The Desert Bones

Jamale Ijouiher

Description

An essential introduction to the age of dinosaurs in Africa.
Once Africa was referred to as the ''Lost World of the dinosaur era,'' so poorly known were its ancient flora and fauna. Worse still, many priceless fossil specimens from the Sahara Desert were destroyed during the Second World War. Fortunately, in the twentieth-first century, more researchers are now working in north Africa than ever before and making fascinating discoveries such as the dinosaur Spinosaurus. Based on a decade of study, The Desert Bones brings the world of African dinosaurs fully into the light. Jamale Ijouiher skillfully draws on the latest research and knowledge about paleoecology to paint a compelling and comprehensive portrait of the mid-Cretaceous in North Africa.

Acknowledgments
Preface
Museum Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Palaeoenvironments and Stratigraphy of North Africa
2. The Flora of North Africa
3. The Fauna of North Africa: Invertebrates
4. The Fauna of North Africa: Vertebrates (fish)
5. The Fauna of North Africa: Vertebrates (tetrapods)
6. North African Ecology
7. The March of the Oysters
8. The Cenomanian Mass Extinction
Appendix
Literature Cited

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Biologie
• HISTORY
• Sciences et techniques
• África
• Paleontology
• Mesozoic
• History of Africa
• Animals
• North
• Africa
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253063335
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 47 Mo

