All language subtitles for IMAX Dinosaurs Alive 2007

80 millions years ago,
two dinosaurs,

a crested Protoceratops and
sharp-clawed Velociraptor,

fought to the death.

Somehow, as they died in
the sands of the Gobi desert,

their battle was
frozen in time.

The Velociraptor
flat on its back,

its clawed arm caught in the
jaws of the Protoceratops.

An extraordinary fossil.

A mysterious glimpse of life and
death in the age of dinosaurs.

For more than
150 million years,

dinosaurs roamed every
corner of the planet.

Only a very few left
evidence of their existence,

their fossilized bones.

And those bones never
sees to fascinate us.

Dinosaurs came in
amazing shapes and sizes.

Some were the largest animals
ever to walk the Earth.

Paleontologists, the scientists,
who study prehistoric life,

are discovering more dinosaurs
now, than ever before.

And this fossil evidence is
allowing them to reconstruct

not only their
strange skeletons,

but also their lives.

An example is this gigantic
long-necked plant-eater,

known as Seismosaurus.

Found in New Mexico,

it lived during
the Jurassic Period,

150 millions years ago,

when many dinosaurs grew
to unprecedented size.

Seismosaurus means
"earth-shaking lizard",

and there's no doubt,

that their footsteps echoed
across the Jurassic landscape.

Measuring 110 feet
from nose to tail,

it is one of the longest
dinosaurs ever discovered.

Strangely, when
it was excavated,

some 240 smooth,
round stones were found

in and around its
huge stomach cavity.

Some scientists believe,

Seismosaurus swallowed
stones to help its digestion.

Others say, that
finding the stones

was a coincidence, that they
were part of the riverbed,

where Seismosaurus
was found.

Seismosaurus weighed
over 30 tons,

as much as 8 elephants.

It must have consumed
hundreds of pounds

of vegetation every day.

Sometimes scientists can
even learn, what dinosaurs ate.

From clues they left behind
in their fossilized dung.

Dinosaurs were first discovered
in Europe and America.

But in the 20th century,
scientific explorers struck out

for the most remote
corners of the Earth.

And a full extend in the dinosaur
kingdom began to be revealed.

The Gobi desert spans

a half-million square
miles of Mongolia and China.

The ancient land
of Genghis Khan.

Beneath sands, that camel
caravans traversed for centuries,

lay a vast treasure
trove of fossils.

Undisturbed for more
than 70 million years,

that would forever change
our view of dinosaur life.

In 1920s, a
team of scientists

from the American Museum
of Natural History

set out to explore
the little-known Gobi.

Their leader was
Roy Chapman Andrews.

Andrews and his team traveled
in a fleet of automobiles.

It was one of the
first major expeditions

used motorized
transport in Central Asia.

To keep his
expeditions supplied,

when the nearest gas station
was 1000 miles away,

he came up with a novel plan.

Sending out camel
caravans in advance,

loaded with food and fuel.

And the camels provided an
unexpected service to the expedition.

Hair, plucked from
their shedding winter coats

was ideal for
packing fragile fossils.

Mongolia was
a dangerous place,

full of roving bandits.

But Andrews thought to be
the inspiration for Indiana Jones,

reveled in the
adventure of it all.

Never again will i have such
a feeling as Mongolia gave me.

All this thrilled
me to the core.

Somewhere in the depths
of that vast silent desert

lay those records of the past,
that i had come to seek.

Andrews fended off the bandits,

but he and his team could not
avoid the violent sandstorms,

that often sweep
across the Gobi.

To their amazement,

they found that each new storm
uncovered a wealth of bones.

Dinosaurs bones
never before seen,

and perfectly preserved
in the desert sands.

Mark Norell and
Mike Novacek

of the American
Museum of Natural History,

following in Andrews' footsteps,

have been leading
expeditions to the Gobi

every year since 1990.

Fascinated by dinosaurs
in their youth,

Mike and Mark have become
renowned paleontologists.

They have dug dinosaurs
all over the world,

but they have made their
most spectacular finds here,

in the Gobi Desert.

Dr. Julia Clark has arrived in
Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar,

with graduate students Alan
Turner and Amy Balanoff

to prepare to this
year's expedition.

They are part of a team,

that will join Mike and
Mark in the desert.

This will be my sixth
summer in the Gobi.

Mongolia has proven
so rich in fossils,

i know, that each year,

there will be great
new finds to be made.

There are few paved
roads outside Ulaanbaatar.

The team's destination
in the western Gobi

is a minimum of
three days' driving.

A "Mad Max" journey
over hot, dusty plains

and through mountain passes.

In 1921, after months
of overland travel,

Roy Chapman Andrews'
motor-caravan came across

a strange and beautiful place

of eroded canyons
and sandstone towers.

The late-afternoon sun seemed
to set the rocks on fire.

