'If a film crew ventured back 65 million years,
'they would be among dinosaurs in their natural habitat.
'They could bring back unique images of a time
'when reptiles ruled on Earth.
'Images we thought we'd never see.
'This is what the makers
'of the TV series "Walking With Dinosaurs" wanted to achieve.
'A portrait of a lost world - as it really was.
(Roar)
Lovely, thank you. Except just one thing.
Sorry, but the chicks weren't ready.
If you could go back, we'll have you...
The aim is to bring dinosaurs alive.
To get a feeling of what it was like.
These creatures wandered the Earth and they were huge and fearsome,
nothing like we've got today. So it was a terribly exciting time.
'This series could only be made
'by bringing the dinosaurs back to life,
'together with the world they lived in.
'The problem being that dinosaurs today
'are very dead indeed.'
I don't know what it is, either.
I suppose it's a skull.
'They quit this Earth
'leaving only faint traces of their existence.
It's that bone that goes behind the ear,
it holds part of where the lower jaw articulates.
We know what it is!
'Fortunately, palaeontologists have spent 150 years
'trying to reveal the behaviour behind the bones.
'Peter Larson is one of them.
'He's digging up a T-Rex.'
When palaeontologists started working on these animals,
they were fitting the bones together and trying to classify them.
Today, we're looking more at behaviour,
to reconstruct what these animals were like when they were alive.
Each bone tells a story.
We look at how the bones fit together.
The animal's mechanics tell us about behaviour as well.
And looking at everything else found with this fossil,
we find other bones,
bones of other T-Rexes or their prey.
Everything gives us a little more indication of their behaviour.
'Palaeontology would guide every stage
'of the attempt to resurrect the dinosaurs.
'Starting with the first step - building the animals.
'It was not the first time people have tried
'to physically reconstruct dinosaurs,
'but there are lessons to be learned from those who tried before.
'This is Crystal Palace Park in London.
'The statues are a reminder of past mistakes.'
Last century, there was hardly anything to go on -
a few bones and teeth.
From that, they built complete animals.
So it's not surprising they made mistakes.
The head's the wrong shape, we know that now.
In particular, there's this great big horn,
very similar to a rhinoceros. It's completely wrong.
We now know that horn is a thumb spike
which was used to defend the animal.
0ver time, ideas change,
and more dinosaur skeletons were found, more complete,
and ideas about the shape of dinosaurs evolved.
'By the 1920s, dinosaurs looked a bit more like this.
'At the time, such pictures were an amazing achievement,
'but the animals are still very inaccurate.
'The Brontosaurus shouldn't bend its neck.
'The T-Rex should not stand up straight.
'Since then, a lot more skeletons have been discovered
'and as a result, museum pieces have become increasingly accurate.
'Making dinosaurs true to how they were
'meant using up-to-date skeletons.
'Sculptors then built the whole animal from the bones up.'
The basic shape of the dinosaurs reconstructed today
is pretty much correct.
Science has progressed enough
to get the basic shape as accurate as we hoped.
'Far more than the basic shape was needed.
'The creatures needed skin, colour, eyes... everything.
'Could a pile of bones reveal that?'
Bones give a starting point.
Take the skull of Iguanodon.
With this animal, the bones give you more clues
about the way you might flesh out this framework.
The jaw has this distinctive prong.
Markings on that show where muscles attach and how it works.
So you can flesh in the skull there.
The front end has this area with no teeth.
A rough surface with lots of openings for blood vessels.
This shows exactly where
there was a horny beak growing.
If you're lucky, you can find skin impressions.
This is Iguanodon.
Notice the scales, just like a lizard.
The skin itself was quite flexible.
'0ne thing, though, could only be guessed at.'
Colour is something we're very unlikely to find.
We don't know of any pigments
preserved in dinosaur skeletons.
It's reasonable to suspect that many dinosaurs were colourful
and used colour in aspects of their behaviour.
So there's no harm in introducing colour.
With information from other fleshy structures,
you can put together a picture
of the dinosaur as it might have appeared.
'0nce the animals were built,
'the next step was to find somewhere for them to live.'
(Squawks )
When we're digging dinosaur bones,
we're also interested in their habitat and environment,
so we collect other things as we're working.
