Latest news with #Tuareg
TimesLIVE
4 hours ago
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
Al Qaeda affiliate has killed dozens of civilians in Togo this year: minister
A group affiliated with Al Qaeda has killed dozens of civilians and eight soldiers so far this year in Togo, the country's foreign minister told Reuters last week, in a rare official acknowledgement of the toll of rising attacks. Minister of foreign affairs Robert Dussey said 15 attacks in northern Togo had been perpetrated so far this year by Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), an insurgent group in West Africa's Sahel region. He put the civilian death toll at 54. Togo has seen a rise in jihadist activity in recent years, as groups linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda have spread from the Sahel. A surge in attacks in May and June marked one of the deadliest periods in the Sahel's recent history, underscoring the threat posed by jihadist groups at a time when regional governments are estranged from former Western military allies, analysts say. Violence in the region south of the Sahara started when jihadist groups hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in the north of Mali in 2012. Groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have since seized territory despite costly military efforts to push them back, spreading into Burkina Faso and Niger and more recently into the north of coastal countries such as Togo.
Straits Times
21 hours ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Al Qaeda affiliate has killed dozens of civilians in Togo this year, minister says
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox FILE PHOTO: Togo's Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Dussey addresses the 78th Session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, U.S., September 21, 2023. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo A group affiliated with Al Qaeda has killed dozens of civilians and eight soldiers so far this year in Togo, the country's foreign minister told Reuters last week, in a rare official acknowledgement of the toll of rising attacks. Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Dussey said 15 attacks in northern Togo had been perpetrated so far this year by Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), an insurgent group in West Africa's Sahel region. He put the civilian death toll at 54. Togo has seen a rise in jihadist activity in recent years, as groups linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda have spread from the Sahel. A surge in attacks in May and June marked one of the deadliest periods in the Sahel's recent history, underscoring the threat posed by jihadist groups at a time when regional governments are estranged from former Western military allies, analysts say. Violence in the region south of the Sahara started when jihadist groups hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in the north of Mali in 2012. Groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have since seized territory despite costly military efforts to push them back, spreading into Burkina Faso and Niger and more recently into the north of coastal countries such as Togo. Thousands have been killed and millions displaced by the fighting. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Business No clarity yet on baseline or pharmaceutical tariffs with US: DPM Gan Singapore Grace Fu apologises for Tanjong Katong sinkhole, says road may stay closed for a few more days Singapore Terrorism threat in Singapore remains high, driven by events like Israeli-Palestinian conflict: ISD Singapore Liquidators score victory to recoup over $900 million from alleged scammer Ng Yu Zhi's associates Singapore Man on trial for raping woman who hired him to repair lights in her flat Sport IOC president Kirsty Coventry a 'huge supporter' of Singapore Singapore Child and firefighter among 7 taken to hospital after fire breaks out in Toa Payoh flat Singapore S'pore can and must meaningfully apply tech like AI in a way that creates jobs for locals: PM Wong Dussey told Reuters that there are about 8,000 Togolese forces in the north between Togo and neighboring Burkina Faso. Analysts say JNIM has been ramping up attacks in Burkina Faso. Dussey said Togo's cooperation with Burkina Faso was very good, and said that Togo acts as a bridge between the Economic Community of West African States, of which it is a member, and the Confederation of Sahel States, consisting of military-ruled Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. REUTERS
Morocco World
7 days ago
- Politics
- Morocco World
Mali Replaces Algeria Accords With New National Charter For Peace, Reconciliation
Rabat – The President of the Malian transitional military government, Assimi Goita, officially received the new National Charter on July 22, in replacement of the 2015 Algerian Accords. Mali's interim government now says it believes that the new charter is the best document for finding peace and national reconciliation in the country's current realities. The Prime Minister of Mali described the new charter as a 'historic step for national sovereignty' as security challenges persist in northern and central Mali. Violence has been widespread in Mali for a long time from various terrorist organizations and the Tuareg insurgency in the north of the country. The current government overthrew the previous elected government in a coup d'etat in 2020, pledging to resolve these persistent issues. The country has since joined the Alliance for Sahel States, together with Niger and Burkina Faso. The document that has been pushed forward after months of negotiations between officials, activists and civil society organizations has led to widespread approval and optimism. 'After so much polarization, everyone is immersed in the content and document itself, we hope to find peace again,' commented a delegate member of the negotiation committee. Morocco to replace Algeria in the Sahel's new regional order? According to the Malian government, the aim of this proposal is to try and build social cohesion and put an end to the epidemic of violence and extremism across the country. The document will replace and overturn the Algiers Accords, which was signed in 2015, a period when Algeria was trying to consolidate its supremacy in the Sahel. It also nullifies several other Algerian-mediated peace agreements, including the Tamanrasset Agreement of 1991, the National Pact of 1992, and the 2006 Algiers Agreement for the Restoration of Peace, Security and Development in the Kidal region. The new chart comes as the Malian government has been trying to free itself from Algerian influence since 2020. Tellingly, Mali has joined the other Sahel states in the Moroccan Atlantic initiative, forging an alliance with Morocco and indicating the emergence of a new axis in Sahelian affairs.
