Original subtitles

In the heart of London is an incredible world.

The Natural History Museum.

Home to 8O million sensations of nature.

From dinosaurs to whales,

giant squid to billion-year-old rocks.

It's probably the most important fossil of a dinsoaur

that there is anywhere in the world.

Now, our cameras have been allowed behind the scenes...

This rather large crate reminds me

of something from the movie "lndiana Jones".

...to meet the team...

...keeping it up and running.

Who's a good boy, eh? DINOSAUR ROARS

I think they're gorgeous.

Welcoming up to five million visitors a year...

...and bringing its unrivalled treasures to life.

So, this is the oldest thing that we have in the museum.

It's actually older than the solar system.

In this episode, the most famous dinosaur of all time...

Dippymania has taken over.

...a possible new dino discovery...

...and a dark secret about our prehistoric ancestors.

So, these teeth marks must be from a human.

Here we go. To infinity and beyond.

This is The Natural History Museum as we've never seen it before.

From whale skeletons to robot dinosaurs...

DINOSAUR ROARS CHILDREN SCREAM

...The Natural History Museum's 28 galleries

are crammed full of priceless show-stoppers.

Some of the biggest draws

take centre stage in the spectacular main hall.

But with the grime of central London just outside the door,

head of conservation Lorraine Cornish

is on constant alert for pollution damage

to these precious pieces.

Very busy day today, there's a lot going on.

This is the uniform for most conservators,

hi-vis jacket and a hard hat.

Today, Lorraine and a crack team of specialists

are descending on these prized exhibits.

We've got a small army in this morning.

We're checking the specimens, we're cleaning them.

The clock's ticking,

we've just got a limited amount of time to get it done, really.

So at the entrance to the museum,

one of the first things people see is these two amazing giraffes,

over 100 years old.

So, these giraffes are right near the doors,

there's a six-lane road outside, a lot of traffic,

public coming through, the doors are often open

and so we get dust just coming in

and one of the things we're looking at

is there any split in the skin, is it drying out or anything?

We check those seams, check that everything is as it should be.

I'm just cleaning the glass eye with some ethanol.

It's going to be the cleanest eyeball ever.

Some of these things are absolutely enormous

and we just need to get on with it.

The museum holds one of the greatest dinosaur collections in the world

and it's looked after by a team of experts,

including Susie Maidment.

Here at the Natural History Museum's dinosaur collection,

we have the world's most complete stegosaurus,

the first T. Rex ever found

and the first dinosaur fossils to be recognised as such.

And that's just scratching the surface.

Down here in the basement,

we have hundreds of different types of dinosaur fossils

from all over the world.

With its world-class reputation,

the museum is the first stop for any member of the public

who thinks they've made a new dino discovery.

Today, Susie and her colleague, Paul Barrett,

have had a promising tip-off.

Someone has sent in photos of what they think

could be a series of dino footprints,

known as a trackway, in Wales.

This is someone who thinks they might have found

a dinosaur trackway on the coast just outside Cardiff.

I have to say, these are some of the more

convincing footprint photos we've been sent.

They're pretty good, aren't they? Look at this one.

Visitors send us photos

of what they think might be dinosaur tracks all the time.

And very often, they're just random holes in rock,

they don't look like trackways at all.

Do you think those are toeprints there?

That is a convincing set of toeprints

for a hand rather than a foot. Yeah.

And then there's this huge dustbin lid shaped thing here

and I wonder if we're looking at a hand-foot pair?

It's difficult to think how that could form

if it wasn't a footprint, to be honest.

New dinosaur finds are rare in the British Isles

and Susie and Paul are so hopeful that these could be dino footprints

that they've decided to go to Wales and check them out for themselves.

Members of the public send us lots of inquiries

about things that they've found.

Sometimes, those are genuine dinosaur footprints,

but it's pretty rare,

most of the time it's something else.

But these are some of the best ones that we've been sent,

and some of the most convincing.

Coming UP---

Susie and Paul arrive in Wales and the plot thickens.

