NARRATOR: On this episode of "Destination Truth,"
Josh and his team travel to Romania,
the Gothic motherland of vampires
and a legendary beast
that locals claim is all too real.
People still believe in these creatures?
Yes.
NARRATOR: Chasing reports made by remote mountain villagers,
can Josh uncover the truth behind this historic howler?
Evan, watch out! Whoa! Whoa!
Evan!
NARRATOR: Next, the team traverses the globe
to northern Chile where they embark on an epic adventure
in search of what locals claim is a terrifying creature
that has survived extinction.
It just stood in front of the car,
and then it looked over before it walked away.
NARRATOR: Does Josh discover something from
the Jurassic period roaming the desert in South America?
There's something in there.
Oh!
Hold on!
I'm Josh Gates.
In my travels, I've seen some unexplainable things,
and I've done some things I can't quite explain.
Now, I've pulled together a team armed
with the lastest technology in the search for answers
to the world's strangest mysteries.
I'm not sure what's out there waiting for me,
but I know what I'm looking for, the truth.
To most people, werewolves are regarded as fictional creatures
that shift from man to beast, howl at the moon
and can only be killed with a silver bullet.
But to many people living in Romania,
werewolves are very real and very dangerous predators,
a hidden species that has defied observation by science.
The werewolf is a pillar of Romanian mythology.
But could people be mistaking regular wolves or even bears
for this nocturnal monster?
And while it might sound crazy
that people here really do believe,
recently, residents in a Romanian village
were so terrified that they unearthed a human corpse,
removed its heart and drank its blood
as part of an arcane ritual to ward off the creature.
But the most recent reports of werewolf sightings
are emerging from deep in the forests
near the rural Romanian town of Brad
where terrified locals recently abandoned a mountain village.
Compiling all of our eyewitness accounts,
we were able to produce this digital mock-up
of what we'd be looking for.
The werewolf is believed to be a fast runner
with an incredibly aggressive disposition.
He's thought to stalk isolated
Romanian forests in the dead of night.
This broad-chested beast
is believed to have a canine anatomy,
its body covered in a coat of dark fur
that conceals it at night.
It is reported to rise up on two legs
when it attacks its victims,
and his muzzle is larger and broader than a normal wolf.
His distinct call can be heard for miles,
though he usually works alone.
His place in folklore is undeniable.
But could this legend be based in reality?
My team and I headed out to expose the identity
of this elusive creature of the night.
From Los Angeles, we flew 20 hours
headed east to Bucharest, Romania.
How do these things get so dirty?
That is a werewolf.
After being momentarily detained at customs...
This is where you end up when you mark,
"Purpose of visit, werewolf hunting."
We hit the streets to begin our search.
Here in the center of Bucharest,
surrounded by Old-World architecture,
it's almost impossible not to think of werewolves.
After all, this is Van Helsing country.
Josh, I don't know if middle of the day is the best time to look
for a werewolf in the middle of a city.
Well, that's when you don't expect a werewolf, Mike.
You think, "I'm not going to find one,"
and then, suddenly...
Waffles, walrus,
witchcraft, werewolves.
Clearly, we needed more scholarly assistance,
so we spoke to one of Romania's leading
anthropologists and expert on all things werewolf.
How far back does this story go in Romania?
This tradition is prehistoric.
People still believe in these creatures?
Yes. This is a strong belief in Romania.
They always claim that they saw them.
They claim they saw them? Yes.
[ Speaking Romanian ]
People are afraid, and they are taking measures
to keep them away.
GATES: The professor told us that,
to locate recent eyewitnesses, we should take a distant trip
into the backwoods of Romania,
that is, if we could make the one train that headed there,
which departed in less than 30 minutes.
♪
Look at this. She's closing it.
So much for window five.
♪
I need some train tickets.
I do not speak Romanian.
[ Speaking foreign language ]
When did you learn Italian?
Train tickets. Off we go.
Apparently, Italian is the new universal language.
Okay! Quickly! Quickly!
