Ice Age Giants S01E01 Land of the Sabre-Tooth
#AncientEarth #Documentary #Dinosaurs #Prehistoric #Evolutionary
Sabre Tooth Tiger
The sabre-tooth tiger, more accurately known as Smilodon, is a prehistoric predator that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. It is not closely related to modern tigers, despite the common name.
Smilodon was part of the subfamily Machairodontinae, which includes various extinct saber-toothed cats.
These animals were characterized by their long, curved canine teeth, which could measure up to 12 inches in length.
Smilodon had a robust build, with a thick neck, broad chest, and short, well-muscled legs. This physique was adapted for ambush hunting rather than chasing prey over long distances. They would use their powerful forelimbs to grab and hold prey, then deliver a fatal bite with their saber-like teeth.
The sabre-tooth tiger's hunting style involved pouncing on its prey from the low branches of trees, plunging its canines into the neck or flank of its victim, and then withdrawing to a safe distance while the prey bled to death.
The sabre-tooth tiger is one of the most famous megafauna of the Pleistocene epoch, along with the woolly mammoth.
Fossil remains of Smilodon have been found in various locations, including the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, where many specimens were preserved.
The most well-known species is Smilodon fatalis, which was slightly bigger than the smaller Smilodon gracilis and the larger Smilodon populator.
It is important to note that the term "saber-toothed tiger" is an informal name for any large saber-toothed felid, and there were dozens of species within this group. They belong to the subfamily Machairodontinae, which is a different lineage from modern felids that left no living descendants.
Modern tigers are part of the family Felidae but belong to a different subfamily, making them "cousins" rather than direct descendants of sabre-toothed cats.
#AncientEarth #Documentary #Dinosaurs #Prehistoric #Evolutionary
Sabre Tooth Tiger
The sabre-tooth tiger, more accurately known as Smilodon, is a prehistoric predator that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. It is not closely related to modern tigers, despite the common name.
Smilodon was part of the subfamily Machairodontinae, which includes various extinct saber-toothed cats.
These animals were characterized by their long, curved canine teeth, which could measure up to 12 inches in length.
Smilodon had a robust build, with a thick neck, broad chest, and short, well-muscled legs. This physique was adapted for ambush hunting rather than chasing prey over long distances. They would use their powerful forelimbs to grab and hold prey, then deliver a fatal bite with their saber-like teeth.
The sabre-tooth tiger's hunting style involved pouncing on its prey from the low branches of trees, plunging its canines into the neck or flank of its victim, and then withdrawing to a safe distance while the prey bled to death.
The sabre-tooth tiger is one of the most famous megafauna of the Pleistocene epoch, along with the woolly mammoth.
Fossil remains of Smilodon have been found in various locations, including the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, where many specimens were preserved.
The most well-known species is Smilodon fatalis, which was slightly bigger than the smaller Smilodon gracilis and the larger Smilodon populator.
It is important to note that the term "saber-toothed tiger" is an informal name for any large saber-toothed felid, and there were dozens of species within this group. They belong to the subfamily Machairodontinae, which is a different lineage from modern felids that left no living descendants.
Modern tigers are part of the family Felidae but belong to a different subfamily, making them "cousins" rather than direct descendants of sabre-toothed cats.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Two and a half million years ago, life on planet Earth faced the dawn of a new era.
00:21The Ice Age.
00:23Now, we can go back in time, because out of the permafrost, from deep inside caves, and from hostile deserts, the astonishing remains of giant animals are emerging.
00:48How amazing to be one of the first people to see this ancient creature.
00:56The Ice Age was the last time such creatures would walk the Earth.
01:04A lost Eden with mammoths taller than any elephant, cats with seven-inch teeth, and some of the strangest beasts that have ever existed.
01:19I'm fascinated by what the remains of ancient animals can tell us about them and the world that they lived in.
01:28Using new scientific advances, we can reveal how they lived and why they died out.
01:36Come with me, back to the Ice Age.
01:48A world ruled by giants.
01:53The Great Ice Age was triggered by a combination of natural forces.
02:22natural forces, acting on a colossal scale.
02:27Continents moved.
02:30The planet shifted in its orbit.
02:34Earth was battered by a merciless cycle of freeze and thaw.
02:40The last freeze started around 80,000 years ago.
