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00:00Life began here in Britain more than a billion years ago, and when dinosaurs and other strange
00:11creatures roamed our land, they left fascinating clues behind.
00:17The fossil detectives are on the trail of that evidence throughout the British Isles.
00:23Fossils hold the key to discovering the secrets of ancient life and allow us a tantalising
00:28glimpse of our prehistoric past.
00:31Mountains the size of Everest have come and gone, and the evidence is all here in the
00:38rocks, in the landscape and in the fossils buried deep inside.
00:43We're on a mission to find and analyse that evidence, to unlock the secrets of the past
00:48and discover lost worlds.
00:50So get ready for some time travel with the fossil detectives.
00:58Our journey starts in central England, home to a number of extremely rare and globally
01:26significant fossil discoveries, and some of the world's most advanced fossil science.
01:33We'll meet a monster from the past and investigate T-Rex in Oxford, see extraordinary evidence
01:40of the world's smallest fossilised... well, you'll have to watch to find out, hear from
01:46Sir David Attenborough about his early fossil detecting days in Leicestershire, and hunt
01:52for fossilised bugs in a housing estate.
02:05There are some extraordinary fossil stories in central England.
02:10Some you can go and find yourself, others are being uncovered by pioneering scientists.
02:18While others have their scientific roots in the past.
02:25The Victorians have left us enduring legacies in all manner of areas, everything from industry
02:31and technology to art and literature.
02:35And in the world of paleontology, their legacy is part of an ongoing fossil detective story
02:41that's happening right here today.
02:43A hidden treasure could be lurking beneath these fields.
02:51It's possible this could be the long-lost location of one of Britain's most famous fossil
02:56discoveries.
02:57More than 150 years ago, fossil hunters came across something so unusual and so special
03:07but almost lost it to science forever... until now.
03:16The location of the site, excavated all those years ago, became overgrown and somehow forgotten.
03:24But Dr Phil Wilby and his team from the British Geological Survey want to solve this mystery.
03:31The exact location must remain a secret, but they've invited me to see what's been discovered
03:36so far.
03:37Hi Phil.
03:38Oh, hello there.
03:39How are you?
03:40Very well, thank you.
03:41Nice to meet you.
03:42Welcome to the site.
03:44So how's it all going?
03:45Really well, actually.
03:46We've found everything we were expecting to find, some absolutely fantastic stuff, much
03:51the same as from the original excavation here, but we've also found some additional stuff
03:55as well.
03:56One of the most common things are ammonites.
03:58They're very, very common here.
03:59Virtually every slab you spit will have one of these preserved on it.
04:03Other things that we've found have been things like this here.
04:07This is actually the ink sac of one of the squid, which is incredible.
04:11If you think about getting a modern squid and chucking it in a bucket of water, the
04:15ink sac will break up and break down within a matter of days, and yet here it's preserved
04:19three-dimensionally.
04:20If you were to take a piece of this ink sac away and grind it up with water, you can still
04:24use it to write.
04:25The ink still actually works as ink, which is amazing for a fossil which is perhaps 165
04:31million years old.
04:32It's incredible.
04:34Some of the other things that we've been finding are specimens like this, and it's a terribly
04:38ugly specimen, but this is one of the most important specimens we've found.
04:42It's a part of a fish, and you can see little bits of the bone and scales preserved here,
04:48but it's concealed by all of this white material, and that white material is the fossilised
04:53muscle of the actual fish.
04:56That's what you don't find at other sites?
04:57That's what you only find at one or two sites around the world.
05:03The exceptional preservation you find at this site has been called the Medusa effect, because
05:11amazingly even the soft parts of the animals have been rapidly turned to stone in meticulous
05:18detail.
05:21Fossils are any evidence of ancient life which have been naturally preserved.
05:26It seems as if in this case, bacteria are responsible for this exceptional preservation.
05:35Excess phosphate in the water or in the animal's carcass stimulates the bacteria to produce
05:40phosphate minerals.
05:43It's these minerals which harden the tissues into stone.
05:52The team are hoping to understand why this kind of exceptional preservation happens.
06:00And for that, they need to prepare the fossils up at the lab in Nottingham.
06:13It's now six weeks since the excavation.
06:18The animals' methods are very different from the way scientists worked in the 19th century.
06:25So what are we looking at here on the table?
