Carly, hold up!
Hey, guys, glad you're here. We're heading somewhere amazing,
-and I think you're gonna love it. -CARLY: Charlie, come on!
Hey! Weird but true,
there was a dinosaur called an Argentinosaurus.
It was the size of three buses.
And another dinosaur, the Edmontosaurus, had more than a thousand teeth. Come on!
(GROANS) Just think, guys, that's a lot of potential dinosaur fossils.
-(EXHALES) Okay, Charlie, this way. -All right.
And that's exactly what we're looking for today.
-It's time for Weird But True! -CARLY: It's time for Weird But True!
CHARLIE: Did you know there are more stars in the sky
than grains of sand on the whole planet?
-Whoa! -This is incredible.
-I know, right? -Charlie here.
-Yeah! -Carly here.
-Yes! -CHARLIE: We're best friends.
-Oh, let's go! -Oh, let's go!
-CARLY: Here in Chicago, on our new home. -CHARLIE: With a little imagination...
For the rest of time.
CARLY: And a whole lot of exploring.
(MUFFLED) Hello. This is so epic!
CHARLIE: We're discovering just how weird the world can be.
-Hey! -We made it!
CARLY: This is unreal.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
-CARLY: Dinosaurs. -CHARLIE: Dinosaurs.
-Hey, guys, Charlie here. -Carly here.
You know our friends, Patrick and Casey.
The new Alabama Cones movie is coming out.
-As you can see, we're her biggest fans. -Yeah, we got our cool hats.
And our own homemade relic necklaces we made out of these weird stone beads
from the beach. Check out the new movie trailer.
(CLICKS)
NARRATOR: In a world...
overrun by robot dinosaurs...
-FEMALE VOICE: Mr. President. -Yes?
FEMALE VOICE: The Robo-dinos, they're back!
-Back? -(GROWLING)
NARRATOR: A hero will rise.
All right, Bama, time to bring home the bacon.
NARRATOR: Alabama Cones returns in...
(SCREAMS)
NARRATOR: Alabama Cones and the Dino Dragoon.
In theaters everywhere this weekend.
-Whoa! -Oh, my gosh!
-This is gonna be the greatest movie ever!
-I am so pumped about this movie! -CHARLIE: Mm.
Guess who gets to go to the Chicago premiere?
Who?
-Boom! -(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)
These guys!
-How? -What?
Tickets are, like, a bajillion dollars!
It pays to be an amazing chef, Charles.
I got asked to cater the premiere, and Patrick is gonna be my sous-chef.
Because I don't mind taking out the compost.
-Ta-ta, you two. -CASEY: Toodles.
What?
We gotta figure out how to get to that premiere.
-But, how? -(SHARPLY INHALES)
(SCREAMS)
(HOOTS, SCREAMS)
-(GASPS) Carly! -What?
Think. How does Alabama Cones make all of her money?
She rips dinosaur bones out of the earth,
and then sells them for boat-loads of cash.
Exactly. See, maybe, we could do the same thing.
If we could find some dinosaur bones of our own.
-Maybe we can make enough money... -To get tickets to go to the premiere!
Yes! But I don't know anything about that stuff.
Neither do I. Well, I guess that means today,
we're unraveling the world of...
-Dinosaurs. -CARLY: Dinosaurs.
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -CHARLIE: All right, guys.
First things first. Dinosaurs.
They were giant reptiles that roamed the earth
over 200 million years ago.
There were big ones like this guy, Patagotitan mayorum...
who weighed as much as twelve elephants.
And smaller ones, like the Parvicursor...
which was about the size of a pigeon.
Get this. Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent.
People are finding incredible specimens all the time.
(DINOSAUR ROARS)
CHARLIE: One day, while looking through a pile of rocks near his home in Chile,
seven-year-old Diego Suarez stumbled upon something amazing.
He found a bunch of fossils
from an entirely unknown species of dinosaur.
Diego became the youngest person ever to discover a new dinosaur species,
and scientists named it Chilesaurus diegosuarezi in his honor.
DIEGO: Yay!
-Carly, this is incredible! -I know, right?
Yeah. It's like you don't have to be a super smart scientist
to find one of these things.
-You can be... -A kid playing outside.
Or two people who are trying to get a bunch of cash to buy some tickets
to meet their favorite movie star paleontologist!
-That's us! -Now let's go find one!
All right, we'll meet you in the backyard for some digging. See you there.
-Charles. -Carls.
