Dinosaur Expedition 2000

Welcome to Dinosaur Expedition 2000, Project Exploration's window onto Paul Sereno's four month dinosaur expedition to the Sahara Desert.

Between August 13 and December 5, when you log on to www.projectexploration.org, you will have direct access to discoveries as they happen and to the team of the 2000 Expedition to Niger.

Dinosaur Expedition 2000 is the window on to the 2000 Expedition to Niger led by Paul Sereno. Developed by Project Exploration as part of its mission to make science accessible to the public - and especially kids - "DE2K" allows visitors to witness not only paleontology in action, explore questions about dinosaur evolution, and learn about the challenges of a four-month expedition to the world's largest desert. Along the way, visitors will also explore Niger and get to know some of the people who live there.

The expedition has an ambitious itinerary that will take them criss-crossing northern Niger with time in September to see the Cure Salee, a nomadic festival during which the Wodaabe (Fulani), men dance in lines and the most beautiful of the tribal women deem which of the men are the most handsome.

There are four camps planned. Camp One will be based in 110-million-year-old beds near the site of a bizarre, 600-toothed plant eater the team discovered and partially excavated in 1997. The three other camps planned will allow them to explore 130-million year-old and 90 million year-old dinosaur beds.

Part of the agreement with the country of Niger includes a mandate create a survey of sites found in the areas explored. In addition, any fossils that are collected will be loaned to the team to bring to Chicago clean and prepare, but eventually the fossils will be returned to Niger and placed in the National Museum in Niamey.

Locating a high tech computer operation in the middle of the Sahara poses challenges of its own. The computers need to survive 130 degree heat, there are there no sockets to plug into and the team will be working in one of the dustiest environments on the planet. "The only thing worse would be to have live dinosaurs tramping through our equipment tent daily," remarked Lyon.

The website will be created out of a special lightweight "clean" "spike tent" with power for the computers drawn from batteries recharged daily by a gas generator. The team will use solar energy to recharge batteries for digital cameras. The team will photograph and write during the day and work at night on special ruggedized personal computers. The computers will be connected to a satellite phone that can transmit information to the states at 65 kilobites a minute - faster that most people's home systems.

The information travels 23,000 miles up over the equator and then comes back down another 23,000 miles. The trip, nearly 50,000 miles, results in a one-second delay.

The team has brought as much extra equipment as they could afford. If something unfixable happens (for example, both computers stop working) the team will read updates over the phone and they will be transcribed. With assistance from Paul and the rest of the expedition team, DE2K is kept online by four people:

Erik Vecchione is Project Exploration's webmaster. He works with PE to design the page and program the features. While the expedition is in the field, Erik is responsible for sending the team email questions from the States and posting the team's outgoing images, updates, interviews. He is also overhauling the existing Project Exploration website.
Conor Irons coordinates the work with partner schools, assists with developing site content and is developing an evaluation of the Dinosaur Expedition 2000 efforts with schools.
DE2K's field team consists of Mike Hettwer and Gabrielle Lyon. In addition to their responsibilities of prospecting countless miles in search of fossils, cutting burlap strips and moving tons of rock by hand, Mike and Gabe create the site from the field. They work to capture images, write about what's happening, and enlist the rest of the team to do interviews and answer kid's questions. Most of the work takes place offline and at night, when it's cool and the equipment is under less strain.