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For 100 million years,
dinosaurs dominated the Earth.

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But they remain enigmatic creatures.

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That's because all that scientists
had to work with

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were fossilized bones.

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Ah! Woo!

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But now, the seemingly
impossible has been discovered...

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Oh, look! Yeah.

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..signs of life inside
these long-dead skeletons.

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It opened the door to the possibility

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that we could begin to understand
dinosaurs in a different way.

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For the first time,

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they've been able to look at
the blood of a T-rex...

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..touch 68 million-year-old
soft tissue...

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It was, you know,
goosebump-inducing -

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just about everything that we saw.

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And Dr Mary Schweitzer
may be on the verge

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of turning Hollywood fantasy
into scientific reality...

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..finding dinosaur DNA.

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It looks like it, it acts like it,
it smells like it.

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You know what, if you have cells,
if you have soft tissue,

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if you have proteins,

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why rule out DNA?

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For the past few decades,

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dinosaur hunters have been
drawn to the American West.

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It's pretty much
Dr Mary Schweitzer's back yard.

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She lives for part of the year in
the Rocky Mountain state of Montana,

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where some of the richest dinosaur
remains have been uncovered.

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A lot of dinosaurs lived in this area
because just to the East of us,

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in Eastern Montana,
North and South Dakota,

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was a big, shallow, warm inland sea.

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And so the dinosaurs would follow
the seaway,

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migrating up and down,
North and South,

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so there was a lot of them here.

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More T-rexes have been found
here in Montana

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than anywhere else in the world.

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But we know very little about the
world's most iconic dinosaur...

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..apart from a few very simple
facts, like it was 12m long

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and could weigh seven tonnes.

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That's a good boy. Come on.

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There you go.

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And that's because, according to
Dr Schweitzer,

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the male-dominated world
of dinosaur science

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tends to ask the wrong questions.

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I think for men a lot of it is,
"Can we quantify it?"

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You know - bigger teeth,
meaner animal.

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And I think for women, we're...

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I can't say that it's all that way

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but I think mostly
we ask different questions.

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We ask, "How did they function?
What was their biology?"

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SHE LAUGHS

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Ah! Woo!

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Today, she isn't riding the range
in search of another T-rex.

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She's hunting more recent
remains that might help to reveal

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some of the hidden secrets
of the world's best-known dinosaur.

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And that's because she's
interested in how

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the once-living tissue
of this dead buffalo

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decays and gets broken down
over time.

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In palaeontology,
we can't watch our dinosaurs die.

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And we can't see what's going
to happen to them.

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But we know that obviously,
if all we have is a skeleton,

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we don't have the whole dinosaur.

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There's a lot of information missing.

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But again, when you see
parts in the fossil record...

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this is skin right there.

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That has a high
preservation potential

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and it's because of the molecular
make-up of the skin itself.

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The guts are gone,
the intestines are gone.

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But the skin and the cartilage,
the bone and the teeth

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are what remain.

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Good boy.

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Your buddies are jealous, huh?

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It's long been Mary's dream
to do this

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with a 65 million-year-old fossil.

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To be able to get her
hands on blood,

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soft tissue
and even the DNA of a T-rex.

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Come on, play with me.

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It might seem an impossible task

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but she believes that
finding signs of life,

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uncovering ancient biology,

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is the only way to put flesh
on the bones

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of the most iconic creatures
ever to stalk the Earth.

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I mean, a lot of the things that have
been done in the past,

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with respect to dinosaurs,
have been untestable hypotheses.

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I mean, really, you could say
dinosaurs were invisible and green

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and how would I prove you wrong?
There's no data.

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I love the way they smell.

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'So I think that getting at
some of these questions

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'about how their proteins
are put together

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'can get us at their function,

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'get us at why they had
an evolutionary advantage.'

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And if we can understand that,
there's a lot we can learn from them.

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You're falling asleep! Look at,
those eyes are starting to get shut.

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Imagine trying to figure out
how a horse might look,

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just from its skeleton.

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Without the biology -
the cells, protein and DNA...

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..we couldn't tell what colour
its eyes were...

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..how far it could see...

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..the way it smelt...

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..the texture of its coat...

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..the make and shape of its muscles.

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Without its biology,
the horse just isn't a horse.

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But most palaeontologists believed
that finding any biological material

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in 65 million-year-old
dinosaur bones

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was impossible.

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And that's because it was thought
that the process of fossilisation

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destroyed every living thing
in the bone.

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Once the dead animal is covered
in sand or mud,

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the fleshy parts then decay.

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And the mineral and organic elements
of the bone

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are replaced by the minerals
in the soil.

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In essence,

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they get turned to stone.

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But what if this wasn't the case?

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What if some of this biological
material was still with us?

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The only way to find out

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would be to look inside
the bones...

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..to conduct a dinosaur autopsy.

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And that's exactly
what's going on here.

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A dinosaur leg bone is being
cut up for analysis...

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..in a process known as histology.

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The bone then needs to be carved
into thin slices...

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..and embedded in plastic so it
can be examined under a microscope.

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It's a bit like cutting down a tree
and looking at the rings.

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They reveal how fast or slowly
the tree grew.

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And you can see the same kind
of pattern in dinosaur bones.

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Is this the first femur?

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It was pioneered by Mary's mentor
and the world's leading dinosaur
scientist,

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Dr Jack Horner.

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Let's say that section.