0ne thing we find are these fossil leaves.
This one is still buried in the rock
but at the lab, we'll uncover it
and get a good identification of it.
Some of the fossil plants we find
are identifiable right away.
This sequoia cone, for instance,
you can tell what it is.
As well as sequoias, which are redwoods,
we find monkey puzzle trees here.
This tells us it was much warmer, it didn't freeze at night.
In winter, we get down to 50 below,
but it didn't do that 65 million years ago.
'So that's what was needed,
'places where dinosaurs would feel at home.
'These days, they're hard to find.'
It was a complete nightmare finding locations.
For one reason - grass.
Grass never appeared in dinosaur times, yet it's all over this world.
Even when we find wonderful trees, there's always grass amongst them.
When you want some clear area, there's grass.
'There are still places where the right habitats exist.
'In making the series, the film crew travelled far and wide
'to locations that reflect the world
'in the time of dinosaurs.
'The Triassic of 220 million years ago
'was discovered in eerie New Caledonia.
'A land of Jurassic giants was found
'in the redwood forests of California.
'And the lava fields of Chile
'were a match for the Cretaceous of 65 million years ago.'
We're filming a mother Tyrannosaurus feeding her young.
Tyrannosaurus was only around for the last two million years.
And to film it, we've come to this place in Chile,
and there's an ideal forest.
There's a low, scrubby southern beech -
that came along at the end of the time of dinosaurs.
Behind it is this monkey puzzle forest.
Monkey puzzles have been around since before the dinosaurs
so the combination is ideal.
It's on an old ash field,
and there's no grass here,
so it all fits together to be the right background.
- Can you reach over enough? - Yeah.
Now, the eyes, um...
'Accompanying the trips was an assortment of animatronics.
'This is a baby Tyrannosaurus puppet
'with remote control nostrils.'
Squeeze, then do the nostrils.
0K, in you come, Andy.
A bit reluctant. Come closer.
Sniff.
Back off a bit, now come in again.
'They were used for all the close-up shots.
'The larger head represents the mother.'
Down, down - push.
And out again.
Let's try that one more time. Cut a minute.
Be more positive, keep that lower jaw still, Joe.
And then try and be more positive.
Come in with a firm movement and shove.
- Ready? Everyone set? - Yeah.
- We turning? - Running.
In you come, Andy.
You have a look, sniff the air a bit
and then you look up
and you back off...
Good.
That's nice - and pull it out.
'The animatronics were only bit parts, not complete animals.
'Those had yet to come to life.
'That would be next.'
Will you please stand still!
We've got a huge task ahead.
These creatures haven't walked for 60 million years.
We have to bring them back
so everybody believes they are walking with the dinosaurs.
'The sculptures would take on new life inside the computer.
'They had to be scanned by a laser
'which probed every nook and cranny
'to transfer the physical models to virtual ones.'
'They would have to be taught to walk, run and swim.
'And some would even have to fly.
'In fact, a pterosaur was an unbelievable animal.
'How should it fly?
'How would a reptile with a 12-metre wingspan,
'even get off the ground?
'This was one of many questions palaeontologists had to answer.
How could an animal this size fly?
It looks so massive,
but this massive head here weighed very little indeed.
The whole animal only weighed a few tens of pounds.
0ne key to their success is the way the bones were engineered.
The skeleton is exceedingly lightly constructed.
The hollow bones are probably filled with air sacs
and engineered in such a way
that they would resist twisting and buffeting by the wind.
So the whole skeleton was exceedingly light,
but exceedingly strong.
This meant that they were incredible flyers.
The palaeontologists arrived en masse
and told us what they knew
about dinosaur movement, about bone lengths,
about limits of motion of the skeleton.
If you put the scapula onto the forearm and articulate it,
the lengths are almost equal, and it opens the door.
They can tell us,
this dinosaur did not move its neck higher than 20 degrees.
From there, it can come right round down here...
They can tell us,
this animal did not run,
because it would break its limbs.
They'll tend to move in a slightly ponderous way, not whizz off...
But it's all up to the animators
because there's a lot they can't tell.
You can't learn that by looking at bones.
