NATURE: "ATTENBOROUGH AND THE SEA DRAGON"
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL PREMIERE: Any time Sir David Attenborough is attached to a nature documentary, whether as narrator or host, it’s Must-See TV because the man simply doesn’t make a bad television program – and he’s been making good and great ones for more than 60 years. This month, he has two new ones coming to our shores. Later in January on BBC America, he hosts Dynasties, a new nature series from the Planet Earth team. And tonight, the PBS Nature series imports the recent British one-shot documentary, Attenborough and the Sea Dragon. The creature getting equal billing with TV’s greatest living naturalist is a long-dead prehistoric denizen of the deep: the ichthyosaur, a Jurassic-era giant reptile. Chris Moore, a British fossil collector, discovered and identified a portion of the front paddles of this so-called “sea dragon” on Monmouth Beach at Lyme Regis. (Good thing he found it and marked its location, or he might have been an ichthyosaur loser.) If more of this fossil were intact (and it was), Moore would have to get official permission from the landowners to extract the rock and relocate it for further study. He not only did that, but he contacted Attenborough, who not only came along for the ride, but helped put together and solve pieces of the puzzle. How did this creature die? Attenborough, like a detective tackling an extremely cold case, saw signs of… murder! Check local listings.