Okay! That's good. The other one.
There you go. Thank you so much.
Come on! Come on! Come on!
Okay. Here we go.
This is like the Hogwarts Express.
This thing is packed.
Which one is full of Romanian supermodels?
Mike, our sound guy, is a werewolf.
[ Roars ]
Seriously, that is a werewolf.
That is a werewolf.
Our train ride would take us north 175 miles
away from Bucharest to the small province of Sibiu.
As the hours ticked by, the city faded away,
and we found ourselves traveling into rural territory.
♪
Here in the frigid mountains of Transylvania,
life goes on as it has for centuries,
and the remote wilderness of the vast forests here
are seldom explored.
It was here that the majority of recent sightings
were being reported.
[ Brakes squeal ]
Lord, it's cold.
Cold and rainy and wet.
Okay. Let's find someplace to sleep and get some food.
- What is this place? - It's lodging.
They have food, and they have a bed.
But it says, "Mioritica."
Let's eat. Yeah.
They're going to eat us.
GATES: The owner of Romania's version of a B&B
was gracious enough to put us up for the night,
complete with a traditional meal.
Werewolf wine.
And there are descriptions of how to spot
a werewolf on the back of here.
This is not booze.
This is an investigation tool.
Is that a guy with an accordion outside the door?
It seemed our host was intent on turning our quiet night
into a local rave...
[ Playing ]
And against my better judgment,
my crew and I showed off our hot American dance moves.
Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Come on!
Yeah! Hey!
Woo!
As the night wound down,
the conversation turned to the werewolf,
and it turned out our host had a lot
to say about the legendary beast.
Are there people in Romania, do you think,
that still believe in the werewolf?
Yeah, in the mountains areas, in the forest.
So do people in Romania as a general rule,
do they avoid the forest at night?
During the night, we are not very happy
to walk in the forest.
Do you think that if I look for a werewolf, I might find one?
Maybe.
GATES: Sorin explained to me that we needed to travel further
north toward the town of Brad
where he heard a werewolf had recently been spotted,
and villagers had fled their homes.
He also mentioned a large cave where the villagers
were convinced the creature was hiding.
In the morning, we made our way to the nearly
2,000-year-old town,
which is surrounded by Transylvania's dense woods.
In order to distinguish the regular wolf
from an undiscovered animal,
our first stop was at a makeshift zoo
where several Romanian wolves were in captivity
and where safety procedures were a little lax.
Oh, this seems like a grand idea.
I don't think I have enough suture kits.
Get closer, Gabe.
Forty percent of all wolves in Europe
can be found here in Romania,
but I couldn't imagine someone
mistaking this agile canine for a monster.
Can you tell him that these wolves are beautiful,
and I would like to have a coat made out of them?
All right. That's good.
Let's all get out of the wolf cage.
Come on.
With an up-close-and-personal look at the common wolf,
we spoke to several villagers
who moved away from the forest out of fear
of a much larger creature.
[ Speaking Romanian ]
So almost everyone left this village.
And why did they abandon their homes?
From the woods, the wolf show up.
He had a very scary look and strange eyes.
Where do I find this creature?
Up in the mountains.
And are there abandoned buildings there?
Yes, there are lots of houses abandoned up there,
and they used to live here, 60 families,
and now there are 14 persons left.
GATES: The man explained that if we traveled up into the hills,
we would eventually come to a stone cross,
which marks the outskirts of the abandoned village.
He also directed us to the remote
cave high above the village
where the creature is rumored to dwell.
One right there, yeah?
What we weren't forewarned about was the sheer cliff
we would have to climb to get there.
Wow.
It's kind of steep.
Hey, Rex. Yeah?
Get the ropes.
♪
Okay.
So we're going to go set the lines,
get ropes down to you guys, we'll pull everybody up.
That's great. Sounds good.
Who's going to take me up, though?
Looking good, Evan.
You're almost there, Evan.
No, he's not.
Okay. Here we go.
There you go. You got it.
Okay. Sharra, let's go.
