In the Early Jurassic, dinosaurs started getting larger. Diplodocus was over 30 metres long - but even he wasn't safe from predators
While dinosaurs dominated the land, huge marine reptiles ruled the water. Ichthyosaurs looked very like dolphins - but they weren't the top predators of the Jurassic seas.
There's considerable evidence that dinosaurs once lived at polar latitudes. How did they survive the cold?
The largest animals ever to fly were pterosaurs. But during their reign, birds as we know them were also beginning to appear.
Why the dinosaurs died out is one of the most frequently asked questions of dinosaur experts. Will we ever know the answer?
Argentinosaurus was the largest dinosaur ever - 35 metres long, and up to a hundred tonnes in weight.
The story opens as Big Al hatches from an egg buried in a nest chamber underground. The nest of a dinosaur very like Allosaurus has been found near Lourinha, Portugal. There were about 100 eggs in the nest and there may have been many more. Inside some of the eggs were tiny fossilised embryos that revealed the type of dinosaur that laid them. Eggshells have tiny pores to let the embryos inside breathe. Eggs which are buried underground have bigger pores than those incubated above ground. By examining the pores on the eggs in Portugal, we could tell that the nest had originally been underground
75 million years ago the Mongolian desert was home to dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes - including one with the largest claw of all time.
The Making of the Big Al special
Walking With Beasts is an introduction to the animals (predominantly mammals) that roamed the earth from the extinction of the dinosaurs until the rise of early humans. The sequel to the BBC's acclaimed and highly successful series Walking With Dinosaurs, Beasts also uses a combination of clever special effects and computer-generated imagery to create a realistic world as it may have appeared millions of years ago. As to be expected from any BBC nature programme, the images are visually stunning; the prehistoric animals look impressively lifelike, interacting seamlessly with each other and their environment to create an entire world that could have been photographed only yesterday. Walking With Beasts has a host of little touches and flourishes that add to the feeling of realism (the animals knock over the cameras, pebbles hit the lens), which make this programme a success as a piece of pure entertainment and prehistoric escapism.
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