- 4 months ago
Top 10 Biggest Beasts Ever (2015) is a fascinating documentary that explores the largest creatures to ever walk, swim, or fly on Earth. From colossal dinosaurs to mighty prehistoric mammals, the film combines cutting-edge CGI with expert insights to bring these giants back to life. Narrated with engaging storytelling, it showcases the science behind their size, behavior, and survival, offering viewers an unforgettable journey into the history of Earth’s most extraordinary animals. A must-watch for fans of natural history and prehistoric discoveries.
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Top 10 Biggest Beasts Ever 2015, prehistoric giants documentary, dinosaur documentary film, largest animals in history, prehistoric creatures, natural history documentary, Earth’s biggest animals, giant dinosaurs, ancient mammals, fascinating science films, prehistoric life documentary, discovery channel style documentary, educational nature films, biggest beasts ever documentary, history of dinosaurs and mammals, learning about prehistoric animals, paleontology films, giant animal documentary, science and history movie, prehistoric storytelling film
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00:00:00Before humans ruled the world, planet Earth was a land of giants.
00:00:11Snakes the length of buses.
00:00:14I am still to this day completely amazed by this animal.
00:00:17Ocean killers with jaws big enough to swallow a person whole.
00:00:22These jaws were able to rip out this big chunk of car.
00:00:25And predators that dwarf T-Rex.
00:00:30We're talking something of enormous length, that could slice you with one motion.
00:00:36But of all the creatures that have ever lived, which is the biggest?
00:00:43Using the latest discoveries and cutting-edge science,
00:00:46we're going to reveal a top ten of the biggest beasts ever.
00:00:51That have walked the Earth, swum the seas, and soared the skies.
00:00:57This is awesome!
00:01:00Analyzing the ultimate giant beasts across the animal kingdom, species by species,
00:01:05and using length as our ultimate guide, we count down from ten.
00:01:12Analyzing the ultimate giant beasts across the animal kingdom, species by species,
00:01:17and using length as our ultimate guide, we count down from ten.
00:01:23And first on our list is a creature you'd never expect.
00:01:27And first on our list is a creature you'd never expect.
00:01:36A terrifying beast.
00:01:38The biggest insect that ever lived.
00:01:42Long before the dinosaurs, a winged giant terrorized the skies.
00:02:01Flying at over 20 miles per hour, and with jaws that could cut small reptiles to pieces,
00:02:06its common name is the griffin fly.
00:02:16A clue to this ancient megabug was discovered in 1940 in Noble County, Oklahoma,
00:02:22in the southern United States.
00:02:28Today, it's the job of insect expert Brian Farrell to take care of that clue.
00:02:36A fragile fossil that's 275 million years old.
00:02:42This really is a spectacular fossil.
00:02:46This fossil is the largest insect wing ever discovered.
00:02:53To get an idea of just how big this insect was, this is a reasonably large-sized modern dragonfly.
00:03:01For comparison, it's about one-fifth the size at most of this Meganeuropsis.
00:03:06Looking at this single wing, it's clear just how big the griffin fly could get.
00:03:12It had four wings, the biggest pair spanning two and a half feet across.
00:03:26That makes it six times larger than many modern dragonflies.
00:03:32If it was around today, it would be a match for a hawk and span the outstretched arm of a six-foot man.
00:03:48From smaller but more complete fossils, experts have discovered that
00:03:51griffin flies didn't merely look like today's dragonflies, their anatomy was incredibly similar.
00:03:56So it's likely that they behaved the same way too, as deadly hunters.
00:04:08Anthony Leonardo is a world expert in dragonfly flight.
00:04:12He's unlocking the secrets of what makes these flying aces such expert killer beasts.
00:04:19They have four wings that can beat independently.
00:04:22If you look at the wings closely, you can see that they're quite amazing.
00:04:25The dragonfly can fly forwards, backwards, upside down.
00:04:28It can also pull these incredibly sharp 6G turns.
00:04:33They also have eyes with virtually 360-degree vision.
00:04:38Powerful legs for grabbing insect prey.
00:04:42And killer jaws.
00:04:44They have these massive mandibles and these kind of pinching crunchers.
00:04:47And they very quickly cut and slice all this prey into little bits that the animal then swallows.
00:04:56But how did the griffin fly get so big?
00:04:59And why are modern dragonflies so much smaller?
00:05:03The answer lies in the way all other insects breathe.
00:05:07Insects don't have lungs.
00:05:09On the outside of the dragonfly's body are little openings called spiracles.
00:05:14And these are little holes that open and close.
00:05:16And they basically are little pumps flooding air into the dragonfly's body and then pushing it back out.
00:05:21Once through the spiracles, the air moves through a network of tubes called trachea.
00:05:29This way, oxygen is fed directly to every single cell of the body.
00:05:33The problem is, there are so many tubes, there's little room left for muscle.
00:05:41And that's what stops today's dragonflies getting any larger.
00:05:44So how did they ever reach the monstrous size of the griffin fly?
00:05:57How did they pack enough muscle into their bodies to power giant wings?
00:06:07One paleobiologist at Midwestern University,
00:06:10John Vandenbroek, believes he has the answer.
00:06:15He's doing experiments to uncover the secrets to what makes a bigger bug.
00:06:19John thinks that growing bigger was all down to the amount of oxygen in the air they breathe.
00:06:34Oxygen was much higher in the past.
00:06:37Today, oxygen is about 21% of the atmosphere around you.
00:06:40In the past, it was as high as 31%.
00:06:44An extra 10% might not sound like much,
00:06:47but that's 50% more oxygen than we breathe today.
00:06:52So perhaps, that increase in oxygen in the atmosphere
00:06:55is what led to the possibility that those insects get as large as they did.
00:07:03To investigate, John decided to do something radical.
00:07:09Change the oxygen that bugs could breathe.
00:07:13First, he takes cockroaches and breeds them at far lower levels of oxygen.
00:07:17In this top chamber, we have cockroaches reared under lower oxygen levels, about 12%.
00:07:27And you can see how large this individual is.
00:07:30It may look large, but it's actually small for the species.
00:07:35John then rears other roaches at the oxygen levels of the past.
00:07:38Comparatively, the cockroaches reared down here are being reared in a high oxygen level of about 31%.
00:07:49And you can see now how large this individual is.
00:07:52Much, much larger than those reared at the lower oxygen levels.
00:07:57And it's even more pronounced if we're able to compare the two animals.
00:08:02The results are clear and astonishing.
00:08:07More oxygen means bugs can have a smaller internal breathing system.
00:08:11We can now definitively say, as oxygen goes up, it actually allows for the animal to put more things inside its body.
00:08:18So it can have more muscle and it can become one of these really large, vicious predators that we see 300 million years ago.
00:08:26So, had we been around to witness it, the griffin fly would have been a truly terrifying sight.
00:08:40This was the biggest insect ever to fly Earth's skies.
00:08:45But our next beast is far, far bigger.
00:08:56The
00:08:57Fast forward from griffin fly to 27 million years ago.
00:09:02Then the skies were ruled by a feathered giant.
00:09:07With wings as wide as a two-lane highway and a cruise speed faster than Usain Bolt,
00:09:13it could travel to every corner of the planet.
00:09:15The evidence of this giant first came to life in South Carolina in the USA.
00:09:34In 2010, paleontologist Dan Sepka discovered a collection of bones in a storeroom of the Charleston Museum.
00:09:41When we pulled open the drawer and I saw this for the first time, it was just absolutely spectacular.
00:09:50Laying the bones out, Dan could see this was no ordinary find.
00:09:55It has this skull with these bony, toothed jaws that almost looks like a crocodile.
00:10:02But it wasn't any kind of reptile.
