All language subtitles for Natural History Museum World of Wonder Series 1 Part 4 1080p

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 dinosaur

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
Indiana Jones.

...to meet the team...

Geronimo!

...keeping it up and running...

I think they're gorgeous!

...welcoming up to five million
visitors a year...

Hello, control.
Are we ready to open the museum?

...and bringing its unrivalled
treasures to life.

See those little faces?
Aren't they cute?

You're looking at the backside
of a maggot,

which always makes me giggle.

In this episode, an exciting new
dinosaur is discovered.

We get to unwrap them
and discover what's inside.

It's like Christmas.

Seven billion years old
and from outer space...

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

It's actually
older than the solar system.

And hunting for bugs
at Anne Boleyn's castle.

So, you want to beat the tree
assertively

without thrashing all the branches
and fruit off, of course.

Especially because
it's somebody else's tree.

Here we go. To infinity and beyond.

This is the Natural History Museum
as you've never seen it before.

The Natural History Museum's
dinosaur collection is world-famous.

Thousands of visitors pour
through its doors each day to see

the most incredible dinosaurs ever
discovered -

from the first T-rex ever found

to the most complete stegosaurus
skeleton in existence.

But behind the scenes,

there's a treasure trove of
dino secrets yet to be revealed.

Susie Maidment is part of the
museum's team of dinosaur experts.

And today, she's unlocking
a store room that's strictly

off-limits to the public.

What you see upstairs is just
a tiny fragment of

all the fossils that we have here.

Most of them
are down here in this room,

where there are literally
thousands of dinosaur specimens.

Here, in the bowels of the building,

she knows something special
has been hidden away.

A crate from a famous dino dig
in Lesotho, Africa...

It's really heavy!

...that has never been unpacked.

OK. So, you can see that we took
this first plank off the box

and it's just full of these parcels
that are wrapped up with these,

kind of, tantalising notes
on the outside.

And we get to unwrap them
and discover what's inside.

It's like palaeontology Christmas.

What else do
I have in my Christmas stocking?

Ooh.

It's difficult to know
whether some of these

have broken up as they've been
in these boxes for so long...

...or whether they were broken
when they found them.

So, this is one I'm really,
really interested in.

To most people, this might just
look like a lump of rock.

But to me, this is rather exciting.

Susie's expert eye has spotted
that this small piece of rock

contains prehistoric dinosaur bones.

But finding out what type of dino
they belong to

is going to be a challenge.

This bone is really, really old -

maybe as much as
199 million years old.

And there's more bone inside
this rock.

We can't see the shape of that bone
right now

but that's what we want to reveal.

Lesotho in Africa, where these rocks
were found,

is famous for early and rare
dinosaurs,

like heterodontosaurus
and Lesothosaurus.

Susie's wondering if her rock
contains bones from these creatures.

To solve the mystery,

she's using the museum's
cutting-edge CT scanner.

I really hope that what we're
going to see when we look at these

images on the screen is a beautiful
dinosaur skull in three dimensions,

preserved in these blocks of rock,
and that would really make my day.

Susie must wait
until the rock's been scanned

and analysed to find out if it
contains something special.

The Natural History Museum

is one of the most popular
landmarks in London.

And keeping
this 50-year-old building

sparkling for its millions
of visitors is no easy job.

Who needs the gym, eh?

Specialist window cleaners Killian
and Paul have the unenviable task

of washing the 5,000 individual
panes of glass

that cover its facade.

We've been cleaning the windows
here for about six years.

Probably the most important
thing to wear when you're abseiling,

at least for comfort, is a seat.

So you get to sit down
when you're working.

It's pretty much like working
in an office, really.

Just really high up!

To get to the windows,
the abseilers face a 100-foot drop.

Sometimes I do get a bit of a...

Bit of a pit in my stomach
before going over the edge,

looking down
and seeing how high it is.

Wish me luck.

Attaching yourself to a historic
building can be a bit unnerving.

If we're anchoring off of something
that we're only 99% sure

will hold, then I go first,

cos I'm fatter.

And that way, if it holds me,
then it'll definitely hold him.

Every couple of months,
I clean the windows at home.

I am actually quite bad on that.

I clean windows when my Mrs
orders me to clean windows!

Oh, I just put my hand in
spider webs or something.

Yep. Yep-

At this height, Killian and Paul

can get up close to
the building's history.