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'Looking at the bone histology
of dinosaurs'

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and looking at babies and juveniles
and some adults,

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we've learned that

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when baby dinosaurs hatched out of
their eggs, they grew really fast.

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Do you know what side it is yet?

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'They had sustained high growth
periods.'

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INDISTINCT CHATTER

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'If you hatch out of the egg
at a half a metre long,'

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you're not very big.

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And if you're going to
grow to the size of a house,

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you'd better get busy.

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And that's all I can say

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because the longer you are small,
the longer you're vulnerable.

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Mary started out as Jack's student.

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And back in 1991, he gave her pieces
of a T-rex leg bone to analyse.

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At first, there appeared to be
nothing out of the ordinary

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about this bone.

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But THIS bone turned out
to be rather special.

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Because what she was looking at,

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when she placed the slide under
the microscope,

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had never been seen before.

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Staring back at her was something
that shouldn't have been there.

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It looked like a red blood cell.

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And its chemical composition
included a heme -

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a part of haemoglobin which helps
carry oxygen in blood

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and gives it its red colour.

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MARY: I was shocked,
I was really surprised.

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The thing that was cool about it is
we know very little, really,

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about these beasts that once
walked on the surface of our planet.

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And all vertebrate organisms except,
well, almost all,

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except for mammals, have
nucleated red blood cells.

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And these things that I was seeing
in the vessel channels of the bone

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were nucleated. They were translucent
red with a dark centre.

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This evidence seemed to suggest that
organic matter could in some way

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survive the process
of fossilisation.

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And what was so exciting about it...

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..is that the new tools and
technology of molecular biology

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might now be used to understand
these long-vanished creatures.

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'It opened the door to the
possibility that we could begin
to understand

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'the function and the physiology
of dinosaurs in a different way.

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If we could get at the elemental
molecular structure,

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that's where the real evolutionary
information is housed.

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And so being able to recover
those things from a dinosaur

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would open the door to understanding
them at a completely different level.

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She now set out to look
for other evidence.

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That's if there was anything else
to recover.

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Mary's new techniques now started
to play into

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one of the most long-standing
questions in palaeontology.

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Just what kind of creatures
were dinosaurs?

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For decades, scientists relied on
unearthing clues from the bones -

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the anatomy.

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And for the people who invented
palaeontology in the 19th century...

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..the bones they saw mostly
looked like giant lizards.

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It wasn't just the size of the
bones - they're obviously colossal.

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It was the teeth
that really helped them understand

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what sort of creatures
dinosaurs were.

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DR HORNER: The teeth that they
were finding were very similar,

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or at least somewhat similar,
to lizards.

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And in particular,

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one was particularly close to
an iguana lizard.

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And so they didn't have
much of the skeleton of the dinosaur

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but they knew what an iguana lizard
looks like

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and an iguana lizard is a reptile.

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But for modern scientists, the teeth
are now seen as a distraction.

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A more comprehensive
analysis of their skeletons

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suggests they're not related
to lizards, but birds.

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And there's one bone in particular,
familiar from the dinner table,

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that's helped to prove the case.

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It's a very special bone
called the furcula.

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And the furcula we find
in meat-eating dinosaurs

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is otherwise known as the wishbone.

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And so when we think about what
characteristics define a bird -

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the wishbone, hollow bones,
feathers, hard-shelled eggs,

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I mean, there's a whole list
of them.

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And what's interesting is,
through the ages we've discovered

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that dinosaurs actually invented
all of those characteristics.

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Dinosaurs had all of those
characteristics...

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..those that we consider
bird characteristics.

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Anatomy has helped to establish
the size, weight,

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even the strength of dinosaurs.

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But on questions of their
bird-like biology -

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the colour of their skin, whether
they were warm- or cold-blooded,

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even how they evolved -

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the bones are silent.

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Making them talk
would require luck, skill

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and knowing the right people.

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This is Bob Harmon.

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For decades, he's worked closely
with Jack Horner.

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And he's something of a legend
in palaeontology.

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He has a special gift
for sniffing out fossils.

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And back in 2000, there was
something about the lay of the land

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in the Hell's Creek area of Montana
that looked promising.

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One day, I came to this one area,
kind of a box canyon type area,

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and I actually
sat down to eat my lunch

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and figure out how to get up to this
next cliff I was going to look at.

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So I was eating lunch,
turned around, looked,

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and here's a bleached-out white bone
sticking out of the cliff.

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So...

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And then I got to looking
a little farther and I could see it,

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the cross-section of
a tyrannosaur vertebrate.

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It has a very distinct shape,

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something we look for
when we're out prospecting.

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It's a honeycomb shape.

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So when you see that,
you get all excited

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cos it's probably a T-rex.

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You know, heart started beating
pretty good

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and then I start looking
up and up and up

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at 50 feet of rock
sitting on top of this bone.

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And pretty much just went, "My God,
what have I done?" You know?

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That's because he knew he'd
have to remove

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all of that 50 foot of rock
to get at the fossil.

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It took them nearly three years'
careful digging

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to extricate the whole skeleton.

243
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,760
But there was another problem.

244
00:20:55,760 --> 00:20:59,600
The area was so remote -
there were no roads in or out -

245
00:20:59,600 --> 00:21:02,600
that every single piece of it
had to be choppered out.

246
00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:12,360
But one of the bones, a femur,
was just too big to carry.

247
00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:19,600
And Bob had to do something
he really didn't want to.