02:48A vast ice sheet marched down from the Arctic across a continent that today we call North America.
03:04known as the Laurentide Ice Sheet, it wiped out everything in its path.
03:15It advanced down over the continent and life retreated before it.
03:20No animals or plants could survive on its endless icy plains.
03:27It might seem like a catastrophe, but beyond the ice, incredibly, the continent saw an explosion of life.
03:36Making America the best place in the world to discover long-lost giants.
03:49I'm going south of where the ice sheet once lay, searching for megafauna, the great beasts of the Ice Age.
04:07Where else would you go for an encounter with the ultimate Ice Age celebrity?
04:19This is the territory of one of the most iconic and terrifying animals of the Ice Age.
04:25A place with a surprisingly deep past.
04:40This glittering city today, the home of movie stars and billionaires, is also a portal to a lost world.
04:48Here, we can step back in time and meet this awesome creature face to face.
04:55Smilodon Fatalis, a sabre-toothed cat, surveys her territory.
05:12Some of the richest hunting grains in the Ice Age world.
05:25There's something primal and nightmarish about these teeth.
05:34But exactly how they were used has been a mystery.
05:38You can't help but be impressed by this fantastic skull and these formidable teeth.
05:48But this construction presented Smilodon with a problem.
05:52These teeth are so long and thin that they're actually very vulnerable.
05:58If they were to get stuck in the sinews or the bone of a violently struggling animal,
06:04there's a real danger they could snap.
06:07It's certainly not a problem faced by any large predator today.
06:18The big cats of the African plains kill large prey by suffocation.
06:37Either by smothering or by crushing the windpipe.
06:48Remarkably, the canines of a lion rarely even break the skin.
07:02But Smilodon could not have killed in this way.
07:21Blair van Valkenburg has spent decades puzzling it out.
07:26Her evidence points to a method of killing unique to sabre-toothed cats.
07:36Their teeth were used for stabbing.
07:41What we think is that they went for the throat.
07:45Because there's a lot of structures in there that make you quite vulnerable.
07:50Such as your windpipe or the jugular vein or carotid arteries.
07:55These massive arteries that feed blood to the brain.
08:03But Blair needed to figure out how a sabre-toothed cat could safely deliver this stabbing deathblow.
08:16How does its skull compare with other big cats?
08:19A CT scan reveals that the temporal bone, where the jaw joins the skull, is incredibly thick in a sabre-toothed cat.
08:36Much thicker than in a lion or a cheetah.
08:39That means a chillingly powerful bite, and massive jaw muscles.
08:49To land that lethal bite, their mouths could open wide.
08:56Twice as wide as any lion.
08:58With those canines, they could drive these two things together, and then pull backwards.
09:18And take out a large amount of flesh.
09:22Making the animal probably bleed to death within minutes.
09:30A brutal technique that few animals could defend against.
09:35An American horse.
09:49To dispatch it, this cat must go in hard and kill quickly.
09:54It's at the moment of the kill, that the cat's teeth are at their most vulnerable.
10:03The secret to protecting them lies in its bones.
10:07Usually what we see, in association with having big canine teeth like that, in these kinds of sabre-toothed species,
10:19is their sort of over-muscled forelimbs.
10:21They have very heavy, strong forelimbs, like wrestlers.
10:25And big paws, too.
10:27Their paws are enlarged with big dewclaws here.
10:30And that they could grasp the prey and hold it steady.
10:33Hold one paw holding the head, one holding the body.
10:37And then apply this killing bite just where they need to put it.
10:40And thereby minimize the risk to themselves of breaking those teeth.
10:45With these incredibly powerful forelimbs, it would pull down its prey,
10:56before dispatching it with these terrifying teeth.
11:00Everything about a sabre-toothed cat, its teeth.
11:30Its killing technique, and its muscular body, point to one thing.
11:37This predator was designed to hunt large prey.
11:48During the Ice Age, sabre-toothed cats flourished right across the continent.
11:53So America must have been full of large animals for them to hunt.
12:07My next giant may not be as famous as its sabre-toothed predator,
12:12but for me, it's even more extraordinary.
12:18It inhabited the most spectacular part of America.
12:23I'm looking for Ice Age secrets in the desert landscape of the Grand Canyon.
