On the tale of a Dinosaur in Bahariya

Findings from the Pharonic period is no longer big news in Egypt. Recent discoveries in Bahariya is rendering an altogether new and exciting dimension to Egypt. Dating back to well over 65 million years ago the latest find becomes the fifth dinosaur to have been identified in Egypt and well establishes Bahariya as a dinosaur heaven on earth.

In the early 1900’s, a German paleontologist by name Ernst Stromer made a significant discovery in Egypt. He found the bones of four different dinosaurs in the desert sands of Bahariya Oasis, located in the western desert plains of Egypt, where it remained hidden for the last 65 million years. He took these with him to Germany where they were housed in the museum in Munich.

Came the Second World and Britain declared its allegiance to the Allies. One night in the April of 1944, British warplanes carried out an air strike on the Nazi headquarters in Munich. Close by was the museum. The entire collection of dinosaur bones from Egypt was destroyed, forever. What remained of Stromer’s painstaking labor were only manuscripts of his observations.

Almost a century later in 1999, Joshua Smith, an American science student along with a team from the University of Pennsylvania decided to come to Egypt to explore the area again, in the hope of finding bits possibly overlooked by Stromer. With only references to guide them, it was to be not all that easy. One day as they were trying to orient themselves after Smith had mistakenly fed the wrong numbers into the GPS device (one that detects objects buried in the sand) he noticed an object, partly buried in the sand.

At first glance, it appeared to be two different bones. They would not believe their eyes when they began realizing that both were indeed different pieces of the same bone.

It was the 5 feet long upper arm bone of a dinosaur!

They dug further and found more bones of the same dinosaur from the location. As they gradually began resurrecting the giant from it’s grave, the animal rose to a height of 100 ft, weighing 70 tons.

"It was an enormous dinosaur by anybody's reckoning," said Joshua Smith, who led the team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, "it would look through the window of a three-storied apartment without much problem,” said Smith. Even a giraffe, the tallest living animal on earth can only grow to a modest 18 ft.

As it turned out this dinosaur, named Paralititan stromeri, was the second largest to have ever roamed the earth, Argentinosaurus being the biggest known, yet. Paralititans walked on their fours, were vegetarians, with a small head and a long tail to counterbalance their extremely long neck.

Estimated to have existed about 94 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, the Paralititan used its long neck to fetch food from the giant sepias and conifer trees that dominated the landscape during that time.

Today Bahariya, stretching into the western desert plains of Egypt is seemingly incapable of sustaining anything but the most rudimentary of plant and animal life. But millions of years ago it was a rainforest!

A lush green, tropical forest with swampy marshes that allowed an abundance of mangroves. Thriving in the warm and moist environment were giant oaks, maples and magnolia trees while ferns made up the foliage on the ground.

“It was probably because of this abundance of food that these plant eating creatures were not provided with a larger brain, unlike their meat eating counterparts,” explains Yousry Attia of the Geological Museum in Cairo. Carnivores have a need to employ their intelligence in ambushing and killing their prey, he continues.

What is fascinating is the magnitude of information a single discovery like this reveals. It helps us understand life as they existed millions of years ago. The green colored mudstone, full of plant remains and root trappings, in which the bone was preserved indicate the skeleton must have lain on the banks of a shallow lake. Attia explains how the gentle wave action of the lake water would have gradually deposited minerals on the skeleton and preserved it.

One would assume that these giants would hardly face any threat from predators. However, while recovering the bones of Paralititan, Smith found a tooth belonging to one of the fiercest dinosaurs of that time, the Carcharodontosaurus, lying close by. These predators were only half the size of the Paralititan, but had jaws that were more than 5 feet long with shark-like teeth. Hunting in packs, they bit and ripped chunks of flesh off their preys. “Incidentally, there was no evidence of a bite or tooth mark,” says Attia, “hence it is unlikely that the dinosaur was killed for meat.” It is quite possible that the Carcharodontosaurus may have been scavenging on the remains of the dead animal, when it lost it’s tooth. The two other meat eaters that were previously discovered in the same region were the Bahariasaurus and Spinosaurus (sail-backed dinosaur).

"We may have stumbled on dinosaur heaven at Bahariya," said Smith.

However, a phenomenal mass extinction about 65 m years ago brought about an end to the age of reptiles and along with it wiped out the entire population of dinosaurs.

Some experts believe a giant asteroid collided with earth, blowing up so much dust into the atmosphere that it blocked out the sunlight. The earth was plunged into darkness and cold. Plants and trees died out first, then the herbivores that depended on the plants for their food, and finally the carnivores that ate the herbivores.

Others believe an extreme and profound change in the earth’s environment brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs, which were not adapted to survive the cold.

It is hard to say which of these is true for man appeared on the horizons only 60 million years after the last of the dinosaurs had been extinct. During the passage of time, the earth had succumbed to phenomenal influences.

The extinction of the dinosaurs is believed to roughly coincide with the time the continents began to form. What was a single, gigantic, land mass began drifting apart because of very powerful forces from the earth’s core. Volcanoes erupted to throw up the mountain ranges of Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains in western USA. The rest of the landscape, including the African continent and the Saharan desert, soon started taking shape.

By then, the era of reptiles had long since been replaced by the forthcoming era – the era of mammals. The disappearing dinosaurs left no evolutionary trail on any species, except for one. Today, most paleontologists believe birds have evolved from dinosaurs.

Back in the geological museum in Cairo Attia sits huddled amidst paper and paraphernalia. In an adjacent building is housed all the spoils of Egyptian archaeology, including an impressive skeleton of an ancient crocodile.

Hope runs high… With the badly needed monetary assistance as well as promises to train his staff abroad, Attia hopes to begin his search for Stromer’s dinosaurs, soon.

“We have neither the state-of-the-art equipment necessary to conduct an expedition such as this nor have adequately trained personnel,” he says, explaining why an attempt was not made before.

“Even as expenses run high, funding is hard to come by for explorations like these,” continues Attia.

Meanwhile Smith’s expedition, which was made possible only because of finances coming from Cosmos Studios has also captured on camera the high adventure expedition. Called “The lost dinosaurs of Egypt,” it is an inspiring two-hour documentary of a group of young scientists in pursuit of a mystery from a lost world. It is scheduled to be aired later this year on A&E television network in the USA.

The team from Pennsylvania will return in the beginning of next year to complete the excavation of the Paralititan. According to Attia, this time it will be much more tougher as the skeleton appears to have been buried beneath the surface layer of earth. It makes us wonder what else the golden sands of Bahariya may be withholding from us.



By Anjana Das