Chapter 41
LAND OF THE DINOSAURS
The south of Morocco is a parched desert that sweeps around the western flank of the Magreb. Whirlwinds rise over the parched earth like genies between the mirages towering above the endless reg watched over by vast silent temples of rock supported by tier like buttresses of stone.
The four Toyotas Landcruisers rolled across the desert leaving a white plume of dust rising behind them, the baggage roped onto their roof racks and protected by heavy white plastic tarpaulins from the sand that penetrated even into the most tightly sealed bags. Here and there an isolated tamaris or acacia stood out against the coppery green landscape that had once swarmed with life in the distant past and in more recent times had witnessed the arrival of man.
They passed dried river beds and occasionally a camel, the only large living creatures capable of surviving in the harsh desert environment, browsing on the sparse vegetation. Huge slabs of rock rose up into the sky baked by the sun and weathered by the elements, their sides scattered with slabs that had broken off then breaking into smaller pieces in an infinitely slow slide down the steep slopes towards the plain. The desert spread without end across the Western Sahara and Mauritania then Algeria and Chad.
Rare tiny ochre coloured villages built of mud bricks and pisé appeared like mirages and oasis parched by long periods of what was described by the Moroccans as drought but in reality was nothing more than the cyclic variation in the climate that forced the burgeoning population from their villages to an exodus towards the country’s large towns and cities.
Stubs of palms stood bleakly in the burning sun; all that remained of a once green oasis abandoned by its Berber cultivators. When they stopped for a pause young Touaregs appeared as if by magic from the dunes proffering trilobites, real and manufactured, to sell to the hardy voyager.
The main fossil sites that interested them lay to the south east of Afni were the reg met the mountains that rose like a great fracture on the landscape piled with geological layers, the giant quarries of nature’s cut by eons of time and now exposing rich fossil beds containing the remains of a multitude of creatures ranging from the simple trilobites to the terrifying cachrydon, creatures that paved the way for the arrival of mammals, and then, as Roland believed, early man.
The wind rose and a mist of sand blurred the landscape that had slowly flattened out into an endless desert of sand and stone. Clouds of red sand now swirled up in long plumes behind the Toyotas.
They passed Tagonnite, a formless one camel town, facing the edge of the encroaching desert. The road ran through the low sand covered buildings in a straight line as if it were pressed to leave the desolation.
Beyond the town in the reg, the Chergi, a hot, dry, wind from the south, was blowing. They paused to look silently at the dried out remains of a camel, its bones protruding from its sack like skin, witness to a nature that showed no mercy, not even to those creatures that had learnt to respect its harsh laws.
The driver, Sala, a tall friendly though laconic Berber, a contrast with the scowling driver of the second Toyota, wore a yellow chesh over his balding head; he was a devout man with a prayer mat tucked between his seat and the door jamb.
The landscape gave way to scattered with patches of vegetation and a few acacia at the foot of the hills that lay off to the west, Sala pointed out a group of twenty or so camels grazing on the sparse vegetation, they were raised for their meat he explained the most delicious of all meats eaten on very special occasions.
Small cairns of rock and stones erected on the side of the trail guided travellers across the vast open space, a landscape that changed endlessly but without the signs that guided men used to life in towns and villages.
The vegetation quickly gave way to the flat sandy bed of a dried up lake that stretched as far as the horizon, a huge formless expanse ahead of them without any sign of a trail for the passengers but the drivers knowing every inch of it drew up four abreast and raced across the salt, a relief from the bone breaking monotony of the reg. It was as flat as a billiard table in every direction, the horizon meeting the sky in a shimmering mirage where three or four camels seemed to walk across the waters of a lake. From time to time tight patches of tiny plants could be seen miraculously sprouting between the cracks of the long dried up lake bed.
To the right were the foothills of the Anti-Atlas. A control point stood on a rise overlooked by a small rose coloured military fort that stood on a small hill, they were stopped by a guard standing at a barrier who waved them on after checked their papers.
Then they crossed a region that looked like a vast demolition site the convoy throwing up a cloud fine grey dust. The variety of desert types was astonishing to those who imagined sand and dunes, but for Ennis who had arrived from the lush rain washed jungles of Sarawak it was a savage but beautiful landscape void of all life.
The weather at the end of March was perfectly suited for the survey expedition with the temperatures in the mid-afternoon of between twenty-five and thirty degrees, and ten to fifteen during the night. In the summer months the shadeless desert reached temperatures of almost fifty degrees.
A lone Bedouin appeared walking on the side of the rocky trail his blue robe and blue black head scarf protecting him from the sun, he lifted his hand in salutation, he was miles from nowhere. Many young Bedouins once they discovered the harshness of their ancestral lives they headed towards the villages and towns abandoning their land, their goats and camels. By progressive steps they moved on from village to village and finally to the hope and misery of the shantytowns in Casablanca, the economic capital.
