All language subtitles for Bizarre.Dinosaurs.2009.WEB-DL.DSNP

NARRATOR: They keep coming out
of the badlands of the world...

(mysterious music)

Each one seemingly stranger
than the last.

Dinosaurs who took
every imaginable body part

to extravagant extremes.

Baffling...

dazzling...

Elegant, ugly...

(dinosaur grunts)

And utterly surprising.

PHIL (off-screen):
It doesn't look real.

The skull is just like something
out of a science fiction movie.

♪ ♪

PAUL: They're an example
of evolution gone wild.

♪ ♪

BOB (off-screen): That neck
that keeps on going

and keeps on going--

that's bizarre.

(crunching)

NARRATOR:
In the mysterious lost world

of the bizarre dinosaurs...

♪ ♪

Who were the strangest
of the strange...

(dinosaur roars)

And how on Earth
did they get that way?

♪ ♪

(dramatic music)

(dinosaur roars)

♪ ♪

(dinosaur chirps)

(mysterious music)

It may be 43 degrees
in the shade--

never mind the fact
that there is no shade--

but wherever the brutal sun
beats down

on dinosaur territory
these days,

it's a good time
to be a paleontologist.

(hammer knocking)

In the 21st century,

dozens of new dinosaurs a year
are coming to light.

They're not just emerging
from the American west.

Now Argentina, Antarctica,

Africa, and especially China
are spitting out finds

that have scientists
scratching their heads.

And some of these dinosaurs
are so loaded

with outlandish appendages,
they're revolutionizing

what we thought we knew
about them.

♪ ♪

(dinosaur roars)

But the dinosaur story
doesn't start

with the bizarre
and the gigantic.

150 million years before
the dinosaurs' catastrophic end,

creatures like this little
standard-issue prototype

had the run of the place.

Coelophysis has
a rather banal body shape.

(dinosaur screeches)

It looks pretty much
like a big lizard,

walks on its hind legs,

eats meat, hunts in packs.

Other than that,
not much to phone home about.

(dinosaur screeches)

But paleontologists think
all dinosaurs descended

from plain little animals
like this guy.

(dinosaur screeching)

So how did they get
from little Coelophysis

to, say, this?

Or this?

(dinosaur roars)

Or this?

♪ ♪

What strange impulses
of evolution

could have molded such things?

♪ ♪

Consider the spectacular
weirdness of this behemoth:

Spinosaurus...

Bigger than T. rex

but with a head
that looks like a crocodile's

and stacked with spines
along its back

as tall as a man.

The spines,
up to 2-meter-long extensions

of the animal's vertebrae,

have been the subject
of a lively debate.

♪ ♪

Some think they anchored
a massive muscular hump

that would have made
the enormous dinosaur

all the more powerful.

Others have suggested

that the spines supported
a skin-covered sail

that could help regulate
the animal's temperature

by radiating heat
or catching the sun's rays.

♪ ♪

One thing is clear:

the spines must have been
doing something important,

because they would have been
a drag--literally.

(dinosaur roars)

PAUL: I think it would have
made the animal more clumsy,

I mean, quite frankly.

It would have
made it less agile.

It would have made it heavier.

It would have made it catch wind
in a strong breeze.

There's no good advantage to it
that you can think of

except showing that, "Hey,
I can grow this 5-foot sail

"and I'm healthy
and I'm bigger than you.

"And here I am over here,
and there I am over there.

This is my territory.
You're my mate."

NARRATOR: While most agree

that the sail
was for advertising,

there's some question about
Spinosaurus' general lifestyle.

Some think it was
a water dweller,

where the creature may have
spent most of its time.

(muffled water rushing)

Why?

Because the creature's head
bears a remarkable resemblance

to that of a crocodile.

A really big crocodile.

(dramatic music)

♪ ♪

JACK (off-screen): Its snout
is constructed for eating fish,

and so it's quite likely

that these animals
actually were aquatic,

and so the only things
that were really sticking out

that were visual--
were sticking out of the water

were these big fins
on their backs.

And so, you know,
much of their display

may have actually been
while they were in the water.

NARRATOR: From here,
the Spinosaurus puzzle

gets even more complicated.

♪ ♪

What's the use
of being bigger than T. rex

if you're just going to hang out
by a river and fish?

(dinosaur roars)

♪ ♪

Why have jaws powerful enough
to shred another dinosaur?

Forearms armed
with long, curved claws.

(dinosaur growls)

What's the evolutionary point of
all these deadly developments...

(dinosaur roars)

Especially if you're going to
carry a handicap on your back?

