Why are there no more mammoths? Who did the Tyrannosaurus rex hunt? And was the Neanderthal really an evolutionary dead end? To answer these questions, one would actually need to travel back to prehistoric times. However, thanks to the latest methods, paleontologists today can gain fascinating insights into the animal and plant worlds of past eras from fossilized bones, plant remnants, and even traces of ancient DNA, all without a time machine. This book presents some of their findings and explains, among other things, why birds are actually dinosaurs, how much truth there is in the saber-toothed cat Diego from the movie "Ice Age," and what our genes still reveal about our ancestors today.