Nice and slow on the way up.
Rocks are slippery. - All right. Got it.
We got you. Keep coming!
The slippery rock provided little to hold on to,
and we struggled to keep our footing as we ascended.
Ah!
Whoa! Whoa!
We got you, man! It's okay!
Okay!
With my team now safely up the wall, we scrambled higher
and discovered the mysterious cave.
According to the locals, this is a possible habitat
for our creature.
If I was a werewolf, that's where I would live.
Let's get ready to go inside.
Let's get the cameras out.
You guys ready to go?
Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.
Here we go.
Okay.
I'm going to take Evan and Mike.
We're going to go inside, check out the main tunnel.
Sharra and Bicha, you guys are going to hang out here,
see if you see any movement on the outside of the cave.
And, Rex, you and Jael splinter off with Gabe.
Check out some of the side tunnels.
All right. Let's do it.
All right. Guys, good luck.
♪
See that?
See the scratch marks here?
These are claw marks right here, right here.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[ Panting ]
Evan, come here quick!
Come here!
Careful, careful, careful. It drops off.
Get down here.
Evan, come here quick!
Come here! Come here!
Careful, careful, careful. It drops off.
Get down here.
That is a human bone.
This is unbelievable.
These are all human bones.
I mean, do you know how old that is?
Pre-Romania, Pre-Rome.
Hey, Bicha, I just stumbled
upon really deep holes at the cave.
All right, copy that.
Oh, what's that?
Looks like some hair fibers, little clump of hair.
Oh.
You think it's animal or human?
It doesn't look human to me.
It looks more like fur than hair.
Yeah, it does. It looks a little softer.
Yeah, it does.
Huh.
Well, let's bag that and take it with us.
We can find out what's been through here at least.
Josh for Jael and Rex, we found what looks like
some hair samples in here, could be fur.
We're going to bag it and put it in the evidence kit.
We're going to head back towards the surface.
Sounds good.
It's getting cold in this cave, so I'm happy to get out.
GATES: Darkness fell upon us quickly,
and after descending to the forest floor,
the trails became impossible to navigate on foot.
Luckily, some brave locals were passing through and offered us
a ride the rest of the way to the village.
Can I come in?
Can my group come in?
Yeah? Yeah.
You're not going to cut us up into little pieces, right?
Okay. Let's do it. All right, guys.
I think we got a ride.
All right, guys.
Keep your eyes peeled for that white cross.
Oh. Oh, my God.
Okay, sir. Sir, can you stop right here?
After our slow-moving haul up the mountain,
we finally came to the stone cross
that the man in Brad told us
marked the entrance to the abandoned village.
We had arrived in werewolf country.
Let's get base camp set up.
Yeah. I saw a spot right over there that'll work.
Perfect. Come on, guys. Let's go.
Let's do it.
We unpacked our gear and began to assess the area
we planned to investigate.
We set up base camp 100 yards from the entrance
to the abandoned village.
Our plan was to set up four IR cameras
in a 300-foot perimeter from base,
which we would monitor throughout the night.
To entice the werewolf, we baited the cameras
with raw meat,
reportedly his favorite meal.
Okay. Let's give this werewolf something to eat.
Who could resist?
We have been led here by a number of eyewitnesses
who claim that in this part of Romania,
in these forests,
there is some sort of creature
that people are seeing, that people are scared of.
This is obviously a story that has real origins
in the folklore of this country.
We're here to do an investigation to see
if there's any merit to the notion
that there is something biological, unknown,
unidentified that is responsible for these attacks.
In an effort to cover as much ground as possible,
I split up the team in cardinal directions.
Sharra and I headed west to sweep the area
with our FLIR thermal imager
to see if anything with a pulse remained
in the abandoned village.
Jael and Bicha headed east,
and we'd all stay in communication
with Rex back at base camp.
♪
If there is something living in here,
this is definitely a trail.
Yeah.
If feels like whatever it is is just outside of what we can see.
What is that?
Evan, flip around.