The nice thing about being
at the Natural History Museum

is that it's a really old building.

Many, many years ago, these handles
here were used by window cleaners

to walk along the edges
and clean the windows.

Like, before health
and safety existed.

This building has really
amazing carvings.

Some of them funny looking.

It's nice. We are the only people
who get to see them this close.

Do you want to hear a joke?

You missed a spot.

Coming up -
the museum's oldest exhibit.

So, there are tiny grains
held within this meteorite

that are older than the moon
and they're older than the Earth.

And they're actually
older than the sun.

And the results are back
from Susie's dino scan.

Look at that. This is great news.

At the Natural History Museum,

there's far more going on
than the public get to see.

It's also home to over 300 experts,

who study the natural world
in labs across its sites.

But much of their work takes place
out in the field.

Today, beetle expert Max Barclay
is taking a trip

to Hever Castle in Kent,

which is home to an amazing
selection of bugs.

We're in the grounds
of Hever Castle,

where natural history is
going to meet real history.

Of course, Hever Castle is
the childhood home

of Anne Boleyn,
the mother of Elizabeth I.

But we're here to look at beetles.

There's a nice old orchard there
with some apple trees

that look like they're
a couple of hundred years old.

Likely to support some
interesting beetles.

Max is taking part
in a ground-breaking project

which involves collecting every
species of beetle in Britain.

Today, he's hoping to find
something new,

but it's no easy task.

What would really excite me today -

it'd be nice to see something
I haven't seen before.

And there's 4,000 species
of beetle in Britain.

I haven't seen all of them.

That is a beating tray.

Very simple -
it's basically like an umbrella.

And you hold it
underneath the branch

and then you hit
the branch with a stick.

So, not very technical, really.

Have a look along the sides
of the tree here,

have a look particularly at the
mistletoe, which is interesting.

This tree is encrusted with lichen.

It's a very old tree,
even though it's very small.

There's a couple of things
on the beating tray there.

That's a beetle.
Ladybirds are beetles, of course.

Max has been studying beetles
for 25 years.

It's a lifelong passion
that's taken him across the globe.

This net has been
all over the world.

It's been all over South America,
it's been in Brazil,

it's been up the Andes in Peru,

it's been in Central America
in Belize.

It's been in North America as well.

There's some bloodstains there.

That's probably from leeches
in Borneo.

So, you want to beat the tree
assertively enough

that the insects are dislodged,
without thrashing all the branches

and fruit off, of course.

Especially because
it's somebody else's tree.

Any beetles?

The grounds here are old - they're
as old as the castle, of course -

so you have some continuity
of the habitat, and probably

the beetles here are the descendants
of populations of beetles that were

here when Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
were still living in the castle.

This is a shield bug.
It's also called a stink bug.

When you handle them, if they get
afraid or distressed they'll produce

a very strong almondy smell, which
is why they're called stink bugs.

I don't like the smell at all,
so I'm not going to handle it.

There's a flea beetle there.

Just put that in the tube.

And a caterpillar there
that looks like a stick.

As you can see,
it's doing quite a good job of it.

When you're collecting beetles
in a historic orchard,

snack time is a simple affair.

These fruits that
look like cherries...

It's not a cherry tree.
Don't know what these fruits are.

Look at that.
Some kind of little plums.

Bad habit tasting everything.

You don't want to do it in
a tropical rainforest -

some of the things can kill you.

They're actually really nice.

I don't know why some people get
creeped out by bugs, really.

I just think they haven't spent
enough time looking at them.

It's been a successful day,
and Max will now

return to the museum with his
fresh haul of beetles.

Every year, the Natural History
Museum holds its famous

competition of wildlife photography.

With almost 50,000 entries,
it's the biggest of its kind

anywhere in the world,
and the most prestigious.

The exhibition that reveals
the winning photographs

is a highlight in the museum's
calendar.

Today, programme manager
Soraia Salvador and her team

are installing
the top 100 photographs.

Be careful here!

But with opening day just
a week away, time is tight.

This is a really exciting project
and it's the result

of the work of so many people,
and it's really beautiful to see.

This is the moment of truth.

Wow! Exciting.

So, these are the photos
that people are gonna be

able to see in one week's time,
here in the gallery.

These prints are really delicate -
that's why you see us

using these gloves.

We go around...

Wow! This one is really spectacular,
the colours.

