In November, 1910, Ernst Stromer left his home in Nuremberg, which at that time was a part of Bavaria in Europe. This would be his third trip to Egypt, and he was going in search of fossil sea mammals such as giant prehistoric whales. After docking in Alexandria, Stromer traveled to Cairo where he met his collector, Richard Markgraf and his camel driver, Oraan. He also met with other British and German scientists to discuss new routes through the mostly unknown deserts of Egypt. Even though at this time in history tensions between England and Germany were growing, the scientists ignored the politics and cheerfully worked together.
After two unsuccessful trips to previously explored sites, Stromer returned to Cairo to get new supplies and camels. He also met his future wife, Elizabeth, whose family was there on business. On January 4, 1911, Stromer, two Egyptian servants and four camels began the journey across the desert to Bahariya. After eight miserable days of travel, they came to the oasis – 1,100 square miles of mostly dry land with a small area fed by the natural springs. |
95 million years ago, the Bahariya Oasis was completely different that it is today. It was a lush, tropical shoreline with many small islands. Giant mangrove trees grew along the shoreline, their thick tangle of roots anchoring the trees in the shallow water. Almost all of what is now modern Egypt, along with much of Europe and other parts of North Africa, were covered by the Tethys Sea. There was no Middle East, and India was an island far south of where it is now located.
As he traveled by camel to the Bahariya oasis, Stromer took very detailed notes of the geology along the way. He noted that there were literally billions of fossils of oyster shells, along with fossilized corals and other sea creatures. He also saw a great many pieces of petrified wood. Stromer began to understand that the desert he was crossing was once a great sea that would advance and retreat many times over many millions of years, the shoreline changing almost constantly. This cycle left many layers of limestone and sandstone in the desert; in essence the pages of Earth’s history left for scientists such as Stromer to read. |
Stromer came to Egypt in search of prehistoric mammals, not dinosaurs. Bahariya was the third stop on his 1910-1911 expedition. The two locations Stromer had visited previously had been areas where huge prehistoric whales had been found. He traveled to Bahariya knowing that its geology was earlier than the other locations and he hoped to find mammal fossils that represented the ancestors of these giant whales.
In the early part of the 20th century, even though geologic periods such as the Jurassic, Cretaceous and the more recent Tertiary had been named, no one really knew exactly how long ago they were. In fact, although we now know that the Cretaceous ended 65 million years ago, in 1911 it was thought that it lasted until just a few million years ago. The entire age of the Earth was thought by scientists to be less than 100 million years, far less than the 4.5 billion years that modern science has shown.
Stromer made a number of exploratory pits, digging into the rocky soil of the oasis. Most came up empty of fossil. However, one pit yielded some remarkable bones. Stromer realized that these were not the bones of a mammal. He was uncovering huge long, straight bones that at first appeared to be ribs. As was standard practice, most of the bones weren’t examined well in the field, they were packed for shipping back to his laboratory in Germany where they would be properly examined. The bones were carefully wrapped and put into crates. These crates were transported to the docks in Alexandria, waiting for ships. However, hostilities had begun in Europe. Shipping was becoming impossible. Stromer’s fossils ended up waiting in a warehouse by the docks for years. It wasn’t until near the end of World War One that the bones made it to Germany. Stromer named the dinosaur Spinosaurus aegypticis, or the Egyptian Spine Lizard.
In the early part of the 20th century, even though geologic periods such as the Jurassic, Cretaceous and the more recent Tertiary had been named, no one really knew exactly how long ago they were. In fact, although we now know that the Cretaceous ended 65 million years ago, in 1911 it was thought that it lasted until just a few million years ago. The entire age of the Earth was thought by scientists to be less than 100 million years, far less than the 4.5 billion years that modern science has shown.
Stromer made a number of exploratory pits, digging into the rocky soil of the oasis. Most came up empty of fossil. However, one pit yielded some remarkable bones. Stromer realized that these were not the bones of a mammal. He was uncovering huge long, straight bones that at first appeared to be ribs. As was standard practice, most of the bones weren’t examined well in the field, they were packed for shipping back to his laboratory in Germany where they would be properly examined. The bones were carefully wrapped and put into crates. These crates were transported to the docks in Alexandria, waiting for ships. However, hostilities had begun in Europe. Shipping was becoming impossible. Stromer’s fossils ended up waiting in a warehouse by the docks for years. It wasn’t until near the end of World War One that the bones made it to Germany. Stromer named the dinosaur Spinosaurus aegypticis, or the Egyptian Spine Lizard.
“Stromer was puzzled by the strange, cone-shaped teeth he found in the jaws of Spinosaurus. They were very different from any other carnivorous dinosaur teeth. In fact, they were nearly identical in shape to the teeth found in crocodiles. After studying the way older teeth were worn, along with the strange shape of the jaw, scientists have determined that Spinosaurus and the other members of its family ate a lot of fish. This makes sense when you consider the environment where they lived and the types of fish that would have been available.”
“The huge spines that grew along its back are still something of a puzzle to scientists. As you can see, they were very big, the largest 170 cm (64 inches) long and would have supported a large fin or sail along its back. What would this have been used for? There are two main theories about its use. First, it would have helped the huge dinosaur keep its body temperature stable. It could have radiated excess body heat or absorbed heat from the sun, cooling and warming the big dinosaur. The second theory is that it was a display used to attract females. Many modern birds and reptiles, almost always males, have colorful parts of their bodies they use in courtship. At present, the subject is still up for debate. It is interesting to note that the two other family members of Spinosaurus, Suchomimus and Baryonyx, don’t have these spines.” |
In the latter part of the 1930’s Ernst Stromer was an important scientific figure at the great museum in Munich, Germany. However, he was also a man of conviction and disagreed with the way he saw Germany moving towards the Nazi party. His anti-Nazi views became well known. As war broke out, he tried to continue his scientific work, but without the support of the ruling Nazi party, he found it difficult. As the war began to go badly for Germany, the Nazis began taking young men into their army without any care about their ability or desire to fight the allies. They took three of Stromer’s sons and sent them to fight the Russians. These young men disappeared and Stromer was told they had been killed in battle. Shortly before he died in 1952 one of his sons returned after being held prisoner in a Russian prison camp long after the war ended.
In 1944 the Allies were bombing much of Germany. They had begun to bomb civilian targets in the attempt to force the surrender of Germany. The Nazi party had begun to hide and protect many of the national treasures of German museums. However, because Ernst Stromer was such a vocal anti-Nazi, all the priceless artifacts in his museum, including the only specimen of Spinosaurus in the world, were left in place. One night in 1944 the museum in Munich was completely destroyed in an Allied bombing raid. Spinosaurus, along with most of Stromer’s lifetime of research, was gone forever. In 2000 a research team from the University of Pennsylvania traveled to Egypt to try and retrace Stromer’s travels and explorations. They found the dig pit where Spinosaurus had been discovered. While they didn’t find any more Spinosaurus fossils, they did discover a giant plant eating dinosaur they named Paralititan. And they found something else, but not at the dig site. In Germany, in a box that had not been looked into for decades, they found photos that Stromer had hidden away of his expeditions and of the Spinosaurus as he had mounted it in the Munich museum. This was the first time since the 1940’s that anyone had seen the fossil. Excerpts from "The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt" by William Nothdurft and Josh Smith |