There's something hot on the FLIR:
See anything over by the river?
I just got a hit on the FLIR:
Right now, right across the river there,
something just cruised right by on the FLIR:
Right there. It's right there.
Come on! Come on! Come on!
It's gone now.
What is this?
You see that?
That place looks seriously creepy.
Yeah.
Josh for base camp, we just found these ruined buildings.
I think this is part of the abandoned village.
Sharra and I are going to go inside and check them out.
- Copy that. - Okay.
Let's go real slow and check it out.
♪
Oh, creepy.
This place has been abandoned for a while.
Some old clothes here.
Whatever happened here, they took off in a hurry.
All right, let's get out of here before this roof caves in.
Hey, there's a chapel. Let's check it out.
This place is totally abandoned.
Hello?
There's still old rugs on the ground.
Okay. Let's go.
Josh for base camp,
snow is really starting to come down now.
We're going to make our way back through the forest
towards base camp. We'll see you in a few.
♪
- Look at this. - Whoa.
That's, like, a huge, almost looks as big as a hand.
Looks like a hand.
See it right there. There's a big heel.
That's a weird footprint.
Bicha for base camp.
Go, Bicha.
We found some footprints.
It looks like it's a hand,
almost like a footprint, but bigger than a hand.
I don't know what it is.
[ Coughing ]
You all right?
Cold.
Okay.
I got Jael here.
She's not feeling good at all.
She's feeling really sick, and she's feeling really faint.
We're going to head back down to base camp.
We're going to mark this area up here.
I think she has to get off her feet because I don't know
if she can make it any longer tonight.
Have Rex down there ready for her.
Okay? - Okay. Copy. Standing by.
Can you make it down the hill?
Yeah, I can make it down the hill.
Watch your step. Watch your step.
All right.
Phew.
What's going on, guys?
Jael is in bad shape, man.
We got Rex.
I'm just really cold. Here, sit down.
So you're going to stay down here with Jael?
Yeah. Yeah. So Rex and I,
we'll go back up there, we'll go cast the footprint.
Mike and Evan, you guys definitely come
because you know where we're going,
and let's explore that whole ridge up there,
cast the print if we can.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Okay. Great. - Hey, good luck, guys.
♪
Okay. Where is it? - It's right up this trail here.
Very slippery, guys. Be careful.
Yeah.
I see tracks here.
Oh, look at this.
That's almost a foot long.
Look at that thing.
I have no idea what that is.
That's big.
That's not a shoe print, and that's not a wolf print.
Man, that looks like a big footprint.
It's got a clean heel print, though.
Yeah.
Hey, Josh for base camp, come in.
Yeah, go for base camp.
Just want to let you know, Bicha, we arrived
at the top of the ridge,
and I'm looking at these footprints that you guys saw.
They are amazing.
Yeah, that's great to hear.
I mean, definitely something up there.
We are going to do a casting up here and see
if we can take these back and have somebody in Los Angeles
who's a specialist identify them.
Copy that.
What?
[ Low whistling ]
That's howling. Yep.
That's howling. I'm sure.
I just saw two eyes with this camera.
Where is it?
It's that way.
Right there! I see it.
A little light, two little lights just flashed right
through those trees like little glinting eyes.
♪
- Evan, watch out! - Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Evan!
Just saw two eyes with this camera.
Where is it?
It's that way.
Right there! I see it.
A little light, two little lights
just flashed right through those trees
like little glinting eyes.
♪
Evan, watch out! - Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Evan! He fell!
Evan, hang on! Evan!
You okay?
Stay right there.
You got hurt in there?
Okay. How about your back?
I think I'm good there.
Wiggle your toes.
You feel that?
Ugh, right there.
You can feel that, though? Yeah, I can feel that.
No numbness? Real slow, Evan.
Real slow. Real slow.
Dude.
Are you sure you're all right, man?
I'm all right. I just slipped out of no—
I mean, just the bottom fell out.
GATES: We continued to explore the snowy forests
until the break of dawn.