Footprints are tricky things to get a handle on,

but there are an awful lot of them around here.

And we meet the most famous dinosaur of all time.

When you're over 100, life can be pretty tough on the road.

Since opening its doors 140 years ago,

the Natural History Museum's main hall has been a stage

for the biggest crowd-pleasers of the day.

Including today's main attraction, Hope the blue whale.

Tonight, head of conservation Lorraine Cornish

has been looking back at the headline exhibits from the past.

People will possibly think that Hope's always been here

where she only came in 2017

and the museum opened in 1881.

So I've gone back into the archives and I've got a great picture here

showing George, an elephant.

I think George came to the museum in 1907

and he looks magnificent, absolutely magnificent.

I'm thinking around here

would be where the photographer would have taken the picture

of a sperm whale that was on display from 1895.

But the most popular attraction in the history of the museum

is Dippy the dinosaur.

Dippy's definitely the most famous dinosaur

in the country and globally.

Dippy came to the museum in 1905

and has been around a bit, it has to be said,

and started off in a reptile gallery

just to one side of here.

And we've got people in lab coats, here.

We've got people just casually sitting on the base.

They're essentially putting Dippy together.

Then this would have been

the public opening in the reptile gallery.

Back in 1905, when Dippy was unveiled to the public,

the opening was a must-have ticket.

So you had some crowned heads of Europe,

a bit of royalty, some VVIPs,

coming to the unveiling of this colossal dinosaur

that was truly amazing

and the press even went mad for Dippy.

Instant rock-star status and really cemented the museum,

you know, as the place to visit.

Dippy is a diplodocus who dominated the main hall from 1979 until 2017.

Since then, he's been on a tour across the UK.

As one of the museum's most prized showpieces,

Lorraine is responsible for making sure nothing happens to him.

And now Dippy's due a check-up.

Dippy's been very busy on kind of an extended tour.

I mean, literally, there is a t-shirt.

When you're over 100 and you're made of plaster,

life can be pretty tough on the road,

so I have to go and check

to make sure that everything's as it should be

and he's not showing his age, essentially.

For many visitors,

the giant specimens are the museum's biggest draw.

But for fly expert Erica McAlister, small is beautiful.

We have many hidden treasures and this is my hidden treasure.

Because it is really in the corner of a corner of this entire building

and yet there is so much going on

in just one little specimen on display.

This is a grasshopper eating a mouse.

It's very personal to me

because it's one of the things that first sat on my desk

when I joined the museum, ahem, quite a few years ago.

And I loved it, because it was so weird,

and we did a little bit of research into it

and it was found by Reverend So-And-So

who passed it on to Reverend So-And-So

who passed it on to someone who passed it on to us,

because obviously, we want a grasshopper eating a mouse.

But you can see the ear of the mouse

is being properly nibbled.

Another of Erica's favourites

is part of a bizarre story about the museum building.

This is a really terrible looking specimen of a cat.

It's desiccated, it's mummified,

which some people might find quite "ugh",

but I think it's fascinating.

And it was found buried in the front steps

of the entrance to the Natural History Museum.

We believe it's one of these superstitious cats

buried in the 1870s.

A warder of bad spirits

and also to get rid of all vermin in the building.

And I love the fact that is a building dedicated to science

and still its roots are very much superstitious.

The Natural History Museum's dinosaur experts

Susie Maidment and Paul Barrett have had

a promising tip-off about dino footprints.

Now they've arrived in Wales to see them for themselves.

There's some rock ledges over there, maybe?

Yeah, quite a lot of exposed rock up there.

If they turn out to be genuine, they could be an exciting find.

They're pretty big, aren't they? They are.

But first they need to get a proper look.

The first thing we've got to do while we're here

is actually work out if these are tracks for sure

or whether they're some other geological feature.

But one of the things that makes me suspicious that it could be tracks

is they have this raised rim of rock

around these crater-like structures,

which could be potentially be these footprints.

