The Dinosaurs! — Season 1

"The Monsters Emerge" re-creates a skeptical world's reaction to the astonishing fact that unknown giants lay buried in our distant past. See how the chance discovery of the first dinosaur tooth in England in 1820 sparked a worldwide mania for "dragon bones." Go West as a pair of hot-tempered American scientists wage a long-running "dinosaur war" to dig up bigger, better specimens. Set off for the wild, remote Gobi Desert with a real-life "Indiana Jones", as Roy Chapman Andrews makes his landmark discovery of the first-ever dinosaur eggs. And, with a modern expedition en route to the Gobi once more, learn the intriguing questions still to be answered about the amazing animals we call dinosaurs. 

"Flesh on the Bones" invites you to solve a fascination detective mystery with clues scattered over 200 million years of history. Where did dinosaurs live? How fast did they move? And, most intriguing of all, were they hot- or cold-blooded? Investigating such long-vanished "suspects" requires considerable scientific sleuthing. But gradually the astounding clues add up. Computer comparisons with modern animals reveal the triceratops could probably outrun a pursuing tyrannosaur. The "switchblade" claws on the feet of one specimen indicate hot-blooded hunting techniques. And dinosaurs living in frosty Alaska apparently migrate south in winter. While many mysteries remain, every new discovery adds more "fresh" to our continually changing picture of dinosaurs. 

In "The Nature of the Beast," you'll join scientists to explore the puzzling question of how dinosaurs originated, and how these amazingly diverse and successful animals came to dominate the entire planet for over 140 million years. Traveling to the high plateaus of Argentina, you'll glimpse the recently discovered remains of the earliest known dinosaur. In Nova Scotia, you'll learn of a cataclysmic prehistoric extinction that destroyed the dinosaurs' competition and ushered in the age of the Terrible Lizards. And, in the American West, you'll encounter the maiasauras, or "good mother lizards" --creatures that radically changed our concept of the nature of dinosaurs by showing that some of them lived in nesting colonies where they fed and protected their young. 

"The Death of the Dinosaur" probes one of the most perplexing questions in all of science. With an unrivaled record of world domination lasting over 140 million years, how was it that these marvelously adaptable, highly diversified creatures could become extinct? Beginning in 1980, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son set out to prove that a massive comet or meteor was to blame. Other scientists disagree, citing such alternative scenarios as violent dinosaur disease. Whatever the answer, the mass extinction of dinosaurs did occur--and left a world ripe for habitation by a small, shrew-like mammal that would one day evolve into a new world-conquering species: homo sapiens.