Nova (1974–…): Season 41, Episode 20 - Bigger Than T. Rex - full transcript
A team of palaeontologists led by Nizar Ibrahim go in search of Spinosaurus, a giant meat eater believed to be even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex.
It's one of the most mysterious
dinosaurs ever discovered
Head like a crocodile,
meter-long jaws,
a spectacular sail,
and an overall body
larger than T. rex.
There is no animal
alive or extinct
that we know of that looks
anything like Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus
Only one skeleton
has ever been found
And in a single night,
it was destroyed
It was a catastrophic loss
to science overall
Now, after a century
of searching,
a new skeleton has emerged
from the Sahara
When this skeleton is revealed,
it's going to change
our understanding of this animal
in pretty fundamental ways
And already,
it's pushing the limits
of what scientists
thought dinosaurs could do
We're going to be figuring out
things as we look at the bones
that we never dreamed possible
in a dinosaur before
From the deserts of Africa
to Nazi Germany,
from the underground
fossil trade
to the cutting edge
of digital paleontology,
can we solve the mystery
of the world's biggest predator?
I think Spinosaurus
is ready now to occupy its space
in the pantheon of dinosaurs
Resurrecting a lost killer,
right now on this NOVA/
National Geographic special
The Moroccan Sahara,
seven hours east of Marrakech
A remote, barren desert
But hidden beneath
the endless sands
lies a treasure trove of fossils
Morocco's ancient rock
has preserved an amazingly
complete record of life here,
from prehistoric insects
and sea creatures
to crocodiles and dinosaurs
Today, they're
a precious resource
The Moroccan fossil trade
brings in tens of millions
of dollars a year
What you have here,
it's a little bit like
a geology book, you know,
so you have fossils,
you have trilobites,
you have corals, minerals
It's literally the history
of life on our planet
laid out on these benches
That's why paleontologist
Nizar Ibrahim is here
He's come to Morocco's
fossil capital, Erfoud,
in search of one of the rarest,
most mysterious animals
ever discovered
A killer even larger
than T. rex.
Its name is Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus even by dinosaur
standards
is one of the strangest,
weirdest creatures
anyone can imagine
This animal's a fabled beast
I make the comparison to Nessie,
the Loch Ness monster,
or the Sasquatch
or the Abominable Snowman
Yes, there are pictures
in books,
but we can't put our hands
on the real fossils
Spinosaurus is one of the great
mysteries of the dinosaur world
This is an animal
that we know was enormous,
we know was very strange,
but short of that, we don't know
that much about it
Spinosaurus tooth
Sharp, conical
and very large teeth
discovered all across
North Africa
offer telltale signs
of this powerful predator
The problem is,
very few Spinosaurus bones
have been found to go with them
Spinosaurus fossils
are very rare
Teeth are actually
a fairly common find,
but an associated skeleton?
Several bones that belong
to the same animal?
That's something that happens
once every hundred years
Nizar, a specialist in North
Africa's ancient fossil beds,
has spent the last decade
scouring museum collections
and fossil shops
around the world
for elusive Spinosaurus bones
I was looking at everything
just hoping to find something
that someone hadn't seen before
So I was starting
to piece together
a basic outline of the skeleton,
but there was so many
missing parts
It was very frustrating
Frustrating, but not unusual
for North Africa
Fossilized remains of dinosaurs
have been notoriously difficult
to find here
because of the vast distances
and harsh desert conditions
It brings new meaning to, you
know, a needle in a haystack
Nizar recently joined forces
with paleontologist Paul Sereno,
a leading expert
in African dinosaurs
You know what it's like
digging in some places
in North America and China?
I mean, it's littered with bones
We've got dozens of skeletons
of T. rex.
In Africa, it's a totally
different story
You have this great
Sahara Desert,
which extends literally
in different directions
thousands of miles
from where we are sitting here,
many without roads
You could spend a week here
easily with an entire team
and not find one piece of bone
It's a challenge
Sereno has had more luck
than most
In 1997, he discovered
a predator named Suchomimus
in nearby Niger
The name means "croc mimic"
because of its long,
narrow snout
He also found the only
well-preserved skull
of Carcharodontosaurus,
the shark-tooth lizard
That was an incredible find,
this giant T. rex-sized skull
It had these stabbing
six-inch teeth
Together with the remains
of giant crocodiles,
flesh-eating birds,
and Spinosaurus,
the few fossils found here
indicate
that 95 million years ago,
this may have been
the most dangerous place
in the history of earth
a habitat of giant carnivores
covering much of North Africa
This is possibly unprecedented
in Earth history
Big predators tend to be rare
It takes a lot of food
to feed a population
of large carnivorous animals
It just seemed like a place
that shouldn't really exist
It's a mystery
Nizar believes he can solve
if he can just find
another specimen
of the enigmatic Spinosaurus
But before venturing further
into the desert,
Nizar's quest takes him
to Germany
and the castle of an eccentric
aristocrat, Ernst Stromer
The little we know about
Spinosaurus begins with him
Ernst Stromer was
a German paleontologist
He was really an explorer
that wanted to find fossils
on virgin grounds
The year is 1910
Fossils are hard to come by
in Germany
But across the Mediterranean
in the deserts of Egypt
come reports of vast formations
of ancient rock
Stromer is eager
to explore them,
not for dinosaur fossils,
but for early mammals,
to chart their diverse evolution
With the help
of an Austrian fossil hunter
named Richard Markgraf,
he scopes out several locations
The most promising, according
to their crude geological maps,
appears to be the Bahariya Oasis
on the edge of the Sahara Desert
Stromer was used to going
to nice restaurants in Munich,
living in a castle,
and here he is
in the middle of the desert
It's hot, he's hungry,
he's not happy with the speed
of the camels,
and it's a really difficult
situation for him
Ever the meticulous scientist,
Stromer recorded
his many travails
His granddaughter, Rotraut,
still has his many journals
and photographs
My grandfather didn't throw
anything away
If every generation
were to do that,
the biggest castle
would soon be full
Half German and half Moroccan,
Nizar feels a special connection
to Stromer
His works offer valuable insight
into a man whose discoveries
have been largely overlooked
The fact that Ernst Stromer
was a great paleontologist,
one of the best paleontologists
in the world,
had been forgotten,
was something that I thought
was really tragic
So from a relatively early age,
I thought,
"Well, one day, you know, we're
going to restore his legacy"
Stromer's journals make it easy,
documenting every step
of his three-week desert trek
He writes of rainstorms
and sandstorms,
of frustrations with his crew
But when he finally reaches
Bahariya,
his luck begins to change
Stromer describes some
of the first-ever evidence
of the Sahara's turbulent past
and the creatures
that lived here
"I find red layers
"preserving shark fin spines,
fish teeth,
and to my joy, also small
vertebrae of reptiles"
And then, at 8:40 a m
on January 18
"I find three large bones
lying next to each other"
"The better one
is probably a thigh bone"
Poking out of the rocks,
Stromer finds enormous thighs,
ribs, vertebrae and claws
They're not early mammals,
but something much bigger
"Apparently, these are the first
of Egypt's dinosaurs
I don't know how to conserve
such gigantic pieces!"