248
00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:23,200
I said, "Jeez, we are going to have
to break this thing in half."

249
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:25,160
And tyrannosaur bone
does not break well.

250
00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:27,760
I mean, it's so dense, you know,
it's hollow in the middle

251
00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:31,040
then it just shatters like glass
when you break it.

252
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:33,520
So I knew it was going to be bad.
HE LAUGHS

253
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:37,400
But I said, "OK. I don't think we
have any choice. Let's just do it."

254
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:40,440
So we broke it in half and
it shattered all over.

255
00:21:45,040 --> 00:21:48,960
The bones get removed with
the soil surrounding them.

256
00:21:48,960 --> 00:21:51,160
It's what the scientists
call context.

257
00:21:53,840 --> 00:21:58,760
They still don't really know why
but the Hell's Creek soil

258
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:01,320
seems to have special
preservation properties.

259
00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:07,640
And when some of these Hell's Creek
bones are cracked open,

260
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,200
there's something about them
that marks them out as different.

261
00:22:13,320 --> 00:22:16,360
And it's got nothing to do
with how they look.

262
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,840
JACK: In many bones that are
broken up,

263
00:22:20,840 --> 00:22:23,680
we do have a very biological smell.

264
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:29,400
Kind of a...almost like oil
or rotting something. Um...

265
00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:30,960
And, you know,

266
00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:35,760
it was certainly weird
back in the days before we knew

267
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:37,240
what it possibly was.

268
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:40,960
As it turned out,

269
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:44,960
this smell was a clue
to what lay within the bones.

270
00:22:55,960 --> 00:22:57,800
This was just the kind of material

271
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:00,440
Mary Schweitzer wanted
to get her hands on.

272
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,400
But it wasn't the smell
of the fragments of T-rex femur

273
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:15,040
that Jack sent her
that set her pulse racing.

274
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:22,360
It was how they looked.

275
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:29,440
T-rex bones might appear solid
but they're not.

276
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:31,080
They are in fact hollow.

277
00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:40,080
But when she peered through
the microscope,

278
00:23:40,080 --> 00:23:42,880
she saw something that
shouldn't have been there.

279
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:45,520
And this is it.

280
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,200
The yellow area
should have been hollow.

281
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:53,880
The fossilised bone on the outside,

282
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:55,680
which is all that remains of
cortical bone,

283
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,280
was all she expected to find.

284
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:02,560
This tissue right here is what
most dinosaur bone looks like.

285
00:24:02,560 --> 00:24:04,040
Everybody has this.

286
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,440
This tissue right here
had not been seen before.

287
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:19,080
She saw what appeared to be
a group of specialised cells.

288
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:21,880
And these cells were utterly unique.

289
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:38,880
They're only found in birds.

290
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:45,840
And they use this tissue
to make eggs.

291
00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:52,240
And that could only mean one thing.

292
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:57,000
And I looked at it and I held it
in my hand

293
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:58,280
and I said to my technician,

294
00:24:58,280 --> 00:25:00,480
"Oh, my gosh, this is a girl
and it's pregnant."

295
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:09,200
If Mary really was looking at the
bones of a pregnant T-rex,

296
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:12,240
it'd be a first in palaeontology.

297
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:15,080
But the microscope slide on
its own wasn't enough.

298
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,000
MARY: I love her wings from the back.
Can you get that picture?

299
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:24,120
MARY GIGGLES

300
00:25:24,120 --> 00:25:25,680
Ow!

301
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:29,640
To be sure, she needed to compare it
with the medullary bone

302
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:32,880
from one of the most primitive
birds still alive -

303
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:33,800
the ostrich.

304
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:42,520
Its evolutionary history can be
traced back 23 million years.

305
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,200
So just how does an ostrich
compare with a dinosaur?

306
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,880
I am in love. Look at this.
Look at her wing.

307
00:25:56,880 --> 00:26:00,440
Can you see how the feather's
attached to the skin?

308
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,800
Look at, their arms are like T-rex...

309
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:08,120
..with skin on.
They're short, little, stubby things.

310
00:26:08,120 --> 00:26:10,840
But you see how the feathers are
inserting into the skin like that?

311
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:15,840
Do we have any more grapes?

312
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:20,200
The problem was that she couldn't
do the test

313
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,120
on a living pregnant ostrich.

314
00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:25,360
She needed a dead one.

315
00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:27,080
So she put out a plea for help

316
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:31,000
and fortunately a local
ostrich farmer answered the call.

317
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:33,720
He had a pregnant bird

318
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,640
but it had been dead
for over a week.

319
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,560
I could definitely smell it
before I could see it.

320
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,120
It was all, you know,
bloated from death and...

321
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:46,320
..you touched the stomach
and it kind of went "goosh!"

322
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:49,280
It was so gross
and it was really smelly.

323
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:51,200
So I sawed the leg off

324
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:54,200
and tasted really rotten ostrich meat
for about two weeks after that,

325
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:55,360
in my mouth.

326
00:26:55,360 --> 00:26:58,200
But it was really gross and he had
a whole bunch more ostriches

327
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:00,760
so they were all kind of standing
around me in a circle,

328
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:02,760
watching as I dismembered
their friend

329
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:04,800
and I felt a little weird about that.

330
00:27:13,120 --> 00:27:15,800
Holding her nose,
she took the bone back into the lab

331
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:17,600
and placed it under a microscope.

332
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:24,680
And what she saw was
ground-breaking.