So far, Spinosaurus is keeping
its secrets to itself.

PAUL (off-screen): We have never
really seen anything

quite like it
in the dinosaur world

or thereafter.

I mean, they're an example
of evolution gone wild.

(dramatic music)

NARRATOR: Poor T. rex,

taking a back seat to
Spinosaurus on the big screen.

(dinosaur growls)

But let us not forget
that when it comes

to bizarre killing machines,

T. rex is in a class
all of its own.

That iconic oversized head

with its 23-centimeter
serrated teeth

and one of the most devastating
bite forces

the world has ever seen.

And then there is that riddle
of riddles:

those insanely tiny arms.

JACK (off-screen): He might have
been able to scratch his belly

after he ate.

♪ ♪

That's about it.

Couldn't reach his mouth,

couldn't--couldn't clap.

Yeah, couldn't do much
of anything.

NARRATOR: The T. rex
head versus hands story

had a completely logical
explanation--

until now.

(footsteps thundering)

It goes like this:

it has been shown
over and over again

that when evolution capitalizes
on one part of the anatomy,

other parts may become useless,

redundant,
and eventually disappear.

(dinosaurs chirping, growling)

With a head that big
and powerful and agile,

who needs arms?

(crunching)

JACK: Why does T. rex
have small arms?

'Cause it didn't need them...

♪ ♪

And was probably losing them.

♪ ♪

GREG (off-screen):
What appears to have happened

in the tyrannosaur lineage
leading up to T. rex

is that the bodies
of these animals

just kept going
but the arms got left behind.

They're also losing fingers.

They've gone down
to two functional fingers.

NARRATOR: This answer
makes compelling sense--

at first.

♪ ♪

And T. rex was not alone

in taking this
apparently sensible trade-off

in deadly assets.

♪ ♪

While the tyrant was roaming
North America,

one of the weirdest-looking
large predators ever

was rampaging in South America.

Called the meat-eating bull
for its peculiar horns,

Carnotaurus is not pretty.

It has a strangely shaped head,

tiny teeth...

♪ ♪

And arms so small, they would
make even T. rex giggle.

(dinosaur hisses)

What was it doing with them?

(dinosaur grunts, roars)

NARRATOR: The anatomy
of Carnotaurus is baffling,

to say the least.

(inquisitive music)

PHIL (off-screen): Carnotaurus
is one weird-looking dinosaur.

It's got a very
foreshortened skull.

It looks like someone's gone up
to this dinosaur

and smashed it in the face
with a frying pan.

But one thing that
really strikes out, though,

is this enormous shoulder blade.

It is absolutely vast.

At the end
of the shoulder blade,

you'd expect to see
enormous arms, but you don't.

They're absolutely tiny.

In fact, it makes the arms
of Tyrannosaurus rex look large.

NARRATOR:
So these great killers

living in the very last age
of the dinosaurs

were apparently on the brink

of trading in
their arms completely

for the sake
of even more lethal heads.

♪ ♪

Makes sense, right?

But two new discoveries

have thrown a monkey wrench
into that scenario

and the mystery deepens
into debate.

First, you'd expect useless arms

to be, well, useless.

Instead, studies
on T. rex biomechanics

show that T. rex
could probably have curled

some 180 kilograms

with those
pathetic-looking arms.

And now the argument
that tyrannosaurus traded arms

for heads over the ages,
culminating in T. rex,

is being challenged
by a startling new find:

a more ancient, miniature,
would-be T. rex.

The creature, though only
about 3 meters long,

has already started trading arms
for a head

60 million years before
Tyrannosaurus rex.

PAUL (off-screen): We have found
the "ur" tyrannosaur,

the roots of the tyrannosaur
radiation,

an animal that has
all the features

that we think are truly
characteristic of tyrannosaurs:

the two-fingered hand...

the enlarged brain,
the enlarged jaw muscles,

the long and lanky legs
for running,

the tiny arms.

We're gonna call it Raptorex.

(curious music)

NARRATOR: The find is so new
that Paul Sereno has had time

only to model Raptorex's head
and neck.

(rock music)

Not as fearsome
as T. rex's, perhaps,

but clearly a ferocious profile.

But it's the tiny arms
that upset the apple cart.

This was supposed to be
a much later development.

PAUL (off-screen):
Everywhere you looked,

you found the features
which we know

characterize
the later tyrannosaurs

in the late Cretaceous.

They're no longer alone
in having arms so small,

they couldn't reach the mouth
or pick the nose.