The government did everything in its power to keep the sparse Berber population from quitting their ancestral lands; once of a village reached three thousand people, electricity and running water were installed, rudimentary but effective.
The survey camp had been set up in advance with the help of local Touaregs hired by Claude Poirot. The tents and vehicles were covered in a fine layer of dust and sand, and as soon as night fell the wind died down and the flies had disappeared.
The Touareg tents were of coarse woven sheep and camel wool, Poirot ensured them that if in the unlikely possibility of rain the wool would swell becoming water proof. Inside the tents were folding camp beds were set up with what looked like fairly comfortable mattresses and thick blankets.
Nearby an ass belonging to the Touregs heehawed in the desert. In the distance a couple of stray camels stood idle in the setting sun and nearer to the camp a few crows had appeared in the hope of scavenging the waste as large black beetles obviously well adapted to their environment scuttled over the sand in search of food.
The logistics manager of the French Bureau of Geological Research and Mines, Claude Poirot, welcomed them to the camp, he was a rugged no nonsense type and had long experience of geological expeditions behind him in Morocco. The Institute’s expedition manager, was Abdel Hassim a young Moroccan who had graduated in Commerce and Management and spoke excellent French with fairly good English, he worked with authority and efficiency, cooperating with Poirot without the least friction. Poirot, who spoke a little Arabic and no Berber, entirely relied on Abdel for communication with the local people who spoke little French.
Jaros pointed to the three ULMs parked under tarpaulins protected from the wind by their tow vehicles. These were part of the equipment necessary for the geological survey over the rugged terrain where air observation could save them weeks of exhausting footwork for the survey, exploring for minerals and studying the geological sediments. Poirot had obtained the necessary permits from the administration at the office of the Glaouie for permission to explore the zone from the air with their low flying ULMs.
After moving their personal affairs into the bivoacks, they settled down on the rugs spread over the outside of the canteen tent facing the sun as it started to settle behind the smooth lines of the anti-Atlas mountains, drinking refreshing mint tea in the evening air after their gruelling tr
ip from Ouazazate.
The ride across the reg had been bone breaking but demonstrated the solidity of the Toyotas that bore no visible signs of the experience apart from the dust after crossing the lunar liker landscape. Ennis who was still feeling stiff from the hours pent in the Toyota, wandered off to relieve himself in the dunes that lay two or three hundred metres to the east of the camp, he made his way to the top of the nearest dune surprised by its size, at the top he saw before him a vast sea of dunes some of which rose like mountainous waves to the rose coloured sky. A full moon was already visible in the sky on the eastern horizon, over the dunes; it was as red as the sun, covered by a grey blue veil. The heat of the day lingered on, radiating from the sand, it was intense, heavy, he was damp with transpiration by the time he reached the top of the next dune, he looked at his watch, almost eight, it was time to the camp for the evening meal.
They sat on the rugs and carpets under the clear sky. Ennis saw a shooting star flash across the bright dome of the night sky to the east of the half moon. Fresh bread was baked in pans over red embers taken from the camp fire of brush wood and eucalyptus. A freshly killed lamb baked on a spit twenty yards from the main fire.
A perfume of the orange blossoms wafted over them. A bottle of chilled Goulamine Gris rosé appeared and was opened, it was corked, Ennis quickly adjusting to the rigours of camp life realised that it was the best they were going to get, and with Roland they slowly sipped it, as though it was a fine Champagne. The silence was broken by low voices and the faint echo of some distant muezzin carried by the night air of the desert called the faithful to prayer.
As they ate their dinner of lamb they talked about their plans with Lauri, a palaeobotanist, specialised in hominid diet and Ann, a palaeontologist. They talked of Pierre’s theory that erectus had crossed into North Africa much early on in his evolution than was currently thought by science, up to then there was no proof simply because proof had not been found. Another bottle of wine to go with the desert of couscous sprinkled with powdered sugar and canella as Ann described the area they would explore the next day, a fault area that exposed layers going back more than a million years.
Lauri shared the tent with Ennis and Pierre Ros; there were no niceties between the sexes. She was in her late thirties and had never married, a professional veneer hid a girlish charm, Lauri told them she had never found time for the pursuit of a partner, her life was dedicated to the pursuit of the strange creatures that had roamed the plains of Africa in the long distant past. Ennis noted how she wandered off from the camp occupied by her own thoughts, as if searching amongst the rocks for eventual clues to past or perhaps simply to get away from life that was too complicated by the politics of specialists that were of little interest to her.
The soft throb of the generator situated about one hundred metres from the tents was hardly heard with the general activity of the camp and was shutdown at ten leaving a total silence. Those who wanted to could read or write by gas lamps. Satcoms kept those who dared open their portable PCs in the sand and dust keep in touch with the rest of the world with the help of vehicle batteries.
