Beneath the wings of giants,
is a land that thunders from the tread of restless herds.
and echoes with the cries of killers,
large and small.
As a hunter, Little Das is a little wet behind the ears,
but he's determined to prove himself.
His targets, a pair of prehistoric runaways,
Buck and Blaze.
They must find their herd,
or die.
Now, a gathering storm of fire and
stone falls from the sky,
and a wall of searing heat
threatens all in its path.
In a forgotten land called North America,
Little Das' hunt begins.
75 million years ago,
the Rocky Mountains are a chain of young,
volcanic peaks that cut through the face of
North America like a great scar of stone.
Deep in the Elkhorn range of Montana,
lunch is served from the rich volcanic soil.
Berries and greens provide
the Orodromeus with organic octane.
In the fast and furious world of dinosaurs,
these are the Roadrunners.
While life is good in the upland community,
the local residents carry on
their own version of
neighborhood watch.
While the herd tanks up,
one adult serves as a lookout.
Quetzalcoatlus are the last
of the flying reptiles.
These animals, largest in the family of pterosaurs,
are also the only survivors in a group driven
to extinction by warm-blooded birds,
but today they rule the air.
Measuring 21 feet, the wingspan of Quetzalcoatlus
is as wide as a World War II fighter plane.
The Quetzalcoatlus is a notorious flesh-eater,
but down on the deck the herd is calm and collected.
Quetzalcoatlus fancy
fish over red meat every time.
Today, the fleet heads for the inland Sea,
some 50 miles away, to harvest fish from the shallows.
The show is over,
but the lone sentry
is stuck in an alert mode.
The herd is more concerned with second helpings
than communal security.
The picnic area they've chosen is exposed
and flanked by a thick line of tree cover.
If Orodromeus are Roadrunners,
Troodons are the Coyotes, and yes, they're wily too.
When evolution passed out the stealth gene,
the Troodons lucked out.
By the time you see one,
it's usually too late to run.
Endowed with the largest brain on Dinosaur Planet,
the Troodon nervous system is
attached to a set of big,
forward-looking eyes.
But for all the stealth,
they're not invisible.
the Orodromeus kick into overdrive,
zero to 40 in about ten seconds.
All the Troodon get to eat so far
is a mouthful of dust.
The herd scrambles, and so will the Troodon,
but their scramble is just a little bit slower.
There's no sense in breaking
delicate toe bones on a reckless race.
Better a loser now,
than a sore loser later.
Ground underfoot,
comes to life.
Jets of white-hot steam bring
the hunt to a sudden end.
The Troodons are the first victims of the
dark force that rules a volcanic kingdom.
Its heart is filled with
a shallow sea of magma.
As the molten rock makes
contact with underground springs,
harmless water blasts out from the Earth
as searing bursts of deadly vapor.
50 miles away, on the lowland plains,
the continuity of life and death, predator and prey, is undisturbed.
Adolescent Maiasauras, like Buck and Blaze,
will grow to the size of dump trucks.
Playmates born in the same season,
they've become Late Cretaceous juvenile delinquents.
Buck is a young male,
Blaze, an immature female.
The game they've chosen is called:
"walk away from the herd and let everyone know about it."
By teen standards,
it's already a roaring success.
When you're this big,
why not mix a little fun with foraging?
Why follow the herd?
Here's one good reason:
He's a Daspletosaurus,
a.k.a. Little Das.
A juvenile himself,
Little Das is here on a big job.
Buck and Blaze have isolated themselves
from the safety of the herd.
Little Das' mission
is to widen the gap.
Little Das is only one member
of a deadly triple play.
Das' two older sisters now
take up the chase.
But Das stays
close to the hunt.
Running parallel to the chase,
Little Das will help his sisters keep
young Buck and Blaze
on a predetermined course.
And now, the final player,
it's the mother of the pack.
Paralyzed by fear,
Blaze delays their escape by one precious second,
and Buck is left behind
to pay the price.
Until the 1970s, large carnivores,
like T. rex, were depicted as lumbering behemoths.
With the emerging link between dinosaurs and birds,
T. rex was recast as a swift,
cunning killer,
that traveled in packs.
It's even been suggested that
they use teamwork to hunt.
To test the speed idea, two scientists built a
bio-mechanical computer model of T. rex.
To run 45 miles an hour,
as some paleontologists suggest,
T. rex would have needed 80% of its muscle mass concentrated in its legs. Physically impossible.
The researchers concluded that T. rex moved
more like an elephant than a roadrunner,
closer to
ten miles an hour.
No problem, slow as they were,
their prey were probably even slower.
What about hunting in packs?
Some scientists argue that mass graveyards of dinosaur
predators found in places like Canada and Argentina,
support the case for group living,
but the burials only show they died at the same place.
It doesn't mean they lived,
let alone hunted together.
Like some large carnivores today,
tyrannosaurs may have been solitary hunters.
The jury is still out.
Two young Maiasauras, Buck and Blaze,
run straight into a kill zone.
Only Blaze manages to escape
the jaws of Little Das' mother.
Little Das lives for the chase, but sometimes a little
thing called attention span gets lost in transit.
