Tendaguru

Tendaguru is a low hill in remote country inland from Lindi where, between 1909 and 1913, German expeditions excavated one of the richest Late Jurassic dinosaur deposits ever found, employing hundreds of local workers and carrying the bones to the coast on foot. The material included the giant sauropod now called Giraffatitan, mounted in Berlin as one of the tallest dinosaur skeletons on display. British expeditions dug here again in the 1920s. Little remains on the ground but the trenches and scatter.

Background

The beds around the hill are the earliest sedimentary unit in the Mandawa Basin, more than 110 metres thick, with an age reaching from the late Middle Jurassic into the Early Cretaceous. The German mining engineer Bernhard Wilhelm Sattler first came across them in 1906, and in 1914 the expedition leader Werner Janensch and Edwin Hennig defined them as the Tendaguru Beds. They are divided into six members, three of them dinosaur-bearing, laid down in shallow seas and on a coastal plain under a semi-arid climate with seasonal rain. Besides dinosaurs, the rocks have yielded early mammaliaforms, crocodyliforms, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and plants, and more than 250 tonnes of material was shipped to Germany.

Source: Wikipedia, "Tendaguru Formation"

What's there

• The excavation trenches - the cuts left by the German and British expeditions.
• The bone scatter - fragments still visible on the surface around the site.
• The Giraffatitan connection - the sauropod excavated here and mounted in Berlin.
• The remoteness - the country the bones were carried across on foot to the coast.

When to go

June to October is the dry season and the only practical window. The rains make the tracks impassable. A guide and a four-wheel drive are needed in any season.

Good to know

There is almost nothing to see: no museum, no signage, no reconstruction, just trenches and fragments in the bush. Getting there is difficult and takes a full day. Removing fossil material is illegal.

Nearby

Lindi is east, and Kilwa is north.

Key facts