Dinosaurs

For more than 150 million years, life on Earth was dominated by giant reptiles. Such as dinosaurs on land, winged pterosaurs in the sky and a range of sea monsters in the ocean. Find out about what they looked like, when and when they lived and what they ate.

Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic

Era, which lasted from 252 to

65 mya. This era is further

divided into the Triassic,

Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Dinosaurs died out at the end of

the Cretaceous period, around

65 mya. The earliest hominids

(the first members of the human

family) appeared around 4.4 mya.

Jurassic giants

Dinosaurs continued to evolve in the Jurassic and became the dominant life forms on land. Some grew to huge sizes, such as the theropod Archaeopteryx, took to the air.

Primates emerge

The era after the Mesozoic is called the Cenozoic era. It contains the Palaeogene period, in which primates, the mammalian ancestors of humans first appeared.