- [first lines]
- Kenneth Branagh: Out of the darkness emerges a twelve ton giant. She is an Indricothere, and she is about to give birth.
- Kenneth Branagh: It is a time called the Oligocene. The world has just been through years of catastrophic climate change, that led to the extinction of one species in five.
- Kenneth Branagh: In the Oligocene, large parts of the world have become highly seasons. Here in Mongolia, long dry seasons are broken by short violent wet seasons. The climate has shaped not only the environment, but also the animals.
- Kenneth Branagh: [about the Enteldont] The bully of the plains. These are distant relatives of the pig. Two metres tall, aggressive, built like tanks, but with a brain no bigger than an orange.
- Kenneth Branagh: The calf is now strong and surefooted enough to venture out on the open plains, where he will spend the rest of his life.
- Kenneth Branagh: [about the Indricotheres] Not since the dinosaurs has nature got this big!
- Kenneth Branagh: [about Hyaenodon] Hyaenodon's jaws have a bone-shattering force of over one thousand pounds per square inch. One bite breaks the Chalicothere's neck.
- Kenneth Branagh: The dry season has transformed the landscape. It's as if the whole lifeblood has drained out of the plains. This is what it means to be a seasonal world.
- Kenneth Branagh: [about the Indricothere calf] It is time to make his own way in the world. This is the hardest lesson of all.
- Kenneth Branagh: [about the Indricothere calf] He is never again going to have the protection of his mother. The rest of his life, he will spend alone.