language	English & Japanese and Chinese
num_episodes	6
executive_producer	Neil Nightingale
producer	Miles Barton
runtime	50 minutes
company	BBC Natural History Unit
Discovery Channel
channel	BBC Two
BBC Three
first_aired
last_aired
::

Wild New World (also known as Prehistoric America) is a six-part BBC documentary series about Ice Age America that describes the prehistory, landscape and wildlife of the continent from the arrival of humans to the welcome of the Ice Age. It was first transmitted in the UK & JP on BBC Two from 3 October to 7 November 2002. Like several other BBC programmes, it contains both computer graphics and real-life animals. Occasionally, footage of non-American counterparts of the extinct North American beasts (like the American lion and the American cheetah) are used in juxtaposition with footage of native American animals, like the pronghorn.

Wild New World was co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and Discovery Channel. The music was composed by Barnaby Taylor and performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. The series was narrated by Jack Fortune and produced by Miles Barton.

The series forms part of the Coordinator History Unit's Continents strand. It was preceded by Wild Africa in 2001 and followed by Wild Down Under in 2003.

Production

The series was announced by the BBC with the working title All American Animals, but it was later changed to Wild New World.

Episodes

All episode names were given from BBC website. All broadcast dates refer to the original UK transmission.

Each of the episode consists with the prehistory and wildlife of a particular region in the United States, except for final episode which is about various modern American animals. 2.79 million viewers watched the first episode.

::data[format=table]

Episode	Title	Original air date
EpisodeNumber = 1	Title = Land of the Mammoth	2002
::

Themes

The show's episodes offer several common themes, the main one being the coming of humans to America via the Ice Age's land bridge and causing the extinction of the North American megafauna featured in the episodes. Another BBC programme, Monsters We Met picks up and elaborates on this topic in greater detail. A more recent Discovery show, Prehistoric, also features scenic elements of Prehistoric America, such as the present melting away to reveal the past, as well as creatures already shown by the show, like the American mastodon, Arctodus and Columbian mammoth.

Merchandise

DVD

In United States and Canada, a two-disc DVD format was released under the title "Prehistoric America" on 7 September 2004 by BBC Warner. The series was included with two additional programmes:

Grand Canyon – From Dinosaurs to Dams Everglades
To Hell and Back Other: Fact Files Documentary

A three-disc DVD format was released in China for Region 6 on 12 June 2008 by Excel Media.

Books

In United Kingdom, an accompanying hardcover format was written by Miles Barton, Nigel Bean, Stephen Dunleavy, Ian Gray and Adam White, with foreword by D. Bruce Means. It was released on 19 September 2002 and published by BBC Worldwide. ()

The companion volume for the US market, Prehistoric America: A Journey through the Ice Age and Beyond, was published by the Yale University Press on 8 February 2003.()

References

"Wild New World - Episodes".
Fraser, Fiona. (16 September 2002). "BBC and Discovery explore Wild New World".
(25 September 2002). "BBC airs Mammoth task".
"Three new shows from BBC-Discovery renewal". C21 Media.
"BBC and Discovery explore Wild New World". C21 Media.
"Weekly top 30 programmes on TV sets (July 1998 – Sept 2018)".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, Land of the Mammoth".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, Canyonlands".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, Ice Age Oasis".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, Edge of the Ice".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, American Serengeti".
"BBC Two – Wild New World, Mammoths to Manhattan".
(7 September 2004). "Prehistoric America (DVD)".
"Wild New World: The Complete Series (DVD)". Excel Media.
"Wild New World (Hardback)".
(2002). "Prehistoric America: A Journey through the Ice Age and Beyond (Books)". Yale University Press.

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