333
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:31,000
The pregnant ostrich had
medullary bone

334
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,440
and in exactly the same position
as the pregnant T-rex.

335
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,560
It was really cool that we had
a pregnant dinosaur

336
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:43,760
but this had been predicted
and it was just verifying that,

337
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:45,440
you know, if birds and dinosaurs

338
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:50,520
were as closely related as we
had been thinking, as a field,

339
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:52,200
it should have been there.

340
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:02,440
It was the first time that
anyone had ever been able

341
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:04,520
to establish the sex of a dinosaur.

342
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:10,840
And it confirmed the importance

343
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:13,840
of trying to understand the biology
of these ancient creatures.

344
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:24,800
MARY: I couldn't believe it. It was,
you know, it was just a gift.

345
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,520
In my kind of palaeontology,
everybody's eyes glass over.

346
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:33,960
If you want to go to a talk
on palaeontology

347
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:39,040
you think field pictures and badlands
and really pretty...dinosaurs.

348
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:42,120
And I study under the microscope.

349
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,240
So this was exciting
in that I thought, "Well,

350
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,760
"maybe this is the time
I can really contribute to the field

351
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:50,440
"in a way that my colleagues will
understand and care about."

352
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,680
Rather than just letting Mary
do her own weird thing!

353
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:54,160
So, yeah, I was excited.

354
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:05,280
One of the first implications
of her work

355
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:09,880
was to make the biological case
that dinosaurs were indeed birds.

356
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,200
MARY: They're so fun!

357
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:16,200
See their feet?

358
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:21,520
And Mary, along with
other scientists,

359
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:23,520
has been figuring out what
this might mean

360
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,480
for how we see these iconic animals.

361
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:27,600
He's so pretty.

362
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,880
For a start, it would be difficult
to read their expressions.

363
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:40,600
Well, if you notice their skulls,
their head, it's just...

364
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:42,480
skin stretched over the bone.

365
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:49,120
And so they don't have the muscles,
they don't have the additional fat.

366
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,680
And that's what gives animals
expression like your dog

367
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:54,720
that looks at you with the cocked
head and the ears

368
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,080
and the little furrow in its brow.

369
00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:59,080
These guys aren't capable
of doing that.

370
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:04,160
They don't convey any emotion at all.

371
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:08,600
And if you look directly in his eye,
it almost looks dead.

372
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:15,520
That's what they might
look like in a one-on-one

373
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,160
but what about collectively,
when they're all gathered together?

374
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:24,560
DR HORNER: I think that when we're
imagining dinosaurs on a plain,

375
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:28,520
we have to really think of them
like flocks of birds,

376
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:34,200
walking and then shifting and then,
you know, I mean just, you know,

377
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:36,960
Not just mulling
around like mammals do.

378
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,720
I mean, mammals are just
sort of mulling around.

379
00:30:39,720 --> 00:30:43,400
Birds, you know,
really have some, you know,

380
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:47,480
some overall shape to their groups.

381
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:51,320
I mean, they all are travelling
in one area and then they shift

382
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:54,040
and, I mean, it's just
very different.

383
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:01,400
And what about the best-known
dinosaur of all,

384
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:02,440
T-rex?

385
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:05,920
What kind of bird was it?

386
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:12,560
So, if we think about Tyrannosaurus
with its bone-crushing teeth,

387
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:15,000
I envision it to be much like
a vulture.

388
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:21,960
And when you think about a big
vulture eating carcasses,

389
00:31:21,960 --> 00:31:23,160
they're nasty.

390
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:27,560
He wants to eat me for lunch.

391
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:34,360
SHE SHRIEKS

392
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:47,200
That was my Velociraptor experience.
That's as close as I want to have.

393
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,000
Look at, there he goes again.

394
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,160
SHE LAUGHS

395
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,920
I think there would be no hesitation,
no pulling back.

396
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:56,640
And I think once they decide
they want you for lunch,

397
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,920
you might as well just give up.

398
00:31:59,920 --> 00:32:01,000
Ooh!

399
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,080
All this started to show
that her work,

400
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:13,000
hunting for organic matter
within ancient fossils,

401
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:16,360
had the potential to really
transform our understanding

402
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:17,600
of dinosaurs.

403
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,760
The next step,
the most important one,

404
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,960
came from re-examining the basics
of bone biology.

405
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,440
Bone is a composite.
It's like plywood.

406
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:43,000
It has a hard part, which is
the minerals that make up bone,

407
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:45,440
and it has a soft part, which is
the collagen.

408
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,440
So bone is both protein
and it's mineral.

409
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,480
And when you put the two together,
it gives it great strength.

410
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:55,400
But it is alive and the cells
that are part of bone maintain it

411
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:57,160
and they give it nutrients

412
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,880
and they continue to just maintain
the bone as living structure.

413
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,160
Take away the mineral element
of this chicken bone

414
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:09,360
by sticking it in an acid bath
and all you're left with

415
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:12,240
is the bendy, flexible, collagen,
protein part.

416
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:15,880
So Mary wondered,

417
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:19,320
could you find that organic material
in a T-rex fossil?

418
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,960
We have always assumed that
all of the organics go away.

419
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,560
And so what you're left with
is basically a mineral morph.

420
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,080
And it's got lots of holes
in it where the protein used to sit,

421
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:31,760
where the blood vessels used to run

422
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:34,480
and the little houses where the
bone cells are,

423
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:35,840
that's all empty now.

