you
I’m going to take you on a journey back
in time I’m not talking about five
hundred years two thousand years now I’m
taking you back in deep time to lost
world of African dinosaurs place that is
far more bizarre than any other
ecosystem we know the Sahara is a
magical place both beautiful and
frightening peaceful and cruel almost
like a world of its own
today this is a sea of Sam
but hundred million years ago this place
was a huge river system when I was about
25 years old I began a fieldwork project
to collect fossils in the border region
between Morocco and Algeria people told
me that I’m crazy but I think in science
you sometimes have to be crazy I think
you need people to push the boundaries I
mean that’s what science is about people
thought I would never find anything
significant well we found a few things
this outcrop of red sediments is the
actual site where a partial skeleton of
Spinosaurus was found let’s see if we
can find something new I never fully
understood the concept of deep time
until I found an ancient piece of
riverbed in the Sahara little pebbles
and the dinosaur tooth and all these
objects were arranged in the same
direction of flow this seam just came to
life in my mind a dinosaur upstream
losing a tooth and the tooth is just
rolling on the riverbed it’s carried
downstream and it suddenly gets stuck in
this little sand dune in the river I had
in my hands
snapshot of time from a time when humans
were absent on our planet we think so
much of ourselves today and you know
we’re ruling our planet but if there’s
one thing paleontology has has taught us
that is that nothing is forever species
go extinct and it’s very unlikely that
it will be the first exception to that
rule
overlooking this vast desert millions of
years of ecosystems just under your feet
travel back in time in your mind and
trying to imagine what the place looked
like hundreds of millions of years ago
I think knowing that our time on this
planet is not infinite makes it all the
more special the world was not made for
us and we are privileged to be here and
we should make the most of it
you
I’m going to take you on a journey back
in time I’m not talking about five
hundred years two thousand years now I’m
taking you back in deep time to lost
world of African dinosaurs place that is
far more bizarre than any other
ecosystem we know the Sahara is a
magical place both beautiful and
frightening peaceful and cruel almost
like a world of its own
today this is a sea of Sam
but hundred million years ago this place
was a huge river system when I was about
25 years old I began a fieldwork project
to collect fossils in the border region
between Morocco and Algeria people told
me that I’m crazy but I think in science
you sometimes have to be crazy I think
you need people to push the boundaries I
mean that’s what science is about people
thought I would never find anything
significant well we found a few things
this outcrop of red sediments is the
actual site where a partial skeleton of
Spinosaurus was found let’s see if we
can find something new I never fully
understood the concept of deep time
until I found an ancient piece of
riverbed in the Sahara little pebbles
and the dinosaur tooth and all these
objects were arranged in the same
direction of flow this seam just came to
life in my mind a dinosaur upstream
losing a tooth and the tooth is just
rolling on the riverbed it’s carried
downstream and it suddenly gets stuck in
this little sand dune in the river I had
in my hands
snapshot of time from a time when humans
were absent on our planet we think so
much of ourselves today and you know
we’re ruling our planet but if there’s
one thing paleontology has has taught us
that is that nothing is forever species
go extinct and it’s very unlikely that
it will be the first exception to that
rule
overlooking this vast desert millions of
years of ecosystems just under your feet
travel back in time in your mind and
trying to imagine what the place looked
like hundreds of millions of years ago
I think knowing that our time on this
planet is not infinite makes it all the
more special the world was not made for
us and we are privileged to be here and
we should make the most of it
you
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