The Day the Dinosaurs Died


The Day the Dinosaurs Died

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Once upon a time, dinosaurs ruled the world.

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But 66 million years ago...

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..they vanished, virtually overnight.

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So what precisely happened in the minutes, the days, the weeks

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that wiped out three-quarters of the animal species on the planet?

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Many scientists now believe it was the impact of an asteroid

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that caused their extinction.

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But nobody has been able to prove it...until now.

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Evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod and I have been granted

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exclusive access to a multi-million-pound drilling mission

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into the exact point where the asteroid hit.

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This really is one of the most impressive science laboratories

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I've ever seen.

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Could the team's findings about the asteroid

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finally solve the ultimate dinosaur mystery?

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This is an absolutely amazing event -

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mountains the size of the Himalayas were formed in seconds.

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With Ben at the impact site,

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I will be travelling across the world

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to look for evidence of the events that followed.

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That is a bit of fossilised bone,

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and they're everywhere, scattered across this hillside.

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It's just extraordinary.

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Armed with astonishing new revelations...

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Right here, we have the smoking gun, and here, we have the bodies.

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..we may finally be able to paint a picture

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of the demise of the dinosaurs.

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I'm off the coast of Mexico right now

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and this thing you can see behind me

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is a specially adapted drilling platform.

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Now, there's an international team of scientists on board

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who are drilling far beneath the seabed where we are now

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to look for evidence to see why and how the dinosaurs died.

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This is the exact spot of a huge asteroid strike

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that happened at precisely the same time the dinosaurs were wiped out.

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This is Earth, 66 million years ago.

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Here's the asteroid.

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It's nine miles across - the size of a city.

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And here's the first surprising thing -

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the speed of it.

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It may not look that fast at this scale,

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but it was travelling an unbelievable 40,000 miles an hour.

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Seen from the ground,

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it would have gone from a mere dot in the sky to impact

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in a matter of seconds.

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The asteroid smashed into a shallow sea

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north of modern-day Mexico,

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exactly where the team is starting to drill.

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The theory goes that this impact set off a chain reaction of events

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that killed the dinosaurs.

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But here's the heart of the mystery...

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When you compare the size of the asteroid and the Earth,

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well, the asteroid is comparatively small.

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It's like a grain of sand hitting a bowling ball.

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So how did this asteroid cause a mass extinction

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all around the globe?

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By extracting rock from the impact crater,

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the team hopes to find out.

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So, I'm not even strapped in, and I don't especially like heights!

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But this is great, this is great.

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This multi-million-pound operation has been decades in the planning

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and we're the only film crew to have access.

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Professor Joanna Morgan first proposed the operation.

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It's been a long wait.

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I've been excited for, you know,

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16 years, so to actually... For it to be happening

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is quite scary.

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We've had so much effort between us to get us to this point

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that...that you really want some lovely results.

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Joining her on board to co-direct operations

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is Professor Sean Gulick.

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So, this is the ultimate test of some ideas, right?

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We have all these models about how the extinction happened,

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but without some samples from ground zero,

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we can't really test them.

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This really is one of the most impressive science laboratories

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I've ever seen, and it's an amazing place -

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we're going to have a quick look around.

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This central area here is incredibly important.

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This is known as Main Street by the crew and scientists.

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Now, these shipping containers are actually science labs

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and, in each one...

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..is a whole, entire laboratory.

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You can see in here huge amounts of equipment.

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This is one of the scanning labs.

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But there are still lots of personal touches.

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You can see where all the different scientists

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and the rest of the crew are from.

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But my hometown's not on here!

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But this is the star of the show.

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This huge drill will bore through 1.5km of solid rock,

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taking us back to the time of the dinosaurs.

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This is the drill bit.

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Each one of these little nodules is an industrial diamond.

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We've had this one modified with a higher-speed head

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that allows us to core.

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Literally collecting a column of rock three metres at a time

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and, as we go further down the borehole,

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we go further back in time,

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until we actually get to the moment of the impact,

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about 66 million years ago.

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As Ben joins the team drilling down into the rock

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for evidence of the asteroid's effects,

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I'm travelling the world to look for clues from fossils.

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My first stop, 1,700 miles from the crater,

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is New Jersey.

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I'm here to see a mass prehistoric graveyard

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unlike anything that's been unearthed before.

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This disused quarry

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may be one of the most important palaeontological sites in the world.

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I'm here to view an intriguing discovery

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that may directly link the mass extinction

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to the asteroid impact.

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There's something very strange about this mass extinction.

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So many animals died on that day, and yet, it's virtually impossible

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to find casualties of this devastating event.

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But palaeontologists here in New Jersey

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think they might have found just that -

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evidence of the day the dinosaurs died.

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It's such an extraordinary claim,

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I want to see exactly what they've discovered.

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'I've arranged to meet palaeontologist Kenneth Lacovara,

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'one of the most experienced -

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'and luckiest - fossil hunters in the world.

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'He's going to show me where the discovery was made,

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'in what used to be the seabed.'

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We're going back through time.

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We are. Now, if you take one more step, Alice,

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you will be in the Cretaceous.

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Excellent.

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'As we descend into the quarry, we arrive at layers of sediment

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'that were deposited during the Cretaceous period,

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'when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.'

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So, down here, we're in the Cretaceous period.

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Here, we're in the Palaeogene period, after the Cretaceous.

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'The boundary between the two periods marks the moment

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'that the dinosaurs went extinct, 66 million years ago.'

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So, this is the boundary right here.

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No-one in the world has found an in-place dinosaur fossil

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one centimetre above that line.

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The team uncovered a dense layer of fossils right at this boundary line.

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It's potentially a unique discovery.

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Dinosaurs.

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No dinosaurs.

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Gosh, that's extraordinary.

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'The animals found here are typical of the late Cretaceous.'

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-That's a formidable-looking tooth.

-It is, isn't it?

-Yeah.

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What's that from?

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This is from a mosasaur.

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Mosasaur's a giant marine reptile, an apex predator.

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Think of a Komodo dragon that's as long as a bus,

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with paddles for limbs,

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a two-metre jaw packed full of these teeth.

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We find mosasaurs here below our bone bed and in the bone bed.

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We never find mosasaurs above the bone bed

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because they go extinct along with the dinosaurs.

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Ken believes that the mosasaurs he's found here

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may be some of the last that ever lived...

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..and that they died as part of the great extinction event.

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To understand why,

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we have to look at the other fossils that Ken has found in the quarry.

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-This is incredible, Ken!

-HE LAUGHS

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Look at all those fossils.

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-25,000 of them.

