0:00:16 > 0:00:21For 100 million years, dinosaurs dominated the Earth.
0:00:23 > 0:00:26But they remain enigmatic creatures.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33That's because all that scientists had to work with
0:00:33 > 0:00:35were fossilized bones.
0:00:42 > 0:00:44Ah! Woo!
0:00:46 > 0:00:50But now, the seemingly impossible has been discovered...
0:00:54 > 0:00:55- Oh, look!- Yeah.
0:00:55 > 0:01:00..signs of life inside these long-dead skeletons.
0:01:00 > 0:01:02It opened the door to the possibility
0:01:02 > 0:01:05that we could begin to understand dinosaurs in a different way.
0:01:08 > 0:01:10For the first time,
0:01:10 > 0:01:12they've been able to look at the blood of a T-rex...
0:01:19 > 0:01:22..touch 68 million-year-old soft tissue...
0:01:26 > 0:01:29It was, you know, goosebump-inducing -
0:01:29 > 0:01:32just about everything that we saw.
0:01:37 > 0:01:39And Dr Mary Schweitzer may be on the verge
0:01:39 > 0:01:44of turning Hollywood fantasy into scientific reality...
0:01:53 > 0:01:56..finding dinosaur DNA.
0:01:58 > 0:02:01It looks like it, it acts like it, it smells like it.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05You know what, if you have cells, if you have soft tissue,
0:02:05 > 0:02:08if you have proteins,
0:02:08 > 0:02:10why rule out DNA?
0:02:46 > 0:02:48For the past few decades,
0:02:48 > 0:02:51dinosaur hunters have been drawn to the American West.
0:02:54 > 0:02:57It's pretty much Dr Mary Schweitzer's back yard.
0:03:01 > 0:03:06She lives for part of the year in the Rocky Mountain state of Montana,
0:03:07 > 0:03:11where some of the richest dinosaur remains have been uncovered.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27A lot of dinosaurs lived in this area because just to the East of us,
0:03:27 > 0:03:30in Eastern Montana, North and South Dakota,
0:03:30 > 0:03:33was a big, shallow, warm inland sea.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36And so the dinosaurs would follow the seaway,
0:03:36 > 0:03:39migrating up and down, North and South,
0:03:39 > 0:03:40so there was a lot of them here.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46More T-rexes have been found here in Montana
0:03:46 > 0:03:48than anywhere else in the world.
0:03:54 > 0:03:58But we know very little about the world's most iconic dinosaur...
0:04:02 > 0:04:07..apart from a few very simple facts, like it was 12m long
0:04:07 > 0:04:09and could weigh seven tonnes.
0:04:16 > 0:04:18That's a good boy. Come on.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20There you go.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23And that's because, according to Dr Schweitzer,
0:04:23 > 0:04:26the male-dominated world of dinosaur science
0:04:26 > 0:04:28tends to ask the wrong questions.
0:04:30 > 0:04:34I think for men a lot of it is, "Can we quantify it?"
0:04:34 > 0:04:37You know - bigger teeth, meaner animal.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39And I think for women, we're...
0:04:39 > 0:04:41I can't say that it's all that way
0:04:41 > 0:04:44but I think mostly we ask different questions.
0:04:44 > 0:04:47We ask, "How did they function? What was their biology?"
0:04:47 > 0:04:50SHE LAUGHS
0:04:50 > 0:04:52Ah! Woo!
0:04:54 > 0:04:58Today, she isn't riding the range in search of another T-rex.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06She's hunting more recent remains that might help to reveal
0:05:06 > 0:05:10some of the hidden secrets of the world's best-known dinosaur.
0:05:22 > 0:05:25And that's because she's interested in how
0:05:25 > 0:05:28the once-living tissue of this dead buffalo
0:05:28 > 0:05:30decays and gets broken down over time.
0:05:38 > 0:05:42In palaeontology, we can't watch our dinosaurs die.
0:05:42 > 0:05:44And we can't see what's going to happen to them.
0:05:44 > 0:05:48But we know that obviously, if all we have is a skeleton,
0:05:48 > 0:05:50we don't have the whole dinosaur.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53There's a lot of information missing.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57But again, when you see parts in the fossil record...
0:05:57 > 0:05:59this is skin right there.
0:05:59 > 0:06:01That has a high preservation potential
0:06:01 > 0:06:05and it's because of the molecular make-up of the skin itself.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07The guts are gone, the intestines are gone.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12But the skin and the cartilage, the bone and the teeth
0:06:12 > 0:06:13are what remain.
0:06:16 > 0:06:17Good boy.
0:06:18 > 0:06:20Your buddies are jealous, huh?
0:06:22 > 0:06:24It's long been Mary's dream to do this
0:06:24 > 0:06:27with a 65 million-year-old fossil.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34To be able to get her hands on blood,
0:06:34 > 0:06:39soft tissue and even the DNA of a T-rex.
0:06:39 > 0:06:40Come on, play with me.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44It might seem an impossible task
0:06:44 > 0:06:46but she believes that finding signs of life,
0:06:46 > 0:06:49uncovering ancient biology,
0:06:49 > 0:06:52is the only way to put flesh on the bones
0:06:52 > 0:06:55of the most iconic creatures ever to stalk the Earth.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01I mean, a lot of the things that have been done in the past,
0:07:01 > 0:07:05with respect to dinosaurs, have been untestable hypotheses.
0:07:05 > 0:07:08I mean, really, you could say dinosaurs were invisible and green
0:07:08 > 0:07:11and how would I prove you wrong? There's no data.
0:07:11 > 0:07:12I love the way they smell.
0:07:14 > 0:07:17'So I think that getting at some of these questions
0:07:17 > 0:07:19'about how their proteins are put together
0:07:19 > 0:07:21'can get us at their function,
0:07:21 > 0:07:23'get us at why they had an evolutionary advantage.'
0:07:23 > 0:07:27And if we can understand that, there's a lot we can learn from them.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31You're falling asleep! Look at, those eyes are starting to get shut.
0:07:38 > 0:07:42Imagine trying to figure out how a horse might look,
0:07:42 > 0:07:44just from its skeleton.
0:07:52 > 0:07:56Without the biology - the cells, protein and DNA...
0:07:57 > 0:07:59..we couldn't tell what colour its eyes were...
0:08:01 > 0:08:02..how far it could see...
0:08:04 > 0:08:05..the way it smelt...
