David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive Page #2

sideways.

Well, I'm sure Professor Owen

would've had something

to say about that.

He must have realised

that these blunt, rounded ridges

on these huge molar teeth

would be very effective

at grinding up twigs and fir cones

and rough forest vegetation,

but they lack the sharp blade

that you need

to slice through flesh.

This is not the jaw of a carnivore.

It soon became clear

that Koch had increased the size

of his monster skeleton

by adding extra vertebrae, ribs

and even blocks of wood.

The Missouri Leviathan was a fraud.

So Owen removed all the extra bits.

And then he put the real bones

back together in their true form.

Finally, he detached

those astonishing tusks

and put them back

in the correct way.

It seems obvious now,

but in life,

they had pointed in much

the same direction

as those of a modern elephant.

And so, here today

stands not Koch's leviathan

but Owen's mastodont

a vegetarian relative

of the elephant

that lived 12,000 years ago

in North and Central America.

It may have decreased a bit in size,

but it's still

an astonishing animal.

Our understanding of the mastodon

is a lot more accurate today,

thanks to Professor Owen.

But it was not the only creature

in this museum

to be the victim

of misrepresentation.

This poor old bird is a dodo.

It once lived on the island

of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean

and it's almost certainly

the first animal species

that human beings

actually exterminated

in historic times.

And so now we talk about being

"as dead as a dodo."

But in spite of its fame,

this one is a fake.

Its feathers come from a goose,

its feet were modelled on a turkey

and its beak, I suspect,

is plaster.

The museum can be forgiven

because no skin or feathers

of the dodo survive.

Its image was influenced

by pictures like this one,

painted by a 17th century

Dutch artist, Roelandt Savery,

but he had never seen a living dodo

and based his image

on accounts by seafarers.

I've often wondered whether dodos

actually looked like that,

but unfortunately,

they'd all disappeared

before anyone could get a good look

at them...

...until now.

This funny, dumpy creature

is how the bird is usually

represented these days.

But I've seen quite a lot of

flightless birds over the years

and this one doesn't quite

ring true.

An examination of the way

its thighs join its pelvis

has shown that, in life,

it actually stood much more upright.

We now know that its feathers

were probably a lot fluffier

than in that painting.

We also now know that it

was related to the pigeon

and some experts suggest that

it made a pigeon-like call -

"Doo-doo, doo-doo" -

which gave the bird its name.

The dodo probably fed on fruit -

there's a lot of it on the island.

I'll try him with a bit.

Come on.

What do you make of that?

Ow! That's a very powerful beak.

In fact, it may well

have been adapted

for crushing shells and crustaceans

for the sake of the calcium.

'And there's a female.'

Maybe she is another reason why

they had such large beaks -

to show off with

during courtship.

And here comes a rival male.

He could be another reason

for having a huge beak -

to fight with in disputes

over nest sites.

Until now,

no-one has ever seen a dodo egg,

so no-one knows how big it was.

But after tonight, who knows?

Science has revealed the truth

behind many a myth

and discovered some creatures

that are so odd

as to be scarcely believable.

But there is one story

that is still remarkably persistent.

Back in 1951,

a famous Himalayan explorer

and mountaineer, Eric Shipton,

came across some footprints

across a high snowfield

that looked as if they'd been made

by some kind of giant ape.

Shipton's Sherpa companions had

no doubt about what had made them.

A yeti - an abominable snowman.

Well, there is one small,

insignificant-looking specimen

in the storage vaults down here

that could, perhaps,

explain those prints.

It was found in a shop in Hong Kong

that sold Chinese

traditional medicines.

It was the molar tooth

of some kind of ape-like creature,

except that it was huge.

The museum has only got a fragment,

this is it.

But here's a cast of a complete one

and it's six times

the size of one of ours.

It was given the name

Gigantopithecus -

"giant ape."

After that discovery, one or two

more teeth were discovered,

but nothing much, until eventually,

a piece of the lower jaw was found.

The original is now in America,

this is a cast,

but here is the lower jaw.

If this animal had a skull

the same proportions

as those of a gorilla,

its complete skull

would've been this big.

This was a true monster.

So we know a huge ape did exist,

Gigantopithecus.

It could well have stood 3m tall,

in which case,

it would've been eight times

as heavy as I am.

And if you're as heavy as that,

you don't spend much time

climbing in trees

because they won't support you.

So the likelihood is that his arms

are quite short

and he walked upright.

He was bipedal.

I'll get out of the way.

An upright animal has its head

on the top of its spine, as I do.

And if that head

is to be well-balanced,

it's better not to have

a long muzzle,

but a rather flat face.

So if I were to observe

Gigantopithecus

and it stared back at me,

I suspect I'd find its look

rather unnervingly familiar.

Gigantopithecus is commonly

thought to have died out

several hundred thousand years ago.

But sightings of the yeti

continue to be reported,

so is it possible

that some kind of giant ape,

maybe even Gigantopithecus itself,

still survives somewhere out in

those remote Himalayan mountains?

The Gigantopithecus tooth

isn't the only intriguing specimen

down here in the storerooms.

This - a piece of dung.

Looking at it, you might think

it had dropped to the ground

only yesterday.

'It was found in a cave

in Patagonia.'

And with it, a piece of skin,

like this -

covered in a very coarse,

bristly hair

and on the underside,

mysterious white bone nodules,

as though it was a kind of armour.

No known creature alive today

has armoured hide like this.

If it still survived, it would be

a truly extraordinary discovery,

so at the end of the 19th century,

explorers and scientists

started a search for it.

In fact, the dung and the fur

appeared to be recent

only because they had been,

in effect, freeze-dried

in that ancient cave.

The creatures themselves

had died out some 10,000 years ago.

But explorers did find

their skeletons.

They were giant sloths

that lived not in trees,

as modern ones do,

but on the ground.

And this one had immense claws.

What could it have used them for?

These giant sloths probably spent

most of their time on all fours

but nonetheless,

they were perfectly capable

of rearing up on their hind legs.

And when they did that,

they probably stood about 3m tall,

which was as tall as a grizzly bear,

if not taller.

But I don't think this one

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