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These dragons from deep time
are incredible creatures.

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They're bizzarre,

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they're beautiful,

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and there's very little
we know about them.

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These thoughts were going
through my head

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when I looked at the pages of
my first dinosaur book.

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I was about five years old at the time,

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and I decided there and then


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that I would become a paleontologist.

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Paleontology allowed me 
to combine my love for animals

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with my desire to travel to 
far-flung corners of the world.

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And now, a few years later,
I've led several expeditions

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to the ultimate far-flung corner 
on this planet, the Sahara.

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I've worked in the Sahara because
I've been on a quest

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to uncover new remains of
a bizarre, giant predatory dinosaur

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called Spinosaurus.

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A few bones of this animal
have been found

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in the deserts of Egypt

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and were described about 100 years ago
by a German paleontologist.

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Unfortunately, all his Spinosaurus bones
were destroyed in World War II.

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So all we're left with are just
a few drawings and notes.

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From these drawings,

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we know that this creature, which lived 
about 100 million years ago,

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was very big,

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it had tall spines on its back,
forming a magnificent sail,

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and it had long, slender jaws, 
a bit like a crocodile,

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with conical teeth,

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that may have been used 
to catch slippery prey, like fish.

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But that was pretty much 
all we knew

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about this animal for the next 100 years.

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My fieldwork took me to the border region
between Morocco and Algeria,

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a place called the Kem Kem.

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It's a difficult place to work in.

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You have to deal with sandstorms
and snakes and scorpions,

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and it's very difficult to find
good fossils there.

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But our hard work paid off.

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We discovered many incredible specimens.

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There's the largest dinosaur bone

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that had ever been found
in this part of the Sahara.

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We found remains of giant
predatory dinosaurs,

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medium-sized predatory dinosaurs,

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and seven or eight different kinds
of crocodile-like hunters.

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These fossils were deposited
in a river system.

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The river system was also home 
to a giant, car-sized coelacanth,

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a monster sawfish,

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and the skies over the river system
were filled with pterosaurs,

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flying reptiles.

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It was a pretty dangerous place,

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not the kind of place where you'd want
to travel to if you had a time machine.

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So we're finding all these 
incredible fossils of animals

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that lived alongside Spinosaurus,

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but Spinosaurus itself proved
to be very elusive.

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We were just finding bits and pieces

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and I was hoping that we'd find
a partial skeleton at some point.

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Finally, very recently,

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we were able to track down a dig site

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where a local fossil hunter found
several bones of Spinosaurus.

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We returned to the site,
we collected more bones.

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And so after 100 years we finally
had another partial skeleton

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of this bizarre creature.

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And we were able to reconstruct it.

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We now know that 
Spinosaurus had a head

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a little bit like a crocodile,

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very different from other 
predatory dinosaurs,

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very different from the T. rex.

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But the really interesting information
came from the rest of the skeleton.

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We had long spines,

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the spines forming the big sail.

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We had leg bones, we had skull bones,

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we had paddle-shaped feet, wide feet --

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again, very unusual, no other
dinosaur has feet like this --

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and we think they may have been
used to walk on soft sediment,

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or maybe for paddling in the water.

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We also looked at the fine
microstructure of the bone,

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the inside structure of Spinosaurus bones,

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and it turns out that they're
very dense and compact.

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Again, this is something we see in animals
that spend a lot of time in the water,

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it's useful for buoyancy 
control in the water.

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We C.T.-scanned all of our bones
and built a digital Spinosaurus skeleton.

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And when we looked 
at the digital skeleton,

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we realized that yes, this was
a dinosaur unlike any other.

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It's bigger than a T. rex,

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and yes, the head has "fish-eating"
written all over it,

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but really the entire skeleton has
"water-loving" written all over it --

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dense bone, paddle-like feet,
and the hind limbs are reduced in size,

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and again, this is something
we see in animals

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that spend a substantial amount 
of time in the water.

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So, as we fleshed out our Spinosaurus --

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I'm looking at muscle attachments
and wrapping our dinosaur in skin --

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we realize that we're dealing
with a river monster,

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a predatory dinosaur, bigger than T. rex,

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the ruler of this ancient river of giants,

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feeding on the many aquatic animals
I showed you earlier on.

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So that's really what makes this
an incredible discovery.

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It's a dinosaur like no other.

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And some people told me, "Wow,
this is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

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There are not many things left
to discover in the world."

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Well, I think nothing could be 
further from the truth.

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I think the Sahara's 
still full of treasures,

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and when people tell me there are
no places left to explore,

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I like to quote a famous dinosaur hunter,
Roy Chapman Andrews,

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and he said, "Always, there has been
an adventure just around the corner --

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and the world is still full of corners."

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That was true many decades ago

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when Roy Chapman Andrews
wrote these lines.

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And it is still true today.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)