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Dinosaurs to supercrocs: Niger’s bone keepers preserve its ancient fossils
Niamey, Niger – In a corner of the sprawling grounds of Niamey’s only museum – a unique, open-air style arrangement in Niger’s capital that doubles as a zoo – imposing fossil replicas of long-extinct animals stand in a corrugated iron stall.
On a recent late Friday afternoon, the Boubou Hama National Museum was busy with scores of excited children. They shrilled, delighted by the rubbery grunts of the hippos near the replicas, and the faint roars of the lions further up.
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Laughter floated over to the fossil exhibition, but the replacement bones, made of resin, and which included those of a long-necked dinosaur called a jobaria, its smaller, sail-backed cousin, and a very long crocodile, were largely left alone, save for two men who stopped by for quick selfies.
While living animals today may steal the show, Niger’s fossils represent rare evidence of the life that flourished in this part of the continent before humans. Original bones are stored in a room on the complex to avoid damage and theft, or are housed in museums abroad.
Much of the Sahara, including a vast swath of northern Niger, which lies within the desert, is replete with dinosaur and animal remains like these, waiting to be discovered by scientists who aim to paint a picture of what the world used to look like.
“More than a hundred million years ago, can you imagine that?” asks the museum’s director-general, Abdouramane Gabidan, in a wondrous tone, as he looks at the exhibition through the iron railings protecting it.
It’s hard to imagine, he says, that present-day arid Niger was once lush forests and huge water bodies in which vanished animals and, later, civilisations thrived.
Dinosaurs, for one, lived about 252 to 66 million years ago, during a period scientists refer to as the Mesozoic era. Climatic changes, however, after a huge asteroid crashed into Earth, caused a mass extinction event that wiped the creatures out, scientists believe. After dinosaurs, early hunter-gatherer humans co-existed with wildlife in the once-green Sahara.
“People don’t believe it when you say we once had water here,” Gabidan adds. “That’s why it’s so important for our people to see this and be educated on this history.”
Yet, for all the glorious treasures buried in its shifting sands, Niger has been unable to transform its heritage into wealth and cement itself as a global tourist destination for fossil buffs.
Persistent poverty, despite abundant gold and uranium deposits, means successive governments have more pressing priorities than investing in archaeology. Instead, Niger has become a cultural trafficking zone, with ancient bones and artefacts smuggled out to the West and sold for exorbitant prices on black markets.
In the latest case of alleged cultural theft, a rare meteorite originating from the northern Agadez region sold for $4.3m at an auction held by New York’s Sotheby’s in July. Meteorites are pieces of stone that fall to the Earth from outer space.
The military government in Niamey, however, says the stone was likely trafficked, and is now investigating how it left the country.
Hidden histories in the sands
After millions of years spent buried beneath the earth, fresh fossils look different from what museum-goers gawk at when they are finally displayed. A huge amount of work goes into carefully packaging, transporting, cleaning, and then assembling them. It often requires a large team of scientists and local guides. Sophisticated machines and temperature-controlled storage facilities to keep the delicate fossils from crumbling are also essential. Careful preparation, with special glues and plaster jackets, for example, enables fossils to withstand movement and being displayed. High-quality replicas are sometimes exhibited when the bones are too fragile.
Much of the necessary infrastructure is lacking in Niger, and the country only has a few archaeologists. It’s partly why replicas are displayed, along with security considerations. Expeditions there have often been led by foreign experts, particularly those from France who embedded with the French army during colonial rule between the 1800s and 1960. Late geologist Hugues Faure, for example, is credited with discovering the first deposits of fossils while prospecting for minerals. Palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, meanwhile, found and identified species like the ouranosaurus, a herbivorous dinosaur that resembles an inflated, hump-backed lizard.
Oumarou Amadou Ide, Niger’s leading archaeologist and research director at the Institute of Human Research (IRSH) in Niamey, blames the slow development of local expertise on education – or the lack of it.