00:10:05What Dan had discovered was the largest flying bird of all time.
00:10:10A new species they called Pelagornis sandersi.
00:10:16This massive element here is the humerus.
00:10:19This is the first bone of the wing skeleton.
00:10:21So it's equivalent to the upper arm bone in a human skeleton.
00:10:25This bone in particular is longer than my entire arm.
00:10:28And so we have a remarkably long wing.
00:10:34The giant bird's body was six feet long.
00:10:37With a 24 feet wingspan, the largest bird alive today, the wandering albatross, could fit easily under one of its wings.
00:10:51Pelagornis' wingspan rivaled that of a harrier jump jet.
00:10:55Everything about the skeleton tells us this bird must have flown.
00:11:03But how could something this big possibly have stayed airborne?
00:11:09A closer look at the bones provides Dan with a vital clue.
00:11:12Like flying birds today, its bones are hollow and super thin.
00:11:19The bone wall is about a millimeter thick.
00:11:21And so this animal would have been a very lightweight for its size.
00:11:25There's less weight to support in flight.
00:11:29It rivaled the wingspan of a fighter jet.
00:11:31But this giant bird weighed only 48 pounds.
00:11:36Less than a third of the weight of an adult human.
00:11:42Light as it was, one bone still cast doubt on its ability to fly.
00:11:47This bone, the scapula, is the equivalent to our own shoulder blade.
00:11:51And you can see it's just so small, it's actually almost comically small.
00:11:55And this certainly reveals that this bird was not a high-powered flapper.
00:12:03If it wasn't flapping its wings, how did Pelagornis fly?
00:12:09Flight biomechanics expert Mike Habib believes the answer lies with this.
00:12:15I'm out here to try hang gliding for the first time, really excited.
00:12:19I'm hoping this will give me some idea of what being a Pelagornis will be like.
00:12:25A hang glider has a similar wingspan to Pelagornis.
00:12:29It's also lightweight, has a hollow tubular skeleton, and a large rigid wing.
00:12:37The physics don't change, so an airplane wing or a hang glider wing
00:12:40looks fundamentally very similar to an animal wing, even though they're made of different stuff.
00:12:46The only way Mike or Pelagornis could get airborne would be to run into the wind.
00:12:51I'm hoping that I run properly and we launch, and I don't have to be like one of these people
00:12:57that gets dragged along on their face.
00:12:59Okay, are you ready to take off?
00:13:00I'm ready to take off.
00:13:01Okay.
00:13:01This is awesome.
00:13:14Oh, man.
00:13:16This is giving me a little bit of a glimpse of what it would be like to be a giant flying animal in the past.
00:13:21This is an amazing feat of engineering, and it's a great way of soaring.
00:13:26But Pelagornis did a lot better.
00:13:3127 million years ago, nature produced a glider that was about four times more efficient than this hang glider.
00:13:38In fact, Pelagornis was a better glider than anything that has ever lived, or that technology has ever produced.
00:13:47So we were in the air for a good 10 minutes, nice long flight.
00:13:59But Pelagornis would have been one of the champions of long distance flight.
00:14:04Probably could stay in the air for weeks at a time, maybe even months at a time.
00:14:10Staying aloft for long periods was essential for Pelagornis.
00:14:13It's bony teeth, ideal for catching fish, reveal it was a seabird.
00:14:2427 million years ago, Pelagornis was living in this open sea environment.
00:14:29Pelagornis could probably travel across thousands of miles of ocean without much thought.
00:14:35So how did Pelagornis manage such an extraordinary feat?
00:14:38Dan thinks the clue may lie with the modern master of ocean flight, the wandering albatross.
00:14:50Albatrosses make use of the way air flowing over the oceans can change speed.
00:14:57They perform a daredevil maneuver called dynamic soaring.
00:15:01Dan believes if Pelagornis was to survive out at sea, it must have done the same thing.
00:15:06So if we look at the waves, the wind above the waves is going more slowly than the wind higher
00:15:14up at a higher altitude above the waves, especially out on the open seas.
00:15:17And dynamic soaring birds can use this to their advantage.
00:15:22They swoop down to the ocean surface, then pull up at the last second.
00:15:29Pulling up gives a bird enough momentum to rise up and catch faster moving air currents.
00:15:36Pulling in loops like this, Pelagornis would have been able to cover vast distances
00:15:43and grab fish from the surface whilst burning very little energy.
00:15:51This was the biggest and most efficient flying bird in the history of the planet.
00:15:57It ruled the ocean skies.
00:15:59Pelagornis was at the limit of how big birds could grow and still get into the air.
00:16:12But if you think that's big, coming up at number eight is an absolute whopper.
00:16:27If you think that's big, you can imagine walking into a modern zoo where they'd somehow managed to
00:16:32resurrect the largest mammal to walk the earth.
00:16:37What you'd see is this.
00:16:40Twenty tons of hide-bound flesh standing more than two stories tall.
00:16:44Evidence of this ancient mega mammal emerged in the 20th century in what is now Pakistan.
00:16:58But today, this evidence is far from Asia.
00:17:03Paleontologist Michael Fortelius is investigating an extraordinary collection of the beast's bones in
00:17:09London's Natural History Museum.
00:17:11Easy.
00:17:14This colossal skull is testimony to its sheer size.
00:17:19The head sits on a very long neck.
00:17:23There's never been anything similar to this.
00:17:28Put all the bones together and you get something that looks like a cross between a giraffe
00:17:33and an elephant.
00:17:35It's called Paraceratherium.
00:17:39It was so big, a six feet man could easily fit between its legs.
00:17:44It stood 25 feet high.
00:17:46It was nearly twice as tall and three times as heavy as the biggest land mammal today,
00:17:54the African elephant.
00:17:58And at 26 feet from nose to tail, it was as long as an Abrams battle tank.
00:18:08Now the obvious question has to be, why did it get so big?
00:18:11But there's an added complication.
00:18:19While some scientists believe the Paraceratherium lived in thick forests,
00:18:23Michael Fortelius thinks this creature's habitat was harsh.
00:18:31Afflicted by dry seasons when water was scarce and vegetation sparse.
00:18:36How does an animal become a giant when food is in short supply?
00:18:44Michael Fortelius believes the answer lies in the teeth.
00:18:49Looking at the teeth will allow us to understand why this animal got so very large.
00:18:57The teeth are worn in a way that only happens when you're eating leaves.
00:19:02And for eating leaves, sheer height would give this animal a massive advantage.
00:19:09Like a giraffe, it could get to food that's beyond the reach of most animals.
00:19:16So that explains Paraceratherium's height, but not its massive bulk.
00:19:22Fortelius believes that the explanation for that can be found in the harsh environment itself.
00:19:27That the animal grew big because of, not in spite of, its tough surroundings.
00:19:35If you're small, just one day without water is a terrible thing and may kill you.
00:19:42But the larger you are, the more buffered you are,
00:19:45and the more you can deal with harshness in this sense.
00:19:49You can go without food, without water.
00:19:52I think that's what was driving the size increase.
00:19:57Not everyone agrees with Fortelius's theory.
00:20:00But there's no doubt that somehow Paraceratherium thrived.
00:20:07And it must have consumed vast quantities of vegetation every day.
00:20:13To find enough food, it needed to range over hundreds of square miles.
00:20:17And that may be the reason for what is perhaps the most remarkable thing about this amazing animal.
00:20:28Its feet.
00:20:31Biomechanics expert John Hutchinson has analyzed Paraceratherium's foot bones and produced a 3D model.
00:20:40He's struck by just how much it resembles that of one of today's giants.
00:20:44The rhinoceros.
00:20:47In fact, weighing in at only one-sixth of its size, the rhino is Paraceratherium's closest living relative.
