00:00 [Music]
00:03 It was 200 years ago that quarry workers in the UK began to find giant bones under the ground,
00:08 and naturalist and theologian William Buckland first theorized the concept of dinosaurs.
00:14 Around 20 years later, the dinosaur nomenclature was finally officialized,
00:17 with over 2,000 species now being recognized since.
00:21 So how much more is there left to discover?
00:23 Recent finds in China have not only produced new and more complete fossils than ever before,
00:28 they have also changed previous conceptions of what some of these creatures looked like.
00:32 Some of the finds have included feathers and proto-feathers.
00:35 And just this year in Patagonia in Argentina,
00:37 paleontologists discovered the remains of quite possibly the largest plant-eating dinosaur to date.
00:42 Experts say the long-necked creature, now dubbed Argentinosaurus,
00:45 would have been around 115 feet long head to tail and weighed around 166,000 pounds.
00:51 Researchers are still finding new clues about why the dinosaurs disappeared as well.
00:56 It wasn't until the 1980s that experts finally theorized that an asteroid hit Earth 66 million
01:01 years ago and began their extinction. However, a study in 2022 added to that,
01:06 suggesting that a period of mega-volcanoes was the second hit of a one-two punch that did in the
01:11 dinosaurs. Simply put, there is seemingly no end to new discoveries with regards to the prehistoric
01:17 beasts.
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