'Life'

John Bohannon's lively account of the Genoa Festival of Science (Celebrating Food, Feces, and 3 Billion Years of Evolution) links to Beginnings, an excerpt from Life with photography by Frans Lanting, music by Philip Glass and video by Alexander V. Nichols.

I think the excerpt is beautiful and worth watching. It covers the development and emergence of single and then multi-cellular life forms in the sea, but does not of course pretend to be comprehensive, and makes some poetic short cuts. It includes marvellous images of stromatolites, probably the first reef builders, and modern corals, which differ significantly from their ancient ancestors, and modern jellyfish which look, at least superficially, like those of the Middle Cambrian (500 Million Years Ago, Jellyfish Left Their Mark in Fine Sea Sediments).