A monkey wrench thrown into a
well-oiled killing machine.
and Little Das is the
monkey in question.
Buck and Blaze have
learned a lesson the hard way,
especially Buck.
Both juveniles are safe for now,
courtesy of a young predator's boundless enthusiasm.
Little Das has let his
mother and sisters down.
Tired and hungry,
the family now faces a long and restless night.
As a foraging species,
Maiasaura are outstanding in their field.
That's exactly where Daspletosaurs like to find them,
out standing in a field.
Unaware they're being
sized up for another hit.
Little Das' mother had no trouble
tracking the herd through the night.
Of all the predators,
Daspletosaurus have the keenest sense of smell.
Little Das can't
wait to get rolling.
This time no mistakes.
Young Buck, the wounded male,
is a target of opportunity.
Das is totally
stoked for the chase.
Sooner or later, Buck will collapse,
and the herd will leave him behind.
As far as Little Das is concerned,
this hunt is as good as done.
All we need to do is find mom,
and the sisters.
Hunting for your own family is a major pain.
How could they run off like that?
Das stumbles upon
a family of another kind.
Einiosaurs are vegetarians
with attitudes.
The very sight of Little Das sends
these two-ton browsers packing.
Is this a power trip or what?
Huge adults fleeing for their lives? Yes!
But the herd is not really running from Das.
The animals know that young Daspletosaurs
serve as scouts for adult hunters.
Little Das has managed to run off every
head of edible prey in the lowlands.
And talk about bad timing.
Hidden nearby,
the pack was just about to spring on the Maiasaurs.
It's not a happy reunion.
The noxious breath of an angry giant
billows from the Elkhorn range.
Beneath the surface, tendrils of molten
rock turn groundwater into sulfurous steam.
Sporadic bursts of searing vapor
blast through the Earth's crust.
But the creatures here are unable to break
this new and disturbing code.
The watering hole is a favorite
for predators and prey alike.
At daybreak,
a herd of Orodromeus make a pit-stop.
For these high-performance running machines,
frequent hydration is a must.
It's a trio of thirsty Troodons.
Troodons rely on sharp vision and speed
to capture their prey.
Now, the vague,
but familiar scent of Orodromeus hangs in the air.
But unlike Little Das, and the Daspletosaurs,
the Troodon's sense of smell is not the greatest.
Volcanic fumes leach up
through the spring water.
The bouquet comes
straight from hell.
It's a lethal mix of low temperature gases that includes sulfur dioxide and flesh-burning chlorine.
Quetzalcoatlus return from a day's hunt,
their bellies filled with fish from the inland sea.
The great fleets goes where no
Troodon has ever gone before,
but would like to.
The jumbo fliers' glide path is the final approach to a combination parking lot and nursery,
across the valley from
the small volcano.
Parking space here is limited,
every square inch jealously guarded.
For centuries, the high ledge has served as a nesting
place for countless generations of Quetzalcoatlus.
Sheer cliffs create
a drop zone of 500 feet.
Takeoffs and landings are a breeze,
and youngsters are safe from Troodons.
Still, no creature is safe from the fuming volcano,
the new apex predator of the Elkhorn range.
The blasts drive flying reptiles
from the rookery,
and scatter them over the tectonic minefield
of the Elkhorn range.
The fallen giants are omens
of a gathering storm.
The smaller volcano dies,
its subterranean pool of magma drained by a larger,
more voracious peak.
Gorging on the molten rock and lethal gas of its
neighbor, is a geothermal monster.
The greatest volcano ever to
strike the western hemisphere.
Soon, even the creatures of the lowlands,
some 50 miles away, will feel its heat.
Brought together by
the single-handed attack of Little Das,
the Einiosaurs, and the Maiasaurs,
become fellow travelers.
Crippled and vulnerable,
Buck is on the watch.
The wound on his hind leg has turned septic,
and the herd will soon pass him by.
Just keeping pace with the lumbering
Einiosaurs is a challenge.
But Blaze remains at his side.
There's nothing sentimental
about her attachment to Buck,
it's just the instinct to
bond with her own peers.
Little Das has run 
wide circle around the herd.
The young predator has achieved
the element of surprise,
but follow-through is crucial.
Scorned by his family, Little Das' future as
a member of the pack is now at stake.
Like many dinosaurs,
Einiosaurus is named for a trademark feature,
its forward curving horn.
The same is true for Triceratops,
three-horned face,
Pachyrhinosaurus,
thick-nosed lizard,
and Centrosaurus,
sharp-pointed lizard.
So, what was all this
strange headgear used for?
Defense against predators,
or so paleontologists once thought.
Yet, that hypothesis is full of holes.
First, Einiosaurus and its kin had only
rudimentary horns and frill as youngsters,
the very time they
were most vulnerable.
Second, each species of horned dinosaur
has a unique set up of horns and frills.
If their main purpose was defense,
surely evolution would have standardized the design.
Third, many of these
make for poor defense.
The nose horn of Einiosaurus
hooks forward and down,
and in some places,
the frill is no thicker than a few millimeters.
Our best evidence for understanding this
bizarre headgear comes from living animals,
with similarly odd features.
