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cont'd
Silhouetted
by the setting sun, Dave squeezes water
out of a burlap strip as he makes the last
jacket of the day
We have set up camp
at the edge of the falaise, not far
from the piste (French for "unpaved dirt
track") that runs between Marandet and Agadez.
Surrounding our camp are low plateaus and
soft-peaked hills covered with grey gravel.
The softer red and green mudstone, where
you can find bones and teeth, peeks out
in on the sides of buttes and on the flats.
Tonight, as the sun sets, the nearby acacias
(thorn trees) are rendered as delicate silhouettes,
and far off an owl cries.
Camp 3 - two tents flanked
by Land Rovers and an assortment of randomly-placed
cots - looks on to a site discovered by
Balla Abdallah, a Touareg from the nearby
town of Marandet.
Back in
the lab, field maps - like this one - are
critical as a record
of a site and as a record of anything important.
Nomads find sites primarily
while they are shepherding their flocks
of sheep, goats, and camels. Occasionally
the nomads will bring us to an important
fossil or skeleton. Other times they introduce
us to an area worth prospecting - or we
might recognize something as important that
they missed. Then its up to us, to walk
far and wide and pick general areas on our
own.
We have spent four days
working this site - recorded in our field
books as T1 - with good results. We have
recovered some of the missing foot bones
of Jobaria, beautiful teeth of Jobaria,
part of a foot of Afrovenator, a
new small armored dinosaur, a new small
crocodile, the the jaws of a lungfish.
The bones
of an Afrovenator foot caught our attention
and led us to one of its jaws.
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