Original subtitles

STEPHEN FRY: 'Dinosaurs.

'Prehistoric monsters.

'Huge, terrifying.

'I've always loved them, always been fascinated by them.

'What's mind-boggling is that these extraordinary creatures

'roamed where we walk today.

'But what if I could go back in time,

'millions of years into the past,

'to the magical, dangerous world they lived in?

'I wonder... what would I make of them...

'face-to-face?'

Oh, you can just pull up here.

Thanks.

Imagine being able to explore their world and move with them.

CHUCKLES

It's just a dream, I suppose, but...

Well, I must get on with my life.

FAINT DINOSAUR ROAR

Mind you... you never know.

GROWLING

ROARS

GROWLING

SNARLS

PUFFS AIR

'For 180 million years, dinosaurs dominated our planet.

'In this series, I'm going to be transported back

'to the different eras of these awe-inspiring creatures...'

LOW GROWL

'..to immerse myself in their amazing, magical world.'

HISSY ROAR Hey! Don't do that!

'With the help of experts

'and the latest scientific discoveries from our time...'

ROAR

'..we'll put their power and strength to the test.

'Unravel their remarkable story from humble origins

'at the dawn of the dinosaurs

'to see how they evolved a dazzling and bizarre array of forms -

'to become giants...'

GROWLING, ROAR

'..and produce some of the scariest predators

'ever to have stalked the Earth.

'Until their ultimate demise.

'Wiped from the face of the planet

'in a single catastrophe of unimaginable power.

'Come with me, as I travel back in time

'to encounter the dinosaur.'

GROWLING

SOFT GROWL

'Reverse back time,

'and the Earth we know today looked very different indeed.

'The land squashed together into one giant mass called Pangea,

'which covered a third of the planet.

'And as the Earth churned, so did the conditions.

'New and distinct worlds formed,

'and each was home to its own class of unique characters.

'From the giants that emerged in the Jurassic period

'to the explosion of diversity in the Cretaceous.

'Tonight, we'll discover how the most fearsome predator of them all,

'the T-Rex, who ruled in the final days of the dinosaurs,

'finally met his match.'

I'm here in the epic final chapter of dinosaur history.

66 million years ago,

at the very end of the era known as the late Cretaceous.

This is the age of the final flourishing of the dinosaurs...

and their terrifying extinction.

Because up in the heavens, disaster is heading this way.

That bright star in the sky is in fact a giant asteroid.

And it's on a collision course with planet Earth.

'Over six miles wide and weighing a billion tonnes,

'it's destined to deliver the equivalent

'of ten billion atomic bombs.'

BOOM

'But down on Earth, the age of the dinosaurs marches on.'

Last time, we saw how the deadliest predator ever to stalk the world,

the T-Rex, ruthlessly hunted its prey.

GROWLING

Now we're going to investigate how the plant eaters fought back.

SOFT GROWL

ROARS

This is Triceratops,

named after the three distinctive horns that adorn his massive head.

Up close, he really is impressive.

Huge, and clearly very strong.

We're going to investigate just how effective these defences really are.

But the Triceratops is not the only solution that evolution has produced

to help the plant eaters thrive in the last days of the dinosaurs.

'The continents are getting ever closer to how we know them today.

'In what we call Mongolia,

'there roamed the heavily armoured Talarurus,

'with spikes and a club tail to ward off predators.

'In North America, the Parasaurolophus,

'adorned with a huge bony crest,

'thought to attract a mate or amplify its cries.

'And in India, Isisaurus - standing 15ft tall,

'able to feed high up in the trees like a giraffe.'

Let's just remind ourselves of the challenges

that the Triceratops faces if he's going to stay alive.

'His biggest threat, the king predator.

'T-Rex.'

T-REX ROARS

PUFFS AIR

Triceratops is smaller than T-Rex.

He's nose-to-tail about 9m and stands 3m high.

And when it comes to bulk, Triceratops is a real heavyweight,

weighing in at a hefty six tonnes.

A lot of that, of course,

can be put down to the massive and ornate skull.