12:29This creature left behind something far more revealing than just its teeth and bones.
12:38Hidden somewhere high up amongst these towering walls and spires is its lair.
12:58Nothro Theoriops Shastensis.
13:22Nothrotheriops Shastensis, the Shasta groundsleuth, as large as a grizzly bear.
13:42She walks on the sides of her feet, ponderous as she browses.
13:50But she has seven-inch-long claws, too dangerous, even for a sabre-teeth.
14:18With such a huge body to feed, she isn't really what you'd expect to find in a desert.
14:33Jim Mead is a world expert in groundsleuths. He'll help me track it down.
14:48Today in the Grand Canyon, a lot of the plants here are either poisonous, or like this jumping
15:04cholla cactus, covered in vicious spines.
15:11The hideous spines of the barrel cactus were even used by the Aztecs for sacrificing victims.
15:19A clue as to how the groundsleuth survived here lies within its lair.
15:34To find it, we have to retrace the animal's journey, right up into the high canyon walls.
15:43Are we nearly there yet, Jim?
15:47A long ways.
15:48As our eyes adjust to the gloom of the cave, I can't quite believe what I'm seeing.
16:14So, Jim, what is this? Is this what it looks like?
16:23This is just a pile of dung of a shasta ground sloth, an extinct animal of the Ice Age.
16:28And we have a whole pile of it here.
16:30I just find it utterly unbelievable that this ancient animal's feces are still here.
16:36I mean, that looks like a piece of relatively fresh dung which has just been dried out.
16:41Why on earth hasn't it rotted away?
16:44There's no water. It's a totally dry cave.
16:46And so, without the water, you don't get the decay. It's mummified.
16:50And it's preserved, and it's preserving a very unique record of this animal.
16:58You can see all these definite twigs. It's not a good digester.
17:02It's doing a very poor job at digesting, which is wonderful for us, because here's the data.
17:08It is incredible to be holding the remains of a meal eaten by this giant animal during the Ice Age.
17:20The dung reveals that the sloth's menu was richer than what's on offer today.
17:26There were also juniper and single leaf ash trees growing here.
17:31But it's still a big challenge for any digestive system.
17:43A clue as to how the ground sloth survived lies with its relatives.
17:48The ones that didn't go extinct.
17:51A tree sloth.
17:53She lives high up in the canopy of the South American rainforest.
18:00Dining on tough and toxic leaves.
18:06It will take her weeks to digest them.
18:09And for precious little energy.
18:15Which is why sloths are so terribly slow.
18:23The ground sloths of the Ice Age were adapted for their strange diets too.
18:35If you could peer inside a ground sloth, you'd see a huge fermenting gut.
18:41A shasta-grown sloth was basically a compost heap on legs.
18:51It could digest pretty much anything.
18:56The downside was a sluggish metabolism.
19:00Just like sloths today.
19:01But the sloth stung tells us a lot more than just what it ate.
19:11It's also a record of one species' struggle for survival during the Ice Age.
19:19So all of this that looks like sediment is in fact excrement.
19:26This is all done.
19:27This is all dry, preserved, done.
19:29And what you're seeing is the surface here is probably dating all in the neighbourhood of 20,000.
19:34Right.
19:35And you're seeing going back through time, down into different layers, further and further.
19:40We've obviously got some other animals here as well as ground sloths.
19:44There are tiny little pellets here too.
19:46So what are those?
19:47These little pellets would be pack rats.
19:49Little rodents that are also scurrying around in here.
19:52And yeah, we'll find a little bit of that.
19:54But most of this stuff, most of this material, that is still shasta ground sloth done.
20:0099% is shasta ground sloth right here.
20:03You get this pungent smell.
20:05And curiously, it's like a wine.
20:08The sweeter it is, it's older.
20:11This is old.
20:12Just by the smell, it's old.
20:15Do you ever think you've seen or smelled too much dung?
20:18Never.
20:19This is wonderful.
20:22At the back of the cave, the dung really piles up.
20:26And it's here that the beginning and the end of the shasta ground sloth story is written.
20:33So this is where we're starting to get deeper and deeper.
20:35Oh yeah.
20:36More and more time.
20:37It's really building up here.
20:38Yeah, it's all through here.
20:40Now this is the profile I really want to show you.