Daily News Egypt
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily News Egypt
Alarming Advance of Jihadist Groups in Sahel Raises Regional Security Concerns
The Sahel region is witnessing a sharp deterioration in security as jihadist groups expand their influence, overpowering state forces and plunging entire areas into chaos, French newspaper Le Figaro has warned in a recent report. According to the analysis by journalist Jean-Marc Gonin, national armies in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are increasingly losing control over vast territories, while civilian populations continue to bear the brunt of violence in a conflict they are neither responsible for nor equipped to escape. Three years after France ended its counterterrorism Operation Barkhane under mounting pressure from military juntas that seized power in the region, jihadist insurgencies led by al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) have surged. These militant groups are not only challenging the armed forces of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger but are also conducting cross-border raids into neighbouring states such as Benin, posing a growing threat to West African stability. Coordinated Raids and Military Setbacks In the past three months, JNIM launched a wave of attacks in western Mali, including a major offensive near the borders with Senegal and Mauritania. The simultaneous raids targeted seven towns, including the strategic urban centres of Kayes and Nioro, underscoring the group's growing operational capabilities. JNIM's leader, Tuareg commander Iyad Ag Ghaly, is reportedly pursuing control of critical urban hubs and key transportation corridors essential for Mali's access to imported supplies from coastal nations. Although Malian authorities later claimed to have recaptured Kayes, the group succeeded in seizing significant military equipment in the process. Witnesses in the area reported the use of armoured vehicles and, in recent months, the possible deployment of drones by militants—raising alarm over the group's evolving arsenal. Bakary Sambe, regional director of the Timbuktu Institute, described the July 1 attacks as 'well-planned strikes' aimed at disrupting military communication lines and logistics. 'This isolation of Bamako weakens the state's response and gives militants the freedom to launch rapid attacks and withdraw with minimal resistance,' he said. Sahel States Struggle to Push Back Since the withdrawal of French troops in 2022 and the United Nations peacekeeping force in 2023, JNIM has filled the security vacuum, growing in both presence and influence. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have since formed the Sahel States Alliance (AES) to confront the threat, but despite some localised military gains, the coalition continues to suffer heavy losses. The July 1 attacks underscored the challenges faced by national forces. While some incursions were repelled, several operations resulted in significant casualties among government troops. Observers say the reliance on Russian military support—particularly through the controversial Wagner Group—has further complicated the situation. Wagner operatives, accused of human rights abuses, have exacerbated existing grievances, fueling local anger and inadvertently aiding jihadist recruitment. Deepening Social Divisions The ongoing violence has heightened tensions between herder and farming communities, particularly among the Fulani people, who are spread across the Sahel. Jihadist groups, especially JNIM, have exploited these fault lines to gain loyalty, offering a form of economic stability and protection in exchange for allegiance. Le Figaro noted that jihadists have, over the past three years, strategically positioned themselves as defenders of the Fulani, in contrast to national governments and allied militias accused of targeting the group. One of the mo…
National Geographic
15-07-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
How to dig up 55 tons of dinosaur bones from the world's fiercest desert
Inside the boldest fossil hunt ever attempted. A team of paleontologists led by National Geographic Explorer Paul Sereno uncovered a trove of dinosaur fossils in the Sahara desert in Niger, including this long-necked herbivore called a sauropod. Working under floodlights after dark relieved the crew from oppressive daytime heat. It also lengthened workdays, permitting excavation, in less than three months, of three different areas separated by forbidding stretches of desert. Photographs by Keith Ladzinski As the Saharan sun rose on my waylaid team, one morning in September 2022, it seemed to burn with particular intensity. For nearly three weeks we'd been holed up in a mud-walled compound in the oasis town of Agadez, in central Niger, stalled because of officials' insistence on assembling for us a large armed escort. Now, as dawn broke, we