African Dinosaurs Unearthed by Maier Gerhard;

African Dinosaurs Unearthed by Maier Gerhard;

Author:Maier, Gerhard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press


Parlett and Kershaw arrived at Tendaguru on October 31 as planned. They were toured around the area the next day, and Kershaw began mapping at M12, which had yielded part of a small animal after initial disappointment.

Rain poured down, flooding the quarries. Migeod roamed 6.5 kilometers along the Mtapaia path in search of prospects, hoping to discover some worthwhile sites to keep his replacements occupied. A femur, about .4 kilometers beyond the trail that led from the water hole to the jumbe’s farm, was deemed worthy of further investigation and dubbed M13. The site was abandoned on November 11, after the femur was removed.

M1 was reopened and tentatively renamed ? M14 on November 16.

Workers presented Migeod with an ebony walking stick and honored his imminent departure with a noisy sendoff. The final consignment of the year, another 20 crates, left Lindi that day. Seventeen cases contained jackets from M6, M7, M8, M9, and M11. Three more crates held botanical, zoological, and geological specimens as well as Cutler’s notebooks and rifle.

Frederick Migeod left Tendaguru behind him on November 17, 1926. He had labored at the dinosaur graveyard since November 18, 1925—one year exactly. He had not visited Lindi or Dar es Salaam during that period and had only taken a one-day trip to the Mbemkuru. It had been an impressive feat of endurance, and had saved the Expedition.

Had the British Museum East Africa Expedition been canceled or postponed, it might have never resumed, considering its initial modest success and precarious funding. The Museum’s credibility might have been questioned in England and Tanganyika Territory. Certainly many specimens lying exposed in the field would have weathered beyond recovery.

Instead, the majority of Cutler’s hard-won finds had been brought safely to the BM(NH). A second campaign had spanned the rainy season, operated for a longer uninterrupted stretch than any previous field effort, and yielded a large haul of specimens. The number of crates shipped to London had increased more than tenfold over the previous year: about 289 in 1926, versus 23 in 1925. Roughly 245 had reached the Museum by year’s end. If one subtracts from this total the 83 stemming from Cutler’s efforts, another 17 as the collections of invertebrate fossils he had made at Dar es Salaam, one more of his fossil and geological specimens stored at Lindi, three crates of German “leftovers” from Lindi, and a few containing his butterfly collection, then William Cutler’s excavations had yielded about 110 crates of dinosaur bones weighing 10,228 kilograms. The cost of the first field season had been £1,787.10.9.65

With Cutler’s figures subtracted, Migeod had filled roughly 180 crates with his own excavation results in 1926. Although weights were not provided for all of his boxes, one can estimate from available figures that his efforts had produced about 17,450 kilograms of bones. This collection represented 431 loads carried to Lindi by 530 bearers.66 Migeod calculated that he was sending remains of about 30 dinosaurs.67 About four hundred botanical specimens had been shipped to the BM(NH), as



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