Original subtitles

Over 66 million years ago...

SCREECHING WAIL

..our world...

HIGH-PITCHED CLUCKS

..was ruled...

DEEP SNORT

..by dinosaurs...

DEEP BELLOW

HISSES

..the largest animals that have ever walked the Earth.

Today, dinosaur experts across the globe

are uncovering the bones they left behind...

..allowing us to imagine how these extraordinary creatures

may have lived...

..so that we can tell their stories...

..and they...

..can walk again.

Eastern Montana.

A vast untamed wilderness...

..with extraordinary stories to tell.

This is dinosaur country.

Here, a team from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

is excavating an iconic species,

a triceratops.

Oh, sweet.

But this is no ancient giant.

But it's really small, a very young individual.

Got a nice baby drake.

A phenomenal find.

The team calls her Clover.

Studying her bones,

we can begin to imagine her world...

..and tell her story for the first time.

At the end of the Cretaceous,

North America is a vast expanse of green.

Where Montana is today,

there is a lush landscape of sprawling subtropical forests...

..crisscrossed by waterways.

This is Laramidia...

..home to prehistoric giants...

THUDDING FOOTSTEPS

..and the occasional...

..not so giant.

TRILLING CALL

Meet Clover, the triceratops.

Barely half a metre tall,

she's the size of a large dog.

PANTS

Despite her size, Clover roams the jungle alone.

These strange white objects mean one thing.

Playtime.

SNUFFLES

But curiosity can be a dangerous thing...

CROAKING CALL

..when you're living in a land of monsters.

Clover is rare.

The vast majority of triceratops fossils discovered

are from adults.

Clover's remains are a chance to uncover the story

of a youngster...

..a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for team leader

Eric Lund.

- Check out these teeth. - Oh, wow.

Clover's tiny jawbone has been painstakingly reconstructed

by fossil restorer Nikki Simon.

Isn't she gorgeous?

She is gorgeous. It's beautiful.

Don't often find upper jaws this complete,

let alone with all the teeth in 'em.

No wear on them.

The teeth's edges, for slicing through plant material,

are still razor sharp.

- Check 'em out. - Sure.

Oh, yeah.

These have barely been used.

They almost look carnivorous.

The teeth are a clue to Clover's young age.

Look at how small this upper arm bone is.

Yeah. Let's see

By measuring Clover's arm bone...

- A little over a foot. - 34cm.

..they can more accurately estimate how old she was.

She must only have been about three years old.

Which means she was just a baby.

A baby...buried all alone.

Seems to be by herself.

Haven't found any adult bones in this quarry.

Without the herd, without her mother,

very vulnerable.

We'll never know why Clover was alone.

What we do know is that in the Late Cretaceous...

..young, solitary dinosaurs don't last long.

WINGS FLAP

SQUAWKS

HISSES

An infernodrakon...

..a giant pterosaur, common at the end of the Cretaceous.

With a five-metre wingspan, it tries to intimidate Clover.

INFERNODRAKON HISSES

And then there's the razor-sharp beak.

But Clover is nimble.

And this mother just wants her egg back.

This time, the little triceratops was lucky.

But danger lurks everywhere...

BELLOWING ROAR

..and it gets much, much bigger.

A mile from Clover's dig site...

..more fossilised remains are emerging.

HAMMER TAPS

We've got a bone over here that's very thin,

very slender and very long.

This looks like one of the processes

off of the tail vertebrae, and it helps lock the tail

into a much more rigid structure.

These thin bones may once have formed

part of a thick, muscular tail six metres long.

But this was no triceratops.

This is sort of a meat-eating dinosaur feature.

Palaeontologist Ellis Mulready holds the final clue.

It's a little bit beat up.

It's a really thick tooth, designed for crushing bones.

It's got those kind of drawn-together serrations.

You can still feel them.

I would love to meet the creature that had this tooth,

but it'd be a bit scary!

Yeah.

THEY LAUGH

It's a tooth that can only belong to one animal.