06:27Well, what we have here is a selection of some of the original specimens that were collected
06:31by the Victorians.
06:32Oh, right.
06:34This is a fossilised squid collected from the excavation site 150 years ago.
06:40You can see its ink sac, arms and head.
06:44These fish are so detailed you can even see the individual vertebrae.
06:49Part of the problem with the material collected during the Victorian era is that they've done
06:54so much preparation to it.
06:55They've actually scraped away all of the fossils that were associated with it.
06:58So we don't know what was actually living with these fish at the same time.
07:04These Victorian specimens are beautiful to look at but have limited scientific value.
07:11Scientists back then removed other fossils found on the same slabs to make them prettier.
07:17Not only that, but the remaining fossils were coated in a kind of varnish or resin.
07:23Scientists today have a rigorous forensic approach,
07:27which ensures as much information as possible can be detected.
07:32This actually is one of the best specimens that we've found.
07:35It's exactly the same species as these fish here.
07:38But why it's important for us is because it has all of this white material preserved.
07:42And that is all of the soft parts, the muscle, the gut, the gills, all of that is fossilised.
07:47If we were to take, say, one of these little bits of muscle associated with this fish
07:51and to put it on the high-powered scanning electron microscope,
07:54we could zoom in to very, very fine detail, to a thousandth of a millimetre.
07:58You could see individual muscle fibres, just like when you buy fish and chips at the chip shop
08:03and you break your cod up, you can see the muscle fibres breaking up.
08:06All of that is preserved in these Jurassic fossils here.
08:09The reason for looking at specimens like this fish
08:12is to understand the process by which they became fossilised.
08:16So I know you've got many months to go on this project,
08:20but if you could achieve that aim, would that be a significant milestone in paleontology?
08:25It would. It would allow us to interpret fossils for which we can't interpret at the moment
08:30in a much more sensible way.
08:33There's still a long way to go, but the work Phil and his team are doing
08:38could transform our understanding of these creatures.
08:48Fossils hold a magical fascination for so many of us.
08:53It's not just scientists who have been seduced by them through the ages.
08:58They have captured the imagination of authors and artists too.
09:04A dinosaur called a megalosaurus proved to be an inspiration to none other than Charles Dickens.
09:14So much so that he incorporated it into the first paragraph of his masterpiece, Bleak House.
09:22London, Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
09:28Implacable November weather, as much mud in the streets
09:33as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth.
09:37And it would not be wonderful to meet a megalosaurus, 40 feet long or so,
09:42waddling like an elephantine lizard up Hoban Hill.
09:46But in Oxford, whether it's term time or not, come rain or shine,
09:50you really can meet a megalosaurus and all sorts of other prehistoric monsters.
10:21And here it is, the megalosaurus that inspired Charles Dickens.
10:27The world's first ever scientifically identified dinosaur.
10:33It was found in Oxfordshire in the 1800s.
10:37Identified as a giant lizard-like creature,
10:40fossil hunters back then estimated it would have been 12 metres long.
10:45One of the founders of paleontology, William Buckland,
10:49added it to his collection and named it Megalosaurus.
10:55Phil Manning is a modern-day dinosaur hunter.
10:58Buckland had a few more bones to go on, though, didn't he?
11:01Yeah, but he didn't have a complete animal.
11:03Here you can see he's just got the hips, the right leg and a bit of skull.
11:07It really is hard painting a picture of what the animal would have looked like
11:11And, of course, our view of this animal has changed a great deal now.
11:15If we start with the tip of the nose of the animal,
11:17working our way back through what are very narrow jaws,
11:20backwardly curved serrated teeth, typical of a predatory dinosaur,
11:24up to a really muscular neck, a bulldog-shaped neck,
11:28quite a big torso, actually.
11:30And, of course, if we start with the tip of the nose,
11:32working our way back through what are very narrow jaws,
11:35backwardly curved serrated teeth, typical of a predatory dinosaur,
11:38up to a really muscular neck, quite a big torso, actually,
11:41but very small forearms, quite unusual looking,
11:44but big, powerful hind legs and a big backside.
11:48And on the back of that backside, a very long, tapering tail,
11:52a typical predatory dinosaur.
11:56Why is it that people talk of Megalosaurus as the first discovered dinosaur
12:01when, presumably, for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years,
12:04people must have been digging up bits of dinosaur bone?
12:07These were interpreted with myth and legend.
