The Last Day of the Dinosaurs | FD Ancient History

our world was once dominated by dinosaurs they walked where we walk they drank the same water breathe the same [Music] air and fought on the same battlefields but then they faced a day that none of us can [Music] imagine some of the most critical hours in the history of life on Earth this is the story of the day their world ended the last day of the [Music] dinosaurs Earth 65 million years ago a warmer place than it is today along the west coast of what's now British Columbia mountains Tower over a lush forested Valley it's

the domain of the ultimate forms of prehistoric Evolution dinosaurs at more than 160 kg with a wingspan of 12 m ketak katalis is the largest flying creature of all time a kilometer down a breakfast no carnivore can [Music] resist it will take this tiny hatchling 18 years to become the ages most fearsome Predator but for now Tyrannosaurus Rex is just a few centimet tall not very scary and completely exposed but not completely unprotected the father a fully grown T-Rex is on the hunt his acute sense of smell helps him sniff out prey from great distances

and it also serves him well as a [Music] parent he knows when something is wrong [Applause] [Music] KET ais's metabolism demands that it eat [Music] regularly empowering this streamline body means finding Rich sources of protein like a 1 and 1/2 kg baby T-Rex [Music] kat' huge wings are perfectly adapted for longdistance gliding but its sheer size makes it hard to lift off when it's backed into a corner [Music] it's lucky this time of the entire clutch of T-Rex Eggs only one chick survives and if it grows up it will grow to be 5 m tall

and weigh more than 7 tons but surviving to adulthood even for Tyrannosaurus Rex isn't written in stone because a Storm is Coming born of events that took place long before this is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter 320 million km away billions of rocks all hurtling through space in the same direction like traffic on a [Music] freeway all except this one which is moving diagonally on a completely different course it's like a 65 km wide semi suddenly slicing across the highway but this truck is going 35,000 km an [Music] hour the two asteroids shatter

into millions of fr fragments but this fragment over 10 km across has a special Destiny it's a rock poised to change history because it's heading for the fifth largest planet in the solar system the only planet known to Harbor life planet Earth meanwhile while the planet's reptilian Lords live completely unaware of what's heading their way Triceratops are among the most widespread dinosaurs in what's now Canada they're herbivores but that doesn't mean they're wall flowers male Triceratops take their mating rights very seriously and up to 6 tons each a Faceoff can be fatal this time intimidation

does the trick but there's another enemy waiting in the wings he's not after mating rights the Triceratops is fast and well armored enough to stand a chance against T-Rex but not against two of them hunting as a pair one T-Rex could get behind the deadly horns and armored [Music] collar there's enough meat here to feed them both for weeks but they may not have the time to enjoy it 400,000 km up is the Earth's Last Hope of Defense the moon has saved the planet before its pockmarked surface Bears the scars of countless collisions this crater

known as Tao is more than 80 kilm [Music] wide created by a rock only half the size of the one that's on its way but the Moon is rarely in the right place at the right time nothing can stop the asteroid now this Cosmic missile isn't as alien as it seems like the Earth itself it's made up largely of rock and water in the cold vacuum of space the water freezes into a hard [Music] permafrost but on the inside there's a chemical cocktail composed of carbon hydrogen and oxygen key ingredients for [Music] Life asteroid fragments

like this one may have provided the building blocks for life on Earth life that evolved into dinosaurs but what gives life can also take it away most dinosaurs in the Valley Hunt and forage during the day and sleep at night this giant herbivore an Ankylosaurus keeps one eye open for Predators under the cover of Darkness very different creatures emerge from their hiding places like madma a primitive mammal about the size of a possum like most other mammals mad's life is all about being where the Dinosaurs Aren't it only comes out at night to forage for

tasty roots and insects while the Giants sleep it's the meek that witness a cosmic event a meteor shower each streak of light is a tiny fragment of the a asteroid Collision burning up as it enters the atmosphere but these are mainly out Riders of the much larger missile hurling through space an asteroid locked into a head-on collision the Day of Reckoning is here after a journey lasting a 100 million years an enormous chunk of cosmic rock is approaching the end of the line and the end of the line is Earth in what is today Central

