2017-06

Emma and Staford, like others with albinism, The Mechanics
have little or no melanin, or pigment, in their of Melanin
skin, hair, and eyes. They are vulnerable to sun
damage that can cause cancer. Emma’s vision Human skin, hair, and eye color
is so poor he must lower his nose an inch from is controlled by several genes that
my phone to see a photo of himself. Their chal- determine the amount and type
lenges are similar to those of people born with of melanin pigment a person has.
albinism across the world—the sting of ridicule, An inherited genetic mutation can
poor vision, and sun sensitivity—but they also interfere with this process, resulting
live in a region where a belief in spirits and in little to no melanin and raising
spells is common, education is spotty, poverty the risk of severe sunburn, skin
is endemic, and albinism has been widely mis- ulcers, and skin cancer. “OCA-2”—
understood. Men accuse their wives of sex with the most common type of albinism—
white men; parents believe their newborns are is caused by a mutation that results
ghosts; nurses, as recently as a generation ago, in only small amounts of melanin.
told new mothers that venereal diseases must
have bleached their children in the womb. In INCIDENCE OF ALBINISM
the past those with albinism were often killed at Accounting for nearly half of albinism
birth, or buried alive in tribal rituals. cases worldwide, OCA-2 is most wide-
spread in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s 14
Although the world’s largest reported family of times as prevalent in Tanzania as in North
people with albinism lives in India—three gener- America and Europe. The Guna people of
ations, no exceptions—albinism is more wide- Panama have one of the highest rates.
spread in Tanzania than in any other country.
About one in 1,400 people there is born pale, and Frequency of OCA-2 Albinism
about one in 17 carries the recessive gene. Its oc-
currence varies greatly throughout the world. In *81$ 3(23/( ǖ3$1$0$Ǘ
Europe and North America the rate is only one in
20,000. On the San Blas Archipelago off the Carib- 1 in 70
bean coast of Panama, the rate among the Guna
people is a staggering one in 70. There, locals say, TANZANIANS 1 in 1,400
dark and fair Panamanians live together without
incident, the way tall and short people coexist. AFRICAN AMERICANS 1 in 10,000
PEOPLE WORLDWIDE 1 in 40,000
Emma’s secure schooling and Staford’s care-
giver are paid for by Under the Same Sun, found- -$621 75($7 1*0 67$)) 0(* 5226(9(/7
ed by wealthy Canadian businessman Peter Ash. $57 %5<$1 &+5,67,(
From his commercial real estate business based 6285&(6 0855$< %5,//,$17 81,9(56,7< 2) :$6+,1*721
in Vancouver, he and his wife contribute about ,167,787( )25 &/,1,&$/ $1' 75$16/$7,21$/ 5(6($5&+
a million dollars each year to the nonprofit’s 5$<021' %2,66< 81,9(56,7< 2) &,1&,11$7,
$1.5 million budget. Ash is almost certainly the
foremost advocate for people with albinism. He
persuaded the United Nations to name June 13
as International Albinism Awareness Day and to
appoint a UN expert, who traveled to Malawi and
Mozambique last year as attacks there soared.

Almost all the nonprofit’s money is spent from
a fenced and guarded compound in Dar es Sa-
laam. Under the Same Sun is paying to educate

78

Shielding skin NORMAL ENLARGED
from the sun SKIN BELOW

Melanin is the main pigment Melanin Epidermis
in the skin of humans and absorbs surface
all other mammals. When sunlight skin layer
sunlight hits the skin, mela- Dermis
nin covers the nuclei of skin hair lower
cells and absorbs damaging skin layer
ultraviolet rays.
SKIN WITH
PROTECTIVE PIGMENT ALBINISM
Cells with branching arms called
melanocytes create melanin Sunlight
in melanosomes, vesicles that passes
ƄRZ LQWR WKH VXUURXQGLQJ FHOOV through
to protect them. unobstructed

Melanosome
Melanocyte

RANGE OF COLOR
Human skin has two types of
melanin: brownish black eumelanin
and reddish yellow pheomelanin.
The mixture of these two variants
determines skin color.

