Paleontologist; 2014 National Geographic Emerging Explorer
Spinosaurus: Lost Giant of the Cretaceous
German/Moroccan paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim, a postdoctoral scholar in vertebrate anatomy and paleontology at the University of Chicago, scours the deserts of North Africa for clues to life in the Cretaceous period, when the area was a large river system teeming with a profusion of diverse life. In addition to unearthing many huge dinosaur bones, he has discovered fossil footprints and a new species of flying reptile with an 18-foot wingspan that lived 95 million years ago.
His upcoming paper describing the ecosystem of what is now Morocco’s Sahara Desert in the mid-Cretaceous period will be a milestone, providing the most detailed account of the diversity, paleoecology, and geologic context of fossil vertebrates from North Africa. His description is especially important, since northern Africa and the mid-Cretaceous period are underexplored and underrepresented in paleontology. “We found an entire lost world; a window on a moment of major evolutionary change,” he says.
Paleontologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Nizar Ibrahim, PhD, has been named a 2015 TED Fellow – the first paleontologist in the history of the program.