424
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,080
So, I mean, if we're right
about that process

425
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:42,280
then if you remove the mineral,
you should have nothing left. Right?

426
00:33:42,280 --> 00:33:43,920
Because the organics are
already gone.

427
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:50,640
So she set up a deceptively
simple experiment.

428
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,480
She dropped the T-rex fossil,
packed full of medullary bone,

429
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:57,920
in an acid bath...

430
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:02,080
..and left it overnight.

431
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,200
When her assistant came back to
check in the morning,

432
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:18,240
something remarkable had happened.

433
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,720
Something that didn't seem possible.

434
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,080
The process went faster than
either of us predicted.

435
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:31,680
And so when she went to stop it
by taking the piece of medullary bone

436
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,920
and putting it in water, she went to
pick it up with her tweezers

437
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,640
and it went like that...

438
00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:45,720
And she called me immediately
and said, "Something's really wrong."

439
00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:48,960
And, you know, I mean, I had
the same expectation as anyone else -

440
00:34:48,960 --> 00:34:51,040
if you dissolve away your
dinosaur bone,

441
00:34:51,040 --> 00:34:53,240
you're going to have nothing left.

442
00:34:53,240 --> 00:34:54,400
But we did.

443
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,120
And this is what it looked like
under a microscope.

444
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:10,840
In a sense, she was able to reach
back through 68 million years

445
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:12,720
and touch a dinosaur.

446
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:24,880
And not just any dinosaur -

447
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,960
this was a soft, pliable piece
of a T-rex.

448
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,720
So, we saw this, where basically
this is the medullary bone

449
00:35:39,720 --> 00:35:41,040
with the mineral removed.

450
00:35:42,720 --> 00:35:46,640
And you can see...see the blood
vessels inside the bone?

451
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:49,240
They stretch with the matrix
themselves.

452
00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:52,200
This was really hard to hang on to!

453
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:53,760
But there you go, you see it stretch?

454
00:35:55,360 --> 00:36:01,640
This was a combination of my absolute
worst nightmare and Christmas,

455
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:03,880
every day in the lab
for about a month.

456
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:05,560
I couldn't wait to get to work

457
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:08,440
but I was scared to death
at what had happened overnight.

458
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:13,640
Um...it was, you know,
goosebump-inducing -

459
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:16,080
just about everything that we saw.

460
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:17,880
It was...

461
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:18,960
I can't even explain it

462
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:21,160
and I know I'll never have that
experience again

463
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:22,920
but it was magic - just magic.

464
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:42,280
Finding the soft tissue

465
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,120
opened the door to a new world
of possibilities.

466
00:36:51,640 --> 00:36:55,480
She now set out to do something
that no-one had ever done before...

467
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:04,400
..to try and find proteins -
the building blocks of life.

468
00:37:09,240 --> 00:37:11,320
She started with this
T-rex bone cell.

469
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,320
If there was a chemical signature
of ancient proteins,

470
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:17,200
it should be hidden away inside.

471
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:24,240
Because birds are descended
from dinosaurs,

472
00:37:24,240 --> 00:37:26,520
the chicken would be
the key to this quest.

473
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:34,440
Mary took a classic tool of
modern biology,

474
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:38,160
one that helps to identify proteins
in chicken bones,

475
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:42,360
and she applied this same test
to the T-rex soft tissue.

476
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:57,760
If there were no proteins
in the cell,

477
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,160
the slide on the right would
remain black.

478
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:05,680
Anything green would be
a sign of life.

479
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:21,360
The green glow made
palaeontological history.

480
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:28,080
It was very exciting, yes.
I was very happy.

481
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:28,960
Very cool!

482
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:48,320
When it was first published in 2005,

483
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:50,840
this research wasn't
universally accepted.

484
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:56,320
Some scientists said her samples
might be contaminated.

485
00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:58,760
Others were dismissive.

486
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,640
Because I was a middle-aged housewife
from Bozeman, Montana -

487
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:05,480
I had no credentials at all.

488
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:10,400
And I think that...I think that
came into play.

489
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,960
I know it came into play later.

490
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:16,400
Um...yeah.

491
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,120
I had a reviewer on one of my papers
once say

492
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:24,320
that he didn't care what the data
said, he knew it wasn't possible.

493
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:29,320
And for me, it's like,
if you can't be convinced by data,

494
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,440
then how is this science?

495
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:37,000
But over the past decade,

496
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,880
her work at
the North Carolina State University

497
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:41,400
is gaining acceptance.

498
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:48,000
She's ruled out the possibility
of contamination

499
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:51,200
and painstakingly analysed
other dinosaur bones.

500
00:39:56,320 --> 00:39:58,800
And she's gone even further,

501
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:02,960
potentially turning Hollywood
fantasy into scientific reality.

502
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:10,600
She's taken some of the cells from
the 68 million-year-old
soft T-rex tissue

503
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,600
and began to look for
the impossible -

504
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:15,200
DNA.

505
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:24,520
You know what, if you have cells,
if you have soft tissue,

506
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:27,120
if you have proteins,

507
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:29,360
why rule out DNA?

508
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:40,360
So she took a single T-rex bone cell
and ran a series of chemical tests

509
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,560
using a classic DNA
staining procedure.

510
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:53,960
If the DNA was present in the cell,
it would show up in yellow.

511
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:02,960
And astonishingly,

512
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:04,120
it did.

