All language subtitles for English (auto-generated)_en_0_Lost Worlds_ the Forgotten Creatures of Prehistory(720P_HD)

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a

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dragonflies the size of

hawks centipedes larger than

humans a strange managerie of giant

insects amphibians reigned over the

Earth 300 million years

ago over time these huge creatures

shrunk in

size or

disappeared the reasons for their

Progressive Extinction remain

controversial

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358 million years ago the continents

came together to form the supercontinent

Pangia this was the beginning of the

Carboniferous period oxygen levels in

the air were much higher back then 35%

compared to today's

21% for the first time on Earth giant

trees stored carbon dioxide and released

oxygen in abundance

human beings would not have survived in

this High oxygen

atmosphere but for some swamp dwellers

it was ideal like Arthur plura measuring

up to 10 ft this long lost cousin of the

centipedes was a

herbivore

oranor with a wingspan up to 25 Ines

this member of the dragonfly family is

the largest known flying insect ever

discovered

a tireless Predator it had no Airborne

competitors of the time since birds and

flying reptiles didn't exist

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yet the high oxygen levels in the

atmosphere give the characteristic sepia

color to the sky during the the

Carboniferous

period oxygen also makes the air

extremely

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flammable such a hostile world is hard

for us to imagine lightning storm could

set a flame the immense

forests and their

inhabitants during this period not a day

went by without huge forest fires and

yet giant insects thrived later when

fires became less frequent these

astonishing creatures simply disappeared

scientists are trying to determine what

caused that Extinction

there are several possible culprits in

fact it's a bit like an Agatha Christi

novel when there's not one but several

murders it's our job to take the clues

we have and reconstruct the

investigations in order to come up with

the most likely scenario while we've

known about giant insects since the 19th

century paleontologists did not

understand why they had disappeared for

a long time a change in the composition

of the atmosphere was the only EXP

explanation but at the beginning of the

21st century the discovery of fantastic

fossil insects and their predators

opened up new possibilities while that's

a wonderful hypothesis and assuredly

something was preying upon these giant

insects we don't have great evidence for

it around the world American European

and Chinese scientists confront the old

theories using new fossil discoveries

Unearthed by groundbreaking technology

to try and explain why these science

became

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extinct the earliest giant insect

fossils were found in the French region

of aler in

1880 under the surface at this Pond were

the remains of animals that had died 350

million years ago during the

Carboniferous period mean

neuras now extinct these tireless

predators are the largest flying in sex

that ever

existed this abandoned industrial site

was an important coal field in the 19th

century and as the coal was dug out

fossils were discovered close to the

town of

kanty the owner of the coal mine Mr

Money gave his name to the specimen that

is preserved at the Natural History

Museum in Paris meura

mon Andre Nell a paleontologist whose

speciality is early insects watches over

this valuable

piece miners would look for fossils to

make a little extra money and one day

when they were opening slabs they came

across this

animal unfortunately when they were

digging it out they hit it four times

with a pick and we lost its head they

were the super predators of the time

predators of other insects that were

also very

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big these large siiz fossils are quite

exceptional while thousands of insects

were found on the site of common only

five mean neuras were ever

discovered meura like all other insects

had four wings two on each side attached

to the thorax in the center in front you

had a head with big eyes because it was

a predator so its eyes just like modern

dragonflies were used to see its

environment in

360° so possibly even behind the animal

to better understand how this extinct

animal once lived we must step back 300

million years in

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time this is what the french region of

Alia would have looked like

then a giant swamp scattered with

cypresses humidity at nearly 100% desent

made the atmosphere dense and allowed

meura to easily carry its heavy

exoskeleton into the

air it is part of a Genus that is

extinct today but it looks much like

modern

dragonflies and is part of the same

odonatoptera super

order with wings that functioned

independently of each other megaira was

agile in flight but unlike its

contemporary cousins it couldn't fold

its

wings faced with this efficient Airborne

Predator vegetarian insects such as

paleo dict optera had to keep themselves

out of

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sight by comparing its Anatomy to Modern

dragonflies we can guess that gura's

main physical

characteristics one it could fly over 40

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mph two it was a sight Predator its head

was independent from the rest of its

exoskeleton so it could keep it still

while flying and focus on its

prey three it had a huge appetite it

could eat its own weight in food every

30 minutes

to catch all this food megura had an

array of attributes identified in

fossils but What might explain its giant

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sign away from the public is the

Museum's library of species where they

keep the specimen that scientists study

here we find mean neuras and their prey

both reaching impressive

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sizes so here you have an example of a

meura on which we see the base of its

wings the thorax but what is most

spectacular are the four legs equipped

with strong spines that were used to

stab

prey but the meanus prey were also large

sized insects like the Paleo dict top

TI you just have one Wing from here to

here so you can imagine the whole

thing these were mean's prey they were

big guys too big insects to escape big

predators so in this case we have an

arms race between predators and prey but

this battle to be the biggest between

meura and its prey seems to have had its

limit limits otherwise paleontologists

would certainly have found even bigger

and more terrifying flying insect

fossils most of mean's day was spent

looking for food since its metabolism

required a lot of

energy according to scientists the huge

size of insects During the carbonis

period was possible because of the high

levels of oxygen in the air

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insects don't have lungs but instead use

a unique system of tubes trachea and

traul to bring air directly to their

organs including their digestive

system the downside to this system is it

lacks

efficiency air travels through the

tissues in the form of gas the bigger an

insect is the more oxygen it needs

it is very strange that these animals

reach these sizes because nowadays we do

not have such big insects and at the

time of the dinosaurs when we had large

vertebrates insects were much smaller it

turns out that in the Carboniferous

period for reasons linked to

geochemistry the oxygen rate in the

atmosphere was higher than it is today

which encouraged the development of

animals such as the large insects

Mega neuras could not survive in today's

atmosphere because not enough oxygen

would reach their organs including their

brains and they would

faint since the beginning of the 20th

century scientists have proposed a link

between the size of insects and the

concentration of oxygen but it wasn't

until

2007 that an experiment finally proved

it

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in the Chicago suburbs the Argon

National Laboratory houses the United

States most powerful synchrotron a

scanner that generates the brightest

x-ray beams in the northern

hemisphere the distance around the

particle accelerator is more than half a

mile so Jake sooker the scientist in

charge of the study uses a trike to get

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around today live insects are being put

under the

scanner we use the idea that you can

take living insects and make inferences

about insects that existed in the past

what we're trying to do in the study is

to test an old hypothesis that the

amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is

what limits insect body size so the idea

with this hypothesis is that when you

have more oxygen your insects can get

larger and when you have less oxygen

insects will get smaller in response U

but no one had really ever tested this

hypothesis before so we use synchrotron

x-rays to look inside the animal to

study the dimensions of their tracheal

system this particle accelerator

generates extremely intense and focused

x-rays that pass through the insect's

body our purpose is to see the trach

system in action and some of the

tracheal tubes are really

small and we want to see it in the

living animal um so this is really the

only technique where we can do all of

those

things

immed for the first time scientists are

able to actually observe an insect

breathing would you turn the

using this experiment they discovered

that crickets not only breathe passively

but also use their whole bodies to carry

air to their

organs and you can see that bubble in

the gut moves forward to the head and it

moves backward and every time it's doing

that it's synchronized with the

compression of the tracheal system the

movements that you see here are are not

a passive effect this is an active

movement um by the animal and it's the

ultimate cause of it are contraction of

muscles just as this cricet contracts

its digestive system to send air to its

organs meura would have contracted its

abdm to absorb the thick Carboniferous

air the elastic exoskeleton would resume

its shape once the muscles had completed

their

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action but beyond the discovery of this

internal movement what interests Joka is

the space occupied by the respiratory

system within the insects

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bodies he has compared beetles of

different sizes to study the link

between their size and that of their

respiratory

system and what we found is that the

tracheal tubes take up a larger fraction

of the body as you go from smaller to

large than you might expect so what we

think based on the study is that if you

would make this even larger so if we

would scale this up farther and farther

eventually you reach a limit where you

can't stuff more traal system inside the

animal because you have to have other

things like muscles and gut and nervous

tissue um fat bodies things like that

that are all important for the

physiology of the animal you can't just

have one big tracheal system the higher

oxygen concentration of the

Carboniferous period meant that insects

required fewer respiratory tubes and

could therefore grow to a larger

size but with the modification of the

atmosphere the giant insects had to

reduce their size over millions of years

of

evolution and not all of them survived

these

changes 290 million years ago During the

permium period oxygen level decreased

from 35% to 23% close to today's level

Andia had already formed a

supercontinent extending from one pole

to the other surrounded by a single

ocean it was subject to extreme climatic

conditions the heart of the continent

suffered drastic temperature changes and

deserts appeared but at the equator

heavy rainall allowed the great forest

from the Carboniferous era to survive

during this period of major climate

change punctuated by the monsoons and

the warming of the atmosphere a living

fungus appeared on the bark of

trees this tiny mushroom uses an enzyme

to break down wood gradually plant

debris and dead trees decompose and no

longer build up on the ground to form

coal

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the fungus stopped the accumulation of

