Nature Middle East | House of Wisdom

The amazing work of a paleontologist

erik seiffert pic for blog.jpg

Being a paleontologist can be very exciting, but it is far from an easy job. Sure you are going on a journey into the past, peeking through a window to see what our world must have looked like tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago. But on the other hand, an excavation can take several years of hard work to yield any rewards.

A good example is the recent discovery Nosmips, a new primate that lived over 37 million years ago, in northern Egypt.

Erik Seiffert, who is a paleontologist and the lead researcher on the exhibition, worked with his team in the sunny deserts of the Fayum Depression in Egypt over a period of nine years just to find 12 teeth from the primate. That amounts to more than nine months of continuous field work.

“We were lucky to find even two teeth of Nosmips in each field season over the course of the nine years,” said Seiffert.

If you want to learn more about the ins and outs of the discovery of Nosmips, you can listen to the audio clips below, provided by Lisa Raffensperger, where Seiffert answers several questions about the importance and complexity of the work done.

Note: You need a Windows Media Player plugin to be able to play these files.

What does the name Nosmips aenigmaticus mean?

How could you tell that all the teeth belonged to one species?

What did Nosmips look like?

How rare a find is Nosmips?

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