(curious music)

NARRATOR: In other words,

if tyrannosaur arms
had started to disappear

millions of generations
before T. rex,

they should have been long gone

by the time
the big bang snuffed them out,

traded in
for even scarier heads.

(dinosaur roaring)

So why were the arms
still there?

♪ ♪

Perhaps the man
who named T. rex

back in 1905,
Henry Fairfield Osborn,

had it right all along.

Those arms were not
engineered for battle

but for love.

BOB (off-screen): He saw
the big snaggly teeth

and he said,
"This is for killing dinosaurs,"

and the long feet, and he said,

"This is for
catching dinosaurs."

And he saw the tiny arms,
and he said,

"That part is for loving."

That's the tickle part
of T. rex.

(dinosaur growls)

NARRATOR: Tickling one's mate,

especially a female tyrannosaur
you'd rather not upset,

makes perfectly good sense.

(dinosaurs growling)

♪ ♪

150 million years
before the explosive end

to the age of the dinosaurs,

the Earth was moving
beneath the dinosaurs' feet,

taking them for a ride--
literally--

into the lands
of the outlandish.

Back then, all the land
on Earth

was on just one continent
called Pangaea.

But Pangaea started
to break apart,

a geological revolution
that set the stage

for an evolution revolution.

♪ ♪

The dawn of the dinosaurs,
the Triassic,

was about to give way
to their middle period,

the Jurassic,

and bizarreness
was about to be unleashed.

♪ ♪

As the continents
were moving apart,

climates were changing.

Many dinosaur havens
were becoming more isolated

and more lush...

(insects chirping)

And dinosaurs were now growing

to mind-boggling sizes.

(branches snapping)

The ancient
evolutionary arms race

matching predators' weapons

against prey's defenses
was escalating,

with a new kind
of eating machine

taking the early lead.

♪ ♪

The time of giants had arrived.

(branches snapping)

These were the sauropods.

(mysterious music)

JACK (off-screen):
They basically tell us

how little we know
about dinosaurs.

If we were proportioned
the same way...

(dinosaur roars)

We'd have a head
the size of a peanut

and it'd be suck out on the end
of a 3-foot-long straw.

BOB (off-screen): That neck
that keeps on going

and keeps on going--should stop
but keeps on going

and going and going--

that's bizarre.

NARRATOR: One of evolution's
strangest experiments

in stretching the necks
of sauropods is this one:

the 20-meter, 15-ton
Mamenchisaurus.

KRISTI: Its neck alone
is longer than it--

the rest of its body, basically.

PAUL: When you look
at the animal, it looks--

it looks disproportionate.

It looks like
it's gonna fall over

because the neck is so long.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
But an astoundingly long neck

on a ridiculously smaller body

conveys a huge advantage
to an animal.

You don't have to go anywhere
to eat.

Just stretch out that neck.

And no predator--even one with
a brain the size of a walnut--

is going to take on
such a titanic creature.

♪ ♪

KRISTI (off-screen):
There's not a lot out there

that can eat a sauropod

when it's, you know,
25 feet long.

If you think about
animals living in Africa today,

animals that really don't get
bothered too much are elephants.

And they're huge.
They're massive.

They really only have to worry
about getting eaten

when they're small
and when they're very old,

and I think that sauropods
probably had, you know, adapted

or adopted that--that kind of
similar strategy in being big.

(insects chirping)

NARRATOR: So how did
the giant sauropods do it--

get so huge,
they could ignore predators?

The answers lie deep
in the fossilized bones

of the dinosaurs,
still etched with the marks

of their life histories.

KRISTI (off-screen):
One of the ways

that we can study
dinosaur growth

is by looking at thin sections
of dinosaur bones

so that light shines
through those bones

and we can study them
under a microscope

and look for these
specific markers--

things like growth rings,

same kinds of things that
are occurring in trees today.

NARRATOR:
What these growth rings tell

Kristi Curry Rogers
is nothing short of astounding.

KRISTI (off-screen): They grow
between 2 and 56 times faster

than all living reptiles.

(radical rock music)

NARRATOR:
You can only grow that much

if you can eat that much...

♪ ♪

And the amount
an animal would have to eat

to fuel such growth
is almost inconceivable.

Some of the later sauropods
would multiply the efficiency

of their sweeping necks
with something more:

unbelievable mouths.

(dinosaur bellows)

♪ ♪

And as Paul Sereno found out in
the deserts of Niger in Africa,

by the Cretaceous,
the need to feed

led some voracious plant-eaters

to evolve some
seriously strange heads.

