National Geographic: Dinosaur Hunters (1997)

[bunniefuu]

Eighty million years ago,

disaster came to a world

ruled by dinosaurs.

It came in waves of

and and wind

that buried

every creature alive.

For eons,

the dinosaurs lay entombed

in a place that would

one day be called

the Gobi Desert

in a country named Mongolia.

Among the dead

was one of the strangest

dinosaurs that ever lived.

It was called Oviraptor.

It was swift, smart, lethal.

Now, only bones

tell us about its life.

And the vicious

world it lived in.

The bones have given us

a glimpse of those

ancient times.

A dim reflection of life

before history.

But there is more

to the story... still hidden

in the vast emptiness

of the Gobi.

Now an ambitious expedition

is traveling to

that distant desert

to uncover the secrets

of the Oviraptor's world.

They don't exactly

look like scientists.

Often, they're mistaken

for each other.

But Mike Novacek leads

the expedition,

along with colleague

Mark Norell.

They could be taken

for surfers;

but they're from

the American Museum

of Natural History -

scientists piecing together

an ancient jigsaw puzzle

of evolution and extinction.

To me it's so

obviously important,

I'm so emotionally

bound up in this.

I can't imagine why

a knowledge of our history of

where we come from isn't

important to human experience.

Could you imagine

what it would be like

to live in the late

and not know that extinction

actually existed?

There's also just

this sense of discovery.

I mean,

every bone that we find

tells us something about

how the world

was 80 millions years ago,

which is... pretty neat.

Just having a sense of history

of what the planet was like

and what the planet

has gone through,

I think, just increases

our appreciation

for our own existence.

Mike and Mark are about to journey

to the sun scorched badlands of the Gobi.

It's a desolate area -

a half million dusty

square miles of sand, scrub,

and redrock cliffs.

But it's a paleontologist's

version of heaven.

For this is where

the Oviraptors lived and d*ed

and lay untouched

in the earth for millennia.

Then, in 1922, one of the

most famous scientific

expeditions in history

wound its way toward

Mongolia's dinosaur graveyard

Its leader was a charismatic

and...

controversial explorer

named Roy Chapman Andrews.

Like Mark and Mike,

he came from the

American Museum

of Natural History.

But Andrews was an

incurable publicity hound -

and a scientific cowboy.

Where his paleontologist

used a camel-hair brush,

Andrews hacked away with

a pick a*.

But he found one of the

richest dinosaur boneyards

in the world.

He returned with a spectacular

collection of fossils...

and a library

of stunning film images.

But in the 1920s,

Communists seized power

in Mongolia.

The open door to the West

slammed shut.

For the next 65 years,

the fabulous fossil fields

of the Gobi

were forbidden territory.

Now, everything's changed.

Only token symbols

of Russia's domination remain.

Finally,

Western scientists can return.

We don't want those onions?

They rot.

They rot in two days.

Mark and Mike were among

the first scientists

allowed in.

They're now back

for their sixth expedition

with the Mongolian Academy

of Sciences.

Three kilos?

Three kilos.

They have just enough supplies

for a short month,

and a long way to go...

retracing Andrews' footsteps

on their way to

one of the richest

concentrations of fossils

in the world -

a place called Ukhaa Tolgod.

Over a vast span of time,

Ukhaa Tolgod

was ruled by dinosaurs.

Dinosaur history

can be thought of

as a great empire

that lasted

a few hundred million years.

That's a significant

slice of the history of life.

Imagine that time,

from the moment the dinosaurs

appeared till now,

is a single day.

At midnight,

dinosaurs first walked earth.

They're flourishing at noon.

They don't go extinct

until five in the afternoon.

Time passes.

The first modern man

finally appears

a minute and a half

before midnight.

All of our recorded history

takes three and a half seconds

In the Gobi, time seems to

have stood still.

The Gobi is such a big place

and it basically has no life

support system.

We really have to bring

everything with us.

So all our food,

all our fuel

which we're carrying in

a fuel tanker,

all our supplies

have to be treated like we're

actually exploring

a polar region.

In such a vast area,

success is never certain.

Even getting there

can be a nightmare.

Roy Chapman Andrews

thought he'd solved

the problem in the '20s,

with a new piece of

technology.

When it was announced

that we were to attempt

a scientific exploration

of the Gobi Desert

with a fleet of motor cars,

men said that

we were little less than fools.

