- 14 hours ago
Documentary, 2 Dinosaurs of the Jurassic Collection
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00A chance discovery takes us on a journey deep in time, to a lost age, unlike anything you've ever
00:25known. A prehistoric world, where the middle of North America lays submerged beneath a sea of strange
00:37creatures. Now National Geographic Entertainment brings us an epic adventure, 82 million years in the
00:46making. Before they lived in our imaginations, they really lived. Sea Monsters, a prehistoric adventure.
01:16To be continued...
01:26For hundreds of years, we thought
01:46dinosaurs ruled the earth as scaly reptilian beasts. Huge lizards that
01:53terrorize the landscape. But new science is proving us wrong. And one tiny bird
02:02like creature is dismantling our most deeply held beliefs about the great T.
02:08Rex and his ground-shaking meat-eating brethren.
02:38Sometimes, ordinary people make extraordinary discoveries. A shepherd stumbled on the Dead
02:48Sea Scrolls. Teenagers found the cave paintings of Lascaux. And in 1996, with one swing of his
03:01pick, a Chinese farmer revolutionized our understanding of the dinosaurs.
03:08His blade struck an ancient rock. Inside, the fossil of a peculiar turkey-like creature.
03:23It was clearly a dinosaur. But the imprints in the rock showed strange new features. This dinosaur
03:34was covered with what looked like feathers. There was a buzz. There was like a rumor that
03:41feathered dinosaurs had been discovered in Northeast China. The find sent shockwaves
03:48through the paleo world. An astonishing discovery that will forever change what we thought we knew
03:54about dinosaurs. Immediately upon seeing it, we knew that this was really a smoking gun. But
04:00totally unexpected. And something we never would have believed we would find.
04:03The new discovery, named Sinoceropteryx, was about two feet tall, with a small head, teeth of a meat-eater,
04:20a long tail, and primitive filament-like feathers. These feathers could only be seen because of the rare
04:32conditions under which they were preserved. A volcanic eruption buried the creature in soft ash, locking in all its secrets before it could decompose.
04:49And it wasn't the only one. The find kicked off a dinosaur gold rush in the region. Over the next decade,
05:02hundreds of feathered dinos were found. And paleontologists began piecing together theories
05:09about what the feathers meant. They forced an immediate shift in our perceptions of dinos. What they looked like,
05:23how their bodies worked, and how they behaved. The one thing all the feathered dinos shared. They were all predatory meat-eaters. The most fearsome killers in the prehistoric world.
05:45Reptile-like creatures we wouldn't expect to be covered in feathers. The implications were scientifically astounding. The possibilities? Quite comical.
06:06One species in particular sparked the imagination. The most ferocious, iconically reptilian dinosaur of them all.
06:15Tyrannosaurus rex.
06:19All of a sudden, scientists had to adjust their image of big bad T. rex.
06:27If the ancestors and the relatives of T. rex all had feathers of some sort, then we know for sure that group would have retained them in some way.
06:36But did T. rex have feathers?
06:42Was he covered with downy fuzz? Or bright, colorful plumage?
06:53Did he behave more like a predatory bird than a giant lizard?
06:59Was our dark, historical picture of him badly misguided?
07:18To find out what T. rex was really like, scientists would need to take a closer look at the feathered coats of his relatives from China.
07:28It seemed smooth scales were out. And feathers were in.
07:38Now, to figure out what they were for.
07:42Feathers are used for lots of different things. I mean, they can be used for hunting, they can be used for display, they can be used for insulation.
07:51Modern birds provide some intriguing examples.
07:56The ptarmigan, which lives in the Arctic, uses feathers for warmth and changes color each season to hide from predators.
08:11The snowy plumber uses its feathers to attract attention.
08:18When its nest is threatened, it lures predators away by acting injured, fanning its rust-colored tail and beating its wings.
08:28The predator goes after the seemingly crippled bird. And the nest stays safe.
08:35And the male peacock flaunts its brilliant fan of iridescent tail feathers to attract a mate.
08:43These feather uses are all behavioral, but color is what makes them effective.
09:00That left scientists wondering whether the same had been true of dinosaur feathers.
09:05The problem was, no one knew of any way to extract color information from fossilized feathers.
09:15An exploration of color seemed like a scientific dead end.
09:22Until 2006, that is, when a chance discovery in a very different kind of animal offered a new avenue of attack.
09:33The man studying it, Yale graduate student, Jakob Winter.