LOW, RUMBLING GROWL

SLOW FOOTSTEPS

LOW GROWL

Standing four metres tall...

..and weighing in at eight tonnes...

..Tyrannosaurus rex.

With 1.5-metre-long jaws,

the Earth's most infamous predator could swallow Clover whole.

LOW GROWL

Fortunately, the hunter's focus is elsewhere.

Padded feet act like shock absorbers,

keeping its approach quiet.

For T-rex, a light snack.

GROWLS

PANTS

For Clover, a terrifying first encounter.

And it won't be her last.

Up to 20,000 T-rex roam Laramidia.

To survive, Clover needs protection...

..and fast.

- You ready? - Ready.

In the search for more clues,

Eric and evolutionary ecologist John Kanipe

are heading deeper into the wilderness.

So, you asked me about snakes earlier.

Oh, yeah.

There's just a baby rattler in the bottom there.

They want to understand who was sharing the forest with Clover.

All right. I'm ready when you are.

It's obvious from the evidence on the ground...

Got a bit of bone here coming out.

..that Clover's world was teeming with other dinosaurs.

Some bigger pieces.

Pretty busted up.

That's got a bit more surface.

One familiar species is turning up more than any other.

Most of them belong to triceratops.

Triceratops once dominated this area.

They've been sitting on the surface a really long time.

They're pretty weathered.

One fossil shows why triceratops were so successful.

It's like a big brow horn.

Oh, man! It's a bit busted up.

You can still see where all the blood vessels would be,

- even on the horn. - Yeah.

In life, this horn would have been over a metre long,

and behind it a protective bony shield almost two metres wide.

Here was a creature seemingly custom built

for fighting off large predators.

Got these big horns on the front of your face, wave them around

and maybe make a T-rex think twice before attacking you.

Triceratops' formidable defences made it

one of the most successful dinosaur species of its day...

..meaning an adult triceratops

would be the perfect protector for Clover.

LOW GRUNTS

CLOVER YELPS

This old bull will do nicely.

CLOVER CALLS SOFTLY

LOW GRUNTS

But there's a problem.

Who needs a troublesome youngster following you around?

CALLS SOFTLY

GRUNTS LOUDLY

TRILLING CALL

As another day ends...

..Clover is still alone...

..and darkness is setting in.

Eric thinks Clover may have had good reason

to fear the night-time most of all.

Back at base camp, he uses a scan of a T-rex skull

to print a 3D model...

..of the killer's brain cavity.

This is the endocast of a T-rex.

For an animal that has a head a metre and a half long,

not a real big brain - a dinosaur's not doing calculus -

but it was enough to do what the animal needed to do.

- It was very successful. - Right.

It just needs to process the information.

- Exactly. - It's got a lot of sensory input.

Though small compared to a human's,

this brain is fine-tuned for hunting.

We've got these really big olfactory bulbs in the front.

- That's for smell. - That's for smell, yeah.

T-rex probably had one of the most sensitive noses

of any dinosaur.

It's probably picking up on minuscule parts per million.

And it wasn't just the killer's sense of smell

that was supercharged.

Here, in the middle,

would be the part of the brain that controls vision.

T-rex does...really big eyes, just like an owl,

that take in a lot of light.

These incredible senses likely made T-rex

a lethal nocturnal hunter.

THUNDER RUMBLES

CREATURES CALL

As darkness descends...

..it's time to begin the hunt.

Locking on to a telltale scent...

SNUFFLES

..it seems that supper is nearby.

Whilst most creatures have sought safe places to sleep...

..Clover is awake.

She must bulk up by a tonne

each year to reach full size,

so feeds often through the night.

In the darkness, she sees little...

..but T-rex sees her

perfectly.

GRUNTS

THUDDING

SNUFFLES

Saved by her size.

GRUNTS SOFTLY

Luck seems to be on Clover's side.

DISTANT GRUNTS

CLOVER GRUNTS

She survived a close encounter with T-rex.

And from the sound of things...

HOOTING CALL

..a new ally may be close at hand.

