National Geographic: Dinosaur Hunters Page #4

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Scientists may never know

for certain

if the bird-like Oviraptors

fell in love.

But now there's a new find

that digs even deeper

into the private lives of

the dinosaurs -

a place paleontologists

usually enter

only in their best dreams.

Oh, yeah, it's farther down.

They've discovered

another Oviraptor.

And then, in the dirt below

the skeleton... eggs,

an entire nest.

How many eggs now revealed?

Uh, one, two, three, four,

five, six, seven, eight, nine.

And then three

over there... twelve.

Twelve eggs. All right.

Another one

coming out right here.

It's really

a great fossil find

because it's one of

the rare instances

where we can capture

a little bit of behavior

that's 80 million years old.

Here we have

a sort of day in the life

of or the death of a creature

of a dinosaur...

in association with something

it did during its life.

This one was fossilized where

it dropped and

it happened to drop right

on top of its own nest.

She didn't just drop there.

The good mother Oviraptor

was sitting on the nest.

They probably brought food

to their nest, as birds do.

And the good mother

tended her eggs.

Like a bird,

she prodded them into a circle

The fearsome carnivore

of the Gobi was parenting.

So the story of the dinosaur

named "egg thief"

has finally come full circle.

The Oviraptors

watched over their eggs

and took care of the nest.

Now, they will never be seen

as simply nightmare

creatures again.

The dig has been everything

the team could hope for.

But to see what

they've really got,

they have to get

all the fossils safely

out of the ground,

and then take them

on a trip exactly

halfway around the world.

She bathed in plaster,

Romeo and Juliet are now heavy

but dangerously delicate... like Rice Krispies

wrapped in concrete.

No, no.

That way.

Okay, okay.

Sorry.

I thought you were going to

push backwards.

Perfect.

It's beautiful, Amy.

More, more, more, more, more.

It's beautiful.

More, more, more, more.

Okay.

Nothing came out.

All right, Amy.

So far, so good.

Now they have to convince

the good mother Oviraptor

to come down from her

hillside perch.

It's like moving

a grand piano off a cliff.

Romeo and Juliet

prove just as stubborn.

I'm happy.

Just drive slowly, please?

It's not there yet.

It could get lost in the mail.

They do get lost in the mail.

The good mother Oviraptor

and Romeo and Juliet

are trucked east.

And then, they disappear...

lost, somewhere in China.

After four months bound up

in Chinese red tape,

the dinosaur fossils

finally make it

to their destination...

the American Museum of

Natural History in New York.

The first arrival is Juliet.

She's headed for Amy's lab,

where, if all goes well,

they'll find out

what ancient secrets

lie beneath the recent coat

of plaster.

I'm really glad this is here.

This is great

From the summer in the Gobi to

the winter in New York City.

Juliet is now a seasoned

world traveler.

After 80 million

years of repose

She, s the new kid

on the block.

There's a lot of questions

at this point.

There could be

anything in here.

I have a feeling

that this one's going

to be a nice skeleton -

this is my guess -

a nice skeleton,

hopefully with a skull,

all laid out.

It's pretty fun.

And it's all mine.

It's a tricky business...

millimeters

make all the difference.

Yeah, this is good.

I'm really glad

I didn't saw through a bone

in the process.

It's weird.

It's just opening

this little window

into this world I was living

last summer.

Yeah, this looks good.

After all this work,

they still don't know

if Juliet is an

important specimen,

whether her skeleton is

perfect or a total ruin.

This is great.

I'm really psyched,

'cause this is the skull.

It does have a skull.

We're really, really happy.

I like, you know,

working late at night.

It's really hard to

go home because...

I just look at it and say,

"I can't believe this."

It's traveled

and halfway around the world

and it's sitting here

and, you know,

it's a dinosaur.

Working late?

Yeah.

And it's so beautiful.

The more I work on it,

the more you see

this natural sculpture.

My work just sort

of disappears

and this beautiful thing

comes out of the rock.

The process takes weeks.

Finally, Juliet is revealed

in all her splendor.

She's everything

they've been hoping for,

perhaps the most perfect

specimen ever found -

a dinosaur for the ages.

It's a beautiful fossil.

In fact, I mean,

that I think that

this is probably

the best prepared

and the best preserved

Oviraptor that's

yet been worked on from

our expedition -

or even anywhere in the world

I think we're going to

have the,

to be able to relish

in the fruits

of last summer

for many years to come.

It makes you wonder

what's still out there.

She's more than a pretty face

These bones

will help us trace

the evolution of dinosaurs

into birds.

Meanwhile,

Juliet makes a scientist dream

about the world

she left behind.

I think what fascinates me is

the broad picture.

What was it like

if you were flying in a little

Piper Cub over that area,

like some of the bush pilots

do over the Serengeti?

What would it look like then -

all those dinosaurs and the

mammals and the lizards...

and the Gobi?

After six long summers,

Mark and Mike have uncovered

the hidden secrets

of the Gobi... making Juliet's

world feel almost real.

You could picture a lake

perhaps and some cliffs

and a bunch of Oviraptors

on a cliff

like a colony of seabirds,

perhaps.

And a bunch of these

tank like ankylosaurs

lumbering around

near the pond

and perhaps

a herd of Protoceratops

wandering through.

And every once in a while

a vicious Velociraptor

coming over the hill

to nab something.

And we can imagine

the Oviraptors:

Romeo and Juliet,

hunting together,

and the good mother,

minding her eggs.

Unnoticed in its

low station

is our own ancestor,

a tiny tense creature

lost among

the powerful beings

of the ancient Gobi.

In the end,

they would all disappear

from the face of the earth -

along with most of the

creatures of their world.

From our perspective,

of course,

this mass extinction event

is not a big problem

because we're part of

the group

that survived

and started evolving into bats

and large hoofed animals and

lions and tigers and bears...

and ultimately humans.

Ultimately, humans,

like the Oviraptors,

and most of

the dinosaur kingdom,

may not be able to count on

permanent residence on earth.

Every species that's

ever lived

Has become extinct

or will become extinct.

And whether extinction

is due to

the total decimation

of our population

or whether it's due to

the evolution of

that species into

another species,

nevertheless, everybody

becomes extinct eventually.

So in that view,

we've had it.

Some species lived

and then died out:

a story like any other story.

Others evolved,

changed and lived on.

So perhaps a message about

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