Let's get digging.
-(CHARLIE GRUNTING) -(CARLY GRUNTING)
(CHARLIE GRUNTING)
Carly! Nothing's working!
-CARLY: I think we need help. -CHARLIE: Yeah. We need like, Bama.
(SIGHS) He's right.
All right, Carly.
(INHALES DEEPLY) Time to bring home the bacon.
(GRUNTS, EXHALES)
Carly!
-CARLY: What? -I found something!
I'm coming.
-Check it out, look what we found. -CHARLIE: It's so cool!
Okay, I'm gonna put it up for sale on Craftbook.
Charlie, what do you think? Like, ten, 15,000 dollars?
Oh, I'd say like, 20, right? You know, gives us room to negotiate.
Yes. Okay. "For sale.
"New discovery.
"Amazing..."
-Rare, super rare. -I don't even... ...Oh, "rare..."
-Yeah. -"...pre-historic dinosaur bone."
Ooh! It's a dinosaur fossil.
Uh. "Dinosaur fossil." Wait, what's the difference?
It's kinda tricky. But it's like, over time,
dinosaur bones turn into dinosaur fossils.
Cool, right? Here's what I'm talking about.
After a long time of stomping around doing dino stuff,
every dinosaur eventually passes away.
Sometimes, its body becomes buried under layers of dirt and debris.
Over time, the soft parts of its body, like the skin and the muscles, decompose,
and the hard bones are left behind. Then, if we take a closer look,
over millions and millions of years, water creeps into these bones.
Very slowly, minerals in the water replace the materials in the bones.
Piece by piece, bit by bit,
until the bone is entirely replaced by a solid rock.
Boom. Now it's turned from a bone into a fossil.
-Okay, so fossils are not dinosaur bones? -Correct.
They're like exact copies of dinosaur bones,
made out of rock, that take millions of years to form.
Hmm. Okay. "Super old, dinosaur fossil from..."
-What kind of dinosaur is this from? -Ooh, what if it's, like, a Brontosaurus?
-Ooh, or a Psittacosaurus. -Huh, a Psittaco-- What?
Psittacosaurus, do you know about those?
-No. -Oh, you are gonna love this!
CHARLIE: Gather, everybody. Gather this direction.
All right, move forward. Oh, that's good. (CHUCKLES)
The dinosaurs are extinct, though, you're okay, right there.
So, we've arrived at our first stop of the dinosaur walk of fame.
Opened 250 million years ago, the Dinowood Theater
features some of the most famous dinosaur celebrities
-ever to walk the earth. -CARLY: Mm.
Follow me over in this direction, yellow hat, everybody,
where we'll find a wonderful pair of prints
-by Linhenykus and Therizinosaurus. -So big and so small.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)
CHARLIE: Linhenykus was a funny lookin' fella.
Weird but true, instead of an arm on each side of its body,
it had one single finger.
On the other side of the spectrum, is the Therizinosaurus.
It had two arms, each with three fingers and giant three-foot long claws.
Definitely a sight to behold.
But our favorite, right over here, is the Psittacosaurus.
Weird but true, Psittacosaurus had an enormous beak, like a big parrot.
To top it off, it had a big bundle of bristles on its tail.
It was basically an enormous parrot, porcupine, and a dinosaur,
all jumbled into one animal.
-There's so many cool dinosaurs! -I know. But what cool dinosaur
-did this come from? -Hmm. (INHALES SHARPLY)
-I don't know. -I think we need help.
And I know just the person. ReBecca Hunt-Foster.
She's a paleontologist in Utah who studies dinosaur fossils.
Perfect! All right, guys, looks like it's time to head out.
We'll leave this here for safekeeping, and gear up to go.
Sounds good? All right, guys, we'll see you in Utah.
We're off to Dinosaur National Monument in Jensen, Utah.
Utah isn't just home to tons of dinosaur fossils,
the Great Salt Lake is here, too.
And, weird but true, it's three times saltier than the ocean.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(GASPS) Guys, you made it! We're here in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.
-This place is unreal. -There's so much to see.
Let's check it out.
Look at this big guy. This is an Allosaurus.
Weird but true, most states have their very own state fossil,
and the Allosaurus is the state fossil of Utah.
Charlie, come here.
Did you know you can touch the bones here?
-That's crazy. -CARLY: My hand is on a fossil
-that is 149 million years old. -CHARLIE: Whoa!
Carly, is that Alabama Cones?
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
Hey, Charlie. Hey, Carly.
