00:01A ruthless murder was committed! Someone killed
the dinosaurs and we have the murderer! Witnesses
00:08say that an Everest-sized asteroid hit
Earth, devastated the planet and caused
00:12a mass extinction. A simple, fascinating
and convincing explanation. Or… is it?
00:21In the last few years, new evidence has
reinvigorated an older theory pointing
00:25at a second suspect. A very slow and
liquid asteroid, 1000 times bigger,
00:31hitting earth on the opposite side of the planet.
Like the true crime channel we are, let's look
00:37at the new evidence and tell a different story
that could change everything we thought we knew…
00:43The Last Days of a Kingdom
00:4666 million years ago, Earth was barely
recognizable. It was the last days of the
00:52Cretaceous, one of the hottest periods
in Earth’s history and much more humid.
00:57Lush jungles and woodlands covered much
of the planet. Even the polar regions
01:02were home to forests of prehistoric
pines and ferns. Amazing ecosystems
01:07that were robust enough to survive the many
months of darkness during the polar night.
01:12Oversized animals were everywhere.
Pterosaurs filled the skies,
01:17marine lizards and long necked monsters up to
15 meters swam in the oceans. And on land,
01:23basically everything larger than one meter
was a dinosaur – one of the most successful
01:28animals ever to walk Earth, dominating
the world for more than 150 million years.
01:35And then they were murdered. All
these majestic creatures vanished
01:40in a split-second of geological time. Why?
01:44Yes, it is true that at around that time a big
asteroid hit Earth. But… was this actually what
01:51killed the dinosaurs? Or did it arrive just in
time to get all the blame? Because according to
01:57some recent science, just before the asteroid
struck, an ancient nightmare, older than even
02:02the dinosaurs, decided to destroy the world.
Let's look at how it might have done it.
02:08The Beast Slowly Awakens
02:11The ancient continents almost resembled
the world of today but not quite. India
02:17was still a continent-sized tropical island
full of lush rainforests and exotic life,
02:22on its way to smash into Asia. But this paradise
also hosted something else. The Deccan Traps -
02:29a volcanic region a thousand kilometers wide and
about to come to life in a dramatic fashion.
02:35The apocalypse began quietly and silently.
About 800,000 years before the impact,
02:42the Deccan Traps began to exhale about
10 million tonnes of CO2 and sulfur
02:47dioxide each year. Which in the grand
scheme of things was not that much,
02:51so for a long time no one noticed. The
problem was, these emissions wouldn’t
02:57stop. For half a million years, they started
to dangerously pile up in the atmosphere.
03:03About 300,000 years before the asteroid, the
Deccan Traps started to vomit lava. This was
03:09nothing like a normal eruption – it was
a lava flood. Imagine a landscape with
03:14volcanos stretching beyond the horizon. They were
constantly active, releasing a steady flow of
03:20massive amounts of poison and lava, interrupted
by much more violent and deadly eruptions.
03:26The lush paradise of India was the first victim
as gigantic clouds spread toxic fumes and poisoned
03:32the coastal regions. Clouds of ash darkened the
sky as rivers of magma started massive wildfires,
03:39eradicating many local ecosystems and
paving the continent with dead dinosaurs.
03:44Still, at this point it all looked like
a local catastrophe – one of many that
03:48have hit our planet over its billions of
years of history. Had it stopped here,
03:52there might still be dinosaurs today. But
the nightmare hadn’t even begun yet.
03:58The Beast Turns Furious
04:01The Deccan Traps would just not stop
spewing lava. And so, after hundreds of
04:06thousands of years of never ending volcanic
emissions, the catastrophe became global.
04:12First the planet experienced a wave of heating,
04:14with oceans getting at least 2ºC hotter
in just 100,000 years. Which is bad,
04:20but just about the timeframe that
leaves ecosystems a chance to adapt.
04:25But then nature would pull a cruel
prank. Some of the gasses of the Deccan
04:29Traps heated the planet up, while others
cooled it down. But the mix was uneven,
04:34so after the initial warming,
a period of cooling followed,
04:37massively stressing the ecosystems that barely
managed to adapt to the hotter temperatures.
04:43At the same time, the sulfur in the
atmosphere came back down as acid rain,
04:47while the CO2 was acidifying the oceans
and killing the plankton – which was,
04:51and still is today, the basis of the food web
in the oceans. And if plankton disappears,
04:56a massive extinction is all but guaranteed.
05:00But now the grand finale was about to
begin. About 50,000 years before impact,
05:05the true apocalypse came. Like a cosmic
horror breaking out of its prison,
05:10the Deccan Traps roared and screamed and
began to spew out tens of trillions of
05:14tons of magma and even more deadly gasses
in an onslaught that lasted for several
05:20thousand years. Rolling over ecosystems,
devastating everything they reached.
05:26For a time as long as all of human civilization,
this lava armageddon brought massive wildfires.
