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cont'd
Greg's microsite investigations,
most of which required crawling on his hands
and knees, resulted in 338 tiny leaf-shaped
of the small armored dinosaur, which belongs
in the large group of plant-eating dinosaurs
called ornithiscians. This is the remarkable
feature of this new site, because in all
of our previous prospecting we came across
only two teeth of this same ornithischian
dinosaur.
Bido, Gabrielle,
Didier and Paul converge on a spot of outcrop
scattered with tiny dinosaur teeth, some
as small as a pea.
One of our sites in
an enormous 10-foot-long (3 meter) hind
limb of Jobaria. It is ideal
for conveying the enormous size of these
creatures. In another area we have partially
prepared out overlapping scapula, humerus
and radius (shoulder blade and forearm).
Both of these are spectacular to see in
the ground. We are planning to develop a
series of sites in the desert where Nigerians
and foreign tourists can come to see spectacular
bones like these right in the desert where
we found them.
At first glance
the fragmented surface of a bone can be
misleading. The bone is often beautifully
preserved inches below.
When Balla first saw
this site, he knew there that was a lot
of fossil bone but could not understand
what animals these bones once belonged to.
Our work with him over the last few days
has been a great hel. The people of Marandet
have developed an appreciation for their
fossil patrimony, and we plan to help them
establish the area as a tourist site where,
with guides, people can see dinosaur bones
preserved in the ground. We will post more
on this project in a later update.
Our plan is to finish
excavating the key finds this morning and
then prospect in bursts across a wide area.
There is so much unprospected 130-million-year
old terrain that we want to spot check as
widely as we can in the hopes of encountering
new species. Then back to Agadez where we
will review our plans for the last part
of the field season.
SPECIAL DIDIER
UPDATE
Newly arrived
after healing a torn achilles tendon, French-African
paleontologist Didier Dutheil quickly gets
to work on the microfossil front.
After four months recovering
from a torn Achilles tendon, Didier Boubacar
Dutheil, has (much to our delight) joined
the team in the field. Didier is a French-African
paleontologist who specializes in paleoichthiology
(fossil fish) and has worked in West Africa
for more than 15 years. His role as ambassador
(he has the best command of the two languages,
French and English) and as the butt of numerous
French jokes--makes him an invaluable asset
to our mission.
SPECIAL DINO UPDATE
Dino is caught
in the act of stealing Gabe's brush.
After a miserable ride
from Agadez to Marandet, Dino has made it
back into the field. Once the car-sickness
had worn off Dino was right back to his
thief-like self, stealing people's tools
from the site and looking for places to
bury them. He even attempted to lug off
a 6-pound camel femur that Paul had collected
as a study specimen. He hasn't learned not
to stand on the bones, and he is determined
to bark at every moving object on the horizon.
These character flaws notwithstanding, Dino
is learning to sit and to come when he is
called, but we have a lot work ahead in
training him. It might help if we spoke
to him in Tomacheck.
Gabrielle
Lyon
Team Member, 2000 Expedition to Niger.
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