Only camels had been used

in that country.

We had 40 men,

eight motor cars

and 150 camels

to carry supplies.

It was the biggest land

scientific expedition

ever to leave

the United States.

Roy Chapman Andrews.

From China,

Andrews headed northwest.

He left Peking,

then crossed over the border

and drove deep into

the parched heart

of outer Mongolia.

Mongolia, a land of painted

deserts dancing in mirage.

Mongolia, a land of mystery,

of paradox and promise!

A thirsty land.

A land of desolation!

Gazelles, wild asses,

and wolves ranged

the marching sands.

Few explorers had been there

and they brought back tales

of thirst, cold, and hunger.

But Andrews found

one more thing... mud.

Our average speed was

only four miles an hour.

Rocks, ravines, washouts,

and ditches

followed one another

in rapid succession.

One might imagine that the

roads have gotten better.

They have not.

And even modern jeeps

aren't built

for a desert like the Gobi.

We have an electrical problem

and we don't know what it is.

It's not a very complicated

wiring plan.

It's a Russian jeep.

It's not like a Japanese

or an American car.

They're up and running.

But next,

it's a truck's turn.

Piston, huh?

We think it's piston

number six.

A critical breakdown could

have severe consequences.

End of the expedition,

if not the end of our lives.

Maybe we'll make it.

Oh, God.

With the nearest gas station

some 500 miles away,

and time already

getting tight,

things will have to go

smoothly from now on.

Oh, we're having

some mechanical problems.

We think it's a fuel pump.

But we're not sure.

This could be way bad.

Seems to me I got this thing

in there

without doing

the twisty deal.

Maybe we'll tow it

or abandon it.

Abandon it.

Get on with it.

We can't stay here

more than a day.

After more than

the vehicles all decide to

run at the same time.

As they enter the dusty

dinosaur fields of the Gobi,

they're traveling a long way

backwards in time.

Dinosaurs first appeared

some 230 million years ago,

in a world

with a different face.

The creatures were thriving

as South America

and Africa split apart.

About 75 million years ago,

in the late Cretaceous period,

dinosaurs began to disappear...

leaving only bones behind.

Their bones were more

motionless than the continents

Then in the 1920s,

Roy Chapman Andrews

came to a remote place

in the Gobi Desert

he would name

the Flaming Cliffs.

It was a likely-

looking place.

There appear to be medieval

castles with spires and turrets

brick-red in

the evening light,

colossal gateways,

walls and ramparts.

A labyrinth of ravines

and gorges studded

with fossil bones

make a paradise

for the paleontologist.

Without a doubt

there were hundreds of bones

lying just beneath

the surface.

But where?

If only my eyes

could pierce that

baffling surface

and get a glimpse

of what lay concealed!

Within minutes,

they were finding fossils.

Andrews and his team

had stumbled onto the mother

lode of dinosaur bones.

They discovered the remains of

some 200 different animals,

many of them completely

new species.

The fossils revealed a world

that Andrews found alien

and terrifying.

Dinosaurs were

the sort of creatures

you might think of as

inhabiting another planet

or the kind you dream of

in a bad nightmare.

It was an image our culture

nourished for generations.

Dinosaurs were fierce,

monstrous...

and not all that bright.

Many of the new ideas

about dinosaurs

are coming from the amazing

boneyard called Ukhaa Tolgod.

The team discovered the site

three years ago.

Now, to get to the dinosaurs,

all they have to do...

is find it again.

The maps in general are pretty

lousy for the Gobi Desert.

The towns on those maps

are myths in many cases.

We don't even pay

any attention to

any of the roads

marked on those maps.

They're completely wrong.

Even a satellite tracking

system doesn't always help.

So the satellite

may know where you are

but the road you need

may be in a

completely

different direction

so the roads here are

very confusing.

There are no signs and many

of them lead nowhere.

We're gonna go like this.

We're a little off course.

We're not really lost.

We're just a bit off course.

So we've gotta go

this-away and that-away.

At times, you have to go in

circles to move forward.

Roy Chapman Andrews too spent

more than a few days

wandering the Gobi.

But in the end,

he blundered into a discovery

that stunned the world.

A member of his expedition

literally stumbled across

a critical link in the great

chain of being.

On July 13,

George Olsen reported

that he had found

some fossil eggs.

We did not take

his story very seriously.