-SHE GASPS

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The way you've laid them out in this grid, is this as you found them?

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These are the places in which we've found them, yep.

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-170 square metres of them.

-SHE GASPS

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It's an astonishing amount of work.

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All these fossils occur in a layer

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that's no more than ten centimetres thick.

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'For Ken, the first clue that these animals all died

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'in a single catastrophic event

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'is that the skeletons are largely intact with no teeth marks on them.'

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They weren't transported, they weren't scavenged,

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they died suddenly and they were buried quickly.

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That tells us that this is a moment in geological time

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that's days, weeks, maybe months, but this is not thousands of years,

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this is not hundreds of thousands of years.

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This is, essentially, an instantaneous event.

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'A second clue comes from the surprising mix of species

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'that had lived in many different environments.'

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I mean, I can pick out large vertebrates.

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Sure. We see the occasional bird here.

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There's a tibia from a crocodile.

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And that's laying next to a piece of the outer shell

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of a huge sea turtle,

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something that would be maybe a metre-and-a-half across.

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'And just a few feet away,

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'Ken found another turtle from a different part of the ocean.'

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This is a coastal-living turtle.

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You can see how tightly articulated it is.

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The shell doesn't flex, so we know that this turtle

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didn't dive deeply in the ocean.

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This animal was living around the coast, in the shallow water.

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So, what do you think you've got here?

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All this stuff died suddenly,

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and was buried all at about the same time,

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so that means all the stuff that comes in from the coast

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has to come in suddenly.

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And that tells us that there is an environmental disturbance going on

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on the coastline, upshore from here.

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Whatever was the cause,

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this calamity that wiped out these animals,

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it was happening in the deep water,

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it was happening along the coastline,

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and it's happening on land.

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Ken's theory is controversial, but if he's right,

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this could be the first fossil evidence

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of a sudden mass death event at the end of the Cretaceous...

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..right at that point in time when 75% of life on Earth is wiped out.

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But what caused this mass death event?

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Could all these animals have been killed by the impact of an asteroid

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1,700 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico?

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Ben is with the scientists who have been drilling into the seabed

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above the asteroid crater.

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I'm here, right in the middle of the drilling platform,

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and there's a fresh core about to come out.

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We've already drilled through 500 metres of limestone sediment.

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Now, we're going to start to bring up rock core

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for the scientists to examine as we get closer to the impact crater.

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This is the first full core of the expedition,

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we're excited to say.

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The first full, three-metre-long core,

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some light layers.

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We're wondering if they're ashes or something.

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We're pretty excited.

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This, along with other core samples like it,

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can tell the team so much information

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about what was going on at the time of the impact.

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The first thing the team does with each new core

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is find out how old the rock is.

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Exactly what's living, exactly what fossils we find

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tell us what age we are.

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As soon as the core comes up on deck,

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we are given a small crumb of material,

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we take it back to the lab and give an age call

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within five minutes of the core appearing on the deck.

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I just got some sweet pictures. Look at this crystal -

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this is the same stuff from the core catcher under the microscope.

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Look at these crystals.

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Though it contains valuable information,

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this core isn't from the impact crater itself.

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Instead, it's from the layers of sediment above it.

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The team needs to drill a further 130 metres down into the sediment

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to get to the crater itself.

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The further down they go, the harder the rock is,

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so that means weeks of 24-hours-a-day drilling.

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They want to pull core from an area of the inner crater

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called the peak ring,

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found only in the largest of super craters.

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They're formed when the massive impact of an asteroid

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forces rock to erupt in a central uprising,

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which then collapses outwards to form the distinctive peak ring.

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It's these rocks that contain the clues to what happened

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in the moments after impact.

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It's been three weeks since the team started drilling into the seabed

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and time and money are running short.

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We didn't sample that because it's in the middle of a core.

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The drill is nearly through the hundreds of metres of limestone

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that has built up since the asteroid struck,

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approaching rock layers from the day of impact.

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I mean, look at this on the microscope.

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I would say somewhere between about 64.5 million years ago

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and 63.5.

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Wow.

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-Wow, so this was E4...

-Yup.

-..which is 53 million.

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Now we are 63, so we have 10 million.

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Yeah, that sounds like a good estimate,

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-so 10 million years in three metres.

-In three metres.

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We've been stuck in the same zone for a while,

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going forward very slowly, and then all of a sudden...

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-HE CLICKS HIS FINGERS

-..boom, big jump in time.

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The team are noticing clues in the latest cores -

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something extraordinary.

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But as you go down, it's just more and more and more of it.

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It's got this greenish tint.

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Yeah, there's one right there.

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We've now had four cores of ever-coarsening sands.

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I think the only process on Earth that can do that is a tsunami.

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Tsunamis are huge, turbulent waves that rip material from the seabed.

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When the wave passes,

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the material is deposited back on the ocean floor in size order.

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The heaviest, most coarse sand settles first,

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the finer sand on top.

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The thicker the deposit, the bigger the tsunami.

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And the fact it's already, like, 12 metres thick

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probably already makes it one of the largest,

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maybe the largest tsunami deposit ever discovered.

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And if it keeps getting thicker as we go, it will absolutely,

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unquestionably, be the largest tsunami deposit ever discovered.

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And, of course, it's right here in ground zero of the impact.

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It's the first major clue of how the impact of this asteroid

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could have caused a deadly chain of events,

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starting with the biggest tsunami in history.

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1,700 miles away in New Jersey,

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Ken Lacovara has also picked up evidence

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of what could have been a tsunami.

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After that asteroid hit, it's just chaos on the continent.

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There are tsunami waves lapping up against the continent.

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You're going to have trees floating down the estuaries.

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You're going to have sediment choking the rivers.

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And that's exactly what we see there.

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Here in our fossil bed, we get a mixture of marine organisms

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and organisms that came in from the land.

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One of our more common fossils is wood.

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In the Gulf of Mexico, the crew are on the verge

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of breaking into the asteroid impact crater,

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but, at the worst possible moment, they've hit a roadblock.

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So they just woke me up because there's

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a problem with the drilling.

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We don't know if it's snapped or if it just got stuck a little bit.

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We don't know, but they have to bring it back

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to the surface to take a look.

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As they get nearer the crater,

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the rock is getting tougher to penetrate,

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and that's causing problems with the drill.

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TOOL BUZZES

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Getting to the point where you start pushing the drill

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beyond its capacity, and right now, there's no...

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There's no drilling rods, no bit, no anything in the hole.

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While the engineers fix the rig,

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the scientists lose valuable drilling time.

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Behind me, you'll notice the rig is not moving.

