"In prehistoric times dinosaurs were engaged in a constant battle for survival." "And dinosaur wars determined who would live... and who would die." "In this programme scientists will be investigating how a dinosaur the size of a small car would have stood up to the lethal claw of a turkey-sized animal with attitude." "And a team of biomechanic experts will be building life-size replicas of dinosaur weaponry." "They'll discover who killed who, 75 million years ago." "The prehistoric plains of Mongolia were home to several different kinds of dinosaur." "But one of the nastiest was a blood- thirsty two-legged meat-eater called Velociraptor." "In the movie, Jurassic Park," "Velociraptor was 6 foot tall with a vicious claw that could rip through flesh." "From then on he was stuck with an evil reputation." "But how much of this is true?" "In reality," "Velociraptor was considerably smaller than in the movie, and its appearance was very different..." "For a start Velociraptor had feathers!" "Scientists also know how it behaved..." "They've discovered what it could kill - and precisely how it killed." "And the truth is just as terrifying as the fiction." "Paleontologists have only ever found one, nearly complete, fossil skeleton." "But the bones betray the first indisputable fact" " Velociraptor was only 2 and a half feet tall." "And like all two legged carnivorous dinosaurs Velociraptor had many similarities with a bird." "Phil Manning is in charge of dinosaur fossils at the Manchester Museum, England." "But today he's dissecting his turkey dinner." "Let's strip away some of this meat and I will prove to you that birds and dinos are closely related..." "This is the wishbone and this is something you always expect to see in a bird, it's a very, very clear bird character." "The wishbone behaves like a spring and gives the wings or in Velociraptor's case, arms, extra power." "now there you go - l call this not a wing but an arm." "You can see the sort of lower arm bones..." "And this is the hand, you can see one of the fingers here" "And there are 2 other finger bones here - they are fused together." "This is something that's left over from when this was once, or its ancestors were once a dinosaur." "The similarities with Velociraptor are obvious." "Feet, you can just by looking at the form, structure, the number of bones present in the foot... it screams dinosaur at me" "You can see the scales look very reptilian but by the time you get to the top of the foot here you can see little feathers sprouting... cos all feathers are, are just highly evolved scales..." "When the idea that dinosaurs sported feathers was first suggested it was considered so unlikely that many scientists refused to believe it." "But then the irrefutable evidence was discovered in 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 from head to tail along its back." "The incredible truth dawned on them..." "this dinosaur was covered in downy feathers, just like those on a young bird." "Then, in the year 2000, local farmers in China made a breakthrough discovery with Dave, the Fuzzy Raptor." "He had much more sophisticated feathers, just like those on the body of an adult bird." "The evidence is clear - the raptor family had feathers, and that of course includes, Velociraptor." "So if he looked very much like a bird, how did he behave?" "Velociraptor's reputation as a fearful killer is almost entirely due to its very unusual, and decidedly lethal-looking, curved claws." "Alan Gishlick is an expert on raptor claws and he's keen to discover what they were used for." "When paleontologists found the first one as recently as the 1960's, there was a frenzy of excitement." "When they discovered this they forgot about the rest of the animal." "It was different from any other type of claw we'd discovered on a dinosaur so far," "When Hollywood and, in particular," "Stephen 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." "The raptor was immediately cast as a scary villain, complete with lethal weapon." "You imagine this animal's creeping up on a prey and jumping on it and slicing its guts open and blood everywhere." "Excites the imagination, makes school kids shiver and looks good on TV and film and movies." "So what's the truth?" "Up until now theories about what the claw could do have all been based on speculation." "But that's about to change..." "Dave Payne and John Pennicott usually make models for movies." "Bond movies, shark movies, they've done them all!" "This time they're going to design a world first experiment to reveal the power of the claw once and for all." "Their challenge is to build a fully working replica of Velociraptor's leg." "Look at the size of the muscle attachment there must have been a big muscle there" "The project will take months" "First, scientists have to advise the team on how strong the leg would have been." "By looking at where the muscles attached on the fossil bones, they can determine the size of the muscles and hence the kicking power of the leg." "It had roughly the strength of a human arm." "Now that doesn't sound a lot but when you actually add that up to that being kicked at an animal, there is an immense amount of force being transmitted through that tiny little claw." "To reproduce the correct muscle strength, the effects team use hydraulic rams." "Then they have to recreate the action of the claw." "You