November 7, 2000
Piste to InAbangharit

11:56am

Gabrielle holds the blade-shaped tooth of the huge predator, Carcharodontosaurus, one of the few known inhabitants of the region 90-million-years ago. The team added four more species
to the landscape on day one of Camp 4.

What will Camp 4 hold? That's what we're all wondering. It's hard to imagine, after three intense months of fieldwork and many discoveries, that we could still make a great discovery in an area we knew almost nothing about; that there might be a lot of collecting to do; that the biggest finds are, in fact before us and not behind us... but no one really knows.

The drive to our last camp heads north along a piste - a pair of tire tracks impressed a few shallow inches into the ground. Paralleling the piste are tracks of animals; camel and donkey hooves are clearly outlined where they have broken through the thin crust to imprint the powdery mudstone underneath.

As we drive, the dust cloud is beautiful behind us - pink, billowing soft against a bleak backdrop of a grey gravel plain, brick-red mudstone and patches of pale yellow grass.

Occasionally a single camel will dot the horizon and then there will be two, three, a herd. Then, all of a sudden we are upon it - a stand of acacia trees and a well surrounded by animals. Ghost towns of eroding, square, mud brick houses sometimes accompany these flashes of green on the otherwise dry landscape.

1:47pm
Piste to InAbangharit

Gabrielle Lyon sits on the piste between InGall and InAbangharit.
Little more than two ruts on a flat plain,
this piste makes for fast - but dusty - driving.

We have just passed through Tigguidi n'Tessoum, famed for its salt production - and its remoteness. There are no towns between here and InAbangharit - 95 kilometers away. In the next stretch we leave the acacia and Sodom's apple of the sahel and re-enter the Sahara.

We are moving forward in geologic time. When we get out of the trucks we will have left the 135-million-year-old world of Jobaria and Afrovenator (and our new armored plant eater) and have entered the 90-million-year-old world of the huge predator Carcharodontosaurus (the "shark-toothed reptile"), quick carnivore Deltadromeus (the "delta runner") and Didier's favorite sawfish, Onchopristes.

4:00pm

We reach InAbangharit (after two flat tires) to find the big truck we've hired to carry our water balloons waiting for us. Water is streaming off the flatbed onto the ground. One of our diesel jerries fell over during the trip and punctured a hole in one of the water balloons. 500 gallons of water, gone.

"No showers this camp. If we only use this water for drinking and cooking - it'll last for two weeks," Jack, chef de l'eau (chief of water) assesses. Likely we will be able to find water in local wells for plastering jackets, but that can eat up precious time.

After checking in at the local post - the first mud brick compound in sight -- we are on our way again. Now, off road, we have projected to a point near the outcrop we want to prospect. If we can get there before dark we'll be able to set up camp tonight.

7:00pm

Headlights from a Land Rover help the team illuminate the tail end of a water ballon filled with 600 plus gallons of water -- weighing about 6000 pounds - - moments before it fell off the truck. Fortunately, it didn't burst.

We've stopped for the night along the edge of a string of dunes. We will set up camp here in the morning. As Chris and Dave cook dinner, the rest of the team works to unload the big truck and decant the remaining water out of the punctured balloon into empty plastic water jerries. Meanwhile, I work to find a station on the shortwave radio.

Everyone has the presidential election on their minds. We mailed absentee ballots from Niamey in September and the scraps of news we that have reached us - from friends, family and occasionally, the radio -- tells us the race will be close.

In the morning we'll actually log on to the internet and read the front page of CNN.com - a luxury at $7.00 a minute - with our high-tech web set up.

November brings the dry season to Niger and enough dust in the air
for spectacular sunrises.

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