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...cont'd
Laying on the
desert floor like it was left there yesterday,
the discovery of this 90-million-year old
jaw of a predatory dinosaur adds an important
new species to Africa's growing dinosaur
fauna.
Camp 4, situated amongst
90 million year old beds, provided an unexpected,
and truly grand, finale. On what was perhaps
the most thrilling first day of prospecting
from any expedition camp, we doubled the
vertebrate species known from this time
period on Africa. Three new dinosaurs were
found less than 100 feet apart. Two were
long-necked dinosaurs; both were new species.
One of these sites developed into a near
complete carcass - with a backbone stretching
in an arc more than 45 feet long. The third
great find was a skull, lying on its side,
of a new predatory dinosaur. Shiny black
teeth jutted from its strangely curved jaws
- a new kind of predator for Africa. The
area also produced a three-foot long skull
of a new crocodile and the two-foot long
shell of a new turtle.
Hard at work
on the sauropod skeleton, and with one thigh
bone ready to go, at this point in the excavation
the team still has no idea how much has
yet to be uncovered.
It will be a long road
before, one by one, these hitherto unknown
animals will be described and named. The
cargo - next to travel from Niamey, Niger,
to Cotonou, Benin, then by boat to the States
- will arrive at the University of Chicago
in February. Then the next stage - opening
the jackets; cleaning and repairing each
of the bones; casting the fossils to make
replicas; studying the new animals and comparing
them to known dinosaurs; and illustrating
and publishing in scientific journals -
will begin.
But when we closed the
door on the shipping container on December
4 - and the perhaps 15 new dinosaur and
reptile species that will populate Africa's
Cretaceous - our dream of unearthing a lost
world became a reality. And maybe, just
maybe, we had a sense of what Roy Chapman
Andrews' team felt when they pulled up their
tent stakes in 1922.
The team poses
for a final field portrait atop two of the
Land Rovers
that helped them explore the desert. - Photo
by Alhassane DineDine
Paul
Sereno & Gabrielle Lyon
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