After Dinosaurs, ‘Prehistoric Beasts’

Meet a menagerie including gastornis, a giant bird that eats horses the size of house cats; basilosaurus, a whale with hind legs; and doedicurus, spike-tailed kin to the sloth, anteater and armadillo.

No, this isn’t some bizarre holiday special hosted by Anne Heche and Michael Jackson. It’s the Discovery Channel’s “Walking With Prehistoric Beasts” (Sunday, 7 p.m.), sequel to last year’s smash, “Walking With Dinosaurs.”

Like “Dinosaurs,” this three-hour special was co-produced with the BBC, and it follows a similar format, bringing extinct creatures vividly to life with the help of digital animation from the Framestore team, and animatronics, or fancy models and puppets, by Crawley Creatures. Even in throwaway effects, such as stones smashing the camera lens, the producers have perfected a kind of playful realism.

Narrated by Stockard Channing, “Beasts” picks up the saga of the animal kingdom 49 million years ago, an evolutionary blink after the demise of the dinosaurs, and tracks the rise of mammals through the last ice age 30,000 years ago. In scripted reenactments of the way life might have been in various eras, six chapters explore the rituals and the constant fight for survival among an ever-changing cast of creatures.

This virtual natural history lesson is not just painless, it’s a pleasure, all the more so for the obscurity of these beasts lurking in the historical shadow of the dinosaurs.

With a few exceptions, such as the saber-toothed cat and the woolly mammoth, these are strangers to most viewers. This time, Discovery and the BBC have beaten Steven Spielberg to the punch.

By the time we get to the final chapter, chronicling the harsh winter journey of a mighty mammoth herd, we understand more clearly not just the bonds seemingly shared by all mammals but also the human delight in being entertained as well as informed.