0:08:07 > 0:08:08..the texture of its coat...
0:08:11 > 0:08:13..the make and shape of its muscles.
0:08:16 > 0:08:20Without its biology, the horse just isn't a horse.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29But most palaeontologists believed that finding any biological material
0:08:29 > 0:08:32in 65 million-year-old dinosaur bones
0:08:32 > 0:08:34was impossible.
0:08:37 > 0:08:41And that's because it was thought that the process of fossilisation
0:08:41 > 0:08:43destroyed every living thing in the bone.
0:08:48 > 0:08:51Once the dead animal is covered in sand or mud,
0:08:51 > 0:08:53the fleshy parts then decay.
0:08:56 > 0:08:59And the mineral and organic elements of the bone
0:08:59 > 0:09:02are replaced by the minerals in the soil.
0:09:04 > 0:09:05In essence,
0:09:05 > 0:09:07they get turned to stone.
0:09:15 > 0:09:17But what if this wasn't the case?
0:09:19 > 0:09:23What if some of this biological material was still with us?
0:09:28 > 0:09:29The only way to find out
0:09:29 > 0:09:31would be to look inside the bones...
0:09:33 > 0:09:35..to conduct a dinosaur autopsy.
0:09:41 > 0:09:43And that's exactly what's going on here.
0:09:47 > 0:09:50A dinosaur leg bone is being cut up for analysis...
0:09:55 > 0:09:58..in a process known as histology.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04The bone then needs to be carved into thin slices...
0:10:07 > 0:10:12..and embedded in plastic so it can be examined under a microscope.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16It's a bit like cutting down a tree and looking at the rings.
0:10:18 > 0:10:20They reveal how fast or slowly the tree grew.
0:10:24 > 0:10:28And you can see the same kind of pattern in dinosaur bones.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33Is this the first femur?
0:10:34 > 0:10:38It was pioneered by Mary's mentor and the world's leading dinosaur scientist,
0:10:38 > 0:10:40Dr Jack Horner.
0:10:41 > 0:10:42Let's say that section.
0:10:42 > 0:10:46'Looking at the bone histology of dinosaurs'
0:10:46 > 0:10:52and looking at babies and juveniles and some adults,
0:10:52 > 0:10:54we've learned that
0:10:54 > 0:11:01when baby dinosaurs hatched out of their eggs, they grew really fast.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03Do you know what side it is yet?
0:11:04 > 0:11:07'They had sustained high growth periods.'
0:11:07 > 0:11:09INDISTINCT CHATTER
0:11:09 > 0:11:12'If you hatch out of the egg at a half a metre long,'
0:11:12 > 0:11:14you're not very big.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17And if you're going to grow to the size of a house,
0:11:17 > 0:11:18you'd better get busy.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20And that's all I can say
0:11:20 > 0:11:24because the longer you are small, the longer you're vulnerable.
0:11:30 > 0:11:32Mary started out as Jack's student.
0:11:35 > 0:11:40And back in 1991, he gave her pieces of a T-rex leg bone to analyse.
0:11:44 > 0:11:46At first, there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary
0:11:46 > 0:11:48about this bone.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54But THIS bone turned out to be rather special.
0:11:57 > 0:11:58Because what she was looking at,
0:11:58 > 0:12:01when she placed the slide under the microscope,
0:12:01 > 0:12:03had never been seen before.
0:12:19 > 0:12:23Staring back at her was something that shouldn't have been there.
0:12:25 > 0:12:27It looked like a red blood cell.
0:12:30 > 0:12:34And its chemical composition included a heme -
0:12:34 > 0:12:37a part of haemoglobin which helps carry oxygen in blood
0:12:37 > 0:12:39and gives it its red colour.
0:12:43 > 0:12:46MARY: I was shocked, I was really surprised.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53The thing that was cool about it is we know very little, really,
0:12:53 > 0:12:56about these beasts that once walked on the surface of our planet.
0:12:56 > 0:13:01And all vertebrate organisms except, well, almost all,
0:13:01 > 0:13:04except for mammals, have nucleated red blood cells.
0:13:04 > 0:13:08And these things that I was seeing in the vessel channels of the bone
0:13:08 > 0:13:11were nucleated. They were translucent red with a dark centre.
0:13:33 > 0:13:37This evidence seemed to suggest that organic matter could in some way
0:13:37 > 0:13:40survive the process of fossilisation.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51And what was so exciting about it...
0:13:52 > 0:13:57..is that the new tools and technology of molecular biology
0:13:57 > 0:14:01might now be used to understand these long-vanished creatures.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12'It opened the door to the possibility that we could begin to understand
0:14:12 > 0:14:17'the function and the physiology of dinosaurs in a different way.
0:14:17 > 0:14:23If we could get at the elemental molecular structure,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26that's where the real evolutionary information is housed.
0:14:26 > 0:14:31And so being able to recover those things from a dinosaur
0:14:31 > 0:14:36would open the door to understanding them at a completely different level.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49She now set out to look for other evidence.
0:14:49 > 0:14:51That's if there was anything else to recover.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15Mary's new techniques now started to play into
0:15:15 > 0:15:18one of the most long-standing questions in palaeontology.
0:15:21 > 0:15:24Just what kind of creatures were dinosaurs?
0:15:28 > 0:15:32For decades, scientists relied on unearthing clues from the bones -
0:15:32 > 0:15:33the anatomy.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39And for the people who invented palaeontology in the 19th century...
0:15:40 > 0:15:44..the bones they saw mostly looked like giant lizards.
0:15:48 > 0:15:52It wasn't just the size of the bones - they're obviously colossal.
0:15:52 > 0:15:56It was the teeth that really helped them understand
0:15:56 > 0:15:58what sort of creatures dinosaurs were.
0:16:02 > 0:16:05- DR HORNER:- The teeth that they were finding were very similar,
0:16:05 > 0:16:10or at least somewhat similar, to lizards.
0:16:10 > 0:16:12And in particular,
0:16:12 > 0:16:17one was particularly close to an iguana lizard.
0:16:17 > 0:16:22And so they didn't have much of the skeleton of the dinosaur
0:16:22 > 0:16:24but they knew what an iguana lizard looks like
0:16:24 > 0:16:27and an iguana lizard is a reptile.
0:16:29 > 0:16:33But for modern scientists, the teeth are now seen as a distraction.