One simply blew his mind:

the lawn mower, Nigersaurus.

PAUL (off-screen): I picked up
the jaw of Nigersaurus

and couldn't figure out
how to attach it to the skull.

It was so strange

that it really took me
quite a while to figure out

that this dinosaur had a face
like no other.

♪ ♪

Only its mother really,

truly could love a dinosaur
with a face like this.

NARRATOR: Ugly or not,

this face is pure genius
in eating design.

Nigersaurus' curious mouth,

shaped like the flat attachment
of a vacuum cleaner,

relentlessly clipped
and hoovered up food

using a massive battery
of small, sharp teeth.

♪ ♪

PAUL: There's no other animal
that has all of its teeth

at the end of the jaw.

There's no other animal that's
developed a tooth battery,

hundreds of teeth coming out
at the same time.

NARRATOR: CT scans
of the jawbones

showed up to nine
replacement teeth

stacked behind
each cutting tooth.

When one wore out,

another immediately
took its place.

♪ ♪

Nigersaurus' grazing posture

may mean most or all
of the sauropods

lived their lives horizontally,
not vertically.

(insects chirping)

Sauropod's necks
may have been more

than just a way
to move insatiable mouths

over giant swaths of vegetation.

(insects chirping)

They may actually have been
combat worthy,

if our long-necked friends,
the giraffes,

have anything to tell us.

PAUL (off-screen):
A lot of people think

that neck length in giraffes

is being driven
when there's only plant matter

at the tips of the trees
and the tallest giraffes

are the only ones
that therefore survive.

Wrong.

Neck length is driven
by mate selection,

and there's a ritual
where they wrap their necks

around each other and push.

You apply that back to sauropods
and you have to say,

"Well, they certainly have
plenty enough neck to do that."

Uh, I'd say probably
that's what they were doing.

(curious music)

(dinosaur growls)

NARRATOR: But evolution
wasn't just tinkering

with the length and strength
of sauropod necks.

(dinosaur growls)

♪ ♪

What exactly it was doing
with this one

is a bit of a puzzle.

(dinosaur growls)

Amargasaurus,

equipped with an elegant
double row of spikes

on its back, seems to have had
a pair of fins.

(footsteps thudding)

One set of spines
would be strange enough,

but the double row
is truly baffling.

KRISTI (off-screen):
Paleontologists have been

debating for years

about what the function
of those spikes might have been.

NARRATOR:
They're in the wrong place

to use to fight off predators.

Maybe they made the animals
look much bigger

than they really were

and just intimidated
the creatures

that were eyeing them hungrily.

Or maybe...

(dinosaur huffs)

They were for eyeing each other.

♪ ♪

(dinosaur bellows)

Odd structures like these
are leading scientists

to a new way of thinking
in paleontology.

♪ ♪

Evolution, it seems,
has a strange way

of taking plain, straightforward
parts of the dinosaur

with obvious functions

and turning them into garish,
baffling appendages

whose purpose is the stuff
of mystery and controversy.

♪ ♪

But, as always with evolution,

there's a method to the madness.

♪ ♪

Perhaps nowhere
is the dinosaurs' penchant

for turning the straightforward
into the fantastic more striking

than when it comes to war--

attacking others
and defending themselves.

Over the course
of millions of years,

intimidating weaponry
sometimes morphed

into something else altogether.

Take, for example,
those perennial favorites,

the stegosaurs.

Surely these creatures,
with their giant plates

and spiked tails,
were built to stand and fight.

(dramatic music)

What could be more obvious?

♪ ♪

Certainly,
the stegosaurs bristled

with fearsome-looking armory.

♪ ♪

Take Tuojiangosaurus,
one of the earliest

who took spikiness
to wild extremes.

♪ ♪

A discovery from China,

Tuojiangosaurus
apparently went overboard

with its defensive array.

A fearsome row of pointy plates
juts out from its back,

leading down to a tail

that would give any predator
or competitor pause.

♪ ♪

Four paired spikes,

each 15 centimeters long,

project from what was probably
a flexible, whiplike tail.

♪ ♪

Tuojiangosaurus also sported
intimidating half-meter spikes

like bayonets
on its shoulders.

♪ ♪

But was this all really
for battle?

Recent research
on other stegosaurs

has made some scientists
rethink the defense argument.

Most problematic is the plates.

They're in the wrong place.

JACK: You know,
carnivorous dinosaurs

probably weren't that smart, but
they probably were smart enough

to realize that if they bit
the animal on the side,

they wouldn't have
to deal with the spikes.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: And the spikes
and plates alone

may look intimidating,
but they're not very strong

in the armory department.

