This is a podcast from the children's radio station Fun Kids.

Listen on DAB Digital Radio across the UK or online at funkidslive.com.

Hello, welcome to a brand spanking new, fresh out of the sealed box episode of the Fun Kids Science Weekly.

My name's Dan. We're here as always really to discover the most amazing,

dangerous, wonderful and often just kind of plain weird things that are out there in the universe.

Today, you can find out how much sand there actually is in the entire world. We'll learn about

the Earth's most deadly snake. We'll talk to a man also whose job

it is to examine eruptions. What a way to earn your money. First, we're traveling back in time

to the age of the dinosaurs, though, and we're looking at the skies. Travel back in time to the

age of the dinosaur at the Natural History Museum.

Imagine going back in time, not 100 years or 1,000 years, but millions of years.

To the age of the dinosaur.

Welcome to the end of the Jurassic period, 145 million years ago.

As the Jurassic period came to a close and the Cretaceous period began, many new types of animal and plant life were evolving, and a new kind of creature was starting to take to the skies.

Birds. Watch out, something is swooping at us.

Wow, it's an Archaeopteryx, the first known bird.

Only 10 fossils of the Archaeopteryx have been found,

but they're important because they prove that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

However, they were very different to birds we know today.

The Archaeopteryx was the size of a crow.

Whilst they had feathers, they also had teeth, claws on their wings and long tails.

They also weren't great flyers, more likely to glide for short distances rather than flap about.

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