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Documentary, Sea Monsters S01E01 - A Walking with Dinosaurs Trilogy - Dangerous Seas
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SeaMonsters, WalkingwithDinosaurs ,Dinosaurs
#SeaMonsters #WalkingwithDinosaurs #Dinosaurs
SeaMonsters, WalkingwithDinosaurs ,Dinosaurs
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Nigel Marvin
00:10Nigel Marvin, a time-traveling zoologist and a man who has had his fair share of close scrapes with dinosaurs.
00:17But the Earth has witnessed more terrible monsters than these.
00:23What Nigel is about to learn about prehistory is that no matter how bad things get on land, the one thing you should never, ever do is get in the water.
00:53In this latest adventure, Nigel will be travelling back and forth through prehistory to visit seven different time zones.
01:11And dive in the seven deadliest seas ever.
01:15In this latest adventure, Nigel will be travelling back and forth through prehistory to visit seven different time zones and dive in the seven deadliest seas ever.
01:29Each sea he visits will be more dangerous than the last, with bigger, nastier predators.
01:37Creatures it's hard to believe. Once lived on this planet. And of course, he's saving the worst. Till last.
01:51Nigel's first stop in this perilous navigation through time is a period called the Ordovician.
02:01To get back there from the 21st century, you have to go unbelievably far back in time.
02:07Back before the Ice Age. Before the first humans. Before even the dinosaurs.
02:14The Ordovician is a mind-boggling 450 million years ago. So far back that plants have yet to evolve.
02:24It's a world ruled by creepy crawlies and fantastically unsuited to humankind.
02:31The atmosphere at this time, it's atrocious. Much less oxygen and much more carbon dioxide than I'm used to.
02:33The atmosphere at this time, it's atrocious. Much less oxygen and much more carbon dioxide than I'm used to.
02:35Without this special air mix, I'd really feel sick and get bad energy.
02:39The atmosphere at this time, it's atrocious. Much less oxygen and much more carbon dioxide than I'm used to.
02:57Without this special air mix, I'd really feel sick and get bad headaches.
03:07Just look around and you can see why the atmosphere is so different.
03:13There's no life at all on the land. There's no insects in the air. There's not even worms in the ground.
03:23And most crucially of all, there's no plants. There's not a speck of green.
03:29So the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's not being absorbed by them and they're not boosting the atmosphere with oxygen.
03:36But it's a different story out there in the sea. There's been life there for hundreds of millions of years.
03:45And you can take it from me, evolution has produced some real monsters.
03:51And now it was time to find one. First some bait. In the Ordovician, that's the easy bit.
04:04With no land animals to scavenge along the beach, anything the sea spits up just lies here rotting.
04:10An army plated fish.
04:16Now into shallow water to flush out one unpleasant little critter that I was going to be seeing a lot of.
04:46A sea scorpion. One of the most grotesque of predators. And look, look at that. Look at the tail curling.
04:54That's how they get their name. But there's no venom in there like their namesakes on the land.
05:00And you've got to be careful. Are those formidable pincers at the front?
05:05The scorpion gave me a graphic demonstration of just how formidable its claws are.
05:19It literally shredded the bait at my feet before moving on to bigger prey.
05:24Arrgh!
05:34Are you alright, Nigel?
05:36Yeah.
05:37Slash my leg.
05:39There's another scar for the collection.
05:42As I found out, those sea scorpions are pretty fearsome.
05:53But there's much bigger sea monsters out there. The sea scorpions, they're not the top predators.
05:58But to see the real big ones, I need a little more than a fish on a stick.
06:03I'm going to try with this. Looks a bit like a giant wood louse. But of course, it's a trilobite.
06:09There's no relatives of this alive in the 21st century. There's up to 15,000 species.
06:15They range in size from a really tiny one, a millimetre in length, to this big one.
06:20This is about as big as they get. And I need one like this because I'm going to use this like a fisherman with a fly.
06:28And I'm going to try to attract a much bigger catch.
06:34And all I need to do is to insert this camera into the carcass.
06:40And if you're squeamish, look away now.
06:43Because what I've got to do is pop out in the eye of this trilobite.
06:48There we go.
06:58There's so many surprises here. The sun's setting. The evening's come. And it's been so quick. The day's flown by.
07:07That's because I forgot, in Ordovician times, the Earth's spinning much faster.
07:12And that means that it's a 21 hour day, not 24 hours. So a watch like this, it's useless here.