Eumelanin Pheomelanin

Typical
melanosome

darker

ALBINISM’S Range of
PIGMENT PROBLEM skin tones

Although melanocytes in skin
with albinism produce melano-
somes, those melanosomes either
completely lack melanin or have

VLJQLƃFDQWO\ OHVV WKDQ XVXDO

lighter
Melanosome
with albinism



$W WKH .DEDQJD 3URWHFWRUDWH &HQWHU LQ QRUWKZHVWHUQ
7DQ]DQLD <RQJH .LIXQJD ƃYH VKDGHV KHU VHQVLWLYH
H\HV 0EDOX .HMD ZLWK WZR RI KHU WKUHH FKLOGUHQ OLYHV
DW WKH FHQWHU 7R SURWHFW FKLOGUHQ ZLWK DOELQLVP DIWHU
D ZDYH RI PXUGHUV LQ WKH JRYHUQPHQW VHQW PDQ\
WR IDFLOLWLHV LQWHQGHG IRU EOLQG DQG GLVDEOHG VWXGHQWV

about 320 children to become professionals, 6KDPLPD .DVVLPX
seeking to change the stereotypes about—and HLJKW OLYHV DW WKH .DEDQJD
the future for—people with albinism in sub- center with three siblings
Saharan Africa, where for centuries they’ve been ZKR DOVR KDYH DOELQLVP
seen as curses and burdens: too poor-sighted to 6RPH SHRSOH ZLWK
educate, too prone to sunburn while farming or DOELQLVP OLNH 6KDPLPD
fishing, and too strange to embrace. SURGXFH D OLWWOH PHODQLQ
([SRVXUH WR WKH VXQ
As we’re bumping over a road after meeting FDXVHV WKHP WR GHYHORS
Emma, Ash tells me, “I view these kids as mis- KDUPOHVV GDUN EORWFKHV
siles, launched into society to blow up discrim- RQ WKHLU VNLQ 7KH VXQ FDQ
ination.” Later he settles on the ground in the also cause dangerous
shade at another school, with 40 albino students lesions that might turn
from toddlers to teenagers. Big, beefy, and self- LQWR VNLQ FDQFHU LI QRW
assured, he cheers as they shout out their career WUHDWHG HDUO\
dreams—“Lawyer!” “Nurse!” “President!”—then
pronounces them “ambassadors for change.” Af- Swahili: “We can’t just go into the lake without
terward, they swarm him. He lifts the chins of the some kind of guidance or protection. Some of us
bashful ones and says, “You must look at me. If believe in God, but the ones who believe in witch
you don’t believe in yourself, the world will not doctors get more than those who believe in God!”
believe in you.” Everybody laughs and nods heartily. He con-
tinues, “We get from witch doctors something
UNDER THE SAME SUN’S STAFF of 26 Tanza- wrapped in cloth or paper.” One man shows me
nians, more than half with albinism, leads sem- with his fingers that it’s shaped like a cigar. It can
inars on understanding albinism, usually in cost as much as 100,000 Tanzanian shillings—
villages where people have been killed, attacked, about $45—and is embedded in the boat. I ask
or even kidnapped, never to be found. In those what’s in the packet. A tall, older man says sim-
remote places, a variety of advisers, witch doc- ply, “We dare not look.” I say, “I have heard that
tors, sorcerers, or diviners, called waganga in sometimes body parts of albino people are used
Swahili, are consulted for problems ranging from for these charms,” and before my translator fin-
illness to a dry cow to an aloof wife. Prescriptions ishes, all of them are frowning. One says, “Here
might include pulverized roots, herbal potions, nobody does that. They do it in the mines.”
or the blood of animals.
It’s unclear exactly how such body parts earned
People desperate for success—in work or their mystique, but academics trace their use as
politics—sometimes seek more potent solutions. commodities to the turn of this century, when
Some waganga insist that the magic they need subsistence farmers saw more opportunity but
thrives in their chalk-skinned neighbors. Albino
hair and bones, genitals and thumbs, are said to
possess distinct powers. Dried, ground, and put
into a package or scattered on the sea, bits of peo-
ple born white on a dark-skinned continent are
alleged to make a fishing net bulge, or reveal gold
in a bed of rock, or help politicians win votes.

