Mermaids: The Body Found bản tốc ký tiếng Anh – English transcript
Monday, December 1, 2014 12:07
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back-and-forth communication
between our bloop creatures and the dolphins,
which made us think, is it a dolphin?
is it some new species of dolphin?
and from that point on,
that’s what we thought we were looking for.
to that point, we only had acoustic evidence.
but physical evidence –
that was the breakthrough that dr. dittmar gave us.
it’s a great white shark.
it’s not the shark. it’s what’s in the shark.
dr. robertson: it — it was a mess.
and it smelled pretty terrible.
there were parts that looked
like they might have been from a dolphin,
parts that looked like they’re from a seal,
but no seal or dolphin we’d ever encountered.
and there were other body parts, too.
we had no idea what we were looking at,
but we thought, right away, “jackpot.”
this was something new. this was a new species.
there were puncture marks
around the shark’s gills and mouth.
and i initially thought these might have been injuries
sustained when it was gaffed to the side of the boat.
but i probed one of them,
and i found a stingray barb inside.
now, this could have come from a stingray defending itself.
sharks eat stingrays. hammerheads do. tigers do.
but not great whites.
so i kept the barb.
i thought it might be something
i could publish in a journal or something.
i just thought it was interesting.
narrator: a million years after entering the sea,
the aquatic apes
would now be better adapted to their new world.
they’ve lost most of their hair
and can hold their breath for minutes at a time.
they are still learning how to hunt.
they’re learning by observation.
unexpectedly, the dolphins scatter.
for now, the aquatic apes must hide,
but eventually, they will learn to defend themselves
against the dangers present in their new world.
whale beachings have continued,
as well as navy denials of their involvement.
tonight, at the end of this film,
we’ll hear more of this story
and reveal compelling new evidence
during a live interview with dr. paul robertson.
stay tuned.
man: the first time
the weapon was tested off the coast of washington,
it was a disaster.
we were caught off guard completely by the aftermath.
the beach hadn’t been secured.
it was left wide open to anyone who passed by that morning.
those boys happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.
at first, it looked like they were going to be a problem.
they refused to recant their initial statement
about what they saw.
finally we convinced one of the boys’ mothers
that they hadn’t seen what they thought they’d seen.
people usually don’t want any trouble
when the military is involved.
the mother was smart enough
to make the boys change their statements.
we kept surveillance on the boys,
but they weren’t telling their story to anyone.
they kept quiet about the entire event.
after that first test,
we didn’t leave any beaches unsecured again.
we weren’t going to let anyone else find anything.
dr. robertson: we got the body back to the lab,
and the condition of the remains was poor.
we recovered about 30% of the body.
so it was gonna be difficult to piece together.
the first thing we did was to take dna samples
to try and establish the genetic makeup.
dr. robertson: we started by looking at the rib cage,
and it appeared to be hinged.
a collapsible rib cage is a feature
of marine mammals who have evolved to dive.
the tail fluke was the best preserved.
and it looked a lot like a manatee’s.
we wondered if maybe that’s what this could be,
some relic population
or undiscovered relative of this animal.
we took an x-ray.
there were bones in the tail fluke.
manatees don’t have that.
so we’re thinking, “what on earth is this?”
dr. davis: the skull was severely damaged.
half of it was missing,
but one important piece that we did have
was a partial forehead plate.
this contained a hole that was not part of the damage.
we presumed it was a blowhole.
we made resin casts of the skull fragments
and sent them to a forensic expert.
dr. robertson: then we looked at the pelvis.
there were remains of leg bones.
seals have leg bones, but their thigh bones are short.
we could tell that the ones in our specimen were long.
so, this thing is not a seal. it’s not a manatee.
and although it talks to dolphins,
it’s not a dolphin, at least not from what we were seeing.
so, what else on earth
would be smart enough to communicate with dolphins?
what else is out there?
narrator: a creature that once hid in shadows
now swims in open sea.
they are not alone here.