It was only in 1974 that Niamey’s Abdou Moumouni University, the oldest public university in Niger, was founded, decades after its counterparts in the region. Archaeology was introduced two years later, but there’s still no palaeontology programme – the branch of geology that focuses specifically on fossils.
Ide, who holds a doctorate in archaeology from Paris’s Sorbonne University, has led excavations of dinosaur fossils and near-intact burial and ritual sites from early civilisations like the Bura-Asinda culture that existed between the 3rd and 13th centuries in western Niger. The Bura site has been so intensely looted of its treasures since its excavation in 1975 that it’s now on a UNESCO endangered sites list.
“Niger is haemorrhaging its national culture,” the professor says.
He faults the authorities’ inability to clamp down on smuggling through Niamey’s Diori Hamani International Airport and establish a commission devoted to safeguarding heritage.
American scientist Paul Sereno, a professor of palaeontology and archaeology at the University of Chicago and head of the university’s Fossil Lab, concurs that the local archaeology framework could be stronger.
Sereno began digging in the country’s north in 1997, working with Nigerien experts like Ide. He has since returned on several more expeditions during which he has uncovered about nine new species of dinosaurs. One of them is the jobaria, the tall herbivore whose replica is caged in the museum hall, and which takes its name from a mythical spirit in local Tuareg folklore. Sereno is also credited with discovering hundreds of human burials, including the skeletons of a mother curled up with two children.
Speaking to Al Jazeera over a video call, Sereno recounts his latest expedition in 2022, which he says was his most ambitious. A caravan of nearly a hundred people – scientists, his students from Chicago, local guides, and armed Nigerien soldiers with vehicle-mounted machineguns – drove from Niamey deep into the hyperarid Tenere, a stretch of the Sahara in northern Niger. In those parts, archaeologists need armed protection against bandit groups. Some parts of northern Niger are also overrun by armed groups, which operate in border areas with neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.
“It was a small army,” Sereno laughs. “That was a bit of overkill, but there’s no roads, there’s no airplanes. You can be in the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden, you’re going to find somebody. That’s what the desert is like. It’s a wonderful place, but at the same time, you have to bring your security.”
It took the team three weeks of round-the-clock work under the sweltering sun to recover 55 tonnes of fossils. Sereno usually has to ship most of the fossils to Chicago for preservation, but a July 2023 coup and the subsequent government change in Niamey have stalled the latest cargo, meaning the bones are still sitting in air-tight containers waiting to be sent.
Even as Sereno is working to transport the latest fossils to his lab, he’s also planning to bring them, and others he earlier retrieved, back in grand style. The scientist said he is collaborating with local authorities in Niamey and Agadez to build two world-class museums where he plans to display all the fossils he has gathered over the years. Sereno also plans to build educational facilities to train students who can help preserve the bones.
“You need to understand what I have taken at the behest and kindness and graciousness of Niger,” Sereno says. “It’s more fossil material than has ever been taken off the entire continent of Africa. I’ve taken a hundred ancient humans. Of course, they’re all going to go back, but it’s an extraordinary relationship.”
The new school of Nigerien experts
As a cultural heritage professor at the Niamey University, museum director Gabidan is often stunned at how little interest some of his students have in the practical aspects of working in museums. Many times, he says, he has to coax them to join him at the Niamey museum so they can get the experience they need.
A few students have, on taking his advice, become inseparable from the complex, Gabidan says. They form part of a growing crop of young people interested in working more closely on fossils.
In the central part of the Niamey University campus, Rachidatou Hassane, one of Gabidan’s best students, sits under a shade of trees, chatting with classmates. Hassane first landed an internship at the museum-zoo about three years ago, with no particular field of interest in mind.
Somehow, she says, she’d been attracted to the dinosaurs, and would often find herself going back to them. As a student, her work involved cleaning the specimens kept safely away in store rooms, but vulnerable to termites. She was also responsible for cleaning the resin replicas mounted for display.