OK. One, two, three.

An expert panel of judges
selected these winning shots

and they are now being
carefully mounted.

No, no.

For us, quality is everything.

Every time we put an image,
we need to assess if it's best.

And this one, it's clearly not.

Here and here.

One, two, three.

It's bUmPY-

Each print is a challenge.

Not perfect,
so we are not entirely happy.

Maybe it's catching some moisture.

Feeling a bit of pressure, because
there's still a lot of work to do.

We have to install the images today.

Er, OK. Let's go to the next one.

One, two, three.

It's beautiful!

As it's the most popular event
in the museum's calendar,

the gift shop is also
in a rush to get

the new merchandise on the shelves
in time for the grand opening.

Wildlife Photographer Of The Year
tote bag.

It's a black bag.
Who doesn't like a black bag?

I'm feeling great.

I mean, it's the final last
five minutes

after seven months of hard work.
It's fantastic.

The Natural History Museum
is full of unique objects

that stretch thousands of years
back in time...

...from prehistoric men to ancient
insects and dinosaur fossils.

But, for Caroline Smith, who is
a world authority on meteorites,

there's one object that beats
everything else in the museum

hands down.

Kept tucked away,

she's one of the few members
of staff who's allowed to handle it.

So, what I have in here,
in this rather unassuming box,

is actually one of our treasures
of the meteorites collection

and, indeed, of the museum.

This is quite a smelly meteorite.

I can smell it.

It has a very distinctive smell.

So, some people have described it

as smelling a little bit
like gunpowder.

So, this is a meteorite
called Murchison.

It fell in Australia in 1969
and even though it looks like just

a boring old lump of black rock,

it's much more interesting
than that.

So, there are tiny grains
held within this meteorite

that are older than the dinosaurs.

They're actually older than the moon
and they're older than the Earth

and they're actually older than
the sun.

So, there are some tiny grains
held within this meteorite

that are as old as
seven billion years old.

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

It's actually older than
the solar system.

Remarkably, meteorites like this one

could reveal how life on Earth
first began.

We've always wondered how life
started on Earth.

You know, it's one of those
really big questions.

And what's so amazing about this
meteorite is,

it's got all of the key building
blocks that you need for life

to start held within it.

When you start taking them apart,

you start revealing that
they're really amazing secrets.

They are like little time capsules
and space probes.

Engine ignition. Two, one, zero.

And lift-off.

As a world authority,

Caroline has been recruited
onto a very special project.

I've actually been working
with colleagues from Nasa

for the last few years,

on the Nasa Mars 2020 mission,
the Perseverance Rover.

She's given Nasa a meteorite
from the museum's collection

that fell to Earth from Mars.

And now, that meteorite
is on board the Rover,

on its way back to the red planet.

Another piece of this rock that
I'm holding is currently

winging its way back to Mars
on a 100-million-mile journey,

and it's got a very
important job to do.

So, not all of our collection
is currently in the building.

Some of it is elsewhere
and some of it is, indeed, in space.

This meteorite will help
Nasa's mission to discover

whether there's life
on other planets.

To be involved in that mission,
even in a very small way,

is super-exciting.

That is the hairs standing
up on the back of the neck

and the, sort of,
butterflies going in the stomach.

Dinosaur expert Susie Maidment has
been waiting for the results

from the CT scan of a mysterious
lump of prehistoric rock

that was found in Africa.

And today,
the results have come through.

She's hoping they'll reveal that the
rock has rare dinosaur bones inside.

There you go. Oh, wow!

We've got a lot of detail here,
which is really nice.

From first glance, it's promising.

This is great news.
This is really good.

To Susie's expert eye, it
looks like the rock contains

an incredible discovery -
an extremely unusual dinosaur skull.

Is this a brain case here,
do you think? Look.

Here's the back of the skull.
Looks like it, yeah.

And then these are the two processes
that are

sticking down from the bottom of
the brain case. Mm.

So, I think we've got the back of
the skull here.

I think this should make
this identifiable.

So, hopefully, from this we'll be
able to tell

what sort of dinosaur it is.

To find out for certain
what's hidden inside,

Susie is now enlisting
fossil expert Mark Graham.

She wants him
to chisel away at the hard rock

and expose the fossil skull
beneath without damaging it.

Only then will
she be able to identify

whether this really is
a rare dinosaur.

I've got some specimens for you.
Fantastic.