were finally ready to embark: Nearly a hundred people packed into 15 vehicles, a motley caravan of SUVs, pickups, and one large dump truck, all strapped with sand ladders and spare tires, heading out on an extraordinary desert dinosaur hunt—without question, the most ambitious of my career. Among our number were Tuareg guides and drivers, a film crew, 64 armed guards, and my paleo dream team of 20 students and freshly minted professors, recruited to spend three months venturing across one of the planet's least hospitable landscapes. Our mission was to explore and excavate three distinct sites, spread across hundreds of miles of blazing, roadless desert. The fossils we found we would ship to my University of Chicago Fossil Lab for careful cleaning and study, later returning them for display in Niger, to celebrate the country's stunning ancient heritage. I had crisscrossed Niger's Sahara during 11 previous expeditions going back 32 years. The last two, in 2018 and 2019, had been for reconnaissance, and I'd spotted bone-rich pockets in some of the desert's most remote and sandswept corners, with dinosaur skeletons jutting from the desert floor. But without the team or tools to collect them, I could only log the sites and imagine our return trip. Then a global pandemic shut down the world, and I spent two years drawing up an audacious plan—and fundraising, with little success. That is, until a benefactor, requesting anonymity, agreed to fully fund the quest. My appeal had aimed at our innate human curiosity, a chance to uncover creatures from paleontology's last great frontier. (This incredibly rare burial ground reveals new secrets about the Sahara's lush, green past.) Ancient mud captured the footprint of an unknown species of sauropod. The expedition found fossils from what Sereno says are many newly identified species. Niger is a dino wonderland because of two chance geologic events. The first unfolded 180 million years ago, during the early Jurassic, when the great landmass Gondwana began to break apart, forming a massive depression in the center of what is now the West African nation, then a verdant region teeming with life. For millions of years, the depression took in sediment and the skeletons of dinosaurs and other creatures. The second event happened 20 million years ago, when a volcanic hot spot raised what's known as the Aïr Massif on the edge of this depression, tilting the strata upward and returning to the surface the now fossilized skeletons. Driving across these rock layers today, heading from Agadez into the open desert, is a journey through deep time. Our timeline was ambitious even before the delay in Agadez, and the expedition's success would hinge on benefiting from lessons I'd learned in the past, along with some novel technology we would deploy in the field. Our perseverance would be tested—many of my young colleagues had never set foot in the Sahara, worked under armed guard in 130-degree heat, or gone a month without a shower. Those with me on previous expeditions, meanwhile, had seen it all: food poisoning, malaria, sandstorms, expedition-ending breakdowns, gun-toting bandits, government coups. And yet I am always eager to go back. Gusty winds make operating drones tricky in the Sahara, but Sereno's team used aerial footage to prospect, map digs, and find campsites. Technology enabled an expedition timeline that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. No one knows the land and its secrets better than those who live on it, and our site nearest to Agadez was a return to a tantalizing find that a local Tuareg nomad had shown us. Years before, he'd led my team by motorbike into the desert, to a spot that the Tuareg call Tchinekankaran (CHIN-kan-KAR-an), or 'place of insects,' for the locusts that swarm after seasonal rains. It's a gravel rise about 10 feet high that stretches for nearly a mile and a half across the acacia-studded Irhazer Plain. Atop the little ridge, a series of large, spool-shaped vertebrae breached the surface. Some digging exposed more of the backbone, which belonged to a 50-foot-long sauropod, the classification given to long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs. (The desert communities of Algeria make a home in the Sahara sand seas.) For this expedition, my team fanned out over the rise and quickly made a series of stunning discoveries, encountering four more of these massive creatures, including one whose neck ended with the most cherished of paleo prizes: a skull. All four seemingly belonged to the same yet-unnamed species. We nicknamed it Ipod, shorthand for an Irhazer Plain sauropod. The elevated fossil field, meanwhile, became Sauropod Island. From the details of its skeleton, I suspected our Ipod dated to the middle Jurassic, some 160 million years ago. But without an ash bed to date it by, this was only a guess. Finding a seam of volcanic ash near a dig site is