The Sahara Desert is probably the most famous desert in the world. However, while the Sahara may seem like a huge wasteland, there is so much incredible in this place. From giant swimming dinosaurs to lost civilizations that fought the Romans, let's bring 10 mysterious archaeological discoveries hidden under the Sahara Desert.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1, the earliest swimming dinosaur</h1>
Egyptian spinosaurs could reach 15.24 meters long and weighed up to 6.34 tons, which made Tyrannosaurus rex seem not large enough. It is one of the strangest dinosaurs ever found, living during the Cretaceous period between 95 million and 100 million years ago, with a very long oar-like tail. It is the earliest complete fossil of the aquatic dinosaur Spinosaurus found by scientists. The Moroccan paleontologists who found the remains published their study in the journal Nature, which they said was a swimming dinosaur. Researchers believe that dinosaurs would push themselves through water, wagging its tail back and forth. It has a "big sail" on its back, while the huge finned spinosaurus tail is "completely weird" and unique, with propulsion organs allowing it to move in the water.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >2, ancient cemeteries</h1>
In 2000, a team of scientists led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Selinor was searching for dinosaur remains in a place called Gobero in Niger when they stumbled upon a large human cemetery that could date back 10,000 years. This is the largest known Sahara cemetery, and in addition to the remains of about 200 people, they have found the remains of fish, crocodiles and other creatures. In human settlements, not only tools related to their daily lives have been found, but also harpoon bone ornaments and arrows, in addition to many strange tombs. The most bizarre also includes a person's head in a pot, and another resting on a turtle shell. In addition, pollen was found here, which proves that the Sahara was once an oasis.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, Taman Lasset River</h1>
The Sahara Desert is the largest hot desert in the world, where only the most tenacious wildlife can survive. But that hasn't always been the case. Before the Sahara Desert was covered by nearly 9.4 million square kilometers of sand, it was a humid tropical region full of lush vegetation and freshwater resources, full of freshwater with lush vegetation. No one knew exactly what was going on until 2015, when the satellite found images in the desert revealing evidence of the ancient river, the remnants of a river system that once flowed through a vast but now inactive river system. The river, known as the Taman Lasset River, probably flowed through the Sahara Desert 5,000 years ago and is 250 kilometers long.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >4, Libyan desert glass</h1>
For more than 3,000 years, in vast areas of Egypt's western Sahara Desert near the Libyan border, fragments of pale yellow glass, known as Libyan desert glass, have been found between moving sand dunes. This mysterious material was even used on Tutankhamun's gilded, jewel-encrusted breastplate as a central ornament. The exact source of Libyan desert glass should be pure silica, formed only at temperatures of 1600°C or higher, which is usually unlikely to occur in the natural environment. Therefore, how it was born is still a mystery. A research paper published last year asserted that a meteorite hit here about 29 million years ago, and that the melting of radiation from a large aerial explosion eventually created this unique substance.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >5, monster crocodile</h1>
Dinosaurs aren't the only animals that love the marine habitat that the Sahara Desert has to offer. In 2016, scientists found the largest evidence of a marine crocodile to date in what is now Tunisia. Their discovery appeared on a rock 120 million years ago, and this discovery was published in the journal Cretaceous Research. It is believed to be the largest marine crocodile of its time, living 120 million years ago. Because of its huge size, it is named the King Machimo crocodile, which is 91 meters long and weighs 3 tons. The head alone is the size of a human.
An analysis of its teeth and skull suggests that it has an extremely strong bite force, and there is evidence that it is an opportunistic predator that may ambush its prey, which includes large sea turtles, fish, and even land mammals. Based on the animals' vertebrae, the researchers believe they may have lived at least some of them in the open ocean and were likely to be excellent divers.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >6, Nabutapaya Stonehenge</h1>
A series of stones known as The Nabutapaya Stonehenge, located in what is now southern Egypt, marked an area of seasonal flooding thousands of years ago and formed a lake that attracted Nomadic Neolithic tribes to camp here. They set up camp at the site about 6,000 years ago and formed Nabutapaya Stonehenge with some stones, which may be the world's earliest known archaeological astronomical instruments. Some scientists believe that the placement of these stones has its own special significance and points to different constellations.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >7, once huge Lake Chad</h1>
A freshwater lake called Lake Chad once occupied about 360,000 square kilometers of the Sahara Desert in central Africa, making it the largest freshwater lake on Earth at the time. In the words of the British scientist who discovered this in 2015, the history of the giant Lake Chad suggests that it was once the largest lake in Africa, and that it was present during the humid period in North Africa, when the Sahara Desert had a lot of precipitation. But that all suddenly changed about 5,000 years ago, but only dried up about 1,000 years ago. Today's Lake Chad is only 22,000 square kilometers in the wet season, and although it is also large, it is obviously only a small area left by the giant Lake Chad in the past.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >8, Libyan civilization</h1>
The secrets of the Sahara Desert are not just ancient bodies of water. Satellite photographs released in 2011 showed more than 100 fortresses or castles of the so-called "lost" civilization that once inhabited southwestern Libya. These communities date back between 1 and 500 AD and belong to an advanced and mysterious people called the Garamantes, who ruled from about the 2nd century BC to the 7th century AD. After taking a closer look at modern satellite imagery and aerial photographs taken in the 1950s and 1960s, the researchers found walled towns, villages and farms of the Garamant. The forts are located about 1,000 kilometers south of Tripoli.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >9, Whale Valley</h1>
The Sahara Desert has historically held large amounts of water intermittently. These include the Tethys Ocean, which existed tens of millions of years ago. Then the ocean dried up and became a desert. The creatures that once lived in the Tethys Sea have been preserved because of the desert environment. Archaeologists have found the remains of 37 million years old paleontology in this arid land, which is more famous in the Valley of the Whales. Prehistoric whales up to 15.2 meters long were found here, and paleontologist Philip found that they had some degenerate hind legs. This seems to indicate that these animals evolved from land mammals.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >10, prehistoric giant lakes</h1>
In 2010, scientists found evidence that the prehistoric giant lake formed about 250,000 years ago, covering more than 108,800 square kilometers in the desert of the eastern Sahara at its peak. The researchers made this discovery by analyzing radar data from Egypt and mapped the contours of the ancient giant lake using images of wind-blown sediment, flowing water sediments and bedrock under sand.