“My first encounter left me just speechless,” the 28-year-old says. The original bones moved her because they’d managed to survive for so long, she adds. “I was impressed to see how pristine these bones could remain with good conservation treatment.” Each one, Hassane says, seemed to her like a puzzle to decipher, a piece that could reveal decades and centuries of lost histories.
It was about the same time that an international team, led by Sereno, the Chicago professor, was in town to dig up new fossils up north. Rachidatou got to work with the team, assisting with the brushing and careful packaging required for preserving and moving the ancient bones. Her obvious interest caught the Chicago team’s attention. Barely a year later, Sereno’s nonprofit organisation – Niger Heritage – was making arrangements for Rachidatou to travel to the United States for training at his lab.
“It was a whole lot,” laughs Rachidatou now, having just returned to Niamey from her second US trip. She has also had to take English classes to brush up on her grammar, since French is Niger’s national language. If she can get the language skills down, Hassane is set to receive a scholarship for training as a museum conservator. That, though, has been a struggle, she says.
“I stayed with family when I was in the US, and we all spoke French and Hausa, and that did not help at all,” Hassane complains now with a small smile.
But if all goes well, she could soon become Niger’s first female museologist, something she says is now one of her life’s goals.
More students like Hassane will also likely travel to the US for study in the coming years, all part of Sereno’s bid to build local expertise as he prepares to return tonnes of fossils to Niamey.
Niger’s fossils can’t do without some foreign expertise, says Gabidan back at the museum complex as the sun was starting to set and the crowd began to thin out.
The hope, however, is that there will come a time when Niger’s own experts will be so well trained that they will have better influence over how their country’s heritage is preserved.
UN warns online scam centres hitting Southeast Asia moving to East Timor
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned that East Timor has become the latest hotspot for scam centre operations plaguing Southeast Asia and beyond.
The UN issued an official warning on Thursday that transnational organised crime networks have infiltrated East Timor’s Special Administrative Region of Oecusse Ambeno through foreign investment schemes.
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Oecusse is an enclave of East Timor that lies entirely within Indonesian territory and is bordered by the Savu Sea.
The government established a digital free trade zone there in December 2024, but a law enforcement raid in August points to emerging scam centre activity, according to the UNODC.
“Analysis links these operations to entities associated with convicted cybercriminals, offshore gambling operators, and triad-linked networks,” the UNODC said in a statement on Thursday.
The raid on an Oecusse hotel produced SIM cards and Starlink satellite devices that match a pattern of activity found in scam centres across Southeast Asia, the UNODC said.
They also found links to China’s 14K Triad criminal group – synonymous with online scam activity in Southeast Asia – and scam compounds in Cambodia, the UNODC said.
Criminal groups typically take advantage of “special economic zones” that are designed to lure foreign investment by setting up criminal enterprises through shell companies.
These enterprises earn billions through varying schemes like illegal offshore gambling, online romance scams, or long-term investment fraud.
They also engage in human trafficking, luring workers from around the world with the promise of employment, but instead hold workers captive and force them to carry out criminal activity.
The Associated Press news agency reported that 30 workers from Indonesia, Malaysia and China were arrested at the scene in Oecusse.
The UNODC said it is still unknown whether workers were victims of trafficking or complicit in criminal activity, although several individuals had university-level qualifications in information technology.
Some individuals also appeared to have taken advantage of “citizenship by investment” schemes and held multiple passports, which the UNODC said could be used to evade law enforcement.
Increased media attention and law enforcement at scam centre hotspots have pushed criminal groups to find new venues like East Timor, the UNODC said.
“Criminal groups are exploiting shell companies, professional services, and multiple passports to evade detection, while embedding illicit operations within legitimate investment frameworks.
NATO states on alert as Russia and Belarus launch Zapad military drills
Russia and Belarus have begun large-scale military exercises, raising alarm across NATO’s eastern flank just days after Warsaw accused Moscow of sending attack drones across Polish airspace, a major escalation that sent shivers through Europe.