As well as the three long horns,

he also has, sticking up from the back,

a huge bony fan.

That could be just to protect his neck,

but you'll notice it also has

very elaborate frilly edges to it, almost dainty.

What was this for?

For decoration or for defence?

SOFT GROWLING

'In search of answers,

'we're heading for London's Natural History Museum...

'and its world-famous dinosaur galleries.

'Because up near the cavernous ceiling

'is the fossilised skull of a Triceratops.

'Taking us up close and personal

'is the museum's principal researcher

'Doctor Susie Maidment.'

It is absolutely enormous.

One of the biggest skulls

of any terrestrial vertebrate that's ever lived.

It's about 1.5m long, and it would have formed

about one third of the body length of this entire animal.

'What's immediately clear

'is the inner strength of those iconic horns,

'with a bony core that grows directly from the skull itself.'

They're very broad at the base, and there's a lot of bone in them,

'relative to, say, the equivalent sorts of antlers or horns

that we see in modern animals.

'A rhino's horn, for example, may look terrifying,

'but instead of bone, it's made of keratin,

'like our fingernails.'

Structurally, they were very strong

and they could have been used for defence.

And possibly even attacking other Triceratopses.

Now, the frill is also made of bone,

and it certainly could have offered some protection

to the region in the back of the neck.

And also the shoulders.

So this also could have been a defensive structure,

and acted as... almost like armour, really.

'But Triceratops' headgear is not just about brute force.'

Some people think that these structures

are related to display in some way, they're showing off.

It's the animal maybe showing off to try and attract a mate.

Or to show that it's the fittest member of its species.

'Despite its ferocious appearance,

'the Triceratops was a strict vegetarian,

'and its mouth was finely engineered

'to deal with a diet of leaves and roots.

'Inside its jaws, a staggering 800 teeth -

'nearly three times as many as a great white shark.'

This is the upper jaw of a ceratopsid

called Chasmosaurus,

and it's quite closely related to Triceratops.

And these are individual tooth sockets.

Each individual tooth socket in these dinosaurs

had about three or four teeth in it.

Two of which were being used for chewing at any one time.

And this is called a dental battery.

'The vast quantity of teeth gave Triceratops

'the power to mash up its food and so helped digestion.

'Each battery had between 36 to 40 teeth columns

'in each side of the jaw.

'Three to five teeth made up each column.

'As soon as one tooth wore out,

'it was replenished, conveyor belt style,

'by the next one.'

This is a Triceratops tooth.

We've got the tooth growing up, and on the back of the tooth,

we have a very smooth surface where the opposing tooth

sheared down and acted like a pair of scissors, really,

to chop up vegetation.

And that's what made these dinosaurs so good at eating vegetation.

And we call them mega herbivores as a result.

CRUNCHING

The Triceratops' jaw is working pretty well there. Isn't it?

Plucking and mashing the vegetation before swallowing it down.

Compare that action to poor old Diplodocus...

..who comes from 90 million years earlier,

the Jurassic period.

And you can see the difference quite clearly.

It chomps with its front teeth,

which means it has to rely on a huge and very long digestive tract,

and plenty of time to break all that food down.

But Diplodocus does have one spectacular advantage.

GROWLS SOFTLY

Poor Triceratops can't copy that trick.

GROWLS, STEPHEN CHUCKLES

It's all rather frustrating.

TRICERATOPS GROWLS

Where is he off to now, I wonder?

GROWLS

Well, an unorthodox technique, but in the end,

as effective as Diplodocus' gymnastics, I suppose.

And it's also a frankly intimidating demonstration

of just how much power he packs into that heavy body.

But the question remains -

Is brute strength enough to defend him against the ultimate predator?

T-Rex.

I think we're about to find out.

SNORT, GROWL

We're in the late Cretaceous,

and dinosaurs like the Triceratops are thriving.

But all the while, up there, the fateful asteroid

that will bring about the end of the dinosaurs' domination of our planet

is hurtling towards Earth at 30,000mph.

But meanwhile, down here, the battle for survival continues apace.