513
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,800
You can see there's this little
light point right here,

514
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:15,040
that's internal to the cell
membrane - it's inside the cell.

515
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:17,720
It's very specific, a single point.

516
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:24,000
We have a visual signal of something
that chemically reacts like DNA.

517
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,000
It looks like it, it acts like it,
it smells like it, you know, yeah!

518
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:38,240
If I didn't tell you where those
cells came from

519
00:41:38,240 --> 00:41:41,480
but I told you the chemistry of what
we did, you'd say, "Yeah. Yeah, so?

520
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,680
"It should be there.
It's a bone cell, for Pete's sakes."

521
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:58,680
Now, if I tell you it's a dinosaur
bone cell, all bets are off

522
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:03,280
because everyone knows that DNA
can't persist for 65 million years.

523
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,840
I personally think that DNA is
way more hardy

524
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:08,680
than people give it credit for.

525
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:17,640
But the challenge now is
to try and sequence it.

526
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,960
This will allow her to see
how the genes fit together

527
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:26,040
and figure out their exact
biological function.

528
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:32,880
I don't believe that you
should publish

529
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:34,680
if you just have one
line of evidence.

530
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:37,920
Especially not something like this
in a field full of controversy,

531
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:41,640
like ancient DNA.
I want lots and lots of evidence.

532
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:45,320
And so if we were ever to get to
the point where we could sequence it,

533
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:48,880
and that may be
problematic for several reasons,

534
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:50,160
I want to be able to say,

535
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:52,360
"We've got the chemistry
to back it up."

536
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:59,240
This is proving really difficult
because the fragments of DNA she has

537
00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:01,160
are very small and degraded.

538
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:04,960
So there's a lot more
work still to do.

539
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:08,640
But there's one thing for sure -

540
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:12,640
this new approach to studying
dinosaurs is set to continue.

541
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:20,360
There's a sort of a shift now to
look at bones from the inside out.

542
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:26,840
Where people generally thought
of bones as being really precious,

543
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:30,120
we're now realising that
there's more information inside

544
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:31,960
than there is on the outside.

545
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:33,920
This one? No.

546
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,640
Finding this material has
recently become much more difficult.

547
00:43:40,720 --> 00:43:45,160
This is Sue, the most complete
T-rex ever discovered.

548
00:43:49,240 --> 00:43:52,520
And the story of how this dinosaur
ended up here in this room

549
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:56,560
takes us to the heart of why getting
ancient biological material

550
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:57,920
is so problematic.

551
00:44:00,200 --> 00:44:03,080
And I begin with a bid of $500,000.

552
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:05,320
Now bidding at $500,000,
Now bidding at 500.

553
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:07,120
$600,000. $700,000, now.

554
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:09,160
At $900,000, now bidding at 9.

555
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,200
At $900,000 now.
Two bids at $1 million.

556
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:15,640
It all started in the auction room
of Sotheby's in New York

557
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:17,840
when Sue was put up for sale.

558
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:19,320
$5 million.

559
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:21,320
THE CROWD GASP

560
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:23,440
5.3 in a new place.

561
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,640
It fetched $7.6 million.

562
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:30,880
Seven million six hundred...

563
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,840
The Fields Museum, in Chicago,
bought it.

564
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,080
And Sue, named after the woman
who found her,

565
00:44:55,080 --> 00:44:58,880
now occupies pride of place in
the main exhibition room.

566
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:12,280
Suddenly, Sue's sale price sparked
a dinosaur gold rush.

567
00:45:18,240 --> 00:45:21,920
Tell what you got. It's...

568
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,960
But the commercialisation of
collecting is a major problem

569
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:28,960
for scientists like Mary Schweitzer
and Jack Horner.

570
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:34,280
'When people are in the business
of selling something,'

571
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:38,280
they're in the business of making
as much money as they can.

572
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:41,360
And therefore,
the specimen is all that matters.

573
00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:44,480
So the specimen is what
they're going to sell.

574
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:46,560
Wouldn't we just plan on, you know,
taking that off

575
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:48,680
and leaving the thing in the jacket?

576
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:51,720
'The scientific data that comes
with the specimen

577
00:45:51,720 --> 00:45:54,880
'when it's in the ground
is overhead.'

578
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:59,240
In other words,
it costs them money to get it

579
00:45:59,240 --> 00:46:03,120
and therefore they will make less
if they get it.

580
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,680
Have you seen the other
side of that pubis?

581
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:07,600
Is it good bone on the other side?

582
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:10,440
'So the problem is, is that,
you know, when we want

583
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:13,520
'to study dinosaurs and learn about
them as living animals,

584
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:15,920
'we have to have that data.'

585
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:20,640
And so a commercially collected
dinosaur is useless to science.

586
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:33,520
The pressure from private collectors

587
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,720
has forced dinosaur scientists
to scour the globe

588
00:46:36,720 --> 00:46:38,440
in search of pristine fossils.

589
00:46:45,720 --> 00:46:48,800
Preservation is of course
the key for Mary.

590
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:54,600
And one of the most promising places
she's found is here in Mongolia.

591
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:59,320
The evidence is locked away
in a specially constructed building

592
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:03,440
in the middle of the main square
of the nation's capital, Ulan Bator.

593
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,360
It's quite the specimen you found...

594
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:15,400
Yeah. ..brought back here.
Yeah. It's home at last. Exactly.

595
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:20,480
Mongolians are very happy to see
the dinosaur. He's beautiful.

