Once, while traveling to Australia and whiling away the absurdly long flight by reading Bill Bryson’s Down Under travel book In a Sunburned Country, I startled nearby passengers by laughing out loud – suddenly and almost convulsively – when Bryson claimed to have learned about a certain kind of local poisonous jellyfish by “browsing through a fat book titled, if I recall, Things That Will Kill You Horridly in Australia, volume 19.” Well, tonight’s Nova could be volume 20. Or volume 1, since it goes back millions of years in Australia’s fossil records, telling us of Dinosaurs Down Under that make Tyrannosaurus rex seem like a prehistoric pussycat. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Australian kronosaurus. Check local listings.

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