570 vanished lives

240Mesozoic

Huge bony eye rings supported vision under pressure and may have helped track soft prey in dim water.

268Mesozoic

A deep skull, serrated teeth and powerful hind limbs placed it atop food webs before dinosaur dominance.

269Mesozoic

Two huge backward-curving shoulder spikes reinforced rows of protective armor.

270Mesozoic

Paired forward-curving brow horns occur only in some individuals, suggesting maturity or sexual display.

281Mesozoic

Two distinct tooth shapes gave this early pterosaur its name.

282Mesozoic

A toothed beak with matching crests helped seize slippery fish near the water surface.

283Mesozoic

An enormous branching crest crowned some adults, but there is no fossil evidence for a sail between its prongs.

284Mesozoic

A vast sail-like skull crest dominated the profile of this large toothless pterosaur.

285Mesozoic

More than a thousand bristle-like lower teeth formed a filter basket.

286Mesozoic

Flippers, a downturned tail fin and reduced armor transformed a crocodile relative into a pelagic swimmer.

287Mesozoic

A skull nearly two meters long and huge teeth formed an apex-predator bite apparatus.

288Mesozoic

More than sixty neck vertebrae formed an exceptionally long neck, while gastroliths filled the abdomen.

289Mesozoic

Only a few million years after the great extinction, ichthyosaurs had already reached whale-like scale.

290Mesozoic

A reduced shell and giant front flippers made it one of the largest Cretaceous sea turtles.

326Mesozoic

A turtle-like shell protected a placodont with a broad filtering or scraping mouth.

327Mesozoic

Chisel incisors and crushing palatal teeth formed a shell-opening toolkit.

328Mesozoic

A hammer-shaped snout scraped algae before needle teeth filtered the fragments.

333Mesozoic

A long tail and advanced skull combine features once separated between pterosaur groups.

334Mesozoic

Most of its enormous head crest was soft tissue used as a visual signal.

447Mesozoic

A short square snout, leaf-shaped teeth and armor belonged to a likely plant-eating crocodyliform.

448Mesozoic

A row of exaggerated dorsal appendages has been called scales, feathers or gliding surfaces.

449Mesozoic

Its main flight membrane stretched between extraordinarily long hind legs.

450Mesozoic

A complete shell coexisted with neck spikes and an inability to retract the head.

451Cenozoic

A shell nearly two meters long came from hot wetlands soon after the dinosaur extinction.