The Zapad 2025 manoeuvres, which run from Friday until Tuesday, are taking place as Russian forces continue their slow advance in Ukraine and intensify air attacks on Ukrainian cities. The Kremlin insists the drills were planned well before the drone incident.
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“The objectives of the drills are to improve the skills of commanders and staffs, the level of cooperation and field training of regional and coalition groupings of troops,” Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Telegram.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed the exercises, including those near the Polish border, “are not aimed against any other country”.
But tensions are running high. Poland shut its last open border crossings with Belarus overnight, with state media in Minsk showing guards laying barbed wire along the frontier.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the coming period as “critical days”, warning that his country was closer to “open conflict” than at any time since World War II.
“This decision to close the border … is a response to very specific aggressive military exercises against Poland that are starting in Belarus,” Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said. “We are doing this for the safety of our citizens. Russia has been behaving aggressively towards Poland in recent days and for many years … towards the entire civilised world.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha welcomed his Polish counterpart Radosław Sikorski in Kyiv before talks on shared security on Friday.
“Against the backdrop of Russia’s escalation of terror against Ukraine and provocations against Poland, we stand firmly together,” Sybiha wrote on X.
Baltic states step up security
Neighbouring Lithuania and Latvia, also NATO members, have stepped up security and announced partial airspace closures. Belarus says the drills will take place near Borisov, east of Minsk.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Moscow’s intentions went beyond its war in Ukraine. “The meaning of such actions by Russia is definitely not defensive and is directed precisely against not only Ukraine,” he said.
Zapad exercises are normally held every four years. The last, in 2021, mobilised some 200,000 Russian troops shortly before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This year’s version is expected to be smaller, as much of Russia’s military remains committed to the battlefield. Belarus initially announced 13,000 troops would join, later halving that figure.
Polish officials believe the drills may simulate an attack on the Suwalki corridor – the narrow stretch of NATO territory linking Poland and Lithuania between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. Military planners see the corridor as one of the alliance’s most vulnerable points.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko dismissed those concerns as “utter nonsense”, while officials in Minsk earlier claimed the exercises were shifted away from NATO borders “to reduce tensions”.
In the meantime, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France will summon the Russian ambassador on Friday over this week’s drone incursion into Poland’s airspace, which he told France Inter radio was “not an accident”.
Manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s shooter: What we know on day two
More than 30 hours after a fatal shooting that has shaken the United States, the federal manhunt for US conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killer is intensifying.
Kirk, the 31-year-old author and podcast host who helped to revitalise the conservative youth vote and return US President Donald Trump to the White House, died shortly after being rushed to hospital on Wednesday with a gunshot wound to his neck.
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On Thursday, authorities released photographs and video footage showing a “person of interest” racing across a university rooftop from which the fatal shot is believed to have been fired. The suspect has not yet been identified.
Here is what we know about the latest in the investigation and Kirk’s killing:
What do we know about where the killer is now?
The suspect, who fatally wounded Kirk with a single gunshot while he was speaking to a crowd of more than 3,000 people at an event at Utah Valley University (UVU) on Wednesday, has still not been identified and remains at large. Authorities have also not speculated about any motive behind the shooting.
Police and federal investigators have asked the public to help identify the suspect. Video footage and images of the man have been circulated.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox said investigators had completed more than 200 interviews and asked the public to keep sending photos and videos to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He added that investigators had received about 7,000 tips from the general public.
“We need as much help as we can possibly get,” he told a news conference on Thursday night, alongside FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino. “We cannot do our job without the public’s help right now.”
Authorities also said they found a palm print on the rooftop, a shoe impression and a hunting rifle in nearby woods where it is believed that the attacker fled.
What details have been released about the suspect?
Utah’s Department of Public Safety released several photographs of a white man wearing Converse trainers, jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a US flag and eagle on it, and a black baseball cap with a triangle.
Surveillance footage released at the news conference shows the man fleeing across a university rooftop about 120 metres (400ft) from where Kirk was speaking, before dropping down to the ground and running along the edge of the campus car park, across the road and into nearby woods, leaving behind palm and shoe prints which are now being analysed.