I think you just solved the problem.
'And so all this expertise
'was slowly put into practice
'as the characters were animated, limb by limb.
'The pterosaur was soon flying,
'tentatively at first,
'but it would soon get the hang of it.
'0thers turned out to be more difficult.'
Animating Tyrannosaurus is tricky,
because he's basically a five-tonne bird, really.
I'm trying to get the weight into his feet,
squashing and stretching to make him look heavy.
This is tricky, with flippers.
Nothing today swims this way, so we have to devise a system.
0ne problem with the Steg, and most dinosaurs
is their long back legs.
We can't have the little front legs shuffling along,
so I'm working on that.
Diplodocus is really hard to animate because it's so big.
You can see, the tail is absolutely massive, and the neck is as well.
It's gonna be hard to get both things working together.
None of these creatures are alive today
and no creatures alive today
move in the same way the dinosaurs did.
That skeletal structure isn't around any more.
The first thing we're going to do
is look at real wild animals today.
How does their way of life affect the way they move?
How does their body affect their movement?
Then we'll look at the dinosaurs
and try and make the same guesses.
It's a sort of primitive form of motion capture, really.
'For the movement of Diplodocus,
'Mike Milne's team of animators looked at elephants.
'With them was palaeontologist and sauropod expert Kent Stevens.'
I'm surprised how little lateral movement there is,
I'd expected more.
The gait might be similar.
I have a problem with the fluidity of the movement.
Because it's smaller?
No, because this is a more intelligent creature.
A sauropod may be five times heavier,
but their brain is the size of my fist.
I don't see the neural processes operating
to do what we're seeing there.
So we can take the movement of the limbs
but not necessarily the speed and fluidity?
It's important to see how the weight is pulled back.
When she stops, she locks her knees
and the legs are very columnar,
and that weight distribution stuff I could imagine.
'Armed with this knowledge,
'the animators got the Diplodocus moving.
'0ne key thing in the finished animation
'is there are always three feet on the ground
'to distribute the giant's weight. 0thers were more stubborn.
'Getting the pterosaurs to fly had been relatively straightforward.
'Making them walk was a puzzle.'
This, surprisingly, is a pterosaur.
0n the ground, its wings have to bend round
so it can walk.
It's very odd, it doesn't match anything in nature today.
We parallel it as an old man on crutches.
- No. - No, sorry.
It does not look real.
That's nearer.
I don't think it works. It feels too pantomimey.
It doesn't feel like anything that would exist.
It's not in balance.
Twist, look like you're really struggling to...
Yeah, you got it.
- Yeah, that's it. - Excellent.
You got it.
- Yeah. - Right.
- That's good. - Yeah, that's better.
Well, he's finished, we're happy.
We tried the parallel walk, the hop, different types of moves,
but this alternate back leg, forward leg,
other back leg, other forward leg, worked really well.
Because his front legs are shorter,
I gave his shoulders loads of reach,
so he kind of swaggers forward like that.
The extra reach compensates for short front legs.
Here's Liopleurodon.
It's flying through the water, alternating flippers.
It's an efficient movement which saves energy
because it's so big.
As the back ones go down,
the front ones are pushed up and vice versa.
'0ne by one, the statues were coming to life.
'In the process, even the palaeontologists were learning.'
Working with the animators and designers,
I saw my skeletal reconstructions
changed into a dynamic animal, moving.
Doing that, I had to think seriously
about the dynamics of the joints, the way the bones moved.
That's the difference these animation programs provide for us
and that brings them more to life than I had appreciated.
The film-makers, in making computer models and physical models,
taught the palaeontologists some things -
what does and doesn't work.
I'm delighted information's flowing both ways.
When I say action, the sauropod comes in.
Keep walking.
All the way through.
'Up to now, the dinosaurs had not existed,
'at least not outside the computer.
'It had required some imagination to film them.'
Cut!
'With the dinosaurs in absentia,
'everything had to be done for them.
'All the footprints, dust clouds and splashes.
'Every contact the dinosaurs made with the world
'had to be simulated.
'Soon, they could walk in the footsteps made for them.
'In fact, that's what happened next.'
Here is a background plate we shot in Chile of the forest,
with some wonderful shafts of light.