carbon on the ground and instead it was

recycled into the

atmosphere the proportion of oxygen in

the air decreased gradually with major

consequences for the

environment this transitional period

brought about the demise of arthr plura

a distant relative of the centipedes

but why did the first giants of the

Carboniferous period disappear could

their lifestyle be

responsible in

1977 arop plura fossils were found in OT

in the heart of the French Countryside

the slag heaps surrounding this former

mining town are Hallmarks of its

industrial past in the local Natural

History Museum tribute is paid to the

miners who discovered fossils while they

were

working among them this impressive set

of footprints the most important ever

found in

France they're examined by Silva shabon

a specialist in arthropods the family of

invertebrates that includes insects and

centipedes here you can see a set of

tracks you have two trails that are

parallel this was made by an organism of

quite a respectable size an animal that

must have measured around 3 F long it's

just a fragment of the track that was

probably much

bigger unfortunately no adult size

fossil has been discovered but the

paleontologists have found many smaller

specimens in these C

deposits you can see here what this

little creature looked like these are

juvenile specimens which are

tiny here's a complete specimen with its

shell that is well preserved so

obviously this organism as it grows will

produce larger Trails when it

moves arura was rather similar to Modern

centipedes it could reach 10 ft in

length and it crawled on the ground or

up trees in search of

food life in the rainforest during the

early permium period was quite similar

to that of the Carboniferous

period and there was enough oxygen in

the atmosphere for arthr plura to

thrive and face unexpected Predators

such as iops this amphibian locates

arthr plura using cells in its skin that

detect vibrations on the tree

trunk but ARR plura had a considerable

Advantage the claws of the ends of it

its articulated legs allow it to grip

the trun and its protective shell

Shields it against

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attackers Arthur aura's disappearance

may not have been caused by Predators

but by decreasing Food Supplies

this creature was a herbivore at the

time it would have had plenty to

eat at that time the vegetation was

equatorial or tropical so it was an

extremely Lush vegetation with a great

variety of plants these plants are in

fact the origin of coal ARR plura lived

in this Forest environment you also have

on the other side trees and leaves that

were found in aropur stomach contents

so it probably fed on these tree

branches did they eat from trees lying

on the ground or did they climb trees

these are hypothesis we will probably

never know for

sure these fossilized plants have been

so well preserved that they still appear

alive but as they began to disappear

arur plura had to adapt this Forest

environment will tend to dry out at the

end of the Carboniferous the climate

will change the vegetation will

disappear and arthr plura will lose its

food source which is probably one reason

that explains its

Extinction over a period of 10 million

years the atmosphere and the climate

gradually changed bringing about the

demise of arthr plura the most recent

fossils we have date from about 280

million years ago Evolution could have

retained smaller and more energy

efficient insects however in 2009

scientists were surprised to find new

meura fossils in the south of France

these specimens discovered on sight

dating from the end of the permium

period prove that the declining oxygen

rate cannot be the sole explanation for

the extinction of giant

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insects what Clues did these unexpected

fossils

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reveal these deposits are scarce

scientists know of only about 15 of them

in the world and like here they've not

been all fully

excavated this beautiful landscape with

its typical Red Rock is located less

than an hour from the French

Riviera this is one of the sites

excavated by Andre

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Nell here we are 250 million years into

to the red Continental peran red peran

because the rocks have become oxidized

the iron is oxidized and has become

red so we are dealing with an

environment that is extremely rich in

organisms that have left their impact

but few visible fossils up to now in any

case in this deposit but fortunately

fossils have been found in other

deposits it's in a similar geological

layer that insect fossils from the

permium period were discovered in 2009

close to the French of for a long time

we thought these giant dragon flies had

existed during the Carboniferous period

at the beginning of the peran but they

no longer existed towards the middle and

end of the peran but we were surprised

to discover dragonflies that were as big

as those from the

Carboniferous paleontologist were

perplexed since the level of oxygen had

already decreased by that period in

theory giant insects should have

disappeared but the specimens of

different sizes conserved in Andre

Nell's laboratory in Paris Pro that they

were still

around there are tiny wings of the meanu

day like this one here this is the size

of a modern dragonfly

Wing we have much bigger species here is

the rear wing of another meanu day

another

species this one too was a giant we have

bigger ones but only

fragments this here is a piece of meanu

day's Wing the size is comparable to

that of the meanu day of the coniferous

we estimate that its wingspan is around

23 in we see that with these animals

there is great diversity it's during

this time they become the most

Diversified we have small ones medium

ones big ones and very big ones this

means they had not really become extinct

at this period this does not sit well

with the scenario of Extinction due to

the decrease in the level of oxygen

these recently discovered species of

mean neuras found in France have also

turned up in the United States evidence

of their existence is

accumulating here is what the Earth

looked like during the middle of the

permium period a hot and humid World

covered with tropical forests with an

oxygen rate just slightly higher than

today one animal species survived

Against All Odds Mega neuras represented

by this Mega neur

opsis this specimen discovered in Texas

is as large as it French

cousins but how can an insect measuring

nearly 2 ft survive breathing air that

was much poorer in oxygen than in the

past did it have an advantage that arthr

plura did

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not the mega neurops fossil was

discovered in 1937 next to canaza city

in the USA

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Professor Michael Engles is a Paleo

entomologist who has worked at the

University of canvas for the past 20

years author of The Definitive work on

the evolution of the insects he is also

the head of this collection containing

4.7 million specimens most of them

contemporary

insects these are some of the large

insects that occur today large moths

stick insects beetles dragonflies and

damsel flies and while they're pretty

impressive in their size none of them

can compare to the giant insects of the

past according to angles one asset which

might have enabled mean neuras to

survive during the permium period

despite the lower oxygen levels is the

movement of their

wings you would have an easier chance

getting a large flying insect than you

would a large insect that doesn't fly

wings are vital not only for the

movement of the organism but as the

muscles contract to move the wings up

and down they actually press up against

the air sacks and move air through the

body flight actually confers an

advantage to uh the giant insects in the

fact that the actual movement of the

flight muscles helps to support the

metabolically active tissue within them

by getting oxygen into an area where a

wingless insect or other arthropod would

not be able to

this full body ventilation could be the

secret to meganeuropsis

survival the movement of its wings

quickly brings air to the trachea which

then supplies the organs with

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oxygen while the ground dwelling Giants

of the Carboniferous period disappeared

this Advantage would have allowed mean

neuras to continue ruling the skies

During the permium period remaining at

the top of the food chain in the

swamps this dupla corus now extinct

amphibian has no chance of going

unnoticed betrayed by its need for

air meganeuropsis sees it as soon as it

leaves the water surface thanks to eyes

that are extremely sensitive to movement

shapes and colors

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w

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mean neuras were the super predators of

the time and their wings enabled them to

survive despite falling levels of oxygen

so what caused their

Extinction no megur fossils have been

discovered from after the permium period

today scientists still don't know

exactly when they disappeared but other

large-sized dragonflies survived the

next 130 million years to explain the

extinction of these Giants scientist are

now contemplating the emergence of new

Predators while insects were the only

flying creatures during the first part

of their history other animals took to

the skies during the later peran period

between 300 and 250 million years ago of

what was to become eventually Europe

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Jean Sebastian sta alienist at the