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SPARKS CRACKLE

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The pump that allows it to turn is actually broken.

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RUMBLING

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We're in a bit of a race against time now.

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We're going to struggle to get to 1,500 metres.

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So we're all hopeful -

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fingers, toes and so on are crossed -

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and we'll see how this goes.

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Finally, after a month of drilling,

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the team are pulling rock from the asteroid crater itself.

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Already, they're seeing evidence of the incredible heat

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generated by the impact -

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rock that has melted.

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And look at...

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In this part, it is very clear that we have different kinds of colours,

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like this red colour.

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It goes from green to red...

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-I think it's melting the material.

-Melted...

-Yeah.

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-What about this?

-I think that is a big cluster melt.

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That does, too. Look at that. That looks like the suevite.

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And we are now fully into impact rocks directly,

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and it's really easy to see, because it's granite,

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and so you can see these spotted, leopard-looking big chunks.

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So, in effect, you know,

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these were formed, you know, on the days that the dinos died.

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Quite heavy, these, aren't they?

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Yeah, you really appreciate just...just how solid this rock is.

0:20:000:20:03

How deep have you gone with this so far?

0:20:030:20:05

We've got to just 1,330 metres, about that.

0:20:050:20:09

So, we were hoping to get 1,500 metres,

0:20:090:20:11

but we've got 700 metres of peak ring materials,

0:20:110:20:14

so we're pretty happy.

0:20:140:20:16

Why couldn't you get 1,500?

0:20:160:20:18

SHE LAUGHS

0:20:180:20:19

Cos...cos the budget ran out.

0:20:190:20:21

Oh, no!

0:20:210:20:22

I'm dying to ask the question that I wanted to know as a kid -

0:20:220:20:25

where's the asteroid?

0:20:250:20:26

-Yes, a lot of people think I'm going to find the asteroid...

-Yeah.

0:20:260:20:30

..and ask me that question a lot.

0:20:300:20:31

Something like 95 or more percent of the asteroid is vaporised.

0:20:310:20:35

-Mm-hm.

-So, in fact, there's hardly any asteroid here

0:20:350:20:39

beneath the surface.

0:20:390:20:41

The asteroid material has been, sort of,

0:20:410:20:43

spread all around the globe,

0:20:430:20:44

so it's been ejected way above the Earth's atmosphere,

0:20:440:20:48

travelled round the globe, and landed around the Earth.

0:20:480:20:51

After eight weeks, the work here is done.

0:20:540:20:56

I don't think it could have gone much better.

0:20:580:21:00

I'll not forget this place.

0:21:000:21:03

It's been an amazing expedition, and I expect we'll have lots more

0:21:030:21:06

discoveries to come.

0:21:060:21:08

More than 300 rock cores have been extracted,

0:21:080:21:10

which the team hopes will tell the story of how the dinosaurs died.

0:21:100:21:15

Four months and over 5,000 miles later,

0:21:340:21:37

the rock cores are now here

0:21:370:21:39

at the University of Bremen in Germany,

0:21:390:21:42

for the second phase

0:21:420:21:43

of this colossal and unparalleled scientific journey.

0:21:430:21:47

I'm inside a huge fridge that's now home to all the samples that

0:21:470:21:51

were taken up from the Gulf of Mexico,

0:21:510:21:54

and it's really cold in here, as you might expect.

0:21:540:21:57

Now, this is to stop any organisms from growing

0:21:570:22:00

and contaminating these samples.

0:22:000:22:02

This is a test recording. Say something.

0:22:050:22:09

Oh. Hello, hello.

0:22:090:22:11

Here in Bremen, the research team is working to find out what happened,

0:22:110:22:15

minute by minute, after the asteroid struck,

0:22:150:22:18

and what that meant for the dinosaurs.

0:22:180:22:20

OK, this is day two that we've had the samples,

0:22:230:22:26

and I'm going to take you through the...around the labs

0:22:260:22:30

where everybody's started their analyses.

0:22:300:22:32

Over here we can see people looking through microscopes,

0:22:320:22:35

looking at thin slides that have been collected from offshore.

0:22:350:22:38

Hi, Philippe. I'm going to film you while you take a look at this core.

0:22:380:22:41

Hey!

0:22:410:22:43

Unravelling these cores is a mammoth task.

0:22:470:22:50

Over 800 metres of rock has to be carefully split,

0:22:500:22:55

tested and photographed.

0:22:550:22:56

But what they're starting to reveal about the force of the impact

0:23:000:23:03

is literally earth-shattering.

0:23:030:23:05

This core, from above the crater, is what typical geology looks like -

0:23:090:23:13

layer upon layer of similar-looking rock,

0:23:130:23:17

laid down on the seabed very slowly.

0:23:170:23:20

This three metres of limestone took millions of years to accumulate.

0:23:210:23:26

But when the asteroid struck...

0:23:280:23:30

..it was geology at hyperspeed.

0:23:320:23:34

The next 600 metres of rock were deposited in a single day,

0:23:370:23:43

leaving a unique and chaotic jumble.

0:23:430:23:46

Sean, I mean, how do you make sense of this incredible place

0:23:530:23:56

-that you've got here?

-It is amazing.

0:23:560:23:57

This is 150km worth of core,

0:23:570:24:00

collected by the International Ocean Discovery Programme

0:24:000:24:02

-and all its predecessors back to the late '60s.

-Mm-hm.

0:24:020:24:04

But from all these cores,

0:24:040:24:06

-the most amazing is the one we just collected...

-Yeah.

0:24:060:24:08

-..in the Chicxulub impact crater.

-Of course, yeah.

0:24:080:24:10

You can see this black, flowing texture of the rock.

0:24:100:24:14

This is actually...

0:24:140:24:15

-It looks like it flowed, right?

-Mm.

-You can see the textures in it.

0:24:150:24:18

This is actually melted basement rock,

0:24:180:24:20

melted granite, and it actually takes amazing pressures to do that,

0:24:200:24:24

and amazing pressures to melt the rock.

0:24:240:24:26

This is...

0:24:260:24:27

So I've got a piece of what would be considered, sort of,

0:24:270:24:29

normal granite, if you will -

0:24:290:24:31

the kind that you might put on your countertop,

0:24:310:24:34

and that's why we use it, cos it's nice and hard.

0:24:340:24:36

-I mean, it... Right?

-Pretty solid.

0:24:360:24:38

But this... Yeah, exactly.

0:24:380:24:39

This stuff has actually seen shock of an incredible level,

0:24:390:24:44

so think of it as pressure waves moving down through the granite,

0:24:440:24:47

like lots and lots of little earthquakes.

