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{\an8}Dinosaurs ruled the planet
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{\an8}for over 150 million years.
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They occupied almost every corner
of the globe
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and came in almost
every shape and size imaginable.
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Some were truly extraordinary.
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We now know that T. rex was
a powerful swimmer.
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Velociraptors were cunning,
feathered hunters,
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and that some dinosaurs had
the most bizarre behavior.
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But new discoveries
are being made almost every day
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that tell us more about life
on this planet 66 million years ago.
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This time on Prehistoric Planet,
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we reveal new animals
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and new insight
into their quest to find a partner,
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the challenges faced by raising a family
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and their titanic battles.
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Journey to a time
when nature put on its greatest show.
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This is Prehistoric Planet 2.
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The mouth of a river in southern Europe
66 million years ago.
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In the aftermath of a tropical storm,
debris is drifting downstream.
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And amongst the wreckage,
rafts of vegetation ripped from the land.
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For a weary pterosaur, this one may be
a welcome place to rest...
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but it's far from safe.
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A huge mosasaur,
a deadly underwater hunter,
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is looking for an easy meal.
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Such as this little dinosaur, Zalmoxes.
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Staying here is too risky.
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He needs a larger raft, and quickly.
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There's little choice but to swim for it.
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He is not the first here.
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Another castaway.
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A female.
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Their raft is drifting out to sea.
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Sometimes, castaways on rafts like these
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are washed up on the shores
of the distant islands.
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If they're very lucky,
this pair could become pioneers.
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And may establish a new population,
which eventually becomes a new species...
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unlike anything seen before.
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The longer an island has been isolated,
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the more different its animal inhabitants
may become.
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These small islands in southern Europe
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are home to a strange,
rather shy hadrosaur.
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Feeding amongst these pine saplings, Tethyshadros.
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Just a quarter of the size
of its giant cousins on the mainland,
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it stands no taller than a human being.
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With its unique serrated bill,
it can forage among the tough vegetation.
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Hunters like T. rex have never reached
this little island,
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so it should be a safe place
for a mother to raise her brood.
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But not necessarily.
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Hatzegopteryx.
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Giant predatory pterosaurs.
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The best chance of escape
is beneath the canopy of the taller trees.
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These small calves have been left behind
among the saplings.
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Mother and young are separated.
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Hatzegopteryx
are very intelligent pterosaurs.
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Now that the element of surprise has gone,
they change tactics.
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Spreading out across the clearing,
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they try to flush out any prey
that might still be there.
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The youngsters' best hope
is to stay completely still...
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and not to run.
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These two are lucky
to be back with their mother.
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The island-hopping pterosaurs move on
to try their luck elsewhere.
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The hadrosaurs can return to feeding.
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The island of Madagascar
has been separated
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from the African mainland
for 80 million years.
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So long that most of its animals
are now very different
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from any to be found elsewhere.
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This is Simosuchus.
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It's not a dinosaur
but a miniature relative of crocodiles.
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One that lives almost entirely on land
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and is strictly vegetarian.
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Simosuchus have tough, armored bodies
which protect them from attack
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by the island's predators.
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So they can risk dropping their guard...
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sometimes.
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Majungasaurus, Madagascar's top hunter.
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This particular female
is blind in one eye,
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so she finds it hard to make a kill,
and she's now very hungry.
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The Simosuchus have a network
of escape routes
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that lead them
to their underground burrows.
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Once inside, they block the entrance
with their heavily armored backs.
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This little male is unlucky.
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But he's not helpless.
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Reverse charges,
tail swipes and aggressive kicks.
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The hunter's snout is too broad
to reach very far inside.
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But just to be on the safe side,
the Simosuchus digs even deeper.
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For the Majungasaurus,
yet another hunt has ended in failure.
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Simosuchus is not the only evolutionary
oddity to thrive on Madagascar.
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The island is also home to another group
of very unusual animals.
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Mammals.
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This is a female Adalatherium.
