570 vanished lives

324Mesozoic

A broad flat head occupied nearly the full width of its front body.

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.

329Mesozoic

A long neck, dense teeth and paddle-like arms suggest a semiaquatic raptor.

330Mesozoic

Forward-projecting front teeth may have hooked small slippery prey.

331Mesozoic

A small plant eater combined low armor with an unusually deep jaw.

332Mesozoic

Four long tail feathers displayed rather than powering flight.

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.

336Mesozoic

A waterbird close to ducks lived before the non-avian dinosaurs vanished.

349Mesozoic

Four net-veined leaflets belonged to a seed fern rather than a true fern.

350Mesozoic

Silica replaced fallen trunks to create today's multicolored petrified forest.

351Mesozoic

A broad skull and massive body made it one of the largest known frogs.

352Mesozoic

A giant amphibian still occupied cold rivers where crocodyliforms were uncommon.

353Mesozoic

Two lower-jaw tusks passed through openings in the palate when the mouth closed.

354Mesozoic

It had a broad head and shortened trunk but lacked the full jumping machinery of modern frogs.

356Mesozoic

The adult tail was gone, but the trunk remained more primitive than in modern frogs.

357Mesozoic

A broad head, short trunk and long tail show the salamander plan already well established.

369Mesozoic

Its semicircular skull was extraordinarily broad and flat.

370Mesozoic

A giant temnospondyl still occupied river ambush niches in the dinosaur era.

372Mesozoic

A narrow snout was built to snap at fish in water.

374Mesozoic

It had a caecilian-like body but still retained four tiny legs.

375Mesozoic

A skull more than two meters long belonged to one of the largest freshwater amphibian predators.