09:40The animal, the squid.
09:43Squids are pretty awesome.
09:46They use colors in all sorts of complex ways.
09:52They can change color. They communicate with each other in color.
09:56They can actually express emotions with color.
10:01They can also spew black ink when threatened, creating a smokescreen in the water to confuse would-be predators.
10:09And they can also speak with the term for the drug that was a species-like.
10:12They can't say, they come to Africa.
10:19Jacob was examining a fossilized squid sample when he noticed something strange in its ink sac.
10:26It often seemed like Takab which is from theuk.
10:34The kingdoms, because they found out all sh Rückney, the dots remain in one or two,
10:37They looked like the granules of pigment that give squid ink its color.
10:48But he'd never seen them in a fossil before, so he'd always assumed they didn't get preserved.
10:57Eager to see if they really were fossilized ink droplets, he sought out some fresh samples
11:03for comparison.
11:05Under the microscope, Jakob saw a perfect match between the fossilized pigment and the
11:22pigment from the fresh samples.
11:27These squids are about 200 million years old, so it came as a big surprise when we looked
11:32at these fossilized ink samples and realized that they look exactly like the modern squid ink.
11:38The magnitude of his find hit hard.
11:44If squid fossils held color, other fossils might as well.
11:50Jakob knew feathers contained pigment in tiny, durable containers called melanosomes.
11:58He wondered if they could survive fossilization.
12:03Then I was thinking about dinosaurs.
12:05Maybe we can put colors on a dinosaur with this sort of discovery.
12:09Or, more specifically, the fossilized feathered dinos.
12:17Suddenly, the squid man had become a dinosaur hound.
12:25But if he was going to transform the field of paleontology, he couldn't do it alone.
12:36His team of heavy hitters, Derek Briggs, fossil preservation specialist.
12:45Rick Prum, bird expert.
12:48And Julia Clark, paleontologist.
12:56Immediately, I realized that if melanosomes were preserved in feathers, there was a great
13:01opportunity to reconstruct the plumage color of the feathered dinosaurs, which of course
13:05is as fascinating a question as there could be.
13:09It was extremely exciting, figuring out what kinds of interesting questions we could ask,
13:16what kinds of specimens might be the best for the project.
13:19It was a fascinating set of questions to start considering.
13:28Questions that might not only lead to a means of coloring long extinct dinosaurs,
13:32but to a new understanding of how they behaved and what they were like.
13:43To make it all happen, they'll need to gain access to a precious feathered dino sample.
13:52And for that, they'll need to go to China.
14:02China's Liaoning province is the world capital of feathered dino fossils.
14:19It's here that Jakob Winter, Derek Briggs, Rick Prum, and Julia Clark hope to find a rare
14:28sample they can use to bring a dinosaur's color back to life.
14:38Two days of traveling gets them to the capital city of Shenyang,
14:43where they meet up with Chinese paleontologist Gao Kachin.
14:54But the long trip is only the beginning of their journey.
14:56Once in Shenyang, they must navigate the tricky waters of Chinese dinosaur politics.
15:06There's a lot of interest in these materials,
15:09and gaining access and negotiating collaborations is always a big part of doing science in China.
15:19To that end, their first appearance is at a lavish dinner to pay their respects to their Chinese hosts.
15:26The team raves about the dinner.
15:38But the next day, their hopes of easy access to the fossils are unceremoniously dashed.
15:48When they arrive at the local museum, the curator refuses to let them take samples.
15:57He's worried their technique will damage his specimens.
16:02The kind of work we do involves taking samples of spectacular specimens.
16:08And inevitably, a curator's job is to ensure that his material is kept pristine and beautiful.
16:13So that's inevitably a little bit of a challenge.
16:20Stonewalled, the team seeks out the museum director for help.
16:27After some political maneuvering, he overrules his curator,
16:31and agrees to give them one special sample from the back.
16:45It's an ancient, crow-sized creature with well-developed feathers that seem promising.
16:50But as they take turns examining it, their excitement turns to concern.
17:08Some of the feathers look like they've been artificially enhanced.
17:11The feathers have been painted in a really very skillful way onto the surface.
17:20So when you look at the specimen as a whole, it looks very real.
17:26But once you see them under the lens, it's perfectly obvious where it's real and where it's not.
17:32Touching up fossils for display purposes is quite common.
17:38And a far cry from the all-out fakes that disreputable dealers often try to palm off to inexperienced buyers.