Mexico a herd of Alamosaurus is wandering the plains in search of food there are recent species to evolve and even by dinosaur standards they're huge they're the last of the s aods the biggest animals ever to walk the earth 20 M long and a staggering 12 M tall Alamosaurus weigh up to 30 tons to maintain that bulk they need to eat up to a ton of leaves every day a vast herd like this one strips the landscape of vegetation in in just a few hours because she's a nomad on a constant search for food when

it's time for this female to lay her eggs she doesn't Nest she simply lays eggs in groups of five or six to improve the chances that some will survive under normal conditions only one in 3,000 will produce a mature Alamosaurus but the odds stacked against these eggs are about to get astronomical because now just 20 minutes away 2 trillion tons of rock is racing right at them the asteroid fragment's enormous mass is only part of the threat the other part is velocity but as it gets closer to the planet the Earth's gravitational pole gets stronger

and the asteroid accelerates past 65 to 72,000 kmph and mass time acceleration equals force as the asteroid encounters atmosphere friction turns it into a fireball swooping over the Atlantic and aimed at Mexico and and the Alam asaurus it takes Just 4 minutes to cross the ocean it crushes and superheats the air surrounding it transforming gas and debris into white hot plasma at 20,000 de it's burning brighter than a Million [Music] Suns [Music] it takes just 5 Seconds to flash through the atmosphere impact seems instantaneous but hidden within the cataclysm are a series of discreet events

invisible to the naked eye but key to understanding what follows the asteroids trajectory is shallow it flies in at about a 30° angle to the surface this means the full brunt of its destructive power will be thrown to the north of the impact Point even before the fireball touches down its sheer brightness in the sky is unat inable 800 km from Ground Zero the light is so intense it makes the Alamosaurus flesh seem transparent and burns flash frames of their Shadows onto the ground the scorching light Sears their eyeballs they they have no way of

seeing what's headed their way but they can feel it an explosive force of 100 million megatons more powerful than all the nuclear weapons ever built if the asteroid had crashed into deep ocean some of the force would have been absorbed instead it hits the shallow Waters of the Gulf of Mexico which instantly vaporize in a fraction of a second the entire asteroid disintegrates into the planet Earth and rock also vaporize and are hurled Skyward at 15,000 km an hour behind them 120,000 ,000 cubic km of the Earth's crust explodes from the ground 800 kilm from

the crash site the air temperature now reaches over 300° hot enough to boil away the water in the dinosaur's skin which Escapes in sudden bursts of steam the fiery blasts suck every drop of moisture from the vegetation anything directly Expos osed to the blistering heat is simply broiled alive just 108 seconds after impact in the Gulf of Mexico the bright streams of vaporized rock can be seen in prehistoric British [Music] Columbia from their Cliff Toop top Roost a breeding pair of katas can see the glow of the fireball high above the Horizon 5,000 kilm away

that's how big it is just 2 minutes have passed since the asteroids slammed into the [Music] Earth the body count back near the crash site is immense surprisingly there are survivors those lucky enough to be shielded by a mountain are spared the worst of the light and heat blasts but three more waves of Destruction are coming on impact Boulders the size of buildings blasted into the air at supersonic speeds but what goes up must come down hundreds of surviving Alamosaurus are bombarded from [Music] above a second wave Hits From [Music] Below an earthquake measuring 11.1

on the RoR scale nearly 60 times more powerful than any earthquake humans have experienced the third wave is the blast pulse wave radiating outward in a perfect circle packing a force that rips through air faster than the speed of sound stripping skin from flesh flinging 30 ton dinosaurs into the air like so many ragd dos just 5 minutes have passed since impact and three waves of Destruction have decimated an entire species many other species of dinosaur in the region share the Alamosaurus [Music] fate most of the eggs too have been destroyed and yet the Earth

is a powerful protector some eggs buried in the co cool ground have survived new Alamosaurus life is growing there is still hope for [Music] now an immense Boulder the size of Mount Everest crashes into the Gulf of Mexico driving entire species of dinos URS to Extinction in less than 5 minutes but the worst is still to come on the other side of the planet there's still no sign of trouble Mongolia is 12,000 km from the impact the scrub land here supports hundreds of dinosaur species for a family of coronos it's business as usual at a

favorite Watering Hole they can weigh 4 tons and grow to 12 m in length but they're vegetarians and docile except when they have to defend themselves or their offspring which are now at their most vulnerable to the hungry predators that lurk around every corner armed with a razor sharp over sized Claw on its hind feet this is the Jackal of the Cretaceous Period sir oroides a very smart reptile its brain to body weight ratio is among the highest of any dinosaur it's hungry but it knows better than to take on a full-grown coronasaurus [Music] not

when there are easier targets [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] in its rush to eat the thief doesn't get his far away from the enraged mother as it should and it can smell its mistake it's a Mexican standoff between two very different kinds of dinosaur one has the speed and smarts of a carnivore but the other is 80 times larger but the large herbivores of this world aren't made for fighting and that's exactly what the siron athes is counting on especially when he's got [Music] backup speed and strategy give these small Hunters the [Music] edge [Music] but

