Documentary, Museum Alive
David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive is a 2014 British documentary film. Written and presented by David Attenborough, it aired on Sky One on New Year's Day 2014.
The documentary was filmed at the Natural History Museum, London, and uses CGI imagery to bring life to several of the extinct animal skeletons in the museum, including Archaeopteryx, the giant moa and Haast's eagle, Gigantopithecus (contrasting prevailing expert opinion; presented as bipedal and more hominin than pongine), the dodo, Glossotherium, Smilodon, Gigantophis, Ichthyosaurus and the London-based replica of the famous Diplodocus skeleton, Dippy. #NaturalHistory
#Museum #Documentary #DavidAttenborough
David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive is a 2014 British documentary film. Written and presented by David Attenborough, it aired on Sky One on New Year's Day 2014.
The documentary was filmed at the Natural History Museum, London, and uses CGI imagery to bring life to several of the extinct animal skeletons in the museum, including Archaeopteryx, the giant moa and Haast's eagle, Gigantopithecus (contrasting prevailing expert opinion; presented as bipedal and more hominin than pongine), the dodo, Glossotherium, Smilodon, Gigantophis, Ichthyosaurus and the London-based replica of the famous Diplodocus skeleton, Dippy. #NaturalHistory
#Museum #Documentary #DavidAttenborough
Category
đź“š
LearningTranscript
00:00:31The Natural History Museum.
00:00:38One of the most popular of all London's attractions.
00:00:43Sometimes it gets so crowded
00:00:45that it can be quite difficult to see the exhibits
00:00:49as closely as you might wish.
00:00:51Ladies and gentlemen, the museum is going to be closing in five minutes,
00:00:55so please make your way towards the exits. Thank you.
00:01:00So it's a great treat if somehow or other
00:01:03you can manage to look around
00:01:06when all the other visitors have gone.
00:02:26Some of the creatures here you might, if you were lucky, have seen in the wild.
00:02:33But there are certain ancient animals that we'll never see with our own eyes.
00:02:43Because they're extinct.
00:02:54And among them are one or two mysterious, not to say suspicious characters,
00:03:00that I would like to examine as they were when they were alive.
00:03:05It's a big place.
00:03:21There are 70 million or so specimens here, I'm told.
00:03:25And the first I want to look at right now is way up on the very top floor.
00:03:31This, some might say, is the most scientifically important and valuable specimen in the whole of the museum.
00:03:45It's a fossil called Archaeopteryx.
00:03:48And it was secured from the museum by the first director, Professor Richard Owen, back in 1862.
00:03:56Getting it wasn't easy.
00:03:57There was a lot of international competition and there was a certain amount of skullduggery.
00:04:03And it certainly cost a small fortune.
00:04:07But what kind of creature was Archaeopteryx when it was alive?
00:04:11It had two long leg bones, so it must have stood upright.
00:04:26A bony tail and a long neck.
00:04:31Its head had bony jaws packed with teeth like a reptile's.
00:04:36And its arms had three elongated fingers, each ending with a claw.
00:04:44So you might think it was some kind of strange, spindly-armed, upright-standing lizard.
00:04:53Except for one fact.
00:04:59There is evidence of more than just bones on its slab.
00:05:07Feathers.
00:05:18Archaeopteryx lived some 150 million years ago, long before the appearance of true birds.
00:05:25Those feathers on its arms certainly enabled it to glide.
00:05:32But that's not all.
00:05:36It had powered flight.
00:05:50Marks on the bones show that there were enough muscles attached to them to enable it to flap.
00:05:56Not only that, a recent scan of its skull showed that its brain would have given it the senses
00:06:06and reactions that are needed for accurate control in the air.
00:06:11This creature was half reptile, half bird.
00:06:15It was the first proof that in prehistory, there were intermediate forms that link the big,
00:06:20very different groups of animals that we know today.
00:06:36But while Archaeopteryx could certainly fly,
00:06:39it could also clamber up tree trunks and along the branches like a tree-living reptile,
00:06:44thanks to those clawed fingers.
00:06:52There were insects flying around at that time.
00:06:59And Archaeopteryx's teeth show that it was a hunter.
00:07:03And this is Professor Richard Owen, the man who acquired that fossil and built this museum.
00:07:28Although he disagreed with Darwin's views on evolution,
00:07:33he was one of the great scientists of his time,
00:07:36and he had a particular flair for interpreting fossils.
00:07:42In 1839, a huge thigh bone was sent to the museum from New Zealand.
00:07:49Owen deduced from its internal structure that it must have belonged to a bird.