LOW GRUNT

In the search for more giants, the team is putting to the test

the very latest fossil-hunting techniques.

A 66-million-year-old treasure hunt

using 21st-century technology.

If we fly out towards those badlands,

that would be a great spot.

BEEPING

The gyros stabilise.

Eric's teamed up with palaeontologists Thomas Kaye...

Going for arm.

BEEP

..and Dr Michael Pittman.

Ready to launch.

Their prototype laser drone scans the ground with UV light...

..searching for the telltale glow of minerals within ancient fossils...

..to create a treasure map of prehistoric remains.

See, here, we've got some specks.

Maybe the size of a tennis ball.

Interesting but, you know, we want the big stuff.

It's early days for the technology,

and it has limitations.

But one spot on the ground...

Bang! Look at that.

..is glowing brightly.

- So that must be a really big piece. - Yeah, that's big!

As dawn breaks,

Eric and Nikki head into the badlands

to see this enormous fossil.

Look how big it is!

It's the lower leg bone of a truly colossal dinosaur.

Seems to have been sitting out on the surface for quite some time.

This is a big bone.

This animal would have been, you know, maybe around

six, seven metres long.

But this is no triceratops.

It's not a T-rex either.

BELLOWING CALLS

Echoing through towering trees...

BELLOWING CALL

..the calls of perhaps the strangest dinosaurs who roam here..

BELLOWS CONTINUE

..Edmontosaurs...

..herd animals known as the cows of the Cretaceous.

Weighing over six tonnes,

these social creatures tolerate Clover.

As a fellow plant-eater, she's no threat to them.

The herd could give Clover the protection she needs.

CHIRPS

And it's not just safety they offer.

A playmate.

ALL GRUNT AND CALL

In amongst these giants...

..Clover can begin to feel safe.

But danger is never far away.

HAMMER TAPS

66 million years ago, T-rex ruled over these lands...

..the apex predator for over two million years.

As it rolls over, just get your hands under it.

The team wants to discover how this fearsome hunter

took down its prey.

Inside this protective plaster coat

is the predator's leg bone.

Eric thinks there might be more underneath.

One, two, three.

Protruding from the rock...

That's a bone.

..one of the giant's vertebrae.

Beautiful preservation.

It was a big, big animal.

It allows Eric to estimate more accurately T-rex's full size.

On the order of 30 feet, maybe more.

Ten metres, something like that.

They wrap their discoveries in a protective plaster jacket.

It's just a tiny fraction of T-rex's skeleton...

..but it's enormous.

This jacket's probably about 150kg,

200lb, 300lb.

It's just so huge.

Alive, adult T-rex weighed over eight tonnes,

but this enormous weight may actually have been a hindrance.

Certainly not the 40mph Jeep-chasing animal of Jurassic Park!

Their physiology just wouldn't allow them to run that fast.

Probably speed walker.

T-rex probably couldn't run for fear of breaking its own legs...

..with a top speed of just 15mph or 20mph.

Not exactly slow, but a fast human could outsprint one.

I think you could.

I think I'm going to take a sharp turn,

and it's going to have a hard time following me.

THEY LAUGH

You think we only just got

to be faster than him.

LAUGHTER

Maybe I'm a little overconfident!

So adult T-rex weren't sprinting after their prey.

This killer relied on another tactic...

..the element of surprise.

LOW GROWL

As Clover and the Edmontosaurs sleep soundly...

..T-rex approaches slowly from downwind.

But it's not easy being stealthy...

CRACK

..when you're the size of a bus.

BLEATS LOUDLY

ROARING

The Edmontosaurs form a defensive line...

..rearing up on their hind legs

to appear as big as possible.

But holding your nerve isn't easy.

And it only takes one of the herd to panic.

SQUEALS

CHOMPS

A lucky escape for Clover...

..not for her new friend.

CALLS SOFTLY

With the adult Edmontosaurs on the move...

..Clover is alone once more.

Survival was a game of chance in the Late Cretaceous,

and the odds were stacked against young dinosaurs like Clover.