Extrait

The Desert Bones
Life of the Past James O. Farlow, editor

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Jamale Ijouiher
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in Korea
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06331-1 (hdbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-06332-8 (web PDF)
I want to dedicate this book to my mother, Jacqueline Ijouiher, and my grandparents, David Brian Evans and Margaret Mary Evans. I also extend that dedication to my former lecturer and mentor professor Alan Turner of Liverpool John Moores University.
Great people who are truly missed.
This is for you.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Museum Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Paleoenvironments and Stratigraphy of North Africa
2. The Flora of North Africa
3. The Fauna of North Africa: Invertebrates
4. The Fauna of North Africa: Vertebrates (Fish)
5. The Fauna of North Africa: Vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
6. North African Ecology
7. The March of the Oysters
8. The Cenomanian Mass Extinction
Appendix
Literature Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
The list of people who deserve my gratitude seems endless, and some (like Ernst Stromer) have been dead for decades and never even met me! I thank Thomas Bastelberge, Oliver Demuth, Liz Kennedy, Casey Holliday, Bruno Granier, Walid Makled, Marguerite Miller, Emilie L ng, Omar Mohamed, Thomas T tken, Olof Moleman, Markus Buhler, Ricardo Pimentel, Guillaume Guinot, Michael Donovan, Jean-Fran ois Lhomme, Neil Loneragan, Andrea Cau, Daniela Schwarz-Wings, Didier Dutheil, Mike Taylor, John Adamek, Matt Lamanna, Hilda Silva, Cristiano Dal Sasso, Wagih Hannaa, Mickey Mortimer, Aaron Miller, Lionel Cavin, Hans Larsson, Bradley McFeeters, and Kenneth Lacovara for their assistance in providing me with access to literature and specimens. If I ve missed anyone from that list, no slight was ever intended.
Worthy of special mention are the staff of Liverpool John Moores University for their continued patronage and advice. My editor James Farlow and principal reviewer Barbara Grandstaff, who share many of the same interests and sparked many new ideas through our discussions. My thanks are also extended to my former flatmates, whose friendship at university made that period one of the happiest points of my life.
I would also like to thank Joschua Kn ppe, Christopher DiPiazza, Andrey Atuchin, and James McKay for contributing artwork and ideas during the writing of this book.
And ultimately, I ve got to thank my sister and aunt for their continued love and support.
Preface
I ve noted that many paleontologists seem to have the same origin story: a childhood interest in fossils that never ended, and parents who were supportive of these endeavors (once they finally accepted that it was not a phase). In that respect, I m no different from all the others. People always ask me when my interest in dinosaurs began, but in all honesty, it began so early in my childhood that I can t remember that far back.
I suppose what makes me different is my interest in one particular subject. While I ve always been interested in dinosaurs, my fascination with North Africa is a relatively new development. And contrary to what some might be thinking because of my name, it has nothing to do with being of Moroccan descent.
It was in early 2008; I was attending university at the time. My mother had purchased Nothdurft s book The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt for me the previous Christmas, and I was finally getting around to reading it. It was the closest I ve ever come to a religious conversion. I stayed up into the night, finishing the book from cover to cover in one go-undoubtedly the highest compliment you can give a book.
I was enthralled: the adventures, the larger-than-life characters who preceded me, the absolute uniqueness of the environment. The more data I collected, the more my love of North African paleontology was fueled. From that moment, I dedicated my life to the paleontology of North Africa, and I ve never looked back.
This book is just one further manifestation of my love for this topic. A definitive book on North African paleontology is long overdue. One inspiration was Jurassic West by John Foster. No doubt readers will immediately see the similarities in style as I attempt to do for Africa what Foster did for the US.
This project has been a four-year labor of love. It hasn t all been easy to write; some days I ll write three or four pages at a go, and other days I stare at a blank screen, wondering where to begin. I also seem to have developed a habit of writing chapters in no particular order, instead of starting at the beginning; whether other authors use this style or this is just a quirk of my own, I can t say.
Ultimately, my aim with this work is to produce something informal and accessible, yet also to provide a serious scientific discourse that will hopefully become a reference source for the paleontological community for years to come. And even if you don t pay me that ultimate compliment by finishing this book from cover to cover in one go, I hope with all my heart that you will come away having learned something new. As Kenneth Lacovara once said, ancient North Africa was a huge biome, one that is only just beginning to be explored.
So let s explore it together.
Jamale Ijouiher, July 2022.
Museum Abbreviations
BSP
Bayerische Staatssammlung f r Pal ontologie und Historische Geologie. Germany.
BSPG
Bayerische Staatssammlung f r Pal ontologie und Geologie. Germany
CGM
Egyptian Geological Museum. Egypt.
CMN
Canadian Museum of Nature. Canada.
FSAC-KK
Faculte des Sciences Ain Chock, Universite Hassan II. Morocco.
GZG
Geo Wissenschaftliches Zentrum der Universit t G ttingen. Germany.
JP
JuraPark. Poland.
MDE
Le Mus e des Dinosaures Esp raza-Aude. France.
MHNM
Natural History Museum of Marrakech. Morocco.
MN
Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro. Brazil.
MNUFRJ
Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Brazil.
MPUR NS
Museum of Paleontology, University of Rome. Italy.
MSNM
Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano. Italy.
OLPH
Olphin collection of the Museo Geologico e Paleontologico. Italy
UALVP
University of Alberta Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology. Canada.
UCRC
University of California. US.
UCPC
University of Connecticut. US.
UMI
University Moulay Ismail. Morocco.
USNM
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. US.
ZIN
Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia.
The Desert Bones
To the eyes of an outsider, the initial impression of ancient Egypt is one of unfamiliarity .
- JAROMIR MALEK , In the Shadow of the Pyramids : Egypt during the Old Kingdom
Introduction
Egyptologists refer to the age in the third millennium BC as the Old Kingdom, a period when Egyptian civilization, what would be the first of three kingdoms, truly began. However, Egypt was home to kingdoms much older than that.
Unfortunately, the geological record is incomplete. If we look at the Bahariya oasis, for example, not only do we know little of the people who dwelled in the region before the Old Kingdom, but much of Egypt s deep history is also missing (El-Sisi et al. 2002). Indeed, this huge gap means that the most recent of these genuinely ancient kingdoms, long before humans arrived in Bahariya, is the basalt flows of the Miocene, a series of rocks formed roughly 16 to 20 million years ago (henceforth abbreviated to mya). Egypt was then a kingdom of arid grasslands, with violent volcanic eruptions racking the landscape as the Gulf of Suez first began to open (El-Sisi et al. 2002).
Going even further back in time, we come to the Radwan Formation of the Oligocene, formed 33-23 mya. Back then, the Nile was far to the west of its present position, and North Africa was seeing the first grasslands expanding at the expense of the forests (El-Sisi et al. 2002). This new biome was home to large numbers of perissodactyl mammals.
As we continue our journey, we arrive at the Hamra, Qazzun, and Naqb Formations of the Eocene, 55-33 mya. Then, much of Egypt s Western Desert was under water, drowned by shallow seas. The only pharaohs to rule this kingdom were the primitive whales, such as Basilosaurus , whose remains are found in the Wadi Al-Hitan: the Valley of the Whales.
Now we come to yet another gap in the record, and on the other side, we have left the Cenozoic era behind and arrived at the Mesozoic era: the age of the dinosaurs. First, we come to the Khoman Chalks, formed during the Maastrichtian age right at the very end of the Mesozoic. Going even further back in time, beyond the Campanian El Hefhuf Formation, we come to some of the very oldest rocks preserved at Bahariya: those of the Cenomanian age, which began an estimated 99.0 mya and ended roughly 93.5 mya.
The Mesozoic era is divided into three periods: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, each with its own subdivisions (see fig. 0.1 ). Contrary to what some think, most dinosaurs did not all coexist at the same time. The Mesozoic lasted for 180 million years, and over that vast period, dinosaurs were continually becoming extinct and being replaced with newly evolved dinosaur species. I think Thomas Holtz Jr. (2012) put it best during an interview in which he pointed out that by the time Tyrannosaurus evolved, Allosaurus had already been extinct for millions of years; Allosaurus was just as far from Tyrannosaurus as Tyrannosaurus is from us!

Fig. 0.1. A , the geological periods in the Mesozoic era;