05:32Earthquakes and tsunamis smashed and shook
the continent. So much heat was released from
05:37the roaring hot interior of our planet that it
might have created hypercanes – cyclones tens
05:42of kilometers wide, with winds reaching
almost 1000 km/h – 3 times more than the
05:48deadliest hurricane ever recorded by humanity.
These storms were so massive and intense that
05:54they could reach tens of kilometers into the
stratosphere and rip holes into the ozone layer,
05:59with devastating consequences for all
life, now without protection from the sun’s
06:03radiation. And of course, where the hyper storms
occurred, devastation and death would follow.
06:10And if all this wasn’t enough, out of the
guts of the earth came colossal amounts of
06:15venom. Giant clouds loaded with mercury and
hydrochloric acid rolled over the planet,
06:21delivering the final blow to the remnants
of a once magnificent and fertile world. As
06:26food chains crumbled and the whole world
around them collapsed, some of the last
06:30dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth may have died
vomiting toxic foam while being bathed in acid
06:36rain. A cruel end for the members of a noble
family that had ruled the world for so long.
06:43Then, it just ended. The frenetic eruptions slowed
down and the endless natural disasters began to
06:50fade away. But the world was changed forever.
The monster had left unfathomable devastation
06:57and corpses in its wake. Even the planet’s
ecosystems far away were severely wounded. It was
07:03the end of a whole geological era. A murder that
started slowly and then turned loud and violent.
07:11And then it happened.
07:12Like a cosmic joke, on the other side of the
world, a bright dot of light appeared in the sky.
07:18And an instant later, an asteroid 10 km across
smashed into earth with the power of 4 billion
07:24atomic bombs. If you want to see what this was
like, we made a whole video about it. If life on
07:30earth was like a murder victim barely holding
on, this was the final blow. Just too much.
07:37After the massacre, on the
other side of the world,
07:39the Deccan Traps went on expelling tens
of trillions of tons of deadly gasses
07:44for another 800,000 years, making sure the
devastated planet stayed covered in poison.
07:50When they eventually finished
and truly went back to sleep,
07:5375% of all species on Earth had perished. Most
famously almost all dinosaurs. Except – birds,
08:02the only dinos that are still with us today.
Their stunning beauty and diversity are a shy
08:07reminder of how majestic and wonderful
their larger cousins must have been.
08:12So - Who Was the Murderer?
08:14Were the dinosaurs doomed by the
traps? Or would they have survived
08:18without the asteroid? Was it teamwork? Well,
we don’t know. Scientists have been fiercely
08:25debating this question for years, but
for now we have no definite answer.
08:29The timeline of events that we’ve shown here is
based on some of the most recent reconstructions
08:33of the evolution of the Deccan Traps. There are
other ones that paint a different picture but
08:38right now scientists are still fiercely arguing
over this, check our sources to learn more.
08:44So like much of true crime, we can’t end this
story with an easy and satisfying resolution.
08:50Time has the nasty habit of erasing evidence,
so maybe we’ll never really know. But there is
08:56something else hidden in the dust, something
truly terrifying. As we learn more and more
09:02about the past, we found that at least 4 of
the 5 big mass extinctions happened at the
09:08same time as the Earth was furiously
spewing gargantuan amounts of magma.
09:13The monster that might have killed the
dinosaurs seems to be a serial killer.
09:18The worst massacre ever, the Permian
mass extinction 250 million years ago,
09:22was caused by the Siberian Traps – a hellish
flood of lava that killed 95% of all the
09:28species on earth, almost bringing life to
its knees. Until recently, many scientists
09:34thought that this was an outlier, but new
evidence suggests it may have been the rule.
09:39Other big mass extinctions happened when
the monster awoke from its sleep and the
09:43longer and more violently it rampaged, the more
slaughter we can see in the fossil record. So
09:49maybe the dinosaurs were not massacred
by a casual murderer from outer space,
09:53but by a serial killer hiding beneath our feet.
09:58Do you need to worry about all of this?
10:00Definitely not. While the monster is real, it's
amazingly slow and currently very sleepy.
10:07 If it were about to awake again, scientists monitoring
the Earth’s interior would get a warning really
10:13early – maybe even millions of years in advance.
Time enough to prepare and move out of the way.
10:22Enough about mysteries of the past
and onto puzzles in the present!
10:26We are testing out this project crate from our
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10:31kids on topics like science, mechanics, biology
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10:36dinosaurs too. Each one is like a little
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10:40doorstep – either individually or as
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10:44with all of the supplies you need along with
kid-friendly instructions to help guide the way.
10:49So what do we have here? A
puzzle maybe...no, a robot crab!
10:54Well go ahead, assemble it!
10:57Good job! This is a project that
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11:01and gives you lots of background info
on the ins and outs of how it works.
11:04We wanted to work with KiwiCo because they spend
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