All language subtitles for Dinosaur Apocalypse 01

66 million years ago,

Planet Earth was very different
from today.

Back then, one of our closest
ancestors might have looked

something like
this little furry creature.

RUMBLING GROWL

And dinosaurs ruled the land.

But what happened to them all?

66 million years ago,

an asteroid hit the Earth,

and scientists think
that it was this collision

that wiped out the dinosaurs.

But no-one has ever found
direct evidence of that.

In fact, no-one has ever found
the fossil of a dinosaur

that died within
a thousand years of the impact.

However, a remarkable dig site
promises to change that.

It's in the Hell Creek formation

in the American Midwest.

These sedimentery rocks are rich
in prehistoric remains...

ROARS
...from triceratops...

SQUAWKS
...to T-rex.

Now, in a patch of land

about the size of a football pitch

a long buried secret is coming to
light.

Because this place
may hold evidence...

...of one of the most dramatic events

in all the four-and-a-half-
billion-year history

of our planet.

Everything was fine on Tuesday
in the Crutaceous.

In the next second, the world
just wasn't the same.

Any time that an asteroid the size
of Mount Everest smashes into the
earth,

that's not gonna be a good day.

It's actually pretty remarkable that
anything survived.

For ten years,
a palaeontologist and his team

have been trying to find out
exactly what happened here.

You're at the edge
of your seat every moment,

trying to dig this stuff up.

It's like trying to defuse
a nuclear weapon

while you're in a rainstorm.

He's named the site Tanis,

and believes it could be
a mass graveyard

of creatures that were killed

in the catastrophic asteroid strike.

A site that could reveal not only
how the last dinosaurs lived,

but how they died.

And a minute-by-minute
picture of what happened

on the day the asteroid hit.

This landscape is full of fossils

dating from the Late Cretaceous,

the period which began
around 100 million years ago

and ended 66 million years ago,

when the dinosaurs vanished.

Palaeontologist Robert DePalma
wants to find out more.

I think anybody
who's ever liked dinosaurs

in the past, or still does,

has thought at one point
or another,

"Well, what happened to them?

"Why are they not here
any more?"

Judging from fossil evidence,

this is what Hell Creek looked
like in the Late Cretaceous.

There were low-lying,
marshy flood plains,

intercut by river channels
and covered with horsetails,

ferns and trees.

Back then, it was warm
and wet here all year round.

If we go back to about 66 million
years ago,

The earth in some ways , was very
similar to today

and in other ways, it was an alien
world.

The climate was very different.
The temperature was different.

There were no ice caps
at the poles.

Hell Creek is one of the most famous
and well studied areas

for digging up dinosaurs.

Hell Creek is really the only place
in the world, at least right now

where we have a really good record
of the last surviving dinosaurs.

Hell Creek records the very last
days of the dinosaurs and

it's the best information that we
have in the world

about that extinction event.

Tanis lies
in the north-eastern corner

of the Hell Creek formation.

66 million years ago,

instead of today's
dusty prairies,

there were sandy river banks.

Instead of rocky cliffs,
there were forests.

And instead
of the wildlife we know today...

DEEP RUMBLING CALLS

TRILLING

...well, scientists are hoping
to find out more

about what that was like.

COOING

A sandbank lying between
a river and a forest

would one day become
what Robert now calls Tanis.

It wasn't until Robert and his team
have been digging here in 2012,...

So somewhere from between there

and down here
is where that came from.

It's come from up above.
Hey, look at this.

What? Look.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

Here we've got
this freshwater environment

of the Hell Creek formation,

and these shocking
red, green colours

coming from the shells of ammonites,
a marine organism,

kind of like a coiled snail
in appearance.

So we've got this marine organism
that's been thrown up

into this freshwater environment,

and they do not belong here.

How they got here is a mystery.

But even more intriguing...

I'm just going to go ahead and
plane down some of this rock.

Sitting just above the ammonites

is something that
many dinosaur hunters

are desperate to find.

So this orange layer right here
is composed 100%

of impact-related debris
that is enriched in iridium.

Iridium is an element that's rare
in the Earth's crust,

but it's common in asteroids.

The layer it's in is called
the K-Pg boundary.

It's made up of dust and debris
from a huge asteroid impact.

It's been dated to 66 million years
ago, when dinosaurs disappeared.

Look at that. That's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what we want.

OK. So it's coming
from this area here.

So somewhere within that region is
where these pieces are coming from.

And it has been found all over the
world.

