Last Killers

The third episode looks at the last generation of killer dinosaurs - carnivores that took killing to a new level.

By the end of the Cretaceous period - 75 million years ago - these gigantic and specialised hunter-killers had spread throughout the globe. In the southern continents, it was the powerful and muscular abelisaurids that reigned supreme, but it was the famous tyrannosaurids (or tyrant dinosaurs) that dominated in the north.

Whilst the northern daspletosaurus hunted in gangs, using its highly developed smell and hearing to take down opponents like the horned rhino-sized beast chasmosaurus, in the southern hemisphere the small-skulled majungasaurus reigned. And though the sharp-toothed majungasaurus was an efficient killer of the much smaller feathered rahonavis, that did not stop it from occasionally turning cannibal and hunting its own.