can see clearly the claw here has got this huge knobble of bone that would have had a massive tendon attachment running underneath this toe so that when the animal wanted to pull that claw down rapidly, it could be whisked through 180 degrees." "The exact replica of the claw, made out of resin, has a very sharp point, but the underside isn't sharp at all." "Will this really be able to rip through flesh?" "They'll only know for sure when the model is built." "In the meantime, scientists have detected other clues in the fossil bones... that shed light on the true nature of Velociraptor." "Phil Manning believes that it had all the hallmarks of a vicious killer." "The skull is exquisite - extremely bird like, but one of the most striking features has to be these backwardly recurved serrated teeth - would have been wonderful for slashing into their prey." "These would have been like razor blades as the animal buried its face into its prey using its body weight, hanging back on these hook-like teeth ripping through flesh." "This would have been a devastating weapon." "So it had meat-eating teeth... long, strong runners legs..." "And it also had a disproportionately long tail." "Long thin tails can be very useful in the chase for prey." "Cheetahs, for example, use their tails as counter balances to help them track their victims." "And Velociraptor would have used its long tail like this to help him quickly change direction." "This dinosaur also had an added advantage that most land predators don't have... its feathers." "They weren't used for flying - they most probably evolved to keep the dinosaurs warm." "But the feathery arms would have acted like a birds wing." "A bird in flight uses its wing to steer and change direction." "Velociraptor would have used its feathers in the same way, but on the ground." "This might look odd, but not half as odd as these ostriches using their wings in a similar way" " but its likely that Velociraptor was rather more elegant!" "So Velociraptor looked like a bird - had teeth - and by making use of its feathers, and its long tail, this dinosaur was super agile as well as fast." "It was clearly well adapted for hunting down prey." "But how did kill its victim?" "Did it really use its claw to rip into the flesh and disembowel the guts of its prey just like in the movies?" "Up until now scientists have only been able to speculate but for the first time in 75 million years, they are about to find out." "After months of painstaking research and meticulous engineering, the bio-mechanical model of a Velociraptor's leg is ready to test." "Whoah, that is awesome Dave" "Phil Manning joins the technical team to make sure that everything is scientifically accurate." "Well this is our Velociraptor." "You've got the dimensions just right." "This is the femur up here is that right... the upper leg bone," "That certainly is..." "lower leg here." "You've got the rotation on this claw." "That's incredible..." "An amazing adaptation to have the claw held up of the ground to rotate round like that." "Must help keep this very sharp." "The leg is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship but can it pull a punch?" "It looks right, but what about this claw?" "Can you get it cranked up to full speed?" "Yeah its gonna get a bit noisy but I'll go away and start the pump and you let you have a look" "OK lets see it go then" "The scientists have calculated that Velociraptor's muscles could power its leg about as fast as a human arm." "Alright come back over - it works," "But I still have a problem with this claw, I can't see how it functions." "is there a way we can work out what damage this could do?" "Let's test it." "OK I'm on for it - what have you got?" "Bit of Chamois leather." "That's pretty flesh-like." "Let's get the chamois leather then." "It's time to test the legendary claw to see what it's really capable of." "Chamois leather is about as tough as human skin." "That is fabulous" "Wow!" "look at that" "Alright - its ripped it... but..." "I think look at the thickness of chamois leather and there is nothing behind it. I think we have got to test this further" "This is quite a feeble test lt is a feeble test. I think we need to crank it up to the next stage..." "that bit of flesh..." "What do you reckon?" "Some pork" "Pork would be good. I think lets see what happens when we shove that thing into it at speed" "Cutting through skin appears to be no problem, but in life, skin is attached to fat and muscles so the team decide to use a more realistic challenger in the form of a pork belly." "Only slightly tougher than your own belly, as it happens..." "An accurate experiment like this has never been attempted before." "Anticipation" "That is gross." "Come on over and have a look at the damage..." "Lets have a look" "Just look at that... it has not disembowelled our dinosaur..." "Its punctured it, it's a foot hold... its hooked right in" "Absolutely this is definitely not for disembowelling, this claw" "The end of the claw was obviously sharp enough to pierce the flesh, but it couldn't cut through the flesh because the underside is round and completely blunt." "It seems that Velociraptor wasn't capable of disembowelling its victims." "So what exactly did Velociraptor do with that claw?" "The answer lies in an incredible fossil found in the Mongolian desert." "This is where Velociraptor stalked his territory, millions of years ago." "One of the most common dinosaurs of the time was the vegetarian, Protoceratops." "It was about the size of a pig and would have made a tasty meal." "In 1971, a Mongolian palaeontologist stumbled across a Protoceratops skull." "This skull led him to the most extraordinary dinosaur fossil ever discovered." "Caught in the mouth of the Protoceratops, he found the arm of a Velociraptor and amazingly there was much much more..." "What he had found was a fight between two dinosaurs - frozen in time..." "Almost all the bones of both animals were intact, and in exactly the same position as when the attack was taking place." "This extraordinary fossil has endured for 75 million years." "And the 'Fighting Dinosaurs' are still locked in mortal combat." "No-one knows how they both died, at exactly the same moment in time." "Some scientists think that, whilst the animals were distracted mid-fight, they were covered by a mudslide." "Others think that they could have been suffocated in a monster sandstorm." "What everyone can agree on is that this is a battle scene." "Dave Unwin, from Humbolt University in Berlin, believes that the fighting pair fossil is the conclusive proof of how Velociraptor used its claw." "He's worked out exactly what was going on, out on the desert." "Velociraptor has seen Protoceratops from somewhere way over here and come running over" "he's grabbed hold of Protoceratops, and we can see very clearly the tension and the energy in this struggle." "Look at the curvature on Protoceratops as he tries to pull away from Velociraptor and look also how Velociraptor's body is curved right round as he tries to pull his prey towards him and kill him off as quickly as possible." "and its just incredible its captured in the fossil record and preserved like this for millions of years." "Dave now turned his attention to the curved claw." "Did it have a specialized use?" "When he looked really close he began to realize that Velociraptor was even more deadly than its reputation." "It wasn't stabbing the prey in, in any old spot, it was actually stabbing this protoceratops in one of the most vital parts of the body, which is the neck region." "Stabbing into the neck gives a predator a good chance of cutting the windpipe or piercing the jugular vein." "If you cut the veins in my neck I'd bleed to death literally in seconds or minutes." "Or alternatively if the Velociraptor was lucky enough to cut through the windpipe the animal would suffocate in literally two or three minutes." "Velociraptor is exposed as a ruthless viciously equipped killer." "And scientists know exactly how successful it was because countless numbers of Velociraptor teeth have been found among the fossilized remains of its victims." "But there's a conundrum" " Velociraptor was no larger than a turkey." "So what was the secret of Velociraptor's success?" "One theory has it that this turkey- sized predator was hunting in groups." "It's difficult to prove whether Velociraptors were hunting together when they lived 75 million years ago." "But one way scientists can theorise about the behaviour of dinosaurs is to study the behaviour of their closest living relatives - birds and crocodiles." "Crocodiles are scary enough on their own, but sometimes they work together." "The advantage is that they can take on much larger prey." "One croc would have problems with a fully-grown zebra, but many jaws make light work." "The first crocodile pushes the unfortunate animal into deep water, where it is well out of its depth." "A second crocodile moves in tojoin the party." "It's all over in seconds... with plenty of zebra dinner for both killers." "Collaborative hunting works for crocs." "But what about those other dinosaur descendents, the birds?" "The hunting methods of these birds of prey could provide an insight into how Velociraptor was such a successful predator." "Steve Ford is one of Britain's most experienced Falconers." "Usually he works with a single bird, but not when he's hunting with Harris Hawks." "One of the good things about Harris Hawks is the fact that they are gregarious and they like to work as a family group so therefore they are ideal in the hunting field because they'll actually work as a team." "So it's nice to have a variety of birds here, males and females, immatures and adults, all raring to get going to get out into the hunting field." "These are tame birds but they're not trained birds - they're displaying their natural hunting method which is not to go out on their own looking for prey for each one, but in groups." "Three birds stand a much better chance of catching one prey - in this case a rabbit." "What we're doing is we're working this wood and we've got one female... that's gone right up front... she's the more experienced one." "and we've got... back in this area... and we always end up when we're working with a group of birds like this that we end up with a backstop" "The backstop stays behind in case the rabbit decides to double back on itself." "Go on hawk ln goes the first bird." "There is..." "The second flies in to cut off the rabbit." "Go on..." "And they've got it." "So co-operative hunting pays off for Harris Hawks" "and perhaps also paid off for some predatory dinosaurs." "Working together, the turkey-sized Velociraptors would have had a much better chance of bringing down one, rather sturdy, Protoceratops." "And there is fossil evidence that suggests that they did just this." "In the 1960's, palaeontologists were digging in the side of a hill in Montana USA when they found the remains of 4 raptors, lying alongside their victim." "The evidence was undeniable." "These raptors were hunting together." "In prehistoric Mongolia, a Velociraptor gets into position up on the high ground." "While a second one sets off down onto the low ground." "And they're off." "Velociraptor most certainly lived up to its billing:" "a ruthless hunter and a vicious killer" "It might not have been six foot tall, and it couldn't actually disembowel its victims." "But Velociraptor could most certainly use its sickle shaped claw as a lethal killing weapon." "a whole pack of these ravenous predators could attack and kill whatever they wanted to eat?" "Or could they?" "The biggest potential meal for Velociraptor that lived out on the desert was one of these - an Ankylosaur." "This huge dinosaur was a vegetarian with a very small brain." "Surely this docile, and probably dozey, animal was destined to be made mincemeat of by a hungry Velociraptor?" "Or perhaps it could look after itself." "The tail is suspiciously lumpy and the animal is covered in thick armour." "So what would have happened if a gang of Velociraptors set out to attack an Ankylosaur..." "This is a question that's been intriguing Ken Carpenter." "Ken is curator of the Denver Museum, USA and a world expert on Ankylosaurs." "I like Ankylosaurs because they are so different among dinosaurs - they have very low, squat bodies - in one sense they are almost built like me so I can kind of relate to them." "They probably had a short temper, they weren't very bright, but they were plant eaters and so they might have been rather gentle animals." "Gentle animals maybe - but what about that tail?" "The bulbous club on the end looks like a weapon - and palaeontologists have often described it as a weapon but did it really pose a threat to Velociraptor?" "It's time for another dinosaur experiment." "The special effects team embark on a new challenge - to build a fully working, replica tail from aluminium." "To date fossil hunters have only found 8 Ankylosaur tails." "But Ken has tracked down a cast of one of them so that he can advise the team." "The tail has two parts: the flexible bendy bit and the solid club on the end." "This is the tail club, this is the business end of an ankylosaur." "It's made by vertebrae which are fused together to form a handle - the true working end are these plates of armour that are fused together - forms almost a battle axe." "When Ken takes a really close look at the fossil cast, he makes an amazing new discovery." "We're very fortunate with this, something that we've never seen before is the damage that occurred on this tail club where the bone had broken off" "and that could only have happened if the tail club had hit something really hard." "It hit with such force that the bone just popped off here." "It didn't only do it once but it did it twice which suggests that the animal had struck something really hard in both directions..." "This provides us with the best evidence that this was indeed used as a weapon." "If this is a weapon, what kind of damage could it inflict?" "And what would it do to a Velociraptor?" "Back in London the special effects team sets about building a replica aluminium tail." "This has an equivalent weight and the same strength as the original tail." "Before they can test it, they need to know exactly how much force an Ankylosaur could put behind its tail swing." "While the team are busy building their scale model in the UK," "Ken is busy in the US - doing maths." "Here in front of me I have the tail that we used in our analysis." "We have all these structures on the side and along the bottom - this is where the muscles attach." "So we could determine the volume of muscle all around the tail." "And from that volume we could then calculate the amount of force that the tail club could generate and it turned out it the tail club could generate about two and a half tons per square inch which is about the weight of a car on a very, very small area." "You can imagine a predator coming nearby and Ankylosaur swinging this club - its going to do a lot of damage if it hit a vital area." "Two and a half tons is an awful lot of pressure on a small spot on any carnivorous dinosaur." "Up until now, scientists could only guess as to what kind of damage the club-shaped Ankylosaur tail could inflict." "But with Ken's calculations and the special effects team's replica tail, they are finally able to put a 75 million year old weapon of war through its paces." "Ken has flown to London to witness the experiment." "Here's our tail, what do you think?" "Wow this is marvellous - looks just like the real thing." "We're pretty pleased with it its very impressive." "So how much force did you calculate for this." "Two tons a square inch, like your figures." "OK so that's about the weight of a large American car on a pretty small area." "a pretty large car." "Explain to me how this thing works?" "OK, we pull it back... and lock it into this release mechanism here and then when we release the tail the weight falls, pulls the tail round and applies the force to whatever we're going to hit." "Well let's see this thing work..." "Great, that's marvellous, just like the real thing!" "With the tail working exactly as they planned," "Ken and the team are about to find out what kind of damage an Ankylosaur tail could have inflicted on an attacker." "The target is set in place - yet another piece of butcher's pork." "This rib cage is designed to be strong enough to protect the animal's internal organs." "Wow look at that... right through, that's amazing." "Just shattered those ribs oh man..." "I'd sure hate to be hit by that thing!" "The experiment proves that the ankylosaur was brandishing a deadly weapon." "But would it have used it against a turkey-sized Velociraptor?" "However scary Velociraptor was, it was only two and a half feet tall." "Ankylosaur's tail force seems well over the top." "Scientists have concluded that the gentle giant must have had to fend off something much more formidable." "Velociraptor wasn't the only predator at large on the pre-historic plains of Mongolia." "In the forests surrounding the open scrub of Ankylosaur's home lurked another even more impressive killer dinosaur:" "Tarbosaurus" " a Mongolian equivalent of T rex with jaws that were just as powerful." "As the special effects team prove, the bite of such an animal would have been devastatingly destructive." "If Tarbosaurus could have crunched through metal Ankylosaurs armour would have been no problem." "But would the Ankylosaur have been able to fight back?" "Phil Manning thinks there are clues in the fossil evidence that the vegetarian could successfully defend itself against Tarbosaurus." "There are examples of lower legs on shins of predatory dinosaurs that have almighty blows kicked into the side of them." "Now it's quite possible that such injuries could have been caused by the huge tail club on the end of an Ankylosaur." "So what damage would an Ankylosaur tail do to a Tarbosaurus leg?" "The team use a piece of timber as a stand-in - it is the right size and has the same strength as bone... lf an Ankylosaur tail club could have seen off a gigantic Tarbosaurus, what would it have done to a diminutive Velociraptor?" "Velociraptors were actually rather small." "Probably about the size of a turkey." "For the biomechanical test, Ken has provided an oven-ready version as a stand-in." "And Dave is standing by to release the tail." "So let it rip..." "Giggle..." "Look at that thing, oh my god." "Poor thing, probably broke all of its ribs, ruptured the internal organs." "If this had been a Velociraptor it would be dead." "It's possible that a sprightly, feathered Velociraptor may have been agile enough to avoid being hit." "But if did get close, it would have the been faced with the Ankylosaur's heavily armoured skin." "Alligators and crocodiles are distant relatives of Ankylosaurs and they are similarly armoured." "Their skin is incredibly tough and resilient to any kind of attack." "So scientists have questioned whether Velociraptor's curved claw could have penetrated the heavily protected Ankylosaur." "There was only one way to find out." "Dave Payne, the biomechanic expert, constructs another Velociraptor claw test." "First he secures the target - an imported piece of crocodile from a farm in Australia." "Then he prepares the Velociraptor leg for action..." "This is what it did to a piece of pork..." "Now the croc skin..." "Amazingly the claw simply bounced off leaving hardly a scratch." "Not only that - the force of the claw hitting the bony skin broke off its tip." "The conclusion is that Ankylosaurs were impenetrable battle tanks." "And Velociraptor didn't stand a chance against that thick armour." "But there's one final twist to the tale..." "Dino Frey is an expert on alligator and crocodile armour and he's discovered that Ankylosaurs may well have had a weak spot after all." "I am a biologist and I work with living animals." "And these living animals help me to explain extinct animals." "Today he is researching alligators and crocodiles in Florida." "But before he can study them, he has to catch them." "Now you can see... you see the amour." "Dino's expert eye has noticed something intriguing about the crocodile skin." "In all crocs there is this armour, but interestingly the babies don't have armour, and especially in the neck where you would expect protective armour against neck bites from other predators, the armour is reduced." "On the young crocs, the defensive armour isn't yet fully developed." "So the small crocs are much more vulnerable to predators and there is evidence that a heron can harpoon a little croc without any problem but it would break its beak if it tried to do the same with the big guys here." "Ankylosaur armour was so similar to crocodile armour that scientists reckon its fair to assume that baby Ankyosaurs would have been just as vulnerable as baby crocodiles are." "Sure enough, in Mongolia palaeontologists have found fossils of twelve young Ankylosaurs." "And amongst the bones were the telltale and unmistakeable teeth of..." "Velociraptor." "These defenceless baby Ankylosaurs would have provided an ideal meal." "Using all the evidence from the fossil bones, and from the bio-mechanical tests, its now possible to reveal Velociraptor at its most ruthless." "The facts prove beyond doubt that Velociraptor does deserve its scary reputation." "Quite different from how the movies depicted him, but an extremely vicious killer all the same."