In this layer, the concentration of
iridium is 100 times higher

than the baseline for the
rest of the earth's crust.

Perhaps the simplest answer to that
is that it ceme from outer space.

We have this wonderful marker
that is the iridium layer,

that coincides with the extinction
event.

This is one of those few cases where
you can really tie a fuzzy thing,

and kinda bring it into focus
cos you have this moment in time

represented by that layer.

Having the KPG boundary here,
dates the site to around the time
dinosaurs went extinct.

No rattlesnakes.

Once you see that layer, it really
does stand out because

it is a thin layer of rock
that caps one world.

The world of dinosaurs.

And it ushers in another world.

A world where you never find a
single dinosaur bone or tooth or
footprint.

What makes the site even
more exciting

is the rock layer
right beneath the boundary

where Robert found the ammonites.

The rock here
is really not quite rocky,

as you would expect dinosaur bones
and things to be encased -

you expect really, really hard
rocks and jackhammers

and things like this,
but it's very, very crumbly

and it just falls apart
in your hands.

As well as being crumbly
throughout,

this layer of rock is also
around a metre thick,

which, along with
other unusual features, makes

Robert think that something very
strange must have happened here.

Maybe a flood or a mud flow,

burying anything within it
in an instant.

Oh, there's a beautiful...
Look at that one - beautiful.

This could mean that anything
he finds in this layer

would have been quickly entombed,

like the bodies in
the volcanic ash of Pompeii.

Generally speaking, the faster you
get buried after you die,

or even if the burial is what kills
the animal,

that's one of the best
scenarios for fossilisation.

Robert knows from the geology

that anything he finds
could be so well preserved

that it could reveal new evidence

that will bring this time period
to life

in a way
no-one has ever done before.

It's actually incredibly amazing
that we have any fossils at all,

Robert digs at Tanis each summer,

the only time the weather
allows him to do so.

99.9 percent of the animals that we
have don't get preserved as fossils.

You have scavengers, you have other
animals that tear away the skeleton

as it's being deposited.

We need certain conditions
for fossils to form.

So a lot of the fossil record
is really missing.

So for fossil hunters, this site is
particularly interesting.

Such rapidly deposited sediment
so close to the KPG boundary

could be evidence that what happened
to the last dinosaurs here,

was as swift as it was destructive.

Yet the story of that devastating
day begins long before.

Millions of kms away and
millions of years earlier.

Most scientists think it all
started in a ring of

dust, rocks and debris known
as The Asteroid Belt.

It's usually an uneventful place.

But sometimes a rock can get bumped
into a new orbit.

And diverted onto a collision
course with planet Earth.

Jupiter in particular, is a
big bully in our solar system.

It's the largest planet,
it has the most gravity.

And it doesn't just take one orbital
pass for an asteroid to be
influenced.

This is a slow build-up over
tens of millions of years.

Interacting with Jupiter
over and over and over.

Robert and his team dig at this site
in North Dakota each summer.

The only time the weather
allows them to do so.

Check out this over here.

In order ot undersatnd how the
impact affected life on earth,

you need to get a very clear picture
of what the world was like right
before.

That is a critical part
of the story.

Palaeontologists Dr David Burnham

and Loren Gurche have been
digging with Robert for years.

Oh, wow!

See...see the brown? Yep.

That might be a tubercle
right there.

And it seems today is their
lucky day.

Oh, my God! Look at that!
Look at that.

Look, the scales are preserved!

Holy crap! Like doing
a freaking dissection.

Oh, my God. Biology of Tanis.

Oh, the scale...

Look, look - the wrinkles
continue down that way.

Mine's all nice and wet so far.

The scales are getting smaller
in that direction.

How big are they there?

I got a...I got one with
the projection over here.

What? Oh!

Yeah. Oh.

Yeah, there's the protuberance
right there.

I've only seen that on one other
specimen, in life. Yep.

This is the closest thing
to getting to touch

a living, breathing dinosaur.

It is.

They found something extraordinary.
Dinosaur skin.

They've uncovered it right next
to another fossil.

This is obviously horn.

Which helps them piece together
the creature. A triceratops

It is so exceedingly rare -

a piece of triceratops skin
in the Hell Creek formation.

It may look like
an impression in the rock,

but this is skin
that has been fossilised

and, over millions of years,
has turned to stone.

Dinosaur skin is somewhat rare.
Triceratops skin is exceptionally
rare.

It's only known from a few examples.

One of the things other than the
shape of the scales that I notice

is the difference in colour.
It's darker brown and black.