With a slightly bruised cameraman
and a sick researcher in tow,
it was time to pack up base camp and get moving.
Our night spent in the Romanian forest
turned up some very intriguing evidence.
We cast a set of footprints and spotted
mysterious eyes lurking through the trees
and recorded some eerie howling.
[ Howling ]
Was the werewolf signaling his presence that night,
or was it just a creature of more earthly origins
like a wolf or bear?
By the light of a new day, we flew home to California
where the DNA results from the fur we collected
indicated a Romanian wolf, a logical suspect
that must've spooked the villagers below the cave.
We brought our other evidence to mammalogist Dr. Jim Dines
at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
He lent his expert eye to our footprint castings.
What, if anything, can you make of that?
So what I'm seeing here, these are canid footprints,
got the pad or the paw with toes surrounding it,
four toes, canid pattern.
This one, you see the claws sticking out from those toes,
so that could be a wolf.
GATES: With the possibility that these footprints
belong to a common wolf,
we then turn to the much larger
print that we spied in the field.
There aren't any definitive features.
It's great you've got that pen in there
for size comparison for scale,
and that alone is telling me
it's way too big for a wolf.
GATES: Did this print belong to an unknown species,
a real-world iteration of the legendary werewolf?
With a known population of real wolves
and other predators in the forests of Romania,
there seems to be a lot of room
for misidentification here,
and my own instincts tell me
that the werewolf will always remain the stuff of legend,
a potent symbol in Old-World Europe
that will forever reappear like the full moon itself.
[ Howling ]
The Atacama Desert in Chile covers
70,000 square miles of uninhabitable
and unexplored rock.
Over 20 million years old and 50 times drier
than California's Death Valley,
it's high on my list of the most uncomfortable places on Earth.
On the lone highway traversing the desert, several drivers
recently reported seeing a dinosaur-like creature
keeping pace with their cars.
If what they're reporting is accurate,
there could be an animal so well
adapted to its brutal desert habitat
that it's cheated its fate for millions of years.
We compiled numerous eyewitness accounts
and loaded them into 3-D rendering software to produce
a model of what we'd be looking for.
The Arica Monster reportedly survived
for millions of years in the barren caves
and canyons of the Atacama Desert
in northern Chile.
This large creature reportedly has thick and leathery skin
and is presumed to live near a water source.
It stands upright on two muscular legs and attacks
with a jaw of razor-sharp teeth.
Its three-toed foot leaves a unique
and unmistakable signature print,
and it is believed to be an extremely fast runner.
With these dramatic recent accounts making headlines,
we were eager to get to Chile
and begin investigating on the ground ourselves.
Tickets in hand, we packed our gear to go looking
for dinosaurs in the Chilean desert.
We flew nearly 5,000 miles from Los Angeles
to the city of Antofagasta, Chile.
Once on the ground, we would drive north
to the town of Arica, the desert outpost
where several eyewitnesses had recently seen the creature.
♪
This desert region is so desolate, rocky and lifeless,
it has been compared to the moon.
Along the way, we stopped to speak
with a local paleontologist
who could offer an expert's view on the recent sightings here.
Dr. Santoro has been studying the possibility
of the Arica Monster for years, and he could tell me
if the recent sightings were plausible.
What are some environments where an animal
could stay off the radar?
The paleontologist referred me to local eyewitnesses
who claim to have seen the Arica Monster
within the last month.
We headed into the city center to speak with them
and to peruse the local flea market
for any hot leads.
Look at that.
Found a dinosaur.
Some people said that I would
never find a dinosaur here in Chile.
They were wrong.
I also found an old photo of Joan Crawford.
So that's two dinosaurs.
We also got momentarily sidetracked by
some hot-blooded natives
settling a dispute Stone-Age style.
[ Women shouting in Spanish ]
You can all have my autograph.
What were they arguing about?
Passionate culture here, very passionate people.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
Latin women are crazy!
Ugh!
