Tendaguru

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Tendaguru
Skeleton of Dicraeosaurus hansemanni in the Tendaguru formation

Skeleton of Dicraeosaurus hansemanni in the Tendaguru formation

location Lindi Region , Tanzania , East Africa
Coordinates 9 ° 42 ′ 0 ″  S , 39 ° 12 ′ 0 ″  E Coordinates: 9 ° 42 ′ 0 ″  S , 39 ° 12 ′ 0 ″  E
Tendaguru (Tanzania)
Tendaguru
Age of the rock 157–135 million years
particularities Fossil deposit from the Upper Jurassic
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The Tendaguru is a hill in the municipality of Mipingo , about 60 km northwest of the city of Lindi in the southeast of the East African state of Tanzania and a world-famous depository for dinosaur fossils from the Upper Jurassic .

history

Werner Janensch at the Tendaguru. His caption reads: "Ego [I] when entering in the lost property book ".

In the years 1909–1913 a German expedition and excavation took place under the direction of Werner Janensch on behalf of the Berlin Museum of Natural History . It is considered the most successful dinosaur dig in history. 250 tons of fossilized dinosaur bones were transported to Berlin, including the almost complete skeleton of a sauropod, long known as Brachiosaurus brancai , today Giraffatitan brancai . The skeleton reconstruction was set up in the Berlin Museum of Natural History, the showpiece of which it has been since then. For a long time it was the world's largest assembled skeleton of a dinosaur and it has been since a reassembly in 2007.

The Tendaguru finds have already led to numerous new findings about the dinosaurs and the scientific evaluation is not yet complete. Other genera , of which abundant finds have been made in the Tendaguru formation, are the stegosaur Kentrosaurus , the small bird's pelvis dinosaur Dysalotosaurus (also referred to as Dryosaurus ), the unusual, slender theropod Elaphrosaurus , as well as a whole series of partly quite complete, partly only partially known sauropods . These include Dicraeosaurus sattleri and Dicraeosaurus hansemanni , Janenschia robusta and, less known, Tornieria africana and Australodocus bohetii . Bones of an allosaurid predatory dinosaur were also found.

From 1924 to 1931 the British Museum (Natural History) , today's Natural History Museum , continued the German excavations at Tendaguru with its own expedition, but without being able to present any similarly spectacular fossil finds.

In August and September 2000, the Berlin Natural History Museum again carried out fossil collections at Tendaguru as part of the German-Tanzanian Tendaguru project. The aim was to reconstruct the paleo-ecosystems in which the dinosaurs lived.

The Tanzanian government demanded the return of the skeleton and countless other objects and human remains in early 2020. Reparation payments or transnational cooperation are also up for debate.

literature

  • Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker and others: Dinosaur fragments - On the history of the Tendaguru expedition and its objects, 1906-2018. Wallstein, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3253-9 .

Web links

Commons : Tendaguru  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Photo document, Tendaguru expedition, W. Janensch. ID: 9106 . Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology, Humboldt University Berlin. Last accessed on February 5, 2013
  2. ↑ Hennig, E. (1912) Am Tendaguru. Life and work of a German research expedition to excavate pre-worldly giant dinosaurs in German East Africa . Stuttgart: Swiss beard. (Contemporary report, shaped by colonial ideas)
  3. ↑ Janensch, W. (1914). Overview of the vertebrate fauna of the Tendaguru layers together with a brief characterization of the newly listed species of sauropods. Archive for Biontology, 3 (1), pp. 81–110 ( PDF )
  4. ^ Taylor, MP (2009). A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax RIGGS 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29 (3): 787-806.
  5. ↑ Janensch, W. (1950). The skeletal reconstruction of Brachiosaurus brancai . Palaeontographica , Supplement 7 (I, 3): 97-103.
  6. ↑ Hennig, E. (1915). Kentrosaurus aethiopicus , the stegosaurid of the Tendaguru. Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Natural Sciences in Berlin 1915 : 219-247
  7. ↑ Hennig, E. (1916). Second message about the stegosaurid from Tendaguru. Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Natural Sciences in Berlin 1916 (6) : 175–182
  8. ↑ Hennig, E. (1925). Kentrurosaurus aethiopicus . The stegosaur finds from Tendaguru, German East Africa. Palaeontographica Supplement 7 : 101-254
  9. ↑ Janensch, W. (1929). An erected and reconstructed skeleton of the Elaphrosaurus bambergi . With an addendum on the osteology of this coelurosaur. Palaeontographica , Supplement 7 (I, 2): 279-286.
  10. ↑ Janensch, W. (1935). An erected skeleton of Dicraeosaurus hansemanni . Palaeontographica , Supplement 7 (I, 2): 301-308.
  11. ↑ Wild, R. (1991). Janenschia ng robusta (E. Fraas 1908) per Tornieria robusta (E. Fraas 1908) (Reptilia, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha). Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History , Series B 173 : 1-3.
  12. ^ Remes, K. (2009). Taxonomy of Late Jurassic diplodocid sauropods from Tendaguru (Tanzania). Fossil Record 12 (1): 23-46
  13. ^ Heinrich, W.-D., Bussert, R., Aberhan, M., Hampe, M., Kapilima, S., Wardrobe, E., Schultka, S., Maier, G., Msaky, E., Sames , B. and Chami, R. (2001). The German-Tanzanian Tendaguru Expedition 2000 . Fossil Record 4: 223-237 (English)
  14. ↑ Jörg Häntzschel: A dinosaur and the consequences. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. February 5, 2020, accessed April 16, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Oliver Noffke: The mountain of bones. rbb24, February 16, 20, accessed April 16, 2020 .