20:44This is incredibly deep at this point.
20:46Yeah.
20:47What we have is a metre and a half of almost pure shasta ground sloth dung.
20:53If we look at the bottom of the unit, so we're looking at about, oh say 40,000 years ago.
21:01The sloth dung is kind of telling us, this is a good time to be in the Grand Canyon.
21:06And then when we get to this point, right in here, now we're at 23,000 years old.
21:12And something is happening.
21:14Oh, so this has changed completely.
21:16Now we're down into what looks like these little pellets.
21:19Is that the pack rats again?
21:21Yeah, it's all pack rat, isn't it?
21:23And different plants.
21:25And then this is about 16,000 years old.
21:29These dates are really significant because this means that we're looking at the peak of the last ice age.
21:34And it seems that for some reason, ground sloths aren't here at that time.
21:39Well, that's precisely it.
21:40Something is going on during the full glacier.
21:50As the ice reached its maximum extent, ground sloths abandoned the Grand Canyon.
21:58It was too dry for their favourite plants.
22:05And the drop in temperature didn't help.
22:08Sloths, with their slow metabolism, would have struggled to keep warm.
22:15It's easy to imagine chaos as the ice age really began to bite.
22:26With those giant ice sheets descending over half the continent.
22:35But although the sloths suffered, other giants thrived during the ice age.
22:45None more so than one that used to stalk the badlands of Arizona.
23:02Back in the ice age, not everywhere was cold and dry.
23:06Large swathes of Arizona were covered in swamp.
23:12Home to an ice age giant that is possibly the weirdest mammal ever.
23:28So weird that scientists can't even agree quite what it looked like.
23:33A team from Arizona's Museum of Natural History has just found an impressive new specimen.
23:50The surrounding soil has been dug away and the creature encased in plaster, ready to be moved.
23:56Dave Gillette is obsessed with these animals.
24:13Dave, what are these creatures?
24:15These are animals called glyptodonts.
24:18They're known for their rigid shell.
24:20It's quite strange looking at it like this, all covered in plaster.
24:24How big is the specimen inside that?
24:26Oh, it's covered, it occupies almost the entire contents as far as we can tell.
24:30Right.
24:31So this is a, this is a large creature.
24:33Yes.
24:34And it's an upside down shell, so that it's belly up, so to speak.
24:39Strangely, most of the glyptodonts Dave has discovered have been found upside down.
24:49I can't wait to see what these creatures were like.
24:53But first, Dave must solve the puzzle of how to get this one out of the ground.
24:59This is all really exciting.
25:02We're going to move the A-frame out of the way and the glyptodont can start its journey.
25:07It's been here for two million years and it's just about to go on its travels.
25:15There we are.
25:17The only thing holding this two-ton lump of fossil and earth together is the fragile coat of plaster.
25:24Do you think that the weight is okay just on these 4x4s?
25:54I feel like, oh, happy day.
25:59Yeah.
26:03Goodbye glyptodont.
26:06This find will join the world's greatest collection of glyptodonts at the Museum in Mesa.
26:24Dave pieces together these specimens to get a better picture of this bizarre creature.
26:37Oh, Dave, these are fantastic.
26:39Are they all from Arizona as well?
26:41These are all from the same area where we just finished excavating.
26:46Is this a hand or a foot we're looking at here?
26:48No, these are probably digging the feet.
26:50We think that glyptodonts had a very strong digging motion.
26:55That's wonderful.
26:56And then what's this? Is this a tail?
26:57This is a tail.
26:59Each vertebra was protected by bony plates all the way around.
27:02Yeah.
27:03And, in fact, the tail could be a weapon.
27:05It's incredibly chunky, isn't it?
27:06It's amazing, yeah.
27:09And this is a vertebra. This is really odd.
27:12It's so peculiar because I'm seeing bits of anatomy that I kind of recognise, but it all seems to be a bit twisted and it's all very strange looking to me.
27:22But it's still a mammal, so you can recognise it as a mammal, even if it is strange.
27:28A very weird mammal.
27:29So, put all the bits together and what have you got?
27:36A bony shell with a belly that was covered in soft fur, an armoured tail and formidable claws.
27:48Just one crucial bit missing.
27:51What would the face of this glyptodont have looked like?
27:55Well, the face would have been very cheeky, fat on the side.