00:20:56And Hutchinson's research shows that in terms of size to weight, its feet must bear the heaviest loads.
00:21:03Rhinoceros, the pressures of its feet are way higher than in a horse, a human, even an elephant.
00:21:11Rhinoceros already today are living at an extreme in terms of foot pressure and Paraceratherium seems to have pushed that extreme further.
00:21:18On the feet of both the rhino and its ancient cousin, there are three gigantic, hoof-like nails.
00:21:29There's also a fatty pad designed to act as a shock absorber.
00:21:33The Paraceratherium's foot is proportionally more slender than a rhino's, meaning it has to bear even more stress.
00:21:43My calculations suggest that Paraceratherium might have borne as much as 50% more pressure on its feet than our rhinoceros does.
00:21:55In fact, this was the heaviest mammal ever to walk the earth.
00:22:03And John's calculations suggest one extraordinary fact.
00:22:07Paraceratherium would have put more pressure on its feet than an average tank's treads would put on the ground.
00:22:17That's pretty staggering.
00:22:18This was the biggest land mammal ever.
00:22:23And with footsteps this heavy, you'd have been well advised to stay out of its path.
00:22:31So far on top 10 biggest beasts ever, we've met a deadly dragonfly the size of a hawk.
00:22:40A giant bird the size of a plane.
00:22:42And a mega mammal twice the size of an African elephant.
00:22:52But next up is an even bigger beast that could launch into the skies.
00:22:57This is the closest earth has ever got to a real life winged dragon.
00:23:1870 million years ago, while the dinosaurs ruled the earth, the skies were ruled by pterosaurs.
00:23:27Their name means winged lizards.
00:23:32And paleontologist Gareth Dyke has spent more than 10 years of his life hunting them.
00:23:40Pterosaurs are interesting because they're the first group of vertebrates to evolve powered flight,
00:23:45long before birds and long before bats.
00:23:48The hunt has brought him to Romania, to the region of Transylvania.
00:24:01Better known as the home of that legendary monster, Dracula.
00:24:0670 million years ago, the climate in this area was much different.
00:24:17Big islands in a tropical sea with lush vegetation, lots of animal and plant life,
00:24:22and quite high temperatures couldn't be more different to the weather today.
00:24:28These red sandstone cliffs hold a huge number of fossils.
00:24:32As the rock erodes, more and more are revealed.
00:24:36So what we have here are some of the bones of pterosaurs that we've collected from this
00:24:40area in the last few years. This one, for example, it's about six centimeters in length.
00:24:46So it would have come from an animal that would have had a wingspan of one or two meters,
00:24:50six feet. Average size for pterosaurs.
00:24:56But then, in 2008, Gareth's colleagues climbed down the cliffs and discovered something extraordinary.
00:25:05This neck vertebra from the same part of the neck in a giant pterosaur.
00:25:10It's quite short, quite robust, but gigantic compared to a normal-sized pterosaur vertebra that you can see here.
00:25:18And you can see immediately that we're looking at animals of gigantic proportions.
00:25:25When the neck bone was mapped onto a model of the pterosaur skeleton,
00:25:29it became clear that this was one of the largest members of the pterosaur family ever discovered.
00:25:36Comparable to giant specimens found in the USA.
00:25:42At up to 16 feet tall, these massive pterosaurs could stand nearly three times
00:25:48taller than a human. Tall enough to look a giraffe in the eye.
00:25:54Their front limbs were also vast wings that, when unfurled, could stretch up to 36 feet across.
00:26:01The same as a modern Learjet.
00:26:05It had a beak more than five feet long, perfectly suited to preying off other animals.
00:26:11And no living creature has ever had a larger wingspan.
00:26:18While it seems obvious that giant pterosaurs flew, they're so large, experts have puzzled over how they ever got off the ground.
00:26:26We already know that Pelagornis with its 24 feet wingspan was as big as a bird could get and still fly.
00:26:38The difficulty of just getting off the ground at this size stopped flying birds getting any bigger.
00:26:42So how did a 550 pound pterosaur with a 36 feet wingspan get into the air?
00:26:56Flight biomechanics expert Mike Habib has made it his mission to find out.
00:27:00He has been studying the bones of one particular giant pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus.
00:27:12Discovered in Texas, this species is of similar giant size to the one found in Transylvania.
00:27:21Mike focused his attention on the pterosaur's wing.
00:27:24This is the skeleton of Quetzalcoatlus. You can see the massive bones of the wing.
00:27:31This is called the humerus. It's the bone of the upper arm.
00:27:35Mike conducted a forensic analysis of the bones.
00:27:39I used CT scans to look inside of the bones, and I found that most of the bones in the wing were very hollow.
00:27:46The bone wall of it is only three millimeters thick. It's mostly air by volume.
00:27:50This makes the skeleton very light. But inside the upper arm bone, a dense internal scaffold
00:27:57reinforces the bone, especially near the shoulder. And that's not something you see in a bird wing.
00:28:05This bone is far stronger than needed for flight. Stronger even than needed for walking.
00:28:13So why would the pterosaur possibly need such powerful forelimbs?
00:28:17Mike noticed another clue. A giant groove in the bone. This could mean only one thing. A huge tendon.
00:28:29A giant tendon would run in along the groove here and then wrap around the wing pivot joint.
00:28:38And ends up at the tip of the wing.
00:28:40The tendon would have been about as big around as my wrist.
00:28:47The super size of this tendon led Mike to form a unique theory.
00:28:54The pterosaurs were using the tendon's elastic power to catapult themselves into the air.
00:28:59The tendons and the muscles attached to them have a certain amount of springiness.
00:29:06You can stretch them and then they snap back. Basically, a giant crossbow.
00:29:12Mike used the skeleton to model how this might work.
00:29:15A giant pterosaur like this one to take off would start by crouching on its back legs.
00:29:22And then it would unload the legs first, vaulting over the giant wing.
00:29:28And then it would push against the ground, using up all that stored energy and pushing itself as fast as
00:29:33possible into the air.
00:29:35There is still one living creature that uses this kind of vaulting launch.
00:29:42It's plain to see when you watch a vampire bat take off.
00:29:47But vampire bats only weigh two ounces.
00:29:51So could the same principle work on the scale of a giant pterosaur?
00:29:59Mike has come to a local firing range to find out.
00:30:05So what we have here is a modern crossbow.
00:30:08And it's a very effective way of talking about pterosaurs.
00:30:12Giant pterosaurs would be stretching its tendons by crouching.
00:30:17And the crouch phase would be much slower than the launch phase.
00:30:20So it puts the energy in slowly and then lets it out quick.
00:30:23So I'm going to put in the energy here nice and slow.
00:30:27You'll notice that the limbs on the crossbow are bending.
00:30:30That's the energy being stored in the flexing of the limbs.
00:30:35There's a lot of energy in here.
00:30:37And when I let it out to fire the bolt, it's going to go really, really fast.
00:30:43This catapult crossbow stores so much energy, it can fire a bolt at up to 218 miles per hour.
00:30:50Wow, it's a lot of energy in this bow.
00:30:59It doesn't have much kick because it's really well engineered, but you can tell that bolt's coming out of there real fast.
00:31:05The crossbow can fire this lightweight bolt hundreds of feet through the air.
00:31:12Not a bad shot.
00:31:14But how do these mechanics scale up to a 550-pound pterosaur?
00:31:20By storing all this energy in this giant tendon, big pterosaurs would have been able to take off like a rocket.
00:31:29Launching a mass about the same as a grizzly bear into the air in under half a second.
00:31:33Mike calculated that pterosaurs only needed to get six feet off the ground.
00:31:40That would give them just enough room to unfurl their vast wings and beat for the first time.
