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tyrannosaurus rex the largest meat-eater ever to walk the earth one of the hundreds of dinosaurs that have been reconstructed and well not exactly brought back to life dinosaurs only come back to life in the movies and they'd been dead for 64 million years before humans appeared on earth many if anything it's been the human imagination that's fed on dinosaurs with tastes ranging from the Greenland comic to the global and serious game of paleontology since the first dinosaur fossils were identified almost 200 years ago it's been science that's fueled science fiction it's been the evidence unearthed by paleontology the study of fossils and ancient life-forms that's given new life to the dinosaur and set them roaming across the landscapes of our imagination and with a new fossil being discovered about every seven weeks our knowledge of dinosaurs is growing by leaps and bounds where did the name dinosaur come from Sir Richard Owen rode into history when he declared that the fossils of giant animals being discovered in England in the early 1800 should be called dinosauria meaning terrible lizards why lizards we know dinosaurs were similar to reptiles because fossils have revealed they had scaly skin and laid eggs it's the dinosaur body plan which sets them apart from reptiles 250 million years ago the reptile design incorporated the short sprawling legs of the lizard and the short length need legs of ancient crocodiles dinosaurs evolved because of a major breakthrough in leg design dinosaur legs were longer and tucked under the body and this breakthrough came in both 4 & 2 legged models dinosaurs could not only stand up they could run faster than anything else around this ability to pursue or escape pursuit was a major factor in the dinosaur success t-rex enjoyed its success by eating its own weight in meat every week at 7 tonnes or the equivalent of twelve cows very thirsty Rex fine wasn't called Tyrannosaurus Rex when barman Brown known as mr. bones because he found so many dinosaurs dug up the first t-rex in 1900 he identified it as a large mediator and called it dynamo soros imperio --ss but dynamo soros imperio sees an overnight sensation in the world of paleontology would soon change its name to something more befitting the largest meat-eater ever to walk the earth Tyrannosaurus Rex literally tyrant Lizard King people have been finding dinosaur bones all over the world for 2,000 years people like the Chinese who've always called them dragons the first known dinosaur extinction theory is attributed to the third century writer Chan Q who explained the mystery of dinosaur bones by writing a dragon ascended a mountain and went directly to the gate of heaven the gate being locked the dragon fell back to earth and died at this spot later it sank into the earth although we may never be able to answer the why of dinosaur extinction completely we do know the win 225 million years ago when dinosaurs first appeared the earth was a very different place the continents were joined together into one supercontinent called Pangaea for the next hundred and 60 million years dinosaurs dominated the earth to get an idea of this immense timescale imagine a book 225 pages long each page equal to 1 million years dinosaurs would be the main characters for the first 160 pages mammals would take over for the last third of the book humans wouldn't appear until the top of the last page 1 million years ago and it wouldn't have been until the bottom of that page that we even knew dinosaurs existed when the second t-rex was found in 1902 a large four leg found nearby was believed to belong to it it wasn't until 88 years later in 1990 when the 10th t-rex was excavated that paleontologists realized mr. bones had got it wrong it wasn't the first mistake made and piecing together a dinosaur and it won't be the last when the freshest evidence to be found has been dead for 65 million years it's no wonder paleontology has a long tradition of getting it wrong one of the first bloopers occurred in England in 1820 dr. Gideon Mantell found some fossilized teeth and excavated Iguanodon named after the modern-day iguana Iguanodon might be considered the beginning of Dino mania it was such a hit with the English public that a full-scale but inaccurate model was built in Crystal Palace Park before the model was finished a dinner party was held inside it for 20 people the diners are long gone that the Iguanodon model is still there a monument to the pitfalls of paleontology what Mantell assumed to be a nose horn turned out to be a thumb spike on the iguanodons multi-purpose hand what still remains a mystery is we're broken and buried under New York's Central Park arm or life-size models waiting to be found by some urban paleontologists but man tells Iguanodon is just one example from over a thousand dinosaur finds scattered across all the continents a tiny fraction of the billions of dinosaurs that must have lived during 160 million year period known as the Mesozoic era what was it like them at the beginning of the Mesozoic era called the Triassic period when dinosaurs first evolved no shrubby fern like plants dominated the landscape next came the Jurassic period when huge coniferous forests groves of psychons supported the heyday of the plant eating dinosaurs