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So, as it's just past midnight there's 8 days to go until Morocco! (Christmas is so meh compared..[sorry if that rhymes])
Food is bought, travel insurance and tickets for the trips out and back are sorted, all I need now is to wait for a week and a day to get onto my flight. The trip has grown recently from 4 to 6 people, with one of my mates gfs and a random spanish guy whose been before now joining 2 of my coursemates and one of our lecturers. We'll be stopping at a few sites, firstly a week in a KemKem site in hills near Garez-ba (I can't remember the spellings of any of the towns and google earth has stopped working..), with a few square miles of Cretaceous hills that nobody has really been into yet, and atop one of the hills is a laminated lagerstätte of fish (I can't remember the age off by heart). We'll also be stopping at some Ammonite mines where some fairly large (and spiny) Ammonites can be found as well as the odd bits of Plesiosaur and Mosasaur. The mines are along the north slope of a large ridge, and then for a week or so after that we'll be checking out the southern slope, which should house much more KemKem deposits, and no-one has ever searched here before. We'll also spend some time in Devonian Trilobite country, in areas where remains of the awesome Dunkleosteus have been found as well.
There'll also be some time for shopping- we're stopping at a mine of Vanadinite, Barite and Azurite, as well as the famous Trilobite workshops where we hope to pick up some beautifully prepared specimens. (I can bring back some for people for a far reduced cost of what you'd find them for on the internet! I can also try to (if we get enough) get the odd Spinosaurus tooth/Charcarodontosaurus tooth as well.)
We'll be flying out (except the lecturer, who is driving down straight after xmas to meet us at Marrakech airport, and then driving back, where we will stop at the hostel in Spain we stopped at for our mapping course back in September (and hoping to pick up some Spanish E-number filled Smarties as well!), and then in France we'll be stopping at one of the large aquariums (can't remember the name of that either!).
I'll probably be putting the photo highlights on here, as well as finds in the finds section, but most photos will be on either Facebook or Google+.
Plausible KemKem finds:
Deltadromeus, a mid-sized Ceratosaur
Spinosaurus- I'm not going to explain this beast, you should all be more than familiar with the largest carnivore ever to walk the earth
Charcarodontosaurus, A huge Charcarodontosaurid Allosaur that was larger than Tyrannosaurus (Don't let me ever catch you calling it T. rex!)
Paralititan, A 30m+ Titanosaurid (last year the group pulled out a full femur from one of these, couple of meters long)
Oncoprestus, an 8m sawfish like shark
Other Dinosaurs, a couple of Pterosaurs and Crocodillomorphs.
Apart from when travelling between stops, when we'll find a cheap hotel to rest and wash, we'll be camping in the middle of the desert, which means camping food! Plently of tins and stuff..
Once I'm back on the 26th, I'll do week-by-week blogs so not to bore everyone too much at once.
Anyway, enough of that.
As far as the quizzes go, well done to everyone who almost beat me last night
was much closer than normal, and I'll spend plenty of my time away thinking up q's for the next one.Also, for Christmas this year we have around 15 family members staying with us, and everyone here (and one for each of the families coming) has been tasked with writing a short quiz for after Christmas dinner. Naturally, I had a choice between maths and Dinosaurs as mine, and chose Dino's, so I'm hoping to keep it simple, but not so simple that anyone scores a point!
I'm probably going to ask questions like: "Besides Tyrannosaurus rex, name a species of Dinosaur." And then watch as everyone names all the Genera they know.
Also: "When did the Dinosaurs die out?" (the correct answer is never), and "When did the non-avian dinosaurs die out?" (correct answer is 66 or 65.6 ma, NOT 65ma.
Hmm.. 'The shirt'. I'm known at uni for my mad and creative custom t-shirts, but this one will beat the lot. You've all (hopefully) heard of the Peroidic Table, and also the Mesozoic Peroid. So, I decided to create a Mesozoic Periodic Table. A Periodic table with Dinosaurs instead of elements. I've done my best to stick to the letters of the actual elements, although there is no Dinosaur beginning with 'Y' whose generic or specific name includes a 'b' (Yb is Ytterbium), so I've just gone with Yunnanosaurus. Pics will come once it's finished.
So, until next time, I'll leave you with a couple of teasers, and the first correct answers will get a special mention next time!
What does Archaeogypocaprarex translate as? (It's a mix of Greek and Latin), and what could it have to do in relation to the Morocco trip?
Who or what is Stingray, and again, what does it have to do with the trip.
And finally, what is my Avatar a restoration of?, and which semi-famous English Dinosaur is he a close relative of?
The only help I can give is that he is Chinese.
Stinger, signing off.
Last edited by macrocephale on Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:50 am; edited 2 times in total