0:24:470:24:50

And what it's done to it is,

0:24:500:24:51

all the way down at the scale of a crystal,

0:24:510:24:53

-is it's actually deformed it...

-Mm-hmm.

0:24:530:24:55

..so that the final granite...

0:24:550:24:56

..can be broken.

0:24:590:25:00

-It just crumbled up. That's...that's amazing.

-Yeah.

0:25:000:25:02

Oh, wow. Just such incredible, amazing forces at work here.

0:25:020:25:07

This whole event, it's... I'm still finding it difficult.

0:25:070:25:10

Well, even as a geophysicist, where we study this for a living,

0:25:100:25:13

it's really hard to wrap our brains around the enormity of

0:25:130:25:16

the pressures involved, and the enormity of the destruction

0:25:160:25:18

-that happens in the middle of an impact, and so quickly.

-Mm-hm.

0:25:180:25:21

This all happened in less than ten minutes.

0:25:210:25:24

It's becoming clear just how mind-bogglingly huge

0:25:250:25:29

the Yucatan impact really was.

0:25:290:25:31

And to help grasp its scale,

0:25:330:25:35

Sean is taking a trip to a more recent impact site in Arizona.

0:25:350:25:40

This simple crater here was created by about a 50-metre, or 150-foot,

0:25:480:25:53

asteroid impacting the Earth, about 50,000 years ago.

0:25:530:25:56

It's about a mile across. It's actually quite small.

0:25:570:26:00

It's basically, simply, a bowl-shaped crater.

0:26:000:26:03

Everything above the red line that you see there is actually

0:26:030:26:05

material that used to be buried that has been flipped up on end,

0:26:050:26:09

and is now...or flipped upside-down,

0:26:090:26:11

and is now laying as a pile of broken-up material.

0:26:110:26:14

By studying the shape of the crater and the upheaval of the rock layers,

0:26:160:26:19

Sean, Jo and the team can compare this site to

0:26:190:26:22

the Yucatan impact zone,

0:26:220:26:25

Even a small asteroid strike like this

0:26:250:26:28

would have had dramatic consequences.

0:26:280:26:31

So it comes in at something like 26,000mph.

0:26:310:26:35

10km away from here, we would have a fireball reaching,

0:26:350:26:39

maybe 20km away from here, a shock wave,

0:26:390:26:42

and, say, 40km away from here are hurricane-force winds,

0:26:420:26:45

but that would just have been a bad day

0:26:450:26:47

in, today, northern Arizona.

0:26:470:26:49

So this is what a 50m-wide asteroid can do -

0:26:520:26:55

it's devastating, but localised.

0:26:550:26:58

but what about an asteroid that is nine miles across

0:26:580:27:01

and leaves a crater 120 miles wide?

0:27:010:27:04

To understand the effects of that impact,

0:27:090:27:11

the team needs to know exactly how much energy it released.

0:27:110:27:15

To do that, they're comparing rock samples from Yucatan

0:27:170:27:20

to data gathered from some of the largest ever man-made explosions.

0:27:200:27:27

This is the Nevada Test Site,

0:27:330:27:37

the most bombed place in the world.

0:27:370:27:40

The US military have detonated 904 atomic bombs here.

0:27:420:27:48

To help us understand how atomic bombs connect to asteroids,

0:27:480:27:52

we've enlisted the help

0:27:520:27:53

of physicists Mark Boslough and David Dearborn.

0:27:530:27:56

The blast must have come all the way through,

0:27:580:28:00

and I bet these windows blew out.

0:28:000:28:02

Those shards of glass would be accelerated by 90mph wind.

0:28:020:28:05

-Wind, the windows were gone. Yes.

-And they're totally...boom.

0:28:050:28:09

This house was part of a test village called Survival Town,

0:28:090:28:12

built to study the effects of a nuclear blast.

0:28:120:28:15

It actually survived a blast called Apple-2 in May 1965.

0:28:170:28:22

EXPLOSION

0:28:220:28:24

WIND HOWLS

0:28:240:28:27

Most of the damage is done by the fireball...

0:28:280:28:31

..and the heat that is generated, or the blast wave as it goes by...

0:28:340:28:38

..and the houses that were in closer didn't survive.

0:28:410:28:43

Those of us who work on asteroid impacts,

0:28:520:28:54

we naturally started comparing them to nuclear explosions.

0:28:540:28:57

It's a similar phenomenon.

0:28:570:28:59

The experimenters had high-speed cameras,

0:29:000:29:02

they had gauges that measured the intensity of the shock wave,

0:29:020:29:05

the blast wave in the air.

0:29:050:29:08

The tests found that nuclear explosions are devastating

0:29:090:29:12

even at a microscopic level,

0:29:120:29:15

causing catastrophic shock to minerals such as quartz.

0:29:150:29:19

The pressure is so high in a shock wave from a nuclear explosion

0:29:220:29:25

that it actually exceeds the strength of a crystal.

0:29:250:29:29

Crystal is made up of a uniform array of atoms

0:29:290:29:32

and that uniformity is completely disrupted by a strong shock wave,

0:29:320:29:36

and that's what shocked quartz is.

0:29:360:29:38

In Bremen, Professor Joanna Morgan is looking at quartz

0:29:410:29:44

found in rock cores from the asteroid impact site.

0:29:440:29:48

From nuclear test data, she knows exactly how much force

0:29:480:29:52

it takes to shock quartz.

0:29:520:29:55

From this, she can tell how much force the Yucatan rock

0:29:550:29:58

has been subjected to and begin to calculate the exact amount of

0:29:580:30:02

energy released when the asteroid struck.

0:30:020:30:04

So this is a piece of shocked quartz that we recently drilled

0:30:040:30:09

from the Chicxulub impact crater.

0:30:090:30:10

There's lots of lines here.

0:30:100:30:12

Essentially, the more lines we have on the screen,

0:30:120:30:15

different directions, the more shocked this rock has been.

0:30:150:30:18

These are caused by the impact,

0:30:180:30:20

by the shock wave that travels through this piece of quartz.

0:30:200:30:22

So we used exactly the same hydrocodes, they're called,

0:30:220:30:25

to model nuclear explosions as we do to model the impact craters.

0:30:250:30:30

We've actually stolen these codes and applied them to our simulations

0:30:300:30:34

of impact crater formation.

0:30:340:30:35

What sort of force were we actually talking about

0:30:350:30:37

from the asteroid hitting it?

0:30:370:30:39

This event was equivalent to about 10 billion Hiroshimas,

0:30:390:30:42

so, absolutely enormous.