With tempers cooled, I spoke to retired Chilean
military officer Hernan Cuevas,
a key witness who swears he saw the dinosaur
while driving with his family on the desert highway.
Tell me exactly what you saw.
[ Speaking Spanish ]
You know, the first thing they saw was this cloud of dust,
and then his daughter started yelling
that something was coming toward the car,
and then all of them saw,
you know, this shape go by very quickly.
Do you think it was some sort of dinosaur?
Mm-hmm. Si.
He saw a dinosaur. That's what he thinks it was.
You know, there's many unexplored places
and valleys in these deserts
that these creatures could live in.
So it's a possibility?
So it's a possibility that it's still there.
GATES: Many other locals had seen signs of the Arica Monster
and were eager to share their story.
She said, "It just stood in front of the car,
and then it looked over."
It stared at them for a moment before it walked away.
She and her mom had the best view
because they were both in the front seats,
and her mom just, like,
got so scared and started crying
and was kind of freaking out, was nervous,
didn't know if she should run out of the car, stay inside.
Oh, you don't want to run out of the car.
I learned that in "Jurassic Park."
It's like the lawyer. You get eaten.
You don't... She made the right decision.
Stay in the car.
She told me she had an image of the monster's three-toed
footprint seared in her memory.
So, three toes and small nails in the front.
That looks like a dinosaur footprint.
All of the recent eyewitness sightings had been concentrated
in a narrow zone of the desert in the Pampa Ancha sector
120 miles northeast of Arica.
If any creature were to survive out here for weeks,
let alone millennia,
it would need a life-support system,
water and a food source.
In barren terrain like this, such a green oasis would be easy
to spot from the sky,
that is, if we could get off the ground.
These dudes are jump-starting a plane?
I've had a lot of vehicles that won't start on the show.
Having aircraft that won't start
is really not that inspiring a feeling.
When did the plane last fly?
What are you looking for? Oh, your glasses.
Yeah, you got your glasses now.
How long have you been flying for?
In this dinosaur of an airplane
with Captain Magoo behind the controls,
I pondered whether or not this flight
was a good idea.
Nope.
Rare that I refuse to fly
but that plane's engine was not in good shape,
so we'll just need to find another mode
of transportation to see the desert.
Having exercised the passenger bill of rights,
we improvised new transportation to seek
out a promising habitat and look for any tracks,
remains or other physical evidence of the creature.
The Atacama Desert is enormous, obviously.
We have these quad runners.
We're looking for any evidence of this creature,
droppings, footprints, material remains.
Be safe. Move fast.
Cover a lot of ground. And we'll stay in touch.
All right. Let's do it, guys. Come on.
Okay! Let's go!
The Atacama Desert is dangerous desolation.
With no medical facilities or potable water
for hundreds of miles,
we scoured the 120-degree deserts at high speeds
to cover as much ground as possible
and battered our ATVs in some extremely difficult conditions.
This muddy stream proved to be a dead end
since the water was dangerously sulfuric.
I mean, looking for dinosaurs is not easy.
♪
Josh for Bicha, come in.
Yeah, go for Bicha. What you got?
Guys, get over here!
All right. We're on our way down.
Hold on 1 sec.
♪
Come here! Come here!
Guys, get over here! All right.
We're on our way down. We're on our way down.
Hold on 1 sec.
♪
Come here! Come here!
Huge footprints!
Three toes, one, two, three.
I'm not a paleontologist,
but there are not a lot of animals running around
with three toes that big.
This canyon was exactly the type of remote habitat
where a creature could survive undetected,
and though it didn't look like these
prints were left just yesterday,
finding this evidence on the canyon's rim indicated,
at the very least, that a large animal had
once tracked through here.
Guys, let's take everything off the quads.
We go on foot from here.
With the light failing, we decided to break out our gear
and dig into a thorough investigation of this
increasingly plausible habitat.
Let's hold up.
We got a nice, flat plateau here.
We're losing the sun.
Let's set up base camp before it gets too dark,
and we can get out, keep pressing through
these canyons, see what we find.
Sounds great. Yeah?