What we really need to do is get some of them nice and clean

so we can have a look at the edges properly,

see if there's evidence of things like toes

that might help us really nail that down.

It'll be really good if we can remove some of this sand,

which is going to involve quite a lot of sweeping, I think.

It's kind of like making sandcastles, actually.

Dinosaur footprints can often just look like holes in the rock

and even for experts like Susie and Paul,

it's still hard to work out whether these are dino prints.

They need to find clear proof

that a dinosaur may have once walked here.

I can't say anything in this one that looks particularly like

a definite finger or a toe impression,

but they're very deep.

They get quite filled up

with all of the sand that's covering the beach.

But there are an awful lot of them around here.

Footprints are tricky things to get a handle on.

What you really want is something that's perfect,

with lots of fingers and lots of toes showing.

At the moment, I'm thinking I don't know what these things are.

It is hard work, yeah,

and there's not really a shortcut to it, either.

There's no technology we can use that makes this easier,

so we just have to stick with this.

Susie and Paul will need to excavate more ground

if they're going to find the crucial evidence they need

to get to the bottom of this dino mystery.

As a housekeeping supervisor at the museum,

Debbie Marler gets privileged access to the world-famous exhibits.

It's just not your normal everyday nine-to-five job, is it?

I get to see all the things that the public don't get to see

and actually, really close up, as well.

I'm touching really old objects.

They've got to be priceless, really.

It's not like you can just go down the shops and buy one.

This is the dinosaur nest.

All the kids must love this one, cos I do.

Look at them, they're just cute little dinosaurs

coming out of their eggs.

I'd say these were my most favourite in the whole museum

because they just look so innocent.

This is Harry, he's in his bed,

he's got his little blanket around him.

This is Billy,

and Susie's just, "No way. You're not coming out".

I've got six children

and I would say these are so much easier to look after.

The Natural History Museum is on a site

the size of eight football pitches in up-market South Kensington.

But what lots of visitors don't realise is that,

tucked between the central building and the busy main road,

the museum has its very own two-acre garden

crammed full of British wildlife.

BIRDS COO

MAN: Morning!

Today, Tom McCarter and Sylvia Myers,

who are part of the team who run the wildlife garden...

Morning, sheep.

...are welcoming some new additions to entertain the tourists.

How are you doing?

Bracken is five years old and Ivy is three

and they're both grey-faced Dartmoor sheep.

They come here for six to eight weeks.

Do you want some sheep nuts? Mmm, yummy!

They really love the sheep nuts,

so if we want them to come with us, it's quite a useful tool.

They love them so much, I believe they know the word "sheep nut".

THEY BLEAT

Come on!

It's a lovely thing to have in your job description,

you get to be a farmer for six to eight weeks every year.

Bracken!

HE LAUGHS Come on!

Herding sheep is harder than it looks.

Come on!

If you try and direct the sheep,

they will quite often bolt and go the other direction.

Do you want to try and get behind them?

Come on!

SYLVIA LAUGHS

They have their own minds and they like to

wander round the gardens as they see fit.

Come on. Hey, girls. Come on, girls.

They do really like this bit.

If they don't come here in the morning,

they sometimes get a little bit grumpy.

That was trickier than I thought. BOTH LAUGH

With Ivy and Bracken safely in their new pasture,

they're ready for the public.

THEY BLEAT

Coming UP---

The secrets of ancient Brits revealed.

To have a skeleton from someone who died 10,000 years ago

is just so incredibly rare.

And we meet the most famous dinosaur of all time.

Dippymania has taken over.

The world's most famous dinosaur, Dippy,

is on a blockbuster tour around the UK.

As one of the Natural History Museum's most prized possessions,

it's vital nothing happens to him.

So today, head of conservation Lorraine Cornish

has come to check up on him.

I'm really excited to be going in and seeing Dippy.

It'll be like seeing our long-lost friend.

After nearly three years on the move,

Lorraine needs to make sure he's not damaged

after being taken apart and put back together so many times.