Nevertheless,

we were all curious enough

to go with him

to inspect his find.

There could be no mistake.

Our paleontologist

finally said,

"Gentlemen,

there is no doubt about it.

You are looking at the first

dinosaur egg ever found."

The discovery made Roy Chapman

Andrews a national hero.

But the eggs were not alone.

Lying above the nest

was a bizarre skeleton -

a bird-like dinosaur

unknown to man.

It had apparently been

caught in the act of m*rder -

stealing the eggs.

So it was forever cursed

with the name Oviraptor -

Latin for "egg thief."

It would be years

before we discovered

the strange truth

about the animal called

Oviraptor.

In the late '20s,

the winds of change

blew fiercely over

the great dinosaur

fields of Mongolia.

That's when

Roy Chapman Andrews

was forced to leave

the Gobi forever.

We are more than ever convinced

that Central Asia

was a paleontology

Garden of Eden.

Still, we have shown the way,

have broken trail as it were.

Later, others will reap

a rich harvest.

Decades later,

Mark and Mike are

hoping to find

the treasures that Andrews

left untouched in the sand.

After more than a week

in the blistering Gobi,

they finally reach their goal:

the brown hills of Ukhaa Tolgod

With all the delays,

they've only got

two weeks to work.

This is the place

where they've pinned

all their hopes.

With luck,

a year of shifting sands has

exposed more bones.

But even here,

there are no guarantees.

It is possible to fail

in the Gobi.

It's a huge area,

a huge tract of land,

there are lots of rocks.

But they don't all

contain fossils.

You can drive to

what looks like the most

tantalizing set of badlands

you could possibly imagine

and not find one

scrap of bone.

It's a treasure hunt in a way

and it is sort of like finding

a needle in a haystack.

But on this day,

Discovery

and elation are immediate.

Oh, I see it.

Oh, wonderful.

Jeez.

That's nice.

Back to lizard

The side of a skull here.

The teeth sticking out.

You can see these teeth,

yeah.

Each one of these is a socket

for a tooth.

Pretty big.

This is a hand claw.

Has this big thing

right here on it...

it's the hand of an Oviraptor.

About medium size.

They've hit the jackpot:

among their first finds

are Oviraptors -

the creature Andrews knew as

"egg thief."

Considering that the Oviraptor

is one of the rarest dinosaurs

in the world and there's

only been a handful

of specimens found before

we discovered this place

where we've found 25.

I mean,

today we found at least five

just in the first 20 minutes.

This is really not

what paleontology is like,

most of the time.

You don't go finding 12

skeletons in a half an hour.

There's another

one right there, too.

Yup.

Each one of these

little mounds of little white flecks sticking out...

that's the eroded rubble of

parts of big dinosaur skeletons

One, two, three, four

four skeletons right here.

This is going to be

a really good specimen.

This is part of

a shoulder right here.

Let me see.

This looks,

is looking like a tail.

That's the tail and part of

the pelvic girdle here

and the tail sh**ting

straight out.

This is nice.

I mean, what we're seeing

here is just awful.

I mean,

all these poor dinosaurs

and other creatures...

mammals and vertebrates -

buried alive possibly

and skeletons littering

the surface like some

b*ttlefield.

But it's great for us

'cause we thrive on carnage.

We don't have enough tape.

We oughta count

everything here.

Once, scores of dinosaurs

walked the sands

of Ukhaa Tolgod

moving toward a tragic destiny.

I think this was an oasis

Huge numbers of dinosaurs

and other vertebrates

congregating around

maybe some water.

And on occasions,

not just one event

but on several occasions,

these animals were buried

in these sands.

We'd have to imagine

an enormous sandstorm,

an enormous force

bearing down

on these creatures

for such a disaster.

Some of the dinosaurs almost

look like they're trying

to swim to the surface,

much like a skier

in an avalanche caught,

in some cases,

in their struggle

to get out of this

sand avalanche,

or great wall of sand,

that engulfed them.

Perhaps

they suffocated in the sand.

Hey, I just swept there.

You've made it

all dirty again.

I take pride in my work.

Next year we'll bring some

dust busters.

The prehistoric sandstorms

buried dinosaurs

at every stage of life.

And on their first

expedition here,

Mark and Mike made an

unprecedented discovery:

A nest with eggs and inside

one was an embryo -

the embryo of an Oviraptor,

like a dinosaur

on the half shell.