There were only two ways in and out of this canyon.
We set four infrared cameras at various positions
on the canyon rim where we had seen the footprint earlier.
This would all feed back to Sharra at base camp,
who would relay any animal sightings to us in the field.
And we're going to try to radiate out from this canyon
as far as we can, and what we're really looking
for is a place where this creature could live.
We're looking for shelter.
We're looking for caves. We're looking for nests.
We're also looking for vegetation and a water source.
If there is some sort of large unidentified animal living here,
it's got to be living up in these canyons somewhere
where it's off the radar.
We've heard different descriptions
of what it looks like, but certainly,
I think we'll know it if we see it.
Okay.
This is very strange.
Jael, come here.
What do you got?
I got a hit on the FLIR: something up in that canyon.
See it? Oh, yeah.
Whatever that is, it's alive.
Just kind of sitting up there.
Be hiding behind some rocks or something, getting...
Josh for base camp, come in.
Jael and I just picked up
something on the thermal imager.
It looks like it's pretty far up this canyon.
It's actually pretty high, steep up on the wall.
I don't know what it is.
It's a pretty good size because it's fairly...
It's got to be a couple hundred feet from me at least.
Okay. Copy that. Keep me informed.
Got to find a way up this ridge here.
Yeah. Might be kind of tough.
We definitely can't go up this way without climbing gear.
Yeah, there's no easy way up over that ridge.
Over here?
We can either go up that...
Okay.
Or try to plug through in there.
Yeah, that looks better. It's not as steep.
You want to try up here?
Yeah. I say we go for it. Let's try this.
♪
Almost sounded like there's something on the ridge up there.
I just heard something crunching on the shale rock.
Rex for base camp.
Base camp, Rex.
Yeah, Sharra, we're definitely hearing noises up here.
It sounds like rocks falling off the side of these canyon walls.
With the echoing of the sound,
it's hard to tell exactly which direction
it's coming from other than deeper into the canyon,
so we're going to try to make our way up there.
Okay. Copy that.
Just let me know what's happening out there.
That was close.
There's no way we can follow it.
It's just too steep, so let's head back.
Okay.
Oh, my God. Guys, get up here. Get up here.
What is it, Josh?
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Look at the paw. It is a paw.
Okay.
It's definitely a paw,
could be a wolf, a dog.
Think whatever we're looking at here is victim, not perpetrator.
We've definitely talked about if there is some sort of large
animal up here, it would need a food source.
This is definitely a food source.
Whatever this was
has been ripped apart and eaten.
Okay. Let's go.
It gets really steep on this side of the embankment.
Be really careful.
Whoa! - Josh!
Josh!
It gets really steep on this side of the embankment.
Be really careful.
♪
Whoa! - Josh, you all right?
Josh! Josh!
- I'm okay. - Oh, my God.
Okay.
- How's your leg? - I'm fine.
- Okay.
Did you fall? What was that?
Just this big rock gave way under my foot.
I'm okay. Oh, my God.
It just kind of gave way under my foot.
Be very careful coming down there.
Hey, Josh. Come here.
What do you got?
This looks like it could be feces.
That's definitely scat. And look.
There's more over there,
and it looks like it's leading into that little cave area.
I don't see any tracks in the sand.
We should definitely sample it and bag it and keep moving.
That is old.
Okay.
No, it's safer in your pocket.
Okay. Let's press on. Let's go.
Okay.
Hello, hello. - Hey, guys.
Everyone alive? Nobody eaten by a dinosaur?
- Not yet. - Ten fingers, 10 toes?
Still looking good.
Good. I mean, I think we've got, you know,
two of our criteria met right now.
We have places where this thing could be hiding and living,
and we have a food supply.
What we don't have yet is water or vegetation,
but, you know, certainly, it's plausible
that something large could be hiding up here.
All right, guys.
Sharra and Bicha, why don't you two hit that eastern area?
And we'll go south. Great. We'll see you in a bit.
Let's go, guys.
♪
Sharra for base camp.
