An excavation of a rare dinosaur fossil goes horribly wrong. It’s left to paleo technicians to try and salvage what they can. From the Show: Dinosaur Cold Case
@@RootVegetabIe it might be when the 'stuff' doesn't weigh multiple tonnes lol. That plaster is not going to hold anything more than half a tonne max. Its like wrapping your car in that stuff and expecting it to not break when your car hangs by it.
@@RootVegetabIe watch the video again. They say they plastered it to make it a single piece. It wasn't only for shaking. I would rather coat the entire thing in concrete or cement and then break it later than breaking the whole thing before moving lol. Plaster should never have been an option in the first place. If they had coated it with concrete, I bet it wouldn't have broken in half.
@@SahilP2648 Concrete would have broken aswell concrete can sustain high pressure, but when its been pulled apart it can only sustain a small force. Reinforced concrete however is a different story.
Can we take a minute to admire the skill of the guy with the drill? A fossil is essentially the animal turned to stone and these guys can tell the difference between fossil stone and ordinary rocks. That's pretty impressive to me.
Not to depreciate his work but I mean... Even the excavation crew could recognize that it wasn't just any typical rock. Takes endless amounts of patience and precision to do something like that though, which is impressive to me.
@@ashawyn well I’m sure it’s easy to spot when it was in the rock and a lot larger, but when it’s in tiny pieces and up close is where the actual skill and expertise comes in I’m sure.
Are we sure that guy isn't just an artist who carved out whatever he felt like into the rock and now everyone just took his word for it and is like "Look a new dinosaur!" .... hmmm....
So they had there scientists engineers and technicians and nobody Realized you needed two beams in the other directions to lift that up? They literally did what you do when you want to break an egg, and the result was just that. Unbelievable
Your everyday run of the mill scientist isn't as smart as you think. Most scientists aren't Einstein or Tesla. They're just normal people who got a paper saying their smart. They blindly follow whatever "scientific consensus" gets peer reviewed to conform with their postmodern neo marxist colleagues (climate change, vaccines, etc).
@@AndreaRoll A degree means nothing without common sense and actual logic to make use of it. Just because scientists know how to pass a test doesn't mean they're smart. Look up Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and academic who regularly exposes leftist bias in modern academia. Look up Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, actual academics who have said similar things about their field.
For anyone who’s interested, this fossil is in the Royal Tyrell Myseum near Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. I lived 45 minutes from the museum and I can tell you it’s an exceptional museum (possibly the best palaeontology museum in the world). The video of the fossil mentioned in this video doesn’t do it justice. Seeing the fossil in person is breathtaking. You can see exactly what the dinosaur would have looked like while alive. If you’re ever in Alberta, the museum is a must see experience. Also Drumheller has some exceptional sights to see including the worlds largest T-Rex (a massive stature you can enter near their ice rink), the hoodoos (prehistoric rock formations), and buffalo jumps (places used by the natives to run bison off cliffs; usually there are a lot of shallow caves to explore).
I visited in 2006 from the US and agree the museum is fantastic. I would love to visit it again to see this fantastic fossil specimen. PS - the T-Rex is pretty cool too.
They even took samples from it’s stomach area using a special microscope that has special software that takes a series of pictures and put the sequences together to get an almost 3D view of the stomach matter and hence they could get an idea of what it was eating: Ferns and pollen granules were some of the plant material seen.
Kudos to the mining company for calling the paleontogists and stopping excavation. As for lifting it, any engineer would have seen that you need to tie those two beams together first.
The construction company had been told beforehand that there might be fossils in the rock and IIRC signed an agreement to notify them if they saw anything.
Wait so they decided to lift the fossil by supporting the weight on both of the ends of the rock and leave the middle portion completely unsupported? I’m not an engineer or anything but...
bug5654 ...sure, or maybe people should just stay in their lane. Ask a physicist, engineer, or technician how to move a rock, don’t comment attacking an entire field of knowledge gathering because a few people failed to move that rock without breaking it.
What bugs me more is to think of all the fossils that are destroyed knowingly just because of short-term-profit. Don't forget that this one (like many others) was found in a mine. This mine is there to make profit and having to put the work down for several hours or maybe even several days lets the owner loose money. I'm pretty sure more often than not the workers are being told not to have seen anything and just keep working for the sake of some money. Unless the scientists pay them more than enough to compensate for the potential losses. And we all know that scientists are really rich people right...? It's the same with caves. Most caves generate in limestone. As it happens limestone is an important resource for making concrete and other stuff. As a cave explorer I know that many and more caves were completely destroyed and are still being destroyed worldwide in limestone mines. I have actually been in some partially destroyed caves in old mines. Like fossils these caves are millions of years old. Many of them keeping natural treasures that are potentially unique. But hey, we have to make some profit, don't we? What could be more important?