596
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:27,760
Occupying pride of place
is a Tarbosaurus bataar,

597
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,520
an Asian relative of T-rex,

598
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,520
recently returned to the country
after it was stolen.

599
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:40,000
Doctor Bolor Minjin, one of
Mongolia's leading palaeontologists,

600
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:43,440
has invited Mary Schweitzer
to see it in all its glory.

601
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:48,120
It's amazing,
the colour of the bones. Yeah.

602
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,280
That's very different than
what we have back home.

603
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:55,720
All the pictures I've seen of Gobi
bone show it like this, like white.

604
00:47:55,720 --> 00:47:59,520
Mm-hm. Not discoloured like we have
back home. Oh, yeah.

605
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:02,480
You know, T-rex is much
darker colour. Yeah.

606
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:07,000
Yeah, mahogany-coloured almost.
Exactly. So it's much lighter.
Mm-hm.

607
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:11,440
The bones usually take on the colour
of the sediments that they're from.

608
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,760
Right. And since this probably
comes from more red sediment... Yes,

609
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:20,440
a lot iron-rich.
..and the colour is so white... Yeah.

610
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:23,880
..that's got to be
because it's such a dry environment

611
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:27,400
that you don't have the transfer
between the sediment and the bone...

612
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:28,960
Yeah. ..as much as you do back home.

613
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:32,080
I mean, that's an indicator that this
might be really good

614
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:33,800
for preservation of organics.

615
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,480
But these bones are unfortunately
useless to her.

616
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,160
Any organics that might lurk
inside them

617
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:45,760
have been fatally compromised

618
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:49,400
because they were excavated
by looters, not scientists.

619
00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:14,280
To find the potentially
well-preserved fossils she needs,

620
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:17,880
Mary is taken by Dr Minjin
to the Gobi Desert.

621
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:26,840
This seemingly endless
expanse of rough grass and sand

622
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:29,080
is a dinosaur hunter's El Dorado.

623
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:45,520
Out here is where the first
fossilised nest of dinosaur eggs

624
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:46,520
was discovered.

625
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:52,200
And it's the first time ever that
Dr Schweitzer's been here.

626
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:02,040
I feel incredibly lucky.

627
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:05,960
And I'm quite sure that most of my
palaeo colleagues would be jealous.

628
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:11,920
Because Mongolia holds a special
magic for palaeontology

629
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:13,160
as a community.

630
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:16,120
It's, you know, it's the place
where dinosaurs

631
00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,720
first entered the public mindset.
Right.

632
00:50:19,720 --> 00:50:22,920
They were introduced to
the American public, at least,

633
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:25,080
from Mongolia, from right here.
Mm-hm.

634
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:27,280
Yeah. It's amazing.

635
00:50:32,240 --> 00:50:34,240
And this is where they're heading...

636
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:38,920
..the place that's become the
natural cathedral

637
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:40,120
of dinosaur hunting...

638
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,240
..the appropriately named
Flaming Cliffs.

639
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,720
Wow. Beautiful.
It is so pretty. Yeah.

640
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:12,840
It is an incredible honour
to be here. It's magic.

641
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:16,480
It's...hmm, I don't know.

642
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:19,560
It's like going to Rome
if you're a Catholic

643
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:25,080
or going to Mecca if you're,
you know, if you're a Muslim. It's...

644
00:51:25,080 --> 00:51:26,680
If you're a palaeontologist,

645
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:29,920
this is one site that is
in everyone's dreams.

646
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,240
This area is so rich in fossils

647
00:51:38,240 --> 00:51:41,480
that they're virtually stumbling
over ancient bones.

648
00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:47,800
MARY SIGHS

649
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:51,480
Hope there's something up here!
I hope so.

650
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:53,920
Make it all worthwhile. Yep.

651
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:56,880
Oh, look! Bolor.

652
00:51:56,880 --> 00:52:00,000
Bone! Oh, look at that.
Look, and more over here.

653
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,240
That possibly looks like,
kind of, skull. Could be.

654
00:52:03,240 --> 00:52:06,080
Really? Interesting shape.
Right here, you're right!

655
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:09,160
It does, see the way it bends?
Yeah. Oh, wow.

656
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:12,160
OK. I need to get all the sand
out of my shoes.

657
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:18,720
Oh, look. Speaking of bone! Yep!

658
00:52:18,720 --> 00:52:20,680
Nice!

659
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:25,000
Look at that. Yeah. Could be a jaw.

660
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:28,200
This almost looks skullish.
And look at this.

661
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:33,120
That looks like a cross-section
of a long bone. Yeah.

662
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,080
Amazing it can persist
for this long. Mm-hm.

663
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,800
So why are these fossilised bones so
white and seemingly well-preserved?

664
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:51,520
The answer lies in the soil.

665
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:57,480
The Gobi has been a desert
since the time of the dinosaurs.

666
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:01,320
It's been dry for more than
65 million years.

667
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,280
And that's potentially good news
for Mary,

668
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:10,440
in her quest to find ancient
organic material.

669
00:53:15,760 --> 00:53:19,720
Scientists think that wet soil
pushes out organics from the fossil.

670
00:53:23,680 --> 00:53:25,960
The water effectively seeps
through the bones,

671
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:27,960
flushing the cells as it goes.

672
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,840
And so if you have a very
long protein,

673
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,280
like a whole collagen molecule
or a whole haemoglobin molecule,

674
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:41,400
you put it in a wet environment and
it gets broken up into little chunks.

