INTRODUCTION...

Thanks to work by French paleontologists in the 1970s, the 2000 Niger Expedition team anticipated finding fossil evidence of the enormous crocodile named Sarcosuchus. But croc bones were just one exciting discovery amongst many during the first weeks of the expedition.

A version of this "SPECIAL DISCOVERY UPDATE" from Dr. Paul Sereno was first posted from Niger on October 3, 2000.

The 5-foot-long massive jaws of an enormous
110 million year old crocodile.

After just three intense weeks of work at Camp 1, a fuller picture of what Africa was like 110-million-years ago-has already emerged.

EARLY WORK IN THE AREA…
When our expedition team first began to work in the Tenere in 1997, we had been preceded by the work of two French paleontologists: Albert Lapparent in the1940s and Philippe Taquet in the 1960s and early 70s.
Lapparent did much of his prospecting alone or with an assistant and often prospected on camelback. There were no paved roads anywhere in the desert. In preliminary surveys of the desert, he found and described isolated dinosaur bones and giant crocodile teeth.

A camel and owner pause in a small pond near dusk
just off the road from Niamey to Agadez.

Twenty years later Lapparent returned to the area, joined by a young colleague, Philippe Taquet. After three expeditions, Taquet and his team discovered and named several dinosaurs including single skeletons of two plant-eating dinosaurs - Ouranosaurus ("Southern reptile") and Lourdosaurus ("heavy reptile.") Ouranosaurus is a sail-backed forerunner of duck-billed dinosaurs while Lourdosaurus, like its close cousin Iguanodon, has an enormous thumb spike. Lapparent and Taquet found evidence of other dinosaurs, including large hand-claws and jaw fragments from predatory dinosaurs, but not enough to understand what these dinosaurs looked like. Even their preliminary work suggested a rich fauna. In addition to dinosaurs they found other reptiles, including the skull of a huge crocodile, which they named Sarcosuchus, and three turtle species.

New small turtle

Although we had descriptions of the fossil finds made by the French expeditions, their maps were not detailed enough to clearly show where they found their specimens, and so we started prospecting from scratch. When our expedition team arrived, we set up a campsite without knowing much about the area. In hindsight our camp turned out to be centrally located a amongst some of the richest beds, but we chose the site for the protective configuration and beauty of the surrounding dunes.

Dinosaur bones clearly were plentiful throughout the region: the outcrop was a continuous stack of river-deposited sandstones. These rivers, many of which were broad, buried the animals that lived along their margins - like dinosaurs- as well as animals that actually lived in the rivers, like the crocodiles, turtles and fish.

LIFE IN EVERY CORNER…
Our three weeks of work at Camp 1 of the 2000 Expedition of Niger has already enriched our picture of ancient life on Africa.

New small crocodile skull

New river animals we've found include small crabs and the teeth, bones and scales from many species of fish. We have found evidence of a enormous pterosaur - a flying reptile with a wingspan of 20 feet (6-and-a-half meters). Life on the banks of the rivers now includes a new large turtle with a domed shell that is more than one foot long. Eric Duneman spotted the six-inch-long skull of a new small crocodile.

110 million year old seeds

We have found evidence of new plants as well. Greg Wilson, who is searching for the remains of the smallest animals including small mammals, found a handful of fossilized seeds measuring less than an inch long (about 2 centimeters).