Name: Most Dangerous Birth In Prehistoric Oceans | Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) | BBC Earth Science
Uploaded: 2025-11-21T13:26:24.000Z
Duration: 4 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The Ophthalmosaurus are starting to give birth.

Most sea reptiles return to the land to lay eggs, but not Ophthalmosaurus.

This frees the adults from the need to crawl out of the water and has allowed them to evolve their fish like shapes.

A single female has between two and five pups.

But since they are air breathers, the young must be born tail first.

Otherwise they would drown in the tin it takes them to escape from the mother.

The newborn pups have just a few seconds to reach the surface and take their first breath.

From the moment they are born, the little pups are vulnerable.

Even adult Ophthalmosaurus will eat the offspring of others to increase the chance of survival for their own pups.

The only real safety is amongst the crags of coral.

Birth is a dangerous time for the mothers too.

This female is trying desperately to expel her unborn offspring.

Fighting for air, she stays near the surface.

These predators have acute hearing and the sound of splashing betrays an animal in distress.

As perfectly evolved killing machines, sharks were patrolling the oceans long before marine reptiles appear.

After 20 minutes her exertions are exhausting her.

She is having to breathe more frequently.

Suddenly something lurking in the gloom scatters the shar.

At 150 tons, it is the largest and most powerful carnivore ever to live on the planet.