, and I'm here in the Nature Garden at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

And I am surrounded by flowers.

[light music] Now, you might not know this, but flowers first appeared during the Mesozoic era, the age of dinosaurs, but they weren't there the whole time.

Back in the Jurassic time period, Stegosaurus never saw a flower.

Allosaurus never saw a single flower.

There were no flowers.

But then in the Cretaceous, the first flowers appeared, and they were beautiful, and they changed the world.

Plants form the basis of any ecosystem.

♪ ♪ Plant-eating dinosaurs eat the plants.

Meat-eating dinosaurs eat the plant-eating dinosaurs.

So it's those plants that keep the whole thing going, plants that capture energy from the sun.

So during the Cretaceous time period, when flowering plants started to take over the world, so to speak, the dinosaurs changed with them, and the dinosaurs started to eat all these flowering plants.

So the next time you're outside and you smell a flower, or just look at their beautiful colors, remember, the very first flowers appeared during the age of dinosaurs.

♪ ♪ - Hello, folks!

It's me, the Conductor.