Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure

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[Woman] The National Science Foundation,

where discoveries begin.

[Man Narrating]

Beneath the earth we know...

lie other worlds...

hidden from sight...

lost in time.

But sometimes we can

glimpse a lost world...

through remnants of the past.

We definitely got a skull.

Lower right. What do you think?

It's hard to say.

[Narrator] This story begins

with a discovery of unidentified bones.

Depositional environment?

A team of paleontologists will try

to figure out whose bones they are...

and what world they came from.

So we got a time frame.

That's a start.

[Narrator]

They were discovered in Kansas-

mostly farmland today.

But once, Kansas lay

beneath a vast sea.

It was 82 million years ago...

during the age of the dinosaurs.

[Roaring]

But there was another world

of giants on Earth...

a submerged world...

where enormous reptiles ruled seas

filled with incredible creatures.

These...

were the most dangerous seas

of all time.

No living thing was safe.

The great marine reptiles

disappeared long ago...

and time has buried their world.

But any of us might still

encounter a sea monster.

- [Dog Whining]

- Buddy!

[Whining Continues]

[Whining Continues]

[Narrator] As if from nowhere,

the distant past returns.

The scientists hope to find not just

the fossil of an ancient creature...

but a story recorded in its bones.

Grab your tools.

Rain washed some of the chalk away

and exposed it.

This is great.

Okay-

[Narrator]

They recognize it as something special...

a rare Dolichorhynchops-

a dolly, for short.

It was a marine reptile

of the late Cretaceous...

a little bigger than a dolphin...

and a fast swimmer.

To unravel any story

the bones may tell...

the investigators will draw on

everything they know about marine reptiles.

Yeah, it looks like Hesperornis.

[Narrator] Their fossils have been found

around the world over decades.

It could have been over 30 feet long.

The matrix materials we've got in the lab

seem to indicate-

[Narrator] These finds will help the team

piece together the story of the dolly...

and picture the moment in time

when it swam in the sea.

In many ways, the dolly's world

was far different from ours.

The climate was warmer.

Sea levels were higher,

and more of Earth was submerged.

This dolly would have lived

in a vast inland sea...

that cut North America in two.

Marine reptiles were also found

in the waters around Europe...

which was a scattering of islands...

and throughout the world's oceans.

In time they died out...

and sea levels retreated...

exposing vast areas of seabed.

Fossils from the ancient oceans

turned up on every continent.

A discovery in the Australian outback...

offers clues to how the dolly's life

may have begun.

It seems to be laying out in

a pretty consistent pattern.

are the bones of juveniles.

[Narrator]

So many small bones in one area...

suggests that marine reptiles

gathered in protected shallows to give birth.

And in North America,

that's how the story of this dolly...

begins to unfold.

Imagine that one of

the creatures in the shallows...

is a pregnant Dolichorhynchops.

She gives birth to a male...

and colored like his mother...

and a female...

darker in color

with light patches below her eyes.

And it's her life we begin to follow.

She and her brother

are air breathers.

Instinct tells them what they have to do

in their first minute alive.

From the beginning...

the little female and her brother practice

skills they'll need one day...

when they'll have to leave the safety of the shallows

for the dangerous seas beyond.

If she survives the perils to come...

she'll return here one day

and have young of her own.

Already she finds

competition for food.

There's the Hesperornis...

a bird that can't fly

and has a beak full of sharp teeth.

And the Styxosaurus...

a distant cousin of the dolly's...

with a supersized neck.

An adult can reach 35 feet in length...

more than half of it neck.

Its shape makes it

a slower swimmer...

but it's great for catching fish.

The little dolly soon comes across

creatures that move...

by pumping jets of water

from their shells.

They're called ammonites...

and they thrive in the ancient sea.

They have rock-hard armor

and perhaps another defense.

Swim too close,

like the little female...

and get a face full of ink.

But that doesn't stop

a young Platecarpus...

when it wants a snack.

Ammonites were once abundant.

Their fossils have been uncovered often...

even by a road crew in Texas.

Ammonites.

A lot of'em.

Ammonites.

A lot of'em.

[Narrator]

There were many kinds of ammonites...

and we know

when most of them lived...

so their fossils are like markers in time.

Identify an ammonite and you can date

other less common fossils nearby.

That helps place dollies

in the long history of marine reptiles.

It began some 250 million years ago...

in the Triassic period...

with land reptiles

that moved into the sea.

They developed webbed feet,

then flippers.

Some had elaborate armor.

Into the Jurassic,

they continued to evolve.

To see at great depths...

some had eyes

the size of dinner plates-

top predators

who grew immense and powerful...

reaching their peak

in the late Cretaceous...

near the end of the dinosaur age...

the very time

when the Dolichorhynchops lived.

Months have passed.

The female and her brother

are now juveniles...

but they're still

in the safety of the shallows...

and unaware of the huge predators

in the sea beyond.

For now, they are mastering the art

of catching their favorite prey-

herring-like fish called Enchodus.

Then one day, everything

changes for the dollies.

Perhaps it's a change of seasons...

that causes the Enchodus

to head out to sea on a migration.

The dollies must follow

their main source of food.

And that means the young female

and her brother...

must now set out

on the journey of their lives...

trailing their mother

from the shallows...

out into the Western Interior Sea.

It's about the size

of the Mediterranean...

and only a few hundred feet deep...

but somewhere ahead

are enormous predators.

We know because...

where those predators once swam...

the layered earth holds their remains...

as if a vast graveyard.

Exposed to wind and rain...

it gradually reveals what's within.

A remarkable discovery was made

by Charles Sternberg and his sons...

pioneering fossil collectors

in the American Midwest.

I covered it so nobody else

would notice and disturb it.

Ah. Yeah.

Skull looks like some kind of tylosaur.

Big one.

Levi, be sure to look over there.

[Narrator]

It was a creature like this...

the dollies might encounter

in deeper water...

waters filled with dangers.

The Tusoteuthis was a massive hunter...

like the giant squid of today...

up to 30 feet long

and abundant in the inland sea.

It was too big to be attacked

by the Platecarpus...

who settles for smaller prey.

Platecarpus itself was fierce...

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