@@mr.stealyourgrill1190 How sad. I know, right? How dare them burn such precious coal meant to be kept in museums to be adored and marveled upon! "Look, son! It's cOaL"
Not only was the fossil on 2 beams, the beams were not connected which caused them to splay out. It's likely that it wasn't even just the weight of the fossil that caused it to break, it was the force vectors pushing outwards (due to the rope setup) which created tension within the fossil. Notice how as soon as the fossil breaks the beams immediately go outward?
Armour with shoulder spikes. Though it could have been to protect them from their own species, like antlers, horns, or tusks. Bison have a thick hide yet no natural predators. It's a good question...
"Goes wrong in the worst possible way". I was thinking that someone died while trying to extract the fossil. But this is much worse, the title didn't exaggerate at all...
Seeing this, and thinking of the amount of time that has passed since its death vs how little time we humans have existed for gives me a feeling of cosmic horror. Just think of the massive, carnivorous monsters that had to exist for this thing to evolve the kind of armor it had.
Welp. Don't blame them. They're just a mere miner. It's like when u ask someone that can't cook to cook. The result of course will be bad. Don't be harsh to them.
Carl Larsen Until you find out the smithsonian is responsible for covering up history destroying artifact life proof of giants in North America. North America has saswuatches as well. Look up Dennis Martin Look up pyramids in America. Ohio. Look up nice to Egypt lived in Grand Canyon The smithsonian wants us to believe the continents were once connected. I hate to break it to you it still is. When you drain a lake or dam there is surface under the water All continents are still connected You swim on the beach your feet is on sand. It's not randomly floating Smithsonian wants us to believe there are 300k active satellites but why have I never seen a satellite? Why when I google "photo of satellite" only animated photos. Why if the earth spins at 23000 mph, when I jump up I land in same place If I lived on a vintage vinyl record and played the record player If I jumped on the record player I wouldn't land in the same spot. If the earth spins so fast why does the sun and moon rise and set only one time per day?
I am incredibly honoured to know the Executive Director of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, personally. Prior to going on public display, she gave me a behind the scenes tour, and I was able to meet Borealopelta before public display. At the time, they were still putting it back together, but the pieces were in position. Even though it is not complete, coming so close (I could not touch it obviously, but was mere inches away), you fully expected Borealopelta to wake up...almost like an overgrown dog. You can make out scales and skin detail, almost as if it were still alive. It is an afternoon I will never forget. Thank you, LM.
No fossil excavation going wrong in the worst possible way sounds like this: “Scientist discover the new most deadly animal on the planet, however also discover that it isn’t as dead as they hoped it would be...”
'a fossil excavation goes wrong in the worst way possible', me as a geology student, i know exactly what's gonna happen... Seeing it crumble like that though, I would've had a meltdown and started sobbing.
And they had it on a rope system which cracked it like an egg, there's a good chance that one more support or just a different lifting method wouldn't have done that
SIX YEARS. I am incredibly thankful they did this and that there are people willing to dedicate their life to such tedious, but important work. I'd be bored after a few hours. But such is science: we stand on the shoulders of past generations
When the rock collapsed, I felt that. Ouch. Good on the team to not lose faith and still try and recover whatever they had left. And what they had left! Borealopelta is one of the most beautifully preserved armoured Dinosaur fossils I have ever seen. It feels like it could spring back to life at any moment.
Omg dude.....I'm a geology hons. student nd also studies paleontology as a part of hons. nd we handle evn a three or four inch of plant fossil with care or just put a layer of cotton beneath it..........my heart just dropped wen I saw this beautiful piece fall apart I can't evn imagine wat they must be going through at tht moment....
The incredible moment, "It sat there in the dirt for 110 million years and we watched it break apart in three seconds." It was a 40 million year old fossil when T-Rex was running around on Earth, and it is probably the most incredible fossil every discovered. The follies of man.
@Muhammad Zain Laws don't mean anything in the countryside where no one is watching. You just need to pay cash bounties that will pay better than the coal that is being scooped from the ground.
Everyone here makes jokes about a dino getting alive, but I'm simply stunned by the amount of work the scientist have done to unveil this amazingly well preserved ancient relic!