07:19Look at that. It's going to be dark very soon. And we can't do anything more today.
07:25It's anything you do, you try to do it, you know, you try to do it.
07:43Today I'm hoping to dive with a sea monster. There's a special air mix in here.
07:47I breathe this Ordovician air at pressure under the water.
07:52I've become unconscious. So this is crucial for me.
07:56I also need this. This is a bit before it's time.
08:00It's a bite-proof shark suit. And of course, sharks haven't evolved yet.
08:05But I'm hoping this will give me protection from those vicious sea scorpions.
08:17I knew the bigger predators would be out in deeper water. So I ventured out into the middle of the bay.
08:34This will look very appetizing.
08:36But for the predators around here, this should be a tasty snack.
08:41And I'm hoping that camera is going to catch the moment when a monstrous predator tries to snap all this up.
08:48There's something. There's something approaching.
09:16It's a sea scorpion. They obviously like trilobites.
09:26Come on. Let go.
09:32Let go.
09:48It was late afternoon before I got a decent bite.
09:51There's something interesting there. And it is much bigger than a sea scorpion.
10:07It's taken the camera. That's the end of the trilobite cam. I have got to see what that is.
10:14I don't know what's happened here. But if I follow the line, I should be able to find the predator.
10:35The camera's not at the end, which probably means that the predator isn't far away.
10:46This is intriguing. I don't know what's going on. I don't know why they're all gathering.
10:55But first there was one sea scorpion. Then there was another. Then another. Then another.
10:59And now they are all around me. There's a whole carpet of them moving along the sea floor.
11:06They're whizzing past my head. They're all heading in one direction.
11:09And there it is. It's an orthocone.
11:28That is the biggest predator that the world has seen up until this time.
11:33He sensed me here. Gave my heart hammering. I don't want to be grabbed by those tentacles.
11:42But those simple eyes. They should shun the light.
11:46So all I can do is start flashing my light. And maybe that will discourage him.
11:54And now he's gone. I can't see where he is. There's still the sea scorpions now.
12:15There. There's the orthocone. And it's spotted one of the sea scorpions.
12:30They're dragged back to the mouth. There's a horny beak.
12:40Oh, you can hear it. I can actually hear it under the water.
12:44Hear the crunching sounds as the sea scorpions are crushed by the beak.
12:48These orthocones probably spend a lot of time in deep water.
12:53Light doesn't penetrate too well down there.
12:55So the eyes don't work very well. And they rely on another sense.
12:59They will actually smell out their prey.
13:02And then crush them to bits.
13:04And the orthocone, that really is the top predator of all the fishian times.
13:10It's not swimming very fast.
13:13If I can catch up.
13:15There.
13:17Yes.
13:19Right up to the tip of the shell. It's a wonderful texture.
13:21And I am hitching a ride.
13:24On the back of an orthocone.
13:27Hooray!
13:33As it got gloomier, I realised the orthocone was dragging me deeper.
13:40Time to get off.
13:43Thanks, orthocone. Thanks for the ride.
13:45I can't.
13:46I can't.
13:56I can't.
13:58Get off!
13:59This is what they were doing. I saw them moving in the shallows, moving towards
14:18the shore and this is a mass spawning. It's a full moon at the moment. This is
14:24the highest tide and they're laying their eggs in the sand. The eggs will be
14:28protected and when the next high tide comes, in about a month or so, the young
14:32larvae will hatch and be taken back out to sea. Some of these sea scorpions, they're
14:37going to stay around here until the eggs hatch. Fossils have been found with baby
14:42sea scorpions inside the stomachs of the big ones and that's what they do. They
14:46wait around here and feed on the babies as they hatch on the next high tide.
14:58The Ordovician, then, isn't exactly a picnic. Anywhere the air gives you a headache and
15:17you can't go swimming without a chainmail suit probably isn't going to take off as a holiday
15:22destination. But prehistory has worse still to offer. The next deadly sea is the Triassic.
15:31To get there, Nigel has to travel halfway back to the 21st century to 230 million years BC.
15:39It's a time when reptiles are taking over the oceans and the first dinosaurs are only just appearing.
15:46The Triassic is a crucial time for marine life. Something new's happened. The fish or the mammals,
15:54they're not the most ferocious animals out there. This sea is dominated by a group that used to just live
16:01on the land, the reptiles. Reptiles dominate everywhere right now. Winged reptiles, the pterosaurs, rule the skies.
16:09And the future lords of the land, the dinosaurs, have just evolved. But they're not much to look at yet.
16:16Of course, I was here to explore life in the sea. Home to the largest Triassic reptiles of them all.
16:23And the future lords of the land, the dinosaurs, have just evolved.
16:29But they're not much to look at yet.
16:34Of course, I was here to explore life in the sea. Home to the largest Triassic reptiles of them all.
16:45Fortunately, sea reptiles are easy enough to spot because they have to come up for air.
16:52My first sighting was a nothosaur.
17:01The nothosaurs, they could be a bit nippy, but there's bigger reptiles down there that could easily kill a person.
17:07So this is my insurance policy. An electric prod, if they come too close, this should deter them.
17:15There's not just one nothosaur, there's a pair of them. And they're inquisitive. Coming closer and closer, they're so curious.
17:36But I'm the first human that they've seen.
17:41You don't know how they're going to react. And I'm glad I've got this electric prod in case they become just too inquisitive.
17:55But at the moment, they're just curious, circling around me.
18:02They've got a mouth full of teeth like razors they're interlocking.
18:08That would seem to me to be the perfect fish trap. And they certainly move fast enough to catch the fish that are around here.
18:20There's one coming close now, and I'm going to try something. Like with alligators, there's only one safe way to hold a nothosaur.
18:33And that's round the jaws.
18:38Wow. A prehistoric ride with a nothosaur.
18:46They can close those jaws with tremendous force, but the muscles that open them, they are really weak.
18:53But nothosaur's like all sea reptiles. They've got to go up to the surface to breathe.
18:58I can't hold him for too long. I'm going to let him go now.
19:02Go on, boy. Off you go.
19:13Hiding here, this isn't dangerous, but it's surely one of the most preposterous reptiles ever.
19:20Tannis strophius. Great long neck. Great long tail. There's hardly anybody at all.
19:29That long neck is perfect for an ambush predator.
19:33And what it probably does is sweep that neck through the water, sweep it through a shoal of fish.
19:39It dropped its tail. This has happened to me many times when I was a little kid catching lizards.
20:01They do this as well. And this is an insurance policy. If they're attacked by a predator, the predator's distracted by the tail.
20:10And the creature can escape. And like lizards, he'll grow the tail again.
20:15And it shouldn't do him much harm. Look, he's swimming away perfectly there.
20:19Golly, this tail is spasming so much. I can hardly hold on to it.
20:26Wow! Where did that come from?
20:32I think it's a cymbospondilus. One of that great group of marine reptiles, the ichthyosaurs.
20:38He's a primitive member of the group. But they're going to evolve into a whole variety of forms. They'll be around for about another 100 million years.
20:53But he's coming a bit too close.
20:55And that slow movement, that's deceiving. With one lash of that tail, they can have really great bursts of speed.
21:15Oh, my heart's hammering. That lunge of me, that was a warning shot. That's really up the ante on this dive.
21:21I need the electric prop now. And he's coming again.
21:30He's coming in again. And I'm going to use it.
21:43What a spectacular reptile.
21:51I'm going to use it.
21:52I'm going to use it.
21:53I'm going to use it.
21:59Two seas down, five to go.
22:02The next encounter takes Nigel back deeper into the past.
22:06To meet the armored fish of the Devonian.
22:09Predators that are quite literally as hard as nails.
22:12I'm using the time map to get my head round where I've been. These spans of time are so immense.
22:26My first adventure, I went all the way back in time, 450 million years ago, to ride an orthocone and tussle with those sea scorpions.
22:34My second dive, that was 230 million years before the present day.
22:40That was with those bizarre sea reptiles.
22:43We're now here, 360 million years ago.
22:47Welcome to the age of giant armored fish.
22:49Unbelievable.
22:50How was the dive, mate?
22:51Well, outstanding.
22:52Have you got one?
22:53Did you see one?
22:54I saw it.
22:55It came so close.
22:56I'll get this in the machine.
22:57Okay.
22:58The cameraman, Mike, he did a reconnaissance dive just to see what was around.
23:11And from what he's saying, we've actually struck gold on the first dive.
23:14Exactly what we came here for.
23:15Oh, look at that.
23:16That's it.
23:17Can't beat anything else.
23:18A dunkley osteus.
23:19Well done, Mike.
23:20I mean, what was it like?
23:21That's like a real leviathan there.
23:22My heart was in my mouth.
23:23It just took my breath away.
23:24And that's a really good thing.
23:25I'm so close.
23:26I'm so close.
23:27I'll get this in the machine.
23:28Okay.
23:29The cameraman, Mike, he did a reconnaissance dive just to see what was around.
23:32And from what he's saying, we've actually struck gold on the first dive.
23:35Exactly what we came here for.
23:36Oh, look at that.
23:37That's it.
23:38Can't beat anything else.
23:39A dunkley osteus.
23:40Well done, Mike.
23:41I mean, what was it like?
23:42It just took my breath away.
23:44And that thing is over 30 feet long.
23:47Must weigh four or five tons.
23:48That's as much as two or three elephants.
23:51Let's pause it.
23:52Have a look at this.
23:53What a fearsome head.
23:55And this shows the classic features of dunkley osteus.
23:58Armour plating on the front of the body.
24:00That can be up to two inches thick.
24:02And look at that mouth.
24:04Those aren't teeth.
24:05Those are extensions of the jaw bones.
24:07They're for shearing through the prey.
24:09And this thing has to punch through other armoured fish.
24:11And those jaws are backed up by powerful muscles at the back of the neck there.
24:15Look at that.
24:16And this is exciting.
24:18If this stays around, it's going to be my turn next.
24:20And we're going to find out how powerful those jaws actually are.
24:24Our band was to hand feed a dunkley osteus.
24:31And my job was to get the bait.
24:33Meanwhile, the crew was building a cage for my protection.
24:46But why was it round?
24:47Well, in the same way that a dog can't bite a beach ball, we hoped that the jaws of the dunkley osteus would slide off these bars.
24:55This could be good.
24:56It's a big tug.
24:57Fortunately for me, there's plenty of life in the sea in the Devonian.
25:10Unlike on land, where as yet there are no creatures bigger than a centipede.
25:14This is a placoderm.
25:15It's a Greek word.
25:16It means armour plating.
25:17And you can see why.
25:19This is in the same family as dunkley osteus.
25:21And for a naturalist, this is a privilege indeed.
25:24These fish were only around for 50 million years.
25:27Then they became extinct.
25:28There's nothing like this around in the 21st century.
25:31I've got a bed on with the crew that the dunkley osteus will slice through the bait if it's actually wrapped in chain melt.
25:46This is where you feel like you're most vulnerable.
25:49Actually swimming into the cage with a great chunk of bait.
25:55I'm in now.
25:57And it will probably take a few minutes for the trailer of smell to bring in the predators.
26:03And fingers crossed, we'll be able to see dunkley osteus.
26:13Look what's arrived.
26:14This must be the most preposterous shark ever.
26:18Look at that fin on the back.
26:20Scientists call it the ironing board shark.
26:23And you can see why.
26:25Must be a male.
26:26Only the males had that bizarre norsal fin.
26:29Probably to help with mating.
26:31Probably to display to females.
26:33Maybe used in courtship battles between males.
26:40And these are some of the first sharks ever to evolve.
26:44And this is great for me.
26:46I am such a shark fan.
26:48But that is surreal.
26:53It's a duckly osteus.
26:54It must have smelled the bait.
26:55This is what we came for.
26:58And it's coming straight towards us.
26:59See that really thick protective armour on the head there.
27:00Over two inches thick.
27:01Only the first third of the body is covered with that.
27:03You must have smelt the bait, this is what we came for, and it's coming straight towards us.
27:10See that really thick protective armour on the head there, over two inches thick, only the first third of the body's covered with that, look at that.
27:19These fish, they've got these massive jaws, with big sharp shears sticking out, and what they do is they slice them together just like scissors working.
27:29The very action of slicing them together keeps them sharp, and with that they can cut through anything.
27:39Let's see if I can win my bet.
27:49Come on!
27:52This is no fisherman's tale, this is a royal monster.
27:59This is getting a little scary now.
28:05I'm happy.
28:08This is getting serious.
28:09I'm really well at the place there.
28:12The dog's over here.
28:14They've been tempted.
28:18He's coming in again, he's fast this time!
28:20This time!
28:37Well, could you survive at Dunkley Osteus?
28:39Log on to bbc.co.uk slash science, and take part in your own adventure through the Seven Deadly Seas.
28:46One Komiko
28:52Number and five likely continue目前, and then move towards Whoozee.
28:55But also when is it, you don't propose more or more?
28:57That would be a surprise.
28:58These days have mote from Bbc.co.uk cross.
29:04When was running from Bc.co.uk?
29:06You're not gonna forget what'm now?
29:08Come to the Seven Deadly Seas.
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