12:09The Victorians brought order from the chaos of this
12:12to reconstruct these animals and bring them back to life using science.
12:15Well, here, Phil, we have arguably the world's most famous dinosaur,
12:20Tyrannosaurus rex, towering above us.
12:23How would T. rex have compared to Megalosaurus?
12:26Well, at a distance, you could be forgiven for mistaking one for the other
12:29because they look pretty much the same, but get close up
12:32and there are subtle differences.
12:34One, this is much bigger, at 12 metres long,
12:37whereas Megalosaurus is only 9 metres long.
12:39Megalosaurus, quite skinny, this is a heavyweight boxer.
12:42There's at least 100 million years between Megalosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.
12:46Now, we are closer to T. rex than Megalosaurus was
12:49because it's only 65 billion years for us to travel to meet T. rex.
12:52So there's no chance that Tyrannosaurus and Megalosaurus would ever have met then?
12:56Absolutely none whatsoever.
13:05Imagine a time when Britain was covered in boiling volcanoes.
13:12Molten lava poured out across the land
13:16and scorching hot ash erupted high up into the sky.
13:23It's hard to imagine just how different Britain would have looked back then.
13:27Instead of these gently rolling hills and rivers and valleys that we've got here today,
13:33there have been times in the past when giant glaciers crushed this countryside,
13:38when scorching hot deserts stretched out far into the horizon
13:42and when volcanoes made their own dramatic contribution to the landscape.
13:52425 million years ago, during what's known as the Silurian,
13:57a massive volcano erupted.
14:01No one knows precisely where it was,
14:04but the evidence of its eruption can be found today.
14:10Some of its ash ended up being deposited into the sea,
14:14smothering creatures in its wake.
14:20When ash settles, it can create the perfect environment for preservation.
14:26Some of the most exquisitely preserved fossils in the world
14:29have been mineralised in clay that was once volcanic ash.
14:34Remarkably, these fossils can be found in Britain today,
14:38but they are mostly microscopic in size,
14:41so to see just how amazing they are, some high-tech detective work is called for.
14:49Here in Oxford, a research team has been applying cutting-edge techniques
14:53to analyse these micro-fossils.
14:59Based at the Oxford University Museum,
15:02Derek Sibita is a key member of the team.
15:05What have we actually got here?
15:07Well, we've got some of the most amazing fossils
15:09that have been discovered anywhere on the globe in the last 20 years.
15:12Really? In this funny-looking potato thing?
15:14Well, yes, really.
15:16I can't quite believe that this has got anything to do with what we're seeing on the screen.
15:20Well, the fossils which you see in the nodules
15:23are transformed by the process of computer rendering
15:27to give the type of fossil here which you see on screen.
15:30And what you've got here is a sea spider.
15:33We can make it turn around so we can see the different parts of the morphology.
15:37And this sea spider is very similar to the sea spiders which you find present day.
15:42And how big is that creature, that sea spider?
15:45From here to here, it's about four millimetres.
15:49And all that detail in four millimetres is preserved inside one of these nodules?
15:54Yes, and much more because when you increase the magnification,
15:59you can see here on this purple-coloured nose-like feature the mouth.
16:05So that's the mouth of the sea spider.
16:08They're as rare as hen's teeth.
16:10You find them in about two or three localities anywhere in the world.
16:15And this, I think it's fair to say, is the best preserved of any of them.
16:22They are preserved in calcite, a form of calcium carbonate.
16:29How significant is this find?
16:31It's very significant because what these animals are providing us with
16:35are unique insights into evolution.
16:38They're throwing up particularly a combination of features
16:43which have been lost during the evolutionary process.
16:46And by analysing these features, we can get a much better understanding
16:50of ancient pathways, ancient lines of descent.
16:55Our work has hit the popular press and indeed the broadsheets,
16:59but the thing we're most proud of is page 41 in the Sun.
17:02Old todger, great headline there.
17:05But what was the story though?
17:07Well, this is a small microfossil.
17:09It belongs to that very important invertebrate group called the arthropods.
17:13It's related to crabs, to shrimps, to lobsters, scorpions, that sort of thing.
17:18But the reason the Sun got it was because it preserves
17:22the oldest male organ anywhere on the planet.
17:25Fantastic. In perfect 3D preservation.
17:28In perfect 3D preservation. In fact, it's probably fit for action.