0:16:34 > 0:16:36A more comprehensive analysis of their skeletons
0:16:36 > 0:16:40suggests they're not related to lizards, but birds.
0:16:43 > 0:16:47And there's one bone in particular, familiar from the dinner table,
0:16:47 > 0:16:49that's helped to prove the case.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55It's a very special bone called the furcula.
0:16:55 > 0:17:00And the furcula we find in meat-eating dinosaurs
0:17:00 > 0:17:04is otherwise known as the wishbone.
0:17:05 > 0:17:11And so when we think about what characteristics define a bird -
0:17:11 > 0:17:18the wishbone, hollow bones, feathers, hard-shelled eggs,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21I mean, there's a whole list of them.
0:17:21 > 0:17:25And what's interesting is, through the ages we've discovered
0:17:25 > 0:17:30that dinosaurs actually invented all of those characteristics.
0:17:30 > 0:17:33Dinosaurs had all of those characteristics...
0:17:34 > 0:17:37..those that we consider bird characteristics.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03Anatomy has helped to establish the size, weight,
0:18:03 > 0:18:05even the strength of dinosaurs.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11But on questions of their bird-like biology -
0:18:11 > 0:18:15the colour of their skin, whether they were warm- or cold-blooded,
0:18:15 > 0:18:18even how they evolved -
0:18:18 > 0:18:19the bones are silent.
0:18:50 > 0:18:55Making them talk would require luck, skill
0:18:55 > 0:18:57and knowing the right people.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08This is Bob Harmon.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12For decades, he's worked closely with Jack Horner.
0:19:13 > 0:19:16And he's something of a legend in palaeontology.
0:19:19 > 0:19:23He has a special gift for sniffing out fossils.
0:19:25 > 0:19:29And back in 2000, there was something about the lay of the land
0:19:29 > 0:19:33in the Hell's Creek area of Montana that looked promising.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43One day, I came to this one area, kind of a box canyon type area,
0:19:43 > 0:19:47and I actually sat down to eat my lunch
0:19:47 > 0:19:51and figure out how to get up to this next cliff I was going to look at.
0:19:51 > 0:19:53So I was eating lunch, turned around, looked,
0:19:53 > 0:19:58and here's a bleached-out white bone sticking out of the cliff.
0:19:59 > 0:20:00So...
0:20:00 > 0:20:04And then I got to looking a little farther and I could see it,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08the cross-section of a tyrannosaur vertebrate.
0:20:08 > 0:20:10It has a very distinct shape,
0:20:10 > 0:20:12something we look for when we're out prospecting.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15It's a honeycomb shape.
0:20:15 > 0:20:17So when you see that, you get all excited
0:20:17 > 0:20:19cos it's probably a T-rex.
0:20:19 > 0:20:22You know, heart started beating pretty good
0:20:22 > 0:20:24and then I start looking up and up and up
0:20:24 > 0:20:27at 50 feet of rock sitting on top of this bone.
0:20:27 > 0:20:31And pretty much just went, "My God, what have I done?" You know?
0:20:36 > 0:20:38That's because he knew he'd have to remove
0:20:38 > 0:20:41all of that 50 foot of rock to get at the fossil.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48It took them nearly three years' careful digging
0:20:48 > 0:20:50to extricate the whole skeleton.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55But there was another problem.
0:20:55 > 0:20:59The area was so remote - there were no roads in or out -
0:20:59 > 0:21:02that every single piece of it had to be choppered out.
0:21:07 > 0:21:12But one of the bones, a femur, was just too big to carry.
0:21:14 > 0:21:19And Bob had to do something he really didn't want to.
0:21:19 > 0:21:23I said, "Jeez, we are going to have to break this thing in half."
0:21:23 > 0:21:25And tyrannosaur bone does not break well.
0:21:25 > 0:21:27I mean, it's so dense, you know, it's hollow in the middle
0:21:27 > 0:21:30then it just shatters like glass when you break it.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33- So I knew it was going to be bad. - HE LAUGHS
0:21:33 > 0:21:37But I said, "OK. I don't think we have any choice. Let's just do it."
0:21:37 > 0:21:40So we broke it in half and it shattered all over.
0:21:44 > 0:21:48The bones get removed with the soil surrounding them.
0:21:48 > 0:21:51It's what the scientists call context.
0:21:53 > 0:21:58They still don't really know why but the Hell's Creek soil
0:21:58 > 0:22:01seems to have special preservation properties.
0:22:04 > 0:22:07And when some of these Hell's Creek bones are cracked open,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11there's something about them that marks them out as different.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16And it's got nothing to do with how they look.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20- JACK:- In many bones that are broken up,
0:22:20 > 0:22:23we do have a very biological smell.
0:22:23 > 0:22:29Kind of a...almost like oil or rotting something. Um...
0:22:29 > 0:22:30And, you know,
0:22:30 > 0:22:35it was certainly weird back in the days before we knew
0:22:35 > 0:22:37what it possibly was.
0:22:39 > 0:22:40As it turned out,
0:22:40 > 0:22:45this smell was a clue to what lay within the bones.
0:22:55 > 0:22:57This was just the kind of material
0:22:57 > 0:23:00Mary Schweitzer wanted to get her hands on.
0:23:09 > 0:23:12But it wasn't the smell of the fragments of T-rex femur
0:23:12 > 0:23:15that Jack sent her that set her pulse racing.
0:23:21 > 0:23:22It was how they looked.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29T-rex bones might appear solid but they're not.
0:23:29 > 0:23:31They are in fact hollow.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40But when she peered through the microscope,
0:23:40 > 0:23:42she saw something that shouldn't have been there.
0:23:44 > 0:23:45And this is it.
0:23:46 > 0:23:49The yellow area should have been hollow.
0:23:51 > 0:23:53The fossilised bone on the outside,
0:23:53 > 0:23:55which is all that remains of cortical bone,
0:23:55 > 0:23:57was all she expected to find.
0:23:58 > 0:24:02This tissue right here is what most dinosaur bone looks like.
0:24:02 > 0:24:03Everybody has this.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06This tissue right here had not been seen before.
0:24:14 > 0:24:19She saw what appeared to be a group of specialised cells.
0:24:19 > 0:24:21And these cells were utterly unique.
0:24:36 > 0:24:38They're only found in birds.
0:24:43 > 0:24:45And they use this tissue to make eggs.
0:24:49 > 0:24:52And that could only mean one thing.