So, these are the little
skull blocks from Lesotho

that we've CT scanned.

This is really spectacular.
Oh, good.

So, as you can see,
there is a lot of bone in it. Yep.

But what the CT scan shows

is that it really looks
very promising as a skull.

This is brilliant, isn't it?
It looks quite exciting, doesn't it?

It does. It looks fantastic, yeah.

And then I think with that
much skull material, we should

be able to identify it. This is
beautifully preserved. Isn't it?

The more I look at this
and the more I look at the scans,

the more I'm convinced
it's a small dinosaur.

I'm pretty excited.
I think this is gonna be very cool

and I can't wait to see what
we get out of it.

Exposing the bone from the rock
is painstaking work

and will take weeks to complete.

Susie will now have to wait
before the mystery of the skull

in the rock can finally be solved.

Coming UP---

Max uncovers an ancient secret.

These beetles were alive

when the pharaohs were building
the pyramids in Egypt.

It's tremendously exciting.

And Susie gets special access
to a museum treasure.

They're virtually priceless,
so it's pretty exciting

to be able to get my hands on them.

Susie Maidment and
her team are working to uncover

a dinosaur skull
from a prehistoric rock.

And while she waits for the result,

Susie's been given special access
to the remarkable fossils

that sparked the discovery
of the dinosaurs.

I've never got to handle
these specimens before.

They're absolutely iconic specimens
for dinosaur workers.

The first dinosaur
fossils recognised as such.

So it's pretty exciting to be
able to get my hands on them.

These small pieces are dinosaur
teeth and they're extraordinary.

They were discovered by accident
in 1822 in Sussex,

by a local doctor whose wife saw
them glinting

by the side of the road.

This chance find
kick-started one of the biggest

discoveries in natural history -

that dinosaurs once
walked the Earth.

It's incredibly difficult to put
a value on these specimens,

because of their incredible historic
importance to palaeontology.

They're virtually priceless.

We will never be able to find the
first dinosaur fossils ever again.

In 1822,
nobody knew about dinosaurs.

There had been dinosaur fossils
found before then

but people had thought that they
were the bones of giant humans

and mythical animals
and things like that.

After this discovery, people were
then able to look at fossils

and look at bones
with a new set of eyes,

and that led to an explosion
in dinosaur research

and study and discovery.

The Natural History Museum
has 28 galleries

and 450 interactive exhibits to
entertain adults and children alike.

Looking after them is a task
that falls

to special-effects engineer
Chris Russell.

I've been here for quite
a long time now, so I know

most of the behind-the-scenes
parts of the museum.

Each morning, Chris and his team
have 60 minutes

to get everything up and running.

So, it's really just going
round switching everything on,

then going round the front, checking
that everything's working properly.

And slowly, the museum comes
back to life every morning.

This is the earthquake floor.
I'm actually just waiting

for the floor to start moving,

which it is now.
And I'm just going to make sure

that all of these barriers
are secure.

Yep, that's all looking good.

But today, Chris has saved his most
special task until last.

He's installing one of the most
extraordinary jewels

in the whole museum.

Known as the Ostro Stone,

it's the largest blue topaz
gemstone in the world.

Found over 30 years ago,
it weighs 2kg

and is over 9,000 carats.

We're in the Minerals Gallery,
one of the oldest-style galleries

in the museum, and we're
looking at the Ostro Stone.

It's one of the largest specimens
of its type in the world

and was found in
the Amazon rainforest.

We've just been putting the gemstone
back onto public display

and then adjusting the lighting
on it to bring out the best aspects

of the stone, so that
as the visitor looks at the stone,

the lighting changes and you can
just see different colours

that come through
and different patterns

as the light refracts through
the stone.

Gemstones come in all different
shapes, sizes and different colours,

and this is one of the most amazing
ones we've got in this gallery.

Really, really beautiful.

Natural History Museum beetle
expert Max Barclay looks after

one of the biggest beetle
collections in the world.

We have one of the largest,
one of the oldest

and the most comprehensive
collections of its kind

anywhere in the world.

We have here about 22,000
boxes of beetles

containing about eight million
specimens.

One of my favourite things
is in this cabinet.

So, these are the gold and silver
chafers

from the cloud forests of
Central America.

These have been called
bling beetles.

We think they're trying to
look like droplets of water,

so that they can hide from the birds
and monkeys.