Into this we add
Tyrannosaurus, who we've generated in a computer,
and this is him.
I'm going to overlay him
onto the Chile background
and this is him on his initial walk.
Not yet interacting,
not breaking the light and has no shadow.
That's part two.
It's not as easy as slapping the two together,
there's jiggery-pokery to do with the computer.
Welcome to stage two.
This is the dinosaur, his colour matched to the background.
A ground shadow is underneath his feet,
but the end effect is still not complete
and to do this, the final adjustments are to add
some breaking light as he walks past the light through the tree
and a disappearance behind the trees in the distance.
'So the animals were put back where they belonged.
'0ne by one they were released into worlds
'from 65 to 220 million years old.'
'It was all very well releasing the animals, but how would they survive?
'The giant sauropods
'were the biggest eating machines of all time.
'People have previously assumed that these vegetarians
'had such long necks to allow them to eat
'from the tops of trees.
'But all is not as it seems with the giant Diplodocus.
'As Kent Stevens discovered when he took a close look
'at the numerous bones that make up its neck.'
I built a computer model of Diplodocus
and put all the bones together in a neutral position.
Two surprises, one straight off the shoulders.
0ther surprise - this is as high as Diplodocus could raise its neck.
It's not designed for rearing up
in the familiar swan shapes.
This tells us Diplodocus was designed
to browse low to the ground,
sweeping back and forth
like a vacuum cleaner.
'You won't see our Diplodocus eating from the treetops.
'Having worked out their eating style,
'Kent went to give hands-on tuition
'to a juvenile Diplodocus that wasn't eating well.'
Bite and then pull that way,
because wear marks are on the outside of the teeth.
You get anything? Try again.
0K, that gets a good chunk.
That's pretty good. 0pen up.
That wear's on the outside, it's still a question,
How did it do it?
(Whirring)
(Beep )
Move forward, have his mouth really open.
0K, now pull up.
That works. Let go now.
Look how much it's eaten.
(Camera whirring)
Mouth over the horsetail and then rip up.
That's good. That's lovely.
'There is another way palaeontologists
'can get the lowdown on dinosaur diet.
'But you have to know what you're looking for.
'Palaeontologist Karen Chin knows what she's looking for.'
Some people think it's odd studying fossil dung,
but it actually provides a unique perspective
on the ancient world.
'In Montana, where Karen is searching for fossilised dung,
'a massive herd of dinosaurs roamed 76 million years ago.
'The ground is littered with their bones,
'and as it happens,
'their bodily waste has been preserved.'
Here's some coprolites, or fossil dung,
from a plant-eating dinosaur.
They don't look like much
but there's lots of chopped-up plant material in here
and there are very distinctive burrows
made by dung beetles burying dung for their young.
When I examine coprolites,
I take a thin section
to look at under a microscope.
I found that this black material is fragments of conifer wood.
These particular plant-eating dinosaurs,
probably duck-billed dinosaurs, fed on conifers.
That doesn't mean it was their diet,
only what they fed on at the time.
(Grunting bellow )
These specimens are interesting
because they give us a glimpse of dinosaur diets.
But what's more exciting is they also give us a glimpse
of the interactions of dinosaurs with other organisms.
'Although there is still dinosaur dung about,
'the series made its own.
'A recipe we're happy to reveal.'
Sawdust,
a touch of wallpaper paste,
water,
and a lot of elbow grease.
Dinosaur poo, big time.
Makes a perfect poo every time.
(Panicked squawking)
(Roaring)
(Angry chirping)
'To understand how the carnivores should feed
'required a different strategy. Their food did not grow on trees.
'So the question was, how did they hunt?
'You have to examine their shape, so say palaeontologists.'
Meat-eating dinosaurs lived a variety of lifestyles.
We can tell by their hands, feet and heads.
So a great variety of designs
and a great variety of styles of living and hunting.
'Some of those brought to life were the raptors,
'Cretaceous predators that came in various sizes,
'but with a basic shape that reveals how they hunted.'
These are brainy, agile predators with a wide gape,
but their teeth were nothing special.
What is striking about them are the long arms
with very sharp claws on the hands and feet.