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She's less than two feet long.
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But even so, she's still one of
the largest mammals to have yet evolved.
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She spends most of her waking hours
searching for food.
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At the end of this tunnel, there are eggs...
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potentially a rich source of protein.
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But she doesn't eat
this particular clutch.
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These are her own eggs.
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And this is her burrow.
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The eggs are starting to hatch.
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The hatchlings' eyes have not yet opened,
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but instinctively, they head
towards their mother to feed on milk.
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She produces it
from modified sweat glands on her belly,
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and for now, it's all the food they need.
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Two months later, and the cubs
have more than quadrupled in size.
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To produce enough milk for them,
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their mother must herself
eat a great deal.
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So every night, she has to leave
the safety of the den in order to feed.
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Her eyesight,
like that of many burrowing animals,
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is not very sensitive.
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She relies instead on her acute hearing.
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And if she hears something
that might be dangerous,
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she stays perfectly still.
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Trouble avoided.
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She returns to searching
in the earth for roots and seeds.
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The cubs are growing fast
and so are their appetites.
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The female is now having to search
almost nonstop for food.
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So her cubs are left unguarded
for hours at a time.
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Masiakasaurus.
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A hunter.
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And one particularly well-adapted
for catching burrowing prey.
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With its long neck and narrow head,
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it can investigate any hole
that might contain a meal.
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But hunters may themselves
become the hunted.
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Madtsoia, a snake nearly 25 feet long,
squeezes its prey to death.
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This neighborhood
has now become rather dangerous.
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As night falls, the mother leads her young
out of the burrow for the very first time.
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For now, at least,
they must stay close together.
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In the far south of the planet,
on the islands of the Antarctic Peninsula,
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winter brings
months of freezing temperatures.
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Here, too,
being part of a family brings benefits.
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A thermal camera
reveals a huddle of glowing bodies.
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Imperobator.
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Hunters.
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Like most dinosaurs,
they are warm-blooded.
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But to stay warm, they need a lot of food.
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So they must make a kill
every few days if they can.
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Fresh snow muffles
the sound of their footsteps,
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enabling them to move undetected
through the forest in search of prey.
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A Morrosaurus.
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A plant eater for whom winter
is inevitably a very hard time.
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Imperobators specialize
in hunting such prey.
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The Morrosaurus
is faster than its pursuers.
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But it's outnumbered by the pack.
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The Imperobators' long-feathered tails
give them remarkable maneuverability.
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The chase has reached
the very edge of the forest.
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Beyond lies a frozen lake,
half a mile wide.
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The clear, open space could give
the faster Morrosaurus an advantage.
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But the frozen surface is treacherous.
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With the Imperobator closing in,
it isn't much of a choice.
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A misplaced step.
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A chance for the Morrosaurus
to sprint beyond the predators' reach.
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But this is an island,
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so hunters and hunted
will almost certainly meet again.
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Some islands are so small
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that they have
no large land-living residents.
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But they may, nonetheless, get visitors.
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Hatzegopteryx.
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This male has arrived
carrying a 40-pound Tethyshadros carcass.
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A prize from a recent hunt.
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He is 15 feet tall,
with a wingspan of over 30 feet.
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Hatzegopteryx are Europe's top predators.
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But this male has come here to reveal
another side to his character.
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He has constructed a display to make it
clear to any females passing overhead
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that he is looking for a mate.
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But he might have a very long wait
before he gets a response.
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At last. A female.
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She seems interested,
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but a little more persuasion
might be necessary.
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And he needs to be careful.
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One well-aimed peck from her beak
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could quickly bring
his whole mating season to an end.
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His display must demonstrate
that he has the good genes
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that her young would do well to inherit.
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The dead dinosaur suggests
that he's a good hunter
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and carrying it here
has proved that he's a strong flyer.
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But if she is impressed,
she isn't showing it yet.
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Time to produce
some new evidence of his eligibility.
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Head lifts invite her to come closer.