Natural History Museum in Paris is the

leading French specialist in early

vertebrates he has come to the legendary

paleontology gallery to collect a very

important specimen for the study of

insect

Predators though smaller in size than

many other

fossils this was the first of its

species to possess a major advantage

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this is the fossil of a gliding reptile

that is about 250 million years old and

has the strange name of celos ravus this

reptile actually developed gliding

flight the ability to Glide allows an

animal to catch prey in the air like the

giant insects

the planet continued to heat up at the

end of the perum period swamps an

infinite source of fossils now had

aquatic plants characteristic of

stagnant

Waters like the insects during the

Carboniferous period reptiles were just

starting to try out life in the trees

and flying amongst them s zavas would

become an outstanding insect Hunter

thanks to its retractable

Wings it had a very unusual and

interesting Anatomy its fairly small

head was a triangular shape on its skull

we can see small conico pointed teeth

they were probably used to crack the

hard exoskeletons of insects and of

course the main characteristic of this

gliding reptile are its stick shaped

bones that start around the armpits and

Ena this animal to throw itself in the

air and base jump

we can well imagine it climbing up this

microscope for instance and then

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jumping we can even imagine it climbing

with its small Claws and then unfolding

its swings to

Glide so we can picture the race between

celus aravis and the flying insects

living at that

time only 16 in long this small reptile

couldn't catch Mega neuras but it could

compete for the same prey the Paleo

dioptra to catch its victim it has to

take the

plunge CIA surus can't flap its wings to

catch flying insects it relies on an

element of

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surprise and its ability to

Glide there is no room for

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error cidio surus is merely a first step

on the road to

flight this gliding reptile has no doubt

played apart maybe not in the full

extension of giant insects but in any

case we have a super Predator regularly

attacking them and we can therefore

assume that this was one element in the

decline of giant insects at the

time if cier SAS was not the only

culprit it was certainly the first to

put pressure on giant insects before any

others took to the

skies this animal guarding the entrance

to the kro museum in Germany is part of

the terasol family these flying reptiles

appeared 230 million years

ago today they are completely extinct

but scientists have discovered around

100 different

species could they too have been a

threat to giant

insects Professor eard Frey or Dino as

he is usually known is a world

specialist in

terrasaurs theasaurus are flying

reptiles and they are characterized by a

flly membrane that extended from the tip

of the little finger down to the

ankle the interesting point with these

pterosaurus is that they have a size

range which is simply unbelievable from

about 20 cm swings span up to 14 M

swings span which is

unique yet according to scientists very

few of these terrasaurs were insect

eaters the only insectivores were part

of the anurag natis family among the

smallest terrasaurs we cannot imagine

really that they hunted the big

insects but probably they chase the

small ones which are not seen in the

fossil record the big insects however

also chased small insect so they

probably conquered about the same prey

all the other pterosaurs from that time

we know likely fed on something else and

thus did not make any concerence to the

big insects and probably this is one of

the reasons why they persisted such a

long

time 230 million years ago during the

Triassic period terrasaurs spread around

Europe Europe but also to what is now

South America and

Asia for the first time in the history

of life on earth a family of vertebrates

learned to master not just gliding but

flapping

flight like annatas discovered in

Germany its Asian cousin batak gnatus is

a flying reptile nocturnal insect eating

and

fast with its flat scull and big eyes

batrack arnus occupies the same

ecological niche as modern day

owls but the comparison with birds of

prey stops there its enormous Jaws are

equipped with a dozen conical

teeth no flying insect can hide from

Bacha Agatha's volums literally flying

frog

jaw can the caligrama an insect with a

10-in wingspan take it

on an experiment carried out in Germany

puts the theory to the

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test Dino fry Works in collaboration

with the Institute of fluid mechanics in

K Germany this wind tunnel is usually

used to refine the shape of airplanes

and improve their aerody dyamics but

today the paleontologist is using it to

test the terasa flying

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abilities a resin and carbon fiber model

of annatas is placed in the Wind

Tunnel we are the beginning of our

studies but what we learned so far is

that pterosaurs likely were extremely

slow Flyers yeah so they could cope with

wind speeds uh around 40 kilm per hour

or less that probably these guys needed

to flap their wings to stay in the air

and that they were not very good gliders

but flapping wings also means that they

were as active Flyers much more

maneuverable and this is again

interesting when they started to chase

insects on the

wing when theasaurus appeared insects

lost the Monopoly on flapping flight

bat trogus was indeed capable of leaving

the tree line Shore to chase insects out

in the open which his predecessor Celia

aravis the flying lizard was unable to

do the terrasaurs seem to have had more

of an impact on the giant insect's prey

than on the giant insects themselves

contributing to their final decline but

not fully explaining their Extinction

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on the other side of the Atlantic one

American researcher suggested other

culprits in a study published in August

2012 this paleontologist specialized es

in the extinction that occurred at the

end of the perum period 250 million

years

ago more at home in front of a computer

than wielding a TR in the field Matthew

clam is a database

de it took him a year and a half to

collect the information needed to

publish his survey on the decline of

giant insects he has undertaken a

mammoth task Gathering the sizes of all

fossil wings since the first scientific

Publications we compiled this very large

database with nearly 10,000 insect

species um by simply getting um

published papers where paleontologists

had found insect fossils and described

them and given them a name Clapham

discovered that during the first part of

their history insect size changed with

the level of oxygen in the atmosphere as

oxygen declined they diminished in size

and as it Rose their size increased so

this pattern holds for the first 200

million years or so of of insect history

um but then beginning in the late part

of the the Jurassic period around 150

million years ago you can see insects

are become become smaller um even though

atmospheric auction is is going up at

this time and this coincides quite

closely with the evolution of of

archaeopteris the first

bird the ancient ancestors of the birds

first appeared during the Jurassic

period 160 m million years ago the

oldest fossils come from

China at that time forests of giant

conifers offered a fantastic Launchpad

to conquer the

sky an ecological niche that was quickly

seized by a new generation of creatures

Learning to

Fly small dinosaurs like this anones had

feathers on their arms and legs and used

them as wings

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the claws on their wings enabled them to

gain altitude and get good Vantage

points insects like this jurus in brof

lebia had to hide in the trees to

survive as soon as it takes off it

becomes visible and is hunted down by

anones while only a few terrasaurs like

anagas ate insects all bird ancestors

did increasingly skilled at flying they

would become Fierce insect

predators in the Cretaceous Period when

these these first birds are are evolving

there would have been increased

predation pressure on these large

insects in particular as they were less

maneuverable than than the smaller

insects uh in addition to this increased

predation there was likely competition

between birds and insects uh especially

these large predatory insects for the

same food sources and so both of those

factors likely led to a a decrease in in

insect

size this competition between birds and

insects still happens

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today just like flying lizards and

parasaurs birds would have had an

influence on the size of

insects but why have giant insects

completely disappeared leaving only

today's small insect population

a last clue could provide an

answer it came from a fossil Rich site

close to where anones was found in the

Chinese region of loning northeast of

Beijing the numerous eruptions that

shook the region 125 million years ago

have helped preserve certain plants from

the period in volcanic ash including the

ancestors of flowering

plants discover in 2002 by the

paleobotanist

sun they would have had an unexpected

impact on the extinction of the last

large-sized dragon

flies but here uh in China in the west

Le we found at all this know an we call

the

arus this is archo

fructus the first flower to appear on

our

planet on this fossil seen through a

microscope we can distinguish the male

organs the stam that contain the pollen

and the pistol the female

organ these characteristics allow sunate

to confirm that this fossil belongs to

the

angiosperms a family of plants whose

seeds are enclosed ins of fruit unlike

conifers according to the paleobotanist

these plants were Aquatic and grew on

Lake

Shores but what does the appearance of

the first flowering plants have to do

with the extinction of large carnivorous

insects Andre Nell believes these two

events are

linked many families of insects

disappeared at that time and others

managed to adapt to angiosperms which

proliferated and began to diversify to

produce more or less our modern forests

the impact was also very significant for

dragonflies during that same

period could the decline of giant

insects have something to do with the

dragonfly's original

shape because before they were able to

fly they were aquatic creatures their

life began

underwater for the first few years they

they existed as L and just like their

cousins the mayflies they fed on other

aquatic insect

[Music]

Lara when flowering plants such as archo

fructus appeared on the lak shores 125

million years

ago the Lara's life conditions

[Music]

changed the plants took root in shallow

water but then opened their flowers in

the

air when they withered their petals and

leaves floated on the surface before

sinking to the

bottom this material is digested by the

microorganisms present in the water but

to do this the organisms use the oxygen

contained in the water leaving little

oxygen available for the dragonfly

lava these dragonflies may have

disappeared at that time because their L

could not adapt to this change in the

aquatic

ecosystem and they were replaced by

other dragon

flies the emergence of flowering plants

completely modified the lak's

ecosystem and would have led to the

extinction of the last large-sized

insects which had gradually declined

since the

[Music]