We saw the raw power of the Triceratops

and examined the elaborate defences of that heavy skull.

But stalking it now... is the deadly T-Rex.

With a greater bite force than any animal that's ever lived.

How will this end?

'At London's Queen Mary University,

'palaeontologist Doctor David Hone is examining the evidence

'that a Triceratops could indeed survive a T-Rex attack.'

We've got used to modern ecosystems,

you have got lions and cheetah and leopard in Africa.

Tyrannosaurus was basically THE only big carnivore.

And so that is the only predator of Triceratops.

Once a Triceratops got to a size of perhaps half a tonne,

they're probably effectively immune to predators,

with one exception.

'To investigate what happened when these two monsters clashed,

'David has turned to the clues they left behind.'

We obviously need to look to fossils,

cos what we really want is direct evidence

of interactions in fossils.

And big animals like tyrannosaurs with big teeth

will bite bones and leave marks on them.

'In 2008, in Hell Creek, Montana, scientists found just that.

'The remains of a Triceratops horn with what appeared to be bite marks.

'The Montana team has created a digital scan of the horn,

'so David can analyse an exact 3D print of it.'

These holes are really quite a good fit for tyrannosaur teeth.

This is about as large as tyrannosaur teeth get.

And you can see that it actually

sits into that socket really quite neatly.

And this circular cross-section is a classic thing for these teeth,

they're very, very fat indeed.

So that's exactly what you'd expect.

So, one tooth has come in here, and one tooth has come in here.

So the upper and lower jaw are coming together,

then the power of that has caused this break

and removed the end piece of the horn.

GROWLING

'But although this confirms battles between T-Rex and Triceratops,

'it doesn't tell us if the Triceratops survived.'

The key thing that we're actually looking for is healing.

Evidence that the animal is alive when it was bitten, and survived.

And, of course, that tells you that that was an attack in life.

'Amazingly, on a skull fragment from the same Triceratops,

'another injury appears to have done just that.'

We've got these two big marks running side-by-side

across the surface of the bone,

and these are where the teeth

basically went into the bone and scraped.

You've got this very characteristic alteration of the bone texture,

showing that something basically disturbed it,

pulled it apart, which is a tooth going through it.

We've actually got an x-ray, and this thick white band

running through the middle, and that is dense bone -

this is where the bone is knitted back together, it's healed.

And famously, if you break your leg, you'll never break it there again.

Why? Because the bone is more solid at that point now.

Exactly the same healing process.

So again, that's really good evidence of healing.

Classic bite marks, classic healing.

This is a Triceratops who survived a T-Rex bite on the face.

So, could this Triceratops also have what it takes

to survive a T-Rex attack?

SOFT GROWL

GROWLING INCREASES

T-REX SNARLS

TRICERATOPS GROWLS

ROARS LOUDLY

T-REX SNARLS

TRICERATOPS GRUNTS

T-REX ROARS

GROWLS

ROARS LOUDLY

SNORTS

ROARS

That was absolutely terrifying!

Two of the most awe-inspiring beasts of the dinosaur world

in an epic clash.

But it seems incredible that a plant eater

could take on and defeat the king of the dinosaurs.

So, does Triceratops have some concealed defences?

We might be about to find out.

'Skewering a T-Rex is one thing...'

ROARS

'..but can it survive a head-on charge

'from another six-tonne monster?'

ROARS

ROARS LOUDLY

GROWLING

SNARLS SOFTLY

'Dinosaurshere in the late Cretaceous period

'are totally oblivious to that asteroid,

'which is getting ever closer.'

We are now unfortunately only minutes away

from a devastating impact.

ROARS

ROARING, GROWLING

Try telling that to these two aggressive Triceratops.

ROARS

GROWLING

I'm not quite sure what's going on there,

it could be some form of alpha male face-off.

ROARING

But given that our hero has just had a fight with the T-Rex...

GROWLS

T-REX ROARS

..I don't fancy his chances much.

