Paul Sereno Paleontologist

JENGUEBI, NIGER – Seas of sand form the core of the Sahara, the world’s largest desert. Our expedition caravan wound slowly between dunes, probing for terrain hard enough to get us to our end goal —windswept rock with fossils from the youngest part of the dinosaur era on Africa some 90 million years ago. Exposed as isolated patches, the target areas resemble an oceanic island chain, each patch decreasing in size until disappearing altogether under the sand seas.  Read More

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Was Spinosaurus a diving hunter? UChicago paleontologists and colleagues unearth an array of new evidence that suggests the sail-backed giant was far too land-adapted to function even as a slow underwater predator. 

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TCHINEKANKARAM, NIGER — One mile long, rising as barren rock no more than 10 feet above a parched plain of patchy grass and thorny acacia, is an area known as Tchinekankaran (chin-kan-karan), or “place of insects” in Tamasheq, the language of Tuareg nomads. True to its name, voracious scorpions wind spiders and praying mantises dueled under our camp lights, but we came for the sea of fossil bones peeking from rocks nearby. Read More

Dispatch No. 2 Live from the Field:

Petrified tree trunks jut from the desert floor, and fossil jaws and bones of nameless beasts peek out from a barren landscape. Nomad legend describes it as “The place where camels fear to go.” Called Gadoufaoua (Ga-doo-fawa) by French geologists who visited in the 1950s, this 100-mile stretch of the Sahara comprises the richest dinosaur beds on the continent. Read More.

AGADEZ, NIGER — Before COVID-19 shut down travel, I led expeditions that discovered some 25 tons of rare fossils scattered across the Sahara Desert, in remote areas of the West African country of Niger.
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For 3 months this Fall, Paul and his team of 20 will excavate some 25 tons of dinosaurs and ancient humans in the heart of the Sahara, a feat never before attempted. These fossils add to Africa’s world-class heritage.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune!

Learn more about the 2022 Expedition.

Check back soon for dispatches from the field!

NIAMEY, Niger — In secret patches of the south-central Sahara, blankets of sand hide 20 tons of dinosaur bones.

There are flying reptiles. A creature that resembles an armored dog. Eleven species yet to be identified — all with long necks. They roamed the desert when it was still green, scientists concluded, as far back as 200 million years ago.

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Predators abound on land, in the air and in water some 95 million years on the shores of northern Africa —as shown by the abundant fossils in the Kem Kem region. Large herbivores, such as the long-necked sauropod Rebbachisaurus, could have been hunted or scavenged by several large predators. Artwork by Davide Bonadonna.

https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/47517/

“More than 100 human burials lay before me” stammered Paul Sereno, paleontologist at the University of Chicago and Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic.

Sereno had just discovered the Sahara’s largest graveyard—hundreds of burials older than the pyramids.

Read more about Skeletons of the Sahara on PBS or get your own copy!

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Paul Sereno's Fossil Lab is located at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. It is comprised of a prep lab, fossil storage areas, teaching space, molding and casting room, bug room, and houses part of the University of Chicago Research Collection.

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Dr. Paul Sereno posing with the skull of Sarcosuchus imperator. This amazing 40 foot long crocodile was the subject of the National Geographic film 'When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs.'

Nicknamed “SuperCroc,” the animal is believed to have reached 40 feet (12 meters) in length—the length of a city bus—making it one of the largest crocs that ever lived. SuperCroc lived alongside dinosaurs, perhaps feasting on them.

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