17:33And it's not just this creature that was particularly tiny.
17:37All of these fossils are pretty small.
17:40They vary in size from less than a millimetre to about 5 centimetres.
17:49The images you see on the screen are models constructed from virtual dissections,
17:54a pioneering way of analysing microfossils.
17:58We take the fossil, we cut it into a very small block,
18:01and we grind it away, a very thin slice at a time.
18:04We take a photo and we do it again and again and again,
18:07until at the end, of course, the fossil's gone,
18:09but the data is captured on a computer.
18:11We get a data set like this.
18:13Mark Sutton grinds down the fossils in successive stages.
18:17Although the fossils are destroyed through this method,
18:21he creates a kind of dissection with a rewinding mechanism.
18:25He creates a kind of dissection with a rewind button.
18:29You can see incredible levels of detail.
18:32We've come up with a process that's actually producing
18:35a very powerful way of working with fossils
18:37and something that's in a lot of ways better than having the real fossil in front of you.
18:40We can do things with this material that we couldn't do in any other way
18:43and it's providing just a very important new way of working for paleontologists.
18:56Paleontology can be high-tech, cutting-edge science.
19:01The study of fossils connects us to past worlds,
19:05worlds we could never otherwise experience.
19:09Fossil hunting is all about making that connection,
19:13but it doesn't always have to be sophisticated work in laboratories.
19:17Sometimes it's just about getting a feel for it.
19:21Here in the West Midlands is one of Britain's best geological reserves.
19:26It's in a housing estate in Dudley.
19:34More than 700 different types of fossils have been found here at the Wren's Nest Reserve.
19:42Dudley is home to the oldest fossil in the world.
19:47Dudley is famous for its association with trilobites, a kind of primitive bug.
19:52Trilobite fossils are so common round here that they even became the town symbol, the Dudley bug.
19:58Now this specimen, which I've borrowed from the local museum,
20:02dates from about 420 million years ago
20:05and it's just one of many different species that have been found here.
20:09Trilobites varied greatly in size,
20:13Trilobites varied greatly in size and shape,
20:17but they all had three lobes running up and down their legs,
20:22which gave them their name, trilobites.
20:25They were also divided across into a head shield, a trunk and a tailpiece.
20:33One young boy who used to go fossil hunting here in central England
20:38grew up to become Britain's most famous naturalist, Sir David Attenborough.
20:45Here at home, his lifelong fascination with fossils is unmistakable.
20:52I really want to know about your early passion for fossils
20:56because I know that they're something that you've been interested in since you were a young boy.
21:00My family lived in Leicester and the eastern side of Leicester is on the Jurassic
21:06and so it's full of ammonites and benaminites and brachiopods of various kinds
21:12and they're remarkable things, aren't they?
21:15I remember finding them in the gravel on our drive.
21:19Right.
21:20And you go to someone and say, what's that?
21:22And they say, it's 35 million years old.
21:25You know, that's pretty exciting.
21:27And also being able to hit rocks and they fall open and there's a beautiful ammonite
21:31and your eyes are the first ever to see them.
21:33I can't believe that anybody wouldn't get excited by that.
21:37So on those early trips I read that you used to cycle out from your house
21:41and be gone for hours collecting fossils by the ton.
21:44Can you remember where you went?
21:46Oh yeah, absolutely, I can do that now.
21:48Except I suppose the whole Leicester show has changed.
21:51But I remember being terribly excited when I discovered an ammonite that was called Tiltinoceros.
21:59When I identified the museum, Tiltinoceros.
22:01Now Tiltinof is a village in Leicestershire.
22:04And here I was, I thought, this must be the very centre of palaeontological discovery,
22:10actually in Tilton, and I got a Tiltinoceros.
22:14Wow.
22:15Well, I wanted to show you something.
22:17Just wondering if this brings back any memories.
22:22Oh yeah, I know where that is.
22:24That's one of the ironstone workings.
22:27Is it my father's photograph?
22:29Well done, I didn't expect you to remember.
22:31It is.
22:32This is a copy of the photograph taken by your father, Frederick,
22:36in 1937 or 1938 that he gave to Leicester Museum.
22:40And this is Holwell Quarry, where I believe you used to go and collect fossils.
22:44Absolutely.
22:45And see, this is the top of the Jurassic here.
22:47This is the glacial overburden.
22:51Oh gosh, Holwell.