[ dolphin clicking ]
they are bonded with another intelligent being.
it is a bond of friendship.
for now, they play together.
in time, they will hunt together.
their ancestors slept in trees.
they now swim through them.
soon their transition would be complete.
like the dolphins, they would belong to the sea.
the bloop is a real phenomenon.
is it the call of a mermaid?
later tonight, we’ll speak more with dr. paul robertson
during a live interview
where we’ll reveal new evidence.
stay tuned.
dr. robertson: brian and i tried to make sense
of the rest of the parts.
we had found a bone that wasn’t part of this animal.
it had markings along it,
and at the top, it had a little notch carved out.
we had no idea what to make of this,
so we set it aside for further study.
dr. davis: so, i started working on the phalanges.
those are the bones that support the fin or flipper structure
in a seal or dolphin.
it was clear that these bones
couldn’t be configured into either of those arrangements.
we found something else.
this animal had been affected by the naval sonar.
narrator: the noaa team was now certain
the navy was not only affecting whales with their tests,
they were also affecting a new species.
the creature’s physiology
gave deeper insights into its behavior.
although it was damaged in the shark attack,
they discovered a large spleen.
dr. robertson: large spleens are common features to marine mammals.
it stores oxygen during deep dives.
it’s like having a built-in scuba tank inside them.
the only reason to have this adaptation is to dive deep,
to hunt for food.
every time we found something new,
a dozen more questions would pop up.
dr. mccormick invited someone else to take a look.
the south africans were taking so long
getting the permitting to get the material out of the country
that brian flew him in.
dr. pearsall: my specialty is in biomechanics,
how animals have adapted different means of locomotion.
my name is dr. stephen pearsall.
but when i got there, i thought,
“well, what the heck am i doing here,
because this is clearly a marine mammal?”
the tail looked like the tail on an animal
that you find in the ocean.
and it was only when we got the remains under the scanners
that i realized that this was like no tail
we had ever seen before.
narrator: looking at the hip structure,
dr. pearsall recognizes something strikingly familiar.
with humans, if you look at the top of your hips here,
they have this high ridge.
and these are called the iliac crests,
and they’re designed to support weight.
i looked at this creature,
and it had similar crests on its hips,
and that didn’t make any sense,
until i realized
that we were looking at the scans the wrong way.
we were looking at them this way,
when, in fact, what we had to do is rotate them.
that is when it became clear
that this creature once walked on two legs.
and there is only one animal that walks upright on two legs,
that walks on two feet.
dr. robertson: and if this thing once stood on two feet,
we realized…
hands.
they were hands.
becky’s discovery that this creature had hands,
the discovery that this creature
once walked upright on land like us,
because it was one of us — that changed everything.
that bone had been worked on.
it had been carved by hand.
at the top, where the notch was,
that was meant to hold something,
and we found fibrous plant material wrapped around it,
which would have been designed to hold it in place.
and then i remembered.
the stingray barb.
this thing fit perfectly in the top of the bone.
this was a tool.
all those tales of fish found with spears in them,
all the fishermen stories of spears found in the open ocean,
this is what made them.
we have something that makes tools.
this thing has figured out how to disarm a stingray,
use its spine to kill fish.
so they are intelligent hunters, but are they hunted?
how would these creatures have evolved
to survive alongside
the most formidable predators in the ocean?
narrator: land covered in glaciers.
land must seem a cold and foreign place to them now.
a lone scout swims ahead of his pod
before they make an open-water crossing.
the drop-offs that chasm down into dark water
are feeding grounds.
whales gather here.
and so does the shark that preys on them.
[ muffled wailing ]
megalodon, a shark as big as a whale,
a shark that ate whales.
a million and a half years ago,
the creatures would have confronted
the greatest monster to ever rule the seas.
the pod travels with young.
they must be protected at all costs.
[ screeching ]
[ screeching ]
in 2005, a team of noaa scientists
uncovered remains of what appeared to have been a mermaid.
after this program,
we’ll speak with dr. paul robertson,
a member of that team,
as we reveal shocking new evidence.
stay tuned.
dr. robertson: the body was one
of the most important anthropological finds,
possibly one of the most important scientific discoveries
in human history.
this was an intelligent toolmaker with grasping hands