00:31:49Then when they're airborne, just like giant birds, they glide.
00:32:06These giants were the largest flying creatures ever.
00:32:10But they would have been no match for the next beast on our list.
00:32:13A snake of astonishing size.
00:32:31This is the story of a creature that looks like it belongs in a Hollywood bee movie.
00:32:36It begins in 2004 in the Colombian region of Cerrojón.
00:32:52A vast mining operation had exposed a fossilized forest,
00:32:56dating to just after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
00:33:02Paleontologist Jonathan Block led an expedition to the site.
00:33:06He returned with something extraordinary.
00:33:10This is what we found. This is a recognizable vertebra. When we originally discovered this,
00:33:16we thought maybe it was the vertebra of a crocodile.
00:33:21But this was no crocodile.
00:33:24John had identified the vertebra of the largest snake ever to roam the earth.
00:33:30Titanoboa.
00:33:31This is the largest vertebra from the backbone of a 17-foot-long anaconda, which is the most massive snake alive today.
00:33:43When you compare the anaconda vertebra to the 60-million-year-old fossil,
00:33:48Titanoboa's true size becomes clear.
00:33:51That comparison is really incredibly dramatic. It even still takes my breath away.
00:34:00Using the anatomy of today's giant snakes as a guide, Block's team set about reconstructing
00:34:06Titanoboa's skeleton, piecing together the fragments.
00:34:13They called in fossil snake expert Jason Head to verify their findings.
00:34:20The numbers that we kept getting were so incredible in terms of its weight and its length and its girth.
00:34:25At first, I was suspicious we were doing the math right.
00:34:33At two and a half feet across, Titanoboa would struggle to fit through your front door.
00:34:39Weighing in at over a ton, it would be four times heavier than the largest snakes alive today.
00:34:45And at 45 feet, it would be as long as an American school bus.
00:34:56So we're looking at a lower jaw that would have been, you know, this long.
00:35:01About four times the size of a large giant python today.
00:35:04Titanoboa theoretically could have probably opened its mouth wide enough for you or I to actually stand in it.
00:35:08Right.
00:35:10What's clear is that this snake was simply too large to live on land.
00:35:15Because it was such a massive snake, it would have had trouble supporting its own weight.
00:35:19This animal probably would have had to spend most, if not all of its time, in the water.
00:35:25And it would have found plenty to prey on.
00:35:30In its ecosystem, Titanoboa lived with giant crocodilians, lived with giant turtles and these
00:35:35giant fishes, and it probably could have eaten all of them.
00:35:38It's some 60 million years since Titanoboa became extinct, so it's a little difficult to meet one now.
00:35:49But again, experts can use today's snakes to get close.
00:35:52This is a reticulated python, the longest species alive today.
00:36:03These are the closest living relatives to Titanoboa.
00:36:06And a lot of their anatomy is similar to Titanoboa.
00:36:08Gone from that, we infer very similar behaviors.
00:36:11Constriction, ambush predation.
00:36:13In the case of anacondas, living in aquatic environments.
00:36:17Oh, not your girl.
00:36:19At this moment in our interview, Goldie the python chooses to flex her muscles.
00:36:25That's better.
00:36:26This isn't an attempt to treat Jason as prey.
00:36:29It's simply her normal movement.
00:36:32Is she in a good mood still?
00:36:33But when actually on the hunt, she's deadly.
00:36:36When boas and pythons constrict their prey, they're putting so much pressure on the circulatory
00:36:41system of the prey animal that they actually induce a heart attack.
00:36:44They can stop the heart by squeezing so hard.
00:36:49Snakes have been recorded constricting at 25 pounds per square inch.
00:36:56Delivered by a snake Titanoboa's size, that would easily be enough to crush prey as big as a rhino.
00:37:05To find out what this kind of force looks like,
00:37:08snake expert Rhys Jones is overseeing a little test, using a collection of heavy machinery.
00:37:16We've got an experiment setup which will help us to try and visualize exactly the type of forces
00:37:23needed to overcome these huge prey items.
00:37:26So what we've got here, we've got a truck that's fixed in place.
00:37:30This big yellow rope here is representative of our snake.
00:37:33And it's got, as you can see, two coils here around this oil drum.
00:37:38The oil drum is representing our prey item.
00:37:41It's full of water.
00:37:42It's sealed.
00:37:43That's going to take some pressure to be able to crush that.
00:37:47So we're going to need muscle.
00:37:50Cue a seven ton tractor with a 190 horsepower engine.
00:37:57This versus a sealed barrel ought to be a tough test.
00:38:07As the tractor pulls on, the pressure passes 25 psi.
00:38:12That's the pressure of today's largest snakes.
00:38:17But Titanoboa had four times the muscle mass.
00:38:21And estimates say it could pull off crushing forces of up to 110 pounds per square inch.
00:38:28The same pressure as having an eight ton truck parked on your chest.
00:38:41It's just squeezed it like a toy, doesn't it?
00:38:50That is just incredible.
00:38:51I think our snake pretty much nailed it, didn't you?
00:38:57It only took 55 psi to burst the barrel.
00:39:00Half what Titanoboa might have done.
00:39:04More than enough to crush the life out of any living thing.
00:39:08I mean, look at the damage to this oil drum.
00:39:12Could you imagine if that type of pressure was applied to you?
00:39:14You wouldn't last two seconds.
00:39:18Titanoboa's phenomenal crushing force made it the apex predator on earth
00:39:24for 10 million years.
00:39:35Titanoboa was the largest snake in earth's history.
00:39:45Nearly twice the wingspan of the biggest flying bird.
00:39:50And nine feet longer than the wingspan of the largest flying creature.
00:39:56But as massive as this predator was,
00:39:58next up is a beast even bigger and more terrifying.
00:40:12At first glance, this beast looks like a cross between a giant turtle and a mega crocodile.
00:40:18But what this submarine-sized sea monster really was,
00:40:25and how it became apex predator, has become a hundred million year old mystery.
00:40:34In 2003, new evidence came to light on the south coast of the UK.
00:40:38If you're looking for fossils, the Jurassic coast of Dorset is one of the most fertile hunting grounds on earth.
00:40:51Kevin Sheehan has been coming here for more than 40 years.
00:40:54I saw three pieces of what I thought was fossilized wood.
00:41:00But I got really excited because I thought, wow, there's got to be more of this.
00:41:05And then, joy of joys, there's this huge piece of bone stuck.
00:41:10It's almost like a meteorite that's going to bang into the cliff.
00:41:13Embedded in the cliff were dozens of pieces of fossil.
00:41:19Reassembled, they made something incredible.
00:41:24The most complete skull ever discovered of a pliosaurus.
00:41:30Paleontologist Richard Forrest is an expert on these ancient monsters.
00:41:36This is a giant killing machine.
00:41:39This pliosaur was the top predator. It was the peak of the pyramid.
00:41:43They were basically just big, powerful brutes that devastated anything in their way.
00:41:50It's an awesome animal.
00:41:54The biggest known pliosaurus had flippers nine feet long.
00:41:58That's like a basketball player at full stretch.
00:42:02If it swam in today's waters, it would have been bigger than a navy patrol boat.
00:42:07That's 45 feet.
00:42:09In terms of weight, it would have taken about 44 compact cars to balance out one pliosaurus.
00:42:17The strongest biter alive today is the saltwater crocodile with a bite force of 1.8 tons.
00:42:30Pliosaurus had a bite nearly 10 times stronger.
00:42:33It was the T-Rex of the ocean.
00:42:38We have these great teeth at the front, which is where it grabs the prey.
00:42:41That's what catches it.
00:42:43Then it moves a bit further back.
00:42:45Then another set of teeth.
00:42:46And these are the ones that cut the prey up into pieces.
