The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs Page #5

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... 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 -

I 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,

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