Stromer wandered into an oasis
and wandered out
with the first dinosaur bones,
really good dinosaur bones
from Egypt
He didn't even know grossly
how old these beds were
and he was going
for a different reason,
and he found some
of the weirdest dinosaurs
on the planet
The important thing
is that he realized it
Stromer changes course
from mammals to dinosaurs
and dispatches Markgraf
on more fossil-finding
expeditions to Bahariya
Together, they introduce many
new dinosaurs to the world
A large plant-eater,
Aegyptosaurus
Killer carnivores Bahariasaurus
and Carcharodontosaurus
And the biggest,
most bizarre dinosaur of all
In 1912, Markgraf makes
a remarkable find
in Bahariya's
95 million-year-old sandstone
Long chunks of spine,
massive ribs, pointy teeth
and a well-preserved lower jaw
Back in Munich,
it takes Stromer several years
to piece this unique creature
together
He describes an animal with jaws
like a crocodile,
smooth, cone-shaped teeth,
razor-sharp claws,
six-foot spines
comprising a magnificent sail
and an overall size
larger than any other predatory
dinosaur, including T. rex,
which had only recently been
discovered in North America
Stromer was amazing
at how well he understood
this animal
from the pieces that he had
He realized that he was dealing
with something that was
like nothing else
that had been found
anywhere else in the world
In 1915, Stromer dubs his animal
Spinosaurus aegyptiacus,
the "spined lizard of Egypt"
For the next several decades,
the skeleton becomes
a popular attraction
at Munich's
Natural History Museum
But that all changes
when the Nazis rise to power
An outspoken critic
of the regime,
Stromer suffers terribly
during the war
All three of his sons are sent
to the front lines
Only one, his granddaughter
Rotraut's father, survives
And if that isn't enough,
even Stromer's life's work
becomes a casualty of war
We're in Munich here,
Neuhauser Straße 51
This is the exact place
where the Spinosaurus skeleton
was mounted
It was a great collection,
one of the biggest natural
history collections in Europe,
so Stromer was very proud
of the things he had found,
and he tried very, very hard
to have them put
into a safer location
But the museum director,
a dedicated Nazi,
refuses to move the fossils
And on the night
of April 24, 1944,
hundreds of Allied bombers drop
thousands of bombs on Munich
The museum is destroyed
Spinosaurus is lost to history
This is the only surviving image
of the mounted Spinosaurus
skeleton
Just imagine you spend decades
of your life doing research
and then in one night,
everything is destroyed
The loss of his sons, of course,
was the biggest loss
in his life,
but the dinosaurs were
a very close second
Those were unique specimens,
and I think he knew that
it was very difficult
to find fossils in the Sahara,
and he was right
Stromer died in 1952
His journals and photographs
survive
But without skeletons
to grace exhibit halls
or fossils to study,
his dinosaurs are overshadowed
by T. rex
and other more familiar beasts
Not having the original
Spinosaurus skeleton
is a tremendous loss
to dinosaur paleontology
We can't go and examine
his observations directly
You had this fleeting glimpse
of something,
and then it's gone
I mean, this is
about as frustrating as it gets
for a paleontologist
60 years later,
Spinosaurus and the terrifying
world it lived in
is as mysterious as ever
Over the decades,
a few Spinosaurus bones
have turned up from
across North Africa:
teeth, vertebrae
and this partial snout
They're isolated pieces mostly,
dug by amateur fossil hunters
and sold to private collectors
on the black market
But if scientists don't know
where they come from
or what they were attached to,
they hold little value
We were tempted and teased
by teeth and little tiny pieces,
and then a snout here,
but no skeleton,
nothing associated,
nothing bone to bone
Nothing to piece together
more than what Stromer had done
100 years ago
But then suddenly,
everything changes
At the Natural History Museum
in Milan, Italy,
Cristiano Dal Sasso receives
a large collection of bones
from an Italian fossil trader
He's told they're from Morocco,
likely spirited out illegally
They all seem to be
from a single specimen
And they bear
a striking resemblance
to Stromer's lost Spinosaurus
Cristiano quickly connects
with Nizar,
knowing he'd been obsessing
over Spinosaurus bones
for the last decade
They said that it's
a large predatory dinosaur
and that I should see it
So I traveled to Italy
on my small
doctoral student budget
and I saw this really amazing
layout of bones on a table
Tall spines
Leg bones
Foot bones
Skull fragments
It was a collection of fossils
even more complete
than Stromer's
I was just amazed
It was, you know
I had difficulty breathing,
you know?
I was just thinking, "My God,
is this what I think it is?"
Convinced the skeleton
is Spinosaurus,
Nizar arranges to have
all 60-odd bone fragments
moved to Paul Sereno's lab
at the University of Chicago
to be systematically studied
When finally this specimen
of Spinosaurus showed up,
we were picking our jaw up
off the ground
Nothing made sense
Sereno expected Spinosaurus
to be similar to Suchomimus,
the other meat-eater he had
discovered in North Africa
Suchomimus lived 15 million
years earlier than Spinosaurus,
around 110 million years ago
It too had a long snout,
conical teeth and a sail,
so Sereno determined
that it was actually a cousin
of Spinosaurus
But Spinosaurus had taken those
adaptations to the extreme
We began to realize
pretty quickly on
that this animal
was no ordinary dinosaur
The team could see immediately
that some of the new
Spinosaurus bones
matched the ones
in Stromer's old photographs,
especially those
characteristic spines
But now they had new bones
that Stromer never had:
flat feet, hand and thigh bones,
pieces from the back
of the skull...
The makings of an animal
more bizarre than even Stromer
could have imagined
So this is really the jackpot
But all these bones are missing
one crucial bit of information:
where they're from
Most fossils from Morocco
are found by private collectors
and actually bought and sold
on the open market,
and so when you do this,
the critical contextual
information is lost
To truly understand a dinosaur,
we need to understand the rocks
that it came from
Nizar has no idea
where these bones originated,
but as he studies them closely,
he notices something
eerily familiar
The cross-section of the spines
have unusual lines
running through them,
perhaps fossilized traces
of blood vessels
No one knows what they are,
but to Nizar,
they're a smoking gun
He remembers seeing
similar bones in Morocco
just a few years earlier
I thought, "This is something
I've seen before
I've seen a small chunk of bone
just like that one"
And I thought,
"Wow, I wonder if this is
maybe the same specimen?"
If it is the same specimen
and the bones match,
Nizar might be able
to track down
the fossil hunter
who dug them up,
the only person
who could take Nizar
to the exact spot
the dinosaur was pulled from
It's a long shot,
but worth a trip back to Erfoud
Nizar has to rack his brain
to remember details
of the fossil dealer who first
showed him the chunk of bone
He vaguely recalls a tall,
mustached man in a white tunic
It became clear very quickly
that that description fit many,
many men in Erfoud
Everybody thought that
I was crazy
This had never been done before
Moroccan fossils had been
described for many, many years
and nobody has ever been able
to trace them
back to the original site
With the help of British
paleontologist Dave Martill
and Moroccan Samir Zouhri,
Nizar goes village to village,
shop to shop,
chatting up the locals for clues
to the fossil hunter's
whereabouts
I'm trying to find a needle
in a haystack
Actually, it's much bigger
than a haystack
It's a needle in the Sahara
Given Morocco's vague
export laws,
Nizar needs to tread carefully
Dealers here are allowed
to dig up and sell
all the common fossils
they want...
Trilobites, ammonites,
even dinosaur teeth...
But exporting rare fossils
out of Morocco
without a license is illegal
Even if Nizar does find the man
he's looking for,
there's no guarantee
he'll agree to help
Those are some big teeth
There's some really nice
specimens here,
but it's all isolated pieces,
so that's all
they're finding here:
no associated skeletons
This is not where our skeleton
came from, that's for sure
The trail in the fossil shops
is going cold
Nizar decides to head south
from Erfoud
toward Morocco's ill-defined
border with Algeria,
where most of the country's
fossils are found
Is he one of the diggers?
