Since you are new to the Dinosaur Expedition team, you may not have known that this actually Paul's fourth trip to Niger.

Why would Dr. Sereno and his team explore Africa when there are dinosaurs in North America?

To answer this question, you need to do a little traveling on your own- time travel actually. Go back 150 million years to the first half of the Mesozoic Era and take a look at the Earth landmasses, or more specifically landmass.

The land was welded together forming a single super-continent called Pangea. About 280 million years ago, Pangea began to rift apart, with continent-sized slabs of the earth's crust inching away from one another and oceans growing in between.

The African continent began to pull apart from South America about 130 million year ago, during the Cretaceous Period. Eventually Africa was surrounded on all sides by oceans and seas. During the later half of the dinosaur era (130 to 65 million years ago), Africa became an island continent.

As the continents drifted apart, dinosaur traffic was greatly restricted. Isolated populations of dinosaurs began to diverge, and follow independent evolutionary pathways on each continent. The dinosaurs that roamed the African continent are virtually unknown.

On this expedition you and the team hope to find out what these dinosaurs looked like, where they came from, and how they are related to other dinos. On his first three journeys, Dr. Sereno began to answer these questions, but this time he'll need your help to uncover even more information.

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