neither great size nor great intelligence is any guarantee of safety from the kind of enemy that is now approaching on the other side of the planet a fireball Rises 160 km Above Ground Zero 70 billion tons of pul pulverized Stone and Earth fill the upper atmosphere with a cloud of microscopic dust and glass and it's spreading fast this is the ejecta cloud as the dust spreads at high altitude trillions of tiny particles re-enter the atmosphere the friction creates intense heat an 800° dust cloud heating up everything beneath it from their clifftop perch in prehistoric British

Columbia the male and female katus have a clear view of the approaching Cloud down in the valley a thick ocean fog blocks out the sky the heavy blanket of moisture makes it impossible to see the coming apocalypse but the animal animal down here do get a warning not from above but from below when the asteroid struck most of the energy is deflected out or up only 1% of the force travels down into the ground but it's enough to ring the planet like a bell seismic waves radiate both across and through the Earth 16 minutes and

40 seconds after impact they reach British Columbia in the valley the ground Shakes as the 11.1 earthquake ripples through the ground Triceratops Panic up the side of the valley in a desperate attempt to escape the Tremors and falling debris smaller animals take shelter underground meanwhile the ejecta cloud is approaching at 16,000 kmph it bakes the Earth with unrelenting Heat millions of volts of static electricity charge the cloud like a giant battery creating a vast electrical storm superheated rocks shower the valley a burning [Music] hail the ketak katus are fleeing the quake's devastation below but there's

no way to hide from a rain of fire only the valley floor can provide shelter but they're too big to descend quickly until the male's tattered Wings can no longer keep him Aloft if his mate doesn't find shelter she'll be next on the mountain slopes a pair of Triceratops emerges above the cool Sea Mist there they're almost out of the Quake ravaged Valley when the ejecta cloud arrives like a blowtorch a dinosaur Paradise just hours ago North America is now a living hell but the ejecta isn't finished yet not by a long shot less than

an hour since the asteroid impact hundreds of species of dinosaurs lie devastated across the West Western Hemisphere the ejecta cloud continues to spread at high altitude as it spans the globe the effects on the ground vary [Music] dramatically 12,000 km away in Asia the cloud rolls in silently from the east in Mongolia temperatures on the ground tick upwards a few degrees hotter every second there's no audible warning only mounting heat as the air reaches 50 c the only hope is shelter at 70 celsus survival is measured in minutes over 90 celius just seconds 90 minutes

after impact the temperature on the ground in Mongolia Peaks at 150 C but not every dinosaur is baking alive the microclimate of a cave can keep a handful of survivors cool enough to breathe but it's a refuge that has to be shared forcing an uneasy peace between sworn enemies one that's already fraying at the edges back in prehistoric British Columbia the dense fog still Shields the Valley from the intense heat above in sheltered areas like this small pockets of dinosaurs hang on for the Triceratops here the high high temperatures and humidity force them to keep

[Music] moving for scavengers there's no shortage of [Music] food but most animals caught by the ejecta cloud aren't so lucky the female katus is one of the few survivors of her species the last thing these animals need is a new threat but the after effects of impact are just getting started above the valley and across North America the intense heat of the ejecta cloud has ignited fires blazes so intense they generate their own winds down in the valley the air pressure plummets creating a vacuum that sucks in the flames the dry vegetation goes up like

a powder keg building a wall of fire the front of the fire burns hottest and fastest moving across the valley floor at 15 km an hour T-Rex can run twice that speed but it can't keep the pace up forever the valley Basin is now a firestorm 1,000° hot enough to melt solid aluminum the panicked animals rap up the valley slopes but fire goes faster uphill some lucky creatures Escape below the Flames but large dinosaurs have no place to hide her wings still damaged from the falling ejector the w wounded katus struggles to take off for

the dinosaurs time is running out 2 hours after the asteroid impact the entire planet is covered in dust and smoke fires rage Across the Western Hemisphere one of the few remaining katas a flying terasa as big as a giraffe is struggling to get airborne from above what was once a lush Valley is now an inferno animals that fly can escape the Flames but there are few places to land and almost nothing to eat a food chain once Rich enough to support Giants now lacks its basic component [Music] plants 12,000 km away in Mongolia the temperatures

