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Episode 24 – Dinosaurs and crocodiles in the Land Before Egypt!
Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have been discovered in Egypt since the beginning of the twentieth century, work that continues to this day. However, fossils from the Age of Reptiles are much harder to come by. Indeed, most of the fossils record of Cretaceous dinosaurs and their contemporaries were collected during a small number of expeditions in the early twentieth century by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer.
Ernst Stromer during an early twentieth century expedition to the Bahariya Oasis. The identity of his Egyptian associate is unknown. Please message us if you have any ideas!
Stromer’s work focused on the “middle” part of the Cretaceous Period: between ~100–90 million years ago. Most of those discoveries—including the original type specimens of dinosaurs like Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Aegyptosaurus—were destroyed in bombings during World War II. For over sixty years, no substantive further discoveries of Mesozoic Egyptian fossils occurred. In the early 2000s, American paleontologists Matthew Lamanna and an international team returned to the Bahariya Oasis and discovered a variety of new dinosaurs, including a supergiant titanosaur Paralititan stromeri now housed in the Cairo Geological Museum.
The Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology project highlighted in this episode extends those efforts into new fossil deposits into the Quseir Formation of the Western Desert of Egypt, preserving fossils from much later in time than those of the Bahariya Oasis. The Quseir fossils are some of the best records of terrestrial backboned animals from the end of the Cretaceous Period from the whole of Africa. This was also at a time when Africa was an island continent, isolated without land connections with other continents. That makes Africa prime real estate for finding unique fossil ecosystems.
Dr. Heham Sallam leads the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP) team to the new frontier of vertebrate paleontology in Egypt. Educated at Oxford University, Hesham is one of the first native Egyptians to lead a scientific paleo project. He is training a large number of students in the science of vertebrate paleontology and Mansoura University. His current graduate students include Sana El-Sayed, Eman Abd El Aziz, and Sara Saber. Ms. El-Sayed holds the distinction of being the first woman paleontologist from the Middle East to lead a scientific publication, which described a giant catfish from the early Cenozoic. Sara Saber published the most recent MUVP paper describing the Cretaceous crocodile relative Wahasuchus, which is featured in this paper.
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Egyptian paleontology has a long and storied history, although much of it is focused on discoveries from the Cenozoic Era. Incredible fossils of early whales, primates, and other mammals have been discovered in Egypt since the beginning of the twentieth century, work that continues to this day. However, fossils from the Age of Reptiles are much harder to come by. Indeed, most of the fossils record of Cretaceous dinosaurs and their contemporaries were collected during a small number of expeditions in the early twentieth century by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer.
Ernst Stromer during an early twentieth century expedition to the Bahariya Oasis. The identity of his Egyptian associate is unknown. Please message us if you have any ideas!
Stromer’s work focused on the “middle” part of the Cretaceous Period: between ~100–90 million years ago. Most of those discoveries—including the original type specimens of dinosaurs like Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Aegyptosaurus—were destroyed in bombings during World War II. For over sixty years, no substantive further discoveries of Mesozoic Egyptian fossils occurred. In the early 2000s, American paleontologists Matthew Lamanna and an international team returned to the Bahariya Oasis and discovered a variety of new dinosaurs, including a supergiant titanosaur Paralititan stromeri now housed in the Cairo Geological Museum.
The Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology project highlighted in this episode extends those efforts into new fossil deposits into the Quseir Formation of the Western Desert of Egypt, preserving fossils from much later in time than those of the Bahariya Oasis. The Quseir fossils are some of the best records of terrestrial backboned animals from the end of the Cretaceous Period from the whole of Africa. This was also at a time when Africa was an island continent, isolated without land connections with other continents. That makes Africa prime real estate for finding unique fossil ecosystems.
Dr. Heham Sallam leads the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology (MUVP) team to the new frontier of vertebrate paleontology in Egypt. Educated at Oxford University, Hesham is one of the first native Egyptians to lead a scientific paleo project. He is training a large number of students in the science of vertebrate paleontology and Mansoura University. His current graduate students include Sana El-Sayed, Eman Abd El Aziz, and Sara Saber. Ms. El-Sayed holds the distinction of being the first woman paleontologist from the Middle East to lead a scientific publication, which described a giant catfish from the early Cenozoic. Sara Saber published the most recent MUVP paper describing the Cretaceous crocodile relative Wahasuchus, which is featured in this paper.