The Ultimate Guide

Sixty-five million years ago, a world that belonged to the dinosaurs suffered a cosmic catastrophe, obliterating the kingdom of Tyrannosaurus rex. For the sixty-five million years folllowing, the bones of the last king of the dinosaurs lay hidden. Then, at the turn of the 20th Century, scientists began to coax the first fragments from the badlands of western North America. They found a super-carnivore that stood eighteen feet tall and was forty feet from head to tail. Today, the bones of Tyrannosaurus rex allow us to encounter the greatest meat-eating machine of the prehistoric world, and T. rex has become the most famous of all the dinosaurs, an ultimate expression of savagery and power.

Not long ago North America was host to saber tooth cats, camels, mammoths and lions. Among these now seemingly exotic creatures, was the distant relative of the elephant: the mastodon. This story is launched from a backyard pond in Hyde Park, New York, where the most recent mastodon site was discovered. With the cooperation of some of today's leading paleontologists, learn how the mastodon evolved, how it migrated out of Africa and how it survived in the North American forests for roughly 3.7 million years. We'll show how it differed from its more famous cousin, the mammoth and we'll explore the controversy among the major theories explaining how and why this keystone species disappeared.