On the stony southern shore of Lake Victoria in
Mwanza, men and boys loiter in shorts, T-shirts,
and flip-flops around their 40-foot, rough-hewn
wooden sailboats. “What do you do to improve
your luck?” I ask, and one fisherman explains in

82 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

also more risk in fishing or mining for gold. Sime- the average annual income is about $3,000.
on Mesaki, a retired sociology professor from Dar Since 2007 only 21 people have been convict-
es Salaam who studied witchcraft for decades,
tells me that in Tanzania many go to church, but ed for murdering people with albinism in just six
many more seek local wisdom. “God is far away, cases, according to Tanzanian prosecutor Be-
but the diviner is close by,” he explains. atrice Mpembo, who blames the low number on
lack of cooperation from relatives. Ash says only
Most of the time a family member is impli- about 5 percent of those arrested are convicted.
cated in the attacks. “Walking money” is a taunt No one has ever named any of the primary in-
thrown at people with albinism. The mother of a stigators of this violence—the affluent clients of
four-year-old boy who’s in a safe school after men the waganga.
on motorbikes tried to snatch him from his front
yard tells me, “I can’t even trust my relatives, be- ASH’S BOYHOOD FANTASIES never involved
cause if they want money, they’ll do anything.” Africa. All he wanted to do was rocket into space.
“You’ll never be an astronaut,” his mother told
Ash offers me an analogy: “It’s as if you had a him, “but there are thousands of other jobs you
dog in the backyard who was diseased, and your can do.” He served as a minister, then joined his
neighbor says, ‘I’ll give you one million dollars to older brother, who also has albinism, in business.
bump off that dog.’ That’s how some parents view Because he is legally blind, like most people with
these children. A whole arm could fetch $5,000 albinism, Ash employs a full-time driver, who
at a witch doctor’s, and let’s say the father gets chauffeurs him in a late-model, black BMW. His
$500 or $1,000. It’s a lot of money.” In Tanzania

THE PERILS OF PALE 83

84 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

$W WKH .DEDQJD FHQWHU 0HODV /XJH DQG VLVWHUV
=DZLD DQG 6KDPLPD .DVVLPX PXVW KROG REMHFWV
FORVH WR VHH WKHP 3HRSOH ZLWK DOELQLVP KDYH SRRU
YLVLRQ WKDW LV RIWHQ OLWWOH LPSURYHG E\ JODVVHV 7KH\
VXFFHHG LQ VFKRRO E\ VHHNLQJ IURQW URZ GHVNV DQG
FRXQWLQJ RQ FODVVPDWHV WR VKDUH QRWHV