0:30:420:30:45

The most dramatic event in the last 100 million years.

0:30:450:30:48

10 billion Hiroshimas combined?

0:30:480:30:50

-That's the amount of force going into this?

-Absolutely.

0:30:500:30:52

It's incredible, it really is.

0:30:520:30:53

Finally, we have hard evidence

0:30:590:31:01

of just how powerful the asteroid strike really was.

0:31:010:31:06

10 billion Hiroshimas.

0:31:060:31:08

It's a major revelation.

0:31:080:31:10

But the truly incredible thing about this asteroid strike

0:31:120:31:15

was that it changed the face of our planet within seconds.

0:31:150:31:18

And now we know that,

0:31:180:31:21

we can do something that has never been done before.

0:31:210:31:24

'Create a simulation of exactly how the impact affected Earth

0:31:250:31:29

'and the dinosaurs.'

0:31:290:31:31

Here's what the new results tell us about those crucial initial minutes

0:31:320:31:36

after the asteroid struck.

0:31:360:31:38

The asteroid, nine miles wide,

0:31:410:31:44

smashes into the Yucatan at 40,000mph...

0:31:440:31:48

..vaporising instantly.

0:31:570:31:59

The impact makes a hole in the earth 20 miles deep and 120 miles across,

0:32:010:32:08

turning the surrounding sea to steam and shattering the earth below.

0:32:080:32:13

Rock from deep in the Earth's crust then rises miles into the air,

0:32:140:32:19

forming a tower higher than the Himalayas

0:32:190:32:23

that collapses to form a strange ring of peaks that exists today.

0:32:230:32:28

All this in the first ten minutes.

0:32:300:32:33

What did this mean for the dinosaurs?

0:32:350:32:37

Well, it started an unstoppable and devastating chain of events.

0:32:370:32:42

First, like an enormous nuclear explosion,

0:32:440:32:47

a radiation fireball 10,000 degrees centigrade

0:32:470:32:51

spreads out from the impact zone.

0:32:510:32:54

This searing hot sphere fries everything within

0:32:560:33:00

a 600-mile radius in an instant.

0:33:000:33:03

The truly global devastation had its roots not in the blast,

0:33:050:33:10

but in the huge vapour plume

0:33:100:33:12

that rose out of the crater and through the atmosphere.

0:33:120:33:15

A red-hot cloud of vaporised asteroid and rock,

0:33:190:33:24

expanding upwards 600 miles,

0:33:240:33:27

spreading rapidly outwards to fill the planet's atmosphere.

0:33:270:33:31

Back then, faraway New Jersey was covered in ocean.

0:33:370:33:41

And it too would soon feel the effects of the impact.

0:33:450:33:50

1,700 miles from the site of the impact,

0:33:510:33:55

the fireball wouldn't have been visible.

0:33:550:33:58

That blazing, towering, swirling cloud

0:33:580:34:01

would've been just over the horizon,

0:34:010:34:03

but we might have seen a faint glow.

0:34:030:34:06

The animals here were safe from the direct radiation.

0:34:060:34:10

Two-and-a-half hours later,

0:34:130:34:15

like the sound of heavy traffic in the distance,

0:34:150:34:17

the shock wave, now a sound wave, arrived.

0:34:170:34:21

Wind starts to whip up, growing stronger and stronger until

0:34:250:34:29

we're facing into hurricane-force winds.

0:34:290:34:32

The blast wave from the impact

0:34:380:34:40

surged across the Earth at enormous speed.

0:34:400:34:42

Its effects would have been short-lived,

0:34:440:34:47

but those few traumatic hours

0:34:470:34:50

left an indelible impression in the earth's geological record.

0:34:500:34:54

These are beads of molten rock that rained down from the skies

0:34:570:35:02

and as they cool, they become glass.

0:35:020:35:04

And if you melt rock and you cool it fast,

0:35:040:35:06

it doesn't have a chance to turn back into rock, it forms glass.

0:35:060:35:10

Glass called spherules.

0:35:100:35:11

And we find these little spherules right here

0:35:110:35:14

in this mass death assemblage.

0:35:140:35:16

What produces the kind of energy and heat needed

0:35:190:35:23

to form these spherules, then?

0:35:230:35:26

Well, when you have an asteroid impact,

0:35:260:35:28

it melts the rock and it flies up through the atmosphere

0:35:280:35:31

and these bits of molten rock rain down on the planet.

0:35:310:35:34

'These 66-million-year-old droplets of molten rock show that

0:35:340:35:39

'debris was falling on landscapes

0:35:390:35:40

'far away from the impact zone itself.'

0:35:400:35:43

Protected by the water, marine creatures like the mosasaurs

0:35:430:35:48

may have been able to survive these immediate events.

0:35:480:35:51

But for the dinosaurs on land, with nowhere to hide,

0:35:510:35:54

this was the beginning of the end.

0:35:540:35:57

To show how the effects might have played out

0:35:590:36:02

for dinosaurs on the ground,

0:36:020:36:03

we've enlisted palaeontologists Steve Brusatte and Tom Williamson

0:36:030:36:08

to our international team.

0:36:080:36:09

They've come to New Mexico,

0:36:090:36:12

1,200 miles from the impact zone,

0:36:120:36:15

hunting for remains in one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites

0:36:150:36:19

in the world.

0:36:190:36:20

-Yeah. OK.

-Whoa.

0:36:200:36:23

-Got a bone layer.

-Look at this. Check this out.

0:36:230:36:25

A lot of times, we'll just be walking around in the Badlands,

0:36:250:36:29

looking for stuff that's sticking out of the rock.

0:36:290:36:32

That's always the first clue.

0:36:320:36:34

This one's really sticking out. We can tell from the shape of it

0:36:340:36:37

that it's part of the backbone of a dinosaur.

0:36:370:36:39

It's a bone from the backbone of a horned dinosaur.

0:36:410:36:45

This is probably Pentaceratops,

0:36:450:36:48

which means five-horned face,

0:36:480:36:50

two brow horns, a nasal horn and then a cheek horn on each side.

0:36:500:36:54

Triceratops has three horns on its face.

0:36:540:36:57

This guy had two more horns, so five horns total,

0:36:570:37:00

so an even gaudier dinosaur.

0:37:000:37:03

The ceratopsians, like Pentaceratops and Triceratops,

0:37:040:37:08

were a large group of plant-eating dinosaurs

0:37:080:37:11

that roamed the American landscape

0:37:110:37:14

for the 20 million years leading up to the asteroid impact.

0:37:140:37:17

-There it is.