Based on my experiernce with other
dinosaur skin fossils,

it tells me there's a high
probability that we have some

original components of the animal's
chemistry.

Actual chemical signatures
of the skin.

We could potentially find evidence
of pigmentation in that too.

That's a very, very exciting
thing for me.

Finding and studying

such well-preserved fossils
as this

helps palaeontologists build

a much more detailed picture
of how these creatures lived.

Combining this information

with insights from scientists
around the world

makes it possible to speculate

about what life
in the Late Cretaceous

might have been like.

We know from bones

that adult triceratops could
reach nine metres in length

and three metres in height.

RUMBLING

Marks on the fossil also show us

that this one was badly scarred.

RUMBLING GROWL

Triceratops were plant-eaters.

Other fossils tell us
that they had sharp beaks

and hundreds of teeth that enabled
them to shred tough plants

such as these cycads.

Almost all adult
triceratops fossils,

including Robert's,
have been found on their own.

So it's possible
that the adults were solitary,

like many modern-day male animals.

If you look at American bison
for example,

they herd through much of their
young adulthood,

but especially old males will
be by themselves.

So not all the triceratops we find
are these old bulls,

but there might be something
similar at play.

So they were
probably territorial,

chasing rivals away.

These were very large animals
that probably had large territorial
ranges.

THere actually is fossil
evidence of puncture wounds

in the frills of these dinosaurs.

They were probably using their horns
like modern caribou,

where they lock their horns together
to complete for mates.

And perhaps
marking their territories.

If you weigh more
than an African elephant,

there's not much
that can bother you...

SQUEAKING

...except perhaps a little mammal.

GROWLS

Robert found these jawbones

in the fossilised burrow at Tanis.

The shape of this tiny bone
and tooth

means it's most likely come
from what's known

as a pediomyid, an early mammal

and a type of marsupial.

The team also discovered
fossilised nuts and seeds

in the burrow.

So we have an idea about
what it might have eaten.

We think of mammals as
the new kids on the block.

But what we don't appreciate
is that mammals and dinosaurs,

their legacies go back to the same
time.

Some of them we think,
may have bene opportunistic.

There's even evidence of a small
mammal that has the remains of

a baby dinosaur within its belly.

Robert's finds are adding

to our knowledge
of the complex world

at the very end
of the Late Cretaceous.

And it's not just
the fossilised creatures.

The dig team has discovered
a number of footprints.

Looks like a good print.

The shape gives them an idea
of what might've made them.

If the team is right, they were made
by a winged creature

that might well have
liked a small mammal.

For lunch!

The footprints are long and narrow
with four toe prints.

Two are slightly longer
than the others.

That suggests they were
made by...

...a pterosaur.

Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs,
but flying reptiles

on a different branch
of the evolutionary tree.

There is nothing like a flying
reptile around today.

Pterosaurs got to enormous sizes.

There was a pterosaur that grew up
to around 40 feet.

That was an animal that had a
40 foot long wing-span.

SCREECHING

Male pterosaurs
usually had crests,

while females didn't.

So crests may have been
used in courtship displays.

And we have an indication of
where females laid their eggs,

because evidence suggests
one pterosaur laid hers

in the soft, sandy banks
of the river at Tanis.

The fossil record of pterosaur
eggs is really small.

So far we have a couple of eggs
from Northeastern China.

We also have a trove of eggs
from Western China.

The only other record of eggs
is a single egg from Argentina.

And this is a fossilised egg

of a pterosaur
that Robert found there.

The only one ever discovered
in North America.

If you look at it
with the naked eye,

all you see
is a jumble of lines.

But if you examine it
with the latest technology,

you can find out
a wealth of information,

from the chemistry of the bones

to the composition of the shell.

And that, in turn,
can tell us a lot about

how these incredible creatures
lived.

Robert has been given access

to the Diamond Light Source
synchrotron in Oxfordshire.

It's a very powerful research tool

that acts like a giant microscope.

By accelerating electrons
in this huge ring,

the synchrotron creates
beams of light

many times brighter than the sun.

Robert wants to turn that beam
onto the egg fossil

to discover more
about its chemical make-up.

We've brought this fossil to do a
post-morten examination.

When we see the animal inside this
egg, we're seeing a very folded
pattern of wings.

Almost like you got a bat or
something and folded it up

inside this small space.

The egg is actually preserved
in side view.

The tiny size of this animal is a
litle deceiving because

big things have small beginnings.

When you talk about pterosaurs,
these flying reptiles started off
the size of a hen'segg.

