Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D.
Her nanoparticle research has many applications
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Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D. Her nanoparticle research has many applications |
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Book, documentary chronicle dinosaur discovery quest By Tony Fitzpatrick It"s not unusual that a movie follows the publication of a popular book. But Josh Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, finds himself in an enviable and rare position. The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, a book about his remarkable research expedition -- which included the discovery of a new genus of dinosaur -- hit bookstores the week of Sept. 16 with an initial printing of 100,000. The "movie" follows at 8 p.m. Oct. 8, when cable television network A&E will show a two-hour documentary of the book"s contents. "The whole thing has been a blur of excitement and unbelievable coincidence," Smith said. Both he and his wife, Jennifer Smith, Ph.D., joined the University Sept. 1. Josh Smith is co-author of the book along with William Nothdurft, who has nearly a dozen books to his credit. Both the book and documentary chronicle an expedition that the Smiths and 12 other research-ers made to Egypt"s Bahariya Oasis in the Sahara in 2000. They were retracing the steps of noted German researcher Ernst Stromer, who, in 1911, discovered four new species of dinosaurs, including the predator Spinosaurus, similar in features to the famed Tyrannosaurus rex. Stromer returned to Munich with the fossils, maps and details of his discovery, but all was lost in 1944 when the Allies bombed out the museum where the materials were held. Josh Smith and fellow Univer-sity of Pennsylvania geology graduate student Matt Lamanna hatched a scheme to see if they could come up with a doctoral project for Lamanna, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs and dinosaur expeditions. Lamanna knew that nobody was working in the area that Stromer had found so rich earlier in the century, and the two tried to find a way to get to Egypt. Jennifer Smith, also a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, was going to Egypt on another project in January 1999 and asked her then-boyfriend Josh Smith if he"d like to hire on as a field assistant. He gladly accepted the offer on the condition that he"d be allowed some time to research Stromer"s general area. He was granted just two days to search, but in that time, came up with some dinosaur bone fragments confirming that he had found the area and showing there very likely could be more to be discovered. With little more than an idea and vague proof and through a series of fortunate happenstances, eventually Smith, through a close friend, convinced a Los Angeles film company to fund the expedition as long as Smith"s team would agree to be the subjects of their documentary. The film company, MPH Entertainment, did all the filming and production. Smith and his collaborators not only uncovered Stromer"s original site, but they also discovered an entirely new genus of dinosaur, Paralititan stromeri, the second-most massive dinosaur ever to walk the Earth. S mith and the team published their results in the June 1 issue of Science. Their story subsequently was documented in The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Scientific American and a host of other publications and in television interviews that went worldwide. "It was incredible, the amount of coverage that we got," Smith said. "We were just stunned. It went from finding a little bone in the desert, and the next thing I know I"m on CNN talking to a million people." There will be more. Smith"s publisher, Random House, has him scheduled for a national author tour that will take him to New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto in the coming months. |
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