0:24:55 > 0:24:56And I looked at it and I held it in my hand
0:24:56 > 0:24:58and I said to my technician,
0:24:58 > 0:25:00"Oh, my gosh, this is a girl and it's pregnant."
0:25:04 > 0:25:09If Mary really was looking at the bones of a pregnant T-rex,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12it'd be a first in palaeontology.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15But the microscope slide on its own wasn't enough.
0:25:18 > 0:25:20MARY: I love her wings from the back. Can you get that picture?
0:25:20 > 0:25:24MARY GIGGLES
0:25:24 > 0:25:25Ow!
0:25:25 > 0:25:29To be sure, she needed to compare it with the medullary bone
0:25:29 > 0:25:32from one of the most primitive birds still alive -
0:25:32 > 0:25:33the ostrich.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42Its evolutionary history can be traced back 23 million years.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52So just how does an ostrich compare with a dinosaur?
0:25:53 > 0:25:56I am in love. Look at this. Look at her wing.
0:25:56 > 0:26:00Can you see how the feather's attached to the skin?
0:26:00 > 0:26:02Look at, their arms are like T-rex...
0:26:04 > 0:26:07..with skin on. They're short, little, stubby things.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10But you see how the feathers are inserting into the skin like that?
0:26:14 > 0:26:15Do we have any more grapes?
0:26:18 > 0:26:20The problem was that she couldn't do the test
0:26:20 > 0:26:23on a living pregnant ostrich.
0:26:23 > 0:26:25She needed a dead one.
0:26:25 > 0:26:27So she put out a plea for help
0:26:27 > 0:26:30and fortunately a local ostrich farmer answered the call.
0:26:31 > 0:26:33He had a pregnant bird
0:26:33 > 0:26:36but it had been dead for over a week.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39I could definitely smell it before I could see it.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42It was all, you know, bloated from death and...
0:26:43 > 0:26:46..you touched the stomach and it kind of went "goosh!"
0:26:46 > 0:26:49It was so gross and it was really smelly.
0:26:49 > 0:26:51So I sawed the leg off
0:26:51 > 0:26:54and tasted really rotten ostrich meat for about two weeks after that,
0:26:54 > 0:26:55in my mouth.
0:26:55 > 0:26:58But it was really gross and he had a whole bunch more ostriches
0:26:58 > 0:27:00so they were all kind of standing around me in a circle,
0:27:00 > 0:27:02watching as I dismembered their friend
0:27:02 > 0:27:04and I felt a little weird about that.
0:27:13 > 0:27:15Holding her nose, she took the bone back into the lab
0:27:15 > 0:27:17and placed it under a microscope.
0:27:22 > 0:27:24And what she saw was ground-breaking.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30The pregnant ostrich had medullary bone
0:27:30 > 0:27:34and in exactly the same position as the pregnant T-rex.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40It was really cool that we had a pregnant dinosaur
0:27:40 > 0:27:43but this had been predicted and it was just verifying that,
0:27:43 > 0:27:45you know, if birds and dinosaurs
0:27:45 > 0:27:50were as closely related as we had been thinking, as a field,
0:27:50 > 0:27:52it should have been there.
0:27:59 > 0:28:02It was the first time that anyone had ever been able
0:28:02 > 0:28:04to establish the sex of a dinosaur.
0:28:09 > 0:28:10And it confirmed the importance
0:28:10 > 0:28:13of trying to understand the biology of these ancient creatures.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24MARY: I couldn't believe it. It was, you know, it was just a gift.
0:28:27 > 0:28:30In my kind of palaeontology, everybody's eyes glass over.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33If you want to go to a talk on palaeontology
0:28:33 > 0:28:39you think field pictures and badlands and really pretty...dinosaurs.
0:28:39 > 0:28:41And I study under the microscope.
0:28:41 > 0:28:44So this was exciting in that I thought, "Well,
0:28:44 > 0:28:46"maybe this is the time I can really contribute to the field
0:28:46 > 0:28:50"in a way that my colleagues will understand and care about."
0:28:50 > 0:28:52Rather than just letting Mary do her own weird thing!
0:28:52 > 0:28:54So, yeah, I was excited.
0:29:03 > 0:29:05One of the first implications of her work
0:29:05 > 0:29:09was to make the biological case that dinosaurs were indeed birds.
0:29:12 > 0:29:15MARY: They're so fun!
0:29:15 > 0:29:16See their feet?
0:29:18 > 0:29:21And Mary, along with other scientists,
0:29:21 > 0:29:23has been figuring out what this might mean
0:29:23 > 0:29:26for how we see these iconic animals.
0:29:26 > 0:29:27He's so pretty.
0:29:30 > 0:29:33For a start, it would be difficult to read their expressions.
0:29:36 > 0:29:40Well, if you notice their skulls, their head, it's just...
0:29:40 > 0:29:42skin stretched over the bone.
0:29:43 > 0:29:49And so they don't have the muscles, they don't have the additional fat.
0:29:49 > 0:29:52And that's what gives animals expression like your dog
0:29:52 > 0:29:54that looks at you with the cocked head and the ears
0:29:54 > 0:29:57and the little furrow in its brow.
0:29:57 > 0:29:59These guys aren't capable of doing that.
0:30:00 > 0:30:04They don't convey any emotion at all.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08And if you look directly in his eye, it almost looks dead.
0:30:12 > 0:30:15That's what they might look like in a one-on-one
0:30:15 > 0:30:19but what about collectively, when they're all gathered together?
0:30:20 > 0:30:24- DR HORNER:- I think that when we're imagining dinosaurs on a plain,
0:30:24 > 0:30:28we have to really think of them like flocks of birds,
0:30:28 > 0:30:33walking and then shifting and then, you know, I mean just, you know,
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Not just mulling around like mammals do.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39I mean, mammals are just sort of mulling around.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43Birds, you know, really have some, you know,
0:30:43 > 0:30:47some overall shape to their groups.
0:30:47 > 0:30:51I mean, they all are travelling in one area and then they shift
0:30:51 > 0:30:54and, I mean, it's just very different.
0:30:57 > 0:31:01And what about the best-known dinosaur of all,
0:31:01 > 0:31:02T-rex?
0:31:04 > 0:31:05What kind of bird was it?
0:31:07 > 0:31:12So, if we think about Tyrannosaurus with its bone-crushing teeth,
0:31:12 > 0:31:15I envision it to be much like a vulture.