17:49But for the team, the enhancement makes large sections of the creature unusable.
17:54They take what they can get, but realize this specimen is not going to provide the samples they need
18:05to give a dinosaur back its color.
18:16Fortunately, their dinner diplomacy provides another lead.
18:20One of their Chinese colleagues introduces them to Li Chuanguo,
18:28a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Beijing.
18:35Li offers them special access to the museum's extensive collection.
18:41The best fossils are stored in the basement vaults.
18:44That's a nice one.
18:46Many still embedded in their original rocks.
18:50We were opening them.
18:52We were looking for ones that would be the best candidates for sampling.
19:04Amid the jumble of ancient rocks and bones, one creature stands out.
19:13Wow.
19:14There's some well-preserved feathers.
19:17It's not micro-Raptor, is it?
19:20Basically, the specimen had extremely well-preserved feathers that had not yet been touched.
19:27They hadn't been prepared.
19:30They hadn't been coated in a preservative material.
19:34You can actually see the barbs?
19:35That's just amazing.
19:36It was not ready for display, but it was perfect for sampling.
19:44You could see the nice details in them.
19:46We have these long feathers extending from the arms and the legs.
19:50And what we also could see was hints of color patterns.
19:56The animal is covered with feathers.
20:00Even its feet and toes sprout downy fluff.
20:03The samples they get from the creature will drive the next part of their challenge.
20:14To tease the fuzzy creature's colors from the ancient rock.
20:17Uncover its identity and see whether it holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of the feathered colored dinos.
20:37The team leaves China with high hopes of unleashing color onto the ancient dinosaur world.
20:47The long trip back to the U.S. gives them time to consider the exciting potential of their work.
21:08If they can isolate the fossilized dino-melanosomes,
21:12they may soon be able to turn fantasy and imagination into colorful fact.
21:26Back in his lab at Yale, Jakob's first task is to find the melanosomes in their samples.
21:33Because a fossil is a flattened 2D representation of a 3D animal,
21:39he's struggling to separate out individual feathers to analyze.
21:45It didn't look like a slam dunk.
21:48We were unsure whether we'd have melanosome preservation at all in the sample.
21:53So you have to say we were crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.
21:57It wasn't a sure thing.
21:59While Jakob wrestles with the melanosomes, Julia turns her focus to the identity of their fossil.
22:13If she can figure out what it is, she might be able to shed light on why it had feathers in the first place.
22:19Cross-referencing it with other feathered dinos, she realizes it's Ancheornis huxleyi,
22:29a chicken-sized meat-eater with a toothed beak,
22:34strange long feathers on its arms and legs,
22:36and the bizarre fluff between its toes and on its feet.
22:47Its thick body feathers form a cozy coat,
22:51something paleontologist Mark Norell is excited to see.
22:54Mark believes the feathers are indicators of a colossal shift in dinosaur physiology,
23:02a shift from cold-blooded to warm.
23:07I think that keeping warm is a big part of the evolution of feathers.
23:13I'm not saying that they were warm-blooded in the same sense that modern birds are,
23:18but they're on their way to becoming warm-blooded.
23:23A change from cold-blooded to warm meant the dinos were probably becoming more active with a higher metabolism,
23:32acting more like fidgety birds than lazy reptiles.
23:39Mark's theory flies in the face of conventional wisdom that dinosaurs were reptilian,
23:44but it's based on some compelling evidence.
23:51In 2004, he and a colleague discovered a tiny bird-like dinosaur,
23:57fossilized in an incredibly lifelike pose.
24:03It had its head tucked between its body and its arm,
24:07and in the same exact position that living birds tend to sleep in.
24:12And the reason that birds do that is because they're warm-blooded.
24:16You're able to maintain heat that way.
24:24Small warm-blooded creatures are especially vulnerable to heat loss,
24:29which is why Mark believes his find was so cozily wrapped up.
24:32But what about the big guys?
24:44Would T-Rex and his plus-size compatriots also have needed a full fluffy coat to keep warm?
24:50Well, scientists would say yes and no.
25:02This has to be investigated, but many people have hypothesized that these dinosaurs had lots of feathers,
25:08which were used for insulation when they were young, but as they grew older and got bigger,
25:13they probably would have diminished that feather coating.
25:17They may not have lost them completely, so even an adult T-Rex may have had amusing tufts of feathers
25:22or flashes of color on the head or down the side of the body or along the middle of the back,
25:27perhaps just for visual display and not any longer for any kind of temperature control.