♪ ♪

PAUL (off-screen): It just
so happens that a few days ago,

I found a plate of a stegosaur.

A huge plate.
It was massive.

And, um, when we
started brushing

towards the end of the plate,

I was staggered
at how thin it was.

(pensive music)

Fragile is an understatement.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The plates were also
full of blood vessels--

not the greatest
defense strategy.

Pitted against the jaws
of the largest predators,

they would have been snacks.

♪ ♪

JACK (off-screen): You know,
if an Allosaurus had bit

into one of them,

basically, there'd be blood
spurting everywhere.

LAWRENCE: Kind of like a--
a big old cookie,

this sort of
blood-filled good morsel to eat.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
All of those blood vessels

point to another possibility:

the plates were used to regulate
the animal's temperature.

♪ ♪

Arrayed to catch a breeze,

they could cool the circulation.

Pointed towards the sun,
they would do the opposite.

♪ ♪

But many of the stegosaurs
survived with tiny plates

or no plates at all...

(dinosaur roars)

Which leads some paleontologists
to believe

that the stegosaurs'
might armory--

perhaps even starting
with Tuojiangosaurus--

may have become more propaganda
than pointy defenses.

NARRATOR: Some argue
that almost anything

you can point to as bizarre--

things like Amargasaurus' neck,

Spinosaurus' spectacular sail,

and the wondrous heads
of so many favorite dinosaurs--

were all advertising:

advertising to predators that
"I'm bigger than you think,"

advertising to rivals that
"I'm fitter than you,"

advertising to potential mates

that "I've got the genes
and health

to maintain this riot
of appendages."

It's all about the display,

and display, in the end,
is all about sex.

(dinosaur roars)

JACK (off-screen):
Everything's for display.

An animal does not have
to defend itself every year,

but it does have to mate
every year.

So display is
the most important thing.

Defense is secondary.

(mellow music)

MARK (off-screen):
The present is the best way

to study the past.

If you look at animals today,
when you see, you know,

really bizarre things--

like some of the, you know,
the crests on birds

or elaborate horns
on herbivorous animals

or, you know, frills on lizards
and things like that--

you see, you know,
99 times out of 100

that they are
display structures.

(funky music)

NARRATOR: But a quick survey
of the dinosaur families

shows that we've left
something out.

♪ ♪

-Those heads.
-(dinosaur roars)

So many of them
were ominously horned,

spiked,

collared,

crested...

and domed.

(dinosaur grunts)

Surely these were meant
for violence

against predators
and rivals, right?

In the world
of the bizarre dinosaurs,

apparently,
nothing is as it seems.

♪ ♪

(dramatic music)

(frogs chirping)

Sex:

it's what it's all about.

♪ ♪

In the natural world,
either you've got what it takes

to find, fight for,
and win over a mate,

or you're Darwin-ed out
of the race.

No more genes.

♪ ♪

By the time we've reached
the Cretaceous,

especially as the dinosaurs'
doom descended

at the very end,

evolution had designed
some of the most flamboyant

and creative sexual displays
and behaviors

the world has ever seen.

And the key to success
was often using your head.

♪ ♪

When it comes
to perplexing head gear,

nothing could top
the ceratopsians,

bearing some of the most
fearsome heads

to grace the prehistoric world.

♪ ♪

They certainly look like weapons
and armory:

sharp spears sticking out
of broad shields.

♪ ♪

Take, for example,
our old favorite:

triple-horned and
elegantly collared Triceratops,

often depicted fending off
a voracious T. rex.

(film reel clicking)

For Jack Horner, this is not
a terribly convincing scenario.

JACK:
From a logical point of view,

the last place in this world
you want your defense mechanism

is on your head.

I mean, about the time
you poke a hole

in a T. rex and he falls down,

he's gonna land
on top of your head.

(dramatic rock music)

(horns crack)

(horns clatter)

♪ ♪

(moose bellowing)

♪ ♪

(horns clatter)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: So what about
another obvious solution:

that they were fighting
each other,

that all of this headgear

was mostly about
testosterone-drenched males

pounding the living daylights
out of each other

in the fight for mating rights?

♪ ♪

Certainly among some
amorous mammals today,

head-on violence seems
to be a prerequisite

for reproductive success.

♪ ♪

(curious music)

Even among the reptiles today,

there are a handful
of headbutters,

and one of them,
the Jackson's chameleon,

looks startlingly like
its ancient distant cousin.

GREG: Here's your
Triceratops analogy.