28:01The trunk would have extended from the nasal bones and extended for a foot or more.
28:07It had a trunk?
28:08I think it had a trunk. There's a lot of debate about that, but I don't see any other feeding mechanism for glyptodonts.
28:15And do you think the bony arrangement that we can see here looks like it would have supported a trunk as well?
28:22I think it does. I see muscle scars on the front of these descending processes.
28:27That's great. I mean, these are muscles which in us make us smile.
28:30That's right.
28:31But in the glyptodont they're about moving its trunk around.
28:33Well, maybe they could smile a little too.
28:37It's by far the oddest mammal I've ever seen.
28:41More like some sort of mythological creature.
28:47Like an enormous armadillo with a trunk.
28:54Even its teeth are peculiar.
28:58Look at this jaw. That's wonderful.
29:00This is spectacular. This is the left jaw.
29:02And these are the teeth.
29:04You see there are eight teeth.
29:06Yeah.
29:07All cheek teeth and no canines and no incisors.
29:10Oh, right.
29:11And each tooth has three lobes.
29:13I love it.
29:14You can see the grooves on the teeth and the ridges.
29:17So what were they eating with these teeth?
29:19Well, they were eating soft vegetation around the streams and lakes.
29:24These strange Christmas tree-shaped teeth were made to chew on aquatic plants.
29:30Dave has found another unusual creature alongside the glyptodont.
29:43The capybara.
29:45A giant rodent that still lives in the tropical swamps of South America.
29:56And in the Ice Age, it shared the Arizonan swamp with glyptodonts.
30:01So could they swim?
30:02I'm sure they could swim.
30:03I'm sure they could swim.
30:04I'm sure they could swim with other glyptodonts and capybara and other animals in the water.
30:16Unlike his furry neighbour, this glyptodont is a challenge for any predator.
30:22Slow moving, perhaps, but armoured like a tank.
30:36A standoff between two males.
30:39Each one is a ton of muscle and solid bone.
30:43Vanquished, the loser struggles to right himself.
31:07If a glyptodont died in the water, its bloated body would turn belly up and eventually sink down to the riverbed.
31:23Which could explain why so many are found upside down.
31:28So what turned the deserts into swamp?
31:47The answer lies with the impact the Great Ice Age had on the world.
31:52Over the last two and a half million years, there hasn't just been one Ice Age, but around 20 of them.
32:08Fossils reveal that every time the ice sheet grew, the Arizonan marshes expanded and the number of glyptodonts rose.
32:26And when the ice shrank, their numbers fell.
32:31The ice sheet was acting like a vast mountain range, two miles high.
32:51Big enough to divert moisture-laden Pacific winds, pushing them south.
32:58Watering the desert and turning it into a lush wetland paradise.
33:20Across the continent, the Ice Age created new worlds for other giants to exploit.
33:28And there's one animal in particular that benefited.
33:34The greatest giant of them all.
33:43Hidden in the sea mist, on a coastal plain just north of San Francisco, some large rocks stand tall.
33:51Sentinels that still bear witness to the wonderings of an Ice Age leviathan.
34:08State archaeologist Breck Parkman has spent decades examining every square inch of these rocks.
34:15Look at this.
34:16It's polished.
34:17It is polished.
34:18And what do you think has caused it?
34:19Is it weathering?
34:20No, actually I think this is all from animals.
34:21Every bit of this is from animals.
34:22Large mammals often need a good scratch.
34:23Perhaps to dislodge unwanted guests like ticks.
34:29Breck believes that over a long period of time, animals have polished these rocks to a shine.
34:51Have you tested this hypothesis?
35:00I have.
35:01We've worked in the lab and we've taken samples of rocks that were known to be polished by wind and by water and by faulting.
35:08And it doesn't compare.
35:11And we've actually looked at something like three or four dozen other ideas, some of which are crazy, you know.
35:16What happens when kelp moves against the rocks?
35:19And what happens with guano on the rocks?
35:21Yeah.
35:22And what happens here, and you have to see it though, and you're seeing it today, you have to see it to see the selectivity.
35:27Yeah.
35:28Where's the polish and where isn't it?
35:29And it's these knobs and these overhangs.
35:31It's up to a certain height, doesn't go higher.
