Editors: Mareike Vennen, Holger Stoecker and Ina Heumann
Authors: Marco Tamborini, Michael Ohl, Musa Sadock, Bertram Mapunda, Halfan Magani, Marijke Vennen
The book tells the story of a research expedition and the fossils that it excavated. It begins in the early twentieth century at Tendaguru Hill, in what is now Tanzania, and continues into the present day.
The expedition was conceived in 1908, when news of some very intriguing fossilized bones reached the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. They were located in the southeastern reaches of German East Africa, a territory that Germany had claimed as a colony in the 1880s.
It was here that, according to several contemporary sources, a mining engineer literally stumbled over the partially buried remains of a gigantic creature.
Between April 1909 and January 1913, over 225 metric tons of fossil bones were extracted and shipped to Berlin. They are considered ‘trophies’.
Under the direction of Berlin-based paleontologists Werner Janensch and Edwin Hennig, and later Hans Reck, two new sites were discovered every year, until the excavation area eventually extended to over 80 kilometers.
In a chapter, written by Musa Sadock and Halfan H. Magani, Tanzanian memories of the German dig are examined and current debates are explored about who should benefit from the dinosaur remains, currently held at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, in Germany:
‘Demands for the return of the remains from Germany or for other forms of restitution—financial or otherwise—have to be seen within the context of a boom in the tourism industry in Tanzania that began in the early 2000s and the desire of the people of Tendaguru to benefit from their natural heritage.’