00:42:49Then we have these teeth, which are hooked backwards.
00:42:52So once the prey gets to there, there's no way out.
00:42:56But that throws up questions.
00:43:02If you're going to bite something, you've got to be able to catch it first.
00:43:06So how does a 45 feet predator the size of a large shipping container keep up with its prey?
00:43:13The secret must lie in their four boat-sized flippers.
00:43:16The closest match to a pliosaurus flipper today belongs to a creature altogether less frightening.
00:43:28Penguins may look funny when they waddle on land.
00:43:31But underwater, they're like rockets.
00:43:35Whizzing around at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.
00:43:42Biomechanics expert Flavio Noca is trying to understand
00:43:45how they reach these extraordinary speeds.
00:43:49Using a high-speed camera, he films penguins moving around underwater.
00:43:56This camera is actually able to go up to 12,000 images per second.
00:44:03That means that every minute detail of flipper action is captured.
00:44:10Flavio's footage reveals the penguins aren't swimming with their flippers.
00:44:14They are flapping them like a bird.
00:44:17They're flying underwater.
00:44:21And by twisting their wings as they flap, penguins can propel themselves forward on the upstroke,
00:44:27as well as on the downstroke, which is something most airborne birds can't do.
00:44:32The pliosaurus had not two, but four flippers.
00:44:38And they were gigantic.
00:44:41All signs point to this mega monster being not only one of the biggest,
00:44:45but also one of the fastest predators in the ocean.
00:44:48Aerospace engineer Luke Muscad is investigating how they moved.
00:44:57Using x-rays of fossils, Luke has recreated a pair of pliosaur flippers he calls wings.
00:45:03The pliosaurus were really good swimmers, and the aim of the game is to chase down the prey.
00:45:08Obviously, to do that, you need to be very fast. You need to have a high thrust and a high acceleration.
00:45:14By suspending the wings in a tank, he's trying to determine how the front and back wings work together
00:45:20to propel the pliosaurus.
00:45:24Blue and red dyes reveal how each wing moves the water.
00:45:30Luke moves the wings together in different ways and records the amount of propulsion generated.
00:45:37He notices certain movements have a remarkable effect on the back wing.
00:45:43So initial results suggest that the hind wing can produce a thrust,
00:45:48which is about 50% higher than a wing operating on its own.
00:45:54By harnessing the wake of the front wing,
00:45:57the pliosaurus could generate two and a half times as much thrust as it would with just one set of wings.
00:46:06And that is how this mega beast gains sudden and tremendous acceleration.
00:46:12Its prey wouldn't have stood a chance.
00:46:18Pliosaurus is just the latest on our lineup of the top 10 biggest beasts ever.
00:46:32So far, we've revealed...
00:46:35Griffinfly, the biggest insect in Earth's history.
00:46:40Pelagornis, the largest flying bird.
00:46:42Paraceriferium, the greatest mammal to walk the Earth.
00:46:50Giant pterosaurs, the largest flying creatures ever.
00:46:56Titanoboa, the largest known snake of all time.
00:47:00Pliosaurus, the largest predatory marine reptile.
00:47:09But coming up is a bizarre dinosaur that beats them all.
00:47:13New discoveries of one of the strangest dinosaurs ever are rewriting the textbooks.
00:47:28A monster dinosaur with vicious teeth.
00:47:32Claws almost as big as a human arm.
00:47:34We're talking something of enormous length that could slice you with one motion.
00:47:39And a massive spiny sail.
00:47:42The spines are taller than a person.
00:47:47Every now and then, we come across really bizarre dinosaurs.
00:47:51In my book, it's the most bizarre dinosaur out there.
00:47:59Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim was on expedition to the Sahara Desert in Morocco in 2013.
00:48:06When he saw the beast's bones, he knew he had something special.
00:48:17This was a spinosaurus, or spine lizard.
00:48:20It lived 100 million years ago.
00:48:25Everything about spinosaurus is vast.
00:48:29Seeing it in front of you, you realize, wow, this is one big predator.
00:48:36That seven feet spiny sail means spinosaurus stands twice as tall as a human.
00:48:44At 50 feet long from snout to tail, it is 10 feet longer than T-Rex.
00:48:50It's so big, it's the size of a fire truck.
00:48:54Weighing in at 22 tons, this is the biggest predator to ever walk the earth.
00:49:00But spinosaurus wasn't the only dangerous dino on the block.
00:49:07A hundred million years ago, this desert was a vast river system bursting with other giant predators.
00:49:13I call it the river of giants, because it was home to giant fish, giant flying reptiles,
00:49:20several T-Rex-sized predatory dinosaurs.
00:49:23It was probably the most dangerous place in the history of our planet.
00:49:26It's jam-packed with all these predators, to the point where you say, what were they living on?
00:49:32Where were the herbivores to support this many predators?
00:49:36It was a mystery.
00:49:38With so few plant-eating dinosaurs to feed on, what enabled spinosaurus to survive here
00:49:44and become the biggest predator of all?
00:49:46As Nizar and his team looked closer at the bones, they began to find clues.
00:49:54Strange features that marked this predator out from other dinosaurs, like T-Rex.
00:50:03This animal didn't look anything like T-Rex or other predatory dinosaurs.
00:50:08It was like working on an alien from outer space.
00:50:13For starters, the teeth were an unusual shape.
00:50:17Spinosaurus, it's really all about grabbing prey and holding it in these massive jaws with
00:50:22long conical teeth. So these teeth are great to grab slippery prey.
00:50:29At over five feet long, these jaws were capable of swallowing prey the size of a person whole.
00:50:41Next, Nizar noticed that for a predatory dinosaur, the front limbs were unusually long.
00:50:47Though not all experts agree, Nizar believes spinosaurus may have even walked on them.
00:50:54And the back feet were just as strange.
00:50:56Now the feet of spinosaurus are really bizarre. Typically in predatory dinosaurs, the claws will be
00:51:07recurved to grab prey and pin it to the ground. In spinosaurus, the claws are almost flat and they're
00:51:13quite wide. It almost looks like a paddle. And I think it's quite likely that the feet of spinosaurus
00:51:20were webbed, just like in many birds or crocodiles. This has more to do with paddling and swimming
00:51:26than running on land. Everything was pointing in one direction. This looked like a beast that swam
00:51:35and hunted in water. This was a dinosaur that was doing something no other predatory dinosaur was
00:51:42adapted to do. This is a river monster. This was an extraordinary discovery.
00:51:48It suggested spinosaurus hunted fish, giving it a major advantage over the other dinosaur predators.
00:51:55But if spinosaurus was swimming, how did it hunt? How could something this bulky chase down enough
00:52:06to find out? How could it be? How could it be? How could it be? How could it be? How could it be?
00:52:12To find out, the team scanned the bones. A CT scanner allowed scientists to record the fossils in 3D
00:52:20and see inside them. Suddenly the skull from another spinosaurus started to reveal new secrets.
00:52:29This is the tip of the snout of spinosaurus. So when you look at the outside of the snout,
00:52:34you have all these openings. And it's really unusual. The CT scan revealed that inside the skull,
00:52:44a complex network of tubes runs from the holes to the brain. It's really a network of openings.
00:52:54And so clearly there's something happening there. There's probably some kind of sensory function.
00:53:00It reminded Nezar of some of today's deadliest predators.
00:53:04Crocodilians.
00:53:16Crocs and alligators have similar holes on their snouts. They're called foramina.
00:53:20And for many years they too mystified experts.
00:53:28Neurobiologist Daphne Suarez made it her mission to find out what they were for.
00:53:35Wow. As you can see, these animals are really well adapted to living in the water.