35:33Some surfaces have been worn mirror smooth.
35:40Oh, that's amazing.
35:45That's a massive area of polish.
35:54But there's one very revealing bit of polishing.
35:57So wait until you see this rock.
36:04What have we got here?
36:07Well, we have more polish.
36:09But look at this.
36:10Look at how high this polish is.
36:12Oh yeah, that's a bit too high for a sheep, I would say.
36:15And look at this.
36:16This is just the beginning.
36:17This polish goes right on up.
36:18Right on up, as high as I can reach.
36:21This is close to 14 feet here.
36:23Oh, so that's too high for a horse or a cow as well.
36:27You could have a horse sitting on the shoulder of a cow and still not do that.
36:31That's much too high for domestic livestock.
36:34So this is caused by an animal which no longer exists in North America.
36:39So what is it?
36:40I think it's a mammoth.
36:42And 14 feet is actually the shoulder height of a really large Colombian mammoth.
36:46That's just fantastic.
36:48Isn't it?
36:49A Colombian mammoth had the same characteristic shape as the woolly mammoth with a domed head.
37:02But a Colombian was much larger and virtually bald.
37:08It's tusks were magnificent.
37:14Much longer than an elephant's.
37:32The herd arrives at a favourite stopover.
37:36A chance to exfoliate and scrape off some parasites.
37:53Amongst these rocks you can feel the presence of those ice age beasts.
37:59It's almost as though the ghosts of the mammoths are still with us.
38:03But where were these migrating Colombian mammoths actually going to?
38:10Surely they didn't come all this way just for a scratch.
38:16Once again the ice age holds the answer.
38:22As more and more water froze, there was less to fill the oceans.
38:35At the height of the last ice age, the global sea level would have been 120 metres lower than it is today.
38:42So here on the coast of Northern California, the land would have extended out almost to the horizon.
38:49The great bay of San Francisco became a vast verdant valley.
39:14From the Golden Gate, the land stretched 26 miles out to sea.
39:27What is now a lonely coastal outcrop, back then, was a milestone in a lost land.
39:40The Colombian mammoths themselves contain clues as to what this place was like.
39:52Their teeth are like millstones, perfect for grinding up two tonnes of grass every week.
39:59This land was a vast prairie.
40:16Today, nearly all of the mammoths' coastal grassland lies beneath the waves.
40:24But there is one fragment left.
40:33This is Point Reyes, and it is a tiny fragment of what was once a vast coastal prairie.
40:45This vegetation is perhaps the closest we can get to what was out there on the coastal plains.
40:51This is bunch grass, and it's incredibly tough stuff.
40:56It positively thrives on being grazed right down to the ground, and then it sprouts back again.
41:03And amongst the grasses, we've got beautiful wildflowers.
41:07There are irises and buttercups amongst them.
41:10They look fantastic, but they taste horrible.
41:14And that is an adaptation against being grazed.
41:19So what we've got here is a heavily grazed landscape.
41:23Today, the grazers are cattle.
41:26Back in the Ice Age, it was the hungry megaherbivores, the horse, the bison and the mammoth.
41:34Just one Ice Age grazer survives here, the Thule elk.
42:01Such fleeting glimpses of the Ice Age might have been all we had, were it not for one truly amazing discovery.
42:24One which means that we can rebuild Ice Age America with all of its creatures, great and small.
42:39I need to return south.
42:42This is just so strange.
43:02There seems to be a road pouring down the side of this hill.
43:06And this is asphalt, but it's natural asphalt.
43:10And at the top of it, I'm hoping to find some sticky tar coming up out of the ground.
43:15Now this looks a bit more like it.
43:25I don't really want to step down here because I suspect that this could be quite sticky.
43:29So let's prod it and see.
43:32Yeah, look at that.
43:35We've got some lovely sticky tar coming up there.
43:38Natural asphalt or tar is very similar to heavy crude oil.
43:48In parts of California, it wells up through cracks in the earth.
43:58Deposits like this drove California's oil boom.
44:04But in 1913, workers at the Rancho La Brea drilling site discovered more than they bargained for.
44:12Thousands of fossils.
44:14Extinct giants that had become trapped in the tar during the Ice Age.
44:21Rancho La Brea became the most sensational Ice Age fossil site in the world.