Go ahead for base camp.
Something is moving around 200 yards from me.
Copy that. What are you hearing?
Are you hearing rocks, gravel moving?
No, it definitely sounded like thud, thud, thud, thud,
something heavy.
[ Gasps ]
Base camp for Sharra, are you guys okay?
Hey. I heard something.
It was chasing us.
We weren't hanging around to find out what it was.
We're headed back.
Josh for base camp, come in.
Go ahead.
We stumbled onto some sort of old cemetery.
It looks like it's been here for hundreds of years,
bunch of old wooden crosses buried
in the sand here in the canyon.
We're just going to keep heading down.
I can hear the sound of water at this point.
I can definitely see some trees and shrubs as well.
So I think we're getting close to a water source.
I'll keep you posted.
We heard something.
We heard, like, kind of a thump, thump.
We tried to ignore it.
We were like, "All right. We're going to look at this evidence."
We hear thump, thump, thump again,
and we were like, "Okay,"
and then we kind of started walking backwards slowly.
And then it was, like... I don't know.
Was it a growl?
Or how would you describe what we heard?
Uh, it was like a rustling.
It was a rustling, but I heard, like, a noise from an animal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it's definitely some kind of animal and just started...
sounded like it was moving towards us.
Could you actually hear the footsteps in the ground?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know what it was, but it just started coming,
and we booked.
Oh, my God. Yeah. So...
Guys, watch your step.
Nice.
Something... Something is down in that brush.
Something crunching around in the brush.
I got down on that long rock.
Here, there it goes again.
Right there.
Whatever jumps out of those bushes, stay together.
Oh, okay. All right.
Big, loud, lots of noise.
Okay.
Because there's something in there.
Okay. Let me get stable ground.
Whoa!
GATES: Stay together.
Big, loud, lots of noise.
Because there's something in there.
♪
Whoa!
Down there. Shh!
Whatever it was just crashed in those bushes
and then came ripping right down through here,
and I think it just went down into those woods right there.
Guys, I think I hear water up ahead.
Careful. Careful.
We found the water, guys.
♪
Guys, it gets pretty deep over here.
♪
Whatever it was came through this way.
We had hit a dead end,
tracking whatever thirsty creature
had been heading for the water,
but had found several pieces of evidence
that an unusually large animal had been in this area.
But could a predator really have cheated extinction here
for millions of years?
The three-toed footprint that led us here
and the animal droppings we collected needed
to be analyzed back in the states,
so we flew home to search for answers.
We took our footprint cast to Dr. Luis Chiappe,
the director of the Dinosaur Institute in Los Angeles
and a world-renowned paleontologist.
Based on these castings, are you able to make
any sort of determination
as to what kind of animal you think this came from?
Yes, absolutely.
The shape of this one seems to be more in line
with the shape of a meat-eating dinosaur.
It's a dinosaur? Yeah.
For sure? Yes, no doubt.
I would have no question about that.
And what type of dinosaur do you think these came from?
A group of dinosaurs that are called iguanodons.
And you can actually see if you look at the structure
of the foot.
You can actually see the three main toes
and that very long middle toe right there.
GATES: I was stunned that these were
the prints of an actual dinosaur,
and though they were probably laid down
in the mud millions of years ago,
the discovery of a pristine run of tracks
like this is incredibly rare
and represents a huge find for our team.
You know, there were these people living the Atacama
that thought they saw a dinosaur.
There are many stories like that.
You know, we get them here all the time.
Which is, in some sense, a dinosaur, a living dinosaur.
It has the same three-toed structure.
It has the same overall shape.
It's really similar.
GATES: It seems that locals may have caught a glimpse
of this rarely seen but very much alive creature
and jumped to Jurassic conclusions,
and in the end, maybe that's fitting
since the rhea is a distant descendant of the dinosaur
we came here to find.
And so we close the case, having made an amazing discovery
and knowing that, in the primordial Atacama Desert,
descendants of dinosaurs really do still rule
the Earth.