This is CBSi in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Thomas Halliday, a paleontologist and author

writing magically and convincingly of other lands, journey through Earth's extinct worlds.

This is before the asteroid, before the death of the dinosaurs,

is called the Cretaceous Period, 125 million years ago. And I learned from Thomas to call

dinosaurs knuckle walkers what does that mean Thomas?

Nuckle workers and I suppose what you're talking about is is sort of some of the

titanesaurian sort of yeah that titanesaurus that was a knuckle walker and yeah they

picture it for me well I mean the reason I call the knuckle workers is because they um through their evolution when they're attaining such large sizes

in order to have this kind of pillar like limb, one of the things that

Titanosaurs in particular do is they lose the bones that are the same as our

fingers, they lose their digit bones, and so their front feet are essentially just highly sort of modified hand bones.

They're working on the ends of their knuckles.

So that's what I meant by that way.

Oh, we, you write that this is the heyday of non-avian dinosaurs.

The titanesors is 17 meters long, very large.

And these are herbivores.

They're eating the the gener the the prosperity of the earth.

What do the what does the forest look like at this time? My note says Cyprus trees.

Yeah, this is a time, so this is back in the early Cretaceous, this particular site,

a wonderful environment in Liaoning in China.

And at this time, flowering plants hadn't got going.

So we're not seeing, or rather they had begun to exist.

...