Female scientists discover 80-million-year-old dinosaur in Egypt

A team of female Egyptian researchers achieved a scientific breakthrough at the Mansoura University in northern Egypt with an important discovery which sparked global interest.

The research team, headed by Dr. Hisham Salam, Director of the Excavation Center at Mansoura University, managed to discover a huge dinosaur fossil in the Dakhla Oasis in the New Valley Governorate in the Western Desert of Egypt, with a long neck and four legs aging 80 million years.

“The dinosaur is an herbivore and belong to the Cretaceous era and a group called Tyrannosaurus,” said Dr. Hisham Salam, director of the excavation center and head of the research “the group included the largest wild animals that lived on the earth now known as the Mansourasaurus shahinae or the Mansoura lizard in reference to where it was discovered. It is 10 meters long and weighs 5.5 tons.”

Salam revealed that the dinosaur lived near the shore of an ancient ocean that existed well before the Mediterranean Sea, and is among the few species of dinosaurs that lived during the last 15 million years.

The head of the research team revealed that he had been looking for this dinosaur since 2010. He has found antiquity maps and historical research indicating that dinosaurs lived in the Western Desert of Egypt millions of years ago. Finally, he found d a map of the cretaceous times of the dinosaur era.

Salam said that he used a book written by the great scientist Rushdi Said, in which he found a single line hinting at the possibility of finding dinosaurs in the Dakhla desert. The research revealed that the area lies between the Dakhla Oasis and al Judeida village. He immediately decided to deploy a research team and travel to the area.

Salam added that all the members of his research team where women. The research conditions necessitate traveling to a barren and dangerous area and staying there for at least a month. He said that he made a great effort convincing the families of his colleagues to travel and stay in that dangerous area.

He stated that these girls never left the city of Mansoura throughout their lives and this trip was a first for them, after a painstaking effort persuading their families, they agreed to let them travel and set up for 21 days in a dangerous area until the dinosaur structure was found.

Salam says that living in this dangerous area, amid extremely difficult weather conditions, was harsh. But with God's help and guidance, they succeeded in finding the skeleton and achieving this amazing scientific discovery that will reveal many secrets about these historical periods, adding that the discovered dinosaur belongs to a species found in Europe and South America.

The head of the research team said that the dinosaur resembles the African elephant; its size resembles that of other breed in the category of Tyrannosaur, including Argentinosaurus Dreadnoughtus, and Patagotitan, which lived in South America, and the African dinosaur Paralititan, some of which are over 30 meters long, which means that these areas were interconnected before the Mediterranean Sea.

Salam underlined that they found the skull of the dinosaur, the lower jaw, the neck, the back, the ribs, the shoulder, the front and the rear legs, considering that the discovery was the first evidence in the history of science that proves that there was a connection between Africa and Europe before the Mediterranean Sea.