Here was the vicious

carnivore, the "egg thief,"

just a tiny baby

about to hatch.

It was an important discovery -

a secret moment

in the very beginning

of this strange

dinosaur's life.

This year,

they're hoping to

find out more

about the Oviraptor

and its fate.

There's growing excitement

on the far side of the ridge.

They think they've found

a completely

new kind of dinosaur,

a relative of the Oviraptor,

and it may shed light on

what ultimately happened to

the dinosaurs.

We have no idea what this is.

It's a really big animal.

It might be something new.

This specimen

has a lot of important

implications that go beyond

just being a really

beautiful object.

So it's exactly

what we wanted to find...

we hope.

The skeleton is

what's important.

Mark and Mike believe that

these bones may help prove

an exciting theory -

that some dinosaurs

actually evolved.

They evolved into creatures

that are still alive today.

The bones tell the story.

There are uncanny similarities

in the skeletons of

certain dinosaurs -

like these and modern birds.

Almost without doubt,

they shared

a close common ancestor.

And each new find

may help prove

that dinosaurs

did not really go extinct,

that birds, in fact,

are dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs need to be thought

of as incredibly

successful animals

that exist with us today.

We just call them birds.

Our skies are filled

with dinosaurs.

It's a bad metaphor

to use to call something

like dinosaur-like,

you know... just

because it's old,

obsolete, ugly,

stupid, and slow.

I mean, that's not what these

animals are all about.

I mean, it's like the swifts

flying around here and things

I mean,

they're a type of dinosaur.

And that they're

still with us now.

And the closest relative

to birds

is these small carnivorous

dinosaurs

we've collected

in these red rocks.

At day's end, hopes are

high that this new find

will help connect the dots

between dinosaurs and birds.

The feeling of anticipation

is palpable,

if not always exactly in key.

First thing in the morning,

they're back at the site.

So, we hope we got something

we can identify eventually.

Mike, work on that.

k*ll that beetle,

while you're at it.

As they pry the rock open,

they sense trouble.

Look at that.

Yeah.

I don't know what that is.

Bunch of... maybe.

I'm afraid to say.

Could it be a theropod,

maybe?

No.

Well, it could be, but...

It's not known to science.

I think what we're lookin' at

is that there's a dead

theropod right there.

It's gone and we're

excavating an ankylosaur.

And the ankylosaurs

are among the most common

dinosaurs around.

It's not a

new dinosaur at all.

It's not even

related to birds.

I'm sure that

this is an ankylosaur.

You want us to just go away?

What they want to do now

is give up.

Today, the dinosaur hunters

have tracked down

approximately zilch.

Well, you win

a few and you lose a few.

That's just...

I don't feel too good right now

I'm tired.

They've spent

two fruitless days

working in the

blistering heat.

But tomorrow will

be another day -

with any luck, a better one.

Instead, nature decides

to add insult to injury.

As Mongolian would say,

"Ich boro." It's raining.

Sounds like I'm bored.

Yeah,

it sounds like I'm bored.

The sun burns off

the disappointment.

It's a new day and a new dig.

This find is not

a new species.

It's not related to birds.

And it's not an Oviraptor.

But it probably was

the Oviraptor's prey.

It's an animal called

Protoceratops.

They called these guys

the cows of the Cretaceous.

They were sort of everywhere.

They roamed around,

they think,

maybe in herds.

It's full of spikes.

We actually call it Spikey

now.

We've sort of bonded

with this one.

These are the eyes

and the snout.

So we're looking at

the skull from the top.

These are... cheek spikes

and the frill covering

the neck here.

Protoceratops was a bizarre

dinosaur,

a hog-sized animal

with a beak like a parrot's,

a strict vegetarian

that grazed the ancient Gobi.

Around its head was

an elaborate shield,

but the shield didn't protect

it from its enemies.

Enemies like the Oviraptor.

And that's exactly

what the team digs up next...

Oviraptors.

A pair of them

lying so close together

they seem to describe

an ancient romance.

Yeah,

we're kind of fond of them.

We're trying to figure out

what names to give them.

Ozzie and Harriet.

Romeo and Juliet.

Batman and Robin.

Well, we have a hypothesis

they were holding hands

and they were sort of

reaching for each other

across the miles.

The star-crossed Oviraptors

are given the permanent

nicknames of Romeo and Juliet.

