The team spent a month in the desert and travelled over five thousand miles by Landrover in an epic overland trip which has taken them through the Atlas mountains and has seen them battling sandstorms and floods in an Indiana Jones-style quest.
Having discovered the giant sauropod bone they had to return to the nearest town to get more water and plaster with which to protect it, a trip which involved crossing flooded rivers in their Landrover at night with water coming in through the doors.
During their fieldwork they were cut off from civilisation for 4 days when heavy rain in the Atlas mountains flooded the river Ziz. To retrieve the bone they had to manhandle the fossil in its plaster jacket down the side of a mountain, clearing thousands of stones to make a safe path to carry it on a wooden stretcher.
“There was a point when we wondered if we would make it out of the desert with the bone, but we had worked so hard to find it so there was no way I was leaving it behind. It took us 5 days to get the bone out of the ground and down the mountain – and that was not the end of our problems,” said Ibrahim.
Dr Martill added: “When we had managed to get the bone in the Landrover the extra weight meant we kept sinking in the sand dunes and on several occasions everybody except the driver had to walk while we negotiated difficult terrain. Our journey home was equally eventful. While crossing the Atlas mountains we got caught in a snowstorm and total whiteout. But it’s all been worth it.”
The team were also excited to discover some rare dinosaur footprints, including some that record several animals walking along the same trail.
As well as discovering hundreds of dinosaur teeth, they also unearthed bits of giant crocodiles and some new species of fish.
Ibrahim said: “It’s amazing to think that millions of years ago the Sahara was in fact a lush green tropical paradise, home to giant dinosaurs and crocodiles and nothing like the dusty desert we see today. Even to a palaeontologist dealing in millions of years it gives one an overwhelming sense of deep time.”
The team also included Moroccan scientists Prof Samir Zouhri and Dr Lahssen Baidder as well as Portsmouth researchers Dr Darren Naish, Dr Robert Loveridge and Richard Hing.
Prof Samir Zouhri, head of the Department of Geology at the Université Hassan II in Casablanca said: “Nizar Ibrahim is a very determined researcher and I knew that he would have success on this trip, but these fossils exceeded our expectations. It is wonderful that we have made these siginficant discoveries and that they will return to Morocco for display after study in Dublin.”
The sauropod and the pterosaur were found in south-east Morocco, near the Algerian border.
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Adapted from materials provided by University of Portsmouth.
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MLA University of Portsmouth (2008, December 17). New Species Of Prehistoric Giants Discovered In The Sahara. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 18, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/12/081216114750.htm