0:31:17 > 0:31:21And when you think about a big vulture eating carcasses,
0:31:21 > 0:31:23they're nasty.
0:31:26 > 0:31:27He wants to eat me for lunch.
0:31:32 > 0:31:34SHE SHRIEKS
0:31:43 > 0:31:47That was my Velociraptor experience. That's as close as I want to have.
0:31:47 > 0:31:48Look at, there he goes again.
0:31:48 > 0:31:50SHE LAUGHS
0:31:50 > 0:31:53I think there would be no hesitation, no pulling back.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56And I think once they decide they want you for lunch,
0:31:56 > 0:31:59you might as well just give up.
0:31:59 > 0:32:01Ooh!
0:32:05 > 0:32:08All this started to show that her work,
0:32:08 > 0:32:12hunting for organic matter within ancient fossils,
0:32:12 > 0:32:16had the potential to really transform our understanding
0:32:16 > 0:32:17of dinosaurs.
0:32:23 > 0:32:26The next step, the most important one,
0:32:26 > 0:32:29came from re-examining the basics of bone biology.
0:32:35 > 0:32:38Bone is a composite. It's like plywood.
0:32:38 > 0:32:42It has a hard part, which is the minerals that make up bone,
0:32:42 > 0:32:45and it has a soft part, which is the collagen.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48So bone is both protein and it's mineral.
0:32:48 > 0:32:51And when you put the two together, it gives it great strength.
0:32:51 > 0:32:55But it is alive and the cells that are part of bone maintain it
0:32:55 > 0:32:57and they give it nutrients
0:32:57 > 0:33:00and they continue to just maintain the bone as living structure.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06Take away the mineral element of this chicken bone
0:33:06 > 0:33:09by sticking it in an acid bath and all you're left with
0:33:09 > 0:33:12is the bendy, flexible, collagen, protein part.
0:33:14 > 0:33:15So Mary wondered,
0:33:15 > 0:33:19could you find that organic material in a T-rex fossil?
0:33:20 > 0:33:23We have always assumed that all of the organics go away.
0:33:23 > 0:33:27And so what you're left with is basically a mineral morph.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30And it's got lots of holes in it where the protein used to sit,
0:33:30 > 0:33:31where the blood vessels used to run
0:33:31 > 0:33:34and the little houses where the bone cells are,
0:33:34 > 0:33:35that's all empty now.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38So, I mean, if we're right about that process
0:33:38 > 0:33:42then if you remove the mineral, you should have nothing left. Right?
0:33:42 > 0:33:43Because the organics are already gone.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50So she set up a deceptively simple experiment.
0:33:52 > 0:33:56She dropped the T-rex fossil, packed full of medullary bone,
0:33:56 > 0:33:57in an acid bath...
0:34:00 > 0:34:02..and left it overnight.
0:34:13 > 0:34:16When her assistant came back to check in the morning,
0:34:16 > 0:34:18something remarkable had happened.
0:34:19 > 0:34:22Something that didn't seem possible.
0:34:24 > 0:34:27The process went faster than either of us predicted.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31And so when she went to stop it by taking the piece of medullary bone
0:34:31 > 0:34:34and putting it in water, she went to pick it up with her tweezers
0:34:34 > 0:34:36and it went like that...
0:34:41 > 0:34:45And she called me immediately and said, "Something's really wrong."
0:34:45 > 0:34:48And, you know, I mean, I had the same expectation as anyone else -
0:34:48 > 0:34:51if you dissolve away your dinosaur bone,
0:34:51 > 0:34:53you're going to have nothing left.
0:34:53 > 0:34:54But we did.
0:34:58 > 0:35:01And this is what it looked like under a microscope.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10In a sense, she was able to reach back through 68 million years
0:35:10 > 0:35:12and touch a dinosaur.
0:35:22 > 0:35:24And not just any dinosaur -
0:35:24 > 0:35:29this was a soft, pliable piece of a T-rex.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39So, we saw this, where basically this is the medullary bone
0:35:39 > 0:35:41with the mineral removed.
0:35:42 > 0:35:46And you can see...see the blood vessels inside the bone?
0:35:46 > 0:35:49They stretch with the matrix themselves.
0:35:49 > 0:35:52This was really hard to hang on to!
0:35:52 > 0:35:53But there you go, you see it stretch?
0:35:55 > 0:36:01This was a combination of my absolute worst nightmare and Christmas,
0:36:01 > 0:36:03every day in the lab for about a month.
0:36:03 > 0:36:05I couldn't wait to get to work
0:36:05 > 0:36:08but I was scared to death at what had happened overnight.
0:36:08 > 0:36:13Um...it was, you know, goosebump-inducing -
0:36:13 > 0:36:16just about everything that we saw.
0:36:16 > 0:36:17It was...
0:36:17 > 0:36:18I can't even explain it
0:36:18 > 0:36:21and I know I'll never have that experience again
0:36:21 > 0:36:22but it was magic - just magic.
0:36:40 > 0:36:42Finding the soft tissue
0:36:42 > 0:36:45opened the door to a new world of possibilities.
0:36:51 > 0:36:55She now set out to do something that no-one had ever done before...
0:36:59 > 0:37:04..to try and find proteins - the building blocks of life.
0:37:09 > 0:37:11She started with this T-rex bone cell.
0:37:12 > 0:37:15If there was a chemical signature of ancient proteins,
0:37:15 > 0:37:17it should be hidden away inside.
0:37:21 > 0:37:24Because birds are descended from dinosaurs,
0:37:24 > 0:37:26the chicken would be the key to this quest.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34Mary took a classic tool of modern biology,
0:37:34 > 0:37:37one that helps to identify proteins in chicken bones,
0:37:37 > 0:37:42and she applied this same test to the T-rex soft tissue.
0:37:55 > 0:37:57If there were no proteins in the cell,
0:37:57 > 0:38:00the slide on the right would remain black.
0:38:01 > 0:38:05Anything green would be a sign of life.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21The green glow made palaeontological history.
0:38:24 > 0:38:27It was very exciting, yes. I was very happy.
0:38:27 > 0:38:29Very cool!
0:38:45 > 0:38:48When it was first published in 2005,
0:38:48 > 0:38:50this research wasn't universally accepted.
0:38:53 > 0:38:56Some scientists said her samples might be contaminated.
0:38:57 > 0:38:58Others were dismissive.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03Because I was a middle-aged housewife from Bozeman, Montana -
0:39:03 > 0:39:05I had no credentials at all.
