Chronicles of a nearly forgotten expedition

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, monographs, paleontology, egypt

I was digging around in the free e-book section of the Google Play Books app and happened upon a fascinating monograph (lengthy scientific article) about the first major overseas collecting expedition by the American Museum of Natural History. In 1907, with introductory letters from his friend President Theodore Roosevelt, and others, Director of Vertebrate Paleontology Henry F. Osborn sent collectors to Egypt, to an area rich in fossils known as the Fayum (or Fayyum or Fayoum) Depression, about fifty miles southwest of Cairo, near the axis of the pyramid field that begins with the "great" pyramids of Giza and proceeds SSW for 100 miles or more. Dr. Osborn accompanied the collectors for the first two weeks of their four-month stay in and near Fayum.

The chief collector was Walter Granger, who kept a diary of the trip. Notes taken from the diary was rediscovered among his effects after his death in 1941. The diary's whereabouts are unknown. The notes are detailed; when typeset, they and several of Granger's photos fill 48 pages of Notes from Diary—Fayum Trip, 1907, prepared by Vincent L. Morgan and Spencer G. Lucas for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Division of the Office of Cultural Affairs. The monograph was published in 2002. A facsimile of the handwritten Notes fills 73 pages. There are 226 endnotes by the preparators, many of which are worth reading for added context. The monograph in total has 156 pages. A facsimile of one day's handwritten record is seen here, reduced by about half. Granger's handwriting is better than average and usually readable without difficulty.

Walter Granger took this picture while the caravan was being photographed by an Egyptian photographer who made prints and sold them to caravan members. Notes mentions that two other caravans were awaiting their turns.

The party employed more than a dozen camels and their drivers and twenty others men in various capacities. The Notes record changes in personnel as fellahin came and went for various reasons. Over time the better workers were retained and others were discharged.

While camping on location they made the acquaintance of an amateur (a very dedicated amateur!) collector, Richard Markgraf, who had sold specimens to several European and Egyptian museums, was on retainer to one of them, and soon accepted a retainer for certain specimens, should he find them, for the American Museum. He fulfilled these expectations.

Dr. Osborne was particularly interested in fossils of probiscideans (elephants and similar animals). Two are pictured here along with other unique mammals of the Fayum fauna. By the letters:

A. Arsinoitherium zitteli
B. Paleomastodon
C. Moeritherium
D. "Phiomia" (the Genus was in question at the time. It is now considered authoritative.)

The expedition was slated to be on site from mid-February until mid-April. Dr. Osborn requested that they stay an extra month or more. By the time Granger and the others left, the daytime heat was dreadful (he had bought hot-weather gear in Cairo in April), and numerous toxic fleas had bitten Granger such that he had to spend two weeks in a Cairo hospital before returning to New York.

Granger and his colleague George Olsen packed and sent more than 500 specimens to the Museum in New York. Dr. Osborn published a monograph on parts of the expedition's findings. He comes across, reading between the lines, as a bit of a credit stealer, a sort of person I well know from graduate school. 

Some findings of the expedition were touted in a Supplement to the London News of March 7, 1908; the opening page is shown here. "Two Million" is an understatement. The fossil beds worked were between 30 and 40 million years old, of the Eocene and Oligocene Epochs. They supported a contention by Dr. Osborn that elephants and many other types of mammals evolved first in Africa and later made their way to Europe and the Americas.

Were it not for the discovery of the Notes, Granger's part in this expedition and many of its findings would have remained unknown. 

Many scientific monographs are dry as dust. This is very readable, due primarily to Walter Granger's fluid and expressive writing style. He was writing for himself, and it is likely that his diary, if it is found, will have an even more colloquial style. Digested into these Notes, his writing is written almost as letters to himself. They have become letters to us all.