Ice Age’ Promises Survival, Snow—and Giant Teeth

• Traveling back in time through science
• The Ice Age comes alive

Apple TV+’s Prehistoric Planet is known for its hyper-realistic CGI dinosaurs, but the Cretaceous period is so last year. The third season of this natural history docuseries leaps millions of years forward, inviting viewers to experience the Ice Age.

In the season trailer released November 6, strikingly lifelike mammoths, giant ground sloths, dire wolves, and other Pleistocene-era creatures fight to survive extreme climatic shifts. The five-episode series, narrated by Tom Hiddleston, is set to premiere on November 26.

Traveling back in time through science

Part of what makes Prehistoric Planet such an immersive experience is the show’s commitment to scientific accuracy, using knowledge gained from the latest research to make bygone periods of Earth’s history come alive. It took over 1,500 paleoartists, dinosaur experts, CGI artists, and filmmakers to create the first season.

“The big ambition of the series is to emulate a BBC Natural History Unit wildlife documentary, the kind of which we’ve been making for the last 60 years,” Tim Walker, the series’ producer and showrunner, told Gizmodo in 2022.

Experts like paleozoologist Darren Naish play a key role in crafting the show. “It’s been very rewarding and exciting for me to be embedded within the team right from the start and to have contributed to, you know, so many of our decisions,” Naish previously told Gizmodo.

“And we have a whole team of other experts that we consult with according to their appropriate specialization,” he added.

The Ice Age comes alive

In season 3, viewers will get to experience clashes between woolly rhinos and saber-toothed cats, brought to life based on recent discoveries of fur, soft tissues, and stomach contents preserved in permafrost.

In addition to iconic Ice Age megafauna, the series will showcase lesser-known species across five new habitats, from the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi)—the woolly mammoth’s warm-weather cousin—to car-sized armadillos (Doedicurus clavicaudatus).

In the trailer, these creatures clash with each other and the climatic extremes they’re struggling to survive. The season will take viewers from “The Big Freeze” to “The Big Melt,” which presumably is from the Younger Dryas—a 1,300-year-long cold snap that occurred some 12,000 years ago—to the rapid global warming event that ended the last Ice Age.

Much like this period in Earth’s history, Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age will be packed with drama. The trailer promises a visually stunning journey through one of our planet’s most transformative eras.