Paleontologists uncover a new ‘Spinosaurus’ species by following a clue from a decades-old book into the Sahara Desert

My fixation on a small, desolate locale in the heart of the Sahara Desert started with a single line buried in a 630-page tome in French about the rocks of the central Sahara: “Dent de Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret,” which translates to “tooth of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus Depéret” – “Depéret” refers to the scientist who originally named the species.
The intrepid French geologist Hugues Faure (1928-2003) had collected one saber-shaped tooth in the early 1950s at