Carboniferous the extinction of

arthropods and giant insects over

millions of years of evolution teaches

us that it took many protagonists to

cause the extinction of these species

the change in the composition of oxygen

in the atmosphere the emergence of new

Predators like flying lizards some teras

SWS and the bird ancestors and finally

the birth of

flowers in the early 21st century which

are the largest insects that inhabit our

[Music]

planet today insects can reach the size

of a hand but very few are bigger than

this Chinese

Cricket for we are at the dawn of a new

phase of

Extinction C by

humans since the onset of the Industrial

Revolution the large insects live mostly

in tropical or intertropical

climates they're in danger since the

habitat is at risk if the forest in

which the giant stick insect lives is in

danger the giant butterfly will of

course disappear I certainly hope that

we will continue to see them but

certainly with the rate of habitat

destruction that's going on throughout

the world particularly in the tropical

environments where many of these species

occur um it is very likely that a lot of

them will be lost just like the giant

insects

where do birds come

from and who were their

ancestors for a long time these

questions have remained

unanswered their family tree stopped

abruptly at the oldest known species a

fossil found in 19th century Germany

archaeopteris whose name comes from the

Greek for ancient wing

but since

1996 thousands of animals Unearthed in

China have shed new light on the origin

of

[Music]

birds this abundance of the discoveries

proves that most dinosaurs were not

covered in Scales but clad in

feathers some of these feathered Dr

dragons could even

[Music]

fly the extent of the Asian jigsaw

puzzle is so vast that it ties

modern-day Birds to remarkable distant

cousins and suggests a multitude of

relatives during the Jurassic period

between 200 and 145 million years ago

the supercontinent Pangia opened up

creating separate land

masses at the edges of this world China

and Siberia formed a huge Peninsula with

a temperate climate similar to that of

modern Europe

the breakup of the continents was

accompanied by volcanic eruptions

particularly in

China a paradise in Waiting inhabited by

strange

creatures like

[Music]

anonas meaning near bird this little

dinosaur is completely covered in

[Music]

feathers the size of a modern-day pigeon

anones is a long lost

relation the descendants of this

lightweight dinosaur survived better

than other large theropods a group that

includes all carnivorous dinosaurs

[Music]

including Guan

Longs they are efficient Hunters 3 m

long and weighing 50

[Music]

kg to escape anones was capable of short

gliding flights while its pursuer was

firmly stuck on the

[Music]

[Music]

ground and yet

guanlong also had

feathers what were they used for

erupting volcanoes spewing fine Ash and

noxus gases frows a moment of Jurassic

Life For Eternity helping us answer some

of these

questions this dinosaur Paradise has

become the feathered dinosaurs Pompei a

huge range of new species has recently

been discovered in one of China's many

construction

sites over the last two decades in the

Leaning region paleontologists have

collected thousands of specimens hidden

for millions of

[Music]

years these magnificent fossils are in a

state of almost perfect preservation

thanks to the mixture of extremely fine

clay and volcanic ash

sediment and those volcanic eruptions

kill the animal directly and they buried

their body so that's why we have so

beautiful skeleton and I include soft

tissue

preserved um so that's why we come here

paleontologists shuing and his

colleagues from around the world world

can trace the chaotic History of Flight

and feathers in these

rocks the feather preservation is really

amazing like detectives they examine the

clues to understand what feathers were

used

[Music]

for and discover how some dinosaurs from

the therapod family turned over the

course of millions of years into Birds

[Music]

the first piece of evidence in their

inquiry was discovered at the end of the

19th century in

Germany towards the end of the Jurassic

period Europe was partly submerged under

a shallow body of water called the

tethis sea

[Music]

about 150 million years ago Germany was

dotted with Tropical

[Music]

Islands terrasaurs the first flying

vertebrates have dominated the skies for

80 million

years this is germano dactus one of 150

species of theasaurus

discovered these flying reptiles are not

dinosaurs a fine skin stretches over

their elongated fingers to create

leathery Wings this membrane along with

powerful muscles and hollow bones makes

them masters of the Skies

[Music]

[Music]

but the terasa aerial Supremacy is about

to be challenged by the very first

Birds such as

archaeopteris a primitive bird whose

claws are the ends of of its wings rais

suspicions amongst 19th century

[Music]

paleontologists its fossils were found

around the modern German Town of sofen a

tropical archipelago during the late

Jurassic Period some islands harbored

salty lagoons where dying animals

avoided scavengers

and were buried by Soft mud that

preserved them in minute

detail eard fry commonly known as Dino

fry is the resident

expert this is the famous solenhofen

laminated Limestone and you can actually

see the sediment stapled up like the

leaves of a book and inside the leaves

of this Rocky

book this is where archa opter was found

together with many other fossils and uh

it's a speciality of this rock that it

is very very very fine grained and

inside this mud fossils are preserved

like in a tin and this is why this

entire area is so valuable as a window

in in Jurassic times the locals use

these stones to tile their houses in the

process uncovering highly prized

Treasures in the history of

[Music]

paleontology in

1868 faced with the

archaeopteris British biologist Thomas

Henry Huxley asserted that this was a

transitional fossil between

reptiles and birds

[Music]

a friend of Darwin and an Ardent

defender of the theory of evolution

Huxley was an expert anatomist capable

of skilled fossil analysis until the

year 1861 before Arch Optics was

discovered the only creatures that were

known to have feathers were the birds so

it was apparent that this is a fossil

bird and Thomas haxley looked at it very

closely and he discovered signs that

this bird could also be a dinosaur

actually a carnivorous dinosaur and

actually shares characters of the two

making it a missing link between

dinosaurs and birds that was a sensation

at the

time the darwinian idea of natural

selection is therefore very recent

Huxley had the insight to see that Arch

op's teeth clawed wings and bony tail

meant that it has similarities with

kognus Dinosaurs predatory relations of

the velociraptors

[Music]

archaeopteris was certainly no

acrobat but it had

feathers and it could

fly its color bones had already fused

together a vital step enabling the wings

to Flap efficiently and gain altitude

allowing it to hunt and nest in trees

[Music]

throughout the 20th and 21st centuries

more Arch opter fossils were Unearthed

in Germany

[Music]

this is specimen number 11 it's the

latest specimen and it came to light in

the year

2011 and despite its fragmentary it's

not completely preserved because the

skull is missing it still shows us some

features which were previously unknown

one of them is that the tail end shows a

v-shaped feather

configuration and the second is that you

can see in this specimen the extent of

the feather Trav along the

[Music]

legs the feathers on its feet are

intriguing since modern Birds no longer

show this

characteristic is this an

exception what is sure is that this

feature has not been selected by

Evolution just like this giant Marine

reptile a leop

done washed up on the shores of the

Lagoon it is a godsend for

archaeopteris the flies attracted by the

carcass provide a hearty meal for this

insect

eater but being out in the open is

dangerous for Arch opter an

opportunistic German oact sees the

prospect of a protein Rich

M and doesn't appreciate the competition

[Music]

[Music]

once the mightiest creatures in the

skies terrasaurs became extinct by the

end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million

years ago while archaeopteris his

descendants grew in

number bogged down at the bottom of the

sofen Lagoon this remarkable fossil

launched the debate on the relationship

between birds and

dinosaurs but with insufficient proof

this theory was shelled for more than a

100

[Music]

years until New Evidence came to light

at the end of the 20th century in

[Music]

China in 1993

leaning a huge fossil deposit was found

dating from the Cretaceous Period 125

million years

ago this region formerly known as

Manchuria comprises fertile Farmland

with fields of corn and

pasture farmers were the first to

uncover fossils inadvertently

in seun at the foot of a cliff fashioned

by volcanic eruptions layers of gray mud

alternate with red

[Music]

[Music]

Ash transported to Beijing these fossils

allow 21st century researchers new

insights into the feathered

dragons like cusur opter the first

discovered in

1996 this specimen remains a source of

Fascination for one of China's most

famous

paleontologists shuing I remember

clearly as that time when this discovery

was announced everyone got so excited

you know we know we are kind of shocked

the by the beauty of the fossil if you

look at this spacement closely you see

the feathers cover the whole body along

the over the head over the back cover

whole the tail a little bit hair also I

mean limb basically feathers are quite

simple they are more like your hair

before this discovery some penologist

believe some bird like danc should have

feathers but but now we have real

evidence so that's totally

different the discovery of this feather

covered fossil was astounding for the

first time they had found a dinosaur

with Aven characteristics proof that

they were part of the same

[Music]

lineage in Conifer forests growing in

the shadow of volcano

lived sinur

opter it belonged to a group of

carnivorous dinosaurs called

theropods these Predators use sight and

smell to

[Music]

hunt one of its favorite victims is

Zango terium one of the first

mammals sinur opic's feathers look like

the down covering modern day

chicks they are so different from bird

feathers but for a long time Skeptics

dismissed them as mere hairs

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

in 2010 chuing focused on

[Music]

sinosauropteryx

pigments these are are mosomes cells

that give feathers their color shushing

discovered circular shapes that produce

a brown pigment and stick-like shapes

that create a gray

color he deduced that sinos orop was the

color of a squirrel with lighter stripes

on its tail but that's not all we can

use a Mal to infer the color but more

importantly for us we want to use that

information to part the hypothesis that

those dark impression in this particular

spacement are Proto feathers not

something else because if mamone are

present we can see quite confidently

those are primitive

feathers sinus arupix was undoubtedly

covered in feathers but this land animal

was incapable of

flight so what use was this Dino fuz did

it protect this warm-blooded animal from

the cold possibly but this theory is not

easy to

[Music]