Yeah, he's one of the diggers
Oh, excellent
He should know
where he's going, then
Diggers here don't have
any special training
With shovels
and other crude tools,
they bore tunnels
straight into the rock,
pulling out any fossils
they can,
often damaging them
in the process
They're just digging
to get out what is in essence
strange-looking rocks
They don't document
the circumstances,
they don't document
in most cases
where something
actually came from
It's really like a Swiss cheese,
lots of holes and openings
And of course
there is no scaffolding,
no support structures,
and it's pretty soft sandstone
People have died, and of course
they are breathing in
all the dust every day
Very difficult work
Despite the risks,
diggers depend on the income,
and paleontologists
depend on them,
crude as their techniques may be
This is how most fossils
are found
Most fossils are not found
by professionals
You know,
if they weren't doing this,
there's nobody else
that has been out here
collecting things
in a systematic fashion
So far, there's no sign
of the mystery fossil hunter
Back in Erfoud,
Nizar is ready to give up
My morale is very low
I'm just trying to figure out
what to do next
You know, it's just being back
at square one
And right in that moment
when I am
at the very lowest point,
this figure walks past me,
and after just a few seconds,
it became clear
that he was the man
I was looking for
He was the one
Against all odds,
the man actually remembers
meeting Nizar several years ago
He recalls showing him
a chunk of bone
with lines running through them
And yes, he did dig up
the rest of that skeleton
I can't believe my luck
Worried that the skeleton
is now illegally abroad,
the man insists that his
identity be concealed
Nizar tries to convince him
in Arabic
to lead them to the dig site
He's concerned because he thinks
that if someone recognizes him,
he might get into trouble,
so I explained to him
that this is not a fossil dealer
situation
I am studying these fossils
I want to know
where exactly they came from
and they'll return
to the country of origin
The man agrees, finally,
to take Nizar
to the site where the fossils
were pulled from the ground
After nearly an hour drive,
most of it off-road,
and a 30-minute trek
up the side of a mountain,
the dealer leads Nizar
to a nondescript-looking hole
in a hillside
Within minutes, in the fill
surrounding the dig site,
they discover fragments
of bones and teeth,
all but certainly Spinosaurus
This is amazing!
I mean, this will take some time
to sink in, but this is amazing
It feels really surreal
The dealer explains
how it took two people
digging for two months straight
to get the skeleton out,
and how he sold it
to an Italian fossil dealer
for the equivalent
of 14,000 U S dollars
This is the best thing
he's ever found,
and he's never found
anything even close to that
in terms of completeness
You find pretty bones,
but never, ever
a partial skeleton
The fact that they were able
to relocate the discovery site
of the skeleton is remarkable,
and it's going to provide
much needed information
about the environmental context
of Spinosaurus
Within months,
Nizar rallies Paul Sereno,
Cristiano Dal Sasso from Milan,
and colleagues
from the UK and Morocco
to conduct a more thorough
excavation
Wow, so this is it?
Wow
Their goal now is simple:
characterize the rock
and landscape
to see when and how
Spinosaurus lived,
and if they can, find more bones
Rather than boring tunnels
straight into the rock
as the fossil hunter did,
the paleontologists excavate
from the top
This is the overburden,
the very hard rock
over the layer
that had the Spinosaurus bones,
so we are widening this opening
to the cave
until we can get a surface here
that is just about
where the bones were found
We know they were found
in a layer right down here,
so to move this layer
is the pay dirt here
At the bottom of the hill,
Dave Martill takes
a different tack,
sifting through the tons of fill
the local digger
already discarded
All this stuff here
is the overburden
that the original guy who made
the discovery threw to the side
while he was trying
to excavate the bones
But I don't think he was looking
carefully enough,
so I'm going through all of this
He needs to pass
a massive amount of material
through his sieve,
but after several hours,
Dave strikes pay dirt:
chunks of cone-shaped teeth,
even a piece of jawbone,
that are all classic Spinosaurus
Even from small bits like that,
I stand a chance
of rebuilding the entire tooth,
which is what I intend to do
It's just that I've got
about three tons of material
to sift through
The scientists scramble
over the rocks for days,
retrieving and assembling
as many bits and pieces
of the skeleton as they can
Cristiano exposes
one of Spinosaurus's
characteristic spines,
similar to the ones Nizar
recognized years ago
This is the same shape,
same size of the specimen
we already know well
It is another confirmation
that this is the specimen
we're looking for
As they piece together
the bones,
the scientists
are also looking carefully
at the rocks they come from
These layers comprise millions
of years of geologic history
But can they reveal the habitat
Spinosaurus lived in
and how he survived alongside
the other giant carnivores?
We're above the dig site now
and we're looking at the cliffs
that dominate this valley,
and you can see beautiful
stripes, gorgeous colors
Each one of these layers
represents a change
in the environment
Forests, lakes, rivers
As we go down through
each of the layers,
we're going further and further
back in time
And eventually, we get down to
the layer with our Spinosaurus
Buried along with Spinosaurus
are very different
kinds of fossils,
ones you might not expect
to find
halfway up a mountain
in the Sahara
This is full of lots of shells
We got this
That's, uh
That's a little sea urchin
Sea urchins, mollusks
Oh, that's lovely
That's a nautilus
Fossils of marine animals
dating back to the Cretaceous
Period 95 million years ago
Back then, sea levels
were over 100 meters higher
than they are today
Much of this place
was underwater,
inundated by rivers and lakes
and a massive ancient sea
Fossils of similar age
found across North Africa
reveal that this lush ecosystem
once stretched
from here in Morocco
all the way to Egypt
And Spinosaurus, along with
the other giant predators,
lived throughout all of it
It's meat-eaters, meat-eaters,
and more meat-eaters
Here it is,
this chamber of horrors,
this scene of carnage
and destruction
It's a very, very striking image
Problem is, it's a scene
that continues
to confound paleontologists
They've found all these fossils
of carnivores from this period,
but relatively few herbivores
for them to eat
This is unheard of
There's too many predators,
and when you look
for the herbivores
that are found in the formation,
you really have a tough time
I mean, they are not only
underrepresented
in bones and teeth,
but it's hard to find
a herbivore footprint
Stromer himself
realized this puzzle
You know, there's all these big
carnivorous things around,
but nothing, you know,
nothing obvious for them to eat
Unless they were eating
something else
There's another bivalve
There's lots and lots
of bivalves
There are lots of shellfish
in the fossil record,
but also much larger
sea creatures,
like coelacanth, sawfish
and lungfish:
a perfect meal for any dinosaur
that could catch them
We're not talking about
small little salmon
We're talking about giant
12-foot, 16-foot
aquatic creatures
So one of these animals
can easily feed
an animal the size
of Spinosaurus, no problem
That Spinosaurus,
with its croc-like snout
and conical teeth,
was built to catch fish
is an idea even Stromer
had considered
Hey, guys, I've got
some more of this tooth
Look at this
But in the history
of paleontology,
no one has found evidence
that any dinosaur
spent much of its life in water
If the new bones reveal
Spinosaurus could,
it would be the first
And that may help
solve the mystery
of North Africa's predators
Back at the University
of Chicago,
the team quickly gets to work
prepping and analyzing
their new fossils,
searching for any clues
that Spinosaurus
may have been aquatic
A full century
after Ernst Stromer
first studied and described
Spinosaurus,
Nizar and Paul finally have
a new skeleton to study
Extremely exciting
To hear that there was
a skeleton, I was like, "Wow"
Paleontologists have been
awaiting the discovery
of a new Spinosaurus skeleton
ever since the first one
was destroyed
Now just imagine if we lost
all of this in a single night
Yeah, well,
if there is any threat
of a bombing raid here,
we are hiding these fossils
in the deepest cave
Just to be safe,
the first order of business:
copy the bones
While Stromer described
all of his bones by hand,
Nizar and team use a CT scanner
to digitize theirs in
bone by bone,
producing a three-dimensional
picture
accurate down to a fraction
of a millimeter
Back in the lab,
paleo-artist Tyler Keillor
then manipulates
the hundreds of files
and begins assembling
a virtual Spinosaurus
We have just now
moved into the digital age
for dinosaur reconstruction
in the sense that you can go
literally from a bone
to a digital model of the bone
to a digital skeleton,
which you can simplify enough
that you can make it move
You can make it walk
You can ultimately
put skin on it
The skeleton is
about 40% complete,
a surprisingly high number
compared to most specimens
Very few dinosaurs are known
from a complete skeleton
There are lots that are known
from a toe bone, a tooth,
in most cases
just distinctive enough
to just tell you, "Yes,
there was something there,
but that's all there is"
The digital model
allows the team
to take their skeleton
much further,
even incorporating some bones
they don't actually have
Using scans of Stromer's
original photos
and resizing the bones
to match their specimen,
they can add in bits of jaw
and spine that they're missing
For the parts on the back
that we didn't have,
we're looking
at Stromer's figures
That's a Stromer specimen?