Hi, Janet. How are you doing?

15 feet high and longer than two double decker busses,

Dippy can only just about squeeze into Rochdale's huge public library.

The whole town has been

experiencing the Dippy effect, basically.

Dippymania has taken over. Dippymania, totally.

We've even had dino breakfasts at one of the local hostelries.

Really? I've even got my Dippy badge on.

There he is.

He seems to get bigger every time I see him, though.

It's so funny, when you haven't seen him for a long time

and then you come back and go, "Oh, he is huge".

Life on the move could easily damage

a dinosaur of this size and structure.

We have a very large join here where the legs come together

and they're bolted

so we always like having a look here

just to see if everything's as it should be.

Dippy is now over 100 years old

and time has taken its toll.

He's quite delicate.

He looks quite robust, doesn't he? He looks like he's pretty solid.

But that plaster is from 1905.

It's quite fragile, it could snap.

There are some tiny cracks, just because it's so old,

and so we have to be very respectful of this skeleton

when we put it together

and don't assume anything.

And clearing away the dust

isn't just to make Dippy look good for his fans.

Two bits of any trusty conservator will have

and that is a handi-brush,

which helps to sometimes dislodge

those tricky bits of dust that actually will fall on the specimen,

and then, this is a bit of a trick up our sleeves, cosmetic sponge.

You don't just use it for your face, you know.

Dust isn't great on objects over time.

It's hygroscopic, so it kind of absorbs water,

it can sometimes become acidic.

It's just not a great thing if you're looking after a skeleton.

After a day of close inspection,

Lorraine's happy that he is structurally sound

and ready for his public.

Lots of people think that this is a real skeleton

but the original is actually in America

and this is the first copy that was ever made

and then was gifted to London at the request of King Edward VII.

And at the time, it was the biggest,

most complete dinosaur to go on display anywhere in the world,

so it caused an absolute media sensation.

Everyone was absolutely amazed

at this "colossal stranger", as it was called.

SHE CHUCKLES

Everything's as it should be, which is what we want.

Dippy's been fascinating the crowds for over a century

and today's no exception.

That's a really good question.

It's a bit like how you poo and wee.

There's a part of the dinosaur's body back here

where the poo and the wee would come out.

No one ever tires of seeing Dippy

and I think it doesn't matter how many times.

And that's magical, isn't it?

Alongside dinosaurs, plants and stuffed animals,

the Natural History Museum is home to hundreds of human remains

from the last 10,000 years.

The most famous exhibit is the oldest

and most complete human skeleton ever found in Britain, Cheddar Man.

Ancient DNA expert Selina Brace and her team

have spent the past three years unlocking the secrets

of his remarkable prehistoric bones.

Cheddar Man is called Cheddar Man

because he was found in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset.

To have an almost complete skeleton

from someone who died 10,000 years ago

is just so incredibly rare, it's amazing.

And we can tell so much looking at him,

from his skeleton, about the way he lived, who he was.

Cheddar Man was alive

over 4,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids.

But using cutting edge techniques,

Selina has been able to discover how he lived.

Cheddar Man's lifestyle would have been that of a hunter-gatherer.

He would have eaten off the land,

he would have eaten roots and berries

but he would have hunted wild animals.

Examining his 10,000-year-old DNA was a delicate process.

When we sampled Cheddar Man for DNA,

it was a very scary day.

We took the skull and we turned this upside-down

and we took a very small amount of bone powder from his inner ear.

Ancient DNA testing often yields no results at all.

But with Cheddar Man, the team struck gold.

And what they discovered was extraordinary.

From his DNA and skeleton,

they were able to create an accurate image

of what prehistoric Britons looked like.

And it wasn't what most people expected.

This is a reconstruction of Cheddar Man's face.

From the DNA, we were able to say

that he had dark hair, blue eyes and dark skin pigmentation,

which today looks really unusual,

but what we think and what we know from other human remains

is that, in fact, most people in Britain

during this time point, 10,000 years ago,

would have had this

really interesting combination of features.

