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00:00:00The Natural History Museum
00:00:30One of the most popular of all London's attractions.
00:00:39Sometimes it gets so crowded
00:00:41that it can be quite difficult to see the exhibits as closely as you might wish.
00:00:47Ladies and gentlemen, the museum is going to be closing in five minutes,
00:00:50so please make your way towards the exits. Thank you.
00:00:55So it's a great treat if somehow or other
00:00:58you can manage to look around
00:01:01when all the other visitors have gone.
00:01:05The Natural History Museum
00:01:10is a great treat.
00:01:13The Natural History Museum
00:01:14is a great treat.
00:01:15It's a great treat.
00:01:16It's a great treat.
00:01:17It's a great treat.
00:01:18It's a great treat.
00:01:19It's a great treat.
00:01:20It's a great treat.
00:01:21It's a great treat.
00:01:22It's a great treat.
00:01:23It's a great treat.
00:01:24It's a great treat.
00:01:25It's a great treat.
00:01:26It's a great treat.
00:01:27It's a great treat.
00:01:28It's a great treat.
00:01:29It's a great treat.
00:01:30It's a great treat.
00:01:31It's a great treat.
00:01:32It's a great treat.
00:01:33It's a great treat.
00:01:34It's a great treat.
00:01:35It's a great treat.
00:02:06Some of the creatures here you might, if you were lucky, have seen in the wild.
00:02:29But there are certain ancient animals that we'll never see with our own eyes.
00:02:36Because they're extinct.
00:02:45And among them are one or two mysterious, not to say suspicious characters, that I would
00:02:52like to examine as they were when they were alive.
00:02:55It's a big place.
00:03:11There are 70 million or so specimens here, I'm told.
00:03:15And the first I want to look at right now is way up on the very top floor.
00:03:20Now, this, some might say, is the most scientifically important and valuable specimen in the whole
00:03:32of the museum.
00:03:33It's a fossil called Archaeopteryx.
00:03:36And it was secured from the museum by the first director, Professor Richard Owen, back
00:03:42in 1862.
00:03:44Getting it wasn't easy.
00:03:46There was a lot of international competition and there was a certain amount of skullduggery.
00:03:50And it certainly cost a small fortune.
00:03:53But what kind of creature was Archaeopteryx when it was alive?
00:04:06It had two long leg bones, so it must have stood upright.
00:04:13A bony tail and a long neck.
00:04:16It's head had bony jaws packed with teeth like a reptile's.
00:04:23And its arms had three elongated fingers, each ending with a claw.
00:04:30So you might think it was some kind of strange, spindly-armed, upright-standing lizard.
00:04:38Except for one fact.
00:04:40There is evidence of more than just bones on its slab.
00:04:52Feathers.
00:05:03Archaeopteryx lived some 150 million years ago, long before the appearance of true birds.
00:05:09Those feathers on its arms certainly enabled it to glide.
00:05:15But that's not all.
00:05:28It had powered flight.
00:05:33Marks on the bones show that there were enough muscles attached to them
00:05:37to enable it to flap.
00:05:42Not only that, a recent scan of its skull showed that its brain would have given it the senses
00:05:48and reactions that are needed for accurate control in the air.
00:05:54This creature was half reptile, half bird.
00:05:57It was the first proof that in prehistory, there were intermediate forms that link the big,
00:06:03very different groups of animals that we know today.
00:06:17But while Archaeopteryx could certainly fly, it could also clamber up tree trunks and along
00:06:23from the branches like a tree-living reptile, thanks to those clawed fingers.
00:06:33There were insects flying around at that time.
00:06:39And Archaeopteryx's teeth show that it was a hunter.
00:06:43And this is Professor Richard Owen, the man who acquired that fossil and built this museum.
00:07:07Although he disagreed with Darwin's views on evolution, he was one of the great scientists
00:07:14of his time, and he had a particular flair for interpreting fossils.
00:07:21In 1839, a huge thigh bone was sent to the museum from New Zealand.
00:07:28Owen deduced from its internal structure that it must have belonged to a bird.
00:07:33If so, it must have been a giant.
00:07:35The Maoris of New Zealand had stories of giant flightless birds that had once roamed their islands,
00:07:43but Europeans had dismissed them as myths.
00:07:47But eventually, Professor Owen acquired enough bones of these huge birds
00:07:52to put together a complete skeleton of one of them.
00:08:00This was no myth.