0:39:05 > 0:39:10And I think that...I think that came into play.
0:39:10 > 0:39:13I know it came into play later.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16Um...yeah.
0:39:16 > 0:39:19I had a reviewer on one of my papers once say
0:39:19 > 0:39:24that he didn't care what the data said, he knew it wasn't possible.
0:39:24 > 0:39:29And for me, it's like, if you can't be convinced by data,
0:39:29 > 0:39:31then how is this science?
0:39:35 > 0:39:36But over the past decade,
0:39:36 > 0:39:39her work at the North Carolina State University
0:39:39 > 0:39:41is gaining acceptance.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47She's ruled out the possibility of contamination
0:39:47 > 0:39:51and painstakingly analysed other dinosaur bones.
0:39:56 > 0:39:58And she's gone even further,
0:39:58 > 0:40:03potentially turning Hollywood fantasy into scientific reality.
0:40:04 > 0:40:10She's taken some of the cells from the 68 million-year-old soft T-rex tissue
0:40:10 > 0:40:13and began to look for the impossible -
0:40:13 > 0:40:15DNA.
0:40:20 > 0:40:24You know what, if you have cells, if you have soft tissue,
0:40:24 > 0:40:27if you have proteins,
0:40:27 > 0:40:29why rule out DNA?
0:40:35 > 0:40:40So she took a single T-rex bone cell and ran a series of chemical tests
0:40:40 > 0:40:42using a classic DNA staining procedure.
0:40:49 > 0:40:53If the DNA was present in the cell, it would show up in yellow.
0:41:01 > 0:41:02And astonishingly,
0:41:02 > 0:41:04it did.
0:41:08 > 0:41:11You can see there's this little light point right here,
0:41:11 > 0:41:14that's internal to the cell membrane - it's inside the cell.
0:41:14 > 0:41:17It's very specific, a single point.
0:41:19 > 0:41:23We have a visual signal of something that chemically reacts like DNA.
0:41:29 > 0:41:33It looks like it, it acts like it, it smells like it, you know, yeah!
0:41:36 > 0:41:38If I didn't tell you where those cells came from
0:41:38 > 0:41:41but I told you the chemistry of what we did, you'd say, "Yeah. Yeah, so?
0:41:41 > 0:41:44"It should be there. It's a bone cell, for Pete's sakes."
0:41:54 > 0:41:58Now, if I tell you it's a dinosaur bone cell, all bets are off
0:41:58 > 0:42:03because everyone knows that DNA can't persist for 65 million years.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06I personally think that DNA is way more hardy
0:42:06 > 0:42:08than people give it credit for.
0:42:14 > 0:42:17But the challenge now is to try and sequence it.
0:42:19 > 0:42:22This will allow her to see how the genes fit together
0:42:22 > 0:42:26and figure out their exact biological function.
0:42:30 > 0:42:32I don't believe that you should publish
0:42:32 > 0:42:34if you just have one line of evidence.
0:42:34 > 0:42:37Especially not something like this in a field full of controversy,
0:42:37 > 0:42:41like ancient DNA. I want lots and lots of evidence.
0:42:41 > 0:42:45And so if we were ever to get to the point where we could sequence it,
0:42:45 > 0:42:48and that may be problematic for several reasons,
0:42:48 > 0:42:50I want to be able to say,
0:42:50 > 0:42:52"We've got the chemistry to back it up."
0:42:54 > 0:42:59This is proving really difficult because the fragments of DNA she has
0:42:59 > 0:43:01are very small and degraded.
0:43:02 > 0:43:05So there's a lot more work still to do.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08But there's one thing for sure -
0:43:08 > 0:43:12this new approach to studying dinosaurs is set to continue.
0:43:13 > 0:43:20There's a sort of a shift now to look at bones from the inside out.
0:43:21 > 0:43:26Where people generally thought of bones as being really precious,
0:43:26 > 0:43:30we're now realising that there's more information inside
0:43:30 > 0:43:31than there is on the outside.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33- This one?- No.
0:43:33 > 0:43:37Finding this material has recently become much more difficult.
0:43:40 > 0:43:45This is Sue, the most complete T-rex ever discovered.
0:43:49 > 0:43:52And the story of how this dinosaur ended up here in this room
0:43:52 > 0:43:56takes us to the heart of why getting ancient biological material
0:43:56 > 0:43:57is so problematic.
0:44:00 > 0:44:03And I begin with a bid of 500,000.
0:44:03 > 0:44:05Now bidding at 500,000, Now bidding at 500.
0:44:05 > 0:44:07600,000. 700,000, now.
0:44:07 > 0:44:09At 900,000, now bidding at 9.
0:44:09 > 0:44:12At 900,000 now. Two bids at 1 million.
0:44:12 > 0:44:15It all started in the auction room of Sotheby's in New York
0:44:15 > 0:44:17when Sue was put up for sale.
0:44:17 > 0:44:195 million.
0:44:19 > 0:44:21THE CROWD GASP
0:44:21 > 0:44:235.3 in a new place.
0:44:23 > 0:44:26It fetched 7.6 million.
0:44:28 > 0:44:30Seven million six hundred...
0:44:48 > 0:44:51The Fields Museum, in Chicago, bought it.
0:44:51 > 0:44:55And Sue, named after the woman who found her,
0:44:55 > 0:44:58now occupies pride of place in the main exhibition room.
0:45:07 > 0:45:12Suddenly, Sue's sale price sparked a dinosaur gold rush.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21- Tell what you got.- It's...
0:45:21 > 0:45:25But the commercialisation of collecting is a major problem
0:45:25 > 0:45:28for scientists like Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner.
0:45:30 > 0:45:34'When people are in the business of selling something,'
0:45:34 > 0:45:38they're in the business of making as much money as they can.
0:45:38 > 0:45:41And therefore, the specimen is all that matters.
0:45:41 > 0:45:44So the specimen is what they're going to sell.
0:45:44 > 0:45:46Wouldn't we just plan on, you know, taking that off
0:45:46 > 0:45:48and leaving the thing in the jacket?
0:45:48 > 0:45:51'The scientific data that comes with the specimen
0:45:51 > 0:45:54'when it's in the ground is overhead.'
0:45:54 > 0:45:59In other words, it costs them money to get it
0:45:59 > 0:46:02and therefore they will make less if they get it.