'To help me decipher this dinosaur body language

'is the Natural History Museum's Doctor Susie Maidment,

'released from the galleries and storerooms

'to come face-to-face with the real thing.'

Susie, what's happening here?

Well, it looks a bit like they're lining up for a fight, doesn't it?

In living animals, deer, for example,

sometimes do fight with each other for either territory or for mates,

or something like that.

You have to assume the horns could have a double purpose.

Both for defence, but also for display and courtship rituals,

and fighting with other males. So perhaps we're seeing

a similar sort of behaviour in our Triceratops.

Rutting, think it's called. Yeah. Rutting, yeah.

ROARS

Triceratops specifically,

there's actually quite a lot of injuries

that they have on the sides of the frills.

They're probably horn injuries from other Triceratops,

so there is some evidence that these animals probably did

engage in intraspecific competition -

that is, fighting with each other.

ROARS

Oh, looks as if things are kicking off now.

ROARS

GROWLING

GROWLS GRUFFLY

Oof! Well, we have a winner, Susie. Yeah.

The first thing that strikes me is just the immense forces.

How can their skulls, you know, take such pressure?

Yeah, it's pretty amazing, isn't it?

Triceratops has this, sort of, weird structure in the top of its skull,

in the roof of its skull, which is a sinus.

A hole, effectively, in the top of the skull roof.

We don't really know what it was for,

but one theory is that maybe it actually absorbed

some of this pressure when they were head-butting each other.

'To understand how those air pockets might have worked,

'let's take a forensic look inside those huge heads.

'The most vulnerable part of the head is the brain -

'direct impact here would be catastrophic.

'This is where the sinus may have helped.

'It stretched beneath the forehead and into the base of each horn.

'It's thought these were filled with air

'so could act as shock absorbers.

'As the skulls collide, the outside bone may flex inwards.

'The air in the sinuses compacts

'and dissipates the huge force harmlessly...

'..leaving the precious brain unharmed.'

ROARS

And is there a technique

when your enemy is exactly the same as you are?

They actually twisted rather than head-butted and forced each other.

So they're actually twisting their bodies,

a bit like bovids and cows, and things like do today.

So like bulls facing off each other?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And presumably, incredibly strong necks.

These heads are enormous. They're absolutely vast.

They're about half the length of the animal.

GROWLING

They have this really interesting structure

in their necks to support this massive head.

The first few of their neck vertebrae

have actually all fused together into a solid block.

And maybe this helped to support the head,

but maybe also helped with these twisting forces, too.

'Inside the skull,

'we can see exactly how those three fused vertebrae work,

'forming a strong enough bond to support the massive skull

'as it swivels in multiple directions.

'To fend off an attack, jab its vicious horns

'or wrestle with a rival.'

ROARS

'We've focused a lot on Triceratops defences so far.

'But what about the other plant eaters elsewhere in the world?

'How did they protect themselves from the likes of T-Rex?

'A dinosaur best known for these defences

'was the heavily armoured Stegosaurus.

'But it disappeared from the Earth around 18 million years

'before the time of Triceratops.

'It's an ancient mystery

'that Doctor Susie Maidment has been trying to solve.'

This is Sophie the Stegosaurus.

And it's a really, really important and significant specimen

for our understanding of this whole group of dinosaurs.

We have these two rows of alternating plates

that stick out very slightly from the midline.

And then at the end of the tail, we have these four big spikes.

And they would have been quite a fearsome weapon,

the stegosaur would have been able to swing its tail

and actually impact bone with its spikes.

'So why did such a heavily defended beast disappear

'so early in dinosaur history?'

'An incredible new discovery could supply the answer.

'A previously unknown dinosaur may have outcompeted the stegosaurus

'with an even more effective suit of armour.'

It's a really, really exciting specimen,

but this is all that we have of it.

And it's very, very unusual.

We've got this T-shaped rod,

which is really characteristic of the ribs of armoured dinosaurs.

But then it's got these spikes that are rounded and quite short.

And they're extending from the top surface of this rib.

This is totally unlike any other dinosaur

and in fact, in any other animal, living or dead.

