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Paleontologist Jonah Choiniere said that a student had noticed "some bones (fossilized) coming out" of a massive rock in an isolated farmhouse in central South Africa. "It turned out to be a hip of a species we had never seen before"
The sun rises on the South African bush while scientists loaded with backpacks climb a hill.
They set to work sawing two huge blocks of stone that hid the secrets of an ancestor of modern crocodiles for about 200 million years.
Jonah Choiniere and his team at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg had followed the reptile from another age for three years.
The research has taken them to an expanse of farmland in the central city of Rosendal, where they are surrounded by cattle and impala.
"In 2015, one of my students saw some bones out (fossilized)," Choiniere said, his shirt sticking to sweat after the morning hike.
"We started the excavations and brought them back to the laboratory, which turned out to be a hip of a species we had never seen before," said the paleontologist United States.
The delicate excavation process on the site is extremely slow and continues today.
Before being extracted, the stone surrounding a fossil is carefully wrapped in a protective layer of plaster.
After five hours of drying time, the stone is chiselled free, lifted by three strong people, and then transported by road for a distance of nearly 300 kilometers (185 miles) until Johannesburg, in the expert hands of Wilfred Bilankulu.
The surrounding stone must be wrapped in a protective layer of plaster before being transported to Johannesburg, where laboratory technician Wilfred Bilankulu uses dental tools to expose the fossil.
"My job is to make the fossils visible," said the former visual arts student. "I take off the coat that has been put up around the fossil and after I prepare it for the help of dental tools."
Rare specimen
The Herculean task will take between eight and twelve months. Similar time will be required to thoroughly examine, compare, and describe the discovery.
Choiniere was expecting an abundant harvest even before having the discovery in hand.
"It's a very good harvest for us.We did not know what to expect when we entered this career … I can say that it's much better than we expected, very promising, "he said.
Given the bones already discovered, Rick Tolchard, a research student at Choiniere, can barely hide his enthusiasm.
He knows that it is in the presence of a rare specimen, the improbable ancestor of the crocodile family that is now tracking African waterways.
"250 to 200 million years ago, these animals were the dominant terrestrial carnivores and we found them all over the world (…) in South Africa, we have no record of them" , did he declare.
Jonah Choiniere said the discovery was much better than expected
"I imagine that some of them looked a bit like a crocodile crossed with a lion, a very tall quadruped, paws under the body, with that big massive jaw, a very intimidating animal.
"Whoever is here would have stood up, it would have looked more like a theropod dinosaur, almost a raptor."
In recent years, South Africa has become a destination of choice for dinosaur hunters.
An hour away from Rosendal Farm, the Choiniere team has already uncovered fossils belonging to a newly discovered type of dinosaur that lived on the earth 200 million years ago.
"Giant thunderbolt at dawn"
Measuring four meters at the shoulder and weighing 12 tons – twice the weight of a modern elephant – the giant herbivore known in the local sesotho tongue as Ledumahadi mafube ("a giant thunderclap at the "Dawn") shook the family tree of extinct monsters.
Choiniere said it could be "the first real giants".
The beast is a forerunner of the 60-ton sauropods of Steven Spielberg's successful Jurassic Park series.
Fossils are present in about two thirds of South Africa, according to Jonah Choiniere
Experts say that the southern tip of Africa is an ideal place to study the transition between the Triassic and Jurassic periods, when massive extinctions have shaped the evolution of the planet.
"One of the reasons is that almost 66% of South Africa's surface contains fossils – there are a lot of areas containing fossils," said Choiniere.
"We do not get a lot of rain, especially in the interior of the country, so we have areas that erode quickly – and this erosion exposes fossils."
"It's phenomenal, it's really great," said Cebisa Mdekazi, a master's student in paleontology, a young student who advocated for the next generation of South African paleontologists.
"It also inspires pride in your country, you have all these incredible things in our country and we can show the world."
His teacher, Choiniere, is far from having finished with South Africa.
"Every time we go on the field and dig something, there is a good chance it will be something new," said Mdekazi.
"It's a country of dinosaurs, and there's no way to finish the job of my life."
Explore further:
Ledumahadi mafube, the new South African Jurassic giant
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