NGTI signs up major co-pro partners for Sky Monsters

Published: 15 March 2005

National Geographic Television International today announces that it has signed co-production deals with France 5, ZDF in Germany and Five in the UK for its major new science and natural history programme SKY MONSTERS.

SKY MONSTERS, a major two-hour event special, is produced by Summerhill Entertainment in association with National Geographic Television & Film and tells the story of Pterosaurs - the first large animals to fly.

Pterosaurs are one of nature's success stories: they diversified like mad, ranging from the size of a sparrow to an F-16, with wingspans of up to 36 feet. They lived for 150 million years but, as big a force as pterosaurs were in the history of life from the late Triassic through to the Cretaceous period, they have largely remained a mystery to scientists - ever since the first fossil was discovered in Germany in 1784.

In SKY MONSTERS, animation and CGI helps us look at these fascinating creatures in more detail - what did they eat, how did they live, why did they vanish? And we travel to Inner Mongolia to both search for pterosaur fossils and to see if a team of palaeontologists, scientists, aerialists and engineers can reconstruct a pterosaur in order to establish how an animal that large ever flew.

Edwina Thring, head of programmes at NGTI comments: "Sky Monsters is destined to be one of the most impressive programmes from National Geographic Television & Film this year. The combination of natural history and science tells a fascinating story about this little-studied prehistoric animal and we are confident that it will prove a major televisual event when it is screened.

"Sky Monsters is an ideal project for co-production: with the first fossil discovered in Germany and fossilised Pterosaur footprints recently found in France, we are really pleased to have secured strong partners from both these countries and we are working closely with them and Five in the UK to ensure their needs are met from this programme."