'Spikes are usually embedded in the skin and muscle,

'but this animal has its spikes growing directly from the bone.'

I was a little unsure about whether it was real

and what the specimen might be.

So we decided to CT scan it.

What it allows us to do is to see the internal structure.

And what we can see from that was that the actual bone cortex,

so the top surface of the bone,

extends from the spike right down into the rib.

So we know that these spikes and this rib

are part of the same structure.

It confirmed that that morphology was real.

And I was really, really delighted,

because it showed that the specimen was as strange

as we thought it might be.

It's really, really exciting when you find something

completely different, that nobody else has ever seen

or ever understood in the history of humankind.

'Microscopic analysis also revealed what kind of dinosaur this was.'

It has a bone tissue

that's entirely unique to ankylosaurs.

So we realised that we had an ankylosaur on our hands.

'These plant eaters were covered in bony armour plates,

'and many also had a vicious club on the end of their tails.

'And this new species was named Spicomellus.'

This obviously had spikes sticking out from its ribs,

Spicomellus refers to a spiky collar in Latin,

because it's this collar of spikes.

'And Spicomellus could even solve the mystery

'of the disappearance of the stegosaurs.

'It was found in Morocco in rocks,

'ten million years older than any other ankylosaur.

'And this earlier date meant that

'ankylosaurs lived at the same time as the stegosaurs.'

Stegosaurs were most diverse during the upper Jurassic.

After which, they seem to have declined in diversity

and eventually gone extinct.

Now, in contrast, the ankylosaurs were really, really rare,

so animals like Spicomellus are really poorly known

and very fragmentary into the late Jurassic.

And then they really take off in diversity.

This suggests that maybe the ankylosaurs

outcompeted the stegosaur.

'So, these vicious ribbed spikes

'may have solved a scientific mystery.

'They must also count among the most remarkable of all dinosaur defences.

'Ankylosaurs were so successful,

'they lived till these last days of the dinosaurs.'

GROWLING, PUFFS AIR

'Soon to be brought to a shattering end by that deadly asteroid

'now hurtling through space.'

Over the span of dinosaur history, the plant eaters developed

different ways of defending themselves

against the predators of their age.

And now, when we have the deadliest predator of them all,

the T-Rex, it makes sense to see the rise of one of the few animals

that could take it on - the awesome Triceratops.

But for me, there's one remaining mystery about that ornate skull,

and that's the huge fan of bone at the back known as its frill.

It doesn't seem vital for defence against an enemy like a T-Rex

or against a member of its own species, another Triceratops.

So what's it really for?

'Doctor Andy Knapp is finding clues

'to the true purpose of the Triceratops' frill

'among ancient fossils of their relatives.'

Triceratops are part of a group of dinosaurs called ceratopsians.

When more ceratopsians were discovered, we find that,

even though they have frills, their frills are much thinner,

and they have quite large holes in them,

which wouldn't have been much good for defence at all.

And it's quite mysterious.

There's not really anything alive today that has

this kind of structure on its head.

'A clue to the frills' function came from studying

'the fossils of a relative of Triceratops called Protoceratops.

'This dinosaur was found in the 1920s in Mongolia.

'It also had a large frill, but unlike the Triceratops,

'it didn't have well-developed horns.

'The breakthrough came when Andy compared a series

'of Protoceratops fossils of different ages.'

We 3D-scanned a whole load of Protoceratops specimens,

ranging from very small individuals up to fully grown adults,

which are considerably larger.

'The scans revealed the frill didn't really get going

'until these dinosaurs approached adulthood.

'And this suggested it wasn't for defence, but to attract a mate.'

Juveniles don't have frills, because they don't need them,

they're not mating.

It's when they become adults, and they start producing offspring,

that's when the frill might become useful for fending off rivals

or attracting mates.

Potentially, this could be why the frill evolved.

It kind of allows potential mates to see how strong and how healthy,

and how well adapted to their environment possible mates are.

GROWLS SOFTLY

Whoa!

Oh, wow! The frill has turned red. What can that mean?

That's amazing, isn't it?

