[MUSIC PLAYING]
During the age of the dinosaurs, spectacular species
like this Pachycephalosaur attract the most attention.
But the prehistoric world was also home
to a wide variety of other quite different species.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So what were some of the animals living alongside the dinosaurs?
[GROWLING]
One of the most surprising was this--
[GROWLING]
The biggest frog to have ever lived.
Beelzebufo was an especially large wide-bodied frog
with a proportionally large head.
It was the size of a small dog, a fearsome hunter
with an appearance to match.
It had armored skull bones and armored backbone
heavily reinforced and big strong jaws.
Beelzebufo had an especially powerful bite.
It would have been able to grab and subdue and kill
even relatively large prey up to the size of baby dinosaurs.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The oceans were dominated not by dinosaurs
but by marine reptiles.
The largest were mosasaurs.
These giant marine lizards could reach 50 feet in length
and weigh 15 tons.
They had massively elongate powerful jaws, huge jaw
muscles, and enormous conical teeth.
[SPLASHING]
They were the greatest marine predators of all time.
[SPLASHING]
But while giant lizards like this mosasaur ruled the oceans,
a very different group of reptiles filled the skies.
[SQUAWKING]
In the air, we've got this fantastic diversity
of flying reptiles that we call pterosaurs.
These things are often referred to as flying dinosaurs,
but they're not.
These were the very first animals with backbones to fly.
Their wingspan ranged from 10 inches to an enormous 33 feet.
The largest posed a deadly threat
for even the most fearsome of dinosaurs.
[GROWLING]
They were not just very big.
They also had a skull that was about 3 meters long
and ended in giant stabby jaws.
If you were tyrannosaurus, you would probably
think twice about approaching an animal that dangerous.
[TRUMPETING]
Many of the impressive creatures on the prehistoric planet
looked completely different from anything alive today.
But there were also some animals that might
seem a little more familiar--
Mammals.
Despite people thinking that the Cretaceous was
all about dinosaurs, there were tons of mammals.
We find things that lived in the water like beavers today.
We see things that were running around in the trees
and even gliding and things that were living under the ground
and digging into the soil.
And you see mammals evolved a lot of characteristics
related to being able to move around at night.
These lifestyles may have been important in helping
mammals avoid the dinosaurs living alongside them.
They evolved a lot of different tools
to help them survive during that period--
fur, being warm blooded, even evolving big brains
and sensory structures that allow them to see at nighttime.
In fact, we may have dinosaurs to thank for the way mammals
look today.
After 150 million years, the dinosaurs
were wiped out by a massive meteor strike.
In their place, mammals became the dominant life
on planet Earth as they still are today.