The past is a vast and mysterious land that
begins at the big bang and ends in the present, expanding with each passing moment. It is the home of everything that came before,
the key to understanding our present. Here we find the most amazing creatures to
ever roam our planet, hundreds of millions of species so diverse that our imagination
cannot do them justice. Unfortunately the past carefully guards its
secrets. While there are a lot of things about the
past we know, there are way more things we know we don’t know. And worse, there are probably even more things
we don’t even know that we don’t know about. Think of the wonder of life: We now recognize
about 1.5 million eukaryotic species but there may be as many as 10 million alive today. And although we are adding some 15,000 new
species to our collective knowledge each year, the vast majority of life on earth is still
undiscovered. This is just what is around today. An estimated four billion species emerged
on our planet in past eons. But at least 99% of them died out, way before
humans spoke the first words. The vast majority of all the different species
that ever existed are so utterly deleted that they have become part of the “unknown unknown”
part of the past, lost to us forever. Or are they? Could we use science and imagination to glimpse
a shadow of the unreachable past? Let us start with what we DO know. To learn about creatures of the past we need
fossils, any sort of remains preserved from past geological ages – bones or shells,
impressions or imprints, things preserved in amber. The totality of all fossils on earth is called
the fossil record and it is the most important window on the past we’ll ever have. For a dead animal to fossilize a number of
things must go just right: The right environment, timing and conditions. And then the fossil needs to survive for millions
or hundreds of millions of years and then get back to the surface – and then be discovered
before natural processes dissolve it. So it is kind of a miracle that we have what
we have and know what we know. Take the dinosaurs since they were one of
the largest and most successful groups of animals for some 165 million years – and
are also a lot of fun to animate. What were they really like and what are we
missing? In the last 200 years we’ve found tens of
thousands of fossils from over 1000 dinosaur species.. Lately we’ve entered a golden era of discovery
and about 50 new dinosaur species are discovered each year, expanding what we know and what
we know that we don’t know about them, which is amazing. But it also makes us aware of all the things
lost to the past forever. Imagine if we took all the animals that lived
in the last 50 million years and randomly chose 10000 individuals from 1000 species
to fossilize. Think about all the things that would be missed,
or that seem too weird to be true. Like the Giraffe, a yellow animal with brown
patterns that looks like a horse and an antelope had a baby, with a long neck and two tiny
hairy horns. How many “dinosaur giraffes” were there? Animals so weird and selected for ecological
niches so specific that evolution molded their bodies very absurdly - today they might seem
made up to us.. We know a lot of species are lost forever
just because of the environment they lived in. For example, lush jungles basically prevent
fossilization as the chances that an animal will be buried here is minimal. Countless scavengers of all sizes break down
freshly deceased animals extremely quickly and the soil is often so acidic that bones
are dissolved. And so fossils of dinosaurs from jungles are
practically nonexistent. Today half of all known species live in the
few remaining rainforests that only cover 2% of earth's landmass. Millions of years ago when dinosaurs roamed
earth, jungles covered much more of the planet. So besides some insects and other small animals
trapped in amber, there should be millions of species that emerged and vanished, without
leaving any trace. Trapped deep inside the unknown, unknown. But just in general biology trips us up. Look at your body. It’s mainly squishy, gooey, soft stuff. Which does not preserve well. What remains the longest are the crystalized
parts of your bones and so most dinosaur fossils are bones or teeth – usually fragments,
not entire skeletons. This means that almost all boneless or shell-less
animals are practically wiped from the fossil record. If we take a look at the stunning diversity
of weird animals like worms, jellyfish and slugs alive today we can only speculate what
we are missing. Although thankfully many mostly soft and gooey
species also left us an incredible diversity of shells that tell us an amazing amount about
our past, so at least we have that. Still when we think about all the boneless
species that may have existed in the last half billion years even our best attempt at
imagining them falls short. But it's not like reimagining something based
on its bones is straightforward and so the way we envisage what dinosaurs actually looked
like has changed a lot in the last few years. In the past many illustrations had a bony,
minimalistic look, with a toothy grin to signify fierceness and danger. But if we draw today's animals in a similar
way, based on their skeletons, just for the fun of it, we get the most bizarre creatures. Elephants, swans and baboons that look like
monsters right out of nightmares. So similar to animals today, we should imagine
dinosaurs with much more soft tissue, fat bellies or chests, weird soft parts like skin
flaps, lips and gums and just more pronounced features that would make them seem like much
more pleasant fellows. Some soft features actually leave distinctive
traces on bones that we can look for in the skeletons of extinct animals, which is where
today’s animals with similar features are really helpful. It’s a similar story with color. Because we know what the feathers of living
birds look like, modern technology combined with the exceedingly rare fossils with preserved
remains of fuzzy feathers give us a glimpse of the real colors of extinct dinosaurs. We know that tiny Sinosauropteryx had a striped
tail and its tiny dino buddy Anchiornis huxleyi was white and black with gorgeous red feathers
around its head. Still, for the vast majority of really any
ancient extinct species we have no real clue what color they were. But we know what modern dinosaurs, birds,
look like and here we find the most amazing variety. So some dinosaurs will have tried to blend
into the background, while others might have fielded aggressive color schemes to attract
mates or to appear dangerous. Some might have had impressive decorations
or colorful beaks. Some may have been striped or patterned. Similarly we don’t know that much about
dinosaur behaviour, although once again we can draw conclusions from existing animals. For example even apex predators like lions
spend a lot of their time lying around and cuddling and licking each other and playing. Why would dinosaurs be so different? When we first found the skull of T. rex with
its mighty teeth and probably the strongest bite of any land animal ever, we imagined
a fierce and stupid beast. But modern scanning technology has revealed