-Oh, hey, ReBecca! -Hey!
CHARLIE: ReBecca Hunt-Foster became interested
in paleontology, the study of fossils, when she was only 13.
And now, she's a paleontologist here at Dinosaur National Monument.
Her favorite weird but true fact is that a close living relative
-of T-Rex is... a chicken! -(CHICKEN CLUCKS)
This is incredible. Can you tell us what's going on with this wall?
REBECCA: This is a 149-million-year-old deposit of dinosaur bones.
These were all deposited during a storm event,
where all these bodies were washed into a river channel.
Wow! Which kinds of dinosaurs are we seeing here?
A lot of the dinosaurs that you'll see here
are things like Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and even Stegosaurus.
Right behind you, you can actually see an Allosaurus tooth.
-(GASPS) What? -CHARLIE: It's right here? Whoa.
REBECCA: And then right over there, you can see a femur
that's been chewed on by an Allosaurus.
And you can see some gnaw marks where it was chewed on.
And this is, like, a T-Rex size dinosaur, right?
Well, the Allosaurus is a little smaller than T-Rex.
These animals were already fossils
-by the time T-Rex lived here. -CHARLIE: Wow.
-Cool. -That's a weird, but true fact for ya.
It's hard to kinda put this into perspective,
'cause it's like, two stories tall.
How many fossils do you think are on this wall right here?
There's hundreds of fossils in this wall.
-CARLY: Wow. -Have you dug up anything here?
REBECCA: Not inside the building, but we're digging some stuff up outside.
-Do you wanna go see it? -CHARLIE: Yes.
-CARLY: Yes. -REBECCA: All right, let's go.
This is a great place to find fossils.
If you're a paleontologist, you know you wanna be here.
When I look over there, I know that those grey rocks are marine rocks,
and I'll find animals in there, like fish.
The hard sandstone behind it represents an ancient shoreline,
and I might find dinosaur tracks up there. Behind that, we find an ancient river,
and that's where the dinosaurs are preserved.
Is it kinda safe to say a great place to find fossils
is a place where water used to be a long time ago?
That's right. You need water to be able to preserve fossils.
-That's where we're gonna find bones? -REBECCA: That's where the bone bed is.
Cool science word, "Bone bed." It's a giant accumulation of fossils.
So a place where you can find tons of fossils.
Let's go see 'em.
CARLY: Yes! Bones, bones, bones.
REBECCA: So in this ancient river channel,
we actually have a lot of dinosaur bones exposed and preserved.
Here we see a very large sauropod femur, that's your upper leg bone.
Here's another dinosaur bone.
There's a set of vertebra over there, and even a rib.
So this whole outcrop is full of dinosaur bones.
All right, let's get it out of here, it is time to bring home the bacon!
-Yeah. -Bacon?
-Like, in the Alabama Cones movies. -Yeah.
She's like, "All right, Bama, time to bring home the bacon."
Then she reaches down, and then rips it out of ground.
-Giant fossil, hooray! Right? Yeah. -Money.
Real paleontologists don't do that.
We like to be very careful with the fossils,
and excavate them very thoughtfully and very slowly, because these are unique.
Wait, they made like, five movies.
-about the stuff she does. Yeah. -Yeah, there's gonna be a sixth, too.
Alabama Cones is just a character. She's not real.
A lot of times, they just make that stuff up.
Babylon's in the Patrivia job
-for three million. -(KNOCKING)
-I love this guy. -CHARLIE: Best in the biz, baby, yeah!
-Oh, who are these guys, huh? -Making movies.
We're the paleontologists.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
To advise you on the script.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
Oh! The dino guys!
-Oh! The dino movie, yeah! -All right, check this out.
We open on our movie star, Ricky Babylon, running from a T-Rex.
It catches him... chomps him down.
(RICKY GROANS)
CHARLIE: Ricky grows scales, turns into a Velociraptor,
and saves the world.
What do you think, huh?
Let's, uh-- Let's start with the speed of the T-Rex.
The research suggests that with a top speed
-of around ten miles per hour... -RICKY: Later 'gator!
...you could easily outrun a T-Rex.
CARLY: Then there's the roaring. Dinosaurs didn't actually roar.
They more likely grunted, like crocodiles. Or cooed like pigeons.
CHARLIE: Then the scales. Turns out, most dinosaurs had feathers.
-(TURKEY GOBBLES) -CARLY: And the truth is,
Velociraptors were more like the size of a turkey.
