New York has been the at the center of the action for millions of years now. Now, we're getting a glimpse of when mammoths trampled down 5th Avenue, sea scorpions were part of the prehistoric freak show on Coney Island and some of the world's first dinosaurs roamed where the New York Giants play football.
The city that invented the skyscraper has a long history of playing host to towering beasts. From the mammoths and mastodons that lived there 13,000 years ago to the bizarre sea creatures who called downtown home 420 millions years ago, we're digging deep into prehistoric Chicago.
Washington, DC, has always been a land of constant conflict and battles for supremacy. Thousands of years before it was the nation's capital, the city was patrolled by a predator that looked like a dog, yet was bigger than a grizzly. Tens of millions of years earlier, it endured an asteroid impact that wiped out all life. Earlier still, ferocious meat-eating dinosaurs stalked the suburbs and flying reptiles terrorized the skies over what is now the National Mall.
Denver is defined by the Rocky Mountains that arose from the earth 65 million years ago during the golden age of dinosaurs. It was in the Mile-High City that the perfect battleground was created for the t-rex and triceratops. It was also home to unusual early mammals like the marauding archaeotherium -- AKA, the Terminator Pig. Evidence has even shown that Denver holds the key to unlocking an ancient mystery about when humans first arrived in North America.
They say everything is bigger in Texas and that was true even in prehistoric times! It's a wild-west show of oversized armadillos, scimitar-toothed cats and the largest ocean-going reptile to ever exist -- the tylosaurus. A few miles west in Fort Worth, there were Texas-sized dinosaurs from the meat-eating brute acrocanthosaurus to his over-sized prey, the paluxysaurus, a creature so big it was named the Official State Dinosaur of Texas.
Los Angeles has not always just been the home to famous actors and wannabe starlets. Just a block away from the Oscar’s Red Carpet, saber-tooth cats once prowled until they were trapped in a pit of tar. Duckbilled dinosaurs basked in California’s famous surf until they were attacked by fast and agile super-predators. Long-necked sea creatures fought underwater battles, continental plates clashed, earthquakes rocked and volcanoes spewed all in the city of Angels.