00:07:54If so, he must have been a giant.
00:07:59The Maoris of New Zealand had stories of giant flightless birds
00:08:03that had once roamed their islands,
00:08:05but Europeans had dismissed them as myths.
00:08:09But eventually, Professor Owen acquired enough bones of these huge birds
00:08:14to put together a complete skeleton of one of them.
00:08:17The Maoris, in their legend, had called it a moa.
00:08:35And Professor Owen, in his researches,
00:08:38had proved that it once had existed.
00:08:41But was it the largest bird that had ever lived?
00:08:45And Professor Owen, in his history,
00:08:47and he was only one of them all.
00:08:49He was only one of them when he gave birth to him.
00:08:54He was only one of them.
00:08:56He was only one of them when he saw a giant philosopher.
00:08:58And that's the only one that he saw a giant zombie,
00:08:59but was only one that he saw a giant priest.
00:09:00But what I saw saw a giant giant buddy of the human being.
00:09:02And that's the only one of them in his work.
00:09:04And the whole thing, that was a giant vampire.
00:09:06Oh, it was a giant giant bitch.
00:09:08And you know why?
00:09:10He was only one of them in my life.
00:09:12The whole thing that was really difficult to do is to do.
00:09:15There were several different species of moa, but this one was the biggest.
00:09:29It stands three meters tall.
00:09:35But is this really what it looked like when it was alive?
00:09:39You can tell how an animal holds its head from the junction between the skull and its neck.
00:09:49If that is underneath the skull, then its neck would have been upright.
00:09:53But this moa's neck joint is at the back of the skull,
00:09:58so it must have held its neck more horizontally, like this.
00:10:09So, was the giant moa the biggest bird that has ever existed?
00:10:34So, was the giant moa the biggest bird that has ever existed?
00:10:39Well, if it craned up its neck, it was almost certainly the tallest.
00:10:45You might think that such a gigantic bird would have no enemies in the remote and isolated forests of New Zealand.
00:10:57You might think that such a gigantic bird would have no enemies in the remote and isolated forests of New Zealand.
00:11:03Well, there's also a Maori legend of a huge predatory bird, an eagle, that existed at the same time, and what is more, there are bones to prove it.
00:11:15Well, there's also a Maori legend of a huge predatory bird, an eagle, that existed at the same time, and what is more, there are bones to prove it.
00:11:29This colossal bird was nearly twice as heavy as today's most powerful eagle.
00:11:49Bringing down a giant mower must have been a huge task.
00:11:53They, too, were strong and heavy.
00:11:56But the eagle had powerful eyesight.
00:12:09A beak the size of a butcher's cleaver.
00:12:21And razor-sharp talons as big as the claws of a tiger.
00:12:26The Greek for grappling hooks is half-axe.
00:12:30And that word gives this bird its name.
00:12:38This is Harpagonis.
00:12:40It was a deadly predator.
00:13:01It was the largest eagle that has ever existed.
00:13:10And it lived in the same forests as the moas.
00:13:29We know that Harpagonis preyed on moas because moa skeletons have been found with holes stabbed through their pelvic bones that exactly match the grasp.
00:13:39The eagle's claws.
00:13:44It was probably even strong enough to cling to a moa's back with one foot while it slashed at its victim's neck with the other.
00:13:52But it looks as if this moa is going to escape.
00:14:04For now.
00:14:05As well as its millions of specimens of animals and plants, the museum also has huge and fascinating archives.
00:14:10scientific journals from all over the world, letters from explorers, even posters and handbills, if they have anything to do with natural history.
00:14:15In the 19th century, when Professor Owen was in charge of this museum, the museum was in charge of the museum.
00:14:20New and extraordinary things were turning up from all over the world.
00:14:21New and extraordinary things were turning up from all over the world.
00:14:25And Professor Owen was very keen that his museum should have the best of them.
00:14:31He secured the Archaeopteryx from Germany, the Moas from New Zealand, but sometimes, really,
00:14:34the most important things were in charge of the museum.
00:14:35The museum was very keen that his museum should have the best of them.
00:14:40In the 19th century, when Professor Owen was in charge of this museum, new and extraordinary things were turning up from all over the world.
00:14:49And Professor Owen was very keen that his museum should have the best of them.
00:14:54He secured the Archaeopteryx from Germany, the Moas from New Zealand, but sometimes, really strange things turned up on his very doorstep.
00:15:03And there were certainly lots of very odd creatures being exhibited around London in Victorian times.