prove to learn more about the climate in

leoning during this period shuing teamed

up with a laboratory in

France this therapod tooth brought back

from China by geologist Roma AMU holds

the key to this meteorological

mystery a lot of researchers thought

that fossils from that time couldn't

preserve the weather conditions recorded

during the animals lifetime it was a big

challenge we were going to test

something unknown could we find out

climate information or

not in a sense we can test the water

that the dinosaurs drank a chemical

reaction with the oxygen preserved in

tooth enamel reveals the temperature of

the atmosphere 100

million years ago Roma made a major

discovery that radically altered our

preconceptions at that time there was a

global climate that was similar or a

little colder than current temperatures

which is very different from what we

thought about the period of the

dinosaurs that we had imagined as hot

tropical and the same throughout the

world well Ying is the climate was

similar to what we have in the north of

France with very harsh Winters so

dinosaurs would have seen snow in

winter so feathers were an insulating

material it meant they could keep warm

and keep active throughout the year like

any other warm-blooded

animal coincidentally just as Roma

published his research the discovery of

large siiz dinosaurs confirmed his work

[Music]

uterus the aptly named feathered tyrants

were the super predators of the

[Music]

time due to their large size the remains

of T-Rex's cousins are kept in a

warehouse in a suburb of Beijing

[Music]

yeah urnal is really amazing animal you

know it's a really big animal about 1

and/ half tons in body mass his body

covered by feathers really long feathers

so this is

unexpected you know traditionally we we

thought you know when animal get bigger

is for dinosaur same the low feathers

reduced feathers so all at least

feathers are kind of sparse but uh here

we have a large bodyi dinosaur with a

dense and like long feathers so this is

bizarre the fact that such a large

warm-blooded animal was covered in

feathers suggests that its body size

eyes was not sufficient to regulate its

temperature so the climate must have

been very

cold the discovery of the largest

feathered animal ever found confirms the

hypothesis of a temperate climate with

harsh

[Music]

Winters it proves that the theropod

dinosaurs of leoning wandered into the

winter snow 125 million years ago

and that the feathers of the little

sinur opter and the huge utilus

protected them from cold temperatures in

this region of the northern hemisphere

[Music]

[Music]

the insulating property of feathers

remains a feature in modern

Birds but it is not sufficient to

explain how surface dwelling dinosaurs

evolved over millions of years to become

Birds among the therapods living in

leoning was there only one type of

feather and at what stage did dinosaurs

begin to fly over time Chinese

paleontologists have Unearthed many

feathered

creatures on some

fossils like the cipic discovered in

1998 shuing found feathers that were not

just simple

filaments with its large feet it looks

much like an

ostrich in this fossil there are some

really beautiful feather impression here

you see two hands of this animal and

here is a middle finger and you see

feathers attached to the finger this

surface and this they go this way so

it's quite a big

feathers cipic literally meaning tail

feather comes from the same Chinese site

as

125 million years

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

ago scientists imagin that these chicks

were imprinted on their mothers just

like M birds and followed them

everywhere more or less

[Music]

weighing almost 20 kg the female cepter

can't fly neither can her

[Music]

youngsters so why do these animals have

long

feathers could they serve a purpose

other than warmth

[Music]

feathers begin as a simple

filament which divides to form a pom pom

before barbs appear around the Hol

shaft but at this stage in their

development feathers are symmetrical and

air passes through

them so it is not flying anymore it's

fast running animal living on the ground

so what's a function apparently those

feathers are not used for flying

uh so the other possibility uh most

people believe is a

[Music]

display just like many birds the males

and females were physically very

different paleontologists believe that

the male cepter displayed his shimmering

feathers in order to attract females

[Music]

these courtship rituals along with

natural selection stimulated an

anatomical

transformation cordi were among the

first theraps to possess a shorter tale

that supported their display

[Music]

Fells in order to fly they were still

missing a fundamental element

flight

[Music]

feathers seen under a microscope this

feather comes from another dinosaur

discovered in 2000 by shushing himself

it is a vital clue to solving the

mystery of the origin of

flight here the feathers are highly

asymmetrical so asymmetrical feathers

are normally considered to be a

associated with flight capability these

feathers are identical to those of

modern Birds it may be proof that some

dinosaurs could fly microraptor is

definitely the most amazing species that

discovered so far and it is dinosaur but

you see it has uh asymmetric flat

feathers not only the feathers on the

arms but also on the feet so we call the

fwi the condition this is really really

bizarre and now we have quite a good

evidence suggesting this forign

condition is related to the origin of

flight for a long time paleontologists

believed that two-legged dinosaurs ran

along the ground in order to take off

but Micro reactor's climbing claws

opened up a new

possibility 125 million years ago in the

part of China that microraptor called

home the ground was fertilized by

volcanic ash that encouraged the growth

of lush vegetation

tall trees add a vertical Dimension to

the landscape and the microraptor

meaning small Thief takes advantage of

them microraptor sported feathers on its

arms and legs

with its four wings was probably the

world's first base

jumper four wings offer an advantage for

gliding but not for walking

a microraptor on the ground is a

microraptor in danger

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

according to shushing tree dwelling

feathered dinosaurs like these would

evolve to become

Birds to better understand this

transition paleontologist teamed up with

an

ornithologist

zongi in front of him is an incredible

collection of primitive Birds found at

cun like the feathered dinosaurs from

the same site they all date from the

Cretaceous Period 125 million years

ago I think uh there are over 500 uh

spens of confusion sonis are collected

in this Museum alone I think as this is

the largest collection of confus Sonic

in the whole

[Music]

world this bird like confusious Onis

they are only shortly uh later than the

earliest bird arop and uh they are

transitioned in many uh flight apparatus

many

features despite the claws on their

wings they are very similar to Modern

Birds they no longer have

teeth or a long bony

tail they also have a furcula the famous

chicken wishbone for attaching muscles

to Wings and the males have two

ceremonial ribbons ornamenting their

behinds

[Music]

[Music]

this sexual variation is similar to that

of the feathered dinosaur

cipic like him the male has long

feathers that he uses to lure the

[Music]

ladies competition is tough and courting

displays are

often interrupted

[Music]

also you can see the bird uh start

climbing the trunk with uh very big

claws in the

wing now we see the bird can uh are

perch on the branches of the trees

because the the helex of the foot is

already reversed

much like a modern

[Music]

bird confucious oris's narrow feathers

were not well adapted to gliding but

would have allowed it to fly by flapping

its wings albeit

clumsily but natural selection is at

work retaining only the most Adept genes

[Music]

yet the presence of many birds found at

the same location as feather dinosaurs

does not necessarily prove that they

were

related if Birds had already Diversified

125 million years

ago U tyranus and other theropods may

have been merely an evolutionary dead

end so when did the first bird

appear did they share a common ancestor

with feathered dinosaurs and how did

their ancestors begin

[Music]

flying to answer these questions Chinese

paleontologists have one last card of

their

sleeves west of

leonin a new fossil bed was revealed

during the construction of a Motorway

in 2009 a finally preserved anones

dating from the Jurassic period was

found near

here it was to become a crucial piece in

shing's puzzle this site is very

important for at least for for one

reason we know that artics the earliest

nor bird is from about 145 million years

ago but most other FAS dinosaurs are you

know from

early cres or even later so this

dinosaur was living in like 160 million

years ago earlier than arrix so that

means there are some feas dinosaur

predates arap Tri the earliest bird so

that's uh correct the time

sequence this new fossil puts an end to

the debate feathered dinosaurs are

undoubtedly older than the first

birds today shushing discovers a fish

confirmation that anones lived in a rich

ecosystem this little four-winged

theropod must have been a victim to

Giant

[Music]

predators in the Jurassic period terasol

like these Darwin opterus ruled of the

Skies with talon-like claws and a

wingspan over a meter wide they were the

equivalent of modern-day Birds of

Prey their ability to fly and perform

aerial acrobatics was beyond that of the

feathered

[Music]

dinosaurs faced with this constant

danger anones sought shelter in the

forest but this little dinosaur was also

threatened from the ground its only

shelter lies in the restricted area

between the ground and the sky the trees

it Glides down to feed in the

undergrowth its surface area is smaller

than microraptor so it falls more

[Music]

quickly with its long back legs anones

is built like a sprinter but its lengthy

feathers are a hindrance on the ground

its long legs are an advantage for

foraging or rushing to the nearest

shelter

if such a thing exists

[Music]

though clumsy anones showed that

dinosaurs attempted to fly from trees

using four

[Music]

wings on this rare fossil the rear leg

feathers are visible to the naked eye

to refine his theory shushing continues

his research using a medical scanner

X-rays of anon's skeleton will be

digitized in 3D in order to study its

[Music]

biomechanics but honestly there are some

debates how exactly those animals use

their leg wiins some people believe the

leg wiins are not really related to

flight maybe is a display structure if

you look at other dinosaurs their leg

normally is underneath the body they has

all like fully erect posture one

possibility may be Anis can project its

leg slightly

laterally to compensate for the lack of

a wishbone anones used its rear leg

feathers to improve its gliding

ability the discovery of anuis proves

the dinosaur flight was a result of

trial and an error in the evolution of

anatomy and

[Music]

