View the full lecture by Sir David Attenborough at the SVP 69th Annual Meeting and the 57th Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy (SVPCA)
 
This event was sponsored by the University of Bristol. 

This lecture was one of a series in honor of the Centenary, in 2009, of the foundation of the University of Bristol, and a contribution to Darwin 200 events, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

Sir David Attenborough, OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, is arguably the most respected documentary filmmaker. He was born in 1926 in London, and spent his boyhood in Leicester collecting rocks and fossils. He studied geology and zoology for a natural sciences degree from the University of Cambridge and continued with studies of anthropology in London from 1944 to 1946.

He joined the BBC in 1950, acting first as a producer of factual programs, and later making his own natural history programs for radio and television. He was controller of BBC Two from 1965 to 1969 and continued as BBC Television's controller of programs until 1972, when he left administration to continue making programs. His major series "Life on Earth" (1979) was an enormous worldwide success, and he has since made a number of such ambitious and inspiring series: "The Living Planet" (1984), "The Trials of Life" (1990), "Life in the Freezer" (1993), "The Private Life of Plants" (1995), "The Life of Birds" (1998), "The Life of Mammals" (2002), "Life in the Undergrowth" (2005), and "Life in Cold Blood" (2008). Other series have covered anthropological, paleontological and environmental themes.

In a career spanning fifty years making television programs of the highest quality, David Attenborough has received many awards. He has written numerous best-selling books, generally one per TV series, and champions causes such as environmentalism and science education, and he challenges creationism.