then came the cretaceous period when the western part of North America was covered with extensive rivers deltas swamps and marshes when large herds of grazing dinosaurs were hunted by a smaller number of meat-eaters flowering plants had just begun to appear and the air was thick with t-rex breath although no one claims that t-rex could kill with its breath some believe the bacteria level was so high in its mouth the t-rex only had to deliver one septic bite then wait until its prey was brought down by the ensuing infection not so far-fetched when you consider the Komodo dragon the largest living lizard which uses just such a septic bite when hunting in 1907 Barnum brown found the third t-rex with 16 centimeter teeth and one-and-a-half meter long skull it was the most complete t-rex to date and would remain the largest found for the next 16 years even with the help of dynamite it took three summers to dig out today excavation is a much more painstaking and exact science although plaster jackets are still used to protect the fossils during transport the use of modern heavy equipment has greatly sped up excavation and transfer to the lab a big help when the block of stone containing a perfectly preserved hadrosaur tale can be 2 meters of solid rock ironically much of the heavy equipment we use today could be considered the descendants of the very first heavy equipment dinosaurs for many dinosaurs were massive powerful creatures the first bucket loaders were the theropods big meat-eating dinosaurs who use their short powerful neck and huge jaws to rip great chunks of meat off a kill our machinery even has claws to rip through the earth the first cranes were the sauropods big plant eating dinosaurs that used their long necks to go where no herbivore had ever gone to the tops of trees although stegasaurus which was the size of a bus was a gentle vegetarian few meat eaters would want to tangle with its spiked tail tails were used for much more than defense long necked dinosaurs were counterbalance like today's suspension bridges with long tails balancing their equally long necks the longest dinosaur neck found to date measures 11 meters even in two-legged dinosaurs the tail served as a balancing mechanism to counterweight various body bills and head designs from the smallest baby hadrosaur less than a meter in length to the 9 meter long meat-eating albertasaurus balance was crucial when several tons of dinosaur decided to run imagine a multi-ton ostrich and you begin to get an idea of how the swiftest of dinosaur predators might have moved but how fast were they from fossilized footprints called trace fossils paleontologists can calculate how fast dinosaurs moved the race to clock t-rex is top speed however remains the subject of great debate ranging from as slow as 15 miles per hour to as fast as 40 miles per hour it's certainly safe to say man would be lucky to reach the finishing line without being finished off fortunately for humans the only dinosaur bite will ever deal with is their dental overbite the largest on record belongs to t-rex number 4 found in 1966 a study of dentition or the shape size and wear of teeth tells us more about feeding habits than anything else and the dinosaurs have left us great dental records most plant eating or herbivorous dinosaurs such as this Triceratops had cheek teeth for breaking down coarse vegetation before it was swallowed the record for the most teeth belongs to Edmontosaurus also known as the tooth fairy's nightmare with over a thousand teeth which acted like self sharpening vegetable craters the largest herbivores such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus and peg shaped teeth much like a horse which they use like rakes to strip leaves and needles off trees many of them didn't chew their food they swallowed it whole and what about the meat eaters who fed on these herbivores from the albertasaurus to the crocodile like Baryonyx most meat eaters or carnivores had dagger-like teeth and many such as t-rex had teeth with serration add those on a steak knife to help rip meat off the bone but t-rex's bark might have been worse than his bite were the biggest carnivores to walk the earth killers or just scavengers the best evidence of them hunting down live prey is in fossilized footprints of one large theropod stalking a sauropod heard this kind of evidence also supports the theory that large herds of grazing dinosaurs were hunted by a smaller number of predators making the Mesozoic scene not unlike the African savanna of today with sickle like claws on its hind legs Deinonychus or terrible claw was the dinosaur equivalent of pack hunting wild dogs or wolves weighing about 70 kilos we know Deinonychus hunted down live prey from a find in Montana using hard evidence from the site the scene was reconstructed a Deinonychus Pack brought down a tenant to Soros but not without first paying a price before succumbing the tenant asuras killed four of its attackers similar finds have revealed pack hunting raptors at the site of other kills the carnivorous dinosaurs no longer hunt but are now hunted themselves by the human pack of fossil hounds in 1981 three Canadian high school students found the next major t-rex black beauty named after the color of its fossilized bone only after being cleaned in the lab did anyone realize