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It's been three years since paleontologist Paul Sereno brought a team to Niger to explore the rich fossil beds hidden by desert sands. This is the first of five dispatches from the dinosaur hunt, and we join the explorers as they arrive in the West African country and load their Land Rovers with tons of supplies for the field.

NIAMEY, NIGER -- On the terrace of the Hotel Sahel, overlooking the broad Niger River, the 2003 Expedition team is gathered for the first time. For most of the 12-member team, this is their first night in Africa - and the beginning of the biggest adventure of their lives.

The most famous dinosaurs in the world - Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Brontosaurus - come from a narrow strip of rock in the western United States and were discovered more than a century ago.

On the whole, Africa's dinosaurs are still waiting to be found.

With giant fruit bats fluttering overhead, the expedition leader, University of Chicago professor Paul Sereno, tries to describe the challenges ahead: "You're on this expedition for two reasons: I believe you're the kind of people that want to make history rather than just read about it; and I believe you think about other people on the team, not just yourself. We have a chance to explore a vast area that no one has set foot in before - new dinosaurs are waiting to be discovered. It's going to be one of the most difficult things you've ever done in your life."

A large-scale Saharan expedition requires months of detailed planning, and this is the fifth time Paul Sereno has been fossil-hunting in the Republic of Niger, a landlocked country that is four-fifths desert and one of the hottest, driest places on Earth.

He began to assemble his team a year ago. With six months to go, he was busy shopping for supplies. With five months to go, the team packed a large cargo container with five tons of plaster, half a ton of dehydrated food, a ton of camping and collecting gear and a replica of the 40-foot-long crocodile best known as "SuperCroc," a prized find from the 2000 expedition to Niger.

The container was shipped by boat to the coast of West Africa and arrived in Cotonou, Benin, in August. It was loaded onto a truck, and driven to Niamey, the capital of Niger.

A short time later, Paul arrived with a small advance crew. Their goals were to obtain permission to do fieldwork and to get the vehicle fleet up and running after three years in storage. When the rest of the team arrived on Sept. 21, the key documents were being drafted and three of the four vehicles were in working order.

If you eavesdropped on the first days of the full team's conversation, you might think the expedition was all about trucks. You would be right. Survival for two months in the Sahara - not to mention pushing back the frontiers of science - can hinge on a good mechanic.

The team's vehicle fleet consists of four renovated Land Rovers, between 10 and 15 years old. Every part of each truck had to be greased into motion, wires repaired and reattached. The trucks also needed new tires plus spares - not so simple in a place where you first have to locate good tires, then bargain for them.

Once the full team was assembled, we had three days in Niamey to get ready for the trip to our home base in Agadez, a city 600 miles to the northeast. We cleaned, organized and repacked all the supplies; by 5:30 on the third morning, we were lined up and ready to go - but we couldn't go very fast. With the overloaded trucks, our top speed was 35 miles an hour. The journey to Agadez would be a two-day affair.

Sept. 26, 2003 - Ingall, Niger: The early morning cacophony in the tiny desert oasis of Ingall is impressive. At 5 a.m. the mosques call Muslims to early morning prayer - crackly loudspeakers and impassioned beckoning welcome the day. Roosters crow, dogs bark. Flip-flops shuffle continuously on the gravel of unpaved roads as people walk past the compound. A radio turned up full volume plays traditional Tuaregcq music that floats across the walled compounds into our own.

Ingall is composed entirely of walled adobe buildings; it is a town of mini-forts. The team, like much of the rest of Ingall, lies sleeping in the open air of a compound.

People are stretched out on cots or curled in sleeping bags, as the soft dawn light breaks over them. On one side, the slumbering team is hemmed in by the vehicle armada we are relying on to get us into the desert and back out. On the other side, they are walled by two trailers packed to overflowing with tools, food, wood and collecting equipment, and an 800-gallon water tank.

The ground is carpeted by more gear: smaller water tanks, a stove, a propane tank, boxes of car parts, a wheelbarrow, backpacks, sandals, canteens.

The team is tuckered out after two days of driving and an unforgettable cultural experience last night. We arrived at this oasis town for the end of the Cure Salee - the Salt Festival.

This yearly event at the end of the rainy season is one of the few that brings together the nomads of Niger. They traditionally meet here to sell goods, swap gossip, race their camels, and enjoy the music and dancing.

It was a non-stop fashion show - Tuareg women in black, white and red shirts, and skirts dotted with silver sequins; Fulani men with faces painted red, or dotted with little white dots and yellow circles and stripes, wearing tall ostrich feathers in their hair; Fulani women with big hoop earrings and black lace shawls - even the camels were garbed with red, turquoise and yellow leatherwork.

Getting to Agadez, the gateway to the Sahara, took a gargantuan effort that brought the fledgling team together. Within 10 minutes of arriving in Agadez on Sept. 27, the team was at work setting up a base of operations in a research compound managed by the Ministry of Higher Education. In 100-plus degree heat, the team unloaded seven tons of supplies from the cargo truck in a space of two hours.

Sept. 28, 2003 - Agadez, Niger: The little cement block room in Agadez is stuffy and lit by a single fluorescent bulb. A fan rattles above the table, barely moving the heavy air. A group of 10 people, damp with the heat of the room, dirty from dried sweat and dust of a full day's work, cluster over a pile of curling maps.

"It's too far. We'll have to go to the second camp and drop the water there too," Sereno says.

"We have to think about water for prospecting when we start out, and also about water for collecting when we return two weeks later," remarks Gabrielle Lyon.

"Do you think we'll be able to find a well for water for plaster around there?" asks Jeff Stivers.

"That shouldn't be a problem," Sereno says.

"How much can people drink?" asks Josh Miller.

"In extreme heat, a person will drink about two gallons of water a day. Add another gallon per person a day for hygiene and a gallon for cooking. Four gallons times 10 people gets us 40, let's say 50 gallons a day. That's about 200 liters a day over 18 days," Sereno says. "The big water truck can hold 14,000 liters. We'll be able to bring in plenty of water, we just need to decide where to put it and how we're going to store it."

As the team maps out the logistics of the fieldwork late into the night, it's hard to realize all that has had to take place to get us this far … and we're not even out in the field yet.

Project Exploration is a non-profit science education organization co-founded by paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon to make science accessible to the public - especially city kids and girls. For more stories and photos from the 2003 Niger Expedition, log on to the Project Exploration Web site.

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