00:15:13This print shows an extraordinary monster that was being displayed in Piccadilly.
00:15:19An American showman called Albert Koch was charging a shilling a head to have a look at it.
00:15:24Professor Owen decided to investigate.
00:15:27He felt sure that something was wrong with it,
00:15:31but nonetheless he was intrigued.
00:15:34And he bought it.
00:15:36When he'd got it back to his museum, he was able to examine it in detail.
00:15:41It was certainly gigantic and bigger than anything else he had in his museum at the time.
00:16:02Koch, the showman, had dug up the bones from a farmer's field in Missouri
00:16:08and maintained that in life the animal had stood nine metres long and almost five metres tall.
00:16:15There were claims that this was a fearsome predator that uses extraordinary tusks for stabbing its victims,
00:16:24presumably by swinging its head sideways.
00:16:27Well, I'm sure Professor Owen would have had something to say about that.
00:16:33He must have realised that these blunt, rounded ridges on these huge molar teeth would be very effective at grinding up twigs and fur cones and rough forest vegetation,
00:16:48but they lack the sharp blade that you need to slice through flesh.
00:16:54This is not the jaw of a carnivore.
00:16:58It soon became clear that Koch had increased the size of his monster skeleton
00:17:03by adding extra vertebrae, ribs and even blocks of wood.
00:17:09The Missouri leviathan was a fraud.
00:17:15So Owen removed all the extra bits.
00:17:28And then he put the real bones back together in their true form.
00:17:34Finally, he detached those astonishing tusks and put them back in the correct way.
00:17:44It seems obvious now, but in life they had pointed in much the same direction as those of a modern elephant.
00:18:04And so, here today stands not Koch's leviathan, but Owen's mastodon.
00:18:11A vegetarian relative of the elephant that lived 12,000 years ago in North and Central America.
00:18:19It may have decreased a bit in size, but it's still an astonishing animal.
00:18:25Our understanding of the mastodon is a lot more accurate today, thanks to Professor Owen.
00:18:48But it was not the only creature in this museum to be the victim of misrepresentation.
00:18:53This poor old bird is a dodo.
00:19:01It once lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
00:19:06And it's almost certainly the first animal species that human beings actually exterminated in historic times.
00:19:14And so now we talk about being as dead as a dodo.
00:19:21But in spite of its fame, this one is a fake.
00:19:27Its feathers come from a goose, its feet are modelled on a turkey, and its beak, I suspect, is plaster.
00:19:36The museum can be forgiven because no skin or feathers of the dodo survive.
00:19:46Its image was influenced by pictures like this one, painted by a 17th century Dutch artist, Roland Savory.
00:19:53But he had never seen a living dodo and based his image on accounts by seafarers.
00:20:02I've often wondered whether dodos actually look like that.
00:20:06But unfortunately, they'd all disappeared before anyone could get a good look at them.
00:20:11Until now.
00:20:25This funny, dumpy creature is how the bird is usually represented these days.
00:20:30But I've seen quite a lot of flightless birds over the years, and this one doesn't quite ring true.
00:20:45An examination of the way its thighs join its pelvis has shown that in life it actually stood much more upright.
00:20:54We now know that its feathers were probably a lot fluffier than in that painting.
00:21:07We also now know that it was related to the pigeon.
00:21:11And some experts suggest that it made a pigeon-like call.
00:21:16Doo-doo, doo-doo.
00:21:18Which gave the bird its name.
00:21:24The dodo probably fell on fruit.
00:21:28There was a lot of it on the island.
00:21:30I'll try him with a bit.
00:21:32Come on.
00:21:37What do you make of that?
00:21:41Ow!
00:21:43That's a very powerful beak.
00:21:45In fact, it may well have been adapted for crushing shells and crustaceans for the sake of the calcium.
00:21:52And there's a female.
00:21:55Maybe she is another reason why they had such large beaks to show off with during courtship.
00:22:15And here comes a rival male.
00:22:17He could be another reason for having a huge beak to fight with in disputes over nest sites.
00:22:26Until now, no one has ever seen the dodo egg, so no one knows how big it was.
00:22:40After the night, who knows?
00:22:41After the night, who knows?
00:22:42After the night, who knows?
00:22:43After the night, who knows?
00:22:44After the night, who knows?
00:22:45After the night, who knows?
00:22:46After the night, who knows?
00:22:47After the night, who knows?
00:22:48After the night, who knows?
00:22:49After the night, who knows?
00:22:50After the night, who knows?
00:22:55After the night, who knows?
00:22:56After the night, who knows?