how complete this one-and-a-half meter long skull was when a fossil is brought into the lab first the plastic casing is removed then it's often given an acid bath to remove the last of the stone covering the fossilized bone the process which could take months or even years not all dinosaurs were as big as t-rex many of them were in fact quite small a small as a bird and they came in all shapes and sizes with a heavyweight title going to Brachiosaurus tipping the scales at 77 tons that's heavier than two Boeing 737s although the largest dinosaurs have traditionally played the leading roles in popular entertainment it's the smaller dinosaurs that are starred in the debate over dinosaur descendants Compsognathus and Coelophysis were similar in skeleton to Archaeopteryx the first bird this missing link supports the theory that modern birds are the nearest living relatives of small mediating dinosaurs and the nearest relatives of large dinosaurs like Baryonyx attract lions the ninth t-rex was found in 1987 and provided the first known tip of tail all the bones of t-rex have now been found except for those of its mysteriously shriveled four limbs the same area North America that produced eight of the ten known T Rex's to date produced a fine that would radically change our view of dinosaur family life a massive bone bed was discovered spread over several kilometers and estimated to contain the remains of a dinosaur herd 10,000 strong dinosaur herds obviously once roamed the American West like the Buffalo of a more recent era the most significant find here were the nesting grounds much like present-day birds which nest in colonies these dinosaurs called Maiasaura also nested in groups the eggs were laid in circular nests two metres across containing 20 to 25 18 centimeter eggs belonging to several Maiasaura or good mother lizards who shared nesting feeding and babysitting duties once the young were hatched we know the hatchlings stayed in the nest and were fed by their parents because the nests were filled with trampled shells sometimes dinosaur eggs provided food for others Oviraptors literally egg these were bird like dinosaurs that like their eggs raw like many modern-day birds and reptiles hadrosaurs had to guard their nests against predators dinosaurs probably also shared another trait with today's birds and reptiles using sound to communicate with their young and some dinosaurs were louder than others Edmontosaurus had an inflatable nasal sound which amplified its core much like many animals living today dinosaur headgear was also used for a less harmonious activity head-butting was probably the most popular way of resolving differences over territory or potential mates this tradition is alive and well in many animals today in fact it's now believed the Triceratops with its three horns of massive frill saw more action going head-to-head with other Triceratops than it did in the popular notion of going one-on-one with the t-rex another long-held belief was shattered when the 10th t-rex was excavated by John Horner in 1990 his fossil 90% complete was the first to produce a complete forelimb the notion that t-rex had three fingers accepted since 1902 was false t-rex only had two but in the serious game of paleontology much larger mysteries still remain and opposing theories vie for the answers were dinosaurs cold-blooded like reptiles or warm-blooded like birds it's the kind of question paleontologists love to argue along into the night those who contend dinosaurs were warm-blooded pointer fossils found as far north as northern Canada and Antarctica they say dinosaurs must have been warm-blooded because cold-blooded animals at the mercy of external temperatures couldn't have lived in such cold you the warmblood see rest's also contend the dinosaurs must have had the four chambered double pump heart of today's mammals to supply them with enough blood pressure to pump blood up their long necks to their heads the heart of a cold-blooded animal couldn't have thought enough blood to their brains and they would have been constantly fainting but the strongest evidence for dinosaurs being warm-blooded is that their bones are honeycombed with holes proof of a network of blood vessels as complex if not more complex and living mammals those who maintain the dinosaurs were cold-blooded say all this evidence is full of holes they claim dinosaurs living in the cold north were mobile enough to head south for the winter and they gleefully point to the crocodile which has a four chambered heart yet is still cold-blooded they also suggest that a dinosaur's large size would have allowed it to store a great amount of heat warm-blooded cold-blooded given the lack of evidence the real answer may never come to light one thing paleontologists have few disagreements about is how dinosaur muscle lay on the bone they can read the bones by looking at the ridges or smooth patches and grooves and determine how muscle tendons nerves and blood vessels were arranged however laying skin over the muscle is more a matter of guesswork from fossilized skin impressions we know dinosaur skin was much like that of modern reptiles scaly tough and waterproof and probably came in the same variety of colors to break up the outline of the body some may have had stripes since blending in was important polka dots