【紀錄片】世界最完好的恐龍化石【1080p】【雙語特效字幕】【紀錄片之家愛自然】

世代以來 動物都捕捉了我們的想像和心靈 牠們的骷髏和腳印給我們瞭解 古代的動物的行為 生活方式和外貌 但甚至最精緻的模型 只是猜測 直到現在 在西加拿大皇家哲學博物館 一隻全新的動物 給了科學家新的觀察 牠們的生活方式和外貌 通常當我們找到動物的骷髏時 我們會找到部分的骷髏 如果我們很幸運的話 我們會找到大部分的骷髏 但我們還是要測量牠們的樣貌 我們會比較牠們和其他動物相比 我們會比較牠們和今天活著的動物相比 我們會把牠們的皮膚和肌肉放在牠們身上 Dr. Caleb Brown is a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology home of many incredible specimens and now an extraordinary new discovery a fossil so pristine and complete that it shows the texture, patterns and colors of a prehistoric giant The nodosaur is the best specimen we have and it's the closest you'll come until we find a better one in terms of coming face to face with a dinosaur It's one of the best preserved dinosaurs in the world The nodosaur is next to surreal a petrified beast caught by Medusa's gaze a fossil more spectacular than anyone had anticipated We knew it was good but we didn't know how good it was I think it's the best preserved armored dinosaur in the world I'm calling this the Rosetta Stone for armored dinosaurs The anatomy of the new species has already given scientists clues to how these animals evolved how they radiated and diversified through time and it doesn't stop there The skin is preserved It's not just the impression of the skin We actually have some of the original biomolecules preserved One of the cool things that they tell us for this specimen is that the animal had at least a component of reddish brown pigment to its skin The coloration aspect is very exciting So it's cool to know what color it was or at least one aspect of its color But it's actually more exciting when that has implications for how the animal lived Researchers now believe the nodosaur was darker on the back and lighter on its sides and underside A method of camouflage called countershading Keep in mind this was a 5.5 meter long 10.5 animal covered in armor But it still has camouflage And to us that just illustrates how intense the predation was back in the Cretaceous You had these very large meat-eating dinosaurs And they would have also been very visual predators So it actually kind of just shows you how extreme that ecosystem likely was back in the Cretaceous The immortalized nodosaur was discovered millions of years after it died entirely by accident Back in 2011 Sean Funk was working his regular shift at the Suncor Millennium Mine in northern Alberta, Canada It was around 1.30 in the afternoon It was my first day shift And just digging in this material type here we call K-spec that comes out in slabs like this And it was sliding down the bank after every scoop And I just noticed this design, like shape that was distinctive, uniform And it just really caught my eye So I knew it was something out of the usual Right away I called my supervisor, Mike Gratton And he came out within about 10 minutes And then we turned one of the lumps over And then that's when we really seen this pattern Right away Mike was like We got to get this checked out Because it was definitely nothing we'd ever seen before Shortly after, Dr. Donald Henderson Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum was on the ground He arrived certain that what he would find was a prehistoric marine reptile fossil commonly found in the area We're looking at it and thinking This isn't working as a plesiosaur Because we saw ribs And how come these bones are so nicely aligned with the osteoderms And my head was still trying to make it a plesiosaur But my technician, Darren Tank, he said What if it's a dinosaur And then, wow, the whole picture changed Donald was surprised Because this area had been rich in plesiosaur fossils Marine animals that would have lived in the area In the early Cretaceous period A time when Alberta used to be covered By a large inland sea It made no sense that a terrestrial animal Would have been found in this same location A new hypothesis came to life At some point, the dinosaur Would have been washed out to sea It would have gone through a process Called bloat and float Whereas the animal starts to decompose Gases build up within the body cavity And this would have actually allowed it To sit a bit higher in the water And that might have actually allowed it To float further out into the ocean At some point, there would have been Some sort of release of gas from the animal And it sank to the bottom We think it got buried very quickly And that layer hardened very quickly What we call concretion It was a very hard rock That would have surrounded the specimen And basically it sealed it off Separated it from bacteria and scavengers And stuff like that And that's really the reason Why it was so well preserved Along with the thick armored skin It was a perfect storm of conditions That allowed for optimum preservation Of soft tissue And the animal's three-dimensional shape The Suncor team quickly mobilized To unearth the fossil Skillfully digging over and around it They got some of their best guys To come and start scraping away the rock down And we got it isolated as a little pinnacle And then we were all set to use pickaxes And electric jackhammers The way we normally do it But they said, why don't try hydrovacuuming Hydrovacuuming is a technique Where a high-pressure water jet Cuts through rock While an industrial vacuum Simultaneously sucks up all the rubble and debris They cut around it And undercut it as well Because we need to detach this thing And expose it much more quickly Than we would have normally We knew the rock was super hard And everybody thought we could just lift it They're working really carefully Going very slowly, lifting it up And so we got the straps underneath it And we got their best rigging and hoisting guys To come and lift