Prehistoric Monsters Revealed

Narrator:
Paleontologists and geologists attempt to envision prehistoric environments to better understand how they shaped their inhabitants, including the largest predator of all time. [Cut to a shot of a fossil skull with huge teeth] The conventional fictional image we have of dinosaurs is of terrifying creatures emerging from prehistoric graves to wreak havoc on modern civilization. [In a CGI rendering, the fossil skeleton turns into a living dinosaur, smashes out through the museum door, and charges out into traffic] The very thing that threatens humanity - overcrowding and overdevelopment - would make our world a challenge for dinosaurs, like the largest predator of all time: Giganotosaurus.

Kenneth Lacovara:
The rise of the mammalian megafauna wouldn't have been possible were it not for the extinction of the dinosaurs; and, to examine this idea, it's instructive to think about the idea of niche, a biological niche. You can think of a niche essentially as the job description of an organism.

Narrator:
The dinosaurs had taken all the good jobs during the Cretaceous Period. Their extinction made room for new blood.

Kenneth Lacovara:
We're not interested in just collecting fossils as trophies. We're interested in looking at these extinct organisms as a biologist would look today at a raccoon or a chimpanzee. We want to know how they lived, what they ate, who ate them.