BIG, FAST AND VICIOUS

A PAIR OF MEAT-EATING DINOSAURS FROM MOROCCO COULD FORCE A RETHINKING OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY

Digging up dinosaur bones is always a grueling business, but conditions in the Kem Kem wilderness of southwest Morocco last summer were especially bad. The temperature soared to 120 degrees F almost every day, and the fossils were hundreds of feet up, poking out of the dusty face of a sandstone cliff. "It was," says Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who led the joint U.S.-Moroccan expedition, "the most brutal fieldwork I've ever done." Worse yet, the team wasn't finding much--lots of moderately interesting bits and pieces but nothing even close to a major discovery.

Then, on the 41st day,...

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