0:46:02 > 0:46:05Have you seen the other side of that pubis?
0:46:05 > 0:46:07Is it good bone on the other side?
0:46:07 > 0:46:10'So the problem is, is that, you know, when we want
0:46:10 > 0:46:13'to study dinosaurs and learn about them as living animals,
0:46:13 > 0:46:15'we have to have that data.'
0:46:15 > 0:46:20And so a commercially collected dinosaur is useless to science.
0:46:31 > 0:46:33The pressure from private collectors
0:46:33 > 0:46:36has forced dinosaur scientists to scour the globe
0:46:36 > 0:46:38in search of pristine fossils.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48Preservation is of course the key for Mary.
0:46:49 > 0:46:54And one of the most promising places she's found is here in Mongolia.
0:46:56 > 0:46:59The evidence is locked away in a specially constructed building
0:46:59 > 0:47:03in the middle of the main square of the nation's capital, Ulan Bator.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11It's quite the specimen you found...
0:47:11 > 0:47:15- Yeah.- ..brought back here. - Yeah.- It's home at last.- Exactly.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20- Mongolians are very happy to see the dinosaur.- He's beautiful.
0:47:23 > 0:47:27Occupying pride of place is a Tarbosaurus bataar,
0:47:27 > 0:47:30an Asian relative of T-rex,
0:47:30 > 0:47:33recently returned to the country after it was stolen.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39Doctor Bolor Minjin, one of Mongolia's leading palaeontologists,
0:47:39 > 0:47:43has invited Mary Schweitzer to see it in all its glory.
0:47:45 > 0:47:48- It's amazing, the colour of the bones.- Yeah.
0:47:48 > 0:47:51That's very different than what we have back home.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55All the pictures I've seen of Gobi bone show it like this, like white.
0:47:55 > 0:47:59- Mm-hm.- Not discoloured like we have back home.- Oh, yeah.
0:47:59 > 0:48:02- You know, T-rex is much darker colour.- Yeah.
0:48:02 > 0:48:06- Yeah, mahogany-coloured almost. - Exactly. So it's much lighter. - Mm-hm.
0:48:06 > 0:48:11The bones usually take on the colour of the sediments that they're from.
0:48:11 > 0:48:15- Right.- And since this probably comes from more red sediment...- Yes,
0:48:15 > 0:48:20- a lot iron-rich. - ..and the colour is so white...- Yeah.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23..that's got to be because it's such a dry environment
0:48:23 > 0:48:27that you don't have the transfer between the sediment and the bone...
0:48:27 > 0:48:28- Yeah.- ..as much as you do back home.
0:48:28 > 0:48:32I mean, that's an indicator that this might be really good
0:48:32 > 0:48:33for preservation of organics.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39But these bones are unfortunately useless to her.
0:48:41 > 0:48:44Any organics that might lurk inside them
0:48:44 > 0:48:45have been fatally compromised
0:48:45 > 0:48:49because they were excavated by looters, not scientists.
0:49:09 > 0:49:14To find the potentially well-preserved fossils she needs,
0:49:14 > 0:49:17Mary is taken by Dr Minjin to the Gobi Desert.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26This seemingly endless expanse of rough grass and sand
0:49:26 > 0:49:29is a dinosaur hunter's El Dorado.
0:49:41 > 0:49:45Out here is where the first fossilised nest of dinosaur eggs
0:49:45 > 0:49:46was discovered.
0:49:48 > 0:49:52And it's the first time ever that Dr Schweitzer's been here.
0:49:58 > 0:50:01I feel incredibly lucky.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05And I'm quite sure that most of my palaeo colleagues would be jealous.
0:50:05 > 0:50:11Because Mongolia holds a special magic for palaeontology
0:50:11 > 0:50:13as a community.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16It's, you know, it's the place where dinosaurs
0:50:16 > 0:50:19- first entered the public mindset. - Right.
0:50:19 > 0:50:22They were introduced to the American public, at least,
0:50:22 > 0:50:25- from Mongolia, from right here. - Mm-hm.
0:50:26 > 0:50:27- Yeah.- It's amazing.
0:50:32 > 0:50:34And this is where they're heading...
0:50:36 > 0:50:38..the place that's become the natural cathedral
0:50:38 > 0:50:40of dinosaur hunting...
0:50:43 > 0:50:46..the appropriately named Flaming Cliffs.
0:50:47 > 0:50:51- Wow.- Beautiful. - It is so pretty.- Yeah.
0:51:07 > 0:51:12It is an incredible honour to be here. It's magic.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16It's...hmm, I don't know.
0:51:16 > 0:51:19It's like going to Rome if you're a Catholic
0:51:19 > 0:51:24or going to Mecca if you're, you know, if you're a Muslim. It's...
0:51:24 > 0:51:26If you're a palaeontologist,
0:51:26 > 0:51:29this is one site that is in everyone's dreams.
0:51:35 > 0:51:38This area is so rich in fossils
0:51:38 > 0:51:41that they're virtually stumbling over ancient bones.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47MARY SIGHS
0:51:47 > 0:51:51- Hope there's something up here! - I hope so.
0:51:51 > 0:51:53- Make it all worthwhile.- Yep.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56Oh, look! Bolor.
0:51:56 > 0:51:59- Bone!- Oh, look at that. - Look, and more over here.
0:51:59 > 0:52:03That possibly looks like, kind of, skull. Could be.
0:52:03 > 0:52:05- Really?- Interesting shape. - Right here, you're right!
0:52:05 > 0:52:09- It does, see the way it bends? - Yeah. Oh, wow.
0:52:09 > 0:52:12- OK.- I need to get all the sand out of my shoes.
0:52:14 > 0:52:18- Oh, look.- Speaking of bone!- Yep!
0:52:18 > 0:52:20Nice!
0:52:20 > 0:52:24- Look at that.- Yeah.- Could be a jaw.
0:52:24 > 0:52:28- This almost looks skullish. - And look at this.
0:52:29 > 0:52:33- That looks like a cross-section of a long bone.- Yeah.
0:52:33 > 0:52:36- Amazing it can persist for this long.- Mm-hm.
0:52:41 > 0:52:45So why are these fossilised bones so white and seemingly well-preserved?
0:52:49 > 0:52:51The answer lies in the soil.
0:52:53 > 0:52:57The Gobi has been a desert since the time of the dinosaurs.
0:52:57 > 0:53:01It's been dry for more than 65 million years.