We have one hand

just down here.

This is the other one.

Christa now is gluing

another hand.

And this is, of course,

the neck coming up

and the head and the hip bone.

And over here we have a claw.

It's a long hard process

to excavate the past.

But they've done it before.

Over the last few years,

they've uncovered a world

of almost preposterous beings.

Some are related to birds.

Others are even

related to us.

Our tiny ancestors -

mammals that lived

alongside the Oviraptors.

Most of these mammals

were small,

like early mice and shrews.

But these insignificant

creatures

gradually evolved

into all the mammals

of our world - the cats,

the aardvarks,

the whales

and even human beings.

But sometimes evolution...

has to take a back seat

to hygiene.

We don't have much water here,

so it's kind of hard to

get things clean.

I thought

I packed more shorts.

For some reason, I messed up.

I've got these on delicate.

Yeah, personal grooming is

a passion of the camp here.

The team spends a lot of time

making sure

that they're groomed,

looking their best

at all times,

because you never know.

There may be some

formal affairs

in a nearby village that

you might need to attend.

There are only

a few days left.

It's time for the second

act of Romeo and Juliet:

the Oviraptors await

a sheltering shroud

of rags and plaster.

They're now

in the skillful hands

of preparator Amy Davidson.

I love skeletons.

I actually never was that

into dinosaurs as a kid,

but I've always loved bones.

And I have a background

as a sculptor

and I've always admired

the skeleton that

we all have inside us.

It's some of the most

beautiful sculpture on earth.

And these fossil skeletons

look almost as well preserved

as yesterday's camel skeleton

But they are a dinosaur.

These fossils are forever.

It almost lasted forever.

For 80 million years,

Romeo and Juliet lay together

reaching toward

each other in death.

What were they like in life?

Did they hunt together?

Share food with each other?

Fight with each other?

Or was this love

among the Oviraptors?

Scientists may never know

for certain

if the bird-like Oviraptors

fell in love.

But now there's a new find

that digs even deeper

into the private lives of

the dinosaurs -

a place paleontologists

usually enter

only in their best dreams.

Oh, yeah, it's farther down.

They've discovered

another Oviraptor.

And then, in the dirt below

the skeleton... eggs,

an entire nest.

How many eggs now revealed?

Uh, one, two, three, four,

five, six, seven, eight, nine.

And then three

over there... twelve.

Twelve eggs. All right.

Another one

coming out right here.

It's really

a great fossil find

because it's one of

the rare instances

where we can capture

a little bit of behavior

that's 80 million years old.

Here we have

a sort of day in the life

of or the death of a creature

of a dinosaur...

in association with something

it did during its life.

This one was fossilized where

it dropped and

it happened to drop right

on top of its own nest.

She didn't just drop there.

The good mother Oviraptor

was sitting on the nest.

They probably brought food

to their nest, as birds do.

And the good mother

tended her eggs.

Like a bird,

she prodded them into a circle

The fearsome carnivore

of the Gobi was parenting.

So the story of the dinosaur

named "egg thief"

has finally come full circle.

The Oviraptors

watched over their eggs

and took care of the nest.

Now, they will never be seen

as simply nightmare

creatures again.

The dig has been everything

the team could hope for.

But to see what

they've really got,

they have to get

all the fossils safely

out of the ground,

and then take them

on a trip exactly

halfway around the world.

She bathed in plaster,

Romeo and Juliet are now heavy

but dangerously delicate... like Rice Krispies

wrapped in concrete.

No, no.

That way.

Okay, okay.

Sorry.

I thought you were going to

push backwards.

Perfect.

It's beautiful, Amy.

More, more, more, more, more.

It's beautiful.

More, more, more, more.

Okay.

Nothing came out.

All right, Amy.

So far, so good.

Now they have to convince

the good mother Oviraptor

to come down from her

hillside perch.

It's like moving

a grand piano off a cliff.

Romeo and Juliet

prove just as stubborn.

I'm happy.

Just drive slowly, please?

It's not there yet.

It could get lost in the mail.

They do get lost in the mail.

The good mother Oviraptor

and Romeo and Juliet

are trucked east.

And then, they disappear...

lost, somewhere in China.

After four months bound up

in Chinese red tape,

the dinosaur fossils

finally make it

to their destination...

the American Museum of

Natural History in New York.

The first arrival is Juliet.

