Name ID 615
Reader, John Africa: A Biography of the Continent
Page Number: 25
A complete skeleton of Brachiosaurus excavated in Tanzania (now standing in the Natural Science Museum of the former East Berlin) represents one of the largest land animals that ever lived. Estimates have put its weight at 80 tonnes (as much as twenty mature elephants), and with its eye level 12.6 metres above the ground it was tall enough to look over a four storey building.
Readers source is Alan Charig, 1979, A New Look at Dinosaurs, London, British Museum (Natural History)
Subsequent browsing in the Natural History Museum in various sources say that the find was near Tendaguru, near Lindi. Henning and other investigated prior to 1908, and then over four years shipped 850 crates of fossils (220,000 Kgs) back to Germany. Not until 1937 was the full skeleton put on display.
After the war, various British teams carried out some excavations, but by 1930 the site was abandoned, athough some further excavations were carried out in the 1970's.
See also
Morell, Virginia Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings
Page Number: 029
Extract Date: feb 1924
From an old family friend, C.W.Hobley, he [Louis Leakey] learned that the British Museum of Natural History was organizing a dinosaur fosil-collecting expedition to Tendagaru in Tanganyika Territory (now Tanzania). Tendaguru had been discovered in 1914 by German scientists, who had returned with a complete skeleton of Brachiosaurus, one of the largest land animals ever to have lived. Now after the British ruled Tanganyika (under a League of Nations mandate issued after the Germans lost the war), they, too, wanted a skeleton of one of these fabulous creatures. The museum had hired a dinosaur expert, William E. Cutler, but they needed someone with African experience to handle the logistics.
Louis landed the job, and on the last day of February 1924 he joined Cutler on board a steamer bound for Dar es Salaam. "My luck," Louis noted, "had certainly turned in a most unexpected manner."