Feathers surprisingly new information

about the origin of feathers was soon to

appear from Over the Border in Siberia

in the summer of

2013 the first Russian feathered fossils

made their appearance

[Music]

1500 km north of Beijing in the trans

Bal step a team of Russians and belgians

worked together at the excavation

site when local geologists found the

first bones they invited paleontologist

Pascal gooda from the Royal Institute of

Belgium to take part in this

revolutionary discovery

we're at the kulinda deposit in

southeast Siberia the hills you can see

behind me date from the Jurassic period

between 145 and 160 million years ago

and Russian geologists who were

prospecting in the area in 2010 found

the first dinosaur bones which have been

extremely important for reconstructing

the evolution of plummage and feathers

in

dinosaurs his curiosity aroused Pascal

assembled a team to search the site for

themselves it's a lengthy process

requiring a deep layer of soil to be

removed to get to the

fossils but after several days the

team's work starts to show

[Applause]

results yeah look at that

that's quite a big deal just there at

the

edge oh wow that's

[Music]

one so here at the edge of the plate you

can see very fine little filaments and

these are feathers dinosaur feathers you

can see that the filaments converge

towards the base so these are composite

feathers It's A Primitive kind of down

that we find on some primitive dinosaurs

compared to the impressive Chinese

discoverers these fossils may seem a

little

underwhelming but the paleontologists

are thrilled to discover a completely

new animal

species during the Jurassic period the

Chinese Peninsula was covered in a vast

Forest of conifers while Siberia was

much more hostile style the arid climate

had huge seasonal variations in

temperature and intense volcanic

activity one of the keys to conserving

precious

fossils only fragments of skeletons are

found at

Cinda to begin with the Russians thought

that the feathers came from fossil ized

Birds the scales from

crocodiles and the Bones from a small

predatory

[Music]

dinosaur but Pascal was not convinced by

this

hypothesis in 2014 he reanalyzed all the

fossils and suggested an entirely

different

explanation it's a bit like going into a

cemetery and Gathering up loose bones

you'll have small tibas large tibas

little femurs and big femur but they all

have the same morphology so we can tell

they all come from the same type of

dinosaur that we called Cinda

dramus because of the large number of

disconnected bones that we found at

kulinda we now know that kulinda dramus

was a small heror dinosaur that was fast

slender and

agile this is the first ever feathered

heror dinosaur to be discovered a

separate branch of the dinosaur family

tree from the carnivorous

theropods colinda dromia lived in

herds just like vilder Beast migrations

in Africa large Predators such as

sinraptor must have closely followed the

movements of these dinosaurs

[Music]

[Music]

this is a real Revolution what it means

is that all dinosaurs could potentially

have had

feathers feathers would have appeared on

an ancestor that was common to both

groups it could be as old as dinosaurs

themselves first seen in the Triassic

period 220 million years ago

[Music]

[Music]

the misfortunes of this group of

herbivores have led paleontologists to

the origins of

feathers thanks to Cinda dromus we now

know that the first feathered dinosaur

the common ancestor of the carnival and

the

herbivores remains to be found in Fossil

Beds going back to before the Jurassic

[Music]

[Music]

period but who knows what other Secrets

could be found in Siberia and what Clues

could be hidden in other parts of the

world to document the early history of

the bird Dynasty

[Music]

[Music]

to study the mammals that lived during

the age of the dinosaurs paleontologists

were dependent for a long time on Tiny

fragments of fossils they believed that

mammals at that time were no larger than

a mouse and that they had only

flourished after the extinction of

dinosaurs but the discovery in China of

a amazingly well-preserved fossils at

the beginning of the 21st century

revealed that mammals were bigger and

more varied than previously

thought detailed analysis of their

physical features allows us to

understand how they were able to coexist

with their carnivorous neighbors and

even outlive them

the fossils of these amazing mammals

were found in the volcanic region of

leoning northeast of

Beijing repenomamus was the size of a

wolf and was able to devour young

feathered dinosaurs

they must have been victim to large

Predators like these

uteruses they are much bigger than all

previously known

mammals these rep anomalus lived 130

million years ago in a highly active

volcanic area

preserved in fine volcanic ash their

skeletons have survived the

ages radically changing paleontologists

understand Landing of the first

[Music]

mammals this fossil mammals are

certainly related to our own

evolutionary history in the a sense that

we ourselves are

mammals mammals whose name comes from

mamory gland are the only animals to

suckle their young their characteristics

include fur covered bodies ears that are

separate from their jaws and a great

variety of teeth all of which according

to the latest fossil discoveries were

already present at the time of the

dinosaurs and what we see is that they

go from having teeth with a few

cusps on them to having teeth that have

many different cusps or tools such that

they were able to survive the mass

extinction that killed off Dinosaurs the

fossils discovered at the beginning of

the 21st century show that the first

modern mammals appeared 125 million

years ago the genetic analysis indicates

that they may go back even

further until the discovery of new

evidence controversy rages between

geneticists and

paleontologists it All Began 250 million

years ago at the beginning of the

Triassic period during a time when the

world was extremely

hot the ancestors of the mammals were

mamalian reptiles like these three

neodon a relative of the reptile family

thr Aidan is considered to be a

transitional species in the evolution

toward WS

mammals like reptiles its legs are not

under its body but on the sides and it

has no external ears but like mammals it

has several different kinds of teeth and

its body is covered with

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fur to escape the heat it dug B along

the banks of rivers which is where it

was

fossilized new x-ray technology at the

synchrotron radiation facility in France

enables scientists to analyze this South

African burrow discovered in the 19th

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century using this Innovation VOR

Fernandez is able to study the contents

of the rock without destroying

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it we discovered this borrow on a site

where a road was under construction and

amidst all the Burrows we discovered in

this small Quarry this one had small

bones in it which gave us the idea of

extracting it completely and studying it

here at the sron in

grob this tunnel was buried 250 million

years ago at a pivotal moment in the

Triassic period when 70 % of the

planet's terrestrial species disappeared

this block of stone may be able to tell

us more about what happened to the

survivors of this dramatic

Extinction the best way to find out

which animal used which burrow is to

find the animal directly inside the

borrow and to find this animal rather

than clearing the Rock by hand we will

use x-rays to study the animal inside

the fossilized

borrow 100 billion times more powerful

than Hospital X-Rays the synchrotron is

able to distinguish the difference in

density between fossilized bones and The

Rock

itself this highresolution technology

revealed the presence of a thrinaxodon a

long-lost mammal

ancestor plus an unexpected

bonus an amphibian named brista line by

its

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side this is a very big surprise because

first of all we did not expect that but

mostly it's very rare because animals

don't usually share the same burrow

especially with animals that are the

same size and have the same

diet just as some mammals hibernate to

protect the El from the cold this thr

axan Burrows underground and estivates

to avoid the

heat in this dormant state it may not

have been aware of the brasta taking

refuge in its

shelter the amphibian could also have

been hiding from the Hostile climate and

its fossil shows that it was

injured we discovered that the brooma

was wounded it had a series of seven

broken ribs that were healing we know

that because it has small bone growes

around the fractures so we see the

healing process we know it was probably

injured for several weeks this discovery

revealed that mammal's ancestors had

developed the ability to enter into a

state of torper one wounded the asleep

both animals would have been taken by

surprise by the rising

Waters the lineage to which thoon

belonged was capable of surviving

because it could dig underground tunnels

and withstand droughts thanks to its

specific metabolism the fact that this

lineage survived allowed for the

emergence of mammals several million

years later

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vassel and his South African colleagues

are now searching for new Burrows to

scan hoping to solve other

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Mysteries we are also looking for an egg

or a pregnant female that will finally

tell us which mode of reproduction our

ancestors

had it's a difficult task because mammal

fossils from the Triassic period are

very

rare until the late 20th century the

only remains we had were the first

mammals where their teeth like these

tiny specimens that are preserved at the

national Museum of Natural History in

Paris M

specialist Emanuel Gabon remembers his

early years as a

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paleontologist when I started my career

in the 80s and '90s most of the remains

we found were isolated

teeth we dreamt of finding not only Jaws

but complete skulls

these tiny fragments are obtained

through painstaking work paleontologists

must Sie several tons of sediment to

uncover just a few of these melean

teeth the teeth are well preserved

because tooth ANL is particularly

resistant to time it is the hardest part

of the skeleton the part that fossilizes

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best the interesting thing about these

collections of isolated mammal teeth is

their small size you can have a

collection of several hundred teeth

which will fit into a shoe box so you

can have the representation of a very

Diversified FAA even the history of a

whole geographical province which boils

down to a collection in the drawer of a

cabinet with several hundred

teeth that's exactly what the collection

studied by Emanuel gabon's team looks

like started in 1976 in a fossil deposit

near Nori in northeastern France it now

contains close to a th000 teeth from the

upper tric period 210 million years

ago this is the oldest collection of

mammals in the world with a dozen

different species identified solely

through the shape of their

teeth on these molers the three cusps

are exclusive to

mammals the molers are used to grind

food while canines keep food in place

and incises cut this complex dentition

indicates that these animals are mammals

since other animal species have only one

type of

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tooth the shape of teeth is like an

identity card to show what group they

belong to it's an identity card to

identify the animal and it also reveals

functional information in other words

the animals

died because sharp teeth for instance

indicate an insectivorous diet but if

they have rather flattened teeth that

indicates a herbivorous diet

though they tell us more about how these

dinosaur age mammals ate the fossils

give no indication as to what they

looked

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like however a tiny clue discovered in

