How to Build a Dinosaur Page #5

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- Running away?

- Maybe, but it's never going to happen, thankfully.

The work of scientists like John has allowed us

to not only refine our ideas about these extinct animals,

but has actually transformed our image of them.

If you think about Tyrannosaurus rex as an example,

we used to think of him as standing upright like Godzilla,

but now we know that he couldn't have worked like that.

If you treat him like an engineering problem,

inform that using comparative anatomy of living animals,

and now we know that his body

was much more horizontal,

with his tail held up in the air,

and our reconstructions are much more robust.

We're getting as close as we possibly can

to what this long-dead animal would have looked like.

But even working out exactly what an adult

T rex would have looked like

only gives you a snapshot of a moment in time.

To really understand this animal,

we need to know how it changed over

the course of its entire life,

and that's why Luis's team

are attempting the first ever reconstruction

of a baby T rex.

There are some small,

very tiny segments of the baby,

but some of them are so small that

we can't match anything up.

Nothing like this has ever been found before.

It's much harder to recreate a baby than an adult.

Only a few tiny fragments of a skeleton

have ever been found.

Paul's colleague Tommy is trying to piece

together the remains

from little more than dinosaur dust.

There's not a lot of pieces and it's only for the skull.

See, I mean, I've gotten several little pieces put together.

All these bones had similar colour,

the texture on the surface was pretty close,

and a lot of times I'll look at the edge of the bone.

You'll see this one has a little white and a little black.

A lot of times it's just trying the piece,

seeing if it will fit.

A lot of people find it boring.

I don't know, it calms me!

Although useful for scientists,

these fossil remains are far too limited

to bring a baby T rex to life for an audience.

And that's why the entire baby skeleton will be a model,

its bones made not from fossils but

from foam and resin.

This is where the artists come in.

They will produce creatures from their imaginations,

but they have to be guided by the science

which provides them with a range of possibilities.

Ultimately, the animal that they draw or sculpt

will be a blend of science and art.

The baby T rex will be sculpted by Doyle,

one of Luis's artists.

When you're doing something that's brand new,

that there is no precedent for,

it can be a little nerve-racking and it can be a lot of fun.

For my baby T rex, there's no reference for that,

so there's a lot of interpretation there.

'With his miniature model of an

adult T rex for reference,

'along with the growing patterns of close

relatives of tyrannosaurs,

'it's possible to work out the likely

proportions of the baby.

'The starting point for the sculpture is

a simple illustration.'

So, I'm going to start off.

T rex, usually, an adult skull is a great way to measure,

because it's so big.

But in babies,

the skull is going to be thinner,

and the rule is always that the orbit

is going to be larger.

And also when you look at human babies,

I've noticed that they are about three heads tall,

versus an adult human, which is anywhere

from seven to nine,

depending on how tall they are.

Do you find yourself at all looking at

other people's reconstructions

and thinking, "They've got that wrong"?

Ah... Yes. SHE CHUCKLES

There are a bunch of people who are out there

who are coming from maybe film or special effects

or something like that.

They're doing this kind of work from

a less informed background.

So, I'm very privileged to work with a scientist,

and that's definitely an asset

that I don't dare forget.

- He's looking nice, this T rex, this little two-year-old.

- Yeah.

'But with limited fossil remains,

'the reconstruction has room for creative licence.'

So, can you draw me another baby T rex...

- Sure.

- ..based on the same evidence,

but taking it off in a different direction?

Let's do the same thing.

We have our head.

There's a lot of evidence

that some of them had feathers,

and that maybe some of them,

when they were young, would have had some

sort of downy covering

that would have left in adulthood,

so that it would have been shedded before

they were fully grown.

This little baby's looking extraordinarily bird-like

- and has really long legs.

- Yeah.

Is this a reasonable interpretation?

- There's nothing that says that it can't be this way.

- Right.

Fantastic. It's the same creature,

but they're very different.

The length of the legs is quite

extraordinary in this one.

And I love the feathers.

That immediately makes it look like

a completely different creature.

It shows you there's quite a bit of room

for artistic manoeuvre

- in these reconstructions.

- Yes. Definitely, definitely.

'The questions about Luis's baby T rex

'run even deeper than its appearance.

'With such limited fossils,

some scientists have actually questioned

whether the bones

'might belong to a different species

of dinosaur entirely -

'something like a T rex, but much smaller.'

You're presenting a mounted skeleton

of this baby T rex,

and this is the first baby T rex

that's been found and has been put on display.

How can you be sure that it is indeed a T rex, if it's a baby,

because bones change as juveniles turn into adults.

You can read the characteristics of the bone tissue

and that can tell you if the animal is

a full-grown individual

or if it's a baby or a very young individual.

So, we know that perhaps in future,

discoveries may prove

that there was another species of tyrannosaur

that essentially lived together with T rex

and that maybe this is a baby of

that particular species.

But at the moment, with information

that we have,

it seems that the most reasonable

hypothesis is to say

that this one represents a baby of

a Tyrannosaurus rex.

I think that's quite brave

to put something like a baby T rex in

this exhibition as a mounted skeleton,

because there's nothing to compare it with.

It is our responsibility to make sure

that people understand

that things are not written in stone

and our scientific conclusions change

as we gather more evidence.

Back in New Jersey,

the T rexs are nearly complete,

and Luis has come to inspect them.

This is phenomenal, you know.

- You like it?

- It looks awesome.

It's just fantastic. Really fantastic.

Everything you thought it would be?

- Better, better, better.

- Good.

It's hard to describe

but I feel that it's very dynamic, you know.

Well, we brought the right-hand foot over

the centre line quite a bit...

- Yeah, I can see that.

- ..with a turning, and...

I can see that.

- It gives a little... quite a bit of movement.

- Yeah.

I'm glad that you like it, Luis.

I think it's phenomenal.

But it's not completely finished.

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