were unlikely but Armour was very popular the toughest armor belonged to the ankylosaurs and yet even armed couldn't protect the ankylosaurs or any of the dinosaurs from extinction the greatest mystery of the dinosaurs is the what done it of their extinction there are many theories one holds that a huge increase in ultraviolet rays gave dinosaurs cataracts and they stumbled blindly into extinction it was once believed they became so huge and lethargic they died of boredom one of the more widely held theory is supported by the fact that about the time the dinosaurs disappeared a meteor eight to 16 kilometres wide hit the earth throwing up a crater 150 kilometres wide and surrounding the earth in a huge cloud of dust and steam which blocked the Sun out for months possibly years the only problem with this theory is that fossil teeth have been found from dinosaurs that lived long after this cataclysmic event it's just such evidence that makes some scientists believe that the dinosaurs decline was more gradual and might have been because they couldn't keep their bodies cool during the increasingly hot summers falling sea levels possibly termed dinosaur habitats into deserts or the opposite might have been the case rising sea levels might have flooded the low-lying lands where most dinosaurs live of one thing we are certain after a hundred and sixty million years of dominating the earth the dinosaurs did die out but life on earth continued to evolve until humans came along to ponder the fossilized remains and indulge in their fantastic reality some would say all over the world dinosaurs have made quite a comeback there are more today than ever before although they're far from real perhaps they are the children born of our fertile imaginations and the hard evidence of dinosaurs mere shadows in the Stone certainly there are many more dinosaurs waiting to be discovered many new mysteries waiting to be pondered and if it's true that life imitates art maybe someday we'll even bring them back to life beneath the surface of the waters of the earth there is another world greater than our own and yet we hardly know it it's the world of the fish vast strange and spectacular with creatures more extraordinary and far more varied than any on land masters are 3/4 of the planet with more species than all birds reptiles amphibians and mammals added together unlike their star sign Pisces the symbol of rebirth and regeneration Pisces last sign in the zodiac a sign that brings the constellations full circle perhaps because of the life cycle of this fish the salmon the king of fish unmatched in agility and acuteness of senses in memories stamina and intelligence the salmon is the wonder of the deep for its life as an epic journey born high up in a shallow stream the salmon sees more of the world than many of us in its lifetime the salmon swims thousands of miles downstream to the river's mouth and into the wide ocean across many waters and habitats then finally to return to the very place of its birth and where the salmon goes man follows for over 8,000 years this fish provided the main source of food for up to 50,000 native tribes people living along the rivers of the northwest coast of America they built their lives around the salmon and its journey and their descendants still call themselves the salmon people 500 million years ago the earliest fishes had no jaws no fins no scales but they did possess one feature before all other animals are strong but flexible support running the length of the body the spine a feature so important that without it there would be no birds reptiles mammals humans and upon this spine evolution moved forward growing fins for steering then taking different paths in some fish developing a skeleton of soft cartilage to produce the shark and array while in the vast majority forming scales for protection a swim bladder for buoyancy and a skeleton of hard bone and for the last 100 million years this design has been the prototype of almost every fish including the most famous fish fossil of all the coelacanth the living fossil thought to have died out at least 80 million years ago but then in 1938 scientists were stunned to find the coelacanth was alive and well and living off the east coast of Africa the only people who weren't surprised were local fishermen who for years had used the course skin of the coelacanth to roughen up the inner tubes of their bicycles for its first few months the young-sam stays in the stream growing and gaining strength but then when it's still only four inches long and weighing just a few ounces comes the irresistible urge to find the sea the fish head downstream and Shoals traveling up to five miles a day the fish's body is perfect it's every part it's every sense geared to one aim survival and survive it has to the tune of nearly 30 thousand species many with vast egg-laying powers like the ocean sunfish which can lay 300 million eggs at a time and we acknowledge this abundance with encouraging words at times when love breaks down there's plenty more fish in the sea though some might not be the most desirable in South America that are 1,200 species of catfish alone some are 13 feet long weighing twice as much as the biggest land cat the Atlantic Ocean holds more than 1 million million herring 500 times all the human beings on the planet