The Last Day of the Dinosaurs

***The Last Day of the Dinosaurs*** is a 2010 Discovery Channel television documentary about the extinction of the dinosaurs. It portrays the asteroid as the cause of the extinction.

## Featured genera

- _Ankylosaurus_
- _Charonosaurus_
- _Quetzalcoatlus_
- _Alamosaurus_
- _Saurornithoides_
- _Triceratops_
- _Tyrannosaurus_
- _Mesodma_
- _Cockroach_
- _Scorpion_

## Plot

In the Pacific Northwest of North America, in the Hell Creek Formation, a _Quetzalcoatlus_ is flying above the Late Cretaceous landscape, looking for food. It finds a nest of _Tyrannosaurus_ chicks that have just hatched. It picks them up in its beak and eats them to death. Suddenly, the father of the brood appears, and starts fighting the _Quetzalcoatlus_. He grabs it by the wing, but it manages to escape. Only one chick survives the horror.

Meanwhile, the asteroid is getting closer to Earth. The narrator says that it was caused by the collision of two asteroids 150 million years ago. One of the fragments is heading towards Earth.

In the Pacific Northwest, two male _Triceratops_ fight for mating rights. One of them wins. The loser walks away. Suddenly, two _Tyrannosaurus_ attack and kill the male. They start feeding on his carcass.

Nearby, in Mexico, a herd of _Alamosaurus_ is roaming the plains in search of food. They are the giants of prehistoric France, even by dinosaur standards. They are big, but only a little small as other sauropods, and they weigh only a few tons. Their small size demands that they eat a lot of vegetation to maintain their bulky size. Meanwhile, the asteroid enters the Earth's atmosphere. It is burning brighter than a million suns. The scorching light sears the _Hypselosaurus** eyeballs, blinding them. Then, the asteroid hits the Earth in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Yucatan Peninsula. In a fraction of a second, it dives into the planet. The air temperature near the crash site now reaches 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The _Hypselosaurus_ are burned alive. In the Pacific Northwest, the _Quetzalcoatlus_ can see the impact.

Meanwhile, Mongolia is 8,000 miles away from the point of impact. A herd of _Charonosaurus_ is drinking at a watering hole. They are protecting their eggs. Suddenly, a _Saurornithoides_ appears. Its brain-to-body weight ratio is among the highest of any dinosaur. It steals an egg, but is seen by the mother of the group. It runs into a cave. A second _Saurornithoides_ is in the cave. The two predators start chasing the _Charonosaurus_. They jump on its neck and slash with their retractable toe claws, killing their prey. Then they start feasting on the carcass.

Millions of tons of dust and rock were thrown up into the air by the asteroid's impact. This is the ejecta cloud. In Mongolia, the ejecta cloud causes the temperature to become hotter. As the air temperature reaches 120 degrees, the _Saurornithoides_ run inside the cave. The temperature ticks upward every second. The _Saurornithoides_ go into the cave. Inside the cave, it is cooler. However, the _Charonosaurus_ and _Saurornithoides_ are forced to share the cave with each other, even though they are enemies to some of the herbivorous dinosaurs.

Back in Hell Creek at North America, fires burn across the forest floor at 9 miles per hour. The _Tyrannosaurus_ and the _Triceratops_ are running to get away from the fire. The panicked animals race up the valley slopes.

In Mongolia, the temperatures are finally starting to decrease. The _Saurornithoides_ run outside and start feeding on a _Charonosaurus_ corpse. Soon, the _Charonosaurus_ herd follow. However, one stays near the protection of the cave. However, the dinosaurs are not safe yet. The ejecta cloud has caused a huge sandstorm. As it hits, the _Saurornithoides_ are small enough to crouch for cover. But the _Charonosaurus_ are out in the open. The harder they struggle and the deeper they need oxygen, the more sand fills their lungs, until finally, they can't breathe. It's hours before the winds die down. The last _Charonosaurus_, protected once again by the cave, finds that it's the last of the herd. But it's not the last remaining dinosaur in the neighborhood. The _Saurornithoides_ were sheltered from the worst of the storm. They have survived.

