Morocco projects Atlas dino museum

Morocco will present a dinosaur museum project dubbed Dinoatlas to the European commission for financial support, the French daily Le Figaro said Wednesday.

In a story titled "Najat Akesbi, Morocco's Madame Dinosaur," Le Figaro said the project, planned in Tazoda, 60 km from Ouarzazate, southeast, will create jobs, enable the training of Moroccan scientists and attract more tourists to this region rich in dinosaur fossils.

Najat Akesbi, 43, will officially head the scientific section of the museum, the paper goes, giving an abstract of her paleontological studies and experience.

A herbivorous sauropod from the middle Jurassic age has been presented to the public by an international team of scientists in Morocco last year. The almost 30-foot-long, quadriped was discovered in Tazoda, by a team of scientists from Morocco, France, Switzerland and the United States.

Officially named "Tazoudasaurus Naimi," the discovered creature is key to understanding the evolutionary process of large vertebrates, had said Philippe Taquet, head of the natural history museum in Paris.

The bones found in Tazouda include a jawbone with 17 teeth, said to be one of the oldest dinosaur remains ever found Ñ aged about 180 million years.

A sauropod is a plant eater with a long neck and tail but a disproportionately small head.