They got up to maybe 5 or 6 metres
of wing span.

Pterosaur eggs are so rare.

Next step, I will get this fossil
and mount if on the stage behind me.

That will make different chemicals
and elements in this animal

flouresce. We'll be able to see
the chemistry onscreen.

We're pretty much lined up
on the skeleton,

but we might have to move
the stage a little bit

to get to the right part. Sure.

They've scanned the egg
here and in America.

What we're looking at here
is th pterosaur embryo.

This isn't a photograph.
This is a chemical map.

Here you can see the blue for
the bones.

That's calcium.

You can see this nice yellow rim.
That's sulphur.

That's really exciting.

That shows us there's probably
still egg shell surrounding this
embryo.

Some birds today need a lot of help
after they hatch.

Their bones aren't fully developed.

This isn't the case for this
pterosaur.

The calcium in these bones show
us that they're hardening.

When they pterosaur hatches, maybe
it'll be ready to look after itself.

A lot of birds are dependent on the
parents bringing them food for a
long time.

There are some that simply
stand up after a few minutes

and start foraging for food
themself.

Victoria now has the results
of the latest scan.

Here we can look at a lot
more detail.

Here we're looking at
part of the eggshell.

EAch one of these little pixels
is 3 microns.

We're able to really pick out and
analyse the chemistry in more detail

When we look at this chemical
map, we've got the zinc in green,

we've got calcium here.

What we're seeing is we're seeing
folding occurring.

There's a regular surface.

We know that with a hard rigid
egg like a chicken egg,

you couldn't bend the chicken egg.
It just breaks.

But here we're seeing
folding occurring.

That tells us it must've
been a soft egg.

Something like an aligator
or a turtle egg.

That tells us more about how
pterosaurs laid their eggs and

possibly even where they
would've laid their eggs.

Creatures that lay soft eggs
tend to bury them

in order to protect them.

SQUAWKS

So female pterosaurs
probably looked for

places like Tanis
to lay their eggs...

...because the sandy soil here
is just soft enough

for the hatchling to dig itself out.

SNIFFING

Now the pterosaur
just has to make sure

that the hole...

...is perfect.

SQUAWKS

WARBLING

Success!

But it's not over yet.

Pterosaurs had two ovaries,

and they laid their eggs in pairs.

So clearly this method,
this way of reproducing

was incredibly successful.

What it kinda says is everything
is normal until the moment when

the impact happens and it
all goes horribly wrong.

Life at Tanis
seemed to be thriving.

But all that was about to change.

Deep in space the asteroid
was approaching.

Its journey would take it through
the orbit

of our neighbouring planet, Mars.

Had the two collided,

a catastrophe on Earth
would've been avoided.

But it was not to be...

...and Earth's fate was sealed.

Robert is searching for evidence
of how the creatures at Tanis died.

Each new find could provide
a valuable clue.

The team have found some more
well preserved footprints.

So these are animals that were
actually walking in the water.

Thes guys would've been on a mushy
river bank going to drink.

ANimals tend to congregate around
rivers.

This print is 30cm long.

I think this is from a duckbill
dinosaur.

They would've been very common
in the Crutaceous.

They ate the plants in the area.

They got very large.
30 feet long.

And there are more.

You see all the toes are
very well preserved.

You even see a nail print.

The little toenails dug into the
mud. I love this one.

But this is the team's prized
footprint.

When I see this track I'm struck by
the birdlike nature of it.

You've got these three toes
that are splayed out.

The key here is the tip has
claw drag marks.

That tells me this is from
a carnivorous dinosaur.

Hell Creek had very, very large
Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It would've had a foot roughly
this shape but the adults

would've been too large for this.

If this was a rex,
it was a juvenile.

Robert also unearthed this
at Tanis.

The crown of a tooth.

This is probbaly one of the coolest
discoveries from the site.

It's a tooth from a Tyrannosaurus
rex.

The very big size and the cerrations
tell you this is an adult.

This tooth was meant for crushing
bone and ripping through flesh.

There is no other dinosaur from Hell
Creek that has teeth like this.

Bitemarks found on bones, show that
they may have eaten each other.

A youngester would make
an easy catch.

But not this time.

Dinosaur tracks in the Hell Creek
formation are almost unheard of.

They're much rarer than any of the
bones of dinosaurs found there.

We've got so many types of
dinosaurs in so many size ranges,

and that indicates that we had
a thriving dinosaur ecology there.

When one dinosaur leaves a track,
the next one comes along and
obliterates that track.