-Wait, wait, wait. -Wait... wait, you're tellin' me,
you're telling us that T-Rexes were slow?
-Dinos didn't roar? -Nearly all of them had feathers?
And a Velociraptor was the size of a turkey?
-Yes. -That is correct.
(SIGHS)
-Listen, baby. -Baby, come on.
They need the roar.
Yeah, they wanna see a man get chomped by a dino,
and turn into a giant Velociraptor.
But, uh, I mean, none of that is correct, according to the science.
This ain't science class. It's showbiz.
-Velociraptors were the size of turkeys? -Yup.
And, you don't just reach over and pull them out of the rocks?
-No. -Well, what do you do?
(CHUCKLING) Come on, I'll show you.
-Hey, guys. -Oh, hey.
So, this is Julia, Kellyn, and Thuat, my interns,
and they're here digging up a bone today.
We're starting by uncovering the sediment. And then, we're going to pull it out.
We're the first people to see this bone for 149 million years.
(BOTH GASP)
This must take, like, a super long time, right?
This is in what we call a mudstone.
And this stuff, as you can see, it crumbles really easily.
-Super crumbly. Yeah. -What?
But for something that's in a really hard sandstone,
it might take even a month
-if it's a really big project. -Whoa!
What?
THUAT: For larger things, we have these rock hammers
for splitting and prying rocks apart.
-So you start with the hammer... -THUAT: Hmm.
...get away the big stuff, and then you kinda work your way down
to the more tinier things, then end with the brush to dust it off.
-JULIA: Yeah! -All right, tell us what to do.
Okay, so, I would take a tool like an awl.
-Yeah. -And you're gonna gently go around
the bone to get the sediment away from it.
-Be gentle. -Yeah. (CHUCKLES)
And then, what you can do is
-take a brush.... -Uh-huh.
...and just kinda brush the sediment away from there...
-CARLY: Okay. -...and keep the bone clean.
CARLY: I'm behind you with the brush.
This dirt is super brittle, you guys aren't lying.
JULIA: Exactly. So this type of thing won't take very long.
Guys, just think about what's happening here.
Carly and I are using actual paleontologist tools
to excavate a dinosaur fossil.
We're the first humans in the history of mankind
-to see this with our own eyes. -Let me get in there!
CARLY: Once the fossil is free and clear,
it's time to put on a protective cover around it called "The jacket",
which involves toilet paper covered with burlap and plaster.
I have never wrapped a dinosaur bone in toilet paper before.
I have wrapped myself in toilet paper before for a mummy costume.
(REBECCA LAUGHING)
So we're TP-ing the bone. And then, what's next?
We're gonna take the burlap that's been dipped in plaster,
and we're gonna spread that over the bone, making a nice hard field jacket for it.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
CARLY: So, just... we can keep making
-layers on top? -REBECCA: Yup!
It's really like, ooey-gooey, kind of, a little bit thinner than slime.
-Charlie, high five. -CHARLIE: No.
-Okay. (LAUGHS) -(LAUGHING)
So next, this will dry, and then you'll transport it to the lab?
Exactly.
Guys, this is so crazy, right?
I mean, you can tell it takes so much time to take these fossils out of the ground.
That's totally different than what we thought it was before.
Gotta be careful to preserve these fossils,
make sure they don't fall apart.
Pretty excited to talk to ReBecca about this a bit more.
REBECCA: Great job, guys.
When it dries, go ahead and bring it down to the museum collections.
-JULIA: Bye. -REBECCA: Thanks, guys.
-CHARLIE: See you guys. -CARLY: Thank you.
Okay. Gonna wash my hands.
The fossils in all these rocks must be worth so much money.
-Do you sell these fossils? -REBECCA: No, we don't sell them.
They're more valuable to science.
And so, we collect them and study them, and we learn a lot about the past,
but that also tells us a lot about our future.
CARLY: Before we head out,
ReBecca explains that fossils are unique time capsules
that record the history of our whole planet.
It makes you wonder what secrets our fossil back in HQ might hold.
CHARLIE: And I'm starting to wonder if selling our fossil to raise money
for the movie premiere is a good idea.
ReBecca, this day has been incredible. You and your interns are amazing.
We learned about dinosaurs, paleontology, the truth about Alabama Cones,
I mean, it's totally different now that we met you. Thank you so much.
Thank you guys so much for coming. I hope you'll come back again
-some time soon. -Definitely.