-Pretty good. Look at that.

-Not bad.

0:37:210:37:24

This whole area here,

0:37:250:37:26

honestly, it's littered with these kind of bones.

0:37:260:37:29

These were the cows of the Cretaceous,

0:37:290:37:31

they would've been everywhere on this landscape.

0:37:310:37:33

66 million years ago, this area would've looked very different.

0:37:330:37:38

Today, it's known as the San Juan Badlands.

0:37:380:37:42

Back then, it wasn't so bad at all.

0:37:420:37:45

This whole area was a lush jungle.

0:37:460:37:49

Dense vegetation.

0:37:510:37:53

Thick forests cut through by flowing rivers.

0:37:550:37:58

When that day started, this whole area here would've been teeming

0:38:040:38:09

with dinosaurs, and then, about 2,000km or so,

0:38:090:38:15

1,200 miles in this direction to the south-east, the asteroid hit.

0:38:150:38:19

And very quickly, the dinosaurs would've realised

0:38:290:38:32

that something was wrong,

0:38:320:38:34

because there would've been an enormous red glowing cloud

0:38:340:38:38

that would've filled up much of the sky here.

0:38:380:38:41

The glowing cloud would've looked dramatic,

0:38:420:38:45

but this far from the impact zone,

0:38:450:38:47

the dinosaurs here would've been safe...for now.

0:38:470:38:51

Now, their cousins down in Texas,

0:38:520:38:54

about 1,000 kilometres closer to the impact site,

0:38:540:38:58

they were toast.

0:38:580:38:59

They were incinerated, they were vaporised.

0:38:590:39:01

By studying the Yucatan rock core,

0:39:010:39:04

we know the exact timing of what happened next.

0:39:040:39:06

11 minutes after the impact,

0:39:080:39:10

the vapour cloud arrived in New Mexico.

0:39:100:39:14

The skies darkened and the temperature started to rise.

0:39:140:39:19

It wasn't really a case of fire and brimstone

0:39:230:39:26

raining down from the heavens.

0:39:260:39:27

It was more a case of all of that stuff heating up the atmosphere

0:39:270:39:31

and turning the atmosphere into a giant radiator.

0:39:310:39:35

The heat was so intense that,

0:39:400:39:42

over 1,000 miles away from the impact,

0:39:420:39:45

many animals would have been roasted alive.

0:39:450:39:48

Climate specialist Dr Brian Toon

0:39:500:39:52

is the first scientist ever to theorise what happened next.

0:39:520:39:56

A devastating global firestorm he's studied for more than 20 years.

0:39:560:40:03

It wasn't falling on you, it was 60km above the ground or so,

0:40:030:40:08

and the glowing hot lava was emitting an amount of energy

0:40:080:40:13

that's a few times larger than the sun.

0:40:130:40:16

This is not a normal fire.

0:40:180:40:20

The fire was started everywhere, which causes what's called

0:40:200:40:23

a mass fire.

0:40:230:40:25

Mass fires can be much hotter than a normal fire.

0:40:270:40:31

Well, the leaves on the ground caught fire,

0:40:310:40:34

leaves in the trees caught fire...

0:40:340:40:36

The underbrush caught fire.

0:40:380:40:39

There's winds at hurricane speeds rushing into the fire,

0:40:420:40:45

drawing upward into the rising flames

0:40:450:40:49

and they consume everything.

0:40:490:40:51

And this vapour quickly spread across the planet.

0:40:550:40:58

Probably only took a few hours

0:40:580:41:00

for it to reach the furthest reaches of the Earth.

0:41:000:41:03

Thanks to our new model of what happened after the impact,

0:41:100:41:14

we now know that fires spread right around the globe.

0:41:140:41:19

But were these fires devastating enough to cause the extinction

0:41:190:41:23

of all of the world's dinosaurs in a single day?

0:41:230:41:27

'To find out, I'm travelling far from the impact site

0:41:300:41:33

'to the very tip of South America

0:41:330:41:36

'and the remote wilderness of Patagonia.'

0:41:360:41:40

Over 4,000 miles away from where the asteroid hit.

0:41:410:41:45

I am all the way down here in Chile.

0:41:540:41:59

Now, we tend to think of this asteroid

0:41:590:42:01

as being absolutely enormous, and it was - 14km in diameter -

0:42:010:42:05

but in the context of the size of the Earth,

0:42:050:42:08

that's like a grain of sand impacting on a bowling ball.

0:42:080:42:11

And I want to understand what kind of impact

0:42:110:42:15

the asteroid landing here had on the dinosaurs

0:42:150:42:20

right down here at the toe of South America.

0:42:200:42:23

Leading the hunt for clues is palaeontologist Marcelo Leppe.

0:42:280:42:33

He's taking me to look for dinosaur remains

0:42:330:42:36

in a mountain valley that's best accessed on four legs.

0:42:360:42:40

Marcelo, can you explain to me how the geology of this valley works?

0:42:500:42:54

Actually, we are passing through time

0:42:540:42:58

and we are moving to the end of the Cretaceous,

0:42:580:43:01

to the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

0:43:010:43:04

We are, at the moment, in 80 million years ago,

0:43:040:43:07

this is Campanian.

0:43:070:43:08

So this is fantastic.

0:43:080:43:09

As we ride along the valley, as we ride north,

0:43:090:43:12

we're riding from 80 million to 66 million years.

0:43:120:43:15

Through time.

0:43:150:43:16

Getting closer to that extinction event.

0:43:170:43:20

We've reached the Valley of the Dinosaurs.

0:43:230:43:26

Now I want to see what sort of dinosaurs lived here and find out

0:43:260:43:30

what happened to them in the hours after the impact.

0:43:300:43:33

So, shall we get off and have a look?

0:43:360:43:38

-Yeah, let's leave the horses and look.

-Seems like a good idea.

0:43:380:43:42

The place is literally full of bones.

0:43:450:43:48

As you can see, this sunlight is the best

0:43:480:43:50

because the angular light is reflecting the bones.

0:43:500:43:54

-Let's see if we can find a dinosaur, then.

-Yeah, let's...let's see.

0:43:540:43:57

Oh, for example, there.

0:43:580:44:00

Or here.

0:44:010:44:03

Look, just beside you.

0:44:030:44:05

-This, here?

-Yes, this is a dinosaur bone.

0:44:050:44:08

Oh. That's fantastic.

0:44:080:44:10

They're different colour. Greyish, or white.

0:44:100:44:12

Yeah, so what's that, then?

0:44:120:44:14

Oh, it looks like a vertebrae.

0:44:140:44:17

Probably the first one.

