The Italian expedition to Morocco begins. The goal, like a prehistoric puzzle, is to recover the most complete skeleton in the world of a dinosaur of the genus Spinosaurus, which differed from all others in that it was a semi-aquatic predator with a bizarre and partly still unknown anatomy. Since 2013, paleontologists have been recovering remains in Morocco every year. This time, in addition to the group of scientists that includes Cristiano Dal Sasso from the Natural History Museum of Milan, paleontologists from the British University of Portsmouth and the Moroccan University of Casablanca are there. The research project is led by Nizar Ibrahim from the University of Portsmouth.
The expedition diary on ANSA Scienza: updates with text and images, thanks to the availability of Cristiano Dal Sasso
Day 9
In the central part of the excavation, a caudal element of the spinosaur comes to light: it is a chevron.
In reptiles, including dinosaurs, the tail bones consist of three elements that repeat one after the other in a chain and become progressively smaller towards the tip of the tail.
These three bones are the neural arch, which rests like an inverted V on the vertebral body, under which the hemal arch – also called the chevron – is hinged in a V-shape. Nerves pass through the neural arches, while veins and arteries pass through the heme arches.
In a well-conducted paleontological excavation, each time a new skeletal element is found, it is mapped, that is, plotted on a map, by measuring how far it is from the bones already found. In the photo, each square of the grid corresponds to half a meter and each color indicates a different excavation campaign.
Mapping the new skeletal element (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
Day 8
We carve into the left side of the hill, half a meter above the fossil level, and after less than half an hour two pieces of ribs crossed one on top of the other emerge. Finally, at least in this area, we put aside the hammer and chisel to turn to brushes and brushes. Further ribs follow, one of which, complete and almost straight, appears to be a neck rib. It is still too early to draw certain conclusions, but in fact we extracted the tail on the right, that is, from the other side of the excavation.
In the evening, after a much-needed shower to rid ourselves of the chalk sand that invades everywhere, we only have to take a few steps out of the kasbah that houses us to encounter dozens of fluorescent scorpions.
A fluorescent scorpion (Source: Alessandro Lania)
Day 7
Reinforcements have arrived: In addition to the German-Moroccan coordinator Ibrahim and his colleague Zouhri from Casablanca, there are English and Japanese paleontologists, an American, a Romanian, a geologist from Niger and a Dutch taxidermist. As a complete team, we are twenty people, plus five drivers who, in addition to driving on often non-existent roads, also act as porters and cooks. But they also know how to dig very well…
To the right of the excavation we reached the layer from which we extracted the tail bones of the Spinosaurus neotype in recent years, but from which nothing other than sandstone (cemented sand) emerged today. Why don’t you try it on the left side too? After all, the skeleton appeared to be very dismembered so far, with bones visible here and there.
Here is a stratigraphic section of the excavation: The bones of our spinosaur are carved into the yellowish sandstone that underlies the reddish-brown, variegated clay. Slanting left-facing streaks in the sandstone layer indicate that the river current that dispersed the Spinosaurus bones flowed in that direction. It is a valuable clue for us.
Valuable clues from the stratigraphy of the rocks (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
Day 6
From up here the view extends to the horizon without any obstacles other than the curvature of the earth. The Sahara stretches over 3,600 km from here to Egypt. We are very small wet creatures, immersed in a hot mass of almost unimaginable size that tends to dry us out by osmosis. Fortunately, we are now almost into winter and by frequently drinking electrolyte-fortified water we offset any risk.
Thanks to good teamwork and a new and more powerful jackhammer, we managed to remove almost 12 cubic meters of rock in addition to what we did yesterday. It is an almost sterile cemented mud containing few shells, and this lack of fossils in the layers above the Spinosaurus level accelerates development even further. In practice today we are not paleontologists, but workers. However, they delve into a very distant past called the Cretaceous period.
Researchers at work (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
Day 5
When we wake up at dawn, we load a generator and a jackhammer. Without these, pickaxes and shovels are of little use. The ancient river bed in which the skeleton of our spinosaur was deposited lies 4 to 5 meters below the current profile of a rocky slope, which therefore needs to be cut deeply and in a wedge shape using appropriate means.
Off-road vehicles bring us closer to the last kilometer. From here you have to carry everything up by hand, including many liters of water, before the sun beats down.
The last stretch on foot to reach the excavation area (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
This year the rain also helped us a little by highlighting tiny fragments of the Spinosaurus new type in the rubble beneath the excavation that we had not seen before. Despite our constant search in the past, among these fragments we still find a tooth and a fragment of the spine of the dorsal sail.
One of the first finds found in the field (Source: Diego Mattarelli)
Day 4
Today we are heading south. We cross the Atlas Mountains until we pass them at altitudes over 2000 meters, where it will soon snow. To the southeast stretch the palm groves and then the Sahara.
The eight planned hours of travel turn into twelve, partly because we stop here and there to examine the mighty rock layers that contain 600 million years of history of life on Earth. Morocco is a paradise for geologists and paleontologists, a book of time to be leafed through layer by layer: few other areas in the world can boast such a wide and continuous paleo-biodiversity, spanning hundreds of millions of years.
Erfoud welcomes us with a breathtaking sunset. Tomorrow we will finally see the site of the Spinosaurus again in full daylight.
A sunset in Erfoud (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
Day 3
An important part of the paleontologist’s work is the so-called “preparation”, which consists of extracting fossils from the rock matrix that has stored them over millions of years. There are no magic tools, but handling chisels and tools similar to those of a dentist requires a lot of patience and skill. The matching fragments are then glued together with synthetic resins and solidified; The most delicate finds are stored in protective cases housed in large cabinets with shelves. This is also the case with our Spinosaurus.
The group of Italian paleontologists: from left to right Cristiano Dal Sasso, Diego Mattarelli, Simone Maganuco, Mauro Scaggiante, Gabriele Bindellini, Alessandro Lania, Francesco Cavallo (Dinorec) and Fabio Manucci (Source: Francesco Cavallo)
day 2
The paleontological laboratory of the University of Casablanca consists of only two rooms, but houses a valuable collection: the bones of the “neotype” of Spinosaurus that have been found so far are officially deposited here. The holotype, the first, was destroyed by bombs in World War II.
So this is the new reference copy. It was found in 2008 in southeastern Morocco, 600 km from here. A Bedouin collected the first bones, and our subsequent excavation campaigns increased the number. The hind legs and tail are the most complete body parts. The long and flat tail served as a swimming fin in the large rivers of the Cretaceous period.
As we put hundreds of bone fragments together, we discover more and more elements. For example, today we identified two skull bones.
Examination of one of the bone fragments preserved in the paleontology laboratory of the University of Casablanca (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
day 1
Here we are. This afternoon we will comfortably cross the Mediterranean to land in North Africa in less than three hours. Casablanca has been the meeting point for our expeditions to the Sahara for years. We need to reconstruct a puzzle of 95 million year old bones, but we don’t have them all yet. That’s why we’re here, to look for those who are missing.
The paleontologists’ journey begins and leads to Morocco (Source: Cristiano Dal Sasso)
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