Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia Page #3

Size has its advantages.

The highest branches belong

to those who can reach them,

and many predators are too small

to be threatening in those situation.

Strong One is now about ten years old.

He has reached the

length of 60 feet, half its adult size.

Rapid growth will give him

the protection of size early in life.

If a single Argentinosaurus

is hard to attack,

a herd of Argentinosaurus

is even more so.

And such a herd have to move

constantly, because it eats a lot,

and have to find new

or regrown food sources.

Long Tooth has reached a

quarter of her adult size.

She is growing fast too.

Her primitive feathers

have almost all disappeared.

She has been feeding on

just about any small animal

and even some vegetation

during the first part of her life.

Her genes will eventually

command her to eat only meat.

The dinosaurs couldn't learn much,

but they had the brains they need.

They thrived for 180 million years.

So it's likely their brain didn't need

to be that large to adapt to survive.

This is a message for us here.

By the way, it is more than

time to introduce Sharp Feathers.

He is Unenlagia, a 6 foot,

50 pound male raptor.

He is related to birds,

as are to some extent Velociraptors,

Giganotosaurus and Tyrannosaurus.

Unenlagias had feathers,

but didn't fly.

Big dinosaurs need space.

This is the Carmen Funes Museum,

which also happens to be my second home.

We still know so little about dinosaurs.

Palaeontology is just beginning

to discover the universe.

Sometimes as a joke we say

that it is a science filled with holes.

We have only found about 700 species

of dinosaurs on the whole planet.

This isn't many for a reign

that lasted 180 million years.

Ten percent of these dinosaurs

were found in Argentina,

most of them

in the last 30 years.

Through technology our

knowledge grows faster every day.

But dinosaurs are only found by

people who are working there.

Fossilisation is a process that

requires extremely rare conditions,

and even then very little

of an organism is preserved.

We could easily conclude that

a tremendous number of species

just disappeared without a trace.

Because there is so much is missing,

your imagination can really run wild.

Of course, science fiction can be fun,

but you also need to be

very careful before proposing

a new way of

looking at dinosaurs.

Like so many of my colleagues,

I wish I could travel in time

to see these amazing creatures alive.

Strong One has reached maturity.

For many scientists he is at full size.

He is 20-year-old,

and is at the beginning

of more than a century of life.

Other scientists believe that

he will keep on growing all of his live,

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