The Dinosaur in East Africa.

In the rare dust jacket. First edition, first impression of this popular account of the remarkable Tendaguru fossil beds of what is now Tanzania. Rare in the dust jacket.

The Tendaguru site was brought to the attention of German palaeontologists in 1906, and was excavated by teams from the Berlin Natural History Museum between 1907 and 1913, a scientific and nationalistic exercise that has been considered one of the most successful digs of all time. More than 225 tons of fossils were removed by the colonial authorities and shipped to Germany, and they were found to represent an entirely new fauna that flourished between the middle Jurassic and early Cretaceous, including sauropods, stegasaurs, and ceratopsians. Tendaguru, which has similarities with the famous Morrison Formation of western North America, is now one of the best understood fossil assemblages from the ancient continent of Gondwana. Some of the skeletons are still on display in the Berlin Museum of Natural History, including the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world, that of Brachiosaurus brancai. Despite formal repatriation requests beginning in the 1980s, none of the fossils have been returned to the modern state of Tanzania. Tendaguru was excavated again by the British Museum between 1924 and 1931, and the author of the present volume, Dr. John Parkinson, was among the palaeontologists present on both those expeditions.

First edition, first impression; 8vo; frontispiece and 17 plates, folding map, contemporary ownership inscription to the front free endpaper, contents faintly toned with the occasional small spot; original black cloth, titles to spine and T-rex design to upper boar gilt, cloth a little rubbed with some small white spots and scuffs, a very good copy in the rubbed and dulled jacket with some marks and scuffs, chipping and creasing, particularly along the top edge, and a few short splits; 192pp.