I had crisscrossed Niger’s Sahara during 11 previous expeditions going back 32 years. The last two, in 2018 and 2019, had been for reconnaissance, and I’d spotted bone-rich pockets in some of the desert’s most remote and sandswept corners, with dinosaur skeletons jutting from the desert floor. But without the team or tools to collect them, I could only log the sites and imagine our return trip. Then a global pandemic shut down the world, and I spent two years drawing up an audacious plan—and fundraising, with little success. That is, until a benefactor, requesting anonymity, agreed to fully fund the quest. My appeal had aimed at our innate human curiosity, a chance to uncover creatures from paleontology’s last great frontier.