She's headed for Amy's lab,

where, if all goes well,

they'll find out

what ancient secrets

lie beneath the recent coat

of plaster.

I'm really glad this is here.

This is great

From the summer in the Gobi to

the winter in New York City.

Juliet is now a seasoned

world traveler.

After 80 million

years of repose

She, s the new kid

on the block.

There's a lot of questions

at this point.

There could be

anything in here.

I have a feeling

that this one's going

to be a nice skeleton -

this is my guess -

a nice skeleton,

hopefully with a skull,

all laid out.

It's pretty fun.

And it's all mine.

It's a tricky business...

millimeters

make all the difference.

Yeah, this is good.

I'm really glad

I didn't saw through a bone

in the process.

It's weird.

It's just opening

this little window

into this world I was living

last summer.

Yeah, this looks good.

After all this work,

they still don't know

if Juliet is an

important specimen,

whether her skeleton is

perfect or a total ruin.

This is great.

I'm really psyched,

'cause this is the skull.

It does have a skull.

We're really, really happy.

I like, you know,

working late at night.

It's really hard to

go home because...

I just look at it and say,

"I can't believe this."

It's traveled

and halfway around the world

and it's sitting here

and, you know,

it's a dinosaur.

Working late?

Yeah.

And it's so beautiful.

The more I work on it,

the more you see

this natural sculpture.

My work just sort

of disappears

and this beautiful thing

comes out of the rock.

The process takes weeks.

Finally, Juliet is revealed

in all her splendor.

She's everything

they've been hoping for,

perhaps the most perfect

specimen ever found -

a dinosaur for the ages.

It's a beautiful fossil.

In fact, I mean,

that I think that

this is probably

the best prepared

and the best preserved

Oviraptor that's

yet been worked on from

our expedition -

or even anywhere in the world

I think we're going to

have the,

to be able to relish

in the fruits

of last summer

for many years to come.

It makes you wonder

what's still out there.

She's more than a pretty face

These bones

will help us trace

the evolution of dinosaurs

into birds.

Meanwhile,

Juliet makes a scientist dream

about the world

she left behind.

I think what fascinates me is

the broad picture.

What was it like

if you were flying in a little

Piper Cub over that area,

like some of the bush pilots

do over the Serengeti?

What would it look like then -

all those dinosaurs and the

mammals and the lizards...

and the Gobi?

After six long summers,

Mark and Mike have uncovered

the hidden secrets

of the Gobi... making Juliet's

world feel almost real.

You could picture a lake

perhaps and some cliffs

and a bunch of Oviraptors

on a cliff

like a colony of seabirds,

perhaps.

And a bunch of these

t*nk like ankylosaurs

lumbering around

near the pond

and perhaps

a herd of Protoceratops

wandering through.

And every once in a while

a vicious Velociraptor

coming over the hill

to nab something.

And we can imagine

the Oviraptors:

Romeo and Juliet,

hunting together,

and the good mother,

minding her eggs.

Unnoticed in its

low station

is our own ancestor,

a tiny tense creature

lost among

the powerful beings

of the ancient Gobi.

In the end,

they would all disappear

from the face of the earth -

along with most of the

creatures of their world.

From our perspective,

of course,

this mass extinction event

is not a big problem

because we're part of

the group

that survived

and started evolving into bats

and large hoofed animals and

lions and tigers and bears...

and ultimately humans.

Ultimately, humans,

like the Oviraptors,

and most of

the dinosaur kingdom,

may not be able to count on

permanent residence on earth.

Every species that's

ever lived

Has become extinct

or will become extinct.

And whether extinction

is due to

the total decimation

of our population

or whether it's due to

the evolution of

that species into

another species,

nevertheless, everybody

becomes extinct eventually.

So in that view,

we've had it.

Some species lived

and then d*ed out:

a story like any other story.

Others evolved,

changed and lived on.

So perhaps a message about

our own future

is encoded in these silent

remnants of the past.

The only real knowledge

we have of our distant

biological past

is from the fossil record.

And it gives us

a sense of who we are

and where we sit in the world

and what that world

might become.

Time is the hardest

rock to pierce,

and the story of life,

with its infinite changes,

is the greatest mystery

we have.

But the expedition

has been blessed with luck.

They've gazed into the past

and brought the violent

and tender world

of the Oviraptor

that much closer to our own.