every paleontologist's dream, since crystals within it can contain datable radioactive isotopes. I'd had my eyes out for ash beds on previous expeditions, but like every Saharan explorer before me, I'd come up dry. This time, however, I brought along one of the world's great time tellers, MIT research scientist and isotope whiz Jahan Ramezani. Jahan's big discovery came by accident, after a rock punctured a tire on one of our battered Land Rovers not far from Sauropod Island. As a few of us set about the repair, he scrambled up the side of a nearby cliff. Soon, Jahan was calling my name, and I found him poking at a greenish clay—an indicator of ancient volcanism, to his expert eye. Would that clay contain the crystals we'd need to date our fossils? Jahan smiled at me confidently. 'I'll bet my career on this one,' he said. Finding bones at Sauropod Island was the easy part. The challenge was whether we could collect all we saw in the three weeks we could devote to the site. Most of my team doubted it was possible. Thirty years ago it likely wouldn't have been, but our tools have come a long way. Some of what we bring to the Sahara today still resembles the equipment and supplies from my first foray in 1993. We still use plaster, burlap, and wood to cocoon fossils in portable field jackets. Our Land Rovers are trusty survivors of past treks. We still get by on packets of dehydrated food—although these days, adding boiling water to a package labeled 'lasagna' yields something closer to the real deal. (They were seeking a mythical oasis in the Sahara. They found a Stone Age surprise instead.) But new gear and technologies have dramatically transformed both the speed of excavation and the imaging of fossils as they emerge. Drill breakers powered by lithium batteries have largely replaced chisels and rock hammers. Lightweight electric jackhammers have replaced picks. GPS and digital imaging technology have replaced hand-drawn maps, while drones and photogrammetry can generate 3D images in minutes, on scales that range from sprawling dig sites to individual bones. At Sauropod Island, a drone flying overhead captured the entire scene, our tracks weaving between skeletons like ant trails. I wouldn't say modern equipment makes the work easy, but it does make the job safer and more efficient. Together with good old-fashioned sweat and 15-hour days, it helped our efforts pay off. When we pulled away from Sauropod Island, triumphant and exhilarated, our trucks strained under a load of some 25 tons of fossils. National Geographic Explorer Alexandre Demers-Potvin, then a Ph.D. student, consults a site map that Sereno made by hand upon discovering this skeleton in 2018. The fossil remained covered for years, awaiting the team's return. Even more remote country awaited us at a site called Gadoufaoua, said to mean 'place where camels fear to tread.' It is Africa's most famously fossil-rich area, in the heart of the Sahara's hyperarid Ténéré region, a desert within a desert. Although I've never felt so much as a drop of rain in Gadoufaoua, my team made a fossil discovery there years ago that's a reminder of how much wetter the area once was. It wasn't a dinosaur at all but rather prehistory's largest dinosaur-eating crocodilian, Sarcosuchus. We took to calling it 'SuperCroc,' a nickname that has stuck in the media. We left from Agadez, where we deposited fossils between digs. In front of us, a roadless expanse of rock gave way to a majestic but daunting dunescape, unfolding as far as the eye or drone could see. Experienced local guides are essential in such terrain, where sinkholes of unexpectedly soft sand can mire vehicles driven by even veteran Saharan hands. Our large dump truck, loaded with 1,000-liter tanks of water, was prone to sinking. Digging it out became a familiar routine, extending what could be a single day's journey to Gadoufaoua into three. You know you've arrived at Gadoufaoua when you see the fossil bones, tinged red with iron, scattered in every direction among low rocky ridges. We were looking for species that lived alongside SuperCroc, in the early Cretaceous, some 110 million years ago. Our first target was Ouranosaurus, a 30-foot-long, sail-backed herbivore. My team had encountered one years before and had covered it, to protect it from wind erosion, until we could someday return. We found it again before long, a gorgeous row of planklike bones as tall as a human and arranged in an array, like a peacock's fantail. It was the first intact bony dinosaur sail ever discovered, and studying it will help solve the mystery of what biological purposes these protrusions served. Spanish paleontologist Noelia Sánchez Fontela peers at sediment with a loupe at a site called Gadoufaoua, where exposed rock dates to the early Cretaceous. Labels on fragments of one of a sauropod's trunk (or dorsal) ribs will aid reassembly. Prepping fossils to ship to