$900 glasses are tinted against the sun, and the $W /DNH 9LHZ 6FKRRO
left side, for what he calls his “seeing eye,” is fit- 5HKHPD +DMML QLQH
ted with a lens that magnifies six times. DSSOLHV VXQVFUHHQ
WR KHU \RXQJHU VLVWHU
By 2008, when he was 43, he had accumulat- )DWXPD ƃYH EHIRUH
ed so much money that he was feeling ready to WKH\ VWHS LQWR WKH
do something with the excess. A late night spent VXQOLJKW 6XQVFUHHQ
Googling “albinos Africa” left him horrified and LV H[SHQVLYH LQ VXE
sleepless. In those wee hours he read recent re- 6DKDUDQ $IULFD EXW
ports by Vicky Ntetema, a Tanzanian who was QRQSURƃW RUJDQL]DWLRQV
the BBC’s bureau chief there. GLVWULEXWH LW IRU IUHH
0DQ\ SHRSOH ZLWK
Tipped off to attacks, including a teacher’s DOELQLVP LQ 7DQ]DQLD GLH
murder of his 18-month-old son, Ntetema posed RI VNLQ FDQFHU EHIRUH
as a businesswoman to visit two traditional heal- WXUQLQJ
ers and 10 witch doctors, whose round thatched
huts, topped with “antennae” made from sticks City’s Staten Island, arranged for Baraka, Emma,
and cowrie shells, dot the rural landscape. “Two and three other maimed Tanzanian children with
made it very clear, ‘We kill,’ and promised after I albinism to be outfitted with free prosthetics by
sent them a down payment they would give me the Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia.
body parts,” she recalls. Each part, even hair,
would cost her $2,000. Now in the lobby of a Dar es Salaam hotel,
Baraka draws pictures in my notebook, holding a
Her reports, to her surprise, angered Tanza- teddy bear I brought for him under his stub arm.
nians. Witch doctors texted death threats to her. Like Emma, Baraka has outgrown his prosthet-
Countrymen questioned her patriotism. Govern- ic. He and one sister with albinism are going to
ment officials suggested this happened in other school on Under the Same Sun’s account. He and
places, so why focus on Tanzania? For her safety, I resume our game of touching each other’s face,
the BBC sent her into hiding outside Tanzania. saying, nose, pua; eye, jicho; cheek, shavu. He
Ash found her and, by phone, listened for hours. remembers how to count to 10 in English, using
the fingers on his only hand twice.
He could not locate Tanzania on a map. He
had never traveled farther than Europe. He had He’s seen his mother a few times, but frown-
never carried his albinism as a purpose. But, he ing, he says, “My father is in jail.” I don’t ask why
says, “I had an answer to the question of what because I know: His father and a witch doctor
would be next in my life.” The next morning he are charged with assaulting him. Meanwhile
checked flights to Africa. he is happy, getting more hugs and kisses at his
school, he says, than he ever did in his village.
Ntetema now leads Under the Same Sun’s Tan-
zanian staff. She knows almost all of the spon-
sored children by name and can tell their stories.

Among the newest and sweetest is Baraka
Cosmas, a tiny boy of six. His earnest face belies
a tender spirit, even though his right hand was
sliced off a year before. “I saw the blood flying all
over the place,” he told Ntetema after his attack,
“and I called for my father, but he didn’t come.”
When Ntetema told her team about his March
2015 attack, she ended her email: “God, this is
too painful! When will it end?”

We first met in 2015, when Global Medical Re-
lief Fund, a small nonprofit based on New York

86 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

That evening Ash hosts a banquet for a doz- rare and expensive, about $25 a tube—and wide-
en of the some 40 sponsored students who have brimmed hats with flaps in back to cover the neck.
graduated from college and found jobs with help
from the organization’s Godliver Gordian. She’s In Dar es Salaam I visit the Ocean Road Can-
a sparky young woman who cajoled employers, cer Institute to meet Jeff Luande, considered the
making the case for the students despite the fears nation’s expert on skin cancers that afflict people
she heard: “They’re ghosts, white dogs, white with albinism. As recently as 1990, he found that
monkeys. They’re cursed. If you put them in your only 12 percent of people with albinism in the met-
business, it could get cursed as well.” ro area lived to 40. The biggest killer: squamous
cell carcinoma, easily treated if caught early.
I meet a bank teller, a journalist, a lab tech, and
a 23-year-old actor who starred in the 2013 indie He leads me to a ward where six men, two with
film White Shadow, about a boy being hunted for albinism, lounge on their beds in street clothes.
his body parts. Hamisi Bazili told me his mother, Saidi Iddi Magera gingerly unwraps the gauze
who also had albinism, died of skin cancer after around his head, revealing a raw, rough hole
the film came out. She was 44. in his neck, below his left ear, big enough for a
child’s fist. Blood drips from it onto his crisp khaki
FOR THOSE WITH ALBINISM in Africa, this is an pants. It’s very advanced, Luande confides to me.
all too common fate. Only recently have nonprof- Magera has languished in the bed for nine weeks,
its begun to aggressively preach sun protection, awaiting radiation from overbooked equipment.
distributing free sunscreen—which is otherwise
Across the ward Msuya Musa lies hoping for a
benefactor; he needs about $20 to get home, after