Tucked away in the same cave as Cheddar Man

was another collection of human skeletons

that still need investigation.

Cheddar Man was found on his own in the cave

but in a different part of the cave,

there were a lot more bones,

and these are from individuals much, much older

and these were are only just starting to look at.

Selina is now hoping further examination will reveal

what secrets these bones could be hiding.

Head of conservation Lorraine Cornish

is back at the museum

and there's one more stuffed animal to check over.

It's her personal favourite.

Hi, Guy.

Guy the gorilla.

I certainly have objects in the museum

where I've looked after them for a long time

and I am attached to them, for sure.

Guy is so treasured and so popular

that he has his own protected glass case

and a dedicated corner of the museum's main hall.

You have to be a little bit agile getting in,

which is not a great look.

I think the phrase "Does my bum look big in this?" comes to mind.

As I don't damage anything. SHE GROANS

He's handsome, isn't he? Don't you think?

When you're in the case, you can get to most of him, actually.

What we're doing is we're looking at any splits.

You can also look at the fur

to see if there's no insect movement or anything.

See how he's doing.

Lorraine's bond with Guy goes back to when she was a girl.

It's even more special to me sitting here with him now

because I remember seeing him when he was alive at London Zoo

as a young child and I thought he was amazing then.

He came to London Zoo as a baby

and he arrived on Guy Fawkes' Night in 1947

and I think he was afraid

of all of the noise of the fireworks and everything.

The story goes that he wouldn't settle

until one of the keepers would actually stay over with him,

and so he got the nickname Guy.

All the public adored him and they would then give him treats,

but sadly that was sweets and cakes and things,

very bad for your teeth, so his teeth were rotting,

so he had to have an operation

and sadly, while he was under, he had a heart attack and died.

And then he was at London Zoo

from 1947 until he died in 1978

and then eventually,

his body was donated to the Natural History Museum.

Even now, people will come into the museum,

they'll ask about the dinosaurs, they'll ask about Guy.

Looking good.

Dead leg. Ooh!

So we probably won't check him for another year now

and so we can close the door up.

Dinosaur experts Susie Maidment and Paul Barrett

are investigating traces of possible dino footprints

on a beach in South Wales.

Dino prints are rare

and identifying them requires evidence of finger and toe imprints.

But after hours of careful searching,

Susie and Paul are no closer to uncovering

the vital proof they need.

I'm still sad that we can't see any toe claws

or really distinct shapes of feet.

Maybe it could have been a claw mark or a toe...

But I wouldn't want to bet my life on it.

To help them get to the bottom of things,

they've called in back up.

Peter Falkingham is a specialist in analysing prehistoric footprints.

So this is it, this is what we've come to see

and we're really intrigued as to hear

what you're going to make of it.

After several more hours of clearing sand,

fresh evidence seems to be emerging.

We do seem to have these depressions in the sides coming up

that could be left behind by toes.

So, that's a long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur foot

and then hands there.

And we just see them quite close to each other.

Ooh! Quite a stretch.

Susie is becoming convinced the potential footprints

match the strides of a large dinosaur.

They're so regular, they're so evenly spaced.

I just can't believe that's a natural feature.

You can predict where the next one's going to be.

I reckon there's going to be one here, right? And there is.

But now Peter is not so sure.

For the team to be certain,

Peter is going to create a 3D model of the footprints,

which Paul and Susie will then analyse back at the museum.

Pete takes lots and lots of pictures

of the same footprint from different angles.

Then we can take all those photographs

and using some really cool software,

we can build 3D models of each of those prints.

The 3D models should confirm once and for all

whether these are dinosaur footprints or not.

Erica McAlister is one of the curators who looks after

the museum's enormous fly and flea collection.

She's part of the museum's ambitious mission

to photograph every one of their 8O million specimens

so that anyone in the world can see them.

Today, she's set her sights on some of the most bizarre.

So, these are exceptionally fragile and exceptionally delicate.