The sky lightened just after six. The embers of the heavy eucalyptus log continued to flicker in the early morning dusk. The camp toilet was rigged about thirty yards from the tents and after the first visit Ennis realised that from a strictly hygienic point of view it was best avoided. Showering was impossible since the nearest point of water was too far from the camp. After a couple of days he barely remarked the rank odour of the canteen tent though the occasional breeze agitated the smell of unwashed bodies smothered with heavy doses of rose water.
Ten thousand years earlier the now parched rivers and lakes had been filled with crocodiles and hippos whilst what was now a parched desert had been a lush savannah teeming with game. The rock carvings he had been shown were the proof that hunter gatherers had once peopled the whole of the Sahara.
Life had prospered or declined with the ebb and flow of climatic change as it has always done. A hundred thousand years earlier when nature had smiled upon man’s ancestors Homo sapiens had arrived in North Africa from the east of the continent and before him other hominids had arrived to wander across its fertile plains and over its cool mountains. The migratory movement was forced north towards Europe whenever the regions population became too great or when climate changed once again and conditions became dryer. The route to the south was cut off by the growing desert forcing them northwards to better climates capable of sustaining their numbers.
The motors of the Land Cruisers were already running as the camp personnel packed their material onto the roof, they had a two hour drive before them to the site through a stark mountain landscape rising up to more than two thousand metres before plunging down into the valley formed by the geological fault.
Roland, a geologist turned anthropologist, haggled with a young Touareg boy who had appeared from nowhere, he held two dinosaur teeth in his small grubby hands. Roland was more interest in where they had come from than by the price. He had already bought several fossil teeth in the town of Errfoud at exorbitant prices.
Roland scrambled into one of the Toyotas alongside Ennis and Ann, a trained palaeontologist and amiable dyke. She immediately identified the teeth as belonging to one of the largest of the theropods, a beast related to the allosaurus and giganotosaurus, a carcharodontasaurus saharicus.
Ann, preferred field work to anything else, her speciality prevent her from collecting samples as did the geologists and palaeontologists, she seemed to spend a great deal of time swaggering around the camp a cigarette hanging from her lips, butting into conversations in a gruff friendly way, having nothing better to do. She played her chosen role to perfection, wearing large kaki trousers belted around her bulging waist line, like many a middle aged male, into which was tucked a bulky tee shirt that did little to hide her large, falling, bust. She chain smoke in broad masculine movements and spoke with an effected upper class English accent. Ann was considered as one of the leading specialists in an obscure branch of primitive archaeology; the ancient stone carvings, especially those of Africa, a speciality she had chosen with the natural enthusiasm that she exulted in, after having forsaken her vocation of palaeontology.
‘This creature had a massive tail, a bulky body, and heavy bones. Its arms were short and had three-fingered hands with sharp claws. Imagine jaws, one a half metres long full of teeth like these,” she said turning over the tooth in here hand. “It was almost fourteen metres long, its head alone over one and a half metres long. They ran the show around here in the Early and Late Cretaceous.’
‘For your information John,’ she said looking at Ennis in a faintly patronising manner, ‘the Cretaceous that is between 144 and 65 million years ago was the last part of the Age of Dinosaurs, and it was in this period that the first modern mammals and bird groups as well as the first flowering plants appeared.’
‘Interesting.’
‘It was when the prehistoric continent of Pangaea continued to break-up.’
‘Did it now.’
‘Yes, in the Jurassic, when the differences in the flora and fauna of the new continents became greater, meaning the Cretaceous was the time when life as it now exists on Earth evolved.’
‘What about or friendly Carcha....’
‘Carcharodontosaurus! As I said they grew up to about fourteen metres long and weighed up to eight tons. It had huge powerful jaws with long, serrated teeth. Look! If you hold it up to the light you can see the serrations, some of these teeth were as much as thirty centimetres long. Carcharodontosaurus were bigger than T-rex but its brain was smaller, it was a more primitive dinosaur than T-rex.’
‘Great!’
‘Actually, carcharodontosaurus fossils are quite common here and they also exist in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Niger.’
A silence fell, the buffeting and shaking of the Toyota over the rocky trail made conversation almost impossible. On a mountainside spelt out in white
washed stones were the words, Allah, the King and the Nation. They arrived at Foum Zguid near an abandoned village half submerged by the encroaching sand, the sun dried mud bricks and ochre walls worn down by the elements into a strange beauty, where Homo erectus fossils had been discovered in a fault that exposed several million years of history. The BRGM geologists had identified the horizon to between one-and-a-half to two million years old.
The discovery when confirmed and published would put the final coffin nail into the ‘out of Africa theory’.