00:23:02After the night, who knows?
00:23:03After the night, who knows?
00:23:09After the night, who knows?
00:23:11After the night, who knows?
00:23:12After the night, who knows?
00:23:13After the night, who knows?
00:23:14After the night, who knows?
00:23:19Science has revealed the truth behind many a myth and discovered some creatures that
00:23:27are so odd as to be scarcely believable.
00:23:34There's one story that is still remarkably persistent.
00:23:41Back in 1951,
00:23:43a famous Himalayan explorer and mountaineer, Eric Shipton,
00:23:47came across some footprints across a high snowfield
00:23:51that looked as if they'd been made by some kind of giant ape.
00:23:57Shipton's Sherpa companions had no doubt about what had made them.
00:24:01A yeti, an abominable snowman.
00:24:11Well, there is one small, insignificant-looking specimen
00:24:16in the storage vaults down here
00:24:18that could perhaps explain those prints.
00:24:25It was found in a shop in Hong Kong
00:24:28that sold Chinese traditional medicines.
00:24:31It was a molar tooth of some kind of ape-like creature,
00:24:46except that it was huge.
00:24:48The museum has only got a fragment.
00:24:51This is it.
00:24:52But here's a cast of a complete one,
00:24:56and it's six times the size of one of ours.
00:25:00It was given the name Gigantopithecus,
00:25:04a giant ape.
00:25:06After that discovery, one or two more teeth were discovered,
00:25:09but nothing much until, eventually,
00:25:12a piece of the lower jaw was found.
00:25:14The original is now in America.
00:25:16This is a cast.
00:25:18But here is the lower jaw.
00:25:21If this animal had a skull
00:25:23with the same proportions as those of a gorilla,
00:25:26its complete skull would have been this big.
00:25:30This was a true monster.
00:25:33This was a true monster.
00:26:05So we know a huge ape did exist, Gigantopithecus.
00:26:29He could well have stood three metres tall, in which case it would have been eight times as heavy as I am.
00:26:38And if you're as heavy as that, you don't spend much time climbing in trees because they won't support you.
00:26:44So the likelihood is that his arms are quite short and he walked upright.
00:26:52He was by a beetle.
00:26:56Let me get out of the way.
00:26:57Let me get out of the way.
00:27:10An upright animal has its head on the top of its spine, as I do, and if that head is
00:27:32to be well balanced, it's better not to have a long muzzle, but a rather flat face.
00:27:40So if I were to observe Targandipithecus and it stared back at me, I suspect I'd find its
00:27:48look rather unnervingly familiar.
00:28:10Gigantipithecus is commonly thought to have died out several hundred thousand years ago,
00:28:19but sightings of the yeti continue to be reported, so is it possible that some kind of giant ape,
00:28:27maybe even Gigantipithecus itself still survive somewhere out in those remote Himalayan mountains.
00:28:34The Gigantipithecus tooth isn't the only intriguing specimen down here in the storerooms.
00:28:53This, a piece of dung. Looking at it, you might think it had dropped to the ground only yesterday.
00:29:05It was found in a cave in Patagonia.
00:29:10And with it, a piece of skin like this, covered in a very coarse, bristly hair.
00:29:20And on the underside, mysterious white bone nodules, as those a kind of armour.
00:29:32No known creature alive today has armoured hide like this.
00:29:37If it still survived, it would be a truly extraordinary discovery.
00:29:42So, at the end of the 19th century, explorers and scientists started a search for it.
00:29:54In fact, the dung and the fur appeared to be recent
00:29:57only because there'd been, in effect, freeze-dried in that ancient cave.
00:30:02The creatures themselves had died out some 10,000 years ago.
00:30:07But explorers did find their skeletons.
00:30:15They were giant sloths that lived not in trees, as modern ones do, but on the ground.
00:30:23And this one had immense claws.
00:30:28What could it have used them for?
00:30:37These grand sloths are probably spent many years on the Bedford
00:31:04These ground sloths probably spent most of their time on all fours, but nonetheless they
00:31:10were perfectly capable of rearing up on their hind legs, and when they did that, they probably
00:31:18stood about three metres tall, which was as tall as a grizzly bear, if not taller.
00:31:25But I don't think this one is going to use its claws on me.
00:31:41That dung made it clear that these creatures are vegetarians, so they doubtless use those
00:31:46claws for ripping up plants.
00:31:51But it's been discovered recently that they use them for something else as well, something
00:32:04that seems rather surprising for animals of their great bulk.
00:32:21They dug burrows.
00:32:28They dug burrows.