We really never take this lid off,

but I'm going to take it off to do this imaging.

The dressed fleas.

These were by the nuns in Mexico, which is great.

So what they would do, they would put the fleas in there,

make little outfits and then the fleas would be the head.

The strange art of dressing real fleas in costumes

began in 19th century Mexico.

This is a wedding being serenaded by a Mariachi band.

So these bands are very popular in Mexico

and these have been made by, we believe, nuns

and they've been bought as tourist trinkets.

You know, who doesn't want a dressed flea?

And then where's the lady?

She's not looking her best, really, is she?

She's got a bouquet. ERICA CHUCKLES

So we've definitely got a bride and groom

and then we've even got a bridesmaid and best man

and then either side of the wedding party,

you've got this little Mariachi band

and you've got a guitarist and one with the castanets.

They've all got the most fabulously large hats.

How on Earth she made these hats, I don't know.

But that's the level of detail I like.

OK, that's really cute,

I might have to take some photos of actually that.

As a child, it's not something you imagine,

being paid to photograph a flea that's been dressed as a bride.

Can you imagine your career guidance counsellor,

"What do you want to do?"

"l want to image fleas.

"L want to image fleas like nobody's imaged fleas before."

These photographs will now form part

of an enormous digital archive project,

recording every single item the museum owns.

One of the museum's biggest crowd-pullers

is Sophie the stegosaurus.

With almost all of her skeleton intact,

Sophie is the world's most complete example of the famous dinosaur.

But she's so unique that the most precious part of her

is kept under lock and key.

Her skull.

While she waits for news about the dino footprints,

Susie Maidment is taking a rare look

at Sophie's 150 million year old skull.

Although they're very iconic as dinosaurs,

there are really few skulls of stegosaurus that are intact

from anywhere in the world, there's no more than five,

and Sophie's is absolutely unique

in that all the bones are separate from each other,

they're not all fused together,

and that, for us, is kind of the holy grail.

The separate skull bones means Susie

has been able to discover more about

this incredible dinosaur than ever before.

We were able to do loads of study on this specimen

and we discovered that Susie weighed about 1.5 to 2 tonnes,

which is something like a white rhino.

The question I get asked the most about the stegosaurus

is what was the function of their armour

that they had down the back,

the plates and the spikes at the end of the tail?

Now, the spikes were probably used as a weapon.

The plates, it's a bit harder to say.

They're very thin, and while some people have suggested

they could have been armour plating,

I think if you were something like allosaurus,

with a big, bone-crunching bite,

chomping through stegosaurus plates

would probably be like eating a pack of Pringles.

What we've got here is the brain case.

This is actually the back of Sophie's skull.

Now, stegosaurus's brain

is sometimes compared to a size of the plum.

I think Sophie's might have been a little bit smaller than that.

Now, while there's not a direct relationship

between brain size and intelligence,

Sophie did have a very small brain for her body weight

and so I suspect that this dinosaur was not very clever.

Coming UP---

A gruesome secret is uncovered.

So this is definitely cannibalistic behaviour.

And after the great dinosaur hunt,

the results are in.

Slightly blows your mind, doesn't it?

At the Natural History Museum,

Selina Brace has been examining a set of ancient human bones.

These 15,000-year-old human remains

are among the oldest of their kind ever found in Britain

and they were discovered in the same cave as the skeleton of Cheddar Man.

PhD student William Marsh has been studying them

and has some gruesome news.

You've got four ribs here.

All of them showing signs of human cannibalism.

And this one is kind of unmissable. Oh, that's amazing.

There are bite marks on these rib bones

that can only have been made by human teeth.

Three tooth marks.

One, two, three.

So these teeth marks must be from a human.

Yeah, I think so.

And cos you can see there's evidence also

of cut marks slightly down here, which is evidence that...

Where they de-fleshed? Where they de-fleshed it.

Yeah, absolutely. Taken the flesh off.

And then the human teeth marks.

The other body parts tell an even more horrifying story.