So this was a special predatory design.
These raptors were swift runners,
cheetah-like speed brought them to their prey.
Long legs let them leap onto their back,
slashing with a claw on the foot and grasping with the hands,
penetrating the skin, biting, biting the back, working forward,
and eventually the animal was weak from blood loss,
and a final bite to the throat suffocating it.
Tyrannosaurus had very stout legs,
it had to support six tonnes of weight, after all.
But these are not athlete's legs, it was not a long-distance chaser.
The arms are puny, trifling, could barely scratch the chin.
It's hard to figure out what good they were at all.
The real weaponry was there, in the head.
All the killing action was concentrated here.
It came in close to its prey, opened its jaws and engulfed it.
These teeth could penetrate skin, strip muscle from bone.
They could actually crush bone.
This was a formidable predator.
(Huge roar)
'There is even proof of who they ate.
'At the University of Montana a piece of Triceratops hipbone
'bears witness to who fed on it.
'Palaeontologist Greg Erickson explains all.'
What intrigued us about this specimen
is it's riddled with bite marks, approximately 80 in total.
Here and here. Some along the vertebra column.
A really deep one.
And just based on the size of these,
we suspected that Tyrannosaurus Rex
had fed upon this poor Triceratops.
To test this, we used dental putty,
like your dentist uses to cast your teeth.
You push it down into the actual bite mark
we want to make a mould of.
This putty sets in five minutes,
so we'll have an answer as to whodunnit.
'This hipbone inspired a scene in the programme.
'First, a Triceratops was filmed being eaten.
'The animal doing the eating would be added later.'
Here it comes.
0K, get that out.
And voila, there it is.
0K, I think we've found our culprit.
As you can see, the mould we've just taken out
is a match for a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth.
The aspect ratio, now let's look end on,
the serration ridge on the back side
is also preserved on the specimen we pulled out.
Smoking-gun evidence that Tyrannosaurus fed on Triceratops.
'In fact, Greg Erickson has discovered even more
'to guide the feeding habits of the recreated dinosaurs.'
The specimen told us about the feeding behaviour of Tyrannosaurus.
These gouges show it employed puncture-and-pull biting behaviour.
The teeth plunged through flesh and bone
and pulled back using its five tonne body.
Using this, it removed the entire front of the Triceratops pelvis
and was consuming small pieces of bone.
T-Rex was basically the biggest carnivore around,
so it ate whatever it wanted.
We find some interesting things in T-Rex bones.
This is the brain case from a T-Rex found 25 miles north of here
with this hole in its head.
This is top of its skull, the neck muscles were attached here.
If we take a T-Rex tooth, it fits beautifully into that hole
and a portion of bone has spalled off here.
This hole and injury healed,
so this happened while this T-Rex was alive.
We found some interesting things
with a T-Rex found nearby we call Steven.
Steven's vertebrae were actually cut in half,
and the spine, the part that takes the T-bone steaks,
those were actually bitten away and gone,
and we believe this is good evidence
that T-Rex not only fought each other,
they killed and even ate each other.
(Roaring)
'The vegetarians would need to be able to protect themselves.
'Some, like the armoured dinosaurs, had obvious built-in defences.
'But other vegetarians had no natural protection.
'How are they going to look after themselves?
'The answer lies among the ripples of a fossilised beach in Colorado.
'The beach has turned on its side
'but footprints are still clearly visible.'
We see an Iguanodon walking on all fours,
the hind legs here and small handprints.
The animal was walking like a dog or a horse.
It's probably easier for it to do than me
because it was a lot bigger.
But we can know more about dinosaurs
besides how this one walked.
In fact, this whole slope is covered with tracks,
the whole ground was trampled.
Many of these tracks are going in the same direction.
It must have been a herd,
walking on this beach 100 million years ago.
'It wasn't just Iguanodon.
'In fact, there's evidence
'for many plant-eating dinosaurs forming herds.
'0ne famous vegetarian though
'had a completely different strategy.
'In the past, it's been assumed
'that Stegosaurus used its plates to cool itself down.
'The idea being it would pump blood up to the plates
'where the excess heat could be dissipated.
'This comes from looking closely at the plates.