Andrews named it
the Flaming Cliffs.

Here they would come upon
one of the greatest repositories

of dinosaur remains
ever found.

More than 80 years later,

the Flaming Cliffs are still
a fabled and productive destination

for dinosaur hunters.

To find dinosaurs,

paleontologists must first
look in the right places.

They know, that fossils are
preserved in certain rock deposits.

The only tool, they need
at first, is keen eyesight.

Tiny white bone fragments
on the surface hint,

at what can be an entire
dinosaur buried below.

There's alot of bones in here.

Always a good place.

Hey, come check this out.
-Oh, what? - An egg.

With decades of experience,

Mike and Mark readily spot
fossils and identify them.

For grad students Alan and Amy,

time in the field
is the best way,

to develop their own skills.

This is my first time going to the
Gobi with Mark and everyone.

I'm really excited and
happy to be a part of a tradition,

that goes back to
Roy Chapman Andrews.

The Gobi expeditions
are a collaboration

with the Mongolian
Acadamy of Sciences.

This year, Mongolian grad student
Boldra Mingin joins the team.

My father is a paleontologist.

And when he first showed me
a giant skeleton found in Mongolia,

i couldn't believe,
such animals really lived.

I have loved finding
fossils ever since.

Today, after only a
few hours of searching,

the team uncovers
a fossilized skull.

Julia is quick to recognize it as
that of a large, armored dinosaur.

It's called the Pinacosaurus,

it was sort of a
heavy tank of its day.

With experience, we can visualize,

what fossils like this,
would have looked like in live.

Pinacosaurus and its relatives,
like this Tarchia,

were built for defence.

Their backs bristled with rows
of hard, bony plates and spikes.

Even their eyelids were armored.

And their tails ended
in a massive bony club.

One of Tarchia's few enemies
was the ferocious Tarbosaurus,

whose bones have also
been found in the Gobi.

Tarbosaurus was a close
relative of Tyrannosaurus Rex,

and it was a top predator.

It was 30 feet long
and weighet five tons.

It had a super-sized bite

with razor-sharp teeth
nearly six inches long.

Scientists have
debated for many years,

how fast or slow these
big predators were.

This scale model of a
T-Rex skeleton reveals,

how a massive two-legged,

or bipedal dinosaur
might have moved.

As they walked, they shifted their
entire weight from leg to leg,

as humans do.

Their large tales
helped to balance them.

Their legs were
directly beneath their hips,

allowing them to carry
more weight and move faster.

Dinosaurs like T-Rex could have
reached speeds up to 25 mph.

Faster than an average
human could run.

Tarbosaurus was at the top of
the food chain in the area of Asia,

that is now the Gobi Desert.

But Tarchia was no wimp,

and could use its tale club
to cripple or kill an attacker.

In the 1920s,
the Andrews' expeditions

found a number
of new dinosaurs.

Their most important discovery
wasn't a ferocious predator.

It was something rather small.

But one of the great
dinosaur finds of all time.

They find the
first dinosaur eggs.

Lying in large round
nests in the ground.

This amazing find confirmed,
that dinosaurs actually laid eggs.

Andrews and his team believed,

the eggs belonged
to Protoceratops,

because they found so many
of these dinosaurs in the Gobi.

About the size of sheep,

Protoceratops had a distinctive
head shield and a hook-like beak.

On top of one nest, they
made a puzzling discovery.

The skeleton of a bird-like
meat-eating dinosaur,

definitely not a Protoceratops.

They concluded,
that it was a predator,

that had been
raiding the nest.

It was named Oviraptor,

meaning "egg thief".

It took 7 years to prove,
they were wrong.

In 1993, Mark Norell made an
extraordinary find in the Gobi.

A fossilized dinosaur embryo.

We discovered,

that it was the embryo of a
very close relative of Oviraptor.

In other words, the dinosaur
was not actually stealing the eggs,

it was a good parent,
that was brooding them.

The discovery of Oviraptors,
preserved on their nests,

sheds new light
on these dinosaurs.

They sat on their eggs,
just like modern birds.

Many of the Gobi dinosaurs

are in a remarkable
state of preservation.

Undisturbed by scavengers
or damaged by erosion.

Not only Oviraptors,
but many others,

like the fighting dinosaurs.

And even a nest full of barely
hatched baby Protoceratops...

How did they die so suddenly,
and remain so intact?

Until recently, it was thought,

that sandstorms
buried these creatures.

New evidences suggests a much
more spectacular scenario.

During this expedition,

heavier than normal rainfall
flooded parts of the Gobi.

According to a new theory,

water and sand dunes
played a dramatic part

in preserving dinosaur remains.

Scientists now believe,
that every few centuries

rainstorms of immense power
swept down on this arid world,

with catastrophic effect.

The inhabitants could not
have known, what was coming.