This is the biggest beetle
in the world,

and this piece is called
Titanus gigantius.

These can get to about
16 or 17 centimetres long,

so they're bigger than your hamster,
they're bigger than your budgerigar.

Recently, Max found a remarkable
pair of beetles

hidden away in the collection.

They could be some of the oldest
complete beetles ever found.

Well, this is one of the most
incredible things in the collection,

to my mind.

This is a piece of wood that was
dug up in the 1970s

on a farm in eastern England.

And in one of these channels,
the farmer who dug it up,

he found some dead beetles
and they're here.

So, he brought these
into the Natural History Museum

and the scientists who were
here at the time said,

"Well, this is not a British
species of beetle."

So, there was always
a mystery about these beetles -

what were they doing here?
Why were they here?

What were
they doing in that bit of wood?

And, er, so it was put into a drawer
in the museum and it was left,

really, for 30 or 40 years.

The beetles lay
undisturbed in the museum's vaults

until Max came across them
several years ago.

He suspected the reason they were
so puzzling was because they were

incredibly old and were now extinct
in the British Isles.

Well, I decided that we were going
to find out once and for all

how old these specimens were.

So we sent some tiny samples
of these beetles

and of this piece of wood off to be
carbon dated.

The results have just come back.

And they're remarkable.

Just got the results back from this,

and that's quite interesting

because we always suspected
that they were old.

But, actually, these beetles

are older than the Tudors,

older than the Roman
occupation of Britain,

even older than the Roman Empire.

These beetles were alive
and chewing the inside of that

piece of wood when the pharaohs were
building the pyramids in Egypt.

They are 3,875 years old.

It's tremendously exciting.

Max believes these
oak capricorn beetles died out

in Britain as the climate changed.

So, this is a beetle that's
associated with warmer climates.

And possibly, it existed
in Britain 4,000 years ago

because the climate was warmer.

And as the climate cooled
and habitats were destroyed,

it became extinct.

It's quite extraordinary to realise
that you're holding

something in your hand
that looks like it

was collected yesterday and it's
actually several millennia old.

It's quite remarkable.

Max's ancient beetles will now
go on display in a major exhibition.

Being selected as one of the 100
winning photos to go on display

at the Wildlife Photographer
Of The Year is a huge honour.

Many of the chosen pictures
were taken in remote locations,

but British photographer
Matt Moran took his picture

just ten minutes from his house
in North London.

Here we are at the allotment,

where I've been coming for the past
four years photographing the foxes.

And just a little bit
further up ahead here was where

I took a picture of the rat game.

For Matt, having one of his pictures
chosen is a dream come true.

I've been entering the competition
for the past 18 years and I always

thought the answer was just to go
abroad and to exotic locations.

And here we are on
a north-London allotment.

And this time around,
I got lucky one night.

There were a few just hanging out,

so I got my camera out and it was

while I was lying on my front

a fox just exploded out
from my right-hand side.

There was a fleeting glimpse
right in front of the lens.

They were tossing
the rat up in the air.

It was entertaining to watch.

It was just these three foxes
trying to gain ownership of the rat.

And that's when I started to frame
and just really fire away.

Steam was coming out of my camera

and I knew that I'd got to get this
moment, I'd got to get this shot.

I reviewed the pictures quickly

and I could see there's one
shot on the back of my camera.

And I zoomed in and saw it
was sharp and I was like, "Yes!

"L've got it. I've got something
really good here."

I think if you ask any photographer,
including myself,

the one competition they want
to have their work in,

it would be the Wildlife
Photographer Of The Year.

It's like the equivalent of winning
the World Cup.

Behind the scenes of the museum,
you won't just find rare specimens.

There's also a vast library
and archives holding over 300,000

spectacular illustrations
and artworks of the natural world -

all cared for by specialist
collections manager Andrea Hart.

But the crown jewel
of this collection

is a book on American birds.

It contains over 400
hand-coloured prints,

capturing wildlife
as never seen before.

A rare copy recently sold
at auction for £7 million,

making it one of the world's
most expensive books.

OK, so, this is one of the heaviest
volumes in the library

but it's also one of the biggest
treasures that we have, as well.

This is john James Audubon's
Birds Of America,

first printed in 1827, and it
is just full of

the most amazing birds that he
captured, in watercolour.

And the most incredible thing
is that they are all life-size.