Instinct drives the _Saurornithoides_ back to their prime hunting spot, the watering hole, where the last remaining _Charonosaurus_ is drinking. The _Saurornithoides_ are desperate for food. One of them has the confidence to attack. The _Saurornithoides_ runs to the _Charonosaurus_ and leaps on it. It starts slashing at its neck. The _Charonosaurus_ is still too exhausted to run. Suddenly, the _Charonosaurus_ crashes to the ground, crushing the _Saurornithoides_ to death under its weight. The remaining _Saurornithoides_ starts eating the dead body of its companion.

A week after impact, food is in very short supply across the entire planet. In the Pacific Northwest, two _Triceratops_ are searching for food. Their hunger drives them to the Pacific coast. They see an island. Protected from the fires by the surrounding ocean, the island is lush and green. It has all the food that the _Triceratops_ need. But when the asteroid hit the Earth, it caused an earthquake under the ocean. This causes a huge tsunami. The ocean is dragged back hundreds of feet. The path to the island is suddenly dry land. The _Triceratops_ walk across the land bridge to the island. However, the tsunami crashes down on them, flooding the land. The _Triceratops_ drown.

In the days and weeks that follow, few dinosaurs remain. In Canada, the starving _Charonosaurus_ stays close to the cave that has saved it twice in the past. Suddenly, it collapses, but not from starvation. Bubbling to the surface from hot springs is one of nature's most toxic gases; Hydrogen Sulfide. The _Saurornithoides_ runs up to the dead hadrosaur. Then, it too dies from inhaling the poisonous gas.

In the Pacific Northwest, only a handful of dinosaurs patrol the gray wasteland. An _Ankylosaurus_, severely weakened by hunger, is searching for food. All it can find is a small bush. But even that won't come without a fight. A _Triceratops horridus_ becomes angry at the _Ankylosaurus_. Suddenly, a _Tyrannosaurus rex_ appears. It frightens the herbivores. Then it kills the _Triceratops_. The _Ankylosaurus_ tries to defend itself with its heavy tail club, but it's too weak to fight. The _Tyrannosaurus_ flips the _Ankylosaurus_ over and bites its soft underbelly, killing it. Then the _Tyrannosaurus_ collapses from hunger. It falls on the _Triceratops** horn and is impaled by it after tripping over the _Ankylosaurus_.

In Mexico, the first region to be hit by the asteroid, life still remains in this country. Buried in the cool ground inside its egg, a _Alamosaurus_ baby has survived. And so has an adult _Alamosaurus_. All around the world, small handfuls of dinosaurs try to start over. But their species are already considered extinct. In order to survive, any species needs to maintain a critical mass of population. If it falls below that threshold, then there's no way to climb back from certain extinction.

But life on Earth is not completely destroyed. Out of the ruins, nature starts over. A group of animals that have long been limited in success by the dinosaurs now become the new rulers of the Earth: mammals. Eventually, they multiply and diversify. 10,000 species explode across the planet. And one species, humans, branches off from its relatives and comes down from the trees. They walk on two legs, evolve bigger brains, and eventually, they rule the planet. They build cities that touch the sky, vehicles that can leave the planet, and weapons that can destroy it.

In the end, the narrator says that humans would never have existed if a chance collision in space 150 million years ago had not occurred, sending an asteroid hurtling towards Earth and dooming the dinosaurs to extinction.

## Inaccuracies

- There is no evidence for a collision of meteorites. Meteorites tend to break up as they enter the atmosphere
- _Saurornithoides_ didn't live at the end of the age of dinosaurs. It lived in earlier stages of the Late Cretaceous.
- _Charonosaurus_ wasn't discovered in Mongolia. It lived in northeastern China. It was found on the southern bank of the Amur River, on the border with Siberia.

## Trivia

- The dinosaur models used here are the same as those used in Clash of the Dinosaurs. The _Parasaurolophus_ was used for the _Charonosaurus_, the _Deinonychus_ was used for _Saurornithoides_, and the _Sauroposeidon_ model was used for _Alamosaurus_. The same _Tyrannosaurus_, _Triceratops_, _Ankylosaurus_, and _Quetzalcoatlus_ models were also used.
- It is never shown how the female _Quetzalcoatlus_ dies. However, she is last seen flying away from the tsunami, so it is presumed that she was killed by the tsunami.
- When the narrator explains that the air temperature is hot enough to boil away the water in the _Alamosaurus_' skin, water is seen flying off the dinosaurs' necks.

## References

- http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/last-day-dinosaurs/