October 12, 2000
Prospecting at Camp II
Camp 2
Gadafawa, North

Planning the next day's activities often occurs after sundown in light generated by solar-powered lanterns.

Although it is desert now, 110 million years ago the Sahara was a wet, lush environment with huge rivers, lakes and streams. Long clams, fish, and crabs inhabited the banks; alongside lived dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodiles and turtles. We know these creatures lived here from fossils we find. The rock records evidence of great waterways in the way the sandstone layers are cross-bedded.

Although the beds are the same age as those we've been exploring at Camp 1, we have very little idea how rich, or poor, in fossils the localities surrounding Camp 2 will be.

This is a classic moment on an expedition: a small group of young scientists sets out into uncharted geology to survey an area known hitherto only by brief descriptions and oral histories.

Here at Camp 2, the outcrop has risen in relief, transmogrified into a broken cliff line, burnt umber against sand..

The Move North

As we journeyed north from Camp 1, the desert shifted shape. What was flat outcrop at Camp 1 has transformed into a burnt umber cliff-line. What had been sporadic dunes has become a never-ending undulation. At the base of the outcrop, white-tipped grass is thick and green.

On our way up we passed two stocky, black Touareg tents amidst hundreds of camels grazing. Our camp is located in a cirque of barkhan dunes, the highest of which overlooks the outcrop to the East.

Sand dunes intermingle with fossil-bearing rocks in the area
under exploration from Camp 2.

Paul calls our drives into the outcrop a "cat and mouse game" because the outcrop (exposed rock) intermingles with dunes. As a result each time we make a foray into a new area we are skirting sandstone ledges (hard to drive over) and sand dunes (easy to get stuck in). The point of the game: reach the outcrop without getting stuck in the sand, cut off by dunes, or driving over sharp rocks.

A stripped-down camp puts the kitchen between two trucks.

What is prospecting?

What is prospecting? Looking for fossils. Some people might say it is looking for something you think might be there, but you don't know what it is until you find it.

Once you are in an area that is the right age (here the rocks are 110 million years old, Cretaceous age) and the right type (because dinosaurs were land animals, we are looking at terrestrial rocks; rocks that were formed on land), you look for outcrop - areas where the rock is exposed.

Prospecting requires a keen eye - and an occasional climb. Here, Greg explores steep sandstone layers laid down by an ancient river.

To find a dinosaur - or other fossilized animal - something needs to be poking up out of the rock onto the surface. Like hunters, paleontologists follow a trail - fragments of bone traced to the source.

Paleontologists may be hunters, but they must be detectives as well. Once you have found something, how do you make sense of it? If you are interested in more than a trophy or a mantelpiece, you must learn to read clues the bones and rocks hold, and to construct stories from them. The full stories come from geology as well as paleontology - rocks and bones.

What kind of animals lived at that time here on Africa? How many species? What was the diversity? How big - or small - did these animals get? What was the environment like when these animals were alive? These are some of our initial questions.

When we actually excavate a site, we try to piece together the death scenario as we excavate. When we are in prospecting mode, like now, we are (literally) scratching the surface to find out what is here.

Next