25:32It's a tactic still used by today's biggest birds.
25:41We see that even in ostriches when the chicks hatch, that they're completely covered with fluff.
25:48But then as the animals get bigger and bigger and bigger, they lose all the feathers on their neck,
25:52they lose a lot of the feathers on their legs, and also their feather density on the body itself
25:57becomes much more limited.
26:02For T-Rex and the meat-eaters, the similarities to the warm-blooded ostrich don't end there.
26:14Other fossilized remains are revealing some other very bird-like and surprisingly endearing behaviors.
26:24When this lizard-looking relative of T-Rex was unearthed over a clutch of eggs in 1924,
26:31it was named Oviraptor, Latin for egg thief, because scientists thought it had been pilfering
26:38another dinosaur's eggs when it died.
26:42Oviraptor was thought to be originally eating the eggs because it was a scaly reptile,
26:48and that's kind of low-life business that reptiles are in, right?
26:57But 70 years later, another Oviraptor find by Mark Norell led to a very different conclusion.
27:04We found dinosaurs sitting on top of their nests. To find an animal brooding its eggs is a
27:13is a remarkable thing. Like, I mean, if you would have told me that we would find that a few years
27:17before I would have said you were crazy. Like warm-blooded birds, the Oviraptors were protecting
27:25their own eggs, not eating someone else's.
27:36Even more shocking, some scientists believe many of the nest-sitters were male,
27:40male. And then males played an important role in brooding and raising the young.
27:49Just like ostriches.
27:50And possibly T-Rex as well, since it was a close cousin of Oviraptor.
28:02It's very likely that if we make a prediction about the parental care of Tyrannosaurus rex,
28:06we would predict that it was the dad at the nest. So here's the most ferocious predator
28:14of any human fantasy, and it turns out that they were probably good dads.
28:21Poor T-Rex is becoming more bird-like every day.
28:26His fearsome reputation as a lizard-like, cold-blooded killer is being shattered
28:33by images of fuzzy babies, flamboyant patches of feathers, and stay-at-home dads.
28:42Even his posture has changed as scientists have been forced to account for his more avian bone structure.
28:50Sadly, things will only get worse for T-Rex, as startling new information about the feathered
28:58dinos comes to light.
29:07New dinosaur color revelations are emerging from New Haven, where the Yale team is starting to make
29:19some real progress on the hues of Ancheornis' coat.
29:29Jakob has finally isolated two distinct types of the color-carrying melanosomes.
29:34And meatball shapes, which would have contained a reddish-brown.
29:50What bird watchers call rufous red.
29:52But he also finds many other variations he doesn't recognize.
30:08Serendipitously, one of the world's leading melanosome specialists has just spent some time at Yale.
30:15A perfect opportunity for a color consultation.
30:25I actually got a kind of cryptic email from Jakob, just asking me about this certain shape of melanosome.
30:36After a few more emails, he wound up telling me that he had this great fossil specimen,
30:41and that they wanted to reconstruct the color.
30:44And I was, to be honest, a bit jealous that I hadn't thought of it.
30:51Intrigued, Matt quickly jumps in to help.
30:55He's an expert on color, and feathers, which often go together in complex ways.
31:00They're very, very narrow as well.
31:03They're very narrow.
31:06Brilliant greens and blues and shimmery iridescents are produced by light bouncing off the physical
31:12structures of the feather.
31:17And most bright reds, yellows, and pinks make their way into feathers from foods the birds eat.
31:30The colors stored in melanosomes tend to be the more earthy tones.
31:37So Matt focuses his attention on those.
31:44Using his one-of-a-kind database of melanosomes and their corresponding colors,
31:50he confirms the black and reddish brown and begins to decipher the other shapes Jakob has found.
31:57There's actually this, this gradient.
32:02We found this, this intermediate between the sausage and the meatball.
32:07And then that appeared to be associated with a gray color.
32:12As Matt spits out colors, Jakob begins mapping where they belong.
32:16That sounds like a Cretaceous feather that we looked at.
32:18Yeah, yeah.
32:19The striped feather.
32:20Yeah.
32:20All right.
32:21It's a crude paint-by-numbers of the ancient fossil.
32:24But it's beginning to reveal amazing patterns of color, including speckles on the cheeks,
32:34stripes on the arm feathers, spots on the legs.
