The Real Age of Monsters - It Wasn't Dinosaurs | Documentary for Sleep

Dim the lights and settle in for a science documentary unlike any other. Tonight, we aren't exploring deep sea creatures or hunting for sea monsters. Instead, we journey back to the Permian Period, a time before the dinosaurs, to witness a strange truth: this was the only time in history the land was scarier than the ocean.

This is a documentary history of survival, following our ancestor, the Cynodont, as it tried to survive a world ruled by prehistoric monsters. On land, predators like the Gorgonopsid (a saber-toothed killer) and the Therocephalians (beasts that may have been venomous) reigned supreme. Our ancestor's only choice was to flee to the coast—a strangely quiet deep ocean.

Why was the ocean safe? This underwater documentary segment goes beyond the blue to explore a "Monster Gap." A previous extinction (the Capitanian) had wiped out the weird ocean creatures and apex predators of the sea. Where unexplained animals should have been, there was only a buffet of Trilobites and Ammonoids.

But this safety was a trap. The real monster wasn't flesh and blood; it was the planet itself. The massive Siberian Traps eruption triggered The Great Dying, the worst mass extinction of all time.

Relax with this calm documentary as we witness the ocean turn into a 40°C (104°F) acidic hot tub, and finally, a toxic, unbreathable "Purple Ocean" that killed the land monsters themselves. This is the story of the evolution of mammals and how our ancestors survived by hiding in burrows while the world above burned.

This is the perfect documentary for sleep. If you are looking for science for sleep or documentaries to fall asleep to, let this 250-million-year-old story of survival guide you into rest.