You can just see that these
were almost painted yesterday,

instead of nearly 200 years ago.

So, today, I'm having a look through
the volumes to choose another

plate that we can put on display
for the public to come and see.

So, I think this one is going to be
the next one to go into the gallery.

The images are so sensitive to light
damage that each one

can only be on show
for a limited time.

So, we're in the Treasures Gallery,
one of my favourite

galleries at the museum, and about
to swap one treasure for another.

So, the tricky thing with these
is that they are

so big that you do have to take
extra care when removing them.

So it's always a relief when you get
that out cleanly in one go.

This is one of my favourite ones,
I think, particularly

because owls are one of my mum's
favourite birds.

And hopefully,
we'll get it all in one go.

There we go.

Love this one, cos it really does
look like the owls

are really looking back at you.

But, anyway, I'm going to close them
up, leave them in there...

...until the next time.

See you in a month.

In his lab, fossil expert
Mark Graham has been chiselling away

at the piece of rock given to him
by dino expert Susie Maidment.

A CT scan suggested there was
part of a rare dinosaur skull

hidden inside.

But it will only be through Mark's
painstaking work that

the fossil will be revealed.

I'm getting rid of this crud,
really.

The trouble is, the bones are lovely
but to get to them

you've got to remove all this...
It's just, sort of, crap.

It takes forever to do it
because it's so hard, so...

Just got to be patient, keep at it

and eventually,
we'll get through to the good stuff.

One wrong slip could destroy
a 199 million-year-old fossil

that can never be restored.

One of the things I worked on
took about nine years to do,

so that's an example of how long it
can take around here

to make progress on some stuff.

It is a very, very distinct
and strange job, really.

So I don't know -
I'm probably a bit of a weirdo.

Most people would probably tell
you that, but, er, I enjoy it,

so I don't give a toss, really.

For Mark, working at the museum
is the best job in the world.

If I'd seriously thought
at six years old

that I would have been working here,
I would have been so excited.

You know, I would have wanted
to grow up really quickly.

You could look back and pinch
yourself

and think, "How did I get here?"
I still do that now.

It's certainly a good party stopper.
You go to a party and someone says,

"What do you do for a living?"

I say, "Well, I work with dinosaurs
at the Natural History Museum."

So, they all think it's
really pretty cool.

After weeks of careful scraping,

Mark's hard work
is finally paying off.

The fossil skull is
starting to emerge.

You know, some people who don't know
would look at this

and think it's just a lump of
old rock

with a couple of knobbly bits
sticking out of it.

But it actually represents
something really important,

because there's a dinosaur skull
in here.

And not only that -
it's going to be a really,

really rare dinosaur skull, so I'm
super-excited to get this job done.

Coming UP---

Here it is.

...the museum's major
exhibition goes live.

It feels a little bit surreal,
actually,

looking at your work up here.

And the fossil skull
is finally revealed.

This dinosaur is really,
really quite rare.

This is a significant discovery.

It's just a few clays

before the Wildlife Photographer
Of The Year exhibition

finally opens to the public.

The winning entries for
each category have been unveiled...

...including the competition's
overall winner -

this Siberian tiger,

captured in the Russian far east
by Sergey Gorshkov.

British photographer Matt Moran's
picture

received a "highly commended"
in the mammal-behaviour category.

Today, he's getting his first
glimpse of his photograph

in the exhibition.

Here it is.

It feels a little bit surreal,
actually,

looking at your work up here,
you know, amongst all of this

amazing selection of images
from all over the world.

I took this photo over a year ago
now and it's just amazing

to be able to stand in front of this
moment that I remember so well.

I'm definitely proud of myself,

because I've been entering this
competition for 18 years.

So, to be able to finally have my
own panel up here

with an animal that's just
ten minutes' walk from my house

is absolutely magnificent.

This is the Holy Grail, for sure.

Every visitor walks
beneath the museum's spectacular

hand-painted ceiling, but very few
people have ever been up close.

Today, botanist Sandy Knapp is
going to inspect

this unexplored treasure
for herself.

I love this building and I actually
love this ceiling

and I'm so lucky, cos every single
day I get to walk through

those doors, I get to walk across
this hall,

look up and see all these amazing
plants arched above me.

It's something that starts every
day with a lift.

Hi, Tom. This is so exciting.

Sandy is hoping to identify
key features on the paintings...