Perhaps it's trying to show off to a female.

Do we know that they could change colour like that?

Well, we don't know for sure, but there is a theory that

Triceratops could have pumped blood into its frill

and actually flushed it red.

So it could be a male saying to a female, "Look at me.

"I've got a big frill, and I can change colour.

"Aren't I great?" Well, maybe, and actually...

over there. Oh, yes.

Do you think that one might be a female?

CHATTERS

But if she is a female, she's also got a fan,

so is the suspicion that both sexes

would have had exactly the same equipment?

Yeah, well, we're actually not able to tell in the fossil records

which of our fossils are male and which are female.

So it's really difficult to know

whether they had exactly the same frills and horns,

or whether there were subtle differences between them,

because we just don't have enough fossils to tell that.

TRICERATOPS SNORT

How good a courtship device do you think such a thing as a fan is?

Well, I mean, look at this frill. It's enormous, it's very visual.

So it can be seen from a long way away.

Doesn't really have any obvious function.

The most obvious thing about it is that eye-catching ability.

So I think it's a very good display structure.

We think of red as being a kind of mixture,

it can be attractive, but it's also a, "go away". Isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe he's just embarrassed.

LAUGHTER Maybe it's slightly ashamed.

Just blushing.

Seems unlikely, it's too big to be ashamed.

ROARS

'Some individuals may be falling by the wayside,

'but 66 million years ago,

'the dinosaurs as a whole are thriving -

'able to evolve and adapt to the changing environment.

'But terror in the sky is edging ever closer.

'The asteroid is now just a few minutes from impact.

'With the vast global damage it would inflict,

'nothing is going to save the dinosaurs this time.'

RUMBLING

After 118 million years of evolution

and dominating our planet for most of that time,

the dinosaurs are having a final flourishing.

But catastrophe is about to strike.

And it comes... from above.

'66 million years ago...' BOOM

'..a massive asteroid, six miles across,

'slammed into planet Earth.'

ROAR ECHOES AND FADES

'Scientists are still investigating its devastating impact.

'Natasha Almeida looks after an extraordinary collection

'of over 2,000 alien specimens -

'known as meteorites.'

Meteorites are extra terrestrial rocks.

They're pieces of asteroids or other planets

that travel through Earth's atmosphere, land on the surface

and then are collected to be studied in collections such as this one.

Each one can tell us a story

and what kind of science we can do with them.

'By looking for certain minerals in these rocks,

'we can learn vital clues about their origins.'

These are small fragments of minerals

that have come from the very beginning of the solar system.

'It was one of these distinctive alien minerals

'that first led scientists to suspect an asteroid impact

'may have wiped out the dinosaurs.'

BOOM

They found that there was this layer of iridium,

and it was associated with the loss of fossils.

We don't see much iridium in most of our rocks.

So if you have iridium found in a layer,

then you know it must have been an extra terrestrial source.

'The next challenge was to find the impact site, or crater,

'where the potential meteor hit.'

Some people started suggesting in the '70s and '80s

that there was one in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

And since then, it's been recognised -

about 180km wide impact crater named Chicxulub.

Finding a very large impact crater that was the right kind of age

that contained the right kind of rocks,

that was the real clue that

it was something like an extra terrestrial impact.

'And this impact triggered a chain of catastrophic events...

BOOMING

'..that led ultimately to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.'

Dinosaurs living in north South America

and south North America would have felt searing heat -

and a lot of the animals that were in that radius

would simply have been vaporised on that day.

A little bit further away, as things get cooler,

it just sets things on fire.

And as a result, we end up with these massive global wildfires,

we end up with tsunamis washing over the surfaces of the continent,

probably some seismic activity close to the site of the impact, too.

And then that's... In addition to that,

the gases that are released by the explosion of the impacter.

These gases include things like sulphur dioxide,

which, when it goes into the atmosphere,

combines with water to form acid rain, sulphuric acid.

This then rains back down, kills plant life.

And in addition to that,

all of this burning that's going on creates vast amounts of soot.