are finally dropping a handful of animals remain safely holed up in their [Music] cave it seems the worst is over the ravenous s ornithoid ISS can't resist the sight of an easy meal [Music] soon the braver coronasaurus follow making their way back towards the watering hole one stays near the protection of the [Music] cave as the ejecta begins to clear The Parting clouds reveal the shift in temperature is throwing Earth's weather systems into turmoil and in Mongolia powerful winds are gathering billions of tons of dust and sand a dust storm forms as hot air rises

thermal imaging shows how it builds whipping up loose particles of sand and dust and gaining energy from the heat of the sand sand itself the 150° temperatures that baked Mongolia turn a common weather phenomenon into a [Music] superstorm as it hits the sirona thids are small enough to crouch for cover but the Coran aurus are out in the open the sand blasts their bodies the harder they struggle and the deeper they gasp for oxygen the more sand fills their lungs until finally they can't breathe the superstorm engulfs much of the continent it's hours before the

winds die down the last coronasaurus protected once again by the cave heads to The Watering Hole on her own halfway there she finds she's the last of the [Music] herd but she's not the last remaining dinosaur in the [Music] neighborhood huddled close to a coronasaurus corpse the sorath thored were sheltered from the worst of the storm but the sand has swallowed their meal Instinct drives them back to their prime hunting spot The Watering Hole where the last surviving coronasaurus is taking in the much needed fluid she's lucky to be alive but too exhausted to run

from any new sign of danger and danger has arrived the sidds are desperate for food but they're weak from Hunger and the buffeting of the sandstorm only one has the confidence to [Music] attack its prey is still to exhausted to run but this time size does [Music] [Applause] [Music] matter the remaining Sor oroides Moves In but it has no intention of making a run at the coronasaurus not when fate offers it a meal that can't fight [Music] back a week after impact food is in very short Supply across the entire planet life is hardest for

the Plante eaters huge herbivores have to eat vast amounts just to sustain their their massive bulk but there are simply no plants to be found they can only hope that something somewhere is growing the carnivores are more fortunate they can eat the herbivores but two Triceratops are a little too much to take on for now 3 days after the asteroid impact a once blue planet is shrouded in darkness and the landscape is anything but green fire Heat and acid rain have battered the terrain until it's unrecognizable normally Triceratops wouldn't travel more than a few miles

a day they wouldn't have to but now most of the continent is stripped of vegetation hunger drives the giant herbivores toward the Pacific coast the devastation reaches all the way to the Sea but geography has a way of protecting certain places from cataclysmic events in this case an island apparently Untouched by the surrounding desolation there may still be food here the female ketak katus has been flying for 3 days [Music] she's weak and in desperate need of [Music] food from 300 M up the island comes into view but all is not as peaceful as it

seems deep below the surface the ocean floor was shaken by the asteroids and initial impact sedimentary rock disintegrates Under The Strain and collapses hundreds of meters into the ocean floor on the surface sea level plunges triggering a massive swell at the coast the ocean is dragged back hundreds of meters from the land exposing huge expanses of seabed exposed land suddenly creates a path to the [Music] island the forest ahead of them appears Untouched by the hell storm of the ejecta it seems too good to be [Music] true a kilometer from the coast the three Triceratops

finally reach the promised [Music] land sheltered from the ejecta by seamist and protected from fire by the surrounding ocean the island has all the food they [Music] need the ketak katas hasn't had a decent meal in days the asteroid has awakened the ocean's most destructive force a mega tsunami a wall of water 100 m tall within seconds the land is [Music] deluged and as quickly as it came the flood is gone but this is only one in an immense Army of Mega tsunamis the asteroid impact launches them against more than 20,000 km of Coast huge

swaths of Shoreline simply wash away into the sea the Avalanche of water leaves countless dead in its wake but as devastating as the first wave of disasters is there's more to come in the days following the asteroids arrival a series of plagues have been Unleashed on the planet firestorms earthquakes sandstorms and towering tsunamis but these are only the outward signs of a catastrophe that reaches much deeper across the continents thousands of dinosaurs may be walking but their species are already dead because to survive any species needs to maintain a critical mass of population fall below

that threshold and there's no way to climb back from certain Extinction the final nail in the coffin may take a while to de develop but it's no less deadly and no less final the kudagra for the dinosaurs comes from inside the planet because when a rock 10 km across slams into the Earth at 72,000 kmph it shoots a million megatons of energy straight into the [Music] ground seismic shock waves Ripple through the planet the aftershocks continue for months as tectonic plates shear and tear deep inside the planet they trigger molten rock to force its way