THE PERILS OF PALE 87



5HFDOLQD +HUQDQGH] DQG (UDOLQD +HUQDQGH]

VLVWHUV ZKR OLYH LQ 3DQDPDŠV 6DQ %ODV $UFKLSHODJR

EHORQJ WR WKH QDWLYH *XQD SRSXODWLRQ ZKLFK KDV DQ

DVWRXQGLQJ RQH LQ LQFLGHQFH RI DOELQLVP %HFDXVH
the condition is common and is often seen as a blessing

IURP *RG WKH\ IDFH OLWWOH RU QR GLVFULPLQDWLRQ

HOW TO HELP

7R OHDUQ ZKDW \RX FDQ GR WR KHOS SHRSOH ZLWK DOELQLVP
YLVLW 8QGHU WKH 6DPH 6XQ (underthesamesun.com)
DQG WKH *OREDO 0HGLFDO 5HOLHI )XQG (gmrfchildren.org)

yet another treatment. His cancer, three years (QMR\LQJ D OLYHO\ JDPH
old, consumed part of his left ear and turned the RI FULFNHW RXWVLGH KLV
base of his neck a mottled red. “Now,” he says, JUDQGSDUHQWVŠ KRXVH LQ
“I am trying to do fishing at night.” 'HOKL 'KDUDPUDM VL[
along with his watchful
Neither man, each in his mid-40s, is likely to DXQW 3RRMD DQG XQFOH
survive long, Luande says. They probably sought 5DP .LVKDQ ORRNV
spurious help from waganga first, and medical IRUZDUG WR GD\V RI JUHDWHU
help too late. DFFHSWDQFH DQG RSSRU
WXQLW\ IRU SHRSOH ZLWK
The children sponsored by Under the Same DOELQLVP 0LVXQGHU
Sun know and demonstrate the sunscreen drill, standing of the genetic
smoothing it on the backs of their ears and in condition has led to
between their fingers. But the sun remains their discrimination, ostracism,
daily curse. Without sunglasses, bright light DQG HYHQ YLROHQFH
stings their eyes, so they must close them for
relief. Ash’s group hands out sunglasses at every the stigma, while models with albinism are mak-
stop, and other groups test eyesight and distrib- ing a name for themselves on fashion runways
ute free spectacles, as they’re called here, to help around the world. Diandra Forrest, an African
schoolchildren read blackboards. American from the Bronx, New York, was the first
to be signed to a major agency. Confidence, she
In most of the world, people with albinism face says, “was a work in progress, after so many years
childhood taunts and schoolroom frustrations, of being teased and misunderstood.” At 28, she
but they regularly find work and love and raise a says she wouldn’t trade her ethereal beauty: “I
family. Recently, in some careers, white skin and don’t mind anymore being the albino model, be-
hair have even become an unexpected asset. cause at least now people know what albinism is.”

Consider musician Aaron Nordstrom, 35, vocal- A few people with albinism also are making
ist for the alternative metal band Gemini Syn- it to the top in Tanzania, including a couple of
drome in Los Angeles. members of parliament and Abdallah Possi, who,
in 2015, at age 36, was named a deputy minister—
“When I was in eighth grade, when I used to the first with albinism. Now an ambassador, he
dye my hair strawberry blond, I looked like a pale was also the country’s first lawyer with albinism.
Irish person. I even painted my eyebrows with a
pencil,” Nordstrom tells me, chuckling, but wip- I MEET THE FUTURE of albinism in Tanzania
ing away tears. “I spent most of my life trying to when Acquilina Sami, 28, welcomes me to her
blend in. I was angry and depressed, on medica- apartment just outside Dar es Salaam, two cinder
tions from the time I was 12 or 13.” Eight weeks
into high school, he tried to kill himself.