We identify dinosaurs by their strange features,
and the dinosaurs likely did as well.
Thanks to its distinctive horns and frill, an Einiosaurus
would never be mistaken for one of its horned cousins.
Virtually all of these traits are used first and foremost,
to identify members of the same species,
and to compete for mates.
Like so much of life,
it all comes down to sex.
When it comes to a kill,
predators fail nine times out of ten.
Out on the lowlands,
Little Das gets a second chance to redeem himself,
and he's not about to blow it.
His target is Buck,
the wounded Maiasaura.
Everyone else
is just in the way.
Blaze breaks past the herd, she runs
straight into the A-Team, waiting to hit Buck
Getting a clean shot at
their prey won't be easy.
Little Das has delivered an Einiosaur sandwich,
and no one's willing to take the first bite.
Buck makes a run for it,
but Little Das stays focused.
The Einiosaurs' blockade
has given Buck a small lead.
The chase has taken its
toll on the young Maiasaura.
And now, his young nemesis,
Little Das, has locked on his new position.
Predator and prey
resume their roles.
In this drama there was no good or bad,
but now a plot twist could turn this prehistoric
pageant into a tragedy.
The great mountain is possessed by a
seething ocean of magma and dissolved gas.
Titanic pressures begin to test the
mountain walls from within.
The creatures of the Elkhorn range
now live beneath a time bomb filled with melted rock.
Buck suffers from dehydration and pain,
but he's no quitter,
his instinct to rejoin the herd
keeps young Maiasaura on his feet.
Blaze has moved further and further
away from her wounded playmate.
The prey is more
dead than alive.
Killing Buck will take
just a minimal effort.
The Daspletosaurs
have waited it out,
and now,
the time feels right to close in.
A small Quetzalcoatlus
reeks from toxic fumes.
It's time to
cut to the chase.
15,000 square miles of sky are
consumed by a monstrous veil of ash.
Created by the release
of gas from molten rock,
the cloud is alive with pin sized
fragments a volcanic glass.
It's time to close the gap on the Buck.
The visibility is falling by the second.
The pack must
now rely on their ears.
And so must Buck.
The return calls
mean only one thing,
Buck must reach the herd, or die.
Little Das and his family navigate a
fog of volcanic ash in search of their prey.
Buck must find his herd, or die.
The blanket of ash
has begun to lift.
Half-delirious from shock,
Buck makes for the herd.
Das and his family, weary from the long trek,
suddenly faced a major investment of predatory energy.
Rivers of lava, pushed up from the magma chamber, now bleed from the side vents in the mountain.
Explosions rip from the cone, 
sending a hail of marble-sized debris miles into the sky.
These air-filled volcanic
fragments, are called cinders.
And the creatures of the highlands
are the first to feel their sting.
A new pulse from cinder cone launches a
bombardment boulder-sized lava fragments,
and a barrage of lava bombs.
The hunting prowess of the Troodon is humbled
by the all-consuming the wrath of an angry Earth.
Weakened by the actions of magma and
acidic gas, the entire east face of the
mountain collapses, in the biggest
eruption in the Western Hemisphere.
A great wave of super-heated ash, rock,
and gas, roars across the uplands.
A pyroclastic flow, temperatures within its
mass exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Some 50 miles away, the lowland dinosaurs
process the oncoming flow as a threat.
Moving at close to the speed of sound, a
wall of burning debris is about to erase
the line between predator and prey.
The ash plume from the Elkhorn disaster extends 300 miles, from Montana to the Inland Sea of North America.
Seven million years later, few signs of
the massive eruption remain.
The Maiasaura has evolved into a new
species, known as Edmontosaurus.
Adults measure 40 feet,
double the length of their ancestors.
Evolution has made some alterations, but the restless nature of Buck and Blaze lives on in the herd's juveniles.
Daspletosaurus has evolved into Tyrannosaurus rex.
A killer that can rip away 500
pounds of flesh with a single bite.
Of course, they have to catch something first.
A drama as primal and sharp as the prehistoric sky continues on the lowlands of Montana.
The players are new, and a little wet behind the ears,
and sometimes they stumble,
and make some pretty big mistakes.
But I tell you, the plot is fantastic!
In a remote corner of northwestern Montana,
scientists unearthed a baffling mystery,
the charred bones of dinosaurs.
Based on the undisturbed state of the bones, it was concluded that the animals died on the spot.
But what killed them?
The investigation that followed was a
classic case of dinosaur detective work.
The bones were found among
more than 200 petrified trees,
all buried under as much as
six feet of cinder and ash.
In turn, the trees lay within a field of ash
covering 9600 square miles.
One of the largest fields of volcanic debris in the world.
Sometime in the Late Cretaceous,
about 75 million years ago,
the forest was destroyed by
a powerful volcanic eruption.
The trees were leveled by the sheer force of the blast, then buried under the fallout of ash, along with the dinosaurs.
We witnessed the same kind of devastation in 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted.
Yet, the Elkhorn eruption ranks as one of
the most powerful ever recorded.
By comparison, Mount St. Helens
was a mere firecracker.