And this soot also travels all around the world,

creating a blanket that shuts out sunlight,

slowing down plant growth

and removing the base of the food chain.

And it's killing the base of the food chain

that then kills everything else.

THUNDER, LIGHTNING CRACKS

RUMBLING

FIRE CRACKLES

CRACKLING

RUMBLING

This is the aftermath of the asteroid slamming into the planet.

The air is thick with smoke, dust.

And the impact has triggered earthquakes and volcanoes,

as you can see on the horizon.

And it's a scene of complete devastation for our dinosaurs here.

Susie, a total catastrophe, a cataclysm.

Do we know if anything survived?

Something survived, because we're all standing here today.

So, the mammals made it through the extinction event.

Of course, the birds, which are the descendants of the dinosaurs.

And other animals, too. Things like the relatives of today's crocodiles.

So some animals did, but really interestingly,

only those that were smaller than about 25kg in size.

So everything bigger than that went extinct.

Is that because they could hide underground or something?

Maybe they could borrow, and maybe they could hibernate,

so maybe they were protected from the environment little bit.

Absolutely.And so these tiny little mammals,

from which we're descended...

Yes. How extraordinary!

So I suppose the first to go were the really big ones,

like the Triceratops, the ones we've been looking at. Absolutely.

They're plant eaters. And one of the first things that happened

was the Earth would have been encircled in ash,

like a nuclear winter, so it would have been really dark

and the plants would have died quite quickly.

So then, of course,

anything that needs the plants to live would have died first.

Now, the meat eaters probably hung on a bit longer

because of course... Because they had... Feast!

They had plenty, they had a feast. A glut of dead bodies.

So animals like our T-Rex here

would have survived a little bit longer.

Feasting on dead bodies, until they rotted so badly

that even they probably couldn't manage them.

What about the pterosaurs and the Pterodactyls, those sort of things?

Yeah, they went extinct.

And we don't really know why they did, and the birds survived.

But I guess there's a possibility that the birds were able to fly away

and find where conditions were slightly better

and were able to survive a bit more.

It's a bit difficult to know.

And I suppose the other area where there's survival would be the ocean.

Absolutely, lots of fish groups and sharks survived.

Some things didn't, though. So, marine reptiles didn't survive.

And there's lots of invertebrate animals, so small shelly things.

Things like the coiled ammonite

didn't make it through the mass extinction as well.

Anybody who's ever collected fossils,

they'd be the first they'd find, they're the cheapest to buy.

They went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs as well.

It's interesting, because I've always thought

it was a complete extinction event - quite wrongly.

And I didn't realise there is an unbroken chain from this

to us and the world as we know it. Yeah, absolutely.

There've actually been five really massive extinctions

through the history of life.

This one wasn't even the biggest.

But every time, something survived, a few things survived,

and life took the opportunity to radiate afterwards.

So the reason that the mammals are very prevalent today

is BECAUSE of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

And maybe, had the dinosaurs not gone extinct,

we wouldn't be here talking to each other.

Well, we can't leave it here. It's just too sad.

'Over the last four nights,

'we've travelled 180 million years through time

'to reveal a remarkable story.'

SCREECHES

'From the dinosaurs' dramatic rise to dominance

'amid the mass extinctions of the Triassic period...

'..their growth into monsters in the Jurassic...'

ROARS

'..their blossoming in the Cretaceous,

'in a surge of diversity...'

GROWLING

'..before the emergence of the ultimate warriors

'in the final chapter of their astonishing history.'

GROWLING, ROARS

Ah. That's more like it.

T-REX ROARS

The dinosaurs may be extinct, but in many ways,

they're still very much alive in our world now.

Not just in our collective imaginations,

where they inhabit our dreams and our movie screens,

but also in their descendants, the birds, which dominate our skies,

and in the fossilised remains,

which constantly emerge from rocks around the world.

And, like pieces of an ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle,

build greater insights into their lives.

And in that sense,

perhaps we are not at the end of the dinosaurs' story,

but still just at the very beginning.

T-REX ROARS

GROWLING

ROAR