00:08:05The Maoris, the Maoris, in their legend, had called it a moa.
00:08:12And Professor Owen, in his researches, had proved that it once had existed.
00:08:18But was it the largest bird that had ever lived?
00:08:21Here we go.
00:08:36Now, what?
00:08:37gradient johnson has told them to encounter another!
00:08:38We're over 300 years old where we дело serait σταから
00:08:38and remember, it couldn't be on killing the planet.
00:08:40Tollot it and we're not used to be on cue or the planet!
00:08:45Fast and corn than you did!
00:08:47OK.
00:08:48Tollot it is about maybe there's enough time to take our time to be evil
00:08:49There were several different species of moa but this one was the biggest.
00:09:04It stands three meters tall.
00:09:10But is this really what it looked like when it was alive?
00:09:18You can tell how an animal holds its head from the junction between the skull and its neck.
00:09:24If that is underneath the skull then its neck would have been upright.
00:09:29But this moa's neck joint is at the back of the skull so it must have held its neck more
00:09:34horizontally.
00:09:36Like this.
00:09:48So, was the giant moa the biggest bird that has ever existed?
00:10:12Well, if it craned up its neck it was almost certainly the tallest.
00:10:33You might think that such a gigantic bird would have no enemies in the remote and isolated
00:10:39forests of New Zealand.
00:10:40But you would be wrong.
00:10:50Tonight strange things are happening in the Natural History Museum.
00:10:56The giant moa that was wandering around New Zealand until only a few centuries ago was
00:11:07so huge it's difficult to believe that it had any enemies, any predators.
00:11:13Well, there's also a Maori legend of a huge predatory bird, an eagle, that existed at the
00:11:21same time and what is more there are bones to prove it.
00:11:37This colossal bird was nearly twice as heavy as today's most powerful eagle.
00:11:44Bringing down a giant moa must have been a huge task.
00:11:47They too were strong and heavy.
00:11:58But the eagle had powerful eyesight.
00:12:01A beak the size of a butcher's cleaver.
00:12:14And razor sharp talons as big as the claws of a tiger.
00:12:18The Greek for grappling hooks is half axe.
00:12:23And that word gives this bird its name.
00:12:30This is Harpagornis.
00:12:31This is Harpagornis.
00:12:43It was a deadly predator.
00:12:52It was the largest eagle that has ever existed.
00:12:56And it lived in the same forests as the moas.
00:13:03And it lived in the same forests as the moas.
00:13:08We know that Harpagornis preyed on moas because moa skeletons have been found with holes stabbed
00:13:13through their pelvic bones that exactly match the grasp of the eagle's claws.
00:13:20It was probably even strong enough to cling to a moa's back with one foot while it slashed
00:13:28at its victim's neck with the other.
00:13:49But it looks as if this moa is going to escape.
00:13:53For now.
00:13:54As well as its millions of specimens of animals and plants, the museum also has huge and fascinating archives.
00:14:15Scientific journals from all over the world.
00:14:18Letters from explorers.
00:14:20Even posters and handbills if they have anything to do with natural history.
00:14:24In the 19th century, when Professor Owen was in charge of this museum, new and extraordinary
00:14:33things were turning up from all over the world.
00:14:36And Professor Owen was very keen that his museum should have the best of them.
00:14:40He secured the Archaeopteryx from Germany, the moas from New Zealand.
00:14:45But sometimes really strange things turned up on his very doorstep.
00:14:50And there were certainly lots of very odd creatures being exhibited around London in Victorian times.
00:14:57This print shows an extraordinary monster that was being displayed in Piccadilly.
00:15:04An American showman called Albert Koch was charging a shilling a head to have a look at it.
00:15:09Professor Owen decided to investigate.
00:15:12He felt sure that something was wrong with it, but nonetheless he was intrigued.
00:15:19And he bought it.
00:15:21When he'd got it back to his museum, he was able to examine it in detail.
00:15:26It was certainly gigantic and bigger than anything else he had in his museum at the time.
00:15:46Koch, the showman, had dug up the bones from a farmer's field in Missouri
00:15:51and maintained that in life the animal had stood nine metres long and almost five metres tall.
00:15:58There were claims that this was a fearsome predator that uses extraordinary tusks for stabbing its victims,
00:16:06presumably by swinging its head sideways.
00:16:10Well, I'm sure Professor Owen would have had something to say about that.