Right, those are Stromer's
Scans of Suchomimus,
Spinosaurus's
croc-snouted cousin,
help fill out the skull
Here is actually
the Suchomimus brain case
It fills in the back end
very nicely
Scaling and incorporating bones
from other specimens,
they up their total from 40%
to over 60%
Then it's a matter
of fitting the bones together
Just getting the jaws to close
properly takes 14 days
Our knowledge of Spinosaurus
comes from several
different specimens
These aren't all the same size,
and so you can't just
hodgepodge them together
like some kind of giant
Frankenstein
You have to build the digital
model in the computer
so you can get
all the proportions correct
and give us a better conception
of what the skeleton
of one of these animals
would have been like
Taken together,
the new specimen:
Stromer's, Suchomimus,
and other isolated bones
The digital skeleton
reveals an animal
every bit as extraordinary
as Stromer imagined
50 feet from snout to tail,
the model confirms
that Spinosaurus
is the biggest predator
ever to walk the planet,
at least nine feet longer
than the largest known T. rex.
Size does matter
biologically speaking
because you wonder,
what are the ecological
circumstances
that support
such a large animal,
and that gets back
to Stromer's conundrum:
how do you feed all these giant
T rex-sized predators?
Stromer speculated that
Spinosaurus could eat fish
But does that play out
in the bones?
The foot is a good place
to start
It's got a flat bottom
I'd never seen anything
like this
The first time I set eyes on it,
I said,
"What is this doing
on this dinosaur?"
Most predatory dinosaurs
scampered around
with narrower feet
and curved claws
This foot's completely flat
I've never seen
anything else like it
To make sense of it,
the scientists compare it
to animals that are living...
At least they were
until relatively recently...
Starting with dinosaurs'
closest living relatives
When you're starting
with a predatory dinosaur,
you think "bird"
as your living analogy
And you have to start there,
because they're bipedal
For all we know,
this dinosaur had feathers
We don't know for sure
Turns out flat feet
are a handy feature
for wading birds like flamingos
They help keep them stable
in wet sediment
In lush Cretaceous Africa,
could Spinosaurus have used them
the same way?
Surely a sensible interpretation
to argue
that a fairly flat foot
would help an animal,
particularly a large animal
like Spinosaurus,
walking over a soupy substrate
You know, you don't want
to get stuck there
The flat surface may even help
propel them through the water
If potentially, they use
their feet as paddle,
that's a whole other chapter
It reinforces the aquatic model
for this animal
We may not be able to prove it
in a court of law,
but it certainly makes the
probability of our inferences
much, much more secure
For more evidence,
the scientists look
to Spinosaurus's
other living relatives,
crocodilians, which
branched off from dinosaurs
about 200 million years ago...
Animals like this 250-pound
tame alligator named Bubba
Bubba's a reptilian ambassador
of sorts,
allowing Paul and Nizar to get
much closer to a large reptile
than they probably should
Bubba is so kind to be able
to lift up its hand
and spread the toes
so you can really see the
anatomy of a live crocodilian
The potential for webbing
on its feet
Its smooth, cone-like teeth
No bumps, no ridges,
just basically a conical tooth,
which is your basic
fish-eating tooth
Its long, narrow skull
Crocodilians in general,
when they become
more fish specialized,
the skull becomes
narrower and longer
Right, because you want
as little water resistance
as possible
Even the sensitivity
of its snout
Every little polka dot
on every scale
is a special sensory cell
And we see all these openings
on the front of the snout
of Spinosaurus
Used for detecting motion
in dark, murky water,
the tail may also have helped
Combined with the flat foot,
it may have gracefully propelled
Spinosaurus through the water,
much like this animal
Whoa, there he goes
See, look at that
He uses the tail to get going
The comparisons all point
to a creature
that was well suited
for getting around in the water
and hunting fish
But what about that giant sail?
Neither birds nor crocs
have that
From the old research journals,
Nizar learns that Stromer
had asked the same question
and had found one animal
to compare it to:
the crested chameleon
Look at this
Right where that ligament
attaches,
there is an expansion
That's right, they all have
this broad base
Wow, that is absolutely neat
Sails evolved independently
many times
Why isn't always clear
For storing fat?
Shedding heat?
Or as a display to warn off
predators or attract mates?
A likely use for thin,
narrow spines like these
I think this was display
It was to make yourself
look bigger
Maybe there was competition
for mates
Maybe the health,
the size of your spine
was an important factor
With the animal comparisons in
and the digital model complete,
there's only one thing
left to do
The original bones will be
repatriated to Morocco
But the team isn't confining its
dinosaur to a computer forever
Thanks to machining facilities
in Chicago and Toronto,
virtual Spinosaurus is becoming
the first life-size
predatory dinosaur
fully realized
from a digital model
Seeing it for the first time
up close and personal,
Paul and Nizar are confronted
with just how massive
Spinosaurus is
and how bizarre
It's front-heavy
You've got
an eight-foot-plus sail
made of solid bone,
you've got an elongate trunk
longer than most dinosaurs,
you've got massive forelimbs,
the most massive
of any dinosaur,
a long neck,
and then a long skull
cantilevered on this side
Where's the balance?
The skeleton towering over them
forces the scientists to rethink
how Spinosaurus got around
you know, very different
from the mode of locomotion
of any other dinosaur
It may have needed to use
its long forelimbs for walking,
a first for predatory dinosaurs,
which so far have been
strictly bipedal
While it hails
from the two-legged dinosaur
group of carnivores,
it might be using
those grabbing, grasping hands
to walk
Otherwise, it's going to fall on
its lovely crocodile-like head
Of course, that's only
when it was walking on land
More likely, the finding
is another strong indicator
that Spinosaurus is different
from any other dinosaur
ever discovered
It appears to have forsaken
the land,
evolving over millions of years
to thrive in water
It is one of the great mysteries
of the dinosaur era
that every other major group
has seemed to invade the water,
and no dinosaur
had ever done this
Never a dinosaur
with a fin for swimming
Never a dinosaur
with anything we could point to
to say, "That was adapted
for being in water"
This is the first time,
and it's really exciting
With this revelation comes
a long-awaited explanation
for how Spinosaurus and all
the other monster predators
of Africa's Late Cretaceous
competed for prey
Quite simply, they didn't
Some large dinosaurs
would have preyed
on the region's
limited meat supply
Spinosaurus may have only
come up on land
when it needed to,
to lay eggs
or move to another river
But put it in the water,
and it was perfectly adapted to
hunt a boundless supply of fish
If one of you is feeding on fish
and the other one is feeding
on large dinosaurs,
you're not in direct competition
And that means more
large carnivorous animals
can occupy the same habitat
Paddle-like feet
and powerful tail
propel it through the murky,
turbid water
Sensors in the snout
help home in on prey
And at precisely
the right moment,
Spinosaurus does what its body
is built to do
It all makes sense, you know...
Being big, having
these strange proportions,
having these unusual feet,
this big sail
Once you really understand
the world Spinosaurus lived in,
all these adaptations make sense
And now Spinosaurus
makes sense too
It's been an odyssey
spanning three continents
and a hundred million years
But finally, it can take
its place among giants
It is the weirdest large
largest predatory dinosaur
that we may ever find
in our lifetime
But the saga
behind this dinosaur...
The man who was associated
with the first bones,
world wars,
the contraband fossils...