-(CELL PHONE VIBRATING, RINGING) -Ooh. Excuse me.
-Hello? -Hello, yes, this is the bajillionaire.
I collect super fancy, old things.
I saw your ad on the Craftbook, and I'd like to buy your fossil.
I'll be in town in about...
an hour. I'll see you there.
-It's a buyer for the fossil. -All right, guys, we gotta go back to HQ.
But we'll see you soon? Great. See you soon.
Okay. He will be here in a minute.
I can't believe you found a buyer already.
But don't you wonder where it came from?
-Yeah. -I wish we had more time to study it.
It's like what ReBecca said. Fossils, they're clues to the past.
This could probably tell us
what our backyard was like hundreds of millions of years ago.
Like, maybe, at one point, our backyard was under an ocean.
And this fossil is from a giant Plesiosaur!
(PLESIOSAUR ROARS)
Or it was covered in thick sheets of ice and snow
and it's from a prehistoric saber tooth cat.
(SABER TOOTH CAT ROARS)
This is crazy, Carly.
It goes back to a time before humans even existed on this planet.
-(GASPS) -Whoa.
We should keep it.
-What are you talking about? -We should keep it.
-No, no, but the premiere... -Charlie, forget about the premiere.
Alabama Cones isn't even a real paleontologist.
-(KNOCKING) -CASEY: Hello?
-Hi. -Hi. I'm a bajillionaire.
-All right. -I came all this way.
Let's see that there fossil.
-Oh, it's right here. -Charlie, we should keep it.
Think about ReBecca.
Alabama Cones is just a character.
A bajillion dollars.
REBECCA: They're more valuable to science.
CARLY: She'd want us to keep this fossil.
Sir, I'm sorry you came all this way.
Because our fossil is not for sale.
-Yes! -CASEY: Wait a minute.
That there is the fossil?
-Yeah. -CARLY: Mm-hmm.
I don't want it anyway. It's not a fossil, it's a chicken bone.
-A chicken bone? -How?
Patrick is gonna be my sous-chef.
Because I don't mind taking out the compost.
(BEATBOXING)
(SIGHS) Patrick!
You two buckaroos have wasted plenty of my time.
(CHARLIE SIGHS)
I'm a bajillionaire.
This stinks. I wanted this to be a fossil so bad!
Me, too. But it's just a chicken bone from the compost in the backyard.
I mean, it kinda makes sense, though, right?
I mean, think of where we found all those fossils with ReBecca.
Yeah, places that were under water a long time ago.
I don't know if our backyard was one of those.
-Wait a sec. -What?
-CARLY: We have something already. -We have?
Yeah! And, they're fossils.
-What? -Charlie, the beads.
Wait, our homemade relic necklaces?
Those weird stone beads we found on the beach
are fossils of ancient, pre-historic animals called crinoids.
-What? -Check it out.
Four-hundred million years ago, Illinois was entirely under water,
and the ocean floor was covered in crinoids,
ancient relatives of starfish.
Eventually, they turned into fossils,
and washed up on the shores of Lake Michigan.
So, these are fossils.
-Of ancient starfish. -CHARLIE: That's incredible!
We learned way more by researching the truth about paleontology
than we would have by going to that Alabama Cones premiere.
You know, I wonder what it'd be like if they made a movie
about actual paleontologists. You know, with like, cooing dinosaurs.
-And tiny Velociraptors. -And crinoids like these. (GASPS)
-You thinking what I'm thinking? -I'll grab the camera.
All right, guys, it looks like we got a new project on our hands.
But thanks so much for stopping by.
Come by again when we discover more things that are weird...
-But true. -We'll see you guys later. All right.
Okay, I'm thinking, I'm gonna be the Velociraptor.
-Yes. -You'll be the paleontologist.
-Yes. -CARLY: So, what do you think
-you should wear? -CHARLIE: Oh, I don't know.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
All right, all right, we got a big star, Bama Cones, right here!
-One question at a time! -MALE VOICE: Alabama, right here!
FEMALE VOICE: What's your favorite dinosaur?
-Uh, look, I don't know. The big one. -Beautiful. Beautiful, yeah.
Do you have a favorite fossil?
-No. -All right, no more questions.
Where's the chicken a la Fronto?
-We need a chicken a la Fronto! -Favorite fossil, what is that?
-Let's go. We'll get your chicken. -CARLY: I'm starving.
-I haven't eaten in like, two hours. -CHARLIE: Don't worry about it.