00:16:17He must have realised that these blunt, rounded ridges on these huge molar teeth
00:16:23would be very effective at grinding up twigs and fur cones and rough forest vegetation,
00:16:29but they lack the sharp blade that you need to slice through flesh.
00:16:35This is not the jaw of a carnivore.
00:16:38It soon became clear that Koch had increased the size of his monster skeleton
00:16:44by adding extra vertebrae, ribs and even blocks of wood.
00:16:50The Missouri Leviathan was a fraud.
00:16:56So Owen removed all the extra bits.
00:16:59And then he put the real bones back together in their true form.
00:17:15Finally, he detached those astonishing tusks and put them back in the correct way.
00:17:24It seems obvious now, but in life they had pointed in much the same direction.
00:17:28as those of a modern elephant.
00:17:43And so, here today stands not Koch's Leviathan, but Owen's Mastodon.
00:17:50A vegetarian relative of the elephant that lived 12,000 years ago
00:17:55in North and Central America.
00:17:57It may have decreased a bit in size, but it's still an astonishing animal.
00:18:02Our understanding of the Mastodon is a lot more accurate today, thanks to Professor Owen.
00:18:07But it was not the only creature in this museum to be the victim of misrepresentation.
00:18:12This poor old bird is a dodo.
00:18:13It once lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
00:18:17And it's almost certainly the first animal species.
00:18:18It's almost certainly the first animal species that human beings have.
00:18:22actually exterminated in historic times.
00:18:23In historic times.
00:18:24In historic times.
00:18:25In historic times.
00:18:26In historic times.
00:18:27And so now we talk about being as dead as a dodo.
00:18:28And so now we talk about being as dead as a dodo.
00:18:30But in spite of its fame.
00:18:31In spite of its fame.
00:18:32In historic times.
00:18:33In historic times.
00:18:34In historic times.
00:18:35In historic times.
00:18:36It's a dodo.
00:18:37It's a dodo.
00:18:38It is a dodo.
00:18:39It was a dodo.
00:18:40It once lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
00:18:42And it's almost certainly the first animal species that human beings actually exterminated
00:18:49in historic times.
00:18:51And so now we talk about being as dead as a dodo.
00:18:58But in spite of its fame.
00:19:00This one is a fake.
00:19:04Its feathers come from a goose, its feet are muddled on a turkey, and its beak, I suspect,
00:19:11is plaster.
00:19:14The museum can be forgiven because no skin or feathers of the dodo survive.
00:19:21Its image was influenced by pictures like this one, painted by a 17th century Dutch
00:19:26artist, Roland Savory, but he had never seen a living dodo and based his image on accounts
00:19:32by seafarers.
00:19:35I've often wondered whether dodos actually look like that, but unfortunately they'd all
00:19:41disappeared before anyone could get a good look at them.
00:19:46Until now.
00:19:58This funny, dumpy creature is how the bird is usually represented these days.
00:20:07But I've seen quite a lot of flightless birds over the years, and this one doesn't quite
00:20:13ring true.
00:20:15An examination of the way its thighs join its pelvis has shown that in life he'd actually
00:20:24stood much more upright.
00:20:29a little bit of a tiny bit of a giant fish.
00:20:33We now know that its feathers were probably a lot fluffier than in that painting.
00:20:38We also now know that it was related to the pigeon, and some experts suggest that it made
00:20:44A pigeon-like call, doo-doo, doo-doo, which gave the bird its name.
00:20:54The dodo probably fell on fruit.
00:20:57There was a lot of it on the island.
00:21:00I'll try him with a bit.
00:21:01Come on.
00:21:06What do you make of that?
00:21:10Ow!
00:21:11That's a very powerful beak.
00:21:13In fact, it may well have been adapted for crushing shells and crustaceans for the sake of the calcium.
00:21:21And there's a female.
00:21:24Maybe she is another reason why they had such large beaks to show off with during courtship.
00:21:30And here comes a rival male.
00:21:48He could be another reason for having a huge beak to fight with in disputes over nest sites.
00:21:54Until now, no one has ever seen a dodo egg, so no one knows how big it was.
00:22:20After the night, who knows?
00:22:30Science has revealed the truth behind many a myth, and discovered some creatures that are so odd as to be scarcely believable.
00:22:53But there is one story that is still remarkably persistent.