22:53Brings back some memories.
22:54Certainly does.
22:55But around near Leicester, I mean it's not just the middle Jurassic that you get,
23:00there are some outcrops of much, much older rocks there.
23:04Oh yes.
23:05Yes, but of course they are Precambrian in the Charnwood Forest,
23:09and by definition, as you know very well, they are called Precambrian
23:13because there are supposed to be no fossils in there at all.
23:17But there are.
23:20But you weren't lucky enough to find them yourself.
23:23No, well, of course, that's a great thing.
23:25I mean, I never even looked in the fossils in the rocks of Charnwood Fires
23:29because no fossils in it, by definition.
23:32But in the 50s, a schoolboy called Roger Mason
23:37found an extraordinary impression that looked like a sort of firm frond,
23:41and he was convinced that it was a fossil,
23:46and in the end, it was proved to be.
23:48And it got his name, Charnia, after Charnwood,
23:52Masoni, after Roger Mason.
23:54How wonderful.
23:55I know, I wished I had been him.
23:57Oh, but you have had a fossil of your own named after you.
24:00Oh, yes.
24:02Would you recognise it?
24:04Of course.
24:06Oh, yes, yes.
24:08Well, well, well.
24:09That's from the Bristol Museum then.
24:11Atmarosaurus coniberi,
24:15and coniberi was the chap who really deserved to have it named after him,
24:18was a clergyman who collected in the 19th century in Lyme Regis.
24:23This came from Lyme Regis.
24:25And when an American paleontologist revised the whole group of plesiosaurs,
24:30he decided that one of them, with a particularly long neck,
24:34was so different from the rest, it should be given its own genus.
24:37Sir David's fossil is a plesiosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile.
24:42So that is now Atmarosaurus.
24:44How does that make you feel, to know that you're there, immortalised?
24:47Every time I go to the museum, I say, afternoon.
24:51And, of course, unfortunately, the one in the museum is only plaster cast.
24:56And as far as I know, the actual thing itself was bombed during the war in Bristol
25:01and doesn't exist.
25:03So there are no other Atmarosaurus coniberi in existence.
25:07Not yet. We might find them.
25:11I'll come along. OK. You're on.
25:14We could go out fossil detecting any day.
25:21When Sir David talked about the schoolboy finding that fossil in the woods,
25:26that extraordinary impression, as he put it,
25:29I wanted to go to Charnwood Forest too.
25:34Sue Cook is from the Charnier Research Group here in Leicestershire.
25:40She's taking me to the secret location
25:43where you can still find these special fossils today.
25:53Named after Charnwood Forest,
25:56Charnier are part of a group of rather strange creatures called Ediacarans.
26:02This way, then. OK.
26:04Dating back 560 million years,
26:07they are the world's oldest complex fossils.
26:10In other words, the earliest known animals.
26:15Watch your footing just here. Yeah, it's a bit slippery.
26:20And here we are. This is what we've come here today to see.
26:23That's wonderful. See this wonderful ring-shaped structure here?
26:26It's beautiful. It is, isn't it? Fantastic.
26:29That's Cyclomedusa davidi. Cyclomedusa davidi.
26:32So this is one of these early, very earliest animals?
26:35The earliest complex life on Earth.
26:38Just here? Yes.
26:40This is what happens if you put two or more cells together
26:43and see what you can create. And this is it. Ta-da!
26:46Yes. And this one, we think, was probably a jellyfish.
26:50Right. But there's other ones, like Charnier masoni itself.
26:54OK, so this is the famous Charnier masoni fossil,
26:57found back in the 50s by Roger Mason.
27:00This is actually a replica of it,
27:02but we think this would have been something like a soft coal
27:05or a sea pen when it was alive. Right.
27:07It's so clear, isn't it? Oh, it is. It's lovely, isn't it?
27:10And so these were two of the earliest animals to ever appear on Earth?
27:15Yes.
27:18The Ediacaran fossils may not be much to look at,
27:22but they are the world's oldest animals.
27:25Yet another very important fossil find right here in central England.
27:33MUSIC
27:38There's been life on Earth for almost four billion years.
27:43Fossilised remains of ancient life are solid memories of worlds long gone.
27:49Without fossils, many of our land's ancient secrets would remain unknown.
27:55Fossils unlock the mysteries of the past
27:59and inspire the explorer in all of us.
28:29MUSIC