The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs

Get ready to come face to face

with some of the most fearsome creatures that ever lived,

as we reveal the world of dinosaurs as you've never seen it before.

In the last programme, we examined the somewhat stormy relationship

between T rex and triceratops.

This time we answer leading questions about another two killer dinosaurs.

Was velociraptor really capable

of disembowelling its victims with its evil-looking claw?

And was this ankylosaur the most impregnably-defended dinosaur

of all time?

To find out the facts, we'll be building life-size biomechanical models.

And we'll be looking at living animals...

to discover exactly who killed who 75 million years ago.

Oh. And most important of all,

everything you're about to see is true.

Aaah... The joys of bird-watching.

Although right now, it's not birds that I'm looking for.

In fact, I'm in pursuit of something a great deal more elusive.

Dinosaurs.

I'm going to investigate the dinosaurs that fought in the Mongolian desert

75 million years ago.

In particular, I'm going to introduce you

to a two-legged meat eater called velociraptor.

In the movie jurassic Park, velociraptor is depicted as six foot tall

and with a vicious claw that can literally tear out its victims'guts.

And from then on, it's been stuck with a pretty evil reputation.

But how much of this is really true?

Well, not very much, as it happens.

Now, the fact that I'm a bird-watcher is appropriate

when it comes to velociraptor,

because, and this might come as a bit of a surprise,

velociraptor had feathers.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, for the first time on British television,

the fierce yet feathered in beautiful plumage, velociraptor.

In fact, velociraptor was only two and a half feet tall.

And it looked very much like a bird.

Which perhaps isn't that surprising

because scientists now agree that birds were descended from dinosaurs.

It all becomes pretty obvious when you look closely at the fossil bones.

As a matter of fact, a complete velociraptor skeleton

has never ever been found and there's only been one that was nearly complete.

Nevertheless, we have assembled our jigsaw and here it is.

Not a single piece missing. The complete velociraptor.

So, what can these bones tell us?

Look at these long front limbs.

Much like wings and it's got hollow bones,

only found on dinosaurs and birds.

And look. A wishbone. Again, only on dinosaurs and birds.

And look at those feet. What about those feet?

They're much more like talons, aren't they? Yeah.

Like you'd see on a bird of prey, which, of course, is also known as a raptor.

As a bird-watcher, I can see quite a few similarities to birds.

But dinosaur experts can spot even more.

Time to visit a scientist.

Phil Manning is in charge of dinosaur fossils at the Museum of Manchester.

Phil and I have something in common -

birds, which is why he's invited me over to his house...

to eat one.

Mmm! My favourite! Roast turkey.

A leg? You can have a leg.

Look at the arm. Now notice I didn't say wing,

because long ago in this guy's evolutionary history,

this was in fact its arm, and you can still see the hand here.

What we call a wing on a bird is the hand.

- You can still see a finger there. - Absolutely.

The end of his finger just fell off. There is a claw.

- That goes on the end there. - That goes there. It still has a joint.

But I've got something else that might convince you that this is a dinosaur.

- All right. - Let me get it for you. You'll like this.

- You don't have to eat this bit. - It isn't on here, then?

- What is it, the head? - Forgive me for not cooking these.

- Oh. - Eurgh!

- The best bit. - Well, maybe. Take your foot.

Just look at that. It's a dinosaur's foot.

If you look at the structure and number of bones, what they look like,

they are bang on for many types of predatory dinosaur.

Another thing that jumps out at you linking birds and predatory dinosaurs

is when you look at the form of the scales on the feet,

cos they gently change into these downy feathers

before they become the true feathers we all know and love in birds.

Cos feathers are just highly-evolved scales.

So, Phil has confirmed what I actually suspected,

that we can learn a lot about dinosaurs by looking at birds.

But feathery dinosaurs? It still doesn't seem right, does it? Where's the evidence?

It came from China.

In 1986, fossil hunters discovered an extraordinary fossil

of a small predatory dinosaur.

Every detail of its body had been left behind as indentations in the rock.

When they looked closely,

they could see a dark line running along its back.

And the incredible truth dawned on them.

This dinosaur was covered in feathers.

They were only little feathers, like these. Downy would be the right word.

No good for flying, these, but very good for keeping warm.

But even better. Only four years ago, and from China again,

the discovery of Dave, the fuzzy raptor.

And he had feathers which were much more impressive,

more like...

this one.