00:32:35Huge excavations like this have been found all over Patagonia and we know they were made
00:33:02by giant sloths because scratches on the walls of the burrows exactly match their claws.
00:33:10Such immense burrows must have been excellent places to take refuge.
00:33:17And the giant sloths may well have had need of them, because there was a truly ferocious
00:33:22predator living alongside them, a great cat with immense sabre-shaped teeth.
00:33:40Smilodon.
00:33:41Smilodon.
00:34:02in California.
00:34:05In general shape, it was somewhat like a lion,
00:34:08but more muscular and much heavier.
00:34:12And those sabre teeth were really sharp.
00:34:15No wonder the giant sloths needed burrows in which to take refuge.
00:34:32You might think that Smilodon would have caught its prey as a lion often does,
00:34:46by chasing it, leaping on it at speed, and then throttling it,
00:34:50suffocating it with a bite to the neck.
00:34:58But Smilodon stalked its prey.
00:35:02Creeping quietly across the plains until it got really close.
00:35:17And then it pounced.
00:35:33Smilodon couldn't throttle its prey with those huge teeth,
00:35:37and they were too brittle to slash.
00:35:39They would shatter if they struck bone.
00:35:42Instead, the animal would have first used its great weight to pin down its victim.
00:35:54Then it would have used its sabres like blades to slice open the soft flesh of its victim's throat.
00:36:01But these terrifying hunters had a rather touching side to their characters.
00:36:10Tigers today are solitary hunters,
00:36:13and when one gets too old to hunt successfully, it dies.
00:36:17But skeletons of really elderly sabre-tooths had been discovered.
00:36:24Which suggests that not only did Smilodon hunt in packs,
00:36:28but when members of the family were too old to hunt for themselves,
00:36:32they were allowed to take a share of the kill.
00:36:35The museum is full of creatures that appear terrifying,
00:36:54but which no doubt, if you knew them better,
00:37:01would prove to have quite a charming side to their characters.
00:37:07But there is one here that would, I think, chill everyone's blood.
00:37:12This is a vertebra from the backbone of a modern snake.
00:37:31It was a python.
00:37:32And we know exactly how long it was because it was measured when it was alive.
00:37:37It was 21 feet long, 7 meters.
00:37:41This, however, is a similar bone from the spine of a fossil snake.
00:37:51And if this was 20 feet long, how big was this?
00:37:56Certainly 30 feet, 10 meters, 11 meters.
00:38:00It was a monster.
00:38:03But what did it live on in those far distant times?
00:38:11Maybe if I follow it, I'll find out what it ate.
00:38:27No.
00:38:28The earth was furious.
00:38:32No, the earth was furious.
00:38:45The earth was fenced…
00:38:46Science calls this snake gai kantofis,
00:38:48and it was truly immense.
00:38:52Certainly big enough to swallow me.
00:38:55But would it have eaten human beings?
00:39:12It might well have done if we had both been around at the same time,
00:39:16but it lived 40 million years ago
00:39:18and had become extinct long before human beings appeared on Earth.
00:39:26So maybe it preyed on dinosaurs?
00:39:31Well, no.
00:39:34Dinosaurs are even older than Gigantophis
00:39:38and disappeared some 25 million years before it evolved.
00:39:42In that case, what about mammals such as sheep or deer?
00:39:54No.
00:39:56At least, not modern mammals like these.
00:40:00The early mammals were rather different from the kinds we know today.
00:40:03This is a model of a prehistoric elephant
00:40:13that was unlucky enough to wander about the planet
00:40:16at exactly the same time as Gigantophis, about 40 million years ago.
00:40:21But how could Gigantophis tackle one of these?
00:40:38Well, it didn't use venom to kill its prey.
00:40:44We know from its massive size that it must have been a constrictor.
00:40:48Constrictors, having seized an animal with their jaws,
00:40:54wrap their coils around their prey and squeeze so hard
00:40:58they stop their victim's heart and it dies within a few minutes.
00:41:01I wonder if he realises that his dinner tonight is a fibreglass model.
00:41:02I wonder if he realises that his dinner tonight is a fibreglass model.
00:41:24I'll leave him to it.
00:41:25There are specimens of animals here from every corner of the earth.
00:41:46But it was much closer to home, on the south coast in Dorset,
00:41:50that a group of amateur Victorian fossil hunters
00:41:53discovered these amazing fossilised creatures.
00:41:56But what kind of animals were they?
00:41:57They clearly lived in the sea,
00:41:58because seashells are found in the sea.