00:53:39Daphne devised an unusual experiment. She put young alligators into a tank,
00:53:51blocked up the foramina on their snouts, and then turned out the lights.
00:53:55I have the animals in complete darkness, so they can't see. Their ears are covered, so they can't hear.
00:54:03Then, to mimic the movement of small prey falling in the water, Daphne hit upon using water droplets.
00:54:09And I'm using water droplets because they don't smell like anything.
00:54:14With all their senses neutralized, the alligators didn't react at all.
00:54:21Then Daphne unblocked just the snout holes and repeated the drip test.
00:54:25Daphne's experiment revealed that the openings in the gator's snout hid pressure sensors that can pick up the tiniest motions in water.
00:54:39This super sense gives Crocs an astonishing reaction speed of five hundredths of a second.
00:54:46As fast as a Lamborghini gear shift.
00:54:48The holes in Spinosaurus's skull likely hid similar pressure sensors.
00:54:56This is the super sense that allowed Spinosaurus to become the ultimate predator.
00:55:03You can just imagine Spinosaurus plunging its huge jaws into water and detecting movement and then catching prey.
00:55:10This super sense and the ability to hunt in water as well as on land made Spinosaurus the biggest predator to ever walk the earth.
00:55:25But coming up, the next giant beast is the biggest apex predator of all time.
00:55:31Stalking the oceans from 16 million to 3 million years ago, the biggest apex predator ever, Megalodon.
00:55:49The name simply means big tooth and it seems to have been the most voracious shark ever.
00:55:56There was nothing that was safe from Megalodon. If it could catch it, it could kill it.
00:56:01Much about this giant remains mysterious.
00:56:08But new clues are coming to light in Panama, Central America.
00:56:13In, of all places, a cement quarry.
00:56:21Here, giant excavators are digging through the bed of an ancient coastline.
00:56:27Ten million years ago, this area was covered by water.
00:56:30We know that because of the kinds of fossils we find here.
00:56:35For example, we find plenty of these shells that are typical from shallow water areas.
00:56:41But as well as shells, paleobiologist Catalina Pimiento is also finding Megalodon teeth.
00:56:47The teeth that we find here from Megalodon are very small relative to the typical Megalodon teeth that we find in other places.
00:56:59I know these are Megalodon teeth because of its particular shape.
00:57:02They are triangular and quite symmetrical.
00:57:05But most importantly because of the serrations they have on their ages.
00:57:10There's only one logical conclusion.
00:57:13The reason is that most of them were babies or juveniles.
00:57:18Catalina has made an astonishing discovery.
00:57:20The first ever evidence for a Megalodon breeding ground.
00:57:26This area right here is the first nursery area for Megalodon.
00:57:30But even amongst these infant specimens, Megalodon's extraordinary size was striking.
00:57:35That babies' teeth were as big as those of today's deadly giants, the adult great white.
00:57:46This is a Megalodon baby tooth and this is an adult great white shark.
00:57:49You can see here that the baby Megalodon was as big as an adult great white.
00:57:55So imagine, when they were born, Megalodon babies were huge.
00:57:58The fact that Catalina had to make her deductions using teeth alone isn't unusual.
00:58:07In fact, almost everything that experts know about Megalodon comes from looking at its teeth.
00:58:16We don't find the skeletons of Megalodon because just like living sharks,
00:58:19they're made of cartilage and after the shark dies, the cartilage disintegrates.
00:58:23But we do find their teeth and we can use these teeth to recreate
00:58:28what the jaws would have looked like when Megalodon was alive.
00:58:32What they tell us is that the adult Megalodon was a goliath.
00:58:39Its jaws alone were up to seven feet high, easily tall enough to swallow a person.
00:58:46Weighing in at a whopping hundred tons, it was a hundred times heavier than an average great white.
00:58:52And at 60 feet long, it was the length of an articulated truck.
00:59:03And that jaw.
00:59:06Up to 250 teeth lined the mouth in several rows, with edges serrated like a steak knife.
00:59:13I mean, these teeth are just so powerful. The massive jaw muscles that this animal had
00:59:19to close these jaws, it would just dismember any animal that was alive on earth at that time.
00:59:26And Stephen has evidence of just what these jaws could do to prey.
00:59:31We know from the size and shape of this bone that it is a dolphin tail vertebra. It's right down near
00:59:41the fluke. There are these deep gouges on either side. The only way that this fossil could have these
00:59:49deep gouges was that it was bitten forcefully by a Megalodon. Okay, so if we look at a Megalodon tooth.
00:59:56So the upper jaw slams shut, forcing the vertebra down into the wedge between two adjacent teeth,
01:00:06deeply gouging the bone with such force that it probably severed the tail off.
01:00:12Everything points to an astonishingly powerful bite.
01:00:17And one man who has set out to calculate exactly how strong that bite is,
01:00:21is shark biomechanics expert Dan Huber.
01:00:28Dan starts with a CT scan of the skull of a modern great white.
01:00:32After the white shark's head is CT scanned, we can create a computer model of it. We can see the lower
01:00:38and the upper jaws here, and then we can apply virtual muscles to those virtual jaws and run
01:00:43simulations to figure out how hard it can bite. Next, Dan scales up to Megalodon size.
01:00:52And if we apply these numbers to what we think is the biggest Megalodon that's ever existed,
01:00:56its posterior bite force was about 41,000 pounds or about 18,500 kilograms.
01:01:03That's like the weight of a garbage truck pressing down on the back teeth.
01:01:09So what does a bite force of this size look like in action?
01:01:13To find out, Dan is going on a mission.
01:01:23He's joining up with the Tampa Fire Brigade.
01:01:29And a piece of kit they use for cutting victims out of crashed cars.
01:01:33The jaws of life.
01:01:39It's lightweight. It's really easily deployable.
01:01:42So is this thing going to be able to generate 41,000 pounds of bite force? The corner of it?
01:01:47Absolutely, Dan. That's exactly where it's going to cut. So this shouldn't have
01:01:51any trouble at all when we need to cut open cars.
01:01:54So that's actually pretty similar to what we're looking at with this ancient shark Megalodon.
01:01:57All right, let's see what this thing can do. All right, let's do it.
01:02:02First, Dan tries out the jaws on a cow bone.
01:02:08Something similar to what Megalodon got to chew on.
01:02:11Let's go ahead.
01:02:19See, it's split the thing in half. No problem at all.
01:02:21Next up is the car.
01:02:34The jaws of life can deliver the same kind of bite force as Megalodon, only far more slowly.
01:02:42Megalodon was capable of biting through the car in a split second.
01:02:46From this, we know that Megalodon could tear through ancient whales,
01:02:52we know that it could tear through ancient sea turtles,
01:02:54and apparently it could even tear through this car.
01:02:58Megalodon was the biggest predator that's ever existed,
01:03:01and its bite force was the highest bite force that's ever happened in any animal in the history of the planet.
01:03:11Megalodon tops all other apex predators.
01:03:14It was nearly one and a half times the length of Titanoboa.
01:03:22It was more than twice the mass of Pliosaurus.
01:03:27And it would have dwarfed Spinosaurus.
01:03:31But though this giant shark was the biggest apex predator ever,
01:03:35it shared the oceans with something much, much bigger.
01:03:44They are the largest living creatures on Earth, and the heaviest in history.
01:03:56Propelled by vast tails, they spend much of their time in the deep oceans.
01:04:00But every year, come summertime, blue whales appear in the waters just off Los Angeles.
01:04:15They are the largest species on Earth.
01:04:18For ecologist Arie Friedlander, it's an unmissable opportunity to study them.
01:04:23You get close up to them and you start to see how big they are.
01:04:27You start remembering what it feels like to be this tiny little person in a pretty small boat next to this enormous whale.
01:04:33It's kind of daunting, you know, they're huge.