Yeah, but if only they had tried to put another support to the middle area of the fossil, they could have gotten less salary for six years and wouldn't be posted in same place while given important subsidiaries by the concerned government department😉
Such a rookie mistake don't even have to be a engineer to see what was done wrong. Should of had something to keep the two beams from swinging independently and there was absolutely no support in the middle at all
@@jacob01711 Yes it's old look at the elderly they are fragile now times their age by millions and million of years could sneeze and they would crumble
Harald Honk They actually have found fragments of plateosaurus bones about 2km below the seabed when they drilled some cores off the coast of Norway in the North Sea. That area is part of the continental plate and was not underwater during the Triassic. There might be some marine fossils under the eons of marine sediment in the deep ocean, but nothing older than the Jurassic period since all the older rocks have since subducted under the continental plates and melted.
It’s a fossil, they are made to crumble and be out back together, that’s what’s so great about paleontologists, they do this as a living, what an amazing trait.
Rock is usually more stable than this. The lifting apparatus they're using is very common for quarries because it allows lifting of a variety of shapes and sizes and cuts down on the load that the crane is having to support.
What a heart breaker. The real story is how you moved forward. Brilliant display of determination despite the setbacks. Thanks for sharing 💜 what a beautiful critter you have recovered and displayed for the world to see....
I grew up watching Time Team in the UK and the care they put into excavations always made me think archaeologists were highly professional and carefull people. I have learned that I was wrong today
In my neighboring city that's an excavation site as a whole (Kyoto) we often heard that construction managers hate to delay their schedule and would instruct workers to destroy whatever they dig out on site. As a young kid i was thinking that's impossible for such worldwide-known city and it had to be a silly rumor. Next minute my own town had an "accident" where a telecom company had a plan to build an antenna on top of what turned out to be a pretty important tomb from A.D. 5 and got snitched out by someone with a common sense working on site, though leaving the tomb unrecoverable by the time the city had to physically step in to stop the construction. It was a devastating news for me and I'm now convinced that the rumor was true over there as well. Also still hate that telecom company to this day and I've never bought their product. Edit: words
was it a local company? or are they big? (I think that’s ridiculous too by the way, deciding that you’re more important and structured that have been there for millennia, you’re tearing apart history that can never be out back together again. ugh.)
@@elenasullivan4522 i didn't dig into that (no pun intended) but i'm assuming it's a combination of both given that the client was a nation-wide telecom company and they generally work in a chain of sub-contracts down to the local labor. I don't know in which layer they decided to full send it but I'd think that it's a structural problem rather than a sole company being responsible in the chain
@gunner Richthofen ugh, this just tears me. The lost history, culture and knowledge that we won’t have unless those relics are found again (most likely destroyed by the careless workers), and who knows how long that will take.
The only reason the mining company stopped work and used their resources to help the palaeontologists is because they get a large tax break when they donate their fossil to museums. It’s not because of some curiosity or of kindness of their heart, it just because they stood to make profit off it
They didnt apply the formular ; pressure= force/area.They should have placed it on a structure with broad surface (low pressure) before lifting it. Those two sticks used in the lifting had small surface area therefore much pressure was exerted on the fossil causing it to break. Nice work at last.
6 years of that work requiring that amount of skill,concentration and patience. Wow. I tip my hat to you Sir, with a job profile I've never even heard before.
the fact something went wrong seems pretty normal to me, i bet most fossils don't get found, get crushed, lost or whatever. What's incredible is when it managed to get solved somehow. Kudos to the ones who put that back together.
This may have happened way back when but my stomach still dropped when that rock burst open. Like the drop off feeling of jumping off a cliff or dropping a glass, I hate it. Awesome documentary I could have watched 5 hours on.
What they put together in the end isn't 100% by the way.. Many skeleton fossils are just guesses, many have been debunked after years. Don't believe me do your research. 👍
Acutely not 100% true, but it is somewhere in the 90%, and there are people more skilled then them, or people more skilled in that specific thing, so what I'm trying to tell you is it takes a men to find out. (:
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum is situated within a 12,500-square-metre-building designed by BCW Architects at Midland Provincial Park. When Canada reopens , go visit this museum. It is a 5 star, world class, working museum . Great experience 😊🇨🇦
Yes indeed! Me and my older brother went in 1997 for a sleep over tour. One could sleep under any skeleton. It was awsome! beautiful experience. And we had the privilege of meeting Robert Bakker himself.
It amazes me that dinosaurs actually existed and were roaming around the earth-possibly right where you live. They seem like some fantasy mythological creatures. Except they were actually real.