00:41:59But it was much closer to home, on the south coast in Dorset,
00:42:03that a group of amateur Victorian fossil hunters
00:42:05discovered these amazing fossilised creatures.
00:42:10But what kind of animals were they?
00:42:23They clearly lived in the sea,
00:42:24because seashells are found alongside them in the rocks.
00:42:30They had bony paddles, not fins like fish,
00:42:35and huge eyes protected by a ring of plates.
00:42:40Those Victorian pioneer scientists,
00:42:43led by Professor Richard Owen,
00:42:45worked out that they were too old to be mammals
00:42:48and were certainly not fish.
00:42:51They were reptiles.
00:42:52Owen and his friends called them Ichthyosaurs,
00:43:02fish lizards.
00:43:22Now it's got skin and flesh on it,
00:43:26you can see how remarkably similar it is to today's dolphin.
00:43:31It's got the same streamlined silhouette,
00:43:35same pointed jaws,
00:43:37it's air-breathing,
00:43:39even gives birth to live young.
00:43:43But surely an ancient Ichthyosaur
00:43:45couldn't be as advanced as a modern-day dolphin.
00:43:48OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR COLD OR CO
00:44:18Dolphins are mammals. If this was, reptiles.
00:44:22Very, very different groups. They're not at all closely related.
00:44:26And yet, they both have very similar body shapes.
00:44:32They're a remarkable example of what's called convergent evolution.
00:44:37Two groups of unrelated animals that have evolved similar bodies
00:44:41to suit the same environment.
00:44:44But there are some differences.
00:44:51Dolphins beat their tails up and down like their cousins, the whales.
00:44:56Aethiosaurs, as is clear from their fossils, had tails like fish
00:45:01that beat from side to side. And dolphins only have two flippers,
00:45:07whereas aethiosaurs had four.
00:45:09So, is it possible that aethiosaurs were as fast in the water
00:45:16and as agile as dolphins, if not more so?
00:45:20I wonder who would win in the competition?
00:45:22One kind of dolphin, spinners,
00:45:44can leap from the surface of the water and spin in the air.
00:45:48Maybe the ethiosaurs could do the same.
00:45:54Aethiosaurs'
00:46:03We know that ichthyosaurs lived and evolved on this planet
00:46:25for many millions of years more than dolphins have done so far.
00:46:29So, maybe ichthyosaurs would have won the competition after all.
00:46:34Who knows?
00:46:48While the ichthyosaurs and other marine reptiles ruled the seas 150 million years ago,
00:46:54another group of reptiles dominated the land.
00:47:00They lived long before big mammals, let alone human beings.
00:47:06There were hundreds, probably thousands of different kinds,
00:47:10and they came in all shapes and sizes.
00:47:14They are perhaps the most famous and dramatic of all prehistoric creatures,
00:47:21and they were first identified and named here in Britain.
00:47:26They were the dinosaurs.
00:47:37Thousands of people come here every day to look at their amazing skeletons
00:47:42and to imagine what they must have looked like and sounded like when they were alive.
00:47:51It's hard to imagine a time when the world didn't know about dinosaurs.
00:48:12But until relatively recently, nobody knew they had ever existed,
00:48:17let alone that they once ruled the world.
00:48:23The story of their discovery starts in the 1820s,
00:48:27when a doctor named Gideon Mantell, living on the south coast of England in Sussex,
00:48:35picked up something odd in a sandstone quarry.
00:48:38And this is what he found.
00:48:45It's clearly a tooth of some kind.
00:48:47This is its outer surface.
00:48:49And in shape, it's very like the tooth of a living lizard, such as an iguana.
00:48:54Which is why the animal it belonged to came to be called Iguanodon, Iguana Tooth.
00:49:04And with it were a number of other bones.
00:49:11They were the hips and back legs of some kind of giant reptile.
00:49:17More of them were discovered,
00:49:18and soon they were enough to get some idea of what the whole animal had looked like.
00:49:25One odd little bone seemed to have nowhere to go,
00:49:29so the reconstructors put it on the end of its nose,
00:49:33making the animal look like some kind of reptilian rhinoceros.
00:49:38It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
00:49:45So, a great fossil hunt started in the quarries of Sussex.
00:49:50And eventually, the bones of several different kinds of big animals were discovered.
00:49:56They were brought here to the museum.
00:49:59Professor Owen examined them,
00:50:01and he decided that they should belong to a completely new kind of animal.
00:50:05An animal he called a dinosaur.
00:50:09A terrible lizard.
