Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
THE former headmaster of Awali School has told for the first time of how he discovered the bones of a dinosaur ... and then covered them up again and kept quiet about the find for 16 years.
John Clingly, now 89, was at Awali School for 14 years from 1961 until 1975 and headmaster from 1972 onwards until he retired.
He and wife Margorie retired back to the UK but their travel adventures did not stop there.
With son Anthony living in the United States, the couple often visited him and in 1993 father and son set out for a camping trip to Big Bend National Park, Texas, an area well known for its dinosaur remains and prehistoric sites.
The pair discovered many campsites but decided to take the road less travelled and head to one of the primitive campsites.
"We found the idea attractive and began the 26-mile journey to McKinney Springs, vaguely described and believed to be identified only by a stony outcrop with the name painted on it."
They arrived to lightning and distant thunder but the next morning, parking their Land Cruiser close to the edge of a ridge they started out across the rough, uneven landscape.
Mr Clingly said: "Scrambling down, or up, an unimaginable variety of terrain whose surface consists of uneven fragmented rock, often covered with an assortment of plants, all of them barbed and thorned, made our jeans barely adequate to protect us."
The travellers encountered countless outcrops of broken hills, layers of sedimentary rock from black or purple ash, fragmented clay and brittle sandstone. And it was when they stopped to admire the surrounding vista that the remarkable discovery came.
Mr Clingly said: "Eventually we paused to examine a series of thin tiles of limestoneslates.
"I was suddenly distracted by focussing my gaze on a large block of dark red sandstone in which was embedded a large fossilised bone at least four inches in diameter and about a foot long.
"A closer look showed not one but three clearly striated (scratched) bones lay embedded in the rock, the latter was too large and heavy to move."
Anthony then spotted a fossilised knuckle bone near the roots of a plant. Mr Clingly said: "We could scarcely believe that perhaps we had fallen upon the remains, undoubtedly prehistoric, of a very large creature.
"The sand at the base of the mound could easily be shifted and with a sweep of the hand, in less time than it takes to tell, we uncovered another very large, fossilised and striated rock that was wholly fossilised.
"It was 22 inches wide and 20 inches long, to where it had clearly broken from a larger fragment. It required our concerted efforts to turn the stone over so that we could see the thickness at the widest point was nearly eight inches.
"That it was likely to be part of an enormous thigh bone, as I imagined, was confirmed when a few minutes later an almost identical bone was uncovered only three feet away, they formed an almost exact pair."
The father and son sat down on the slope to decide what to do about their 'million-to-one discovery'. They decided to leave the site as it was for a day or two and, after taking pictures, they continued on their trek returning a few days later to mark the location of the find with three small cairns of stones before recovering the bones and returning to civilisation.
Mr Clingly said: "We're not glory hunters and had no wish to make the find official. I'd had my fill of official archeologists.
"The dinosaurs had a pretty rough time of it, so I just wanted to leave him in peace but perhaps we will go back one day and I'm sure we would be able to find the bones again without too much trouble."
