After finding a dinosaur, you need to get the dinosaur bones out of the ground.

Jobaria is an enormous dinosaur. It was buried in nearly six feet of mud during a flash flood some 135 million years ago. As its bones fossilized the mud surrounding the bones turned to rock (lithified). Excavating this huge skeleton out of solid rock required a large-scale expedition and months of work.

The Sahara Desert is a long way from Chicago. So it took Dr. Sereno several years to assemble the right team and for the team to gather the resources and supplies they needed.

By 1997 they were ready. The 18-person, 4-month expedition spent nearly three months at the Jobaria site excavating the first skeleton and tracking down several new ones in the surrounding area.