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In this episode of Amazing Animals, Henry the animated lizard hops into his time machine to travel back millions of years. Expecting dinosaurs to rule the world, he is surprised to find armadillos, ostriches, sharks, and many other animals that are still around today. Many of them, however, were much larger. The prehistoric crocodile grew up to about 60 feet long, or twice as long as today's croc. Henry also learns about tree ferns--the world's first forest--and how the lowly salamander was an ancestor of the dinosaurs. Birds also were around before and after the dinosaurs--indeed they have some similar features, and the first bird, archaeopteryx, was a close, contemporary relative of the dinosaurs.
All this information has been passed down to us through mammoths preserved in ice, fossilized skeletons, and--shades of Jurassic Park--insects encased in amber (early dragonflies had the wingspans of pigeons!). This 24-minute video also shows the Komodo dragon, who certainly has the features of a dinosaur, and the present Serengeti plain to give us an idea of how prehistoric plains might have appeared. Prehistoric Animals has a lot of good footage of today's animals as well as interesting facts about their relatives, but look elsewhere if you want dinosaurs. --David Horiuchi
