Prehistoric animals

📖 In short

Prehistoric animals are the animals that lived before people invented writing, more than five thousand years ago. Some look like animals today, and some are very strange and unlike any animal we know, such as dinosaurs, flying reptiles and mammoths.

🤩 Did you know?

The oldest known fossils are of bacteria about 3.5 billion years old.
Brachiosaurus was about 25 meters long.
Some ancient dragonflies had wings as long as your arm!
Cockroaches, crocodiles and turtles lived in the time of the dinosaurs and still live today.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Life began in the sea

The first living things were tiny and lived in the sea. Then fish appeared, then some animals left the water for land, and amphibians and then reptiles appeared.

🔍 The age of dinosaurs

Dinosaurs lived on land for millions of years, while at the same time huge reptiles swam in the seas and other reptiles with wings flew in the sky.

💡 The age of mammals

After the dinosaurs vanished, mammals grew bigger and spread out, and huge animals appeared like the mammoth, the saber-toothed cat and the giant sloth.

🎯 Continents move

About 250 million years ago all the continents were one huge piece of land, then they very slowly split apart. That's why we find fossils of the same animal on continents far apart today.

📸 More pictures

The evolution of animal life: the oldest animal fossils date back about 700 million years. Over the ages animals became more complex and new kinds appeared. At certain times in Earth's history, some animal groups, like reptiles and mammals, grew large and varied and became the most important.

🧩 Test yourself

1 Where did life on Earth begin?

2 Which of these animals lived in prehistoric times?

3 The oldest known fossils are of bacteria about ?? billion years old.

4 Which picture shows “Prehistoric animals”?