to the surface through newly formed fractures until it explodes from the Earth's crust in violent volcanic eruptions the seismic waves awaken dormant volcanoes around the world adding to the debris clouds of dust and toxic gases that already surround the globe the Shroud is already many kilometers deep a thick blanket stopping light and warmth reaching the Earth's surface the planet plunges further into a nuclear winter in the days and weeks that follow the only growth to thrive is fungus which lives off the rotting remains here in Mongolia few signs of dinosaurs remain and for the starving

coronos surus the future looks bleak but it stays near the cave that has saved it twice in the past the watering hole that once provided Ed [Music] [Music] plenty but the last coronos saurus doesn't fall victim to starvation bubbling to the surface is one of Nature's most toxic gases hydrogen sulfide released from deep underground by volcanic activity it collects invisibly in low-lying areas like the water hole's natural Basin the gas paralyzes the lungs making Escape impossible then it kills by suffocation what was once a refuge is transformed into a death [Music] trap the last dinosaur

in this part of Mongolia is dead Mexico 2o is a graveyard just 800 km from Ground Zero it's been hit by wave after wave of Devastation there would seemed to be little else that nature could throw at it and yet amidst all this destruction beneath a thin layer of charred soil a lone Alamosaurus egg survived Liv in what's now British Columbia just a handful of dinosaurs Patrol the gray Wasteland an ankal losauro searches the charred terrain for something to eat 7 m long and weighing 4 tons this heavily armored herbivore is used to getting nearly

135 kg of food every day all it can find now is a small Bush and even that won't come without a fight a suddenly hunger isn't their biggest problem he is [Music] oh [Music] [Music] the Ankylosaurus main defense weapon is a heavy tail [Music] Club but it's too weak to get in a good shot [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Music] oh it took 160 million years to bring the dinosaurs to this point in their evolution it took just one rock to bring them down the events triggered by the impact flashed by at break neck speed seismic

shocks caused massive earthquakes Boulders the size of buildings rain down followed by a brutal blast wave all within the first 3 minutes by the time the superheated ejecta cloud hit Mongolia just 44 minutes later the whole planet was in [Music] shock in the coming days forest fires raised the Earth violent dust storms destroyed entire ecosystems Titanic waves wrecked coastlines put all these together and it's hard to believe that anything on Earth could have survived but something [Music] has Mexico 800 km from the point of impact the very first landmass to feel the force of the

asteroid strike a region that has suffered wave upon wave of [Music] violence yet even here even now life Remains the last surviving Alamosaurus egg buried safe within the soil a dick has survived the barrage of Destruction and he's not [Music] alone all around the world small handfuls of dinosaurs try to start over but inbreeding and disease weaken their tiny populations eventually the huge numbers of dinosaurs that had ruled the world are reduced to a single solitary dinosaur then it too is gone and with it a dynasty that had Ruled the Earth for 160 million [Music]

years but dinosaurs weren't the only animals on the planet there were other humbler life forms that that had lived in the dinosaur Shadow for a very long time when floods and firestorms hit they found shelter under ground some hid deep inside trees and plants others took Refuge beneath the [Music] soil in small mammals like madma survived by scampering into Burrows down here they were protected from the worst the asteroid could throw at them the Earth would be inherited by animals that were good at hiding fish were sheltered beneath the water so were the Aquatic reptiles

birds especially water fowl could survive by diving underwater or hiding in Burrows it would be years before all the sun's energy could reach the land again but the heavy Cloud slowly begins to clear in the Gulf of Mexico where the the asteroid struck a shallow crater can be seen a tiny scar for such a fatal wound out of the ruins nature starts [Music] over simple organisms like mold and fungus dominate the burned and rotting landscape then New Growth emerges and one plant in particular ferns tough and resilient they soon carpet the planet in green it

takes thousands of years for ferns to give way to forests breathing oxygen and life into the planet again and setting the stage for a new era because waiting in the wings are creatures whose development had long been thwarted by the Dinosaurs the mammals unlike the Dinosaurs the mammals are fast breeders brilliant adapters they multiply and diversify 10,000 species exploding across the planet but it's millions of years before one very important species branches off from its relatives and comes down from the trees they walk on two legs evolve bigger brains and eventually rule the planet just

as the dinosaurs once did but unlike them they'll reshape the World building cities that touch the sky vehicles that can leave the planet and weapons that can destroy it but none of it could have been possible if a chance Collision in space 165 million years ago hadn't sent an asteroid hurdling toward Earth and doomed the dinosaurs to Extinction [Music] only because they died can human beings [Music] live [Music] [Music] my [Music]