The Vanished Sea

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“The Vanished Sea”
The Future Is Wild episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 3
Written by	Victoria Coules
Original airdate	–
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "Return of the Ice" "Prairies of Amazonia"

The Vanished Sea is the third episode in the documentary series The Future Is Wild. It is set in what was the Mediterranean sea in 5,000,000 years time. It features four species.

• Cryptile - a lizard with a sticky frill to catch flies which it can then lick off at its leisure
• Scrofa - a descendant of the wild boar which has developed spindly legs to allow it to live on the rocky islands in the desert
• Gryken - a descendant of the pine marten which hunts Scrofa in the cracked rocks of the landscape
• brine flies (live-acted)

Before this time in the future, the tip of Africa has collided with the southern tip of Spain, thus enclosing the Mediterranean inland. It has since dried up to become an enormous salt desert with a few lakes of ultra-saline water, as it was during the Messinian salinity crisis. The holiday islands that used to be in the sea are now mountains scattered throughout the desert.

The episode starts with two cryptiles mating. Then the female cryptile goes looking for grykes to lay her eggs, for if they were laid in the salt they would shrivel up and die. After she laid her eggs she is chased by a gryken but escapes for grykens only have short bursts speed. The gryken hunts by crawling through the grykes and captures it's prey by surprise .The gryken then hunts scrofas it fails and is chase by an adult male. Scrofas eat grass that grows between the grykes and cryptile eggs. The gryken tries a second time and succeeds. However a baby scrofa gets lost in the process and wanders into a the salt plains it spots a cryptile eating brine flies. Soon the baby scrofa dies. Then there is a scene were scrofas are grazing the narrator explains how some animals survived such as pigs, lizards, and pine martens.