00:50:11In due course, more complete skeletons of Iguanodons were discovered,
00:50:18and it became possible to reconstruct them with greater certainty.
00:50:26Iguanodon could stand upright.
00:50:28It had small arms and was over 25 feet, seven meters tall.
00:50:35And that horn on its nose...
00:50:38was actually a spike on its thumb.
00:50:41Before long, new and even bigger species were being unearthed all over the world,
00:50:53from the instantly recognizable three-horned Triceratops
00:50:57to the sensational Tyrannosaurus rex.
00:51:00These astounding beasts have inspired and captivated not only scientists,
00:51:10but writers, artists, and filmmakers for almost two centuries.
00:51:14But it was Professor Owen, here in the Natural History Museum,
00:51:22who first identified them.
00:51:25And his work has been continued here ever since.
00:51:34This is the laboratory where the museum prepares its fossils for study and for display.
00:51:44It's here that they painstakingly removed the excess rock
00:51:50to reveal the fossils in all their extraordinary detail.
00:52:01This is the fossilized egg of a dinosaur, one of the first to be discovered.
00:52:07And it was found close to some bones of a sauropod dinosaur.
00:52:11Sauropods, this is the model of one,
00:52:15were gigantic vegetarian dinosaurs that wandered around on four legs.
00:52:21There are lots of different species of them, they're found all over the world,
00:52:25and they're the biggest land animals that have ever existed.
00:52:30Of course, you can't prove that it was a sauropod that laid this egg.
00:52:35But I would like to think that it was.
00:52:36The weight of the sand that eventually covered it squashed it.
00:52:42But if we could see it when it was first laid...
00:52:48We would see that it's much rounder than a chicken's egg,
00:52:53more like that of a turtle or a crocodile.
00:52:56And of course, very much bigger.
00:52:59Hmm, sounds like something's in there.
00:53:05But how will that something make its way out?
00:53:09Most dinosaur eggs are shell filled with rock.
00:53:14But not so long ago, someone in South America found a sauropod egg,
00:53:20and inside there was a baby sauropod.
00:53:23And on its nose, it had a little egg tooth.
00:53:27Birds and crocodiles have the same sort of thing.
00:53:32They need it, as the sauropod did, in order to be able to break out of the shell.
00:53:36Oh!
00:53:40Oh!
00:53:41Oh, oh!
00:53:42Oh!
00:53:45Oh!
00:53:46Oh, oh!
00:53:47Oh, oh!
00:53:48Oh, oh!
00:53:51We know that baby sauropods are very small and left for a long time.
00:54:17We know that baby sauropods are very small
00:54:20and left their nest very early,
00:54:22perhaps to avoid being trampled upon by their huge mothers.
00:54:34They probably hid in the forest
00:54:36until they grew large enough to join the herd of adults.
00:54:39Hello.
00:54:53Well, this is just one leg bone of a fully grown sauropod,
00:54:57so you can see this little fellow has got quite a lot of growing to do over the next few years.
00:55:03The museum, of course, has the skeleton of a fully grown sauropod, of a kind.
00:55:17And its story is one of kings and millionaires.
00:55:23Back in 1902, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales,
00:55:29saw a picture of a huge sauropod replica,
00:55:31one of the biggest yet discovered,
00:55:33whilst visiting the Scotsman-turned-American millionaire,
00:55:35Andrew Carnegie, at his castle in Scotland.
00:55:39The prince immediately said,
00:55:41well, I would like one of those.
00:55:43And in those days, what princes asked for, they got.
00:55:49And so, in due course, another replica turned up right here,
00:55:53and the prince of Wales saw a picture of a huge sauropod replica,
00:55:55one of the biggest yet discovered,
00:55:57whilst visiting the Scotsman-turned-American millionaire,
00:55:59and here it is.
00:56:01And here it is.
00:56:03There are two ways that the prince of Wales
00:56:05and the prince of Wales,
00:56:07and in those days, what princes asked for, they got.
00:56:09And so, in due course,
00:56:11another replica turned up right here,
00:56:13in the Natural History Museum.
00:56:15And here it is.
00:56:27There are two ways of pronouncing its scientific name.
00:56:31It's either Diplodocus or Diplodocus.
00:56:35Either way, it's a bit of a mouthful.
00:56:37So, I'm going to use the nickname
00:56:39that is commonly used around here.
00:56:41This is Dippy.
00:56:44And once more, although there's no way of being sure
00:56:48whether it was male or female,
00:56:50I'm going to assume that Dippy was female.
00:56:57But what did Dippy look like when she was alive?