I mean, look at it.
Three horns.

Unbelievable.

Even has a--what they call
a cask.

This is very much like the frill

on the back
of a horned dinosaur

such as, uh, Triceratops.

And there is some evidence
of injuries

on the frills of Triceratops

that suggests that
they did fight with one another.

NARRATOR: But chameleons
would rather display their horns

than lock them,

and Greg Erickson thinks

the ceratopsians would have
done the same.

GREG (off-screen):
What were these structures for?

Well, the traditional
explanation

is that this shield
was a defense

to parry off blows
from other horned dinosaurs

or to help
and protect their neck

when they were being attacked
by predatory dinosaurs.

And I'm not sure
I believe any of that.

I think these are display
structures, for the most part.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: From humble origins
in the Jurassic,

the ceratopsians' heads
simply exploded

into exuberant spectacles
in their last days.

There's our favorite,
Triceratops,

along with its even more
outlandish cousins.

There's Styracosaurus,
meaning "spiked lizard,"

with its profusion
of long horns

extending from its neck frill.

Here's elegant Chasmosaurus,

with an even taller,
more elegant frill,

this one edged
with lacy little spikes.

And the equally curious head
of Centrosaurus.

♪ ♪

For many paleontologists today,

these extreme heads
are a clear indication

that the ceratopsians
were lovers, not fighters.

♪ ♪

Potential mates could recognize
their own kind at a distance,

size up their frills,

and get to the heart
of the matter.

To heighten the allure,

the heads may have blazed
with colors

as extravagant as their sizes
and shapes.

In one dinosaur family,

the question of how best
to use your head

to win the girl has reached
its own level of weirdness,

one in which headbutting
among paleontologists

is getting fiercer
than any head-banging

in the Mesozoic.

Welcome to the world
of the pachycephalosaurs,

or "thick-headed lizards."

(footsteps thudding)

If any animal on Earth
looks more suited

to slamming its cranium
into another's,

it has got to be
some of these guys.

Some of their domes are
20 centimeters thick or more,

inspiring awe and controversy
in equal measure.

BOB (off-screen): Of all
the major dinosaur groups,

the butt-heads are the ones

that inspire the deepest
soul-searching among us,

the most puzzled expressions,

and the most extraordinary,
exhilarating flights of idiocy.

PAUL: We're in a struggle

to understand
dome-headed dinosaurs.

JACK:
Adult pachycephalosaur domes

are definitely not adapted
for headbutting.

Definitely not.

NARRATOR: On one point,
everyone agrees:

the heads
of the pachycephalosaurs

were sexy--
at least to other pachys.

The argument is over
whether they were sexy

in the violent sense--impressing
the females with power--

or pure visual allure.

(dinosaur grunts)

(curious music)

There's no doubt that the skull
of this dome-head--

Pachycephalosaurus--
bears a striking resemblance

to the most dedicated
headbutters of today.

BOB (off-screen): This is the
butt-head supreme alive today.

♪ ♪

The musk ox.

Side view.

Big googly eyes, dome here--

please note, it is domed.

67 million years ago,
this rammed.

Right now in the Arctic tundra,
this rams.

NARRATOR: But for Jack Horner,
even if a head

looks on the outside
like it was used for butting,

you have to look inside
to see if it was up to the job.

He has been
cutting open the heads

of pachycephalosaurs
for years now.

What he has found
was counterintuitive.

Their heads were full
of brittle stuff.

(inquisitive music)

JACK (off-screen):
They're constructed

of a very odd kind of bone.

It is brittle;
it's kind of like porcelain.

And if those dinosaurs had
crashed their heads together,

they probably would have
just shattered.

The pachys did not headbutt

and couldn't have
more than once.

Once they crashed
their heads together,

that would have
knocked them both out

and they'd have just been
laying there.

(dinosaurs grunting)

NARRATOR:
For Jack Horner, then,

the pachycephalosaur heads

were all about
the same old love song:

a pure display of health
and vitality

with no need
for all of that violence.

(dramatic rock music)

Not everyone is convinced.

♪ ♪

Earlier studies indicate
the bones were pretty sturdy

and awfully
biologically expensive

for just showing off.

♪ ♪

PAUL (off-screen):
6, 7, 8 inches of solid bone

in some of these large
pachycephalosaur dinosaurs.

That's a lot of bone to feed,
a lot of bone to upkeep.

NARRATOR:
And even if head-banging

may have taken its toll,
it would have been worth it.