'The grooves were once blood vessels,
'but some think they had another use.'
I came up with an alternative idea.
By increasing blood flow, the plates would blush,
as a display against, perhaps, an attacker.
Imagine an Allosaurus comes upon a Stegosaurus.
The Stegosaurus turns its body,
increases that blood flow,
suddenly the plates are standing out pink.
The Stegosaurus could turn and swing that tail.
It looks bigger and more vicious than the Allosaurus realises.
'0ne of the characters in the series is called Torosaurus.
'This is one of a number of dinosaurs
'who sport huge crests.
'They look like shields, so since the year dot,
'people have assumed that these were defensive structures.
'But you won't see our creatures using their crests
'to fend off attackers.
'Because, as Peter Dodson explains,
'that idea is just plain nonsense.'
The idea that these crests protected the animal
has a certain appeal,
but the design really doesn't hold up very well.
Look at these great holes.
What kind of protection would that be?
The holes are covered in skin, but still very thin.
(Bellowing)
I believe that males used these structures
to compete with each other for females.
The frill was a display structure, like the tail of a peacock.
It was probably brightly coloured.
When the dinosaur dipped its head,
the expanse of brightly coloured frill
was a thrilling sight for a female.
Males competed with each other for breeding rights,
so they joined their horns together and they fought,
they struggled.
The stronger bull exhausted the weaker one
and the victor had the breeding rights.
In the same way that deer and antelope,
the males, fight for breeding rights.
So this gives us a deep insight into the biology of horned dinosaurs.
T-Rexes mating.
We can look at crocodiles to get an idea of that.
They have to touch their cloaca,
the single opening they do all their business through.
It's located at the base of the tail,
so the male's tail would wrap under the females
and the female's tail turns to allow the male's penis to enter.
It was... It must have been quite a sight,
'cause these are pretty big animals.
Hopefully there weren't many injuries,
but rough sex would have broken bones.
He's putting a lot of weight onto her.
His legs have to be splayed apart,
to get into that position it's quite athletic.
Surprising they ever managed it.
0ne female we worked with, called Sue,
there's a portion of the tail
that looks like it was stepped on,
there's three fused vertebrae.
That easily could have happened during a passionate moment.
'Before long, the inevitable happened,
'the dinosaurs were starting to mate.
(Low roar)
(Howls)
'What happened next was well known.
'Eggs have been preserved for many different dinosaurs.
'Surprisingly, they're never much bigger than a football,
'even for dinosaurs that grew 40 metres long.
'What had to be worked out was how they laid them.
(Rumbling groan )
'Take Diplodocus. They were not supple animals
'and couldn't get low to the ground.
'How did they stop their eggs breaking?
'The series had to come up with a possible solution.
'In the studio, an egg-laying contraption was put to work.'
Push, push. There you go.
Go on, keep going.
No, fine.
Push, push!
This is turning out to be a difficult birth.
The egg's getting stuck. It's not ready yet.
This is an ovipositor, or egg tube.
Sauropods were large and they lay hard eggs,
so they had to have some way
of getting them down without them cracking.
So this is one solution, a muscular tube like a turtle has,
that allowed the egg to pass down, drop in,
then they could bury it.
It looks a bit obscene, but it's only a guess.
It's coming - ooh, and pull up.
It's a boy. (Laughs )
'In the water, something very different was going on.
'This astonishing Ichthyosaur fossil was found in Germany.
'It shows a baby halfway out of her mother's birth canal.
'This proves two things -
'Ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young
'and they were born tail-first.
'The birth was an episode that was recreated in detail.'
0K, standing by for birthing sequence.
(0n radio ) 0K, close the mouth.
0K, swim through, move the eye as it goes by.
Get the tail moving more freely there.
So, turn over...
and pull harder!
(0n radio ) 0K, cut.
'The dinosaurs had been brought back to life
'and spawned another generation.
'The ancient worlds that been filmed
'were soon repopulated with extinct animals
'of every description.
'With them had returned
'a world we thought we'd lost - forever.'
Hmm, who did I find it most difficult to work with?
Animators. Definitely animators.
You know, chase this dinosaur, chase that dinosaur.
You'd swear we couldn't act. It's so degrading.