32:38And the biggest surprise of all?
32:41A truly debonair hairpiece.
32:43We found support for black, gray, brown, brownish red.
32:53But what I think is more exciting to me is that these were, these were patterns.
32:59Like we could find out that the rufous color, the reddish color was on the head.
33:04And that's interesting because that says that it was actually using these feathers for display.
33:11It was showing off its feathers to its fellows.
33:15If Ankiornis was showing off for his neighbors, it means they must have been able to see what he was displaying.
33:24Turns out, we think they could.
33:26Their evidence comes from vision tests on modern crocs and birds.
33:37Many croc species have a proven ability to recognize colors.
33:44And birds have very keen color vision as well.
33:49They share the same four color receptors in their eyes.
33:52So genetically, scientists can predict that those receptors were present in their ancient common ancestor.
34:05That common ancestor is also shared by dinosaurs.
34:10So scientists can infer that dinos evolved with color vision as well.
34:16If they're right, it means Ankiornis' companions would have been duly impressed
34:21by his conspicuous rufous red crest.
34:29Feathers may have evolved for temperature control.
34:32But other, more visual uses would soon have followed.
34:38Dominance displays.
34:40Mating games.
34:43Camouflage.
34:45Probably all of the above.
34:47And if the team's color work pans out,
34:53the colors and patterns of Ankiornis and the other feathered dinos will reveal just how they did it.
35:03But just as they begin the final stage of the recolorization,
35:06another find uproots the dinosaur family tree yet again.
35:13In an obscure mining town in Shandong Province, China,
35:26an intriguing new dino is making the origins of dino
35:30feathers even fuzzier than it was before.
35:50For years, it sat unexamined in a private collection,
35:55until its owner turned it over to a museum.
36:05Mark Norell can't wait to take a look.
36:07How are you?
36:08Great, really great.
36:10Let me introduce you to the director.
36:11Yeah, can't wait to see it.
36:13The new find is Tianya Long, a small bipedal dinosaur covered in primitive bristle-like filaments.
36:30The first specimen reveals long bristles on the throat,
36:35along the backbone, and at the base of the tail.
36:38We were able to see additional specimens,
36:42and to see that these bristles are completely covering the entire body.
36:46I mean, that was pretty amazing and pretty spectacular,
36:49because I never expected that they would be, you know, that thick,
36:53and that, you know, covering the whole head, the whole neck, everything.
36:57I mean, it looked like a big fuzzball.
37:02Interesting, but given the huge number of feathered,
37:05fuzzy and filamented dinosaurs that have been found,
37:09it doesn't seem like much of a revelation,
37:15until paleontologists realize where it stands in the dino family tree.
37:22Unlike every other feathered dino, Tianya Long doesn't come from the predatory line that includes
37:28T. rex and the flesh-eaters.
37:34It comes from an older plant-eating branch that featured the armor-plated, spiked, and duck-billed species,
37:43including the iconically bizarre Stegosaurus and Triceratops.
37:48If Tianya Long's bristles do turn out to be actual feathers,
37:56it would suggest that the ancestor it shared with the feathered meat-eaters might also have had some
38:02form of feathers, way back at the base of the dinosaur family tree.
38:09It's a stunning new window into the earliest days of the dinosaur,
38:19and indicates to a growing number of scientists that all dinosaurs may have had some form of feathers.
38:26Unfortunately, it doesn't shed much light on the way those feathers looked on a living, breathing animal.
38:45Little Anchiornis is still the great hope for that.
38:48And after all the fossil hunting, sample-taking, sausage-searching, and color-coding,
38:58he is at last getting ready for his close-up.
39:10The team at Yale calls in world-renowned bird artist Michael DiGiorgio to bring him to life.
39:19I got a phone call from Rick. He says, I have a really cool project for you.
39:25And I said, sure, sounds good. What is it? And I thought it was some type of project with a bird.
39:31And then he told me that it was a dinosaur.
39:35This is uncharted territory.
39:40Since use often defines appearance,
39:43DiGiorgio will rely on Rick's knowledge of bird feathers and their functions.
39:48To hint at what some of the dino feathers might actually have looked like.
39:56The thick body feathers, most likely for warmth.
40:00This is from a great gray owl, a northern forest, arctic owl that lives in places that are really cold.
40:07And so underneath the contour feathers of the plumage, he has a whole layer of downy feathers that provide beautiful insulation.