00:23:00Back in 1951, a famous Himalayan explorer and mountaineer, Eric Shipton, came across some footprints across a high snowfield that looked as if they'd been made by some kind of giant ape.
00:23:16Shipton's Sherpa companions had no doubt about what had made them, a yeti, an abominable snowman.
00:23:28Well, there is one small, insignificant-looking specimen in the storage vaults down here that could, perhaps, explain those prints.
00:23:45It was found in a shop in Hong Kong that sold Chinese traditional medicines.
00:23:51It was a molar tooth of some kind of ape-like creature, except that it was huge.
00:24:08The museum has only got a fragment.
00:24:11This is it.
00:24:12But here's a cast of a complete one.
00:24:16And it's six times the size of one of ours.
00:24:19It was given the name Gigantopithecus, a giant ape.
00:24:25After that discovery, one or two more teeth were discovered, but nothing much until eventually a piece of the lower jaw was found.
00:24:33The original is now in America.
00:24:35This is a cast.
00:24:36But here is the lower jaw.
00:24:39If this animal had a skull with the same proportions as those of a gorilla, its complete skull would have been this big.
00:24:49This was a true monster.
00:24:50To be fair.
00:25:08I don't know.
00:25:38So we know a huge ape did exist, Gigantopithecus.
00:25:45He could well have stood three meters tall, in which case it would have been eight times as heavy as I am.
00:25:53And if you're as heavy as that, you don't spend much time climbing in trees because they won't support you.
00:25:59So the likelihood is that his arms are quite short and he walked upright.
00:26:05He was by a beetle.
00:26:10Let me get out of the way.
00:26:11Let me get out of the way.
00:26:14Let me get out of the way.
00:26:16An upright animal has its head on the top of its spine, as I do.
00:26:43And if that head is to be well balanced, it's better not to have a long muzzle, but a rather flat face.
00:26:51So if I were to observe Gigantopithecus and it stared back at me, I suspect I'd find its look rather unnervingly familiar.
00:27:02Gigantopithecus is commonly thought to have died out several hundred thousand years ago.
00:27:17But sightings of the yeti continue to be reported.
00:27:20So is it possible that some kind of giant ape, maybe even Gigantopithecus itself, still survive somewhere out in those remote Himalayan mountains?
00:27:29The Gigantopithecus tooth is a giant ape.
00:27:31He's a giant ape.
00:27:32He's a giant ape.
00:27:33He's a giant ape.
00:27:34He's a giant ape.
00:27:35Some kind of giant ape, maybe even Gigantopithecus itself,
00:27:40still survives somewhere out in those remote Himalayan mountains.
00:27:57The Gigantopithecus tooth
00:27:59isn't the only intriguing specimen down here in the storerooms.
00:28:05This, a piece of dung.
00:28:09Looking at it, you might think it had dropped to the ground only yesterday.
00:28:14It was found in a cave in Patagonia.
00:28:19And with it, a piece of skin like this,
00:28:25covered in a very coarse, bristly hair,
00:28:28and on the underside, mysterious white bone nodules.
00:28:35For zoos, a kind of armor.
00:28:40No known creature alive today has armored hide like this.
00:28:45If it still survived, it would be a truly extraordinary discovery.
00:28:50So, at the end of the 19th century,
00:28:53explorers and scientists started a search for it.
00:28:56In fact, the dung and the fur appeared to be recent
00:29:04only because there'd been, in effect, freeze-dried in that ancient cave.
00:29:09The creatures themselves had died out some 10,000 years ago.
00:29:12They were giant sloths that lived not in trees as modern ones do,
00:29:25but on the ground.
00:29:28And this one had immense claws.
00:29:33What could it have used them for?
00:29:35Well...
00:29:36Well...
00:29:37Well...
00:29:38Well...
00:29:39Well...
00:29:39...
00:30:05These ground sloths probably spent most of their time on all fours, but nonetheless
00:30:14they were perfectly capable of rearing up on their hind legs.
00:30:18And when they did that, they probably stood about three meters tall, which is as tall
00:30:25as a grizzly bear, if not taller.
00:30:30But I don't think this one is going to use its claws on me.
00:30:43That dung made it clear that these creatures are vegetarians,
00:30:47so they doubtless use those claws for ripping up plants.
00:30:52But it's been discovered recently that they use them for something else as well.
00:31:00Something that seems rather surprising for animals of their great bulk.
00:31:10They dug burrows.
00:31:29They dug burrows.