The team has tracked down a remarkable fossil

with a chilling tale to tell.

That's the weirdest baby bundle ever.

It may look like a nondescript lump of rock

but its shape and texture tell the experts

this is a coprolite - fossilised faeces.

Eric works with fossil-restorer Aubrey Knowles...

67.5 centimetres, or 26.5 inches.

..to examine this prehistoric poo.

- This is a massive turd. - It's a really big turd.

ERIC CHUCKLES

Most coprolites can't be attributed to any specific species...

..but bone fragments within the dino dung

reveal this was the waste product of a meat-eater.

And then there's the matter of size.

So we're at 15.7 centimetres across, or 6.2 inches.

That's a wide cloaca.

That is a very wide bumhole.

SHE LAUGHS

The only large-bodied carnivorous dinosaur

that could have possibly dropped this

would be a T-rex,

so very, very cool.

It's an astonishing fossil...

..the excrement of the most notorious predator in history.

It's interesting how many bones there are

preserved in the dropping.

By examining coprolites,

it's even possible to identify the killer's victims.

T-rex faeces have been found to contain bones

that are small and smooth.

That speaks to a more juvenile or young prey.

The bones of babies.

Baby dinosaurs would be very vulnerable.

Bite-sized.

- Energy is precious. - Yeah. - Go after easy prey.

Needing a quarter of a tonne of meat a week

to sustain their enormous bulk,

baby dinosaurs like Clover were a common meal for T-rex.

Nothing is off the menu.

Naive, defenceless

and small enough to swallow whole...

..Clover would make an excellent snack.

SHRIEKS

GRUNTS

With nowhere to hide...

..it's a good time

to bump into an old acquaintance.

Few creatures can challenge T-rex,

but a full-grown triceratops might be the only animal

that doesn't need to turn and run.

Who wins in a fight - triceratops or T-rex?

The two giants were locked in an evolutionary arms race,

adapted to battle each other.

But Eric thinks triceratops may have had

a surprising trump card.

This fossilised fragment was once part of the huge frill

extending from the back of the skull,

but it wasn't solid bone.

All these vascular channels on the surface,

all these pits and grooves that are in it,

go all over the surface of the frill.

This surface was covered in a lot of blood vessels.

The blood flow suggests to Eric

a triceratops frill was more than just a shield.

The idea is they could change the colour pattern of their frill,

flash these different colours.

Pushing all this blood up into its frill,

this would be a great way to send a message.

It would have been really intimidating.

BELLOWING ROAR

The giants are evenly matched.

Each weighs over eight tonnes.

Each with fearsome weaponry.

But triceratops plays his trump card.

Flushing blood into his frill

creates huge colourful eye spots.

They make triceratops seem even bigger.

But T-rex isn't apex predator for nothing.

Stalemate.

But for T-rex, there's still an easier meal close by.

Most young dinosaurs never made it to adulthood,

and Clover was no exception.

But as the dig season draws to a close...

..her exact cause of death is still unknown.

You know, we're not sure how baby Clover died.

In digging her bones up, we haven't found any evidence of predation.

There doesn't seem to be any injuries,

no bite marks, things like that.

Up to this point, it remains a mystery.

- Got it? - All right.

But we do know one thing.

If Clover had died as a meal for T-rex...

..there probably wouldn't be any remains at all.

For Clover, it seems as if time has run out.

But she still has one advantage -

her size.

With T-rex distracted...

..a moment of surprise.

Clover has survived her encounter

with history's most infamous killer.

For now, she's safe.

CALLS SOFTLY

GRUMBLING GRUNTS

And while this old bull may not seek the company of a youngster...

..Clover's not giving up just yet.

We take the plunge

in the most dangerous river...

GRUNTS CALLS

..in Earths' history...

..join the smallest member of the biggest herd...

..on an epic journey...

..get up close with the deadliest pack of predators...

..follow an island giant looking for love...

..and meet the band of brothers on the run

from a ferocious and cunning adversary.

SQUAWKS