Eventually you end up with
a ploughed field.

If we think about the extent of
the rock in which we're excavating,

our excavations are tiny samples.

It's entirely possible
there are more out there.

And that supports the idea...

...that dinosaurs and pterosaurs
were thriving at Hell Creek

shortly before the impact.

If they were thriving
the must've been reproducing.

No-one has ever found a T-Rex nest.

But fossils from similar dinosaurs
show that they may have laid

around 20 eggs in a circular nest.

It's possible that they partially
covered their eggs with vegetation

to keep them warm.

Looking after eggs must've been a
tricky business,

when you weigh 7 tonnes.

As the team's dig continues,

a vision of what happened at Tanis

is finally starting to come
together.

It seems the sandbank was full
of life.

T-rex, triceratops,

little mammals,

alongside the footprints of
other dinosaurs and pterosaurs,

all in a very small area.

BLOWS
You see the scales?

I do. Oh, my God.

That excites me just looking at it!

Then Robert finds
something truly remarkable.

See the cracks already forming?
Look at that.

So we're going to have to really
monitor that before we glue it.

Cos this is getting vulnerable
now.

An almost complete creature.

After 66 million years, finding
anyting intact is rare.

To get this block out,
we're freezing it.

Robert is about to attempt
something tricky.

To get the fossil out
in one piece, they're trying

to freeze it using liquid nitrogen

at almost 200 degrees below zero.

Loren, I'm worried
about brittleness here.

Get that hammer. Give this a couple
whacks with the hammer.

OK. Move over five centimetres.
Good.

It's cracked loose. Yep.
OK. It's loose.

So we have to get this out
in one piece.

One, two, three.

Yeehaw!

Total success. Total success.

This is a technique
used in archaeology

for digging up human remains.

We've got enough time
to work with the fossil

and not damage it.

And I couldn't be happier.

And the creature Robert found?

A turtle.

This turtle is what we know
as a baenid.

It is probably one of the coolest
fossils from Tanis.

Turtles were all over the place
in Hell Creek but

this is the only one that
we've got from Tanis so far.

This poor creature is almost
lying on its back.

You can see the high dome
of the shell.

Here's the edge of the shell.

In the rear portion, this
really cool saw-tooth edge.

That's really well known in the
baenids in Hell Creek.

This baenid turtle
looks very similar

to modern cooter turtles

and lived in the same sort
of freshwater environment.

The late Crutaceous period
is the heyday of turtles.

There were at least 16 species
that were known from Saskatchewan.

Compare that to today,
we only have three.

It was a much better
time to be a turtle.

Now we can see the belly
of this turtle.

The whole underside is really
well preserved.

We've got all the legs there and
even some organic staining where the
skin was.

The intresting thing, totally not
expected, is this red/brown object

sticking into the front of
the animal.

That is a piece of petrified wood.

It goes right into the flesh
of the turtle.

It goes itno the front of the
turtle, and exits right at the rear.

This entire animal is skewered
on this piece of wood.

A violent end to one of
the many creatures found

in the crumbly rock layer at Tanis.

When I look at the animals

and plants preserved
in the sediments of Tanis

and the footprints beneath it,

I see a picture of
a vibrant ecosystem,

many different dinosaurs,
and a thriving, thriving place.

Robert has found so many fossils,
it looks as if,

even at the very end
of the Late Cretaceous,

Tanis was bursting with life.

VARIOUS ANIMAL CALLS

Full of the giant reptiles
that had dominated the planet

for more than 150 million years.

BARKING

It's impossible to know
how much longer

their reign would've continued...

SQUAWKS

...because all this was about to end.

The asteroid hit...

...in what is now the Yucatan
peninsula in Mexico.

It's called the Chicxulub asteroid

after the town nearest
to the centre of its crater.

Any living thing within 1,500km
of the impact...

...was destroyed by the blast.

But what effect
did the impact have on Tanis,

nearly 3,000km away?

Robert is looking for clues
that might link Tanis

to the actual day the asteroid hit.

WQhen we date rocks from the
Crutaceous, we can say the end

Crutaceous was 66 million years ago
plus or minus a few tens of
thousands of years.

That is a huge achievement
of modern science.

But when it comes to the asteroid,
that asteroid hit the earth one day.

Really it hit the earth
at one instant.

So to date fossils in the rock and
to try to tie them to one instant

in geology time 66 million years
ago, is just outside of the scope

of the chemical methods that
we have to date rock.