40:17The red crest, probably for display.
40:20Now, this is an example of a male great curacao.
40:27These feathers are a little stiffer and slightly curly, a little more specialized than we would see in
40:33Anchiornis huxleyi. It's still an example of a prominent crest on a living bird and probably functions in courtship display and signaling.
40:45But the long, spangled arm and leg feathers are not as easy to decipher.
40:51And the foot feathers are still downright bizarre.
40:54One of the biggest surprises was the foot. The way the feathers came off the foot.
41:00Which is amazing. Why would feathers, it seems like they would get in the way, right?
41:10The foot feathers are a mystery his drawing might help solve.
41:13And it's finally ready for the big color reveal.
41:30For the first time in more than 150 million years, a dinosaur will be seen in its original colorful coat.
41:39And here is our rendering of the plumage of Anchiornis huxleyi.
41:48When we thought we had an opportunity to reconstruct the color of the dinosaurs,
41:53I never expected that the first one we would work on would turn out to be so dramatic.
41:59Yeah, it looks like a big fluffy chicken with, you know, lots of leg feathers.
42:03It's a very weird looking, big fluffy chicken.
42:08I could see it hunting down maybe insects, small prey.
42:15Probably was quite a quick creature based on the size of the legs.
42:21And if I had to pick a living bird that this looks the most like,
42:26it reminds me of a road runner.
42:31Taken together, the feathers and colors provide some fascinating clues about how Anchiornis acted.
42:40They might circle around each other and size each other up.
42:43And maybe it flares up its feathers to display these patterns.
42:46It might be a brief skirmish and then one of them runs away.
42:49We know Anchiornis wasn't airborne because its feathers were not aerodynamic enough for flight.
42:58But they certainly looked like they were heading in that direction.
43:04I'll be opening up a can of worms if I say it goes up in the trees and then flaps down.
43:09But you would think that maybe you would at least soften the landing if it jumped out of a tree.
43:13It does have actual fingers so it probably could climb very well.
43:19And I could see it sailing from one location to another.
43:23This thing might have been useful in gliding.
43:27But if they did glide, they were certainly at a very early phase of aerodynamic function.
43:34It's a theory worth further investigation.
43:37But another of the creature's more familiar features has bird expert Rick Prum pondering something bigger.
43:48The detailed patterning of its black and white feathers.
44:02The spangled plumage of the wings and the legs is really exciting.
44:07Because it's strikingly similar to the feathers of a breed of chicken.
44:16The silver spangled hamburg chicken is a domesticated chicken that has beautifully white feathers with a black spangled tip.
44:25So it's a striking example of a very similar plumage pattern in a living bird.
44:32The physical similarity sparks a powerful possibility.
44:40One of the interesting things about the hamburg chicken is that the spangles are larger
44:45in females than they are in males.
44:53If the same was true of Ancheornis, a pattern comparison of additional specimens could help
44:58reveal which were males and which were females.
45:02Something notoriously difficult to determine from dinosaur fossils.
45:06It could work on other dinosaurs as well, if enough samples can be found and analyzed.
45:14What would have thought a mere chicken might provide such a windfall?
45:27It could work on other animals.
45:28It could work on other animals.
45:30It could work on other animals.
45:35And unfortunately for the great T-Rex, that's not all the chicken can tell us.
45:39Scientists recently analyzed protein samples from a 68 million year old T-Rex leg bone.
45:52And what modern animal did they find it was most closely related to?
45:57That's right, the common chicken.
46:04Think about that next time you bite into a wing.
46:06Think about that next time you bite into a wing.
46:15After centuries at the sinister top of the reptilian predatory food chain,
46:21T-Rex can fall no further.
46:26From upright and scaly to feathered and bird-like, this cousin of Ancheornis,
46:32and long-lost relative of the chicken, has had its reputation completely shattered.
46:41His image consultants might pine for the days before new scientific techniques invaded the field of paleontology.
46:49But for the rest of us, it has opened up a whole new world.
46:53A world where one small creature named Ancheornis brought the past back to life.
47:02Where dinosaurs, crocs, and birds shared a single common ancestor.
47:06And where evolutionary trial and error left dinosaurs with an exotic collection of strange feathered coats.
47:16And eerily familiar bird-like behaviors.
47:19You
47:22Outro
47:31Outro
47:34This is the company of his nat friendship
47:40The mac built-like behaviors
47:41And it Jane
47:43The fala
Comments