What do we know about the weapon used to kill Kirk?
Investigators said they had recovered a bolt-action rifle in the nearby woodland, which they believe to have been used in the shooting.
FBI special agent Robert Bohls described the weapon as “a high-powered, bolt-action rifle”. According to US media outlets citing sources, it is an imported Mauser .30-06 bolt-action rifle.
Unlike semi-automatic guns, bolt-action rifles have a slower rate of fire but are valued for their precision. Bohls said the weapon is currently undergoing analysis at an FBI laboratory for possible evidence.
The rifle and three unfired rounds of ammunition inside it were reported to be engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology, the Wall Street Journal said on Thursday, quoting a person familiar with the investigation and an internal law enforcement bulletin.
What else are investigators doing to find the shooter?
On Thursday, the FBI announced a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person, or people, responsible for the fatal shooting of Kirk.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,296
Here is how things stand on Friday, September 12:
Fighting
- Anti-aircraft units downed seven Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow early on Friday, according to the Russian capital’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
- Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Sosnivka in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
- A “massive” Ukrainian drone attack forced authorities in Russia’s Belgorod region to order children to stay at home while closing its schools and shopping centres, the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
- The Moscow-installed administration of the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station accused Ukraine of attacking a training centre at the plant with drones.
Regional security
- The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting to address Russia’s violation of Polish airspace earlier this week, Poland’s Foreign Ministry said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed for a tougher response to the suspected Russian drone incursion into Poland from Kyiv’s allies, saying the move by Moscow was likely aimed at slowing supplies of air defences to Ukraine before winter.
- Polish President Karol Nawrocki claimed the Russian drone incursion was an attempt to test Poland’s and NATO’s capability to react militarily.
- The Russian drone incursion was a “kind of a prelude” to Russia’s upcoming “Zapad” military exercises in Belarus, Poland’s National Security Bureau chief said.
- Russia will not make any further comments on the shooting down by Poland of what Warsaw said were Russian drones in its airspace, the Kremlin said.
- Polish military representatives plan to visit Ukraine for training on shooting down drones, a source familiar with the matter said.
- France will deploy three Rafale fighter jets to help Poland protect its airspace after this week’s drone incursions, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday on X.
- NATO’s allied air command will provide Lithuania with better early warnings of aerial launches against Ukraine that could cross into Lithuania, NATO’s top military commander Alexus Grynkewich said.
- Germany will strengthen its commitment to NATO’s eastern border, including expanding “air policing over Poland” in response to the incursion of Russian drones, a government spokesperson said.
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasised the need for Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service to heighten its operational levels in the wake of increased threats of hybrid attacks by Russia.
Military aid
- German arms giant Rheinmetall plans to manufacture artillery shells for Ukrainian forces at a future production plant in Ukraine, Kyiv’s defence minister said.
- Sweden’s Defence Ministry announced plans for 70 billion Swedish krona ($7.5bn) in military support for Ukraine over the next two years.
Politics and diplomacy
- President Zelenskyy said he had discussed joint weapons production with Washington and imposing further sanctions on Russia during talks with US envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv on Thursday.
- A representative of United States President Donald Trump told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that the US wanted to reopen its embassy in Minsk and normalise ties between the two countries, after Washington closed the embassy in 2022, the State-run Belta news agency reported.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has still not decided on attending the APEC summit in South Korea next month, the Kremlin said.
Sanctions
- Several European Union members including the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Spain summoned their respective Russian ambassadors and charge d’affaires to express official condemnation of Russia violating Polish airspace earlier this week.
- A timeline for the imposition of the EU’s 19th package of sanctions against Russia is still undetermined, after an EU delegation returned from Washington, according to a European Commission spokesperson.
- The US will pressure G7 countries to impose higher tariffs on India and China for buying Russian oil, the Financial Times reported, as the US looks to ramp up sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.