David Attenborough joins paleontologist Robert DePalma at the Tanis site in North Dakota, he unearths the story of the dinosaurs’ death in this documentary.
Paleontologist Robert DePalma started excavating a patch of dirt in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota in 13th of July. At first he had been pessimistic about the site, but soon observed something different, small spherical droplets of rock called Ejecta. These are some common signature from interstellar bodies hitting planets, and now they were scattered throughout a layer of soil from an ancient flood alarmed by the asteroid impact, which is perfectly preserving its contents, Pompeii-style.

When he further dug, he found a trove of pristine fossils that he suspected were from the late Cretaceous period, last time non-avian dinosaurs roamed free before the catastrophic Chicxulub asteroid vanish  them out. There are some scant fossil records from that fateful day, which makes the location named Tanis.

DePalma kept his discovery secret before reveling the site’s existence in 2019, after when BBC documentary team joined him at Tanis for three years. David Attenborough is on hand to check the specimens from fossil experts, and to explain what they tell us about the creatures’ final moments, armed with a healthy dose of dinosaur CGI.

Attenborough, sharing equal screen time with the fictional animals are the arguably more interesting paleontologists.

The documentary is about a day that occurred about 66 million years ago, it is so difficult not to draw comparisons with the climate future that might await us.

Attenborough said, “It’s possible that humanity is having as big an impact on the world as the asteroid that ended the age of the dinosaurs.”

But he concluded with hopeful note, said humans are unique in their ability to learn from the past. “We must use that ability wisely.”

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