0:44:170:44:18

OK, so...yeah.

0:44:180:44:20

That looks like a facet, it looks like the surface of a joint

0:44:200:44:22

and that would be where the skull sits.

0:44:220:44:24

Any ideas what species?

0:44:240:44:26

-Yeah, probably a hadrosaur. 99%.

-Really?

-Yeah.

0:44:260:44:30

-That's your first hadrosaur, yeah?

-Yeah, it is.

0:44:300:44:33

'This valley is now a bone bed, four miles long.'

0:44:340:44:38

Yes, that is a bit of fossilised bone and they're everywhere.

0:44:390:44:44

Scattered across this hillside.

0:44:440:44:45

It's just extraordinary.

0:44:450:44:47

Once, it was home to herds of hadrosaurs.

0:44:500:44:52

Plant-eaters up to 30-feet long with a distinctive duck-billed face.

0:44:570:45:02

But did the dinosaurs down in Patagonia

0:45:040:45:07

die on the day the asteroid hit?

0:45:070:45:10

Thanks to the team in Bremen,

0:45:160:45:19

we now know that once the asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula

0:45:190:45:22

over 4,000 miles away,

0:45:220:45:25

it took 42 minutes for the superheated cloud of debris

0:45:250:45:29

to reach Patagonia.

0:45:290:45:31

For much of the planet,

0:45:330:45:34

the fires triggered by the burning sky

0:45:340:45:37

led to total destruction.

0:45:370:45:39

But Marcelo has found evidence

0:45:460:45:49

that that may not have been the story here.

0:45:490:45:51

Plants that the hadrosaurs used to eat.

0:45:530:45:56

This is Nothofagus, the southern beech.

0:45:560:45:59

They're all around here, aren't they?

0:45:590:46:02

And if you want to see it, look at that architecture.

0:46:020:46:07

And I want to show you also this one.

0:46:070:46:10

This is from Las Chinas,

0:46:100:46:11

the same valley we were looking for the hadrosaurs.

0:46:110:46:14

Oh, this is fantastic.

0:46:140:46:15

-This is what the hadrosaurs were walking on.

-Yeah.

0:46:150:46:18

-And if you want to compare it...

-Well, that looks incredibly similar.

0:46:180:46:21

Is there actually a relationship

0:46:210:46:23

between this fossil leaf and this living one?

0:46:230:46:25

Oh, there is a direct line

0:46:250:46:28

from this fossil and this one that is living today in Patagonia.

0:46:280:46:32

So this is fantastic evidence that, down here in Patagonia,

0:46:320:46:35

some spaces did actually make it through.

0:46:350:46:37

66 million years ago, this region was warm, wet

0:46:400:46:43

and dense with vegetation like the southern beech.

0:46:430:46:46

A species of plant that survived the fires on impact day.

0:46:480:46:52

And if plants survived,

0:46:550:46:56

maybe the dinosaurs here could have done, too.

0:46:560:46:59

Life down here should have been badly hit,

0:47:040:47:08

but the fossil evidence, particularly of plant life,

0:47:080:47:12

is telling us a different story -

0:47:120:47:14

that the immediate fallout from Chicxulub

0:47:140:47:17

in Patagonia was not as bad as predicted.

0:47:170:47:21

So perhaps our hadrosaurs had a stay of execution,

0:47:210:47:25

maybe they made it through that first day.

0:47:250:47:28

But something...

0:47:280:47:30

Something got them in the end.

0:47:300:47:32

To determine exactly what did happen in the days, weeks and months

0:47:360:47:40

after the asteroid struck, the Bremen team are still

0:47:400:47:44

hard at work studying rock samples from the impact crater.

0:47:440:47:47

Dr Philippe Claeys thinks he's found perhaps the most important clue yet.

0:47:520:47:57

So, Philippe, when this asteroid struck Earth,

0:48:020:48:05

it had a massive and devastating impact.

0:48:050:48:07

But that didn't quite seal the fate of the dinosaurs, did it?

0:48:070:48:09

Probably not. Remember, the dinosaurs were ideally adapted

0:48:090:48:13

to the late Cretaceous environment.

0:48:130:48:15

They were the ultimate animal for the Cretaceous.

0:48:150:48:18

What happened here is that

0:48:180:48:20

we have an incredible change in the Earth's system,

0:48:200:48:23

basically kills the dinosaur everywhere on Earth -

0:48:230:48:27

in Africa, Antarctica, in the forests, or in the savanna.

0:48:270:48:30

But what made them extinct?

0:48:300:48:32

You talk about a global scale, suddenly.

0:48:320:48:33

-What went global? What happened?

-What went global is really

0:48:330:48:36

the ejection of material from the crater.

0:48:360:48:39

-Look at what I have in my pocket - this is gypsum.

-Right, OK.

0:48:390:48:42

-This was part of Yucatan at the time of impact.

-Yeah.

-OK?

0:48:420:48:46

And this material here contains sulphate.

0:48:460:48:49

And this gypsum affects the chemistry of the atmosphere.

0:48:490:48:54

It changes it drastically.

0:48:540:48:56

This area's meant to be rich in this sort of stuff.

0:48:560:48:58

It's supposed to be full of it. But it's not.

0:48:580:49:02

We can look for the remnants of it here.

0:49:020:49:05

In the core, it's totally absent,

0:49:050:49:07

which means that almost the entire sequence of gypsum

0:49:070:49:10

that was present in the sedimentary target

0:49:100:49:13

at the time of impact went into the atmosphere.

0:49:130:49:15

This is a huge discovery.

0:49:200:49:23

The presence of gypsum means the plume of vaporised rock

0:49:230:49:26

that spread across the world was dense with sulphates

0:49:260:49:31

that blocked sunlight.

0:49:310:49:32

The same thing happened after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo

0:49:380:49:42

in the Philippines.

0:49:420:49:44

Sulphates reduced the amount of sunlight reaching land by 10%,

0:49:450:49:49

which caused a drop in global temperatures.

0:49:490:49:52

25 years ago, Pinatubo had an incredible effect on the atmosphere.

0:49:550:49:59

It cooled it by very little, but it had an effect.

0:49:590:50:04

-And it stayed for a couple of years.

-Right.

0:50:040:50:06

Here, we have an event which is orders of magnitude more important.

0:50:060:50:09

Pinatubo is nothing compared to the Chicxulub impact.

0:50:090:50:12

It is really going global, no place is protected,

0:50:120:50:15

no dinosaur can escape

0:50:150:50:17

the consequence of the Chicxulub impact.

0:50:170:50:19

This is the gypsum.

