Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt

From Barnes & Noble

This book chronicles two expeditions separated by 89 years. When paleontology grad student Josh Smith learned that among the many casualties of World War II was a stash of Egyptian dinosaur fossils unearthed by a German researcher in 1911, he became determined to visit the site and was rewarded with some spectacular discoveries. This book, co-written by Ghosts of Everest author William Northdurft, presents this engrossing history of dinosaurs lost and found.

Publishers Weekly

Between 1910 and 1914, Ernst Stromer, a little-known German paleontologist and explorer, unearthed a wealth of dinosaur fossils in Egypt's Bahariya Oasis. Thirty years later, Stromer's discoveries were destroyed in a WWII Allied bombing raid, and the oasis lay neglected for decades until Josh Smith, a Penn State doctoral candidate in paleontology, decided to retrace Stromer's footsteps in 1999. Based on Stromer's detailed but rather dry journal entries and vivid, often humorous, testimonies from Smith and his research team, this lucid account highlights Stromer's discoveries (which include, among others, the bones of three predatory dinosaurs) and chronicles recent findings by Smith and his colleagues that set the science world buzzing. When Smith's entourage arrived in Bahariya after months of negotiating with MPH Entertainment, their primary financial supporter, and Egyptian officials, they were amazed to find fossils literally "floating" on the dry, sand-packed surface. Weeks later, the team uncovered its landmark find a 67-inch humerus, or upper arm bone, belonging to a new genus of dinosaur, which measured an impressive 80 to 100 feet in length and weighed between 65 and 70 tons. This discovery was compounded by the newsworthy conclusion made by field geologist Ken Lacovara that millions of years ago Egypt's western desert looked much like Florida's Everglades do now. Nothdurft, coauthor of the Ghosts of Everest, gracefully interweaves the team's exploits with Stromer's own Bahariya experiences and provides just enough scientific background to keep lay readers afloat. An engaging mix of history and desert drama, this Indiana Jones-type adventure is first-rate popular science. (Sept. 3) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In 1944 a Royal Air Force bombing raid destroyed the museum at the Alte Akademie in Munich, Germany. Lost in the flames was a collection of dinosaur bones that had been found between 1910 and 1914 in the remote Western Desert of Egypt by a German baron, Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach. It was not until 90 years after the original discovery that Smith, an American graduate student, pulled together a team of geologists and paleontologists to rediscover Stromer's lost dinosaurs. Remarkably, the team located the original fossil quarries and began to investigate a mystery that Stromer had never solved: what were the Egyptian dinosaurs eating? Written with Smith's input, this narrative by Northdurft, coauthor of Ghosts of Everest, alternates the discoveries of the modern expedition with the history of Stromer's expeditions and the sabotage of his scientific career by the Nazis. The story is told competently but somehow lacks a dramatic sense of the detective work it took to relocate the site and reconstruct lost information from the clues left behind. Still, this title is unique because the site hasn't been written up elsewhere in the popular literature. For larger general science collections.-Amy Brunvand, Univ. of Utah Lib., Salt Lake City Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

From The Critics

German paleontologist Ernst Frieherr Stromer von Reichenbach first sighted them in 1911, identified four new species, collected fossils, and deposited them in a Munich museum where they were destroyed by bombing during World War II. US graduate student Josh Smith (now paleontology, Washington U.) led a team back to Egypt in 2000 to continue the work. Science writer tells the story in a companion to a television documentary. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Kirkus Reviews

A mildly captivating but ultimately scattered account of the vicissitudes of fossil hunting. The major problem is that this was apparently written by committee. Adventure writer Nothdurft (The Ghosts of Everest, not reviewed, etc.) gives credit to no fewer than five coauthors: three graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, one assistant professor at nearby Drexel University, and one "fossil preparator" at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. All five were principal members of the Bahariya Dinosaur Project, which in 1999 set out to follow in the footsteps of long-forgotten German aristocrat and scientist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbch whose pre-WWI explorations of the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert yielded the first fossils of huge sauropods in what was once a lush mangrove forest. Unfortunately, the unfocused text reads less like an account of the team's collaboration than a meticulous accounting of their tiresome confabulations. The authors try to do two things at once, neither of them well. They open the German part of the story confusingly with an excessively long escription of the 1944 RAF mission that destroyed (purely as a matter of collateral damage) the Munich museum containing the bones from Bahariya, then circle back to chronicle Stromer's expedition. The second narrative, of the contemporary scientific team who set out to restore Stromer's legacy and register their own contributions, is even more diffuse. Slangy, not to say spacey, observations like those from fossil lab head Jason Poole ("it was like Bahariya was playing games with us") or geologist Jennifer Smith ("these dinosaur guys . . . go up and down like they're on a rollercoaster") do nothing to advance the reader's understanding. If this were a term paper, which is about the length of the material here, the committee might rightly be accused of padding it. Despite a lot of gravy and garnishes, there's not much here but the bones.