it And we all started to lift What they hadn't realized Was that the center of the fossil Was extremely fragile Not strong enough to bear the weight of the lift I just get a pit in my stomach thinking about it It was such a gut-wrenching thing The solution? To go back to a more traditional model Of wrapping and packing each individual piece At the time, they still weren't quite sure What was inside the rock Once the nodosaur made its way to the Royal Tyrrell It fell into the hands of technician Mark Mitchell The specimen came to the museum And basically everything from blocks That weighed probably over 4,000 pounds To small chippets of bone And various sized jackets in between It was both very exciting and also very daunting I look over and see these monstrous jackets I'm like, that's going to take me years to do And it did Five and a half years A total of 7,000 hours of intense and meticulous labor Once a fossil arrives at the preparation lab At the Royal Tyrrell Technicians work with zip guns and heavy-duty tools To get rid of the coarse layer of rock around the fossil As they get closer They employ smaller and finer instruments Until the surface of the bone is exposed The most difficult part was Trying to get the rock to separate from the bone The rock in that specimen was very hard And the bone was very soft, very powdery I was trying to maintain, keep the surface in place As I exposed it Mark's thousands of hours of work Carved his name in history The species was christened Borealopelta markmitchelli Technicians put in a lot of time and effort Into the job that they do And what we do as paleontologists What we do as researchers We can't do without the technicians They're often kind of the unsung heroes of paleontology So when someone makes an extraordinary contribution As it was the case with Mark To preparing this nodosaur I think it was a good idea for us to honor him That was super cool Just to have a dinosaur named after me But particularly a dinosaur as spectacular as this one Yeah, dream come true And the spectacular specimen Still has many secrets to unveil The next focus of study The contents of the nodosaur's stomach In addition to having skin preserved All over most of the surface of the animal We also have abundant gut contents So the last meal of the animal preserved inside And this is what that stuff looks like So we're currently doing all sorts of work on this Geochemical work, histological work and CT scanning Trying to figure out what these spheroid structures are And there's been many ideas that Part of the diversification of dinosaurs Is tied to the diversification of flowering plants And it would be great to see Exactly which types of plants this guy was eating And if that hypothesis makes sense The nodosaur lived towards the end of the Mesozoic era A time when reptiles ruled the planet Once Pangaea ripped apart Water flushed in between Africa, Europe and North America Forming the Atlantic Ocean The planet's land masses Started to look very much the way they do now The earth was dominated by animals Like these long-necked dinosaurs The biggest land animals that ever lived While the waters were home to marine giants Like the plesiosaur About 110 million years ago The nodosaur stepped into the picture At the time, Alberta's climate Was similar to what North Carolina is like today The land was covered by lush conifers, ferns and cycads The planet was going through One of the biggest changes In terrestrial landscapes since life bloomed The diversification of flowering plants The nodosaur lived much earlier than the T. rex Scientists believe its predators Were similar carnivorous beasts Or other small pack-hunting raptors The plant-eating, slow-moving animal Only stood a chance Because of its impenetrable coat of armor We see three rows of osteoderms Those are what are called cervical rings And it's armor that would have protected The neck of the animal And as we move to the side We see this giant periscopular spine It's basically a big armor spine Coming off the shoulder And it's about half a meter long By the end of the Cretaceous period The nodosaur was long gone And new species dominated land, water and air But they were all destined for a devastating fate 65 million years ago A rock the size of Denver Blasted through the atmosphere Gunning for earth In an instant, a blinding light Wiped out nearly 80% of all life on the planet The only glimpse of the dinosaurs From the Cretaceous period we'd ever see Would be immortalized in rock The nodosaur discovery Can be seen as an ode to the science of paleontology It helps to confirm things that we already knew Often big dinosaur discoveries Will kind of turn everything on its head Make us think new ideas about particular research In this case it's a bit different We have an amazing specimen But generally it shows that What we were thinking before is pretty close We know what dinosaurs ate How they fought And now what they looked like But there's still many questions to be answered There's so many exciting things That we would love to find There are so many dinosaurs That are only known from very fragmentary remains We know so little about the life history Of most dinosaurs So how they grew from egg to juvenile To sub-adult to adult So there's so many cool discoveries That are awaiting us And I'm sure we'll find in the next few years Alberta might just be the place to find them It's estimated there are thousands of fossils Hidden underneath the earth As each of these ancient marvels is uncovered More questions will be answered Bringing us ever closer to the real picture Of the lives of these prehistoric beasts That walked the earth millions of years ago