The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, Josh Smith
The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, Josh Smith
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The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt

Author: Josh Smith, William Nothdurft

Narrator: Michael C. Hall

Abridged: 5 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/24/2002


Synopsis

The date is January 11, 1911. A young German paleontologist, accompanied only by a guide, a cook, four camels, and a couple of camel drivers, reaches the lip of the vast Bahariya Depression after a long trek across the bleak plateau of the western desert of Egypt. The scientist, Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach, hopes to find fossil evidence of early mammals. In this, he will be disappointed, for the rocks here will prove to be much older than he thinks. They are nearly a hundred million years old. Stromer is about to learn that he has walked into the age of the dinosaurs.

At the bottom of the Bahariya Depression, Stromer will find the remains of four immense and entirely new dinosaurs, along with dozens of other unique specimens. But there will be reversals—shipments delayed for years by war, fossils shattered in transit, stunning personal and professional setbacks. Then, in a single cataclysmic night, all of his work will be destroyed and Ernst Stromer will slip into history and be forgotten.

The date is January 11, 2000—eighty-nine years to the day after Stromer descended into Bahariya. Another young paleontologist, Ameri-can graduate student Josh Smith, has brought a team of fellow scientists to Egypt to find Stromer’ s dinosaur graveyard and resurrect the German pioneer’s legacy. After weeks of digging, often under appalling conditions, they fail utterly at rediscovering any of Stromer’ s dinosaur species.

Then, just when they are about to declare defeat, Smith’s team discovers a dinosaur of such staggering immensity that it will stun the world of paleontology and make headlines around the globe.

Masterfully weaving together history, science, and human drama, The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt is the gripping account of not one but two of the twentieth century’s great expeditions of discovery.

About The Author

William Nothdurft is the author, coauthor, or ghostwriter of nearly a dozen books, including the award-winning Ghosts of Everest, about the search for the missing mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. Josh Smith served six years in the U.S. Army before getting his B.Sc. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in paleontology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an assistant professor at Washington University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Troy on April 09, 2023

My one-phrase rundown: Trying to make geological, archeological, or paleontological work sound exciting is very difficult. To be fair, these scientific pursuits can really be very exciting, as I remember from a time in my life when I almost gave up biology for paleontology. The quintessentially Amer......more

Goodreads review by Annie on October 10, 2018

This was not my book. In general, I found it to remain tangental to paleontology throughout. It was constantly more interested with the various researchers and their challenges in the field than with the dinosaurs themselves. This is not necessarily a negative, but it was not what I wanted form the......more

Goodreads review by Lara on May 28, 2018

Wow, I'm really kind of amazed that so many people rated this so poorly. The beginning of the book was a little rough, true--there's a lot of back-story, and there are a lot of people introduced, as well as the basic idea of what they're trying to do. The way the story is told reminded me a lot of D......more

Goodreads review by Alex on January 30, 2011

One would not think it that surprising to discover that dinosaur fossils had been discovered within the Sahara Desert of Egypt, considering the immense history this country already has, but apparently from an archaeological perspective, this is pretty rare. What is even more amazing is that these di......more

Goodreads review by Troy on March 05, 2016

This was a riveting book, outlining the pioneering (and depressingly forgotten) work of German paleontologist Ernst Stromer, and the attempts of a group of modern paleontologists to rediscover his finds in Egypt. The science is interesting: these are some seriously cool dinosaurs. The history is fas......more