01:04:41The numbers are awe-inspiring.
01:04:44The whales are so big compared to a person that 90 of us could fit on its tail alone.
01:04:49It's 200 tonne bulk makes it 30 times heavier than an African elephant.
01:04:58And at 100 feet, it's the same length as a Boeing 737.
01:05:05So how does a mammal get so big?
01:05:08It's only when a whale washes up dead on the beach that scientists get a chance to really study their anatomy.
01:05:22Now we're in the ribcage of the whale, and on either side of the ribcage would be the lungs.
01:05:28You've got the heart, you've got the stomach.
01:05:32A heart the size of a car connects to a million miles of blood vessels,
01:05:36enough to reach to the moon and back twice.
01:05:41But there's one feature that's supersized beyond all others.
01:05:46The mouth.
01:05:49Rather than hunting one big animal, blue whales use their enormous mouths to catch entire shoals in one go.
01:05:57They feed on tiny shrimp-like crustaceans called krill.
01:06:01Many people think that it's amazing that the largest animal that's ever existed feed on such a tiny animal.
01:06:08But no blue whales going, oh, there's a krill. I think I'll take that one.
01:06:12What they're doing is they're trying to find huge, dense swarms of krill.
01:06:15And a prey atom for a blue whale is not one of these guys.
01:06:18It's thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of these guys.
01:06:23Though the whale's gullet is so small it would choke on a loaf of bread,
01:06:28its mouth can take in 220 tons of water in one go.
01:06:33For anything roughly comparable, you'd have to look at something like this.
01:06:43The DC-10.
01:06:45A specially modified firefighting airliner.
01:06:48It swapped passenger seats for a massive water tank.
01:06:54This is the biggest tanker flying in the world.
01:07:00It carries 12,000 gallons or 44,000 liters of liquid,
01:07:05which is roughly four to ten times the size of any other airplane.
01:07:09Used to fight forest fires, the DC-10 releases enough water
01:07:15to cover the length of ten football pitches in a single drop.
01:07:28But a blue whale picks up four times this much water in a single mouthful.
01:07:34We're very proud of this machine, but if the whale could fly,
01:07:38we'd hire the whale because it's four times bigger.
01:07:42The whale more than doubles its weight with each mouthful.
01:07:46And what follows is one of the weirdest operations in the natural world.
01:07:53When the whale opens its mouth to feed,
01:07:55the water pushes its elephant-sized tongue all the way back to its belly button.
01:08:02The tongue is super stretchy and expands out,
01:08:05lining the mouth and creating a huge sack full of water and krill.
01:08:10Then, mouth closed, the whale rams the tongue forward like a piston.
01:08:16It forces the water out through sieve-like grills called baleens,
01:08:20until only the krill is left inside.
01:08:23The energy required to perform this maneuver is colossal.
01:08:31In fact, in a single day, blue whales burn up to three million calories,
01:08:36the equivalent of 10,000 hamburgers.
01:08:39How does a creature burning this much energy find enough food to become a giant?
01:08:46The answer must lie in how they hunt.
01:08:51But as whales hunt krill hundreds of meters underwater,
01:08:54witnessing this behavior has been almost impossible, until now.
01:08:58Harry Friedlander is using a tag that enables him to spy on whales,
01:09:09even when they're deep below the surface.
01:09:14It contains a camera and motion detectors like the ones found in a smartphone.
01:09:21All he needs to do now is attach it to a 200-ton whale.
01:09:24You always are a little nervous approaching them.
01:09:30They're wild animals, so you never know how they're going to react.
01:09:34Harry gets into position.
01:09:40Tag in place, the whale disappears into the depths,
01:09:44and Harry returns to base to track it on his computer.
01:09:50As he plots the whale's position in 3D,
01:09:52he spots something extraordinary.
01:09:57Incredibly exciting.
01:09:58Up until now, we basically thought they just went through the water,
01:10:02taking these munches and lunging sort of in a straight line.
01:10:05But we noticed the animals diving down to depth,
01:10:07and then doing these 360-degree rolls.
01:10:11This kind of acrobatic maneuvering is something we had no idea an animal this big could do.
01:10:17Images from the camera reveal the whale rolls just before it opens its mouth to feed.
01:10:22This is the mechanism that allows whales to get so big.
01:10:27If you're a whale, your eyes are on the side of your head.
01:10:30They don't have this binocular vision like we have where you can see directly forward.
01:10:35So in order for that animal to see its prey in front of it, it kind of needs to roll its body.
01:10:40So you maximize the amount of food you get and you limit the amount of energy it takes to do it.
01:10:47Far from just hoovering up krill like a 200-ton deep-sea juggernaut,
01:10:52it turns out the blue whale is the ocean's biggest acrobat.
01:11:00So far on top 10 biggest beasts ever, we've met
01:11:04the hawk-sized griffin fly.
01:11:10A bird the size of a fighter plane.
01:11:15A mammal as big as a tank.
01:11:20A pterosaur the size of a learjet.
01:11:22A snake the length of a school bus.
01:11:29An ocean killer nearly 50 feet long.
01:11:34A dinosaur that dwarfs T-Rex.
01:11:36A shark a hundred times heavier than a great white.
01:11:45And the largest creature ever to swim Earth's oceans.
01:11:51The blue whale is very nearly the largest beast that's ever lived.
01:11:58But there's one beast that's even longer.
01:12:02And it takes the title of biggest beast ever.
01:12:06And it takes the title of the planet.
01:12:18March 2015.
01:12:20In southern Argentina, in the remote province of Patagonia,
01:12:24a team of paleontologists is on standby.
01:12:36And it takes the title of the planet.
01:12:38Lucio Ibericu has been waiting for this moment for months.
01:12:51Inside this truck are some of the biggest bones on the planet.
01:12:55And after five years in the United States undergoing scientific analysis,
01:13:07they're coming home.
01:13:08More than 50 crates hold the bones of just one dinosaur.
01:13:15Each bone is enormous.
01:13:18Yet as big as they are, these bones are just a clue to a creature that was even larger.
01:13:24The biggest beast ever to walk the earth.
01:13:30The journey to this moment began in 2005.
01:13:33Lucio was part of a team of paleontologists prospecting for dinosaur bones.
01:13:42They were in a remote area of Patagonia, known as the Badlands.
01:13:4675 million years ago, this area was completely different.
01:13:52Warmer, more green, humid, a lot of vegetation and several rivers.
01:13:59The ancient rocks revealed the area was once a perfect habitat for dinosaurs.
01:14:06But today, the lush forests have given way to harsh desert.
01:14:15As the team surveyed the land, one of them came upon a small piece of exposed bone.
01:14:23The first thing that we see was the middle part of the femur.
01:14:27So we start to dig and continue digging and continue digging and we never finish with that.
01:14:33So we say, okay, this is the femur, but it's huge.
01:14:38You sit there and you look at this object and you realize that you're the first person
01:14:43to ever see this thing. You're the first person in history to know about this.
01:14:51They had found a giant thigh bone over six feet long.
01:14:58So this is the femur.
01:15:00This is a leg bone.
01:15:03It's bigger than me and it's just one bone. This is amazing.
01:15:10It's hard to imagine, but bones of a beast bigger than this have occasionally been discovered.
01:15:15But what was remarkable about this find was just how complete the skeleton was.
01:15:22It took several expeditions to uncover it all.
01:15:27At the end of three seasons of excavating there, we had 145 bones.
01:15:32And the state of them was surprising.
01:15:37The preservation of the dinosaur was very good.
01:15:40A lot of bones that we found are in the same position as when the dinosaur died.
01:15:45The team were now in possession of what was effectively a time capsule.
01:15:54One that could revolutionize our understanding of the biggest beasts to ever roam the earth.
