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...cont'd
November 8, 2000
6:35am
Camp 4
At 6:00am
we downloaded the front page of CNN.com.
It reads, "Bush wins Presidency after electoral
college cliffhanger." From the three or
four pages we've saved we try to piece together
the story of what has happened - and what
are still projections. We remind ourselves
that we're still six hours ahead of the
East Coast and that votes are still being
counted. Three states have not yet filed
any outcomes. We plan to log on again this
evening. But during the breakfast meeting
we are all distracted.
On the morning
of November 8, the team put its high tech
equipment to work and went online to learn
the results of the US presidential election.
Paul begins by previewing
the schedule ahead of us. At this stage
of the expedition we are counting backwards
- beginning with departures. The first of
which will be Allison, Chris and Mike on
the 16th of November.
Paul: "We're anticipating
being able to carry what material we find
back ourselves -and that we won't need to
arrange for the big truck to come. That
might change if we find something, but as
of right now we'll prospect heavily in this
area, head south for two days and depart
for Agadez the 22nd. We will
have two days for sorting and loading and
we will depart for Niamey the 25th.
Let's talk about prospecting!
Paul takes out the topographic
map.
At daybreak,
breakfast iis gulped down as the truck that
carried the water to camp prepares fro the
return journey to Agadez.
Eric: "Is the general
plan to go out an prospect every day and
come back every night?
Paul: "Not necessarily.
It depends on the outcrop. We're camped
here. The classic Lapparant area is here.
There are some ridges here and a complicated
cliff line here. We need to see if there
is even any exposure. When we exhaust the
areas west of camp, we'll head south. ...
As far as the fauna
goes, for this time period, it's pretty
sparse. We know two predators from the Cenomanian
[90-million-year old beds] from our work
in Morocco - Deltadromeus and Caracharodontosaurus.
There is another predator lurking around,
a spinosaur. We know almost nothing about
the herbivores. The story is wide open.
We found one huge footprint from a large
Iguanodon-like herbivore in Morocco,
but we really have no idea what animals
were the most common or what most of them
looked like. The question is: what is the
outcrop like?"
9:55am
We head out. Fifteen
people, three trucks, to a projected point
to begin prospecting. We've estimated the
longitude and latitude points on a topographic
map of the area and are guided now by a
hand-held GPS receiver (that receives signals
from a global satellite navigation system).
Our anticipation about
what the outcrop holds seems to mirror
the uncertainty in the election. The CNN
predictions give Florida to Bush. We've
brought the shortwave radio out in hopes
of tuning in a station at lunch.
Driving in this area
is not for the faint of stomach. Like a
small boat in choppy waters, the truck pitches
to and fro as it lurches over mounds of
long-dead grass and occasionally comes down
with a thud over a hidden trough in the
terrain. Sometimes the vehicle ploughs through
soft sand, engine straining, tires leaving
a wake of dust hovering over their tracks.
Spotted
from the window of a moving Land Rover,
the fossiized vertebrae and thigh bone of
this dinosaur, exposed on the desert floor,
are worth a closer look.
We will spend most of
our time driving, interspersed with bursts
of prospecting - 25 minutes here, half an
hour, one hour of looking around - followed
by sorting, wrapping, labeling and packing.
Sometimes someone spots bone from the moving
truck. When the tires get too close, we
fondly call the material "road kill." A
good find in an area often merits a longer
look. Sometimes one find brings the group
to an area and additional discoveries are
made.
Exposed rock appears
amongst the dunes as we approach the projected
point. Far in the distance, we spot the
outline of a limestone-capped cliff. We
are the first to try to extend Albert de
Lapparent's discoveries made on camelback
in the 1950s. He, too, traveled with a guard
and, in his papers, describes Touareg nomads
and tents much like the ones in the area
today.
After our first
round of prospecting, the tire on the hood
of a truck is surrounded with fossils. After
deciding what to keep, each fossil will
be labeled, logged and wrapped.
The outcrop is big -
expansive even. We could not have predicted
there would be so much of it. And, even
from the car, we see bone fragments on the
surface and, therefore, reason to stop.
Two kilometers or so shy of the projection
point, we decide to start prospecting.
5:55pm
Overwhelmed
by the astounding discoveries on the first
day at Camp 4,
Paul can't hold back a smile
Four new species in
an hour. Day one at Camp 4 and the floodgates
of the Cenomanian have opened!
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