It's a story that has
so many dimensions,
it's going to be hard to top
Spinosaurus hadn't really
captured
the public's imagination
because it just wasn't real
It was like a made-up dragon
But with this skeleton,
you know,
things are going to change
It's absolutely going to capture
the imagination of the world
Spinosaurus, the world's
first aquatic dinosaur
The largest predator is the lost
killer of the Cretaceous
dinosaurs ever discovered
Head like a crocodile,
meter-long jaws,
a spectacular sail,
and an overall body
larger than T. rex.
There is no animal
alive or extinct
that we know of that looks
anything like Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus
Only one skeleton
has ever been found
And in a single night,
it was destroyed
It was a catastrophic loss
to science overall
Now, after a century
of searching,
a new skeleton has emerged
from the Sahara
When this skeleton is revealed,
it's going to change
our understanding of this animal
in pretty fundamental ways
And already,
it's pushing the limits
of what scientists
thought dinosaurs could do
We're going to be figuring out
things as we look at the bones
that we never dreamed possible
in a dinosaur before
From the deserts of Africa
to Nazi Germany,
from the underground
fossil trade
to the cutting edge
of digital paleontology,
can we solve the mystery
of the world's biggest predator?
I think Spinosaurus
is ready now to occupy its space
in the pantheon of dinosaurs
Resurrecting a lost killer,
right now on this NOVA/
National Geographic special
The Moroccan Sahara,
seven hours east of Marrakech
A remote, barren desert
But hidden beneath
the endless sands
lies a treasure trove of fossils
Morocco's ancient rock
has preserved an amazingly
complete record of life here,
from prehistoric insects
and sea creatures
to crocodiles and dinosaurs
Today, they're
a precious resource
The Moroccan fossil trade
brings in tens of millions
of dollars a year
What you have here,
it's a little bit like
a geology book, you know,
so you have fossils,
you have trilobites,
you have corals, minerals
It's literally the history
of life on our planet
laid out on these benches
That's why paleontologist
Nizar Ibrahim is here
He's come to Morocco's
fossil capital, Erfoud,
in search of one of the rarest,
most mysterious animals
ever discovered
A killer even larger
than T. rex.
Its name is Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus even by dinosaur
standards
is one of the strangest,
weirdest creatures
anyone can imagine
This animal's a fabled beast
I make the comparison to Nessie,
the Loch Ness monster,
or the Sasquatch
or the Abominable Snowman
Yes, there are pictures
in books,
but we can't put our hands
on the real fossils
Spinosaurus is one of the great
mysteries of the dinosaur world
This is an animal
that we know was enormous,
we know was very strange,
but short of that, we don't know
that much about it
Spinosaurus tooth
Sharp, conical
and very large teeth
discovered all across
North Africa
offer telltale signs
of this powerful predator
The problem is,
very few Spinosaurus bones
have been found to go with them
Spinosaurus fossils
are very rare
Teeth are actually
a fairly common find,
but an associated skeleton?
Several bones that belong
to the same animal?
That's something that happens
once every hundred years
Nizar, a specialist in North
Africa's ancient fossil beds,
has spent the last decade
scouring museum collections
and fossil shops
around the world
for elusive Spinosaurus bones
I was looking at everything
just hoping to find something
that someone hadn't seen before
So I was starting
to piece together
a basic outline of the skeleton,
but there was so many
missing parts
It was very frustrating
Frustrating, but not unusual
for North Africa
Fossilized remains of dinosaurs
have been notoriously difficult
to find here
because of the vast distances
and harsh desert conditions
It brings new meaning to, you
know, a needle in a haystack
Nizar recently joined forces
with paleontologist Paul Sereno,
a leading expert
in African dinosaurs
You know what it's like
digging in some places
in North America and China?
I mean, it's littered with bones
We've got dozens of skeletons
of T. rex.
In Africa, it's a totally
different story
You have this great
Sahara Desert,
which extends literally
in different directions
thousands of miles
from where we are sitting here,
many without roads
You could spend a week here
easily with an entire team
and not find one piece of bone
It's a challenge
Sereno has had more luck
than most
In 1997, he discovered
a predator named Suchomimus
in nearby Niger
The name means "croc mimic"
because of its long,
narrow snout
He also found the only
well-preserved skull
of Carcharodontosaurus,
the shark-tooth lizard
That was an incredible find,
this giant T. rex-sized skull
It had these stabbing
six-inch teeth
Together with the remains
of giant crocodiles,
flesh-eating birds,
and Spinosaurus,
the few fossils found here
indicate
that 95 million years ago,
this may have been
the most dangerous place
in the history of earth
a habitat of giant carnivores
covering much of North Africa
This is possibly unprecedented
in Earth history
Big predators tend to be rare
It takes a lot of food
to feed a population
of large carnivorous animals
It just seemed like a place
that shouldn't really exist
It's a mystery
Nizar believes he can solve
if he can just find
another specimen
of the enigmatic Spinosaurus
But before venturing further
into the desert,
Nizar's quest takes him
to Germany
and the castle of an eccentric
aristocrat, Ernst Stromer
The little we know about
Spinosaurus begins with him
Ernst Stromer was
a German paleontologist
He was really an explorer
that wanted to find fossils
on virgin grounds
The year is 1910
Fossils are hard to come by
in Germany
But across the Mediterranean
in the deserts of Egypt
come reports of vast formations
of ancient rock
Stromer is eager
to explore them,
not for dinosaur fossils,
but for early mammals,
to chart their diverse evolution
With the help
of an Austrian fossil hunter
named Richard Markgraf,
he scopes out several locations
The most promising, according
to their crude geological maps,
appears to be the Bahariya Oasis
on the edge of the Sahara Desert
Stromer was used to going
to nice restaurants in Munich,
living in a castle,
and here he is
in the middle of the desert
It's hot, he's hungry,
he's not happy with the speed
of the camels,
and it's a really difficult
situation for him
Ever the meticulous scientist,
Stromer recorded
his many travails
His granddaughter, Rotraut,
still has his many journals
and photographs
My grandfather didn't throw
anything away
If every generation
were to do that,
the biggest castle
would soon be full
Half German and half Moroccan,
Nizar feels a special connection
to Stromer
His works offer valuable insight
into a man whose discoveries
have been largely overlooked
The fact that Ernst Stromer
was a great paleontologist,
one of the best paleontologists
in the world,
had been forgotten,
was something that I thought
was really tragic
So from a relatively early age,
I thought,
"Well, one day, you know, we're
going to restore his legacy"
Stromer's journals make it easy,
documenting every step
of his three-week desert trek
He writes of rainstorms
and sandstorms,
of frustrations with his crew
But when he finally reaches
Bahariya,
his luck begins to change
Stromer describes some
of the first-ever evidence
of the Sahara's turbulent past
and the creatures
that lived here
"I find red layers
"preserving shark fin spines,
fish teeth,
and to my joy, also small
vertebrae of reptiles"
And then, at 8:40 a m
on January 18
"I find three large bones
lying next to each other"
"The better one
is probably a thigh bone"
Poking out of the rocks,
Stromer finds enormous thighs,
ribs, vertebrae and claws
They're not early mammals,
but something much bigger
"Apparently, these are the first
of Egypt's dinosaurs
I don't know how to conserve
such gigantic pieces!"
