HAVE you ever wondered what life on earth would look like if evolution could be fast-forwarded?

Dinosaur expert Dougal Dixon from Wareham did just that - and the results are a new series, The Future Is Wild, starting on BBC2 on Sunday, August 29.

Flying fish could take to the skies if all birdlife became extinct. Computer graphics are used to create a series of creatures that may evolve in millions of years time.

Dougal, who has published more than 100 books on dinosaurs, became involved in the project after TV researchers came across his book After Man: Zoology of the Future, published 23 years ago.

"I thought let's look to the future, let's take the new processes and trends and see how animal life may evolve in 50 million years time," he said.

A panel of experts were brought together for the series to design animals that may evolve in three time periods: five million, 100 million and 200 million years into the future.

"If birds as a whole were wiped out, what would be the next colonisers of the air? Flying fish make a half-hearted attempt at flying, so what about fish with a sophisticated flying mechanism? Nature always fills gaps," said Dougal.

The £5 million series took five years to make and background scenery was shot in Patagonia and Iceland. It has already been screened in 60 countries in 18 languages.

Dougal's fascination with dinosaurs began when he saw his first picture of a dinosaur in a comic at the age of five.

"I asked my father what it was and he took down an ancient natural history book from the shelf and from that day I was hooked," he said.

"There were no children's dinosaur books in those days - other children and teachers didn't know what I was talking about."

He gleaned information from ancient encyclopaedias and Victorian natural history books and after studying two university degrees in geology he became geological editor for an encyclopaedia publisher in London.

Since then he has gone on to publish more than 100 titles about dinosaurs.

He visits the United States every year on lecture tours and recently spent three weeks in Montana helping to excavate stegosaurus bones for the Judith River Paleontological Institute.

First published: August 21