A man jumps into the water of the Crystal Palace Diving Institute and is swallowed by a Mosasaur. The man’s girlfriend is accused of murder. The supervisor at The Office, James Lester (Ben Miller), as well as Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown), Nick (Douglas Henshall) and the rest of the team know that what killed the young man was an ancient sea predator but to keep that knowledge under wraps, James is willing to let the girl be arrested.
The anomaly that opened up in the pool quickly closes and reopens in a reservoir twenty miles away. The parts of the man that the Mosasaur couldn’t digest were regurgitated and found floating in the reservoir. Nick now knows that the individual anomalies can move from place to place. A search of the reservoir eventually uncovers the anomaly. The Mosasaur returns through the anomaly to its own time. As the anomaly closes, one of the Special Forces divers is sucked through.
Nick’s theory is proven right when the anomaly opens up again in a flooded cellar of a residential house. When a plumber is called to the house, he is killed by a Hesperornis that came through the rift. Along with the body of the plumber, the authorities find the missing Special Forces diver. Attached to the diver’s arm is proof that Nick’s wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) is alive.
Episode 3 of season 1 features two prehistoric creatures. The first is a Mosasaur and the second a Hesperornis. A Mosasaur was a large marine reptile. It lived 82 to 66 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period. Its closest relatives were either monitor lizards or snakes. A Hesperornis was a genus of aquatic, flightless bird that lived during the late Cretaceous period. It had teeth as well as a beak.
The Primeval series was created by Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges. It ran for five years between 2007 and 2011. Haines previously created the “Walking with” documentary series. Haines studied zoology and had a background in science journalism. Haines also produced an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel “The Lost World” 2001.