00:57:03This strangely-shaped fragment
00:57:06of a dinosaur called Edmontosaurus
00:57:09was mummified before it was fossilised.
00:57:12So, not only the bones, but the skin
00:57:14was almost perfectly preserved.
00:57:16And it was covered in small scales.
00:57:19They didn't overlap like those of a lizard,
00:57:22but formed a close-fitting mosaic.
00:57:25Maybe Dippy was like that too.
00:57:27But what about her colour?
00:57:30My suspicion is that Dippy, like many large mammals today,
00:57:36such as elephants or Edmontosaurus,
00:57:38was a general all-over neutral plain colour.
00:57:42So, if we add a little bit of skin and flesh,
00:57:45we can get some idea of what she actually looked like.
00:57:49Evelyn's feel like...
00:57:50That is going to make this all bright.
00:57:52To the end of the eye...
00:57:55the light of the sea...
00:57:56the light of the sea...
00:57:57he or the black blood...
00:57:59and he ever felt like...
00:58:00the dark of the sea...
00:58:01the dark of the sea...
00:58:02The dark of the sea...
00:58:04and the dark of the sea.
00:58:05To be continued
00:58:35After 150 million years,
00:58:38we've got a pretty good idea of what Libby looked like.
00:58:42But how did she behave?
00:58:57Well, animals her size and weight must have moved in a rather ponderous way.
00:59:05And in any case, since she was a vegetarian, as we know from her teeth,
00:59:10she had no need to be speedy to get her food.
00:59:17But it's the tiny bones in Libby's inner ear
00:59:21that can give us a clue as to what she sounded like.
00:59:26These little bones are basically the same shape
00:59:29as that of the dinosaur's closest relatives, birds.
00:59:32The range of sounds a bird hears is related to its size.
00:59:37A small bird makes and hears high-pitched sounds,
00:59:40whereas large birds communicate with low-pitched sounds.
00:59:48So huge Dippy, with her inner ear bones shaped like those of a bird,
00:59:53could probably hear very low-pitched frequencies of sound.
01:00:00And she could probably make them, too.
01:00:03We know that elephants today can communicate using infrasound,
01:00:12sound with sequences so low they're below human hearing.
01:00:18We know that elephants today can communicate using infrasound,
01:00:26sound with sequences so low they're below human hearing.
01:00:31And those sounds travel through the ground, sometimes for many miles,
01:00:35and are detected by elephants through their large, flat, sensitive feet.
01:00:41Dippy, too, had large, flat feet.
01:00:48So maybe the giant dinosaurs communicated with one another
01:00:52in much the same way, as well as by bellowing.
01:01:00And those may not have been the only noises that Dippy could make.
01:01:04Some scientists think that because of the length of her tail
01:01:10and the way the joints work,
01:01:12she might have been able to crack it like a whip.
01:01:19The muscular strength that enabled her to hold her tail above the ground
01:01:24meant that she could, if necessary, use it as a weapon.
01:01:27Her tail would have helped to balance her long, heavy neck.
01:01:36But why was that so long?
01:01:40It used to be thought that she lived in rivers
01:01:43and needed her neck to break the surface in order to breathe.
01:01:47But that can't have been true,
01:01:49because if her body was submerged,
01:01:52the pressure of the water would have crushed her lungs.
01:01:57The most likely explanation seems to be
01:02:01that her huge neck helped her reach vast quantities of leaves.
01:02:05Sweeping it from side to side,
01:02:07she could cover a larger grazing area.
01:02:12She could also push ahead between forest trees
01:02:15to reach ferns and other ground vegetation.
01:02:21But in order to reach the highest, most succulent leaves in the forest,
01:02:25it seems likely that Dippy would have reared up on her hind legs.
01:02:32Come on, Dippy.
01:02:33Breakfast.
01:02:34Come on.
01:02:35and hold it back into the forest.
01:02:51Oh, hello.
01:02:52Well...
01:02:53wup.
01:02:56Wuh.
01:02:56Wuh.
01:02:57Oh, my God.
01:03:27Oh, my God.
01:03:57Oh, my God.
01:04:27Oh, my God.
01:04:57It's our planet, both today and in the past.
01:05:01Especially after a night like that.
01:05:04ORCHESTRA PLAYS
01:05:09ORCHESTRA PLAYS
01:05:14ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:19ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:21ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:23ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:25ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:27ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:29ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
01:05:31ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
Recommended
2:26
|
Up next
1:27:31
1:36
7:20
1:20
57:22
59:07
58:30
1:27:38
59:00
Be the first to comment