The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs Page #8

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to protect the animal's internal organs.

Wow look at that... right through,

that's amazing.

Just shattered those ribs oh man...

l, d sure hate to be hit by that thing!

The experiment proves that the ankylosaur

was brandishing a deadly weapon.

But would it have used it against

a turkey-sized Velociraptor?

However scary Velociraptor was,

it was only two and a half feet tall.

Ankylosaur's tail force seems well over the top.

Scientists have concluded that the gentle giant

must have had to fend off something

much more formidable.

Velociraptor wasn't the only predator at large

on the pre-historic plains of Mongolia.

In the forests surrounding the open scrub

of Ankylosaur's home lurked

another even more impressive killer dinosaur:

Tarbosaurus

- a Mongolian equivalent of T rex

with jaws that were just as powerful.

As the special effects team prove,

the bite of such an animal

would have been devastatingly destructive.

If Tarbosaurus could have crunched through metal

Ankylosaurs armour would have been no problem.

But would the Ankylosaur

have been able to fight back?

Phil Manning thinks there are clues

in the fossil evidence

that the vegetarian could successfully

defend itself against Tarbosaurus.

There are examples of lower legs

on shins of predatory dinosaurs

that have almighty blows kicked

into the side of them.

Now it's quite possible

that such injuries could have been

caused by the huge tail club on the end

of an Ankylosaur.

So what damage would an Ankylosaur tail

do to a Tarbosaurus leg?

The team use a piece of timber as a stand-in -

it is the right size

and has the same strength as bone...

If an Ankylosaur tail club could have seen

off a gigantic Tarbosaurus,

what would it have done

to a diminutive Velociraptor?

Velociraptors were actually rather small.

Probably about the size of a turkey.

For the biomechanical test, Ken has provided

an oven-ready version as a stand-in.

And Dave is standing by to release the tail.

So let it rip...

Giggle...

Look at that thing, oh my god.

Poor thing, probably broke all of its ribs,

ruptured the internal organs.

If this had been a Velociraptor it would be dead.

It's possible that a sprightly,

feathered Velociraptor may have been

agile enough to avoid being hit.

But if did get close, it would have the been faced

with the Ankylosaur's heavily armoured skin.

Alligators and crocodiles are distant relatives

of Ankylosaurs and they are similarly armoured.

Their skin is incredibly tough

and resilient to any kind of attack.

So scientists have questioned

whether Velociraptor's curved claw

could have penetrated the heavily

protected Ankylosaur.

There was only one way to find out.

Dave Payne, the biomechanic expert,

constructs another Velociraptor claw test.

First he secures the target - an imported piece

of crocodile from a farm in Australia.

Then he prepares the Velociraptor leg

for action...

This is what it did to a piece of pork...

Now the croc skin...

Amazingly the claw simply bounced off

leaving hardly a scratch.

Not only that - the force of the claw hitting

the bony skin broke off its tip.

The conclusion is that Ankylosaurs

were impenetrable battle tanks.

And Velociraptor didn't stand a chance against

that thick armour.

But there's one final twist to the tale...

Dino Frey is an expert on alligator

and crocodile armour

and he's discovered that Ankylosaurs

may well have had a weak spot after all.

I am a biologist and I work with living animals.

And these living animals help me

to explain extinct animals.

Today he is researching alligators

and crocodiles in Florida.

But before he can study them,

he has to catch them.

Now you can see... you see the amour.

Dino's expert eye has noticed something

intriguing about the crocodile skin.

In all crocs there is this armour,

but interestingly the babies don't have armour,

and especially in the neck

where you would expect

protective armour against neck bites from

other predators, the armour is reduced.

On the young crocs,

the defensive armour isn't yet fully developed.

So the small crocs are much

more vulnerable to predators

and there is evidence that a heron can harpoon

a little croc without any problem

but it would break its beak if it tried to do

the same with the big guys here.

Ankylosaur armour was so similar to crocodile

armour that scientists reckon its fair to assume

that baby Ankyosaurs would have been

just as vulnerable as baby crocodiles are.

Sure enough, in Mongolia palaeontologists

have found fossils of twelve young Ankylosaurs.

And amongst the bones were the telltale and

umistakeable teeth of... Velociraptor.

These defenceless baby Ankylosaurs

would have provided an ideal meal.

Using all the evidence from the fossil bones,

and from the bio-mechanical tests,

its now possible to reveal Velociraptor

at its most ruthless.

The facts prove beyond doubt that Velociraptor

does deserve its scary reputation.

Quite different from how the movies depicted him,

but an extremely vicious killer all the same.

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