France in

2008 reveals more about the skin of

these extinct

animals this abandoned Quarry is located

near the town of aring on the west coast

of

France on this sand excavation site two

paleontologists from the University of

Ren take advantage of the exposed walls

to come and collect

fossils this geological layer dates from

the Cretaceous Period 100 million years

ago at the time it was covered by a

forest of conifers and Ginko trees

whose remains have been uncovered by

Roman vulo and

diu look at this this Leaf has been in

clay for the past 100 million years

comes off and if I blow on

it I can bend it which shows that it's

still

flexible apart from its change in color

the passage of millions of years doesn't

seem to have altered this Leaf

significantly

the paleontologists are searching for

another treasure in this Petrified

Forest occasionally bits of animals

become trapped in the resin from Conifer

trees when the resin

fossilizes it becomes

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Amber so here we are at the bottom of

the

Quarry water has poured down and created

an interesting little out crop because

you can see the different layers

the layer is stre because you have

different alternating

sediments you will have two main types

of deposits you find sand deposits white

ochre and red and then another deposit

from an accumulation of coal which forms

these small black

veins so here you can see sand

alternating with Clay beds that contain

plant debris and small pieces of Amber

which is what we're looking for in

particular

the sediment is then sivd in a nearby

Pond we've got quite a few small

fragments

here that's a good sized piece it's

slightly translucent part Brown part

red paleontology relies on meticulous

work and a fair amount of luck

one major clue to the appearance of

mammals was discovered thanks to an

incredible stroke of Good

Fortune while looking for bacterial

filaments one of Rao's colleagues made

an exceptional

Discovery two hairs trapped in

Amber so we see the whole piece of Amber

and in the middle the longer of the two

hairs which is slightly bent as you can

see it is very very

fine we compared this 100 million year

old fossil hair with the hair of current

mammals and we found that this one

presents many similarities with what can

be found in existing species including

scale morphology and scale

layout and their Contours also show

strong similarities to the hair of

living animals

from a paleontological point of view

this is an outstanding Discovery since

there are only one or two fossil mammal

hairs in the

world 100 million years ago warm-blooded

mammals already had the same hair as

today to protect them from the climate

and allow them to survive the extinction

that decimated large dinosaurs

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in China at the beginning of the 21st

century new Clues to the physical

appearance of mammals were

Unearthed in a deposit dating from the

Cretaceous Period 125 million years ago

fossils were discovered in an area that

was once a peninsula with a subtropical

climate

this world dominated by huge dinosaurs

like these 30t high

titanosaurs was also home to

mammals like this aoma scoria literally

ancient mother that can

climb prayed upon by feathered dinosaurs

like the Zen one long aoma was the

oldest known mammal ancestor when it was

discovered in

2002 located in the leing region

Northeast of Beijing this deposit was

once a volcanic area that has preserved

our distant past for millions of

years shes

American paleontologist of Chinese

origin is at the seun cliff where many

longl fossils have

emerged this Yan formation is Lake

deposits and trapped all variety of

fossil vertebrates most famous of all

are feather dinosaurs but very important

for understanding our own human beings

early evolutionary history are are those

Cretaceous mammals 125 million years ago

multiple volcanic eruptions created a

series of sedimentary

layers pockets of Red Ash flattened the

mammals into the gray mud like a

printing

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press measuring 6 in from nose to tail

and weighing around a oun aaya would

have been fair game for the feathered

dinosaurs the fossil mammals are

preserved very well because they Liv

nearby shallow water lake the sediments

accumulated fairly slow and also the are

occasional volcanic

eruptions so the hot volcanic ash help

to trap the fossil mammals in the

sediments and that is why they are

preserved so well therefore gave us this

beautiful fossil to

study at the Natural History Museum of

Beijing shuo studies fossils of the aoma

scansor group placental mammals whose

fetuses are sustained in the uterus by

placenta

just like

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humans the whole body of the animal is

beautifully preserved a dream come true

for any mammal

specialist it is absolutely amazing that

we have the entire fossils here with the

complete skeleton we can start to flash

out a more interesting picture about

this early mammals this guys lived in

Cretaceous it has very grass out jaws

and we can recognize even with naked eye

the limbs are quite slender and we can

tell by its very long fingers and the

different nail structures that they are

tree climber it shows that the placental

ancesters are capable of exploring the

aboral or tree living nich is than all

these other contemporaries and this gave

us a big evolutionary

Advantage aoma left its young high up

out of reach of dinosaurs that sometimes

slept on the

ground these very first mammals would

have to leave their shelter in order to

drink

their extraordinary Mobility is revealed

by this skeleton particularly by the

elongated trapezoid bones which resemble

those of tree dwelling primates

it is really by uh studying the ankle

joint we are able to recognize great

many features to place this particular

fossil on the line that eventually gave

rise to Modern

placentals its feeding habits were

revealed thanks to its extremely well

preserved

teeth you can tell that this uh mammals

have a very sharp cusp in the front and

in the lower teeth generally there were

a series of very sharp triangles and

those are very effective for cutting the

skeletons of insects and also slice off

the Flesh of worms

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sh

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after the discovery of aoma more fossils

were Unearthed in China changing the

vision that paleontologists had of

ancient mammals

countless wonders are kept at The

Institute of vertebrate paleontology in

Beijing among them is a repenomamus with

a complete and unusually large

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skeleton Yong King Wang is the

paleontologist in charge of studying

this strange 30in creature Unearthed in

2004 a lot of of mic mmal that about the

size of mouse a rat so this is quite a

big another feature of this large mammal

is its sharp pointed teeth embedded in a

strong

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jaw before we found this animal we know

mesic mammals usually we sought there

are insector and small living in the

shadow of dinosaurs you can see the te

is like sharp and pointed so it's a

Carnivor animal especially in his

stomach area there are some fragmentary

bones of baby dinosaurs called

tacosaurus so we said okay this guy ate

Dinosaurs the animal stomach contents

are

revolutionary they contain proof that

some mammal ancestors actually fed on

young dinosaurs

rather than living in their

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Shadow paleontologist do not know

exactly how they

hunted but they believe Romus work

together in packs like wolves

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the Beijing collection has many

surprises in store for

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scientists discovered in 200 6 volti

aetherium has an unusual

feature a large fold of skin connecting

its upper and lower

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limbs observed under a microscope this

dark stain reveals the presence of

numerous hairs

called a patagium it's a fine membrane

of skin covered in

fur like a flying squirrel the Tor skin

stretched between its limbs meant that

vola etherium was able to Glide from the

trees before this discovery scientists

believed that bats were the first flying

mammals to appear 50 million years

ago voltio theum who was a around at the

same time as the dinosaurs showed that

flying mammals were around long before

that this nocturnal Hunter waited for

Dusk to start searching for its

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prey it's really interesting it's told

us the ecological diversity of the meso

m is much wider than we thought before

usually we thought animals is living in

the tree or working on the ground but

these animals can GL in the air

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this flying animal confirms that mammals

had adapted to different environments

long before the extinction of

dinosaurs despite the discovery of these

fossils in China one question still

troubled the scientific Community during

the early 21st

century when did placental mammals first

appear geneticists and paleontologists

thrashed out their opposing views in

scientific journals in the German Town

of oldenberg a team of researchers hunts

down the genes of modern mammals in

order to construct their family

tree we can estimate by seeing how

similar a gene is in two different

species of mammal how closely related

they

are Olaf binda Emmons is the author of a

2007 study which analyzed the genes of

99% of animals living

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today this Mammoth task required eight

months of DNA sequencing to track the

genetic mutations of 60 markers

throughout the evolution of mammals the

molecular data will give us a much more

complete picture we have DNA here for

many more species then we have fossil

data for the fossils will give us Point

estimates throughout the tree the DNA

will fill in the gaps and give us all

the divin times for all the species of

mammals and all the common ancestors

that were

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this method called the molecular clock