A pair of speedy, aggressive
Velociraptors were on a hunt,

and approached a large group
of nesting Oviraptors.

But on this day, unaware, that
they are chasing their last meal.

Bones become fossilized,
when they are quickly buried,

protecting them from
weather and predators.

Over time, living tissues decay
and bone is replaced by minerals,

seeping in from the
surrounding sediment.

But bones are
not the only clues

to the understanding
of dinosaur life.

New evidence is
revolutionizing our view

of dinosaurs like Velociraptor.

Long thought to be
leathery-skinned or scaly,

Velociraptor was in fact
covered with feathers.

And though it could not fly,

it had the same s-shaped neck,

four-toed feet, and many other
features, that birds have today.

Julia Clarke is using
the very latest evidence

to study one of nature’s
most enduring mysteries,

the origin of birds,

and how feathers developed
to give them the power of flight.

Understanding the
evolution of flight

is to me one of the
most interesting questions

in dinosaur paleontology.

Dozens of new dinosaur species

are being discovered
in the north of China.

They are preserved in
extremely fine volcanic ash

and, for the first time,

we can see distinct
impressions of feathers

associated with
their delicate bones,

confirming to us that
non-flying dinosaurs

were the first feathered
creatures on Earth.

But at least one
group of dinosaurs,

like this Confuciusornis,

recently found in China,

did develop the body structure
and the kind of feathers

that allowed them
to take to the sky.

65 million years ago dinosaurs
disappeared from Earth.

Or so it was long thought.

Today we know that the
dinosaurs are not all gone.

One line of dinosaurs survives,
and we call them birds.

Mongolia is a
great place to find

some of the last
non-flying dinosaurs,

that lived on Earth.

But to go further back in time
and find the earliest dinosaurs,

scientists come to places like

the high desert
badlands of New Mexico.

The land has a rich and turbulent
human history of Pueblo people,

Spanish conquistadors,
cowboys,and cattle rustlers.

But it has an even
richer history of life

stretching back
over 200 million years.

It is one of the few
places in the world,

where rock layers span
the Age of Dinosaurs.

The deeper the layer,
the older the rock.

At the top, rock
from the Cretaceous.

Below that,
further back in time,

the gold and white
cliffs of the Jurassic.

And near the bottom,
the oldest, red Triassic badlands,

when dinosaurs first appeared.

Alan Turner is
having a busy summer.

In addition to
trekking across the Gobi,

he is working with his fellow
grad student Sterling Nesbitt

on a new excavation at
a place called Ghost Ranch.

Sterling grew up
in the Southwest,

reading about dinosaurs
and the amazing discoveries

that had been
made at Ghost Ranch.

I have spent every summer since
i was 15 digging for dinosaurs.

I have always wanted
to be a paleontologist

so the chance to excavate at
Ghost Ranch is a dream come true.

Ghost Ranch was
explored in the 1940s

by paleontologists from
the American Museum.

They discovered rich fossil
beds 220 million years old

with hundreds of bones
of a small, early dinosaur

now considered
a kind of blueprint

for the carnivorous
dinosaurs yet to come.

Named Coelophysis, it grew to nine
feet long and weighed 100 pounds.

Its size and leg bones
indicate an ability to run fast.

On each hand it had
three-clawed fingers

for catching and holding prey.

Its large eye sockets
suggest very acute vision.

It all adds up to a small
but effective predator.

Pursuing his graduate research,
Sterling became intrigued

by the dozens of unexamined
fossils at the museum,

collected from Ghost
Ranch in the 1940s.

He knew that not all dinosaur
discoveries are made in the field.

Each expedition collects fossils

and brings them back
for later examination.

But some remain in museum
catacombs for decades, unopened.

It's amazing,

When you walk
through these catacombs,

filled with tens of
thousands of dinosaur bones,

some still wrapped in plaster,

and you realize

that they were dug up by
really famous paleontologists.

To get the chance to see,

what they saw for the
first time in 70 or 80 years,

is pretty incredible.

It took me a few
months to prepare

and remove the bones
from that old plaster cast,

but by comparing it
to Coelophysis correctly,

I very quickly realized, that
this was not a dinosaur at all.

It was actually an
animal new to science.

It is not often that a grad
student discovers a new species.

And when his find
captures the attention

of leading paleontologists
like Mike and Mark,

it is a memorable day.

Sterling named this
new creature Effigia,

the Latin word for ghost,
in honor of Ghost Ranch.

It was up to nine feet long
and weighed about 200 pounds.

It really looks like a dinosaur,

but one bone tells
a different story.

The ankle is that of an
ancient relative of crocodiles,

telling us that Effigia was a
member of the crocodile group.

But strangely Effigia
walked upright on two legs.

After the discovery of Effigia,
i knew i had to go to New Mexico.