Sereno's lab in Chicago required diligent logging and packaging. This fossilized ungual, or claw bone, once belonged to a sauropod on the Irhazer Plain. When the dinosaur was alive, in the Jurassic period, a claw as big as this fossil would have protruded from the bone. A logo on one of the team's Land Rovers dates to the first Saharan expedition that Sereno led, in 1993. Fifteen vehicles made up the caravan during the most recent Niger mission. To make up for our initial delay in Agadez, we worked deep into the night excavating Ouranosaurus, relying on generator-powered lamps. Although the work was exhausting, round-the-clock excavation has its perks in the heart of the Sahara. Nighttime temperatures plummeted to half the day's 125-degree high. Insects attracted by our bizarre desert light show retired before midnight. All told, we would pack out two tons of Ouranosaurus fossils in just three days. Gadoufaoua hides its secrets under drifting, shifting sand: You might walk right past a hidden skull one year only to spot it the next. On an earlier visit, we had discovered a patiolike stretch of exposed sandstone that was packed, to a jaw-dropping degree, with the embedded bones of raptors, turtles, fish, and more—what paleontologists call a microsite. As I returned to Gadoufaoua, among the foremost questions on my mind was whether the microsite would be buried under deep sand, and if it wasn't, how we might carve it up and collect it. I held my breath as I neared the spot and saw a towering dune. But miraculously, just yards away from it, the microsite was exposed. And soon it was surrounded by awestruck paleontologists on their hands and knees, marveling at the sandstone-bound menagerie. We used a rock saw with the largest diamond-covered blade we could find to slice down, about six inches, into the bone patio, hoping to cut it into bricks we could carry out in our usual field jackets. But would the slabs separate cleanly? When the first one did, with little more than the tap of a chisel, my team whooped. I felt like Michelangelo at first, then like Darwin aboard the H.M.S. Beagle, knowing a million bones of unknown species were ours for the collecting. Painstakingly removing rock or sediment from around fossil treasures like these might require years of lab time. But there at Gadoufaoua, one of my team members submerged a block from the microsite in water, and we discovered to our amazement that the sandstone matrix softened instantly—meaning this trove could be freed with minimal effort back at the Fossil Lab. The thrill of that realization helped power us through six long days transforming the bone patio into 10 tons of jacketed slabs. We headed to our final site with only two weeks left in the field, feeling the pressure. Three years before, we'd come to this place, some 120 miles east of Agadez, after investigating a passage I'd read in a 1950s monograph. Its author, French geologist Hugues Faure, described an isolated site where he had found saber-shaped teeth, like those of the T. rex-esque Egyptian predator Carcharodontosaurus. With some effort, we had found his site and, along with it, plenty more teeth, confirming Faure's understanding of the beds as late Cretaceous, some 95 million years old. We might have left with nothing more than teeth if not for a serendipitous visitor to our camp. He wore a black trench coat, cheche head wrap, and sunglasses, with a Tuareg sword slung over his shoulder. His name was Abdul Nasser, and he offered to take us to a bigger bone field. As he led us deep into one of the Sahara's great ergs, or sand seas, over and between dunes, our Land Rover struggled to keep pace with his Honda motorbike. It was feeling like a fool's errand until Abdul pulled up alongside a thigh bone as long as I am tall. It clearly belonged to a skeleton; in every direction, there was more bone. Grace Kinney-Broderick, then a field assistant and a former fossil preparator in Sereno's University of Chicago Fossil Lab, brushes off a sauropod tailbone while members of the team's security detail look on. Truck-mounted guns were a precaution against bandits. With little daylight and fuel, we were able only to note the GPS coordinates of the place, called Jenguebi, and grab a few jaw pieces we assumed were from Carcharodontosaurus. But assembling the jaw back in Chicago, I realized the teeth and tooth sockets were all wrong. They belonged instead to the sail-backed predator Spinosaurus. It was the first record of one of these water-loving beasts found so far inland—and I suspected it was a new species. Our return trip to Jenguebi took us back across the erg. We hopscotched among rocky areas, each smaller than the last, as we traveled deeper into it. We set up camp near where we found the jaw pieces, and we'd been there no more than an hour when my colleague Dan Vidal, a seasoned paleontologist from Spain, came running toward me, eyes gleaming. 