A little history of the Tendaguru Expedition

[Lanthanotus]

A short introduction to the history of the wolrd famous Tendaguru expedition (~1907)

English translation of the text thanks to Google:

The Tendaguru expedition is still considered one of the most successful paleontological excavations today. The Tendaguru hill, in which countless dinosaur fossils were hidden, is located in Tanzania in eastern Africa. Between 1885 and 1918 the area belonged to the German East Africa colony and was under the rule of the German Emperor as a "protected area".

How did it come about that dinosaurs were dug there and their bones ended up in Berlin? This story can be read in detail in the book by Ina Heumann and her colleagues, which was published under the title »Dinosaur Fragments«. Initially, the colonial administration had sold licenses to various companies in order to open up the area for the German Empire. In 1904, a five-year concession was granted to the Lindi mining company, which committed itself to investing at least 10,000 marks annually in mining for minerals. The company was named after Lindi, a port town about 60 kilometers from Tendaguru.

After just a few years, however, the company was on the verge of collapse. And that has to do with one of the most violent chapters in German colonial history. In 1905 a colonial war broke out in German East Africa, the Maji Maji War. The African population had united in an uprising against the German occupiers. The colonial troops acted extremely brutally against the resistance movement. The consequences of the war were devastating. Historians assume that about a third of the population died as a result of acts of war, hunger and the deliberate destruction of crops and seeds.
225 tons of fossils are shipped to Berlin

The equipment of the Lindi mining company was destroyed in the war. In addition, the company had not made a profit since acquiring the license. Nevertheless, they continued to dig so as not to lose the concession. One day in 1907 an African worker reported to the manager that huge bones had been found. The company informed the colonial administration in the German Reich, which reacted cautiously. It was definitely only giraffe or elephant bones, was the tenor of the answer. Nevertheless, the authority sent the paleontologist Eberhard Fraas (1862–1915) to be on the safe side. He should take a look at the finds.

The way to the Tendaguru was somewhat arduous. From Lindi it took four to six days on foot to get there on unpaved roads. Fraas stayed a week because it was immediately clear to him that this was not an ordinary site, but that the remains of enormous dinosaurs lay before him. The colonial administration, however, continued to show disinterest. A state-funded expedition is out of the question.

So Wilhelm von Branca (1844–1928) got involved. He was director of the Geological-Paleontological Institute and Museum in Berlin - he organized an excavation. To raise the money, von Branca founded the Tendaguru Committee. Enough people answered his appeals for donations for an expedition to begin.
How did the fossils get to Berlin?

In the end, the excavation took four years, to an extent that has seldom been seen before in paleontological projects: up to 500 workers, most of them from the African population, uncovered the fossils. In days of marches, they carried a total of 225 tons of bones in 800 transport boxes to the port, from where they were then shipped to Berlin. Unopened boxes from the Tendaguru expedition are still stored in the Museum of Natural History.

But how was it even possible that the German researchers were allowed to transfer the fossils to Berlin? According to the legal situation at the time, the land at Tendaguru belonged to the German Empire. But only because the Germans had declared themselves the owners! In 1908 the colonial administration declared the country to be "ownerless" and annexed it as crown land. "Such crown land declarations were made in the course of the economic development of the colony and in fact represented an expropriation and expulsion of the local population," says the Berlin Museum of Natural History. The German Reich had therefore acquired the land - and the fossils it contained - anything but lawful.

The most spectacular dinosaur finds came to light in the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the United States. One of the most famous and largest skeletons was the Diplodocus carnegii discovered in Pittsburgh, named after the millionaire Andrew Carnegie. He sent casts of the Diplodocus to many museums in Europe, which is why the skeleton could be admired in Paris, Vienna, Bologna, Madrid and, since 1908, also in Berlin.
The largest assembled dinosaur skeleton in the world

But the finds at Tendaguru exceeded everything that was known until then. However, a few years passed before the first dinosaur was exhibited in Berlin. It wasn't until 1924 that the time had come: a Kentrosaurus, a pelvic dinosaur from the stegosauria group, was built in the atrium of the Museum für Naturkunde. Today's highlight of the exhibition was added in 1937: the Brachiosaurus brancai.

The taxidermists had put together the skeleton with enormous effort; they needed 450 hours of work for just one cervical vertebra. The dinosaur was named after the museum director at the time, Wilhelm von Branca. Brachiosaurus brancai is still the largest assembled dinosaur skeleton in the world at a height of 13.27 meters. It lived 150 million years ago and weighed around 50 tons. With a total length of around 26 meters, it was one of the largest land animals in the history of the earth. In 2009 it turned out that the genre was wrong. It wasn't a Brachiosaurus at all, but a Giraffatitan.
A trip to Japan saves the dinosaurs

The large dinosaur skeletons of the Tendaguru expedition began a special journey in 1984: packed in 92 transport boxes, they were shipped from the port of Hamburg to Tokyo, where they were on display for 100 days in an exhibition. For this, Giraffatitan brancai had to be dismantled and prepared with Paraloid, an age-resistant plastic. This work likely saved the skeleton. In the meantime it was so badly weathered that it would have collapsed at some point.

The colonial context from which the Tendaguru dinosaurs came faded into the background over the years. For a long time it was not included in the exhibition. For several years, however, the museum has been trying to come to terms with it. For example, researchers working with Ina Heumann reconstructed the colonial history of the skeletons over a period of three years and in 2018 brought out a comprehensive publication. Much of the events of that time were made known. In addition, there has been a memorandum of understanding with the University of Dar es Salaam since 2019, with which both institutions want to promote their cooperation. Restitution, as is currently being discussed for the Benin bronzes in the newly opened Humboldt Forum, is hardly an issue at the moment. A return has also been a long way off since 2011: Berlin has registered the Giraffatitan brancai in the register of nationally protected cultural assets. Thus, according to the Culture Protection Act, "remaining in the federal territory is in the outstanding cultural public interest".

Note d. Red .: This article is based on the research results that the historian Ina Heumann and her team from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin published in the following book in 2018: Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker, Marco Tamborini, Mareike Vennen, »Dinosaur Fragments. On the history of the Tendaguru expedition and its objects, 1906-2018 «(2018).

[Halichoeres]

This is a fascinating and sobering little bit of history, thanks for sharing! Incredible how much coerced manual labor was involved in the extraction.

[dyno77]

here is the definitive book on this expedition .....
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/african-dinosaurs-unearthed-gerhard-maier/1110993026