In reality there is no building dedicated to
the dinosaur fossils found in Nalut. The fossils were first discovered by
professor Masoud Khalifah Almashaekh. The
remains are housed in a special wing of the
local Red Crescent (Red Cross) building, and it is
this wing that I am here referring to as Nalut
Dinosaur Museum. The aim of this web page is
therefore to collect information and develop
an online gallery about the archaeological
finds of Nalut.
Dinosaur Fossils From Nalut
Leg-fossil remains
of
a carnivores dinosaur were discovered in a site
used for excavating construction sand,
about one kilometre (1km) north-east of Nalut.
It was estimated that the dinosaurs that lived
in the area of Nalut were nearly 16 meters tall, 6 meters
high, and weighed nearly 8000 kilograms. It was
thought that the dinosaur swallowed soft stones
to aid digestion. A petrified forest of giant trees was also discovered
in an area west of Nalut. These fossilised trees,
some of which are up to 20 meters tall, date
to the same period from which the dinosaur fossils
date - between 90 and 95 million years ago.
Crocodile And Fish Fossilised Bones
Fossilised Dinosaur Remains
In August 2005 two American
scientists from the Washington University
in St. Louis: Joshua Smith, Ph.D., assistant
professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts
&
Sciences, and David Tab Rasmussen, Ph.D., professor
of anthropology, joined a number of Libyan scientists
and experts to study the archaeological findings
in the area. This study was
the first American-Libyan scientific collaboration
of its kind. Before the findings of the group, there have only been about
five legitimate reports of dinosaurs out of Libya
since 1960.
Read
more at:
http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/6226.html
The team:
D. Tab
Rasmussen (American)
Joshua Smith
(American)
Ahmed S3eed 3asker (Libyan)
Sifaw Tshakrin (Libyan)
Khaled Bourqiq (Libyan)
Miloud Abuqaris
Umar Solayman
Mustafa Ashibani
According
to J. Smith, S. Tshakreen, S. Rasmussen, and M. Lamanna, (New dinosaur
discoveries from the Early Cretaceous of Libya,
2006, JVP 26(3) Abstracts
pp.126,
http://www.dinodata.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9248&Itemid=103):
"In August 2005 . . . Along Jabal Nafusah
we produced fossil vertebrates from 13
localities in the Aptian-Albian (~125-99 Ma)
Chicla Formation and the underlying uppermost Cabao Formation (uppermost
strata regarded as upper Neocomian, ~125 Ma)
. . . Dinosaurs are currently
represented by fragmentary remains of a ?titanosauriform
sauropod and the partial skeleton of a theropod.
The theropod, the most complete record of
a Libyan dinosaur to date, was found
at the top of the Cabao Formation near the town
of Nalut, ~40 km east of the Tunisian border. It consists of vertebrae
and appendicular elements."
The Arabic sign reads: "dinosaur bone remains, not identified (or classified) yet."
Some of the related publications exhibited at the museum.
A model of a dinosaur from Nalut (Festival).
Dinosaur Drawings Illustrating The Kind of Dinosaur Found In
Nalut.