Playing piano and guitar with rock bands that
were “angry without apology” gave him an out-
let. He began to write his own music, including a
song called “Basement” with the opening words:
“Color-coded blasphemy, this really strange
anatomy—is this really my life?”

Applause gave him confidence. Now his hair
is in dreadlocks and his beard is hefty. “When
we play on stage, everybody wears black except
me. I wear white.” He needs no makeup to dis-
tinguish himself: “It’s God-given.”

Kenya hosted the world’s first beauty pageant
for people with albinism just last year, to help lift

90 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

block rooms with bars on the windows, a lace without notes, rarely using the blackboard.
curtain over the door, and a crucifix on the wall. “Most come in wondering,” she says. “I tell
Tall and achingly lean, with wide hazel eyes and
a high forehead, she begins her story: “My father them a little bit about me; they get the ABC’s
left when I was one week old.” He blamed her of albinism.” They grow to like her, she says.
mother for her skin and her older brother’s. “He “Teaching is my dream job, my happiness: mov-
didn’t want to see us. He said, ‘They are not hu- ing a person from one stage to another.”
man beings.’”
She believes the stigma against people like
She feels lucky he didn’t do worse. “In our her is fading, although she interacts daily with
culture, when a child is born with this, very soon strangers who stare at her, thinking thoughts
they are thrown into the lake so they would not she cannot read. Her life’s challenge, she says,
be seen. Yes,” she nods. “It’s known.” remains a simple but, in Tanzania, still a difficult

A Dutch woman who employed her mother one: “Peace of mind.” j
paid for Sami’s private schooling. She aimed to be
an engineer until she realized that meant dealing 6WHSKDQLH 6LQFODLU a frequent contributor, and her
with tiny numbers and symbols. Instead, with husband recently adopted two children with albinism
help from Under the Same Sun, she earned a de-
gree in business administration. She now teaches from China. To read about their
at the Institute of Social Work, where she roams
the classroom, engaging her students, lecturing decision and their new life, go to

ngm.com/Jun2017. This is the

second feature 6XVDQ $JHU has

ZULWWHQ IRU WKH PDJD]LQH KHU ƃUVW
was on Detroit, her hometown.

NICOLE CHAN

91

Turned to

Stone

How a Canadian mine

yielded one of the best preserved

dinosaurs ever found

Stunning Discovery

Some 110 million years ago, this armored plant-
eater lumbered through what is now western
&DQDGD XQWLO D ƄRRGHG ULYHU VZHSW LW LQWR RSHQ
VHD 7KH GLQRVDXUŠV XQGHUVHD EXULDO SUHVHUYHG
its armor in exquisite detail. Its skull still bears
tile-like plates and a gray patina of fossilized skin.

93

0XFK OLNH WRGD\ŠV

KHUELYRURXV OL]DUGV
the nodosaur’s gut
probably housed a

PRGLƃHG ODUJH LQWHVWLQH

LQ ZKLFK LW IHUPHQWHG
its food.

7KH ƃQHO\ VFDOHG
pad of the nodosaur’s
forefoot (below)
resembles the
footpads of modern
birds and big lizards.

Solving the Puzzle

,Q OLIH WKLV LPSRVLQJ KHUELYRUHŞFDOOHG D QRGR-
VDXUŞVWUHWFKHG IHHW ORQJ DQG ZHLJKHG QHDUO\
SRXQGV 5HVHDUFKHUV VXVSHFW LW LQLWLDOO\
fossilized whole, but when it was found in 2011,
only the front half, from the snout to the hips,
ZDV LQWDFW HQRXJK WR UHFRYHU 7KH VSHFLPHQ LV
WKH EHVW IRVVLO RI D QRGRVDXU HYHU IRXQG