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Now, she gives him a little encouragement.
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A synchronized dance
creates trust between them.
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Another male.
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He's much younger,
but he could still be a rival.
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That's him dealt with.
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Disaster. The female has left.
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He may have lost his chance.
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She's back.
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Seeing off a potential rival
might even be another point in his favor.
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He continues from where he left off.
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One last reminder of his strength.
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And this is his only contribution
to fatherhood.
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It's all over in just a few seconds.
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But it's the start of the next generation
of these giant flying hunters.
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Islands like this may only be small,
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but like countless others
around the world,
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they bear witness to crucial moments
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in the lives of some
of the most unusual creatures
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on the Prehistoric Planet.
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During the time of the dinosaurs,
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the skies were dominated
by flying reptiles called pterosaurs.
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There were over 250 species...
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and some of them were enormous.
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One of the most interesting,
because they're the most bizarre,
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{\an8}are the azhdarchid pterosaurs.
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{\an8}And to try and describe
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{\an8}what an azhdarchid pterosaur is like
is very difficult.
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They stand as tall as giraffes.
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They've got heads
that may have been two meters long,
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wingspans of ten meters.
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They're some of the most bizarre things
who've ever evolved on Earth.
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Despite their size,
these giants were well-adapted for flight.
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So why do we think
they hunted on the ground?
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{\an8}The azhdarchid's wing is a skin membrane
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{\an8}supported entirely
by a superenlarged fourth finger.
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{\an8}This skin membrane extended
from the tip of that giant fourth finger
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{\an8}all the way to the top of the hind leg.
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Azhdarchids were supremely adapted
for covering great distance,
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but they weren't the kind of animals
that were twisting and turning
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and making agile movements
actually in flight.
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This would've made it hard for azhdarchids
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to catch other flying animals.
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They must have
had a different way to hunt.
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One of the most prevalent ideas about how
azhdarchid pterosaurs may have fed
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is by using this bizarre mechanism
of foraging known as skim feeding.
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Today, birds
like black skimmers feed in this way.
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It's the most ridiculous way
of getting your food you can imagine.
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It's literally pushing your lower jaw
through the water
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and crashing into your food.
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A skimmer's neck
is built to absorb sudden impacts.
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But fossils reveal azhdarchids
had none of these adaptations.
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In fact, they would almost certainly
break their necks from just the strain
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of trying to push their lower jaws
through the water.
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An azhdarchid had no option.
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It must have landed to find food.
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But could it really walk
fast enough to hunt?
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Scientists needed evidence
to persuade them
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that they could do anything more
than just waddle.
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That evidence comes
from 66-million-year-old footprints.
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The biggest pterosaur track
in the world was made
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by a walking giant azhdarchid.
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That's not only a cool thing to have,
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it tells us an awful lot
about how efficient they were at walking.
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These tracks show
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they held their limbs
directly under their body,
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00:37:24,536 --> 00:37:26,747
giving them an upright stance.
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00:37:28,749 --> 00:37:30,250
Their feet were padded.
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00:37:32,252 --> 00:37:34,671
And unlike the small pterosaurs,
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their long legs
gave them an enormous stride.
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Although azhdarchids
are peculiar-looking animals,
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they're moving very efficiently.
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00:37:49,102 --> 00:37:53,315
Azhdarchids combined
this competent terrestrial walking ability
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00:37:53,315 --> 00:37:55,526
with this massive long stork-like face.
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00:37:56,693 --> 00:37:59,071
They almost certainly were predators
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that walked around reaching down
to grab animals.
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00:38:07,412 --> 00:38:08,830
We have to remember, though,
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the throat size of this thing
is half a meter wide.
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That's about the width of my shoulders.
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We would be on the menu for these things
if they were alive today.
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00:38:22,553 --> 00:38:27,057
Pterosaurs would have been
an awe-inspiring sight in the sky.
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00:38:31,228 --> 00:38:36,275
But these giants were even more impressive
and terrifying on the ground.