♪ ♪

BOB (off-screen):
If you're gonna headbutt

to impress a potential mate,

you're gonna run the risk
of breaking your head.

It does happen today
with musk oxen,

and it's a risk
you've got to take

because that's the only way
to get your genes

into the next generation.

NARRATOR: Bob Bakker points out
two other factors.

Like the musk ox,

pachycephalosaurs have
huge areas

on the back of the neck

where massive muscles
could have been attached.

♪ ♪

And then there's that
equally classic dinosaur brain.

BOB: Though I love
these animals,

they were dumb as posts.

The brain is very small.

Small brains
are harder to injure.

(dramatic music)

NARRATOR: The headbutting--

among both dinosaurs
and paleontologists--

reaches its culmination

with one of the most
bizarre dinosaurs of all.

Enter the dragon...

(dinosaur calling)

Dracorex hogwartsia.

PHIL (off-screen): What makes
Dracorex hogwartsia so wonderful

is, it does look like something
out of a fantasy movie.

It really does look
like a dragon

with this strange spiky skull.

It doesn't look real.

NARRATOR: If ever there was
a face made for headbutting,

as far as Bob Bakker's
concerned,

it's this one.

It bears
a remarkable resemblance

to the head-banging
African warthog,

and by mashing two casts

of Dracorex's
peculiar face together,

he discovered something amazing.

BOB:
This is craniological Velcro.

There are so many bumps that
you press the heads together

and they don't slip.

So they push and shove
and push and shove

and push and shove
until one of them gives up.

NARRATOR: Even here,
opinions differ.

Horner suspects that Dracorex
wasn't even its own species,

let alone a headbutter,

just an adolescent
pachycephalosaur

obviously going through
an awkward phase.

Clearly, the dragon king
of hogwartsia

is not going to put the
headbutting controversy to rest.

♪ ♪

And now an even more puzzling
little dinosaur

has charged into the debate:

a dome-headed
mini pachycephalosaur

about the size of a cat.

PAUL: We have found
an absolutely bizarre headbutter

that we believe is a dwarf.

(quirky music)

A little animal we're gonna call
Mushroom Head, Microcephale,

because it almost looks like
it's wearing

a top hat
that's expanded

yet it's filled
with solid bone...

♪ ♪

Covered with an armored surface
that also is smooth at the top.

NARRATOR:
A headbutter this small?

Surely it was just a baby pachy.

Except the CT scans
told a different story.

♪ ♪

The sutures between the bones
in its skull

had completely fused,

which means the animal
was a full-grown adult.

♪ ♪

PAUL: I think this is
our smallest headbutter

ever to have evolved.

(dinosaurs grunting)

NARRATOR:
From the violent

to the most peaceful way
to use your head,

here is a creature
that may have perfected

that gentlest of seductions...

(dinosaur bugles)

The love song.

(dinosaur bugles)

The curiously crested head
of Parasaurolophus

kept paleontologists guessing
for generations.

(dinosaurs bugling)

PHIL (off-screen):
Parasaurolophus

is just truly weird.

It's got this enormous expansion
of skull bones

which projects into this
banana-like lump

coming out
of the back of its skull.

(dramatic music)

NARRATOR: For a long time,
it was assumed

that this dinosaur
was a water dweller

and used its unusual headgear
as a snorkel.

♪ ♪

But CT scans of the crest

show that there was no opening
at the top to breathe through.

What those CT scans did show
was this...

An elegant construction of tubes

that bears a striking
resemblance to a trombone.

♪ ♪

Using the CT scans

to generate
a 3-D virtual instrument,

scientists in New Mexico

may have even re-created
Parasaurolophus' eerie music.

(dinosaur bugling)

In fact, its crest might have
done double duty

when it came to flirting,

displaying both audibly
and visually

for the opposite sex.

(dinosaur bugling)

♪ ♪

(mysterious music)

♪ ♪

Though the arguments
about exactly how dinosaurs

used their heads
just keep heating up,

one thing is for sure:

sex in the late Cretaceous...

(dinosaur roars)

Was a roaring success.

But the wild triumphs
of the age of the dinosaurs

were about to be rendered moot.

Their only hopes rested
with an evolutionary experiment

that would result in some of the
most baffling creatures ever.

♪ ♪

(dramatic music)

NARRATOR: After more
than 150 million years

dominating the Earth,
the dinosaurs were doomed.

♪ ♪

There was an asteroid
on the way.

Volcanoes were about to explode.

Perhaps even a deadly plague
was being unleashed.

♪ ♪

But evolution had nonetheless
stumbled onto a plan

for the dinosaurs' survival:

the bird plan.

