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Brushing the
knee joint, Paul is dwarfed by
the enormous hind limb of Jobaria.
The place: Outer Mongolia's
Gobi Desert. The Year: 1922 No one had ever
seen a dinosaur egg nest before. The oval
textured eggs were beautifully preserved
in the red-colored sand that covered them
80 million years ago. Within a foot of the
nest lay the skeleton of a strange two-legged
raptor with long, recurved hand claws.
Roy Chapman Andrews
and his crew from New York set out to explore
Central Asia's great desert in hopes of
finding the origin of man. Instead, his
team discovered a lost world of Cretaceous
dinosaurs, dinosaur egg nests and tiny dinosaur-age
mammals. The expedition, which generated
wide public interest even then - is now
legendary.
Hundreds
of people were awed by the skeleton during
the Flamme de la Paix celebration.
Are there any places
left in today's small world where one can
explore with the chance of discovering animals
so new to science that they shed light on
the deep history of an entire continent?
How many chances does any team have to unearth
a lost world?
We set out to Africa's
Sahara desert with ambitious dreams of exploration
- and four months to make them a reality.
We planned to visit three time horizons
- Cretaceous rocks dating back 135 million,
110 million and 90 million years - all located
in the parched upper half of the Republic
of Niger.
One of the highlights
of Camp 2 was the discovery of the most
complete jaw so far of the new, large predator.
Here, Paul brushes away 110-million year
old rock while a herd of camels passes by
on the horizon.
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.
After collecting 20
tons of fossils, mixing 100 bags of plaster,
building 274 jackets, repairing 21 flat
tires, the 2000 Expedition to Niger is over.
Every morning
at about 6:45AM, Paul tells the team about
plans for the day, the next week and general
announcements.
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