Stromer wandered into an oasis
and wandered out
with the first dinosaur bones,
really good dinosaur bones
from Egypt
He didn't even know grossly
how old these beds were
and he was going
for a different reason,
and he found some
of the weirdest dinosaurs
on the planet
The important thing
is that he realized it
Stromer changes course
from mammals to dinosaurs
and dispatches Markgraf
on more fossil-finding
expeditions to Bahariya
Together, they introduce many
new dinosaurs to the world
A large plant-eater,
Aegyptosaurus
Killer carnivores Bahariasaurus
and Carcharodontosaurus
And the biggest,
most bizarre dinosaur of all
In 1912, Markgraf makes
a remarkable find
in Bahariya's
95 million-year-old sandstone
Long chunks of spine,
massive ribs, pointy teeth
and a well-preserved lower jaw
Back in Munich,
it takes Stromer several years
to piece this unique creature
together
He describes an animal with jaws
like a crocodile,
smooth, cone-shaped teeth,
razor-sharp claws,
six-foot spines
comprising a magnificent sail
and an overall size
larger than any other predatory
dinosaur, including T. rex,
which had only recently been
discovered in North America
Stromer was amazing
at how well he understood
this animal
from the pieces that he had
He realized that he was dealing
with something that was
like nothing else
that had been found
anywhere else in the world
In 1915, Stromer dubs his animal
Spinosaurus aegyptiacus,
the "spined lizard of Egypt"
For the next several decades,
the skeleton becomes
a popular attraction
at Munich's
Natural History Museum
But that all changes
when the Nazis rise to power
An outspoken critic
of the regime,
Stromer suffers terribly
during the war
All three of his sons are sent
to the front lines
Only one, his granddaughter
Rotraut's father, survives
And if that isn't enough,
even Stromer's life's work
becomes a casualty of war
We're in Munich here,
Neuhauser Straße 51
This is the exact place
where the Spinosaurus skeleton
was mounted
It was a great collection,
one of the biggest natural
history collections in Europe,
so Stromer was very proud
of the things he had found,
and he tried very, very hard
to have them put
into a safer location
But the museum director,
a dedicated Nazi,
refuses to move the fossils
And on the night
of April 24, 1944,
hundreds of Allied bombers drop
thousands of bombs on Munich
The museum is destroyed
Spinosaurus is lost to history
This is the only surviving image
of the mounted Spinosaurus
skeleton
Just imagine you spend decades
of your life doing research
and then in one night,
everything is destroyed
The loss of his sons, of course,
was the biggest loss
in his life,
but the dinosaurs were
a very close second
Those were unique specimens,
and I think he knew that
it was very difficult
to find fossils in the Sahara,
and he was right
Stromer died in 1952
His journals and photographs
survive
But without skeletons
to grace exhibit halls
or fossils to study,
his dinosaurs are overshadowed
by T. rex
and other more familiar beasts
Not having the original
Spinosaurus skeleton
is a tremendous loss
to dinosaur paleontology
We can't go and examine
his observations directly
You had this fleeting glimpse
of something,
and then it's gone
I mean, this is
about as frustrating as it gets
for a paleontologist
60 years later,
Spinosaurus and the terrifying
world it lived in
is as mysterious as ever
Over the decades,
a few Spinosaurus bones
have turned up from
across North Africa:
teeth, vertebrae
and this partial snout
They're isolated pieces mostly,
dug by amateur fossil hunters
and sold to private collectors
on the black market
But if scientists don't know
where they come from
or what they were attached to,
they hold little value
We were tempted and teased
by teeth and little tiny pieces,
and then a snout here,
but no skeleton,
nothing associated,
nothing bone to bone
Nothing to piece together
more than what Stromer had done
100 years ago
But then suddenly,
everything changes
At the Natural History Museum
in Milan, Italy,
Cristiano Dal Sasso receives
a large collection of bones
from an Italian fossil trader
He's told they're from Morocco,
likely spirited out illegally
They all seem to be
from a single specimen
And they bear
a striking resemblance
to Stromer's lost Spinosaurus
Cristiano quickly connects
with Nizar,
knowing he'd been obsessing
over Spinosaurus bones
for the last decade
They said that it's
a large predatory dinosaur
and that I should see it
So I traveled to Italy
on my small
doctoral student budget
and I saw this really amazing
layout of bones on a table
Tall spines
Leg bones
Foot bones
Skull fragments
It was a collection of fossils
even more complete
than Stromer's
I was just amazed
It was, you know
I had difficulty breathing,
you know?
I was just thinking, "My God,
is this what I think it is?"
Convinced the skeleton
is Spinosaurus,
Nizar arranges to have
all 60-odd bone fragments
moved to Paul Sereno's lab
at the University of Chicago
to be systematically studied
When finally this specimen
of Spinosaurus showed up,
we were picking our jaw up
off the ground
Nothing made sense
Sereno expected Spinosaurus
to be similar to Suchomimus,
the other meat-eater he had
discovered in North Africa
Suchomimus lived 15 million
years earlier than Spinosaurus,
around 110 million years ago
It too had a long snout,
conical teeth and a sail,
so Sereno determined
that it was actually a cousin
of Spinosaurus
But Spinosaurus had taken those
adaptations to the extreme
We began to realize
pretty quickly on
that this animal
was no ordinary dinosaur
The team could see immediately
that some of the new
Spinosaurus bones
matched the ones
in Stromer's old photographs,
especially those
characteristic spines
But now they had new bones
that Stromer never had:
flat feet, hand and thigh bones,
pieces from the back
of the skull...
The makings of an animal
more bizarre than even Stromer
could have imagined
So this is really the jackpot
But all these bones are missing
one crucial bit of information:
where they're from
Most fossils from Morocco
are found by private collectors
and actually bought and sold
on the open market,
and so when you do this,
the critical contextual
information is lost
To truly understand a dinosaur,
we need to understand the rocks
that it came from
Nizar has no idea
where these bones originated,
but as he studies them closely,
he notices something
eerily familiar
The cross-section of the spines
have unusual lines
running through them,
perhaps fossilized traces
of blood vessels
No one knows what they are,
but to Nizar,
they're a smoking gun
He remembers seeing
similar bones in Morocco
just a few years earlier
I thought, "This is something
I've seen before
I've seen a small chunk of bone
just like that one"
And I thought,
"Wow, I wonder if this is
maybe the same specimen?"
If it is the same specimen
and the bones match,
Nizar might be able
to track down
the fossil hunter
who dug them up,
the only person
who could take Nizar
to the exact spot
the dinosaur was pulled from
It's a long shot,
but worth a trip back to Erfoud
Nizar has to rack his brain
to remember details
of the fossil dealer who first
showed him the chunk of bone
He vaguely recalls a tall,
mustached man in a white tunic
It became clear very quickly
that that description fit many,
many men in Erfoud
Everybody thought that
I was crazy
This had never been done before
Moroccan fossils had been
described for many, many years
and nobody has ever been able
to trace them
back to the original site
With the help of British
paleontologist Dave Martill
and Moroccan Samir Zouhri,
Nizar goes village to village,
shop to shop,
chatting up the locals for clues
to the fossil hunter's
whereabouts
I'm trying to find a needle
in a haystack
Actually, it's much bigger
than a haystack
It's a needle in the Sahara
Given Morocco's vague
export laws,
Nizar needs to tread carefully
Dealers here are allowed
to dig up and sell
all the common fossils
they want...
Trilobites, ammonites,
even dinosaur teeth...
But exporting rare fossils
out of Morocco
without a license is illegal
Even if Nizar does find the man
he's looking for,
there's no guarantee
he'll agree to help
Those are some big teeth
There's some really nice
specimens here,
but it's all isolated pieces,
so that's all
they're finding here:
no associated skeletons
This is not where our skeleton
came from, that's for sure
The trail in the fossil shops
is going cold
Nizar decides to head south
from Erfoud
toward Morocco's ill-defined
border with Algeria,
where most of the country's
fossils are found
Is he one of the diggers?