...that can't be seen
from the ground.

I'm getting to go up in this cherry
picker to get closer to this

amazing ceiling than
I've ever been before,

which has been one of my dreams
for many, many years.

Whoo!

Incredible.

The 60-foot-high ceiling
is made up of 180 panels,

intricately decorated with plants
from across the world.

Can you imagine putting all this
decoration in a place where

no-one is ever gonna see it?

Those flowers are
beautifully done in gilt,

so it's hugely detailed,
which you kind of don't see

from down there but I can see it
for the first time here.

No-one knows for certain why these
particular plants were chosen.

But now she's up close, Sandy has
spotted that some of these panels

appear to tell a story of
the British Empire.

A few of the plants here
on the ceiling are those plants

that fuelled the British economy
in the Victorian times.

So, they were things like cotton
and tobacco and tea,

which were the real crops
which brought in money.

They also were involved with a lot
of misery for the people who

harvested them, enslaved people,
and whose lands were taken,

but that was how
the British Empire was made.

It's like a hidden treasure
in plain view, isn't it?

You know, you only see it
when you look up.

It's a work of art.

In a way, this is our version
of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

But I kind of like it better.

It is AMAZING!

It's been six weeks
since Susie Maidment handed over

a seemingly unremarkable lump of
rock to fossil expert Mark Graham.

Today, he's finally ready to share

the results of his hard work
with her.

Oh, my goodness.
You've done so much to it. Yeah.

Turned out really well. Oh, yes.

So, the back of the skull's
come out nicely.

So, I used the air abrasive just
to remove that,

kind of, rock that was over there.

That's beautiful.
It's a beautifuljob, though.

Considering this is 200
million years old... Yeah.

...it is really well preserved,
isn't it? It is. It's lovely.

I'm really confident that we're
gonna be able to identify this.

Brilliant. Thank you very much,
Mark. It's lovely. Yeah, no problem.

See you later.

With her newly prepared
dinosaur skull in hand,

Susie is now ready to work out
what it could be.

The rock contained a small piece
from the back of the skull.

It's not much but it's enough
for Susie to identify it.

I'm really excited to look at
this fossil now.

Mark has done such
a beautifuljob on it.

It is not a whole skull but the vast
majority of dinosaurs are known

from just a few bones, and specimens
like this have the potential

to reveal all sorts of information
that we didn't already know.

The skull was found
in Lesotho in Africa,

which narrows the field down.

But to find out for certain what
kind of dinosaur it is,

Susie must examine key features
in the fossil and compare it

to similar skulls in the museum's
collection.

After hours of analysis, she thinks
she can finally identify

what kind of dinosaur
the skull belonged to.

I'm quite excited by this specimen.

I think I can be quite confident
what it is, which is always nice.

So, the shape of the bones
from our skull are really similar

to those of this dinosaur here,
which is called Lesothosaurus.

Lesothosaurus is an early,
and rare, dinosaur.

I think that we can say with a lot
of likelihood

that this is Lesothosaurus.

So, this dinosaur
is 200 million years old.

Now, if you think about it, that is

140 million years older than T-rex.

So, this was already
a fossil by the time T-rex lived.

And that's really, really exciting
for me

because it's the group of dinosaurs
that I work on and this is...

This is kind of where it
all started for those dinosaurs.

This is the back of the skull,
so this is, kind of, this part here.

And this is the eye socket,
so that bit there.

And then its snout probably
would have been over here.

Now, the whole animal
was about the size of a Labrador,

and it had a stiff tail held out
to the back, it walked on two legs

and it had short forelimbs that it
used to pull food to its mouth.

It would have eaten ferns and mosses

and there were no flowering plants
around at the time.

This dinosaur is really,
really quite rare.

There are maybe only
20 specimens of Lesothosaurus

anywhere in the world,
and there's fewer skulls than that.

So, any skull material of this
dinosaur is really, really important

to us, to help us to understand
the anatomy of these animals.

Even with ten million fossils,

for experts at the
Natural History Museum,

there's always something new
to learn.

People might think that we
already know everything there is

to know about dinosaurs.

But, actually, the truth is, we've
only just scratched the surface.

Every single fossil that we find

tells us new information about
dinosaurs.

And this one here has
the potential to really help us

understand about the early evolution

of some of the most exciting
and interesting dinosaurs.

This is a significant discovery,
and a significant find.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media