44:28And important new discoveries are still being made.
44:34In the vaults, there are over three million specimens representing more than 600 different species.
44:49including the star of the show.
44:53There are hundreds of sabre-toothed cat Smilodons in this collection.
44:58In fact, as we walk down this corridor, everything down here on my left and my right,
45:04it's all Smilodon as far as the eye can see.
45:08Smilodon, Smilodon, Smilodon.
45:12All the way to the end of this corridor.
45:15And then we turn around and we're into Herbivore Alley.
45:20We start with two species of bovid.
45:23This is bison antiquus.
45:26And then, on the right here, we are into equus.
45:32Horses.
45:33We have two species of horse at La Brea.
45:36Here is the western horse.
45:41And these are its toe bones which bore the hooves.
45:45And then, we have three species of sloth.
45:51And these are perhaps my favourite animals actually at La Brea after the sabre-toothed cats.
45:57And right towards the end of this corridor, we're going to find Paramylodon or Harman's ground sloth.
46:07Here it is.
46:09And these are its finger bones.
46:11And just imagine the claws that then extended from them.
46:15Quite formidable.
46:17And we've got two species of the camel family.
46:20Over here, these are the neck vertebrae of yesterday's camel.
46:26And that's quite impressive, but we haven't got onto the four species of mustelage.
46:32That's weasels and badgers.
46:33And the three species of rabbit.
46:36The two species of deer.
46:38Two species of antelope.
46:39Two species of elephant.
46:40One of tapir.
46:41And one of peccaries.
46:43And that's not even counting the small mammals.
46:52Each creature is helping to populate that empty Ice Age landscape.
47:10And the tar keeps on revealing more about the land of the sabre-toothed cat.
47:19A few years ago, the Museum of Art over there, next to the tar pits, decided it wanted an underground car park.
47:25But there are tar pits over there as well.
47:28So the paleontologists were called in.
47:30And rather than rush through an excavation there and then, they took the sediment out on block and brought it back over here in these massive wooden crates.
47:39And now they're carefully excavating each one of them.
47:43The place feels more like a trailer park than a paleontological dig.
48:00Each box is excavated grain by grain by its own resident paleontologist.
48:15Laura.
48:16Oh, hi.
48:17Hello.
48:18Hi.
48:19Welcome to box one.
48:20Laura has been here for nearly a year.
48:34What are you actually excavating here?
48:35It's a real mass of bones.
48:37It really, really is.
48:38It's just kind of a tangled mess at this point.
48:40But I've got baby bison, maxilla, so in front of his face.
48:44And for more teeth, I've got dire wolf, lower jaw.
48:49Yeah.
48:50So far, she's got through two metres of bone deposits.
48:54It's painstaking work.
48:55But it's fun.
48:56I get to dig for buried treasure for my job.
48:58Yeah.
48:59This whole project, Project 23, what's the most exciting thing that's emerged so far from it,
49:03do you think?
49:04Well, one of my favourite things, anyways, is from box one, we have, we kind of nicknamed
49:09it our entire family of saber-toothed cats.
49:11So far, just from this one deposit right here, we have at least three adults, three sub-adults,
49:18teenagers, and four separate saber-toothed kittens.
49:21Kittens.
49:22Like you can see right here.
49:23I know.
49:24Let's see, I have saber-toothed kitten, Ulna.
49:26So that's one of the forearm bones.
49:28We've got more saber-toothed kitten, we have a thoracic vertebrae, middle of his back.
49:33And let's see, just over here, it's half of a pelvis.
49:36This one's from an adult saber-toothed cat.
49:39In fact, there's this one day that I actually found three separate saber-toothed kitten sabers
49:44all in one day.
49:45I must admit, that's probably one of my favourite days here.
49:48The kitten's remains are being scrutinised by La Brea saber-toothed cat expert, Chris Shaw.
50:03These are the most recent saber-toothed cat bones that we have gotten from the project here.
50:10And these kittens are fantastic.
50:12We've got their little milk-teeth sabers.
50:15Can I pick that one up?
50:16Yes, you may.
50:18These are the real thing.
50:19Wow.
50:20And you'll notice, too, if you rub your finger along the edge of that,
50:25it's actually serrated and very sharp.
50:28Ooh.
50:29That's like a knife blade.
50:30Exactly.