675
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:42,560
And of course the chunks

676
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:45,640
are a lot easier to move away from
muscle or from bone

677
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:48,240
and into the environment,
where they're lost for ever.

678
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:53,800
In theory, if it's dry,
the bone proteins, molecules

679
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:58,200
and even possibly DNA
should be better preserved.

680
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:03,120
We think dry is good
for preservation.

681
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:06,960
A lot of the incredibly preserved
mummies from Peru,

682
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,440
they are preserved with
their skin intact,

683
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:11,560
the colour intact,
the clothing intact

684
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:12,800
because it's dry.

685
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:15,080
I didn't see any at work...

686
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:19,720
The problem is that around here,
fossils are so easy to find.

687
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:24,600
Now that might not seem
like an obstacle but it is.

688
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:29,560
It seems like if we saw it
that easily,

689
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:31,560
other people would too.

690
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:34,360
Yeah, the colour - it's very white.
It's very white.

691
00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:37,320
I've never seen that.
And they're a distinct shape. Yeah.

692
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:42,080
You know, shape is the thing
people really easily pick up.

693
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:44,120
And if you know...
if you're here to find bone

694
00:54:44,120 --> 00:54:46,840
and you know anything
at all about it... Yeah.

695
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:48,360
Yeah. Hmm.

696
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,800
INDISTINCT CHATTER

697
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:56,320
Not surprisingly, then,

698
00:54:56,320 --> 00:55:00,360
there has been a spate of fossil
looting at this historic site.

699
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:01,760
Oh, look at that.

700
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:06,800
Looks very suspicious! Something...

701
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:10,080
And the looters rarely take
the trouble to cover their tracks.

702
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:11,360
This is not good.

703
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:15,200
Who would leave something like that
here? Yeah. What the heck is it?

704
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:19,400
Strange bits of plastic, sometimes
used as markers for a site,

705
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:21,480
are scattered around these cliffs.

706
00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:24,120
Look.

707
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:27,200
Oh, my gosh.

708
00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:29,640
Other clues include general litter,

709
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:33,280
like these discarded
plastic bottles.

710
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:36,320
Wow, long day. Huh? Yeah!

711
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:39,120
Sun is going down very soon.

712
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:43,480
It all leads to
the inevitable discovery

713
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,480
of a tell-tale hole in the ground.

714
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:48,040
Oh, look at here.

715
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:52,160
Yeah, that looks kind of weird.
This is clearly excavation.

716
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:55,440
Right there, see the sharp line?
Yeah.

717
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:59,080
That's exactly. Look at how perfect,
you know? Yeah. This is not natural.

718
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:02,280
Could have been something
available for science. Yeah.

719
00:56:02,280 --> 00:56:05,800
So this is what's happening here.
See the thing is, you know,

720
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:08,400
when somebody takes something
out of context like this, it's lost.

721
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:09,920
It's valueless. Exactly....

722
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:12,840
It might look pretty but you might
as well go get a coffee table book.

723
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,320
Yeah. It just...
It's just not right.

724
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,240
But things are changing
here in Mongolia.

725
00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:41,920
The government is now planning

726
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:44,360
to take much firmer action
against the looters.

727
00:56:46,280 --> 00:56:49,160
And Mary has her own plan to help
combat the problem.

728
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,840
She's setting up a project with
Bolor to mount a dig in the Gobi

729
00:56:52,840 --> 00:56:55,040
using all the techniques
she's helped to pioneer.

730
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:04,480
The fossil record is always
surprising us

731
00:57:04,480 --> 00:57:06,520
with things that we said
couldn't be preserved.

732
00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:11,800
Why not look a little deeper now that
we have new technologies

733
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:14,800
and maybe what we've said all along
that couldn't last this long

734
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:16,040
maybe does.

735
00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:19,600
And her ground-breaking work -

736
00:57:19,600 --> 00:57:20,920
the discovery of cells...

737
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:24,120
..proteins...

738
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:27,640
..and even possibly DNA...

739
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:33,320
..is pioneering a new era in
our understanding of dinosaurs.

740
00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:44,280
But even if she was able to find
dinosaur DNA

741
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,760
out here in the wilds of the Gobi,

742
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:51,640
we might have to wait a very long
time for a Hollywood ending.

743
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:59,120
You know, if you want to build
a dinosaur

744
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:02,160
out of DNA you pull from
a dinosaur bone,

745
00:58:02,160 --> 00:58:06,000
there are so many things
that you have to answer.

746
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:08,280
You know, you might get
little chunks of DNA,

747
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:10,840
maybe you might even get
the whole genome.

748
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:12,320
But it's going to be fragmented,

749
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:14,640
it's going to be split up,
it's going to be broken.

750
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:18,240
So how are you going to piece it
together in the right order?

751
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:20,840
Because if you get chromosomes and
genes in the wrong order,

752
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:21,880
you're toast.

753
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:29,240
It may not possible to bring
a dinosaur back to life

754
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,320
but Mary's bringing them
closer to us than ever before.

755
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:37,520
And the well-preserved remains

756
00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:40,160
which lie buried beneath these
Flaming Cliffs

757
00:58:40,160 --> 00:58:43,400
might allow her to put
even more flesh on the bones

758
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:47,880
of the most fearsome and forbidding
creatures ever to walk the earth.

759
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:10,280
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