Why the dinosaurs died out is one of the most frequently asked questions of dinosaur experts. Will we ever know the answer?
The Making of the Big Al special
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.
In the Early Jurassic, dinosaurs started getting larger. Diplodocus was over 30 metres long - but even he wasn't safe from predators
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 largest animals ever to fly were pterosaurs. But during their reign, birds as we know them were also beginning to appear.
Argentinosaurus was the largest dinosaur ever - 35 metres long, and up to a hundred tonnes in weight.
There's considerable evidence that dinosaurs once lived at polar latitudes. How did they survive the cold?
When dinosaurs first appeared the world was very different. There were no mammals, no birds and no lizards. But there were some lizard-like reptiles.
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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