50:31These animals could puncture skin, much like the adults.
50:36You can feel these.
50:37I can barely see these serrations.
50:39They're really tiny, aren't they?
50:40But I can certainly feel them rubbing my finger along it.
50:42Yes.
50:43And these teeth grow in and were actually erupted at the time of birth.
50:50It's unlikely that the kittens used their saber teeth to kill.
51:05Their serrated teeth were like little steak knives, ideal for scavenging after mum had made the kill.
51:15The sheer number of specimens here give scientists a chance to understand not only the anatomy, but the behaviour of these extinct cats.
51:28And one find in particular is transforming our understanding of how sabre-toothed cats behaved.
51:35It's a disfigured pelvis.
51:38One that shows signs of a condition that I've seen before in humans.
51:44This is one of my favourite specimens.
51:47What you have is a very, very nasty injury and a massive, massive infection.
51:53This, I was going to say, this looks to me like septic arthritis.
51:56This looks like the type of bone growth that you get around a joint which has become infected.
52:01It's exactly that.
52:02And the femur itself, the thigh bone, is really, really worn down.
52:07That's just quite shocking.
52:08I mean, this would have been an animal which was limping.
52:10Right, exactly.
52:11This animal wouldn't have been able to run after prey.
52:14And yet we can say, looking at this, that actually this has been a long-standing condition.
52:19Absolutely.
52:20For all of this bone to have grown to this extent, this animal has survived for months and possibly even years with this going on.
52:28That's absolutely correct.
52:29And that's the premise of my idea that these animals were, in fact, social animals.
52:35That would enable this animal to survive because the rest of the group would bring in the food and nurture this animal by letting it feed at kills.
52:50So not only did this giant cat possess daggers for teeth, it's likely that it hunted in groups, much like lions today.
53:05Sabre-toothed cats must have been utterly terrifying.
53:11A herd of Colombian mammoths is making its annual migration from the coast.
53:21A young male wanders away from the herd.
53:26Straight into the path of a pack of sabre-toothed cats.
53:34Baby cats.
53:35I am not sure if they are directly from the stock in the world.
53:37I am a pig.
53:38I am not sure if you want to be careful.
53:39That is so.
53:40Very.
53:41Very.
53:42Very.
53:43Very.
53:44Very.
53:45Very.
53:47Very.
53:48Very.
53:49Very.
53:51Very.
53:52Very.
53:53Very.
53:55Very.
53:56Very.
53:57Very.
53:58Very.
53:59Very.
54:00Very.
54:01Very.
54:02Very.
54:03But the tar makes it impossible for them to escape.
54:23This is their last meal.
54:33The tar has preserved dramatic stories of Ice Age giants, but it also holds clues to
54:45the world that they lived in.
54:51Hidden amongst the giant bones are much smaller ones.
55:02And it's these micro-fossils that can tell us just why this place was such a happy hunting
55:09ground for sabre-toothed cats.
55:17Tiny animals like snails and beetles are very sensitive to climate.
55:24So these species are the best indicators of what the lost Ice Age environment was really
55:32like.
55:33And what we find is that this area of Southern California was in fact cooler and wetter and
55:40more lush.
55:41A beautiful temperate parkland of open areas and woods populated by these magnificent animals.
55:54And what we find is that this area of Southern California is a beautiful place for America.
56:11And what we find is that this area of Southern California is a beautiful place for America.
56:23For America, the ice age was actually the golden age of megafauna.
56:42But meanwhile, in the rest of the northern hemisphere, the ice sheets were going to have a very different impact.
56:53The most bitter struggle that the ice age animals would face was not in North America, but here on the other side of the Atlantic, in the mountains and plains of Europe and Siberia.
57:14Here, the ice age hit with brutal force.
57:19Next time, I witness the struggle to survive.
57:28Deep within a cave in Transylvania, grizzly remains tell of a spectacular fight to the death.
57:35And the woolly mammoth faces its own battle for survival against a new and cunning predator.
57:46Difficult and dangerous.
57:56Simon Reeve is rounding up, believe it or not, camels in the dusty heart of Australia, next on BBC Two.
58:03And including what a TV chef would never say, Mock the Week looks back at food and drink at 10.
58:08The End
58:17The End
58:19The End
58:20The End
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