A blast from the past: the lost world of dinosaurs at Tendaguru, East Africa

Abstract

The superbly preserved dinosaurs and associated organisms from the Late Jurassic fossil Lagerstätte Tendaguru in southern Tanzania mark an exceptional success story in palaeontology. The new permanent exhibits of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, highlighting the spectacular dinosaurs (Fig. 1), are telling evidence. In more than 100 years of research, geoscientists produced a considerable amount of knowledge about the composition and diversity of the ancient fauna and flora at Tendaguru, their unique palaeobiological characteristics, and the continental to marginal marine ecosystems in which they lived. Several questions are still open to debate. These include the detailed genesis of the Lagerstätte, aspects of dinosaur palaeobiology, and their biogeographical affinities to contemporaneous assemblages from the Northern Hemisphere.The discovery of Brachiosaurus was the crowning achievement of the German Tendaguru expedition of 1909–1913. The skeleton is about 13 metres tall and 23 metres long. It is on display in the dinosaur hall of the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) in Berlin along with Dicraeosaurus, Kentrosaurus, Dysalotosaurus and Elaphrosaurus. They constitute the most significant dinosaur discoveries ever made in Africa. Photo: Antje Dittmann, MfN.image