'It's here!' he said. 'The skull!' (What dinosaur has 500 teeth? This prehistoric jaw was one-of-a-kind.) I found much of my team gathered around a toothy snout jutting up from the rock. These were the first Spinosaurus skull bones found in place in more than a century. My colleagues stood, mesmerized, as the significance of the find sank in. Some even wept. A few hours later, Dan found me again. This time he held an unfamiliar, boomerang-shaped bone. It was a head crest, we realized, but a strange one, projecting upward to a degree never seen in predatory dinosaurs. And where the crest of an Egyptian Spinosaurus is a ridge, this one was shaped like a scimitar. While team members Jahan Ramezani (at left) and Vincent Reneleau handle lunch dishes, Sereno finds a patch of elusive shade alongside the kitchen tent. On coals made from kindling, the team's Tuareg guides boiled water for tea in the evenings. Knowledgeable local guides were key to the expedition's success. While the team excavated the skull, Dan, our photogrammetry expert, documented the emerging skeleton with digital photos—a much faster process than in my early career, when we'd have photographed a few key fossils and I'd have stood over others, doing shaded drawings. That evening, on a laptop in the tent, he presented us with a 3D image, made from the stitched-together photos, of the skull of our new tall-crested Spinosaurus. The team was awestruck. It wasn't our last spectacular find at Jenguebi. A few days later, an 11-year-old boy from a Tuareg family camped nearby offered to show us fossils he'd seen while wandering with his goats. Navigating complex terrain he knew by heart, he led us to site after site, some with little more than a lonely bone fragment. At the last site, however, was an impressive set of bones and teeth. The latter's saber-like shape left no doubt we had found Africa's first partial skeleton of a carcharodontosaurid. After cleaning and assembly, it will provide the first detailed look at Africa's line of these colossal predators. We returned to Agadez haggard, dirty, and triumphant, with fossils filling two 40-foot containers. On a truck scale, the results of our efforts weighed in at 55 tons, twice what many of us had estimated. I, meanwhile, was 32 pounds lighter. I was also elated, leaving Niger for Chicago and knowing that, in a matter of months, our fossils would soon make the same trip. Then one last hurdle arose, suddenly and unexpectedly, a few months after our return. A military coup toppled the elected government of Niger, putting the shipment of the fossils on hold. (How a trip through the Sahara reflects Niger's fragile state.) Veteran fossil hunter Agali Bazo, curator of a small natural history museum in the oasis town of Ingall, visits the site that the team nicknamed Sauropod Island. For nearly two years, the fossils from our expedition remained in limbo. Then this spring, I traveled to Niamey, Niger's capital, where I signed an agreement that will at last bring the fossils to Chicago. It also provides for their staged repatriation, and it establishes a blueprint to develop two new Nigerien museums to house them, along with an institute to train the country's next generation of museologists, archaeologists, and paleontologists. These initiatives will be overseen by NigerHeritage, a foundation I established in 2016. I first came to Niger for its fossils, for high adventure, and for the stark beauty of its landscapes and sunsets. But I've returned again and again because of my deeper motivations as a paleontologist—because I know that the significance of my work isn't ultimately measured in new species but by the impact those discoveries can have on the future of a nation. On the eve of our expedition, I had goaded my young team members by telling them this would be their chance to write a new chapter in Earth's history, something they'd have few opportunities to do in a lifetime. We now have troves of images, video, and data from the field, and we have presented findings to conferences and journals, including a paper on the remarkable tall-crested Spinosaurus species. Soon we will have the bones for close study, along with geologic samples to reveal their age. Next will come an outpouring of discoveries related to the Carcharodontosaurus, a dozen new sauropods, a digging raptor, an armorless croc, a giant 'SuperFish,' and other new species. We are poised to write that chapter, introducing others to Africa's lost dinosaur worlds, daring them to imagine what still lies beneath the surface. A version of this story appears in the August 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine. An Explorer since 1983, paleontologist Paul Sereno writes this month about the most ambitious expedition of his career. He is a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago and runs the university's Fossil Lab, a research and education center.