shows that placental mammals separated

from

marsupiales 160 million years ago during

the Jurassic

period Then Diversified during the

Cretaceous Period to form the current

main groups rodents carnivores and

primates an unexpected result since no

fossil of these early mammals has ever

been discovered

this was interesting because there's a

very big disconnect between molecular

studies and fossil

studies in Pittsburgh on the other side

of the Atlantic another study offered

very different

results it is the work of John Wibble a

paleontologist at the caragi Museum of

Natural History

its starting point was the discovery of

a skull found in a 75 milliony old

deposit in

Mongolia named mesus gobiensis it has

been studied from every angle since it

does not belong to any known species 400

of its morphological features have been

compared to those of 82 fossil or living

mammals what we did as we looked at the

individual morphological features of

this animal across a broad array of

other fossil forms and living mammals to

try to figure out what it was what it

was related to and our study supported

the traditional view that there were no

fossils living during the cortus that

were members of the placental group

itself there were only the ancestors of

placentals living which of these two

studies should we believe fossil or

genetic the molecular studies all tend

to say that the crown group orders

rodents primates carnivores bats they

all have their origins in the Cretaceous

when the dinosaurs were still alive the

problem is there's absolutely no fossil

evidence supporting this many of these

modern groups according to the molecular

clock analyses actually are they should

be present in the Cretaceous record we

can't find them there's no doubt that

there were placental m in the

Cretaceous what's debated is what kind

of placental mammals they are and it's a

question of who's right at the

moment to achieve the most complete

mammal family tree both types of data

will need to be

refined defining the pace of genetic

mutations on one hand and seeking Fossil

Beds on the other since new fossils

would confirm the geneticist hypothesis

in the meantime paleontologists are also

trying to understand how these early

mammals protected themselves from

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Dinosaurs the ability to nurse their

young could have been a benefit

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if we want to understand how modern

theor come from we need to look at

modern theon's distant relatives Zango

theum is a mammal that is even more

ancient than placental mammals this

extremely well-preserved fossil was

discovered in China in

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1997 we can be relatively sure it is a

mammal because it had fur and associated

with fur would be a whole series of

reproductive features and so we know

that the must have nurse its fetuses but

we don't know if the fetuses was born

either in a egg or a live

fetus lactation offers an advantage when

food is scarce since the young continue

to be fed thanks to their mother's body

reserves lactation first appeared in the

form of hundreds of milk producing

glands on the abdomen just like modern

platypuses the young would lick the

thick milk from their mother's

hair zangi etherum has another

characteristic in common with monotes

like the platypus a spur on its hind leg

this spe definitely has another fossil

that has preserved with a boning spur

and it's also consistent with the first

observation directly from this

particular specimen in modern monitoring

this spur is definitely used for

selfdefense but we do not know if it is

truly poisonous or it's just a bon spur

snakes have

fangs insects can

sting but this defense technique is rare

among modern mammals

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located on the male's hind legs this

spur may have released a Venom capable

of paralyzing their

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foes according to

scientists this weapon is not terribly

efficient since it takes time for Venom

to have an effect as they a vault they

tried other

strategies like running

away and to improve this tactic what

better than a superior sense of

hearing the evolution of ear bones was a

key Advantage for primitive mammals in

2011 the discovery of this leoniden

fossil shows at last how the jawbones of

these reptiles migrated to form the

middle ear of modern mammals 120 million

years

ago this specimen is in most complete

Amo we have ever found in Western down

all the bones are preserved here so it's

a very beautiful specimen especially

this specimen preserves some tiny bones

of your

region this year O course usually is

very difficult to be preserved in the

fossils because it's were tiny more

important it is a transitional stage of

the meman midyear

evolution in ancient mammals the lower

jaw was linked to the skull by an

elongated

bone in leonan this evolved to begin

forming the ear

bones the hammer Anvil and tanic ring

became completely detached in modern

mammals to form the inner ear

amazingly every mammal embryo including

humans reproduces this evolutionary

phase in the womb resulting in the

formation of the inner ear this

Precision Tool allows us to analyze

everything that happens around us

constantly yes you can hear the

dangerous earlier than the other kind of

animals so helps them to escape from the

pred Dead The Mystery of the inner ear

bones a link with our reptilian past is

cleared up thanks to this new

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fossil another mammal weapon

teeth reveal their secrets at the

University of Washington in Seattle

this is where Gregory Wilson uses

state-of-the-art technology to analyze

the teeth of

multituberculates mammal species that

became extinct 34 million years

ago we found some really exciting

results actually what we found is that

these

multituberculates that were living

alongside dinosaurs actually undergo an

adaptive radiation 20 million years

before dinosaurs go extinct and what we

see is that they go from having teeth

with a few cusps on them such that they

can eat insects and so on to having

teeth that have many different cusps or

tools such that they can exploit a new

resource in flowering

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plants is that ability to exploit that

new resource that allows them to expand

in terms of numbers of different species

of multituberculates as well as the

range of body sizes that they have such

that they were able to survive the mass

extinction that killed off

dinosaurs his study shows that

multituberculates evolved well before

the extinction of

dinosaurs they moved from an

insect-based diet to a diet based on

fruit or even angiosperms flowering

plants that appeared during the

Cretaceous Period

to reach this astonishing result Gregory

Wilson used fossils collected over a

hundred years in Montana's Hell Creek

formation by studying this collection of

tiny teeth under a microscope he was

able to familiarize himself with the

many species of multituberculates

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this is the largest of um

multituberculates that lived uh the size

of maybe a beaver or a Marmet uh and it

has many many bumps all along the tooth

row and those bumps act as tools to

crush and grind

food um another

example sits inside this tiny vial it's

a another multituberculate but it also

had teeth with many little bumps so this

was a smaller version of this animal

that lived during the time of

dinosaurs this lineage we've known about

for a very long time but it's been

difficult to really quantify or

understand what the shape of those teeth

mean we've tried many different

approaches but none have really uh been

able to give us the Precision that we

can now attain today this technological

Revolution came in the form of of the CT

scan a medical imaging tool nowadays

used by

paleontologists specimens like this 67

milliony Old tooth are first scanned

with x-rays on a microscopic scale it is

identifiable by its long inzer but what

intrigues researchers is the complexity

of its

molers once the data is collected

cartography software reconstructs an

accurate map showing the shape of the

teeth

Gregory Wilson has found that carnivores

have a fairly simple tooth structure

with approximately 110 cusps per row of

teeth while multituberculate teeth are

far more complex with up to 348

cusps this particular specimen that I

just pulled up has uh about

250 different complex little tools on

the surface of its tooth row and those

little tools tools help break down plant

material that needs to be processed very

finely in order to be digested properly

so these guys have evolved towards

eating plants

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it is this key function of grinding

which promoted the explosion of

herbivore and omnivore species an

ecological niche untapped by primitive

mammals despite these multiple

discoveries at the end of the 20th

century The crucial question about the

origins of the first real mammals

remained once again the leoning region

provided the

answer in 2011 Chinese Farmers found the

fossil of a mammal called Jeremiah

sinensis meaning Jurassic mother from

China

the paleontologist Shilo Has Come For

the First time to visit this area which

stretches over several miles it is not

an easy task to identify fossil bearing

Rocks Under the fields of lush

corn but he is Guided by a local

specialist in feather dinosaurs whose

older specimen anones

was excavated on a site close to this

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one it's exciting fossil discovery

because it gave us a new

Milestone as to when the placental

lineage first start to appear on Earth

and all the modern placental mammals

have a deep root into the Jurassic and

is coming from right

here the Rocks also are embedded with

volcanic ashes and this size had been

dated by geochronology to

be 160 million plus or minus a little

bit so we know for sure this rocks

actually belong to the late

Jurassic the Jeremiah sinensis fossil is

the oldest specimen of a placental

mammal and is a critical piece of the

puzzle in the evolution of mammals it

was identified by its teeth which

included molers canines and

incises as the genetic studies of living

mammals showed their origin is much

older than existing fossils had

suggested since the discovery of

Jeremiah means that placental mammals

must have appeared at least 35 million

years before aom Mya

skoria and even though paleontologists

are still seeking fossils from the

Cretaceous Period belonging to current

groups like rodents or carnivores this

discovery brings the conflicting opinion

of geneticists and paleontologists

closer together independent

corroboration by fossils on one hand and

by molecules on the other gave us the

confidence that we are getting closer to

the correct answer

with Jeremiah we know that 160 million

years ago mammals already had the

characteristics that made them

successful fur complex teeth and acute

hearing to escape predators and locate

their

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prey the General Adaptation such as

insect St and such as a capability to

move on the tree gave this particular

mammo some evolutionary Advantage it is

really equipped it well enough already

in the late Jurassic for its descendant

to thrive After The Dinosaurs Extinction

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certainly the mammals ancestors were

very small in the time of

dinosaurs but much more varied and

better equipped than was previously

thought with advantages that we find

later in

primates our closest relatives

a

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he

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oh