My first stop was
to see Alex Downs,

curator of paleontology
at Ghost Ranch,

who has been working
for years on Coelophysis.

This is one of the
few places in the world,

where fossilized bones
of early dinosaurs

and their closest
relatives are found together.

There is a somewhat
larger one here.

This is a tip of the snout,
and we can see the teeth here.

And we have
a beautiful skull...

It's just missing one tooth.
-That's great.

For grad students
like Sterling and Alan

who work in classrooms
and labs most of the year,

the opportunity to
spend a few weeks

at a hot, dusty
hunt for dinosaurs

is what they live for.

The new dig at Ghost
Ranch is a joint project

of the University
of California Berkeley

and the American Museum.

Once the overlying tons
of rock are removed,

the grad students soon realize

they have come upon
a huge fossil site.

For Paleontologists great work
is often accomplished,

while lying down on the job.

We hope to piece
together a picture

of which creatures
lived in the Late Triassic.

What their
surroundings were like,

and where they fit into
the family tree of reptiles.

When dinosaurs first appeared,

this part of North America
was a very different environment.

The region had a
wet tropical climate.

Tall evergreen-like trees grew

along the banks
of streams and rivers

cutting through
a vast floodplain.

All in all, it seemed to have
been a rich habitat for life.

The question is,

how did early dinosaurs
interact with other animals?

Raptiles appeared
on Earth before dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs are reptiles too,
but over 200 million years ago,

they branched off from
the evolutionary line

leading towards crocodiles.

Effigia was an early
crocodile relative.

Coelophysis was one
of the first dinosaurs.

Undoubtedly, they came
across one another

in the canyons and forests
of the Triassic Southwest.

The prospect of a
new dinosaur discovery

has brought Mike,
Julia, and Mark

to Ghost Ranch
to see for themselves.

The number of fossils
here is staggering.

Layers and layers of animals

are piled up in this
mass burial place,

which seems to have been a
sharp bend in an ancient riverbed.

What happened here?

The high desert
landscape is dramatic,

and so are the
torrential rainsqualls

that can turn dry canyons
into raging rivers of death,

as they must have done
back in the age of dinosaurs.

In Arizona’s Petrified
Forest National Park,

200 million year old
fossilized trees are reappearing

as the ground
erodes around them,

evidence of the ancient floods

that violently uprooted
and buried them.

Though now extinct,

these giant trees
of the Triassic

were similar to the
Pacific redwoods of today.

But it was not just trees that
were swept up in ancient floods.

Early dinosaurs like Coelophysis
were always on the defensive.

They lived in a world still
dominated by larger reptiles,

like this 1500-pound Postosuchus.

Flash floods washed the drowned
bodies of reptiles and dinosaurs

into concentrated deposits.

Perhaps this is why
Sterling and team

are finding so many
in one area.

When they
locate a skeleton,

they carefully
excavate around it,

then cover it up with a jacket
made of plaster and toilet paper,

which always comes in
handy out in the field.

This protects the fossils

so that they can be
transported to the lab,

where the bones will be delicately
separated from the rock.

This summer's dig at Ghost Ranch

has been productive beyond
our greatest expectations.

We have found
something really exciting

and we think it
maybe a new dinosaur.

It is thrilling to find a dinosaur
we have never known before

that has not seen the light of
day for over 200 million years.

It will take many
months to determine

what it looked like
and how important it is,

but it will surely
change our views

of how dinosaurs
rose to dominance.

There are things, the fossil
record cannot preserve,

that we may never know,

such as the color of dinosaurs

or precisely what
sounds they made.

But year by year,
we learn more about them.

Some dinosaurs traveled
in herds and hunted in packs.

We know that they made nests,
protected their eggs,

probably cared for their young.

From som fossils we learned,
who were the hunters,

and who were the hunted.

That feathers first appeared
on non-flying dinosaurs,

before birds evolved.

And that some dinosaurs
live on, as modern birds.

Those who love to contemplate

the secrets of
the history of life,

must come to places

like Ghost Ranch
and the Flaming Cliffs.

It is hard to imagine
our own human sense

of who we are and
where we come from

without the records
buried beneath our feet.

For young paleontologists
like Sterling and Alan,

the adventure
is just a beginning.

Three quarters
of a century ago,

Roy Chapman Andrews discovered
a whole new world of dinosaurs

beneath the Flaming Cliffs.

Camping in this magical place,
he wroted in his diary,

of a sense of having
traveled back in time.

It is a feeling shared by
paleontologists then and now.

In the evening shadows, the rocks
took on fantastic shapes

We seemed to be living in the
world of along-gone yesterday.

At any moment,

I imagined that dinosaurs might
wander to the doorways of our tents.

We have discovered
less than two percent

of all the dinosaur
species that once lived.

Imagine...

All those dinosaurs
out there yet to be found.

Translation: jierro
Contact: podnapisi.net