Around 66 million years ago, the Earth was
a very different place. The oceans where filled with gigantic marine reptiles such as the
Megalodons and Liopleurodons. The land on the other hand was ruled by the dinosaurs.
Creatures like the famous Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. Then something happened.
Something that would cause 75% of the life on this planet to go extinct. It is known
as the K-T or K-Pg extinction and what's so remarkable with this particular mass extinction
is how quickly it occurred. It was not a gradual process but instead seemed to have been triggered
by a single event. An asteroid impact. The asteroid created a crater over 180 kilometers
wide and 20 kilometers deep, located here at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. And while this asteroid meant the end for much of the life here on Earth, it could possibly have meant the beginning
for new life elsewhere in the universe. Simulations of the impact shows that vast quantities of
large chunks of Earth was launched into space at incredible speeds. Many of these pieces
had the capacity to shelter tiny living organisms for millions of years in the cold darkness
of space. Simulations also show that some of them had the potential to collide with
other bodies like Mars and even as far out as the moon of Jupiter, Europa. So even though
the chances of that actually happening is ridiculously small and just next to impossible.
It's not truly impossible that space dinosaurs actually exist. While it's often said that dinosaurs went
extinct around 66 million years ago, it's not really true. What really happened is that
all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. Meaning that, taxonomically, modern day birds (like
a chicken for example) are dinosaurs just as much as the T-rex was. In fact, the relation
between birds and dinosaurs are much stronger than we once thought. If you examine the embryo
of a chicken and how its bones and body develop, you'll find a very close resemblance to many
long extinct dinosaurs. Chickens and many other birds still have characteristics like
a long tail, hands, claws, and even teeth. It's just that it's hidden within their genetic
coding and never actually develop. However, scientists are working on, sort of, reactivating
these genes which could mean that in the not so distant future we'll see something like
a Chickensaurus. Many dinosaur and bird fossils have been found
in what's become known as "the death pose". The pose consists of their neck being dramatically
bent backwards, their tail extended, and mouth wide open. Why and how this occurs has been
the subject for debate for many decades now. For the longest time, experts believed that
the animals simply could bend this way in real life. But that seems unlikely, and it's
more reasonably caused by something after death. The most likely theory is that the
ligaments in their bodies shrink once they start to decompose and thus the death pose
is formed. The group of dinosaurs known as Titanosaurs
were, as the name implies, some of the largest dinosaurs we've ever discovered. In fact,
they are probably the largest terrestrial animals to have ever existed on Earth. Quite
literally titans. Some of the largest in this group doesn't even have official names yet
and could grow to become 40 meters long and 20 meters tall. Their necks being so elongated
that if they held it too high for too long they could pass out as their heart struggled
to pump blood all the way up to their brain. The most astounding fact is that they could
have weighed anywhere from 70-100 tonnes. That's roughly 15 of the heaviest elephants
you can find squeezed into one single beast of an animal. Micropachycephalosaurus is the longest generic
name for any dinosaur so far. It means "small thick headed lizard" and the fact that it
has the longest name is a bit ironic given that it's one of the smallest and shortest
dinosaurs found at only 1 meter long. Giant herbivorous dinosaurs known as Sauropods
would roam the Earth during the Mesozoic Era and spend their entire life eating plants
and various kinds of foliage. Their bodies were so ginormous that they didn't even have
time to orally process their food like we humans do. Instead, their head and jaws functioned
as simple harvesting tools to get plants into their bodies as quickly as possible. The stomach
then took on the responsibility for processing and digesting these whole pieces of food.
But doing it this way created a lot of methane, or in other words, dinosaur farts. Sauropods
alone, not including any other dinosaurs, are estimated to have released around 520
million tonnes of methane into the atmosphere every year. That's almost as much gas that
we humans are able to naturally and artificially produce today. All from just one single group
of reptilian rectums. Dinosaurs essentially terraformed a planet with their ass. It's long been known that most dinosaurs didn't
look like this. With sort of leathery skin similar to a lizard. Instead, most dinosaurs
had feathers covering their entire bodies. It's been proven time and time and again and
even the T-rex had feathers. The question is why though? I mean, we now know that birds
are in fact dinosaurs but birds use the feathers to fly. As far as we can tell, the T-rex could
not fly. That would be scary as shit though. So as feathers mysteriously appeared long
before any birds or flying animals used them for flight, what was their original purpose?
Well, paleontologists and other experts believe they were used to communicate. More specifically,
to attract females and to show how much of a boss you are with all them fancy-ass colors.
This is also supported by the fact that dinosaurs enjoyed a much more complete visual range
than we humans do and could perceive even more colors and thus obtain even more fabulous
feathery dino friends. The Stegosaurus is known for it's weird looking
plates on its back. And experts agree, it is weird as we can seem to figure out what
purpose they served. One fascinating theory is that the Stegosaurus could control its
body temperature by regulating blood flow through them. The idea is that if it was really
hot or cold outside, blood would start gushing in and out of the plates to keep an even temperature.
It's called thermoregulation and we humans do this as well. But instead of plates on
our back, we for example sweat. Plates would be pretty cool though. Quetzalcoatlus. Ok, only the 38th time I'm
trying to pronounce that name. Seriously, who uses a Q and a Z in the same fucking word.
I'm looking at you.. quartz? Quetzalcoatlus was a flying reptile that existed during the
Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic Era. It is the, without question, largest flying animal
to have ever lived. They had a wingspan of up to 12 meters and weighed between 200-250
kilos. It would be like seeing a lightweight, living, breathing fighter yet flying around. Throughout this episode you might have noticed
me using the word reptiles and dinosaurs in different situations. The reason is that while
animals like these and these are often referred to as dinosaurs, they are technically not.
The definition of what is and isn't a dinosaur is a bit complicated and usually involves
various anatomical differences. What you need to know is that around 252 million years ago
their was an extinction event called the "Great Dying". This event killed almost everything.
It is the most severe of all of the major mass extinctions, killing up 96% of all species
on the planet. This event marked the beginning of the Mesozoic Era. It would last until the
next extinction event that occurred around 66 million years ago when an asteroid wiped
out the dinosaurs. This marked the end of the Mesozoic Era. Almost every egg-laying,
land-dwelling, reptilian creature that existed during this period is a dinosaur with a few
exceptions. This means that sea creatures and flying animals from the Mesozoic Era are
not dinosaurs but instead regarded as marine and flying reptiles. However what they all
have in common is that they are all descendants of archosaurs.
That's a lot of dino farts! :3