0:53:04 > 0:53:07And that's potentially good news for Mary,
0:53:07 > 0:53:10in her quest to find ancient organic material.
0:53:15 > 0:53:19Scientists think that wet soil pushes out organics from the fossil.
0:53:23 > 0:53:25The water effectively seeps through the bones,
0:53:25 > 0:53:27flushing the cells as it goes.
0:53:31 > 0:53:33And so if you have a very long protein,
0:53:33 > 0:53:37like a whole collagen molecule or a whole haemoglobin molecule,
0:53:37 > 0:53:41you put it in a wet environment and it gets broken up into little chunks.
0:53:41 > 0:53:42And of course the chunks
0:53:42 > 0:53:45are a lot easier to move away from muscle or from bone
0:53:45 > 0:53:48and into the environment, where they're lost for ever.
0:53:49 > 0:53:53In theory, if it's dry, the bone proteins, molecules
0:53:53 > 0:53:58and even possibly DNA should be better preserved.
0:54:00 > 0:54:02We think dry is good for preservation.
0:54:02 > 0:54:06A lot of the incredibly preserved mummies from Peru,
0:54:06 > 0:54:09they are preserved with their skin intact,
0:54:09 > 0:54:11the colour intact, the clothing intact
0:54:11 > 0:54:12because it's dry.
0:54:12 > 0:54:14I didn't see any at work...
0:54:14 > 0:54:19The problem is that around here, fossils are so easy to find.
0:54:21 > 0:54:24Now that might not seem like an obstacle but it is.
0:54:26 > 0:54:29It seems like if we saw it that easily,
0:54:29 > 0:54:31other people would too.
0:54:31 > 0:54:34- Yeah, the colour - it's very white. - It's very white.
0:54:34 > 0:54:37- I've never seen that. - And they're a distinct shape.- Yeah.
0:54:37 > 0:54:42You know, shape is the thing people really easily pick up.
0:54:42 > 0:54:44And if you know... if you're here to find bone
0:54:44 > 0:54:46- and you know anything at all about it...- Yeah.
0:54:46 > 0:54:48- Yeah.- Hmm.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51INDISTINCT CHATTER
0:54:54 > 0:54:56Not surprisingly, then,
0:54:56 > 0:55:00there has been a spate of fossil looting at this historic site.
0:55:00 > 0:55:01Oh, look at that.
0:55:03 > 0:55:06Looks very suspicious! Something...
0:55:06 > 0:55:10And the looters rarely take the trouble to cover their tracks.
0:55:10 > 0:55:11This is not good.
0:55:11 > 0:55:15- Who would leave something like that here?- Yeah.- What the heck is it?
0:55:15 > 0:55:19Strange bits of plastic, sometimes used as markers for a site,
0:55:19 > 0:55:21are scattered around these cliffs.
0:55:23 > 0:55:24Look.
0:55:25 > 0:55:27Oh, my gosh.
0:55:27 > 0:55:29Other clues include general litter,
0:55:29 > 0:55:33like these discarded plastic bottles.
0:55:33 > 0:55:36- Wow, long day. Huh?- Yeah!
0:55:36 > 0:55:39Sun is going down very soon.
0:55:40 > 0:55:43It all leads to the inevitable discovery
0:55:43 > 0:55:46of a tell-tale hole in the ground.
0:55:46 > 0:55:48Oh, look at here.
0:55:49 > 0:55:52- Yeah, that looks kind of weird. - This is clearly excavation.
0:55:52 > 0:55:55- Right there, see the sharp line? - Yeah.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59- That's exactly. Look at how perfect, you know?- Yeah.- This is not natural.
0:55:59 > 0:56:02- Could have been something available for science.- Yeah.
0:56:02 > 0:56:05- So this is what's happening here. - See the thing is, you know,
0:56:05 > 0:56:08when somebody takes something out of context like this, it's lost.
0:56:08 > 0:56:09- It's valueless.- Exactly....
0:56:09 > 0:56:12It might look pretty but you might as well go get a coffee table book.
0:56:12 > 0:56:16- Yeah.- It just... It's just not right.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37But things are changing here in Mongolia.
0:56:40 > 0:56:41The government is now planning
0:56:41 > 0:56:44to take much firmer action against the looters.
0:56:46 > 0:56:49And Mary has her own plan to help combat the problem.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52She's setting up a project with Bolor to mount a dig in the Gobi
0:56:52 > 0:56:55using all the techniques she's helped to pioneer.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04The fossil record is always surprising us
0:57:04 > 0:57:06with things that we said couldn't be preserved.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11Why not look a little deeper now that we have new technologies
0:57:11 > 0:57:14and maybe what we've said all along that couldn't last this long
0:57:14 > 0:57:16maybe does.
0:57:17 > 0:57:19And her ground-breaking work -
0:57:19 > 0:57:20the discovery of cells...
0:57:22 > 0:57:24..proteins...
0:57:25 > 0:57:27..and even possibly DNA...
0:57:29 > 0:57:33..is pioneering a new era in our understanding of dinosaurs.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44But even if she was able to find dinosaur DNA
0:57:44 > 0:57:47out here in the wilds of the Gobi,
0:57:47 > 0:57:51we might have to wait a very long time for a Hollywood ending.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59You know, if you want to build a dinosaur
0:57:59 > 0:58:02out of DNA you pull from a dinosaur bone,
0:58:02 > 0:58:05there are so many things that you have to answer.
0:58:05 > 0:58:08You know, you might get little chunks of DNA,
0:58:08 > 0:58:10maybe you might even get the whole genome.
0:58:10 > 0:58:12But it's going to be fragmented,
0:58:12 > 0:58:14it's going to be split up, it's going to be broken.
0:58:15 > 0:58:18So how are you going to piece it together in the right order?
0:58:18 > 0:58:20Because if you get chromosomes and genes in the wrong order,
0:58:20 > 0:58:21you're toast.
0:58:25 > 0:58:29It may not possible to bring a dinosaur back to life
0:58:29 > 0:58:32but Mary's bringing them closer to us than ever before.
0:58:35 > 0:58:37And the well-preserved remains
0:58:37 > 0:58:40which lie buried beneath these Flaming Cliffs
0:58:40 > 0:58:43might allow her to put even more flesh on the bones
0:58:43 > 0:58:47of the most fearsome and forbidding creatures ever to walk the earth.
0:59:06 > 0:59:10Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd