Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur

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I'm here in Patagonia in the southern

part of South America because,

a few years ago,

a man looking for one of his lost sheep found

a simply gigantic bone

sticking out of a rock -

a bone that was going to astonish science.

That first bone led to the

discovery of over 200 others.

They were all huge - so big that they

could only have come from a dinosaur.

And what a dinosaur it would turn out to be!

One that seems to defy the laws of nature.

These bones are part of a

skeleton that has remained hidden

and marvellously preserved

for 100 million years.

'An international team of

scientists assembled to try

'and work out what sort of

dinosaur it belonged to.'

It's like a palaeontological crime scene!

Each bone is an important piece

of evidence that can give us

information as to what the living

creature was actually like.

We'll use the latest forensic technology,

we'll compare it with how

giant animals live today

and we'll build a full-size skeleton

of this stupendous creature.

And we will try and work out

in detail what it looked like

when it was alive.

HE GASPS:

Absolutely amazing!

Could it really have been the biggest animal

ever to walk the earth?

Patagonia in southern Argentina.

Like many detective stories,

this one began by chance.

A shepherd stumbled across

the tip of a huge bone

poking out of the ground.

HORSE SNORTS:

Experts from Patagonia's

premier palaeontological museum

confirmed it was part of a dinosaur.

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

But they didn't realise at the

time what a truly extraordinary one

it would prove to be.

Dinosaurs of many kinds

roamed all over these lands

in the southern end of South America

during what's known as the Cretaceous period,

between 66 and 145 million years ago.

The largest were plant-eaters

known as sauropods.

And the largest of them were the titanosaurs.

Giant titanosaur bones are comparatively rare

so very little is known

about these dinosaurs.

This new discovery could change all that.

'Like many people, young and old,

I'm fascinated by dinosaurs,

'so the chance to join this investigation

'is just too good an opportunity to miss.'

Oh, I'd love to have a go!

HE LAUGHS:

I'm sure they'd let you.

HE LAUGHS:

'Of course,

it's the giants in particular that capture

'the imagination.'

The first sauropods to appear on earth

were comparatively small creatures.

This is the cast of the

thigh bone of one of them.

It's not even as big as my thigh bone.

But after about 20 million years,

some had become pretty big.

This is a thigh bone from

one of those creatures.

But then, after that...

..our giant appeared. This is its thigh bone.

It's the largest ever found.

Coming across such a bone in your

back yard must be quite a shock.

Just ask farm owner Alba Maio.

HENS CLUCK:

TRANSLATION:

SHE LAUGHS:

TRANSLATION:

Before long,

a whole team of fossil-hunting scientists

arrives and starts work.

The thighbone proves to be eight feet,

2.4 metres long.

It's preserved in extraordinary detail,

and detail will be

critical to the forensic

examination that will follow.

The research team soon turn

the site into a vast quarry.

It proves to be one of the biggest

dinosaur finds of the century.

Bone after bone emerge from the rocks.

THEY LAUGH:

We just found another bone right here.

We weren't expecting it at all.

We just start digging and find it.

Until recently, giant titanosaurs

have only been known from a dozen bones

and our team have already found

more than ten times as many.

Dr Diego Pol is the chief palaeontologist

leading the investigation.

If you really want to know

what a really gigantic dinosaur looked like,

this quarry here

has the potential to answer that question

and that's really exciting for us.

It's really impressive.

When you stand by one of these bones,

you really feel tiny.

With so much new evidence,

there is a chance of discovering

all kinds of new facts about

the mysterious titanosaurs.

It's like a palaeontological crime scene.

It's a really unique thing

that you will not find

anywhere else in the world.

Patagonia's harsh weather

makes uncovering the fossils exhausting,

but it also endangers the

newly-exposed fossils.

THUNDER RUMBLES:

A lot of damage from the rain

so we need to protect the

bones that are at risk.

I'm really concerned that

this already has some cracks.

If the bones aren't protected,

tiny details on their surface could be lost.

To protect the bones,

they're covered with, of all things,

wet toilet paper and plaster of Paris.

It's like putting a plaster

cast on a broken leg.

There's a rush to get them back to the museum

to begin examining them in minute detail.

A new road has been specially

built to enable them

to be transported without too much jolting.

Once at the museum laboratory,

the detailed detective work begins.

It's a chance to start

putting flesh on bones.

Some really big muscle was going in here.

This animal was so big

that it certainly needed

really powerful muscles

and very strong attachments

into the bones.

This is a giant vertebra,

one of the bones of the spine,

and it's a very important find.

That's because it's likely

to provide crucial evidence

for identifying the species of our dinosaur.

Despite weighing up to half a tonne,

these fossils are surprisingly fragile.

It's all rather nerve-racking.

One bone like this has already

cracked in half without warning.

Bravo!

THEY LAUGH:

And so this is the position as it was in life

with the centre of the backbone there,

then this is the crest on the top.

Right, right, and this belongs

to the middle part of the thorax.

- Right about here.

- About that. - Yeah, yeah.

'Many more weeks of detailed examination

'will be needed before the

backbones reveal all their secrets.'

Surprisingly, perhaps,

one of the first things

the team was able to deduce about

our titanosaur is its weight.

That's because, after finding the thigh bone,

they discover another huge bone

from the front leg - a humerus.

By measuring the circumference

of each of these leg bones,

it's possible to estimate how

much weight they could support.

Let's see how much.

We'll measure this.

- 79.

- 79? Wow!

I'm not sure how that

translates to body weight.

- Yeah, around 70 tonnes or even more, probably.

- Wow!

That's really big.

It's amazing.

That evening, Dr Jose Luis

Carballido checks his calculations.

Until now, Argentinosaurus was

the heaviest known dinosaur.

Ours already looks bigger.

Could this mean it was the largest

animal ever to walk the earth?

Could it also be a new species?

We can't be sure...yet.

The rocks of Patagonia,

so bare of vegetation,

also contain astonishing evidence of

how titanosaurs began their lives.

I've now come nearly 500 miles north

from our Patagonian dinosaur excavation

to a place called Auca Mahuevo.

This is the largest dinosaur

nesting ground yet discovered.

The remains of their eggs and

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