The Explorers Page #8

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in a stack

and the river sediment

buried their bones

Although the sauropods are

a significant find,

Sereno is not satisfied

He sets out deeper into

the desert

in search of more bones

Go this way?

Okay, go this way.

As hard-working and

focused as he is now

it wasn't always the case

As a child, he broke school

windows with rocks

and even tried to derail

trains

The one thing that kept

him on track was bones

He's been fascinated with

them since childhood

At the new site,

the team can't contain

their excitement

There are bones everywhere

We've got an aranosaurus

We got therasaur

You've got a sauropod,

and a therapod

Five minutes

They can leave their pick

axes in the truck

Fossils are scattered around

on the surface of the desert

No one has been here

to scavenge the bones

Wow! Look at those ribs!

Beautiful!

Bone by bone

they uncover a predator

some kind of high-spined

dinosaur with a toothy jaw

Yeah, this is a piece of

aranosaurus

And then Sereno and

his team

make another stunning

discovery

Wow, this is great, Dave

That's a big ass claw!

It's a foot-long thumb claw

just laying there

on the surface

Anybody would have stopped

to pick it up

but no one was there

That's a particularly

exciting moment

sort of a chilling feeling

that reveals that there

are many

many places on the surface

of the earth

that have not been

investigated

And it's just the beginning

Bones of the animal

have been preserved

in the sand and rock

Sereno thinks

they have discovered

a new species of spinosaur

Not until they haul over

four tons of bones

back to the lab will they

know for sure

The expedition is over

but the journey of discovery

has just begun

Over the next year

in this basement laboratory

at the University

of Chicago

Sereno's team will

painstakingly reconstruct

the animal

I had a vision of something

I would like, I think

to see this animal down

low up front

as if it were almost fishing

with its hand

you know, with the claws

ready to grab something

It's just like you say,

to some extent

interacting with something

it's looking, it's ready

to go after something

We are literally

resurrecting a world

that once existed

When we set foot in Africa,

in the desert

there wasn't one skeleton

or skull that was known

well enough to reconstruct

from the whole Cretaceous

period

That's the last half of

dinosaur evolution

We now can stand among six

or seven of our recreations

Wow! That is really big

For the first time

in 100 million years

the spinosaur stands

It gives the public a sense

of a lost world

a time without humans,

something that's foreign,

strange...

a time when there were

animals that weren't like us

where we didn't influence

and control the world like

we do today

That's critical, I think

for understanding and also

preserving our future

The beast is 11 feet tall

And from the tip of its tail

to its fang-filled snout

it measures more than

I think there is a point

in an expedition when you

feel like

"We've done it!"

Unconsciously,

you realize there's

tension that's gone

a tension that drove you

to spend months organizing

and energizing a team to be

able to accomplish that

But there is a thrilling

point when you say

"We've done it again,"

and you can walk out

thinking

we have made a difference

In the face of

such discoveries

how can we say that

exploration is finished

that it has all been done?

There are places

on the planet

that we still haven't seen

There are ocean depths

we haven't been to

There are species yet

to be discovered

And there's always something

new on the horizon

We can never know everything

To be an explorer today is

to face the greatest era

of exploration ever

It's just beginning

We're just beginning

to open the doors

to see how many more

there are out there

I think the ultimate goal

really is not

to ever fall into some

false complacency

and think that we've made

whatever discoveries

there are to be made and

that we

our whole life, continue

to be this sense of

informed by this spirit of

discovery and exploration

On the cusp of

a new millennium

we can pause and look back

at what we have accomplished

Exploration has remade how

we see our planet

But true explorers will

never be satisfied

with what they see now

They will continue to rush

head-long into the future

...pushing the limits of

mind and body

whether they are diving

into the deepest oceans

uncovering artifacts

of antiquity

or saving the habitats

of endangered species

Our limits will become the

next generation's triumphs

One of these children might

walk on the surface of Mars

Another might explore and

solve the riddle of human

consciousness

The only guarantee is that

in every generation

there will be a daring few

who continue to dream

to be restless,

and who are willing to

risk it all to explore

the unknown

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