Contents The Big the Bad and the Ugly Rocking the Boat Dimetrodon Ruthless Reptile Inostrancevia Cold-Blooded Killer Sarcosuchus Soaring Pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus Walking Whale Ambulocetus Bone Cruncher Andrewsarchus Killer Pig Entelodont Terror Bird Phorusrhacid Fangtastic Feline Smilodon Snapping Jaws Hyaenodon Timeline Uncovering the Past Index 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
The Big the Bad and the Ugly Everyone knows about the dinosaurs and how scary some of them were But did you know there were lots of other equally savage prehistoric creatures How about the crocodile that liked to dine on dinosaurs Or the bird that stood 8 feet 2 5 meters tall and used its 18-inch 46 centimeter beak like a hatchet Now can you imagine what might happen if they arrived back in today’s world Well you are about to fi nd out All life started in the sea and that’s where the fi rst animals evolved around 550 million years ago Some were pretty weird such as 2 5-inch 6 cm Opabinia right with its fi ve eyes and long grasping claw at the end of a long nose Pretty soon animals became ferocious About 475 million years ago there were massive predators such as sea scorpions and shelled creatures called nautiloids as large as crocodiles Eventually some sea animals evolved limbs and hauled themselves on to land One was Acanthostega below though it probably still kept close to water O pabinia Acanthostega Reptiles were the fi rst animals with backbones to live only on land Some grew to enormous sizes like the fearsome Sarcosuchus see page 12 Some evolved leathery wings and took to the skies One of the fi rst fl ying reptiles or pterosaurs was Eudimorphodon below The largest was Quetzalcoatlus see page 14 which hunted or scavenged on land Eudimorphodon 6
Mammals started evolving at the same time as dinosaurs and pterosaurs about 230 million years ago or even earlier Like the fi rst sea creatures they were mostly very small but after the dinosaurs died out mammals grew to massive proportions These big mammals were equipped with powerful jaws and muscles that made them very dangerous predators The saber-toothed cat Smilodon left and page 24 which lived until 10,000 years ago weighed up to 880 pounds 400 kilograms much more than any of today’s big cats And birds became gigantic and ferocious too Now you can meet mighty Smilodon along with terror birds see page 22 killer pigs below and page 20 and brutal reptiles Imagine if they came back to life to cause carnage and commotion If you’ve got the courage read on just be prepared for some bizarre and scary encounters between modern animals and prehistoric beasts Killer pigs 7 Smilodon