♪ ♪

And nature's experiments
with the bird cousins

were simply wild.

(curious music)

Take this little
birdlike dinosaur...

♪ ♪

Epidendrosaurus.

♪ ♪

Standing on two legs
with forearms and claws

elongating into
winglike proportions

and possibly sporting feathers,

sparrow-sized Epidendrosaurus
couldn't fly,

but it probably did live
in trees,

where its outrageous hands
came in, well, handy.

♪ ♪

They are completely
out of proportion to its body,

and that one finger
is twice as long as the others.

MARK: I mean, it's sort of
similar to what you see

in this type of lemur
called an aye-aye in Madagascar,

where that really
elongated finger

may have been used
to, you know,

dig into the bark of trees
after termites

or some other insects
that they were eating.

You know, that's also
a very, very strange thing.

♪ ♪

Three, four, five, six.

NARRATOR:
More than a decade ago,

Mark Norell discovered some
of the first direct evidence

of birdlike behavior
among the dinosaurs...

MARK: 12 eggs.

(inhales sharply)
All right.

NARRATOR: Fossilized dinos

who had been sitting
on their fossilized eggs.

♪ ♪

These were the oviraptors.

(dramatic music)

Most oviraptors
looked like birds

and stuck to birdlike sizes,

the largest being smaller
than an ostrich.

♪ ♪

That is, until this behemoth
was discovered:

Gigantoraptor...

more than 5 meters tall

and weighing in at 1 1/2 tons.

PHIL: This was
absolutely enormous.

This was a big animal.

It's almost on the scale
of Tyrannosaurus rex,

but think scaling
a giant chicken.

This is what this animal
almost looked like.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: This enormous dinosaur
has a toothless beak,

which would suggest
that it ate plants,

but its size and fearsome claws

hint that it may have been
a meat-eater as well.

♪ ♪

(dinosaur squawking)

♪ ♪

But perhaps the most mysterious
birdlike dinosaur of all

is this one:
Deinocheirus.

Known only from a single set
of tremendous arms and claws,

the animal may have been
12 meters long.

♪ ♪

Originally imagined
to be a deadly carnivore

tearing its prey to shreds
with those incredible claws,

Deinocheirus may actually
have been a gentle giant.

Some paleontologists think
that it may have behaved

more like that most placid
of animals, the sloth.

But until some more of its
intriguing fossils are found,

Deinocheirus is largely
a creature of the imagination.

♪ ♪

Deinocheirus lived at the end
of the Cretaceous period

and may well have been around
to witness the cataclysmic end

to the age of the dinosaurs.

(explosion)

(rumbling)

(dinosaur chirps)

Its line did not survive.

(rumbling)

But some little dino birds did,
and no one knows why.

It is one
of the greatest mysteries

in the dinosaurs'
riddle-filled story.

(mysterious music)

All we do know is that
the basic body plan--

the bird plan--
somehow made it through

to the modern age,

and the birds of today

are now the bizarre dinosaurs
of the world.

Far more successful than either
mammals or reptiles,

the birds have managed
to find ways to thrive

in virtually every habitat
on Earth.

(penguins chirping)

And nothing can match them

in terms of outrageous behavior

and spectacular displays
of strength and sexiness.

They're a credit to their
extraordinary predecessors,

ancient cousins

who seemed to take
every opportunity to stretch

the bounds
of nature's creativity.

KRISTI (off-screen):
They evolved horns,

frills, spikes, plates,

long necks, long tails,

sharp claws, big teeth.

They do all of these things

and they're wildly successful
organisms on the planet

from 228 million years ago
to 65 million years ago.

They are the kings and queens
of the Earth at that time.

(pensive music)

NARRATOR:
And the truly remarkable part?

We've probably only discovered
a tiny fraction

of all the dinosaurs
that ever existed.

♪ ♪

Meaning that even more
mind-boggling

and mystifying creatures
are out there

just waiting to be found.

♪ ♪

MARK (off-screen): This amazing
amount of material we find,

some of it's going to be
some very unusual animals,

so it was probably
a lot weirder in the past

than we can even imagine.

PAUL (off-screen): That's
the fun part of paleontology

because you can be assured
of this: that we're gonna find

some new and bizarre dinosaurs
in the future.

♪ ♪

JACK (off-screen): There are
plenty of surprises out there,

so many things
that you can't predict.

All I can say is, you know,
be ready for anything.

(dinosaurs grunting)

(dinosaurs growling, bugling)

♪ ♪

Captioned by Captionmax