that T.rex had a larger brain-to-body ratio than some earlier giant meat-eaters. And it probably had very sharp hearing, vision
and sense of smell and was in all likelihood not a stupid animal. So maybe T.rex was a cuddly fellow that spent
a lot of time playing around or impressing potential mates when it was not hungry. Likewise, while their horns and shields might
have made ceratopsids appear to be natural born fighters, they were probably much more
than that. Based on the behaviour of modern animals and
the complex dances some have to go through to mate, maybe their shields were amazingly
colorful, maybe it danced for its mates like many birds do today. How intensely amazing these creatures must
have been. And what a loss it is to us that we don’t
get to experience them first hand. What an even greater loss that there is so
much we will never know about them and even more tragic, all the absurd and beautiful
beings that disappeared without a trace. But such is life – time marches on without
any concern for our feelings and the past expands with every moment that passes. Most wild animals alive today will in all
likelihood not leave fossils behind and also just disappear forever. We can do something about that though – instead
of accelerating the extinction we are witnessing we could become the guardians of life and
preserve it where we find it. If possible in the wild, if not then in museums,
movies and in our minds. Because as amazing as our imagination is,
and as fascinating to think about the animals that are part of the unknown unknown – it
is even better to witness them in the present. The land that we actually inhabit, where we
get to experience life as it happens. There is one more exciting way to experience
Dinosaurs though this year: The 12,022 Human Era Calendar: Eons Edition. As always, we’re adding 10,000 years to
the regular calendar to represent the Human Era and include all cultures around the world. But this year we’re expanding the scope
beyond humanity to showcase forgotten animals and plants from all across the Phanerozoic
Eon, like giant armoured fish, scythe lizards or giant sloths, on 12 elaborate pages. Witness how multicellular life has persisted
for over half a billion years, surviving asteroid impacts, volcanoes and frozen oceans. And of course, pandemics. In the end life, uh, finds a way – and we
want to celebrate that! You can get the very shiny, high-quality,
limited Edition now until we sell out and then never again. To support what we do on this channel, to
fill the void in your soul or just to have something beautiful to look at. As every year, we also have bundles and special
calendar deals with some of your favorite products. Thank you so much to all of the thousands
of birbs who get the calendar every year, you enable us to create videos and to publish
them for free, for everyone. We wish you a happy year 12,022.
Im pleasantly surprised with how they drew the Rex this episode! Mostly scaley with proto feathers or quills in select parts of the body. Something they didn't really mention this episode (unless I missed it) is that one of the areas we've made major discoveries in over the last few years is actually soft tissue impressions.
We've been finding (or in many cases realizing we already had) impressions that show us textures of the skin of various dinos. Trex is actually one such species that we've found partial imprints from. So because of that we are fairly confident that an adult Rex wouldn't be fully covered in proto feathers or plumage, but we also can't be certain that they didn't have them on on certain parts of the body or during the younger years of their life cycle.
And speaking of pigment we've actually made some strides there too! PBS Eons actually has a video that talks about this is anyone is interested, I believe it is their video "The Dino that was buried at sea". But we found an amazingly well preserved nodosaurus fossil that tests showed signs of pigmentation left in the surrounding rock. Not exact shades mind you, but enough to give a rough idea. I believe the evidence showed signs of counter shading (lighter on the bottom, darker on top) specifically orange and white. We've also been testing feather imprints from other dinos like archaeopteryx, but I admit im not as up to date on the results of that.
One criticism I do have is towards the end they talk about how (and im paraphrasing here for brevity) "maybe we should imagine more colorful display structures,". My problem with that is that it implies that we already aren't. Research over the last few years into things like ceratopsian frills has shown that they almost certainly were display structures to an extent (we already assumed that, but research into how durable they would've been has shown that they probably weren't as armor like as we once thought). And that's something that Paleo-art has been depicting as well.
It's a bit of a nitpick on my part, but hey... I dont have a follow up there it really is just a nitpick on my part...
If anyone is interested in any of the things I mentioned I would like to just quickly recommend a few youtube channels with more:
PBS Eons This channel does short but very informative videos on the ancient world. These include alot on dinosaurs, but they aren't limited to just them.
Ben G Thomas this channel does in depth videos in specific species, videos on depictions in older media (like walking with dinosaurs) and comparing them to our newer understandings as well as weekly videos recapping new scientific discoveries across various fields
Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong My personal favorite of the group. Fans send in dinosaur toys and they explain how wrong they are. Each episode is an in depth dive into a single species of dinosaur. Unlike the others where I linked to a channel this one links specifically to their Iguanodon episode, which is a great episode in particular due to how long we've been depicting that species in particular
I feel vindicated from when 5 year old me asked my teacher why, if all we had were bones, couldn't dinosaurs have been pink with purple polka dots?
Fuck you Mrs. Finch!
For those confused by the year on the calendar promoted at the end, here's the video explaining why they add 10000 to the year.
Wow this was a beautifully animated episode
My son loves these things, and we watch them together as a family. As he's rapidly becoming a teenager, this is one of the few things he still wants to do with me.
Thanks Kurzgesagt.
I’m trying to reimagine Jurassic park where they were being stalked by giant chickens throughout the park.
I get the main point of the video is how time has erased so much rather than "What Dinosaurs ACTUALLY Looked Like?", but it still comes off as a very low information video.
What did dinosaurs look like?
A. some had feathers, some had stripes, they might have had other features, but we don't know.
Even the non-existential versions of these video make me terrified for some reason. As soon as I start to see skeletons in these its time to go!
It's okay to cry everyone. dinosaurs could exist on habitable planets deep somewhere else beyond our galaxy.