A skull has been turned into a drinking vessel.

We've got a skull cup which shows signs of cut marks.

So rather than being, like, brutally smashed

or very quickly broken apart to remove the brain,

what they've actually done is very carefully cut away,

de-fleshed around the outside

to create this beautiful cup that you see here.

So that together, if we had that up round there,

would be the whole of the drinking vessel,

this would be the drinking cup.

For Selina and William, the next step is to work out why

humans were carving skulls and eating each other

15,000 years ago in Britain.

So this is definitely cannibalistic behaviour.

So there are many reasons that you can have cannibals

and that people would eat human flesh.

One is that they were very hungry.

Maybe this was a time when there wasn't much food.

It could be that they were eating their enemies

to prove they were stronger than they were.

Or it could be much more about honouring the dead,

so ritually eating members of your family

as a way to show that you cared,

as bizarre as this may sound.

With many questions about these prehistoric cannibals

left to answer, Selina's research will continue.

In a hidden corner of the museum,

marine expert Miranda Lowe is responsible

for some of the most delicate items in the entire building.

150-year-old replicas of sea creatures

made from paper-thin glass.

Every time I handle these, I take a sharp intake of breath.

You can see how fragile it is.

A glass jellyfish that was actually made in the 1870s.

The museum has a new exhibition coming up

and Miranda has been asked to select

just one of these models for public display.

It's really hard to just choose one item for exhibition

because we have 180 of them.

This is a form of moon jellyfish.

The glass here is one-tenth of a millimetre.

So thin, so fragile.

This is one of my most favourite objects.

A beautiful glass octopus.

You can see so much detail.

These painstakingly accurate models

once offered a glimpse into a mysterious underwater world.

So when these things were made,

these glass marine sea creatures were there to inspire people

about the world's oceans.

This kind of object brought to the public

what you might actually see.

This is a bit like unwrapping your best birthday present.

But as much as she loves them all,

Miranda can only choose one for the exhibition.

Amazing.

Or can she?

I can't just choose one, so I'm going to see if I can have to.

I'd love this one to go in,

and then I'd love this other one over here.

I think I've got my final selection and people are going to love them.

Dinosaur experts Susie Maidment and Paul Barrett

have just received a digital model

of the possible dino trackways they saw on a beach in Wales.

These images have revealed details

that were invisible to the naked eye.

It just looks so clear.

It does. It really gives a much clearer view

than when you're on the beach.

That's true, actually.

There's no water in the tracks here, are there?

Which really helps to see it,

cos on the beach it was quite difficult to see.

After a thorough examination,

Susie and Paul finally see the evidence they were looking for.

Proof of finger and toe marks.

That one looks like it's got toes. Yeah, that looks like a toe.

And it has this big raised rim of mud at the back of the print

which has been caused by the heel of the hand

really pushing into that soft mud.

And as you say, these could be claw marks

and these animals would have had

really big, chunky claws on their fingers.

With these images, and what they saw on the beach,

Susie and Paul now feel confident

that they've made an exciting new discovery.

They're so much like footprints.

They're so regular,

they've got these raised rims that just look like what you get

when a foot impacts into mud.

Not only can Susie and Paul now see these dinosaur prints clearly,

they also think they know what type of dino they belong to.

An early sauropod, the largest land animal that's ever lived.

One of its relatives sits in the Natural History Museum today.

I think it was probably made by an early relative

of this sort of dinosaur here.

But an earlier member of this group.

And some of these shapes that we see

in these footprints here are really so similar.

I actually think it's kind of amazing that something like that

would have been wandering around

what is now a beach in South Wales 210 million years ago.

Yeah, it is quite stunning.

It slightly blows your mind, doesn't it?

Next time...

The first T. Rex ever discovered.

The ribs can be really, really fragile

because they've been around for 66 million years.

In the eeriest corner of the museum...

Some of these animals,

you might not even realise are actually real animals.

And the most daring mission the museum's ever undertaken.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media