0:50:190:50:21

-This is what killed the dinosaurs.

-Wow.

0:50:210:50:24

This astonishing find is the final piece of the jigsaw...

0:50:280:50:31

..allowing us, for the first time,

0:50:330:50:35

to model what finally killed the dinosaurs.

0:50:350:50:38

It's what happened in the days after the impact

0:50:400:50:43

that made it a global extinction.

0:50:430:50:46

Our blue planet turned grey.

0:50:480:50:51

Long after the hot skies cooled, ash and dust in the atmosphere

0:50:540:50:59

almost completely blocked out the sun.

0:50:590:51:01

As the lights went out, global temperatures plunged

0:51:020:51:06

more than ten degrees centigrade within days.

0:51:060:51:08

This is where we get to the great irony of the story.

0:51:130:51:16

Because in the end, it wasn't the size of the asteroid...

0:51:210:51:24

..the scale of the blast,

0:51:260:51:29

or even its global reach that made dinosaurs extinct.

0:51:290:51:33

It was where the impact happened.

0:51:340:51:36

Had the asteroid struck a few moments earlier,

0:51:390:51:42

or maybe even a couple of seconds later,

0:51:420:51:44

then rather than hitting shallow coastal waters,

0:51:440:51:47

it might have hit deep ocean.

0:51:470:51:50

An impact in the nearby Atlantic or Pacific oceans

0:51:520:51:55

would have meant much less vaporised rock,

0:51:550:51:57

including the deadly gypsum.

0:51:570:51:59

The cloud would have been less dense

0:52:020:52:04

and sunlight could have still reached the planet's surface...

0:52:040:52:07

..meaning what happened next might have been avoided.

0:52:090:52:12

In this cold, dark world,

0:52:140:52:16

food ran out in the oceans within a week,

0:52:160:52:19

and shortly after, on land also.

0:52:190:52:22

With nothing to eat anywhere on the planet,

0:52:220:52:25

the mighty dinosaurs stood little chance of survival.

0:52:250:52:28

In Patagonia, 10% of plant species went extinct.

0:52:360:52:41

The southern beeches would have shed their leaves,

0:52:410:52:44

shutting down for the long winter that the asteroid set off.

0:52:440:52:48

The hadrosaurs were left to starve.

0:52:480:52:50

The demise of the dinosaurs down here in Patagonia

0:52:550:52:58

was nowhere near as dramatic as being obliterated by a blast wave,

0:52:580:53:03

or drowned in a tsunami,

0:53:030:53:05

or even being caught up in a colossal forest fire.

0:53:050:53:08

But they were doomed, nonetheless.

0:53:080:53:11

The dinosaurs as a group were hugely successful and diverse,

0:53:150:53:19

they'd been on the planet for more than 150 million years.

0:53:190:53:23

But this Chicxulub event was more than just a local phenomenon.

0:53:240:53:28

It changed the climate globally,

0:53:290:53:32

plunging the world into a deep, deep winter.

0:53:320:53:35

And there was no time to adapt.

0:53:350:53:38

So, in some ways,

0:53:380:53:40

the dinosaurs that died instantaneously were the lucky ones.

0:53:400:53:43

This sudden climate change may finally solve the mystery of

0:53:490:53:53

what happened in New Jersey.

0:53:530:53:54

As the food supply in the oceans dwindled,

0:53:570:54:01

shallow water creatures roamed ever deeper.

0:54:010:54:03

But eventually, the food would run out.

0:54:050:54:07

And all of those animals from different parts of the oceans died,

0:54:100:54:16

coming to rest in a single layer.

0:54:160:54:18

It's been an incredible adventure decades in the planning.

0:54:290:54:34

A multi-million-pound scientific expedition,

0:54:340:54:38

weeks of drilling rock samples from deep inside a super crater,

0:54:380:54:43

and months of studying hundreds of metres of rock samples.

0:54:430:54:48

-So, this was E4.

-Yep.

-Which is 53 million to 55.

0:54:480:54:53

We were just jazzed about the science, all day long.

0:54:530:54:57

Many people have been up for 20 hours

0:54:570:54:59

and they were still just going with enthusiasm,

0:54:590:55:01

describing the cores, looking at the microfossils.

0:55:010:55:04

It was a heady experience.

0:55:040:55:07

All that hard work has paid off in a big way.

0:55:070:55:11

The team has been able to reveal extraordinary new details,

0:55:110:55:16

evidence about how the dinosaurs died.

0:55:160:55:19

But perhaps even astonishing than what killed the dinosaurs...

0:55:190:55:23

..is what happened after they were gone.

0:55:240:55:27

The asteroid and its aftermath ended the age of the dinosaurs.

0:55:300:55:34

But as the cloud started to clear, months or years later,

0:55:370:55:42

the dormant plants came back to life.

0:55:420:55:45

And a tiny group of animals came out of hiding to inherit the Earth.

0:55:460:55:52

Creatures that would, over millions of years,

0:55:520:55:55

evolve into a huge range of different species...

0:55:550:55:58

Including us.

0:55:580:56:00

On the tip of my finger right here

0:56:000:56:02

is a lower tooth of something called mesodma.

0:56:020:56:08

This was a little guy who was probably about the size of a mouse.

0:56:080:56:11

This is one tough little mammal.

0:56:140:56:17

One of the very few species known to survive

0:56:170:56:19

through the global devastation.

0:56:190:56:22

It's a blade-like tooth.

0:56:220:56:23

It was able to feed on things like insects and seeds,

0:56:230:56:27

so it didn't have to rely on photosynthesis.

0:56:270:56:30

Mammals had lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs for 100 million years.

0:56:320:56:38

But now it was their turn.

0:56:380:56:41

This chance event that was the doom of the dinosaurs

0:56:410:56:44

was a stroke of luck for the surviving mammals.

0:56:440:56:48

With the dinosaurs gone,

0:56:500:56:52

suddenly, the landscape was empty of competitors

0:56:520:56:55

and ripe with possibilities.

0:56:550:56:56

Just half a million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs,

0:57:090:57:12

and landscapes around the globe had filled up with mammals

0:57:120:57:16

of all shapes and sizes.

0:57:160:57:17

Fast forward another 60 million years or so,

0:57:220:57:25

and we have the evolution of an extraordinary upright walking ape

0:57:250:57:28

that contemplates its own existence

0:57:280:57:31

and the demise of ancient creatures they'd never even seen.

0:57:310:57:35

Chances are, if it wasn't for that asteroid,

0:57:350:57:38

we wouldn't be here to tell the story today.

0:57:380:57:41

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