00:31:31They dug burrows.
00:31:32They dug burrows.
00:31:33They dug burrows.
00:31:35They dug burrows.
00:31:36This did hiatus would be aghan
00:31:45all over Patagonia.
00:31:45Oh!
00:31:56Huge excavations like this have been found all over Patagonia,
00:32:00and we know they were made by giant sloths
00:32:02because scratches on the walls of the burrows exactly match their claws.
00:32:08Such immense burrows must have been excellent places to take refuge.
00:32:15And the giant sloths may well have had need of them,
00:32:19because there was a truly ferocious predator living alongside them.
00:32:30A great cat with immense sabre-shaped teeth.
00:32:37Smilodon.
00:32:40For me, there is no more alarming animal in the whole museum
00:32:44than this.
00:32:49And its skeleton is perfectly preserved,
00:32:51because about 10,000 years ago,
00:32:54it wandered into a pool of naturally occurring tar
00:32:58oozing from the ground in California.
00:33:02In general shape, it was somewhat like a lion,
00:33:05but more muscular and much heavier.
00:33:07And those sabre-teeth were really sharp.
00:33:11No wonder the giant sloths needed burrows in which to take refuge.
00:33:16You might think that Smilodon would have caught its prey, as a lion often does,
00:33:17by chasing it, leaping on it at speed, and then throttling it,
00:33:21suffocating it with a bite to the neck.
00:33:22And then throttling it, suffocating it with a bite to the neck.
00:33:23And then, you might think that Smilodon would have caught its prey, as a lion often does,
00:33:26by chasing it, leaping on it at speed, and then throttling it, suffocating it with a bite to the neck.
00:33:30You might think that Smilodon would have caught its prey, as a lion often does,
00:33:42by chasing it, leaping on it at speed, and then throttling it,
00:33:46suffocating it with a bite to the neck.
00:33:53But Smilodon stalked its prey,
00:33:56creeping quietly across the plains, until it got really close.
00:34:11And then...
00:34:13it pounced.
00:34:26Smilodon couldn't throttle its prey with those huge teeth,
00:34:31and they were too brittle to slash.
00:34:33They would shatter if they struck bone.
00:34:39Instead, the animal would have first used its great weight to pin down its victim.
00:34:47Then, it would have used its sabres, like blades,
00:34:50to slice open the soft flesh of its victim's throat.
00:34:54But these terrifying hunters had a rather touching side to their characters.
00:35:02Tigers today are solitary hunters,
00:35:05and when one gets too old to hunt successfully, it dies.
00:35:09But skeletons of really elderly sabre-tooths have been discovered,
00:35:16which suggests that not only did Smilodon hunt in packs,
00:35:19but when members of the family were too old to hunt for themselves,
00:35:23they were allowed to take a share of the kill.
00:35:26They were allowed to take a share of the kill.
00:35:27They were allowed to take a share of the kill.
00:35:45The museum is full of creatures that appear terrifying,
00:35:49but which, no doubt, if you knew them better,
00:35:51would prove to have quite a charming side to their characters.
00:35:57But there is one here that would, I think, chill everyone's blood.
00:36:02The museum is one of the world's greatest treasuries.
00:36:17It holds some 70 million specimens,
00:36:20some beautiful, some bizarre,
00:36:23and some truly frightening.
00:36:25This is a vertebra from the backbone of a modern snake.
00:36:39It was a python.
00:36:41And we know exactly how long it was,
00:36:43because it was measured when it was alive.
00:36:45It was 21 feet long, seven meters.
00:36:49This, however, is a similar bone
00:36:55from the spine of a fossil snake.
00:36:59And if this was 20 feet long, how big was this?
00:37:03Certainly 30 feet, 10 meters, 11 meters.
00:37:07It was a monster.
00:37:10But what did it live on in those far distant times?
00:37:19Maybe if I follow it, I'll find out what it ate.
00:37:49Science calls this snake Chichantophis, and it was truly immense.
00:37:58Certainly big enough to swallow me.
00:38:00But would it have eaten human beings?
00:38:03It might well have done if we had both been around at the same time,
00:38:20but it lived 40 million years ago,
00:38:23and had become extinct long before human beings appeared on Earth.
00:38:30So maybe it preyed on dinosaurs.
00:38:33Well, no.
00:38:37Dinosaurs are even older than Gigantophis,
00:38:41and disappeared some 25 million years before it evolved.
00:38:50In that case, what about mammals such as sheep or deer?
00:38:57No, at least not modern mammals like these.
00:39:01The early mammals are rather different from the kinds we know today.
00:39:12This is a model of a prehistoric elephant
00:39:15that was unlucky enough to wander about the planet
00:39:18at exactly the same time as Gigantophis, about 40 million years ago.
00:39:32But how could Gigantophis tackle one of these?
00:39:35Well, it didn't use venom to kill its prey.
00:39:45We know from its massive size that it must have been a constrictor.
00:39:54Constrictors, having seized an animal with their jaws, wrap their coils around their prey,
00:40:00and squeezed so hard they stop their victim's heart and it dies within a few minutes.
00:40:13I wonder if he realizes that his dinner tonight is a fiberglass model.
00:40:18I'll leave him to it.
00:40:41There are specimens of animals here from every corner of the Earth.
00:40:45But it was much closer to home, on the south coast in Dorset,
00:41:03that a group of amateur Victorian fossil hunters discovered these amazing fossilized creatures.
00:41:10But what kind of animals were they?
00:41:19They clearly lived in the sea because seashells are found alongside them in the rocks.
00:41:26They had bony paddles, not fins like fish,
00:41:31and huge eyes protected by a ring of plates.
00:41:33They had bony paddles, but they had bony paddles in the sea.
00:41:36Those Victorian pioneer scientists, led by Professor Richard Owen,
00:41:41worked out that they were too old to be mammals, and were certainly not fish.
00:41:47They were reptiles.
00:41:52Owen and his friends called them Ichthyosaurs, fish lizards.
00:42:03And now it's got skin and flesh on it.
00:42:20You can see how remarkably similar it is to today's dolphin.
00:42:24It's got the same streamlined silhouette, same pointed jaws, it's air-breathing, even gives birth to live young.
00:42:37But surely an ancient Ichthyosaur couldn't be as advanced as a modern-day dolphin.
00:42:41Or could it?
00:42:50Dolphins are mammals, if this was reptiles, very, very different groups.
00:43:15They're not at all closely related, and yet they both have very similar body shapes.
00:43:23They're a remarkable example of what's called convergent evolution, two groups of unrelated animals that have evolved similar bodies to suit the same environment.
00:43:36But there are some differences.
00:43:39Dolphins beat their tails up and down like their cousins the whales.
00:43:46Ichthyosaurs, as is clear from their fossils, had tails like fish that beat from side to side.
00:43:53And dolphins only have two flippers, whereas Ichthyosaurs had four.
00:43:58So, is it possible that Ichthyosaurs were as fast in the water and as agile as dolphins, if not more so?
00:44:09I wonder who would win in the competition?
00:44:11One kind of dolphin, spinners, can leap from the surface of the water and spin in the air.
00:44:34Maybe the Ichthyosaurs could do the same.
00:44:41I wonder who would do the same.
00:44:46We know that Ichthyosaurs lived and evolved on this planet, but neither would you ever find any way to live on the planet?
00:44:48I wonder who would do the same.
00:44:51The world would do the same.
00:44:54The world would be the same.
00:44:56The world would be the same.
00:45:03The world would be the same.
00:45:05We know that ichthyosaurs lived and evolved on this planet for many millions of years
00:45:13more than dolphins have done so far, so maybe ichthyosaurs would have won the competition?
00:45:19After all, who knows?
00:45:30There's another group of ancient reptiles here in the museum that I suspect were not
00:45:38quite as sporting as the ichthyosaurs.
00:45:52While the ichthyosaurs and other marine reptiles ruled the seas 150 million years ago, another
00:45:59group of reptiles dominated the land.
00:46:04They lived long before big mammals, let alone human beings.
00:46:10There were hundreds, probably thousands of different kinds, and they came in all shapes
00:46:15and sizes.
00:46:18They are perhaps the most famous and dramatic of all prehistoric creatures, and they were
00:46:24first identified and named here in Britain.
00:46:30They were the dinosaurs.
00:46:37Thousands of people come here every day to look at their amazing skeletons, and to imagine
00:46:43what they must have looked like, and sounded like, when they were alive.
00:46:50It's hard to imagine a time when the world didn't know about dinosaurs.
00:47:11But until relatively recently, nobody knew they had ever existed, let alone that they
00:47:17once ruled the world.
00:47:22The story of their discovery starts in the 1820s when a doctor named Gideon Mantell, living
00:47:28on the south coast of England in Sussex, picked up something odd in a sandstone quarry.
00:47:36And this is what he found.
00:47:41It's clearly a tooth of some kind.
00:47:44This is its outer surface.
00:47:46And in shape, it's very like the tooth of a living lizard, such as an iguana.
00:47:51Which is why the animal it belonged to came to be called iguanodon, iguana tooth.
00:47:59And with it were a number of other bones.
00:48:06They were the hips and back legs of some kind of giant reptile.
00:48:12More of them were discovered, and soon they were enough to get some idea of what the whole
00:48:16animal had looked like.
00:48:20One odd little bone seemed to have nowhere to go, so the reconstructors put it on the
00:48:26end of its nose, making the animal look like some kind of reptilian rhinoceros.
00:48:33It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
00:48:39So, a great fossil hunt started in the quarries of Sussex.
00:48:44And eventually the bones of several different kinds of big animals were discovered.
00:48:50They were brought here to the museum.
00:48:52Professor Owen examined them.
00:48:54And he decided that they should belong to a completely new kind of animal.
00:48:59An animal he called a dinosaur.
00:49:02A terrible lizard.
00:49:04In due course, more complete skeletons of iguanodons were discovered.
00:49:11And it became possible to reconstruct them with greater certainty.
00:49:18Iguanodon could stand upright.
00:49:21It had small arms and was over 25 feet, 7 meters tall.
00:49:27And that horn on its nose was actually a spike on its thumb.
00:49:33Before long, new and even bigger species were being unearthed all over the world,
00:49:44from the instantly recognizable three-horned Triceratops to the sensational Tyrannosaurus rex.
00:49:56These astounding beasts have inspired and captivated not only scientists,
00:50:01but writers, artists, and filmmakers for almost two centuries.
00:50:08But it was Professor Owen, here in the Natural History Museum,
00:50:12who first identified them.
00:50:14And his work has been continued here ever since.
00:50:18This is a laboratory where the museum prepares its fossils for study and for display.
00:50:35It's here that they painstakingly remove the excess rock
00:50:39to reveal the fossils in all their extraordinary detail.
00:50:50This is the fossilized egg of a dinosaur, one of the first to be discovered.
00:50:55And it was found close to some bones of a sauropod dinosaur.
00:50:59Sauropods, this is the model of one, were gigantic vegetarian dinosaurs that wandered around on four legs.
00:51:09There are lots of different species of them, they're found all over the world,
00:51:12and they're the biggest land animals that have ever existed.
00:51:16Of course, you can't prove that it was a sauropod that laid this egg.
00:51:22But I would like to think that it was.
00:51:25The weight of the sand that eventually covered it squashed it.
00:51:29But if we could see it when it was first laid...
00:51:31We would see that it's much rounder than a chicken's egg,
00:51:40more like that of a turtle or a crocodile.
00:51:43And of course, very much bigger.
00:51:49Hm. Sounds like something's in there.
00:51:52But how will that something make its way out?
00:51:55Most dinosaur eggs are shell filled with rock.
00:52:01But not so long ago, someone in South America found a sauropod egg,
00:52:05and inside there was a baby sauropod.
00:52:09And on its nose, it had a little egg tooth.
00:52:13Birds and crocodiles have the same sort of thing.
00:52:17They need it, as the sauropod did, in order to be able to break out of the shell.
00:52:21Oh.
00:52:25Oh.
00:52:51We know that baby sauropods were very small, and left their nests very early,
00:53:05perhaps to avoid being trampled upon by their huge mothers.
00:53:09They probably hid in the forest, until they grew large enough to join the herd of adults.
00:53:21Hello.
00:53:22Well, this is just one leg bone of a fully grown sauropod.
00:53:39So you can see, this little fellow has got quite a lot of growing to do over the next few years.
00:53:45The museum, of course, has the skeleton of a fully grown sauropod, of a kind.
00:54:09And its story is one of kings and millionaires.
00:54:16Back in 1902, King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, saw a picture of a huge sauropod replica,
00:54:24one of the biggest yet discovered,
00:54:26whilst visiting the Scotsman-turned-American millionaire, Andrew Carnegie, at his castle in Scotland.
00:54:32The prince immediately said,
00:54:35well, I would like one of those.
00:54:37And in those days, what princes asked for, they got.