01:16:01Ken took the bones back to his lab in Philadelphia.
01:16:11Here, careful cleaning, 3D scanning and forensic examination all started to reveal how these extraordinary
01:16:19beasts looked and lived.
01:16:25The beast's sheer size was apparent at every turn.
01:16:28The scale just staggers the imagination. This animal was 85 feet long from head to tail.
01:16:37It was two and a half stories tall at the shoulder.
01:16:41This was a new species of titanosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur of almost unimaginable proportions.
01:16:51Ken named his titanosaur Dreadnoughtus, meaning fears nothing.
01:16:56Dreadnoughtus isn't going to have anything to worry about in terms of predation.
01:17:00These are big, nasty, capable, vigorous creatures that deserve a lot of respect.
01:17:09Dreadnoughtus was clearly a mine of information for the scientists.
01:17:14But it held one surprise which relates directly to the size of the very biggest titanosaurs.
01:17:20Ken started to find evidence of how old this Dreadnoughtus was when it died.
01:17:29You see here these big oval bone cells here.
01:17:33That's indicative of bone that's not growing anymore.
01:17:36And then as we move towards the outer edge of the bone, you'll notice that that texture changes.
01:17:46And that is indicative of rapidly growing bone.
01:17:49And that could mean only one thing. Ken's Dreadnoughtus, though vast, was not fully grown.
01:17:58We know that it was growing rapidly when it died. So 65 tons and not yet done growing.
01:18:05That means there are bigger Dreadnoughtus out there. We don't know how big this dinosaur could have gotten.
01:18:09But then comes another clue. Titanosaur wasn't like our other giants, Megalodon and Blue Whale.
01:18:17It didn't start life at monster size.
01:18:23Paleontologist Gerald Grelit-Tinner has uncovered stunning evidence that reveals the last piece of the jigsaw.
01:18:32He's investigating a site in northern Argentina.
01:18:34An area that was once a harsh volcanic landscape.
01:18:48So here we're sitting on the top of a geothermal formation.
01:18:53At the time of the dinosaurs, this area was a geothermal hotspot with steaming vents and hot water pools.
01:19:04The geothermal hotspot with a geothermal hotspot with a geothermal hotspot.
01:19:07Gerald has found evidence that titanosaurs came here to lay their eggs.
01:19:13What we have here is a clutch of about 24, 25 titanosaur eggs.
01:19:19And this one here, it's probably the biggest one.
01:19:21And I would say maybe more than eight inches in diameter.
01:19:24Remarkably, as big as titanosaurs were, their eggs were about the same size as ostrich eggs.
01:19:35But some of them have incredibly thick shells.
01:19:38As you could see this one, for instance, it's very, very thick.
01:19:46And it's about seven millimetres.
01:19:48And this is virtually impossible to break.
01:19:52So a chick will not be able to break that eggshell.
01:19:56Gerald thinks that the shells began this thick to shield the embryo inside from the geothermal chemicals.
01:20:02But then these chemicals helped make it possible for the baby titanosaur to hatch.
01:20:10The harsh chemical is eroding the eggshell from the outside to the inside.
01:20:15Trilling down the eggshell to probably 1.2, 1.23 millimetres, which is perfectly acceptable for the chick to break.
01:20:24And for an incubating egg, the choice of this site offered a major plus.
01:20:32It had constant heat.
01:20:40But baby titanosaurs had one big problem.
01:20:44Once hatched, they were no bigger than domestic cats.
01:20:48Not great in a world teeming with hungry predators.
01:20:54There's a premium on growth when you're on the menu.
01:20:57And so they grow very rapidly to get to the point where they can be impervious to predation.
01:21:04And going from the size of a cat to having five bones over six feet long means one serious rate of growth.
01:21:12Baby titanosaurs have an early burst of growth and that burst never stops.
01:21:17They just keep growing as fast as they possibly can.
01:21:20It should now be possible to pull all the clues together and build a picture of what these beasts looked like.
01:21:31Starting with scans of the bones, Ken Lacovara works on a 3D digital model of dreadnoughtus.
01:21:38The completeness of the skeleton means this model is far more accurate than for any previous titanosaur.
01:21:44And this gives us an amazing opportunity.
01:21:50We can take the model and scale it up to match the bones of Argentinosaurus, the largest titanosaur ever found.
01:22:00Only a handful of Argentinosaurus' bones have ever been discovered.
01:22:04So this may be our best possible chance to fill in the blanks and see what the beast might have looked like.
01:22:13Just how big that is must be seen to be believed.
01:22:17So one of the best ways to have an idea of how big this dinosaur could grow is to measure it.
01:22:33So we are going to start with the tail.
01:22:39Using dreadnoughtus' skeleton as a guide, Lucio maps out how Argentinosaurus may have stood on this ground.
01:22:48Its tail alone would be the length of Titanoboa at 45 feet.
01:22:53So this is the tail.
01:22:56Adding its body takes Lucio to 70 feet, longer than Megalodon.
01:23:03So this is the tail and the body, and now the neck.
01:23:06The neck and head is another 60 feet, giving a total length of 130 feet.
01:23:15That's bigger than blue whale and Paraceratherium put together.
01:23:23All the pieces in place, it's time to reveal the biggest beast ever to walk the earth.
01:23:29Meet Argentinosaurus, the biggest beast ever.
01:23:37From the tail to the front of the head should be about 130 feet.
01:23:44Towering over 30 feet in the air without even lifting its head.
01:23:57And with a neck like the arm of a crane.
01:24:15The biggest known titanosaurs would have been a fearsome sight.
01:24:25Standing over three stories tall,
01:24:27a six feet person wouldn't even reach the knee of an Argentinosaurus.
01:24:33And 90 tons, it likely weighed as much as 11 T-Rexes.
01:24:37And 130 feet from tail to mouth, it was the length of the space shuttle orbiter.
01:24:51Titanosaurs were mega versions of long-necked, long-tailed sauropods like Diplodocus.
01:24:59Just their stomachs alone were likely the mass of an elephant.
01:25:03And just one foot was big enough to crush 20 people.
01:25:10So what was the secret to their mega size?
01:25:21Well, an answer appears to lie with the one thing about titanosaur that isn't gargantuan.
01:25:27It's head.
01:25:37A titanosaur like Dreadnoughtus only had a head as big as that of a horse.
01:25:43And that's because it didn't chew its food.
01:25:46It just grabbed and swallowed.
01:25:48The skull is basically a plant vacuum.
01:25:54They don't have the ability to chew.
01:25:57What that means is that a titanosaur had the capacity to consume over two tons of vegetation every day.
01:26:06That's enough salad to feed 40,000 people.
01:26:09Dreadnoughtus could stand in one place with its massive body and not move that body.
01:26:16And maybe spend an hour taking in tens of thousands of calories.
01:26:19And then at the end of that, take a few steps to the right and spend another hour or so clearing out
01:26:25another giant envelope of vegetation.
01:26:27So by expending very few calories itself, it takes in massive quantities of food.
01:26:32This basic strategy made titanosaurs some of the most efficient eaters of all time.
01:26:40And it allowed them to reach monster size.
01:26:45And yet, as big as they were, experts are convinced that somewhere out there,
01:26:51hidden in the rocks, are even bigger specimens still to be uncovered.
01:26:56The top 10 biggest beasts ever are giant creatures at the top of their evolutionary trees.
01:27:07Beasts that hunt, kill, walk, swim and fly at sizes that dwarf all others.
01:27:16Between them, they've mystified scientists, broken the record books and colonized every continent on the planet.
01:27:27Screen sunny camping.
01:27:33All right.
01:27:39Tim振興
01:27:41You
01:27:43Don't
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