Yeah, he's one of the diggers
Oh, excellent
He should know
where he's going, then
Diggers here don't have
any special training
With shovels
and other crude tools,
they bore tunnels
straight into the rock,
pulling out any fossils
they can,
often damaging them
in the process
They're just digging
to get out what is in essence
strange-looking rocks
They don't document
the circumstances,
they don't document
in most cases
where something
actually came from
It's really like a Swiss cheese,
lots of holes and openings
And of course
there is no scaffolding,
no support structures,
and it's pretty soft sandstone
People have died, and of course
they are breathing in
all the dust every day
Very difficult work
Despite the risks,
diggers depend on the income,
and paleontologists
depend on them,
crude as their techniques may be
This is how most fossils
are found
Most fossils are not found
by professionals
You know,
if they weren't doing this,
there's nobody else
that has been out here
collecting things
in a systematic fashion
So far, there's no sign
of the mystery fossil hunter
Back in Erfoud,
Nizar is ready to give up
My morale is very low
I'm just trying to figure out
what to do next
You know, it's just being back
at square one
And right in that moment
when I am
at the very lowest point,
this figure walks past me,
and after just a few seconds,
it became clear
that he was the man
I was looking for
He was the one
Against all odds,
the man actually remembers
meeting Nizar several years ago
He recalls showing him
a chunk of bone
with lines running through them
And yes, he did dig up
the rest of that skeleton
I can't believe my luck
Worried that the skeleton
is now illegally abroad,
the man insists that his
identity be concealed
Nizar tries to convince him
in Arabic
to lead them to the dig site
He's concerned because he thinks
that if someone recognizes him,
he might get into trouble,
so I explained to him
that this is not a fossil dealer
situation
I am studying these fossils
I want to know
where exactly they came from
and they'll return
to the country of origin
The man agrees, finally,
to take Nizar
to the site where the fossils
were pulled from the ground
After nearly an hour drive,
most of it off-road,
and a 30-minute trek
up the side of a mountain,
the dealer leads Nizar
to a nondescript-looking hole
in a hillside
Within minutes, in the fill
surrounding the dig site,
they discover fragments
of bones and teeth,
all but certainly Spinosaurus
This is amazing!
I mean, this will take some time
to sink in, but this is amazing
It feels really surreal
The dealer explains
how it took two people
digging for two months straight
to get the skeleton out,
and how he sold it
to an Italian fossil dealer
for the equivalent
of 14,000 U S dollars
This is the best thing
he's ever found,
and he's never found
anything even close to that
in terms of completeness
You find pretty bones,
but never, ever
a partial skeleton
The fact that they were able
to relocate the discovery site
of the skeleton is remarkable,
and it's going to provide
much needed information
about the environmental context
of Spinosaurus
Within months,
Nizar rallies Paul Sereno,
Cristiano Dal Sasso from Milan,
and colleagues
from the UK and Morocco
to conduct a more thorough
excavation
Wow, so this is it?
Wow
Their goal now is simple:
characterize the rock
and landscape
to see when and how
Spinosaurus lived,
and if they can, find more bones
Rather than boring tunnels
straight into the rock
as the fossil hunter did,
the paleontologists excavate
from the top
This is the overburden,
the very hard rock
over the layer
that had the Spinosaurus bones,
so we are widening this opening
to the cave
until we can get a surface here
that is just about
where the bones were found
We know they were found
in a layer right down here,
so to move this layer
is the pay dirt here
At the bottom of the hill,
Dave Martill takes
a different tack,
sifting through the tons of fill
the local digger
already discarded
All this stuff here
is the overburden
that the original guy who made
the discovery threw to the side
while he was trying
to excavate the bones
But I don't think he was looking
carefully enough,
so I'm going through all of this
He needs to pass
a massive amount of material
through his sieve,
but after several hours,
Dave strikes pay dirt:
chunks of cone-shaped teeth,
even a piece of jawbone,
that are all classic Spinosaurus
Even from small bits like that,
I stand a chance
of rebuilding the entire tooth,
which is what I intend to do
It's just that I've got
about three tons of material
to sift through
The scientists scramble
over the rocks for days,
retrieving and assembling
as many bits and pieces
of the skeleton as they can
Cristiano exposes
one of Spinosaurus's
characteristic spines,
similar to the ones Nizar
recognized years ago
This is the same shape,
same size of the specimen
we already know well
It is another confirmation
that this is the specimen
we're looking for
As they piece together
the bones,
the scientists
are also looking carefully
at the rocks they come from
These layers comprise millions
of years of geologic history
But can they reveal the habitat
Spinosaurus lived in
and how he survived alongside
the other giant carnivores?
We're above the dig site now
and we're looking at the cliffs
that dominate this valley,
and you can see beautiful
stripes, gorgeous colors
Each one of these layers
represents a change
in the environment
Forests, lakes, rivers
As we go down through
each of the layers,
we're going further and further
back in time
And eventually, we get down to
the layer with our Spinosaurus
Buried along with Spinosaurus
are very different
kinds of fossils,
ones you might not expect
to find
halfway up a mountain
in the Sahara
This is full of lots of shells
We got this
That's, uh
That's a little sea urchin
Sea urchins, mollusks
Oh, that's lovely
That's a nautilus
Fossils of marine animals
dating back to the Cretaceous
Period 95 million years ago
Back then, sea levels
were over 100 meters higher
than they are today
Much of this place
was underwater,
inundated by rivers and lakes
and a massive ancient sea
Fossils of similar age
found across North Africa
reveal that this lush ecosystem
once stretched
from here in Morocco
all the way to Egypt
And Spinosaurus, along with
the other giant predators,
lived throughout all of it
It's meat-eaters, meat-eaters,
and more meat-eaters
Here it is,
this chamber of horrors,
this scene of carnage
and destruction
It's a very, very striking image
Problem is, it's a scene
that continues
to confound paleontologists
They've found all these fossils
of carnivores from this period,
but relatively few herbivores
for them to eat
This is unheard of
There's too many predators,
and when you look
for the herbivores
that are found in the formation,
you really have a tough time
I mean, they are not only
underrepresented
in bones and teeth,
but it's hard to find
a herbivore footprint
Stromer himself
realized this puzzle
You know, there's all these big
carnivorous things around,
but nothing, you know,
nothing obvious for them to eat
Unless they were eating
something else
There's another bivalve
There's lots and lots
of bivalves
There are lots of shellfish
in the fossil record,
but also much larger
sea creatures,
like coelacanth, sawfish
and lungfish:
a perfect meal for any dinosaur
that could catch them
We're not talking about
small little salmon
We're talking about giant
12-foot, 16-foot
aquatic creatures
So one of these animals
can easily feed
an animal the size
of Spinosaurus, no problem
That Spinosaurus,
with its croc-like snout
and conical teeth,
was built to catch fish
is an idea even Stromer
had considered
Hey, guys, I've got
some more of this tooth
Look at this
But in the history
of paleontology,
no one has found evidence
that any dinosaur
spent much of its life in water
If the new bones reveal
Spinosaurus could,
it would be the first
And that may help
solve the mystery
of North Africa's predators
Back at the University
of Chicago,
the team quickly gets to work
prepping and analyzing
their new fossils,
searching for any clues
that Spinosaurus
may have been aquatic
A full century
after Ernst Stromer
first studied and described
Spinosaurus,
Nizar and Paul finally have
a new skeleton to study
Extremely exciting
To hear that there was
a skeleton, I was like, "Wow"
Paleontologists have been
awaiting the discovery
of a new Spinosaurus skeleton
ever since the first one
was destroyed
Now just imagine if we lost
all of this in a single night
Yeah, well,
if there is any threat
of a bombing raid here,
we are hiding these fossils
in the deepest cave
Just to be safe,
the first order of business:
copy the bones
While Stromer described
all of his bones by hand,
Nizar and team use a CT scanner
to digitize theirs in
bone by bone,
producing a three-dimensional
picture
accurate down to a fraction
of a millimeter
Back in the lab,
paleo-artist Tyler Keillor
then manipulates
the hundreds of files
and begins assembling
a virtual Spinosaurus
We have just now
moved into the digital age
for dinosaur reconstruction
in the sense that you can go
literally from a bone
to a digital model of the bone
to a digital skeleton,
which you can simplify enough
that you can make it move
You can make it walk
You can ultimately
put skin on it
The skeleton is
about 40% complete,
a surprisingly high number
compared to most specimens
Very few dinosaurs are known
from a complete skeleton
There are lots that are known
from a toe bone, a tooth,
in most cases
just distinctive enough
to just tell you, "Yes,
there was something there,
but that's all there is"
The digital model
allows the team
to take their skeleton
much further,
even incorporating some bones
they don't actually have
Using scans of Stromer's
original photos
and resizing the bones
to match their specimen,
they can add in bits of jaw
and spine that they're missing
For the parts on the back
that we didn't have,
we're looking
at Stromer's figures
That's a Stromer specimen?
