The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs Page #6

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the bio-mechanical model of a Velociraptor's leg

is ready to test.

Whoah, that is awesome Dave

Phil Manning joins the technical team to make

sure that everything is scientifically accurate.

Well this is our Velociraptor.

You've got the dimensions just right.

This is the femur up here is that right...

the upper leg bone,

That certainly is... lower leg here.

You've got the rotation on this claw.

That's incredible...

An amazing adaptation to have the claw held up

of the ground to rotate round like that.

Must help keep this very sharp.

The leg is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship

but can it pull a punch?

It looks right, but what about this claw?

Can you get it cranked up to full speed?

Yeah its gonna get a bit noisy but I'll go away

and start the pump and you let you have a look

OK lets see it go then

The scientists have calculated that

Velociraptor's muscles could power its leg

about as fast as a human arm.

Alright come back over - it works,

But I still have a problem with this claw,

I can't see how it functions.

Is there a way we can work out

what damage this could do?

Let's test it.

OK l, m on for it - what have you got?

Bit of Chamois leather.

That's pretty flesh-like.

Let's get the chamois leather then.

It's time to test the legendary claw to see

what it's really capable of.

Chamois leather is about as tough as human skin.

That is fabulous

Wowl look at that

Alright - its ripped it... but...

I think look at the thickness of chamois leather

and there is nothing behind it.

I think we have got to test this further

This is quite a feeble test

It is a feeble test. I think we need to crank it

up to the next stage... that bit of flesh...

What do you reckon? Some pork

Pork would be good. I think lets see what happens

when we shove that thing into it at speed

Cutting through skin appears to be no problem,

but in life, skin is attached to fat and muscles

so the team decide to use a more realistic

challenger in the form of a pork belly.

Only slightly tougher than your own belly,

as it happens...

An accurate experiment like this has

never been attempted before.

Anticipation

That is gross.

Come on over and have a look at the damage...

Lets have a look

Just look at that... it has not disembowelled our

dinosaur... Its punctured it, it's a foot hold...

Its hooked right in

Absolutely this is definitely not for

disembowelling, this claw

The end of the claw was obviously

sharp enough to pierce the flesh,

but it couldn't cut through the flesh because

the underside is round and completely blunt.

It seems that Velociraptor wasn't

capable of disembowelling its victims.

So what exactly did Velociraptor

do with that claw?

The answer lies in an incredible fossil

found in the Mongolian desert.

This is where Velociraptor stalked his territory,

millions of years ago.

One of the most common dinosaurs of the time

was the vegetarian, Protoceratops.

It was about the size of a pig

and would have made a tasty meal.

In 1971, a Mongolian palaeontologist

stumbled across a Protoceratops skull.

This skull led him to the most extraordinary

dinosaur fossil ever discovered.

Caught in the mouth of the Protoceratops,

he found the arm of a Velociraptor

and amazingly there was much much more...

What he had found was a fight between

two dinosaurs - frozen in time...

Almost all the bones of both animals were intact,

and in exactly the same position as

when the attack was taking place.

This extraordinary fossil

has endured for 75 million years.

And the, Fighting Dinosaurs,

are still locked in mortal combat.

No-one knows how they both died,

at exactly the same moment in time.

Some scientists think that,

whilst the animals were distracted mid-fight,

they were covered by a mudslide.

Others think that they could have been

suffocated in a monster sandstorm.

What everyone can agree on is

that this is a battle scene.

Dave Unwin, from Humbolt University in Berlin,

believes that the fighting pair fossil

is the conclusive proof of

how Velociraptor used its claw.

He's worked out exactly what was going on,

out on the desert.

Velociraptor has seen Protoceratops from

somewhere way over here and come running over

he's grabbed hold of Protoceratops,

and we can see very clearly the tension

and the energy in this struggle.

Look at the curvature on Protoceratops

as he tries to pull away from Velociraptor

and look also how Velociraptor's body

is curved right round

as he tries to pull his prey towards him

and kill him off as quickly as possible.

and its just incredible

its captured in the fossil record

and preserved like this for millions of years.

Dave now turned his attention to the curved claw.

Did it have a specialized use?

When he looked really close he began to realize

that Velociraptor was even more deadly

than its reputation.

It wasn't stabbing the prey in, in any old spot,

it was actually stabbing this protoceratops

in one of the most vital parts of the body,

which is the neck region.

Stabbing into the neck gives a predator

a good chance

of cutting the windpipe

or piercing the jugular vein.

If you cut the veins in my neck l, d bleed

to death literally in seconds or minutes.

Or alternatively if the Velociraptor

was lucky enough

to cut through the windpipe the animal would

suffocate in literally two or three minutes.

Velociraptor is exposed

as a ruthless viciously equipped killer.

And scientists know exactly how successful

it was because countless numbers

of Velociraptor teeth

have been found among the fossilized

remains of its victims.

But there's a conundrum -

Velociraptor was no larger than a turkey.

So what was the secret of Velociraptor's success?

One theory has it that this turkey-sized

predator was hunting in groups.

It's difficult to prove whether

Velociraptors were hunting together

when they lived 75 million years ago.

But one way scientists can theorise about

the behaviour of dinosaurs

is to study the behaviour of their closest

living relatives - birds and crocodiles.

Crocodiles are scary enough on their own,

but sometimes they work together.

The advantage is that

they can take on much larger prey.

One croc would have problems with a fully-grown

zebra, but many jaws make light work.

The first crocodile pushes the unfortunate

animal into deep water,

where it is well out of its depth.

A second crocodile moves in to join the party.

It's all over in seconds...

with plenty of zebra dinner for both killers.

Collaborative hunting works for crocs.

But what about those other dinosaur descendents,

the birds?

The hunting methods of these birds

of prey could provide

an insight into how Velociraptor

was such a successful predator.

Steve Ford is one of Britain, s

most experienced Falconers.

Usually he works with a single bird,

but not when he's hunting with Harris Hawks.

One of the good things about Harris Hawks

is the fact that they are gregarious

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