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December 4, 2000
Photos by
G.H. Lyon unless noted
12/4/00
4:00am
U.S. Ambassador's Residence, Niamey
The expedition: A statistical view
(Front row,
from left) Gabe, Didier, BIdo and Paul along
with
two hundred Nigerienne students welcome
Jobaria home to Niger
at the National Museum of Niamey. ( Click
on the photo to enlarge)
A few interesting statistics
from our four months of field work:
- The 2000 Expedition
to Niger added the following new species
to the picture of Africa's dinosaur world:
at least 5 new predatory dinosaurs; 5
new herbivorous dinosaurs including a
new armored ornithischian; as many as
6 new crocodiles - from the largest in
the world to one less than three feet
long; 3 new turtles; new fish, arthropods,
and seeds; and, doubtless, mammal teeth
and the bones of other small animals lurking
in the sediment collected by Greg Wilson.
- Including the cargo
delay, the expedition lasted 116 days,
of which 96 were field days.
- We collected 20 tons
of fossils.
- We used 100 bags
of plaster to make 274 plaster jackets.
(The 1997 expedition also used 100 bags
of plaster but collected only 105 jackets
because many of the jackets were "oversized"
and contained the skeletons of the large
sauropod Jobaria.)
- We were invited to
a private meeting with Niger's President
Tandja.
- We worked with people
in Marandet to create a 10-site park of
Jobaria fossils for visitors.
- We created dinosaur
guidebooks for In'Gall and Marandet.
- We erected Suchomimus
in Agadez at the Flamme de la Paix; it
was the first mounted dinosaur skeleton
to stand in the Sahara.
- We erected the towering
skeleton of Jobaria in Niamey for
a two-day extravaganza that included many
ministers, the American and French ambassadors
and hundreds of school children.
- We will bring back
not only fossils, but also the fleet-footed
"terrible" dog, Dino.
Leaving the field.
Tonight we leave. And
now, in the early quiet of the morning,
with the mosques calling people to prayer
before the sun for Ramadan, it seems as
if we've just arrived.
It seems, despite the
four camps in the desert, the sheer physical
labor to excavate the finds (and sometimes
simply to reach camp), that memories of
our arrival here in August are more fresh
than memories of excavating the last great
discovery, which took place only a week
ago.
Eric and Greg
wait in position as one by one the jackets
are stacked.
The field season haul - 20 tons.
A week ago we were in
the field, sleeping on cots, hunching in
sleeping bags against the cold of the desert
night as we watched showers of shooting
stars, visiting the guards to joke with
them by their fire, pounding rock and mixing
plaster, walking with long strides across
flat plains and rocky outcrop keeping eyes
on the ground in the hopes of spotting a
fossil.
These memories seem
hazy this early morning, the day lightened
not by the horizon glow of a predawn sun,
but by the sharp, low light of fluorescent
bulbs. Sharper are the memories of the Hotel
Terminus, eating bread and jam outside our
rooms, waiting for cargo and, finally heading
off to Agadez without our field gear. The
memory of the first drive to Gadoufaoua,
with small Dino scrambling on my lap to
get out of the car is more intense than
the two day blur of packing in Agadez, November
23 and 24.
In the whirlwind of
leaving, and all the things that need doing,there
has hardly been time to think about all
we've done on this expedition, perhaps one
of the most productive expeditions since
paleontology expeditions to the Flaming
Cliffs of Mongolia in the early 1900s.
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