Right, those are Stromer's
Scans of Suchomimus,
Spinosaurus's
croc-snouted cousin,
help fill out the skull
Here is actually
the Suchomimus brain case
It fills in the back end
very nicely
Scaling and incorporating bones
from other specimens,
they up their total from 40%
to over 60%
Then it's a matter
of fitting the bones together
Just getting the jaws to close
properly takes 14 days
Our knowledge of Spinosaurus
comes from several
different specimens
These aren't all the same size,
and so you can't just
hodgepodge them together
like some kind of giant
Frankenstein
You have to build the digital
model in the computer
so you can get
all the proportions correct
and give us a better conception
of what the skeleton
of one of these animals
would have been like
Taken together,
the new specimen:
Stromer's, Suchomimus,
and other isolated bones
The digital skeleton
reveals an animal
every bit as extraordinary
as Stromer imagined
50 feet from snout to tail,
the model confirms
that Spinosaurus
is the biggest predator
ever to walk the planet,
at least nine feet longer
than the largest known T. rex.
Size does matter
biologically speaking
because you wonder,
what are the ecological
circumstances
that support
such a large animal,
and that gets back
to Stromer's conundrum:
how do you feed all these giant
T rex-sized predators?
Stromer speculated that
Spinosaurus could eat fish
But does that play out
in the bones?
The foot is a good place
to start
It's got a flat bottom
I'd never seen anything
like this
The first time I set eyes on it,
I said,
"What is this doing
on this dinosaur?"
Most predatory dinosaurs
scampered around
with narrower feet
and curved claws
This foot's completely flat
I've never seen
anything else like it
To make sense of it,
the scientists compare it
to animals that are living...
At least they were
until relatively recently...
Starting with dinosaurs'
closest living relatives
When you're starting
with a predatory dinosaur,
you think "bird"
as your living analogy
And you have to start there,
because they're bipedal
For all we know,
this dinosaur had feathers
We don't know for sure
Turns out flat feet
are a handy feature
for wading birds like flamingos
They help keep them stable
in wet sediment
In lush Cretaceous Africa,
could Spinosaurus have used them
the same way?
Surely a sensible interpretation
to argue
that a fairly flat foot
would help an animal,
particularly a large animal
like Spinosaurus,
walking over a soupy substrate
You know, you don't want
to get stuck there
The flat surface may even help
propel them through the water
If potentially, they use
their feet as paddle,
that's a whole other chapter
It reinforces the aquatic model
for this animal
We may not be able to prove it
in a court of law,
but it certainly makes the
probability of our inferences
much, much more secure
For more evidence,
the scientists look
to Spinosaurus's
other living relatives,
crocodilians, which
branched off from dinosaurs
about 200 million years ago...
Animals like this 250-pound
tame alligator named Bubba
Bubba's a reptilian ambassador
of sorts,
allowing Paul and Nizar to get
much closer to a large reptile
than they probably should
Bubba is so kind to be able
to lift up its hand
and spread the toes
so you can really see the
anatomy of a live crocodilian
The potential for webbing
on its feet
Its smooth, cone-like teeth
No bumps, no ridges,
just basically a conical tooth,
which is your basic
fish-eating tooth
Its long, narrow skull
Crocodilians in general,
when they become
more fish specialized,
the skull becomes
narrower and longer
Right, because you want
as little water resistance
as possible
Even the sensitivity
of its snout
Every little polka dot
on every scale
is a special sensory cell
And we see all these openings
on the front of the snout
of Spinosaurus
Used for detecting motion
in dark, murky water,
the tail may also have helped
Combined with the flat foot,
it may have gracefully propelled
Spinosaurus through the water,
much like this animal
Whoa, there he goes
See, look at that
He uses the tail to get going
The comparisons all point
to a creature
that was well suited
for getting around in the water
and hunting fish
But what about that giant sail?
Neither birds nor crocs
have that
From the old research journals,
Nizar learns that Stromer
had asked the same question
and had found one animal
to compare it to:
the crested chameleon
Look at this
Right where that ligament
attaches,
there is an expansion
That's right, they all have
this broad base
Wow, that is absolutely neat
Sails evolved independently
many times
Why isn't always clear
For storing fat?
Shedding heat?
Or as a display to warn off
predators or attract mates?
A likely use for thin,
narrow spines like these
I think this was display
It was to make yourself
look bigger
Maybe there was competition
for mates
Maybe the health,
the size of your spine
was an important factor
With the animal comparisons in
and the digital model complete,
there's only one thing
left to do
The original bones will be
repatriated to Morocco
But the team isn't confining its
dinosaur to a computer forever
Thanks to machining facilities
in Chicago and Toronto,
virtual Spinosaurus is becoming
the first life-size
predatory dinosaur
fully realized
from a digital model
Seeing it for the first time
up close and personal,
Paul and Nizar are confronted
with just how massive
Spinosaurus is
and how bizarre
It's front-heavy
You've got
an eight-foot-plus sail
made of solid bone,
you've got an elongate trunk
longer than most dinosaurs,
you've got massive forelimbs,
the most massive
of any dinosaur,
a long neck,
and then a long skull
cantilevered on this side
Where's the balance?
The skeleton towering over them
forces the scientists to rethink
how Spinosaurus got around
you know, very different
from the mode of locomotion
of any other dinosaur
It may have needed to use
its long forelimbs for walking,
a first for predatory dinosaurs,
which so far have been
strictly bipedal
While it hails
from the two-legged dinosaur
group of carnivores,
it might be using
those grabbing, grasping hands
to walk
Otherwise, it's going to fall on
its lovely crocodile-like head
Of course, that's only
when it was walking on land
More likely, the finding
is another strong indicator
that Spinosaurus is different
from any other dinosaur
ever discovered
It appears to have forsaken
the land,
evolving over millions of years
to thrive in water
It is one of the great mysteries
of the dinosaur era
that every other major group
has seemed to invade the water,
and no dinosaur
had ever done this
Never a dinosaur
with a fin for swimming
Never a dinosaur
with anything we could point to
to say, "That was adapted
for being in water"
This is the first time,
and it's really exciting
With this revelation comes
a long-awaited explanation
for how Spinosaurus and all
the other monster predators
of Africa's Late Cretaceous
competed for prey
Quite simply, they didn't
Some large dinosaurs
would have preyed
on the region's
limited meat supply
Spinosaurus may have only
come up on land
when it needed to,
to lay eggs
or move to another river
But put it in the water,
and it was perfectly adapted to
hunt a boundless supply of fish
If one of you is feeding on fish
and the other one is feeding
on large dinosaurs,
you're not in direct competition
And that means more
large carnivorous animals
can occupy the same habitat
Paddle-like feet
and powerful tail
propel it through the murky,
turbid water
Sensors in the snout
help home in on prey
And at precisely
the right moment,
Spinosaurus does what its body
is built to do
It all makes sense, you know...
Being big, having
these strange proportions,
having these unusual feet,
this big sail
Once you really understand
the world Spinosaurus lived in,
all these adaptations make sense
And now Spinosaurus
makes sense too
It's been an odyssey
spanning three continents
and a hundred million years
But finally, it can take
its place among giants
It is the weirdest large
largest predatory dinosaur
that we may ever find
in our lifetime
But the saga
behind this dinosaur...
The man who was associated
with the first bones,
world wars,
the contraband fossils...
It's a story that has
so many dimensions,
it's going to be hard to top
Spinosaurus hadn't really
captured
the public's imagination
because it just wasn't real
It was like a made-up dragon
But with this skeleton,
you know,
things are going to change
It's absolutely going to capture
the imagination of the world
Spinosaurus, the world's
first aquatic dinosaur
The largest predator is the lost
killer of the Cretaceous