Other evidece is needed to
make a plausable scenario,

if someone found a fossil and
wanted to argue that it came from

the end of the Crutaceous.

To tie the site to the day the
asteroid hit is a challenge.

Robert and his team are following
a compelling trail of clues.

The first of which lives in a mass
death assemblage.

We've got some wood,

and pressed up against this
and all intertangled,

we've got the carcasses of fish.

OK.

That's a beautifully preserved
tail,

so that fish is going to be
absolutely gorgeous.

Some of the evidence
he's found so far

has been hidden inside
the fish themselves.

In more ways than one, it literally
is an operation of a Cretaceous

fish, so we're performing surgery
on this thing.

Robert needs to open this
fish's skull.

And very carefully,
we want to separate this

from the rest of the fish.

OK.

Here we go.

Opening up the fish.

Got a nice ant
that made a home in there.

And beautiful, look at that.

OK, here we have
the gill bars of the fish.

Those are the bars that hold
the filaments of the gills.

And between the gill bars,

all of these clusters
of round objects.

Tiny balls of clay.
But what are they?

After a large asteroid impact,
a mix of vaporised and molten rock

is propelled into the stratosphere.
Some of it into space.

There, much of it cools,
solidifying into tiny glass droplets.

Some of it is high enough velocity
that it can leave the earth's
gravitational field.

It's almost certain that some of it
would've ended up on the Moon.

Which is kind of exciting
to think about.

But most of the droplets would've
been pulled back to earth by
gravity.

Over millions of years,

pressure and chemical reactions
in the ground

would turn most of them to clay.

So finding spherules
in the gills of a fish,

as Robert has done at Tanis,

suggests the fish sucked them in

while the spherules
were still falling.

So these creatures could have died

at the time of an asteroid impact.

Those have to have come
from the impact.

That shows that these
were fish that were alive

before the impact.

In the nextd 20 to 60 mins,
those fish swalled them and died.

That's an amazing discovery.

The fact that there's spherules
in the gills of the fish,

really brings them as close
you can possibly get to impact.

These ejector spherules could be
evidence of what Robert suspects.

That creatures here died on the day
of the asteroid strike.

Once Robert begins to look
for ejecta spherules,

he finds more and more,

and realises the thick,
crumbly layer of rock at Tanis

is full of them.

I mean, this stuff is go...
Oh, my God, look at that one.

These things are just gorgeous.

Ejecta spherules like this

give us a fingerprint
of where they came from.

If these spherules were connected

to the Chicxulub impact,

then the whole crumbly layer
could be full of evidence

of what happened on the day
the asteroid hit.

That's a good one.

Oh, is that a droplet right there?

To see if that's the case,

Robert needs to find a spherule
that hasn't turned to clay.

Oh, my God,
that's a beautiful droplet.

OK.

The small pieces of orange material

that Robert and Loren are digging up

may be able to help.

They're amber.

If there was anything flying
through the air at that time,

this is where it's going to get
caught.

The amber they're collecting
was once sticky resin

oozing out of
a Late Cretaceous tree trunk.

It's a way for the tree
to protect itself,

like a scab forming on a cut.

Anything covered by the resin
would be frozen

in an amber time capsule.

If they find a spherule
preserved in amber,

it could be analysed

to see if it comes from
the Chicxulub asteroid impact.

So during this batch,

we were incredibly lucky
that we came across

two completely unaltered spherules.

Could this spherule be the
evidence to link the site

directly with the impact?

There are several lines of evidence
that geologists would need

in order to defiitelyve say that
this ejecta and this are from the
same event.

The shape of the spherules,
the size of the spherules,

the colour ofthe spherules
can be similar for material

coming from different sources.

Only the geochemical signature
would tell you exactly

what the origin of the parent
material was.

The ability to use trace minerals
as a way to diagnose the

provence, the place from which the
particles originally came from.

It's a whole field of geology.

It's a pretty mature science.

If it's a match, Tanis could be
something incredibly rare.

If we can match spherules to the
imapct site geocehmically and in

terms of radiometric ages,
that's pretty accurate,

that's a smoking gun.

Does the site record the very last
day of the Cretaceous?

Full of fossilised creatures
that were alive at the moment

the asteroid hit?

The potential for the Tanis
site is huge.

Might Robert's team find
something extraordinary?

That's bone right next
to the skin.

A dinosaur that died as a direct
result of the asteroid impact...

The day the asteroid hit would
definitely be hell on earth.

No matter where it is,
you're in for a bunch of chaos.

# (epic music)