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...cont'd
What little we knew
about Africa's Cretaceous world started
with the pioneering work of French and German
paleontologists. They often worked alone,
and often prospected on camelback. Their
collections, as a result, were enticing,
but relatively fragmentary. Our own previous
expeditions to the Sahara in 1993, '95 and
'97 allowed us to get our foot in the door.
The challenge for us on this expedition:
to swing the door wide open.
This is part
of the jaw of a juvenile Nigersaurus,
a new long necked, plant eating dinosaur.
The fossil is less than three inches long
and this baby dinosaur probably died in
its first year, according to Paul Sereno.
From outset of our expedition,
at Camps 1 and 2, we struck it fossil-rich.
Amidst the dunes and blueish 110 million
year old outcrop, we discovered not one,
but four new crocodiles, living alongside
the world's largest crocodile, Sarcosuchus.
30 years ago French paleontologists discovered
this crocodile's skull. We added two partial
skeletons - enough to bring this 40-foot
long beast back to life as a mounted skeleton.
Chris Sidor
found this new, unnamed, dog sized therapod.
He spotted the articulated vertabrae and
realized this was a major new find
as it is one of the smallest dinosaurs ever
discovered.
We dug up an amazing
10 tons of dinosaur fossils at Camps 1 and
2, a veritable menagerie. As we had hoped,
we excavated several skeletons of the bizarre,
600-toothed plant-eater Nigersaurus;
enough to reconstruct it from head to
toe. In addition to Nigersaurus,
we added one other new long-necked plant
eater and two new meat eaters. One of the
predators, only three feet long, will be
Africa's first good look at a raptor. Turtles,
fish, petrified seeds, crabs and even seedpods
rounded out the cast of creatures preserved
at Camps 1 and 2.
Prepared as
a tourist site and surrounded by boulders
and petrified logs, the articulated tail
of Jobaria can be seen as it came to rest
135 million years ago.
Camp 3 was initiated
by following a tip from a local nomad. We
set up camp at the foot of a spectacular
sandstone cliff laid down by broad rivers
135 million years ago. Not far from our
camp, we brushed away the red mudstone entombing
a 10-foot-long hind limb of Jobaria.
To our delight, it included the bones of
the foot - the last pieces missing pieces
of the skeleton. Jobaria now proudly
stands as one of the most complete sauropods
every discovered.
A stone's throw away
crawling across the outcrop on all fours,
Greg Wilson picked up tooth after tooth
belonging to a small plant eater. Meanwhile,
other team members were combing the rubble
of a hill. At its peak was the jackpot:
a skeleton whose delicate bones were mingled
with more of the teeth Greg was finding,
and odd, keeled armor plates. The first
of its kind ever discovered on the continent
of Africa, the teeth and bones belonged
to a 6-foot long, 4-legged, plant-eating
armored dinosaur.
Rare as hens'
teeth on southern continents like Africa,
the small armor plates (top), thigh bone,
and triangular teeth represent a new species
and the first record of an armored dinosaur
on the continent of Africa.
(Pen for scale)
This armored dinosaur
had armored company - the skull and skeleton
of a new toothy crocodile was protruding
from a mound of outcrop nearby. During the
10 days we spent in the area of Marandet,
the picture of life on Africa 135 million
years ago came into better focus.
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