00:54:45And so, in due course, another replica turned up right here in the Natural History Museum.
00:54:51Seeing this alive would be really something.
00:55:05The most famous inhabitant of the museum is the skeleton of one of the largest land animals ever to walk the earth.
00:55:24And here it is.
00:55:37There are two ways of pronouncing its scientific name.
00:55:41It's either Diplodocus or Diplodocus.
00:55:44Either way, it's a bit of a mouthful.
00:55:47So I'm going to use the nickname that is commonly used around here.
00:55:51This is Dippy.
00:55:54And what's more, although there's no way of being sure whether it was male or female,
00:55:59I'm going to assume that Dippy was female.
00:56:06But what did Dippy look like when she was alive?
00:56:09This strangely-shaped fragment of a dinosaur called Edmontosaurus was mummified before it was fossilized.
00:56:20So not only the bones, but the skin was almost perfectly preserved.
00:56:25And it was covered in small scales.
00:56:28They didn't overlap like those of a lizard, but formed a close-fitting mosaic.
00:56:33Maybe Dippy was like that too.
00:56:36But what about her color?
00:56:38My suspicion is that Dippy, like many large mammals today, such as elephants or Edmontosaurus,
00:56:46was a general all-over neutral plain color.
00:56:50So if we add a little bit of skin and flesh, we can get some idea of what she actually looked like.
00:57:08We can target vectors at a large scale of the small scale.
00:57:09We can also chase the European model where it's very similar to her logo.
00:57:14We can't even climb on the family but let it all go.
00:57:16We can't be careful.
00:57:17We can't be careful.
00:57:18If you have a mini-free memory, we can't be careful.
00:57:19We can't be careful.
00:57:20I'm going to see this one who is more than a year.
00:57:22In the future, we have a graduate.
00:57:23From the year to 2, we can't be careful.
00:57:24So now, after a hundred and fifteen million years, we've got a pretty good idea of what
00:57:45did it look like. But how did she behave? Well, animals her size and weight must have moved in a rather
00:58:05ponderous way. And in any case, since she was a vegetarian, as we know from her teeth,
00:58:13she had no need to be speedy to get her food.
00:58:20But it's the tiny bones in Dippy's inner ear that can give us a clue as to what she sounded like.
00:58:29These little bones are basically the same shape as that of the dinosaur's closest relatives, birds.
00:58:35The range of sounds a bird hears is related to its size. A small bird makes and hears high-pitched
00:58:42sounds, whereas large birds communicate with low-pitched sounds.
00:58:50So huge Dippy, with her inner ear bones shaped like those of a bird, could probably hear very low-pitched
00:58:58frequencies of sound. And she could probably make them, too.
00:59:04We know that elephants today can communicate using infrasound. Sound with sequences so low,
00:59:13they're below human hearing. And those sounds travel through the ground. Sometimes
00:59:18for many miles, and are detected by elephants through their large, flat, sensitive feet.
00:59:27Dippy, too, had large, flat feet. So maybe the giant dinosaurs communicated with one another
00:59:40in much the same way, as well as by bellowing. And those may not have been the only noises that Dippy could make.
01:00:00Some scientists think that because of the length of her tail and the way the joints work, she might have been able to crack it like a whip.
01:00:18The muscular strength that enabled her to hold her tail above the ground meant that she could,
01:00:23if necessary, use it as a weapon.
01:00:30Her tail would have helped to balance her long, heavy neck. But why was that so long?
01:00:38It used to be thought that she lived in rivers and needed her neck to break the surface in order to breathe.
01:00:44But that can't have been true, because if her body was submerged, the pressure of the water would have crushed her lungs.
01:00:53The most likely explanation seems to be that her huge neck helped her reach vast quantities of leaves.
01:01:01Sweeping it from side to side, she could cover a larger grazing area.
01:01:08She could also push ahead between forest trees to reach ferns and other ground vegetation.
01:01:13But in order to reach the highest, most succulent leaves in the forest,
01:01:21it seems likely that Dippy would have reared up on her hind legs.
01:01:27Come on, Dippy. Breakfast. Come on.
01:01:39Welcome back, Dippy.
01:01:40Come on.
01:01:40Let's go.
01:01:45Oh, that looks worse.
01:01:47Huh.
01:01:48Let's go.
01:01:51Let's go.
01:02:03Let's go.
01:02:03Oh, my God.
01:02:33Oh, my God.
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