And he was covered in these much more sophisticated feathers from head to toe.

So it seems the raptor family did have feathers

and that of course includes our star, velociraptor.

From just a few fossils,

scientists can be pretty certain what velociraptor looked like.

Right, then. Let's put the flesh on the bones.

OK. First, the muscles.

Next, the skin.

And now... Ah. What?

Is it gonna be scales? No. The feathers.

And there we are. A dead ringer for an ancient turkey.

Except, er... I wouldn't fancy trying to stuff it.

I think it would stuff me, more like.

It's not a turkey, is it? Come on! This wouldn't go pecking round at seeds.

I mean, look at those teeth. This was obviously a meat eater.

And how did it get its meat?

Phil Manning showed me that it had all the hallmarks of a vicious killer.

The skull is exquisite. Extremely bird-like.

One of the most striking features has to be these backwardly recurved, serrated teeth,

wonderful for slashing into their prey.

These would have been like razor blades as it buried its face into its prey,

using its body weight, hanging back on its hook-like teeth, ripping through flesh.

This would have been a devastating weapon.

Yes, a pretty formidable set of gnashers,

but at the other end was something even more sinister, and I don't mean the tail.

I mean at the end of the foot.

A very unusual and decidedly lethal-looking claw.

To find out more about that claw, I went to talk to an expert, Alan Gishlick.

He told me that the first claw had been discovered as recently as 1969.

Not surprisingly, the dino world was shaken by a frenzy of excitement.

When they discovered this, they forgot about the rest of the animal.

It was different from any type of claw we'd discovered on a dinosaur so far.

And when Hollywood and in particular a certain Steven Spielberg saw the claw,

they jumped to a dramatic conclusion.

Because it was so thin and shaped like a scythe,

it immediately made people think about a slicing action or a cutting action,

and led to the idea that this was used to disembowel prey.

Velociraptor was immediately cast as the quintessential scary villain,

complete with lethal weapon.

You can imagine this animal creeping up on prey and slicing its guts open

and blood everywhere.

It excites the imagination, makes school kids shiver

and looks good on TV and movies.

Ooh, can't argue with that.

Or, um...can we?

I mean, let's face it. Up till now, theories about what that claw could have done

were pretty much just conjecture.

So I decided to do a little detective work.

To find out what the claw was really used for, I've come to...

Battersea.

I think this is a job for Dave and John. Yes.

Dave Payne and john Pennicott usually make models for movies.

Bond movies, shark movies. Yes, they've done them all.

So we asked them to help us design the world's first experiment

to reveal once and for all the power of the claw.

Welcome to the house of special effects.

We want you to make us...one of these.

- Voila. - Brilliant.

What is it?

This is the limb of a velociraptor.

At the moment, totally harmless, but we want you to make us a fully-working model

as it would have been in real life.

As lithe, as strong and as effective.

And in particular, we want to know what this claw was for.

- Disembowelling? - But was it?

Could it really have disembowelled? That is the point.

It's all yours. Good luck.

Wow. Look at that.

This was quite a challenge.

It would take months for the special effects supremos

to build an accurate working replica.

First, scientists had to advise the team on how strong the leg would have been...

by looking at where the muscles attached on fossil bones,

and the kicking power of the leg.

It had roughly the strength of the human arm.

That doesn't sound a lot, but when you add that up to that being kicked at an animal,

there's immense force being transmitted through that tiny little claw.

To reproduce the correct muscle strength,

the effects team used hydraulic rams.

Then, they had to recreate the action of the claw.

You can see clearly that this claw has got this huge knobble of bone

that would have had a massive tendon attachment running underneath this toe.

So when the animal wanted to pull that claw down rapidly,

it could be whisked through 180 degrees.

From the fossil, they could tell that the claw had a very sharp point.

But the underside wasn't sharp at all.

So, would this really be able to rip through flesh?

We're going to have to wait until the model is built to find that out.

In the meantime, I decided to take a closer look at our star.

Apart from the claw,

were there any other clues to suggest it was a ruthless killer?

Right, then. Velociraptor.

Big, sharp teeth.

Great big scary claw.

But then was velociraptor a fully qualified, proper predator?

It's, er...certainly got the eye for it.

It could spot its prey. And look at those legs, eh?

Long, strong - definitely a runner.

And that tail. Not for wagging, surely.

Long, thin tails can be very useful in the chase for prey.

Cheetahs use their tails as counterbalances