T
he mysterious man with the mustache
opened a cardboard box. Nizar Ibrahim looked inside it. He saw four chunks of rock. Each rock was purple sandstone with streaks of yellow. More interesting to Ibrahim, bits of old bone stuck out of them. Ibrahim immediately knew what he was
looking at. As a paleontologist and National Geographic Explorer, he’s dug up many fossils. In fact, he’d just returned from collecting dinosaur bones in the nearby Sahara desert. Now, he studied the rocks in the box. So
much sediment covered them, it was hard to tell what exactly he was looking at. One held a bone that looked like it came from a dinosaur’s hand. Another rock held a bone that looked like nothing Ibrahim had seen before. It was flat and shaped like a blade. A deep, red line ran through the middle of it. Curious, Ibrahim bought the box of bones
from the fossil dealer. Little did he know, it would lead him on an amazing journey. In the end, he’d discover one of the oddest and most dangerous dinosaurs that ever existed. And he’d help solve one of the most enduring dinosaur riddles of all time. How could so many predators coexist in one ecosystem?
Predator’s Paradise To solve the riddle, Ibrahim first had to go back in time. T e stones and bones he and other fossil hunters have collected in the Sahara tell him about the past. T ese fossils formed when sediment buried dead plants and animals. As the sediment turned into stone, it preserved some bones, footprints, and other traces of ancient life. Now, these remains tell a story of a very diff erent place and time. T at’s why, when Ibrahim looks out over
the Sahara, he doesn’t see a desert. Instead, he pictures what it looked like 95 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Instead of sand, Ibrahim sees rivers and swamps full of life. Plants grew tall here. A few kinds of plant-eating dinosaurs lumbered through the vegetation. But most of the animals here were predators. Giant turtles swam in the rivers, dodging huge crocodiles, sharks, and fish the size of cars. Giant pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, filled
the sky. Two giant dinosaurs as big as T. rex stomped through the forest and ripped apart prey with their sharp teeth. “It was a predator’s paradise,” Ibrahim says. T e Sahara during the Cretaceous, he believes, was the most dangerous place and time in Earth’s history.
This prehistoric crocodile likely hunted for prey along the banks of rivers.
10 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SCIENCE EXPLORER
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