COMPOSITE OF EIGHT IMAGES
PHOTOGRAPHED AT ROYAL TYRRELL MUSEUM OF PALAEONTOLOGY,
'580+(//(5 $/%(57$ ǘ$//Ǚ

Missing 5HFRYHUHG

3URQRXQFHG VSLQHV

RQ WKH QRGRVDXUŠV QHFN
and shoulders may

KDYH KHOSHG LW LPSUHVV

PDWHV LQWLPLGDWH ULYDOV

DQG ZDUG RƂ SUHGDWRUV

By Michael GresÛo
Photographs by Robert Clark

n the afternoon of March At first glance the reassembled gray blocks
21, 2011, a heavy-equipment operator named look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dino-
Shawn Funk was carving his way through the saur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and
earth, unaware that he would soon meet a dragon. back, and gray circles outline individual scales.
Its neck gracefully curves to the left, as if reach-
That Monday had started like any other at the ing toward some tasty plant. But this is no lifelike
Millennium Mine, a vast pit some 17 miles north sculpture. It’s an actual dinosaur, petrified from
of Fort McMurray, Alberta, operated by energy the snout to the hips.
company Suncor. Hour after hour Funk’s tower-
ing excavator gobbled its way down to sands laced The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling
with bitumen—the transmogrified remains of it becomes. Fossilized remnants of skin still cov-
marine plants and creatures that lived and died er the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal’s
more than 110 million years ago. It was the only skull. Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five dig-
ancient life he regularly saw. In 12 years of digging its splayed upward. I can count the scales on its
he had stumbled across fossilized wood and the sole. Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at
occasional petrified tree stump, but never the re- the museum, grins at my astonishment. “We don’t
mains of an animal—and certainly no dinosaurs. just have a skeleton,” he tells me later. “We have a
dinosaur as it would have been.”
But around 1:30, Funk’s bucket clipped some-
thing much harder than the surrounding rock. For paleontologists the dinosaur’s amazing
Oddly colored lumps tumbled out of the till, slid- level of fossilization—caused by its rapid un-
ing down onto the bank below. Within minutes dersea burial—is as rare as winning the lottery.
Funk and his supervisor, Mike Gratton, began Usually just the bones and teeth are preserved,
puzzling over the walnut brown rocks. Were they and only rarely do minerals replace soft tissues
strips of fossilized wood, or were they ribs? And before they rot away. There’s also no guarantee
then they turned over one of the lumps and re- that a fossil will keep its true-to-life shape. Feath-
vealed a bizarre pattern: row after row of sandy ered dinosaurs found in China, for example, were
brown disks, each ringed in gunmetal gray stone. squished flat, and North America’s “mummified”
duck-billed dinosaurs, among the most complete
“Right away, Mike was like, ‘We gotta get this ever found, look withered and sun dried.
checked out,’” Funk said in a 2011 interview. “It
was definitely nothing we had ever seen before.” Paleobiologist Jakob Vinther, an expert on an-
imal coloration from the U.K.’s University of Bris-
Nearly six years later, I’m visiting the fos- tol, has studied some of the world’s best fossils
sil prep lab at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in the for signs of the pigment melanin. But after four
windswept badlands of Alberta. The cavernous days of working on this one—delicately scraping
warehouse swells with the hum of ventilation off samples smaller than flecks of grated Parme-
and the buzz of technicians scraping rock from san—even he is astounded. The dinosaur is so
bone with needle-tipped tools resembling min- well preserved that it “might have been walking
iature jackhammers. But my focus rests on a around a couple of weeks ago,” Vinther says. “I’ve
2,500-pound mass of stone in the corner. never seen anything like this.”

A poster for the movie Night at the Museum
hangs on the wall behind Vinther. On it a dinosaur
skeleton emerges from the shadows, magically
brought back to life.

The remarkable fossil is a newfound species
(and genus) of nodosaur, a type of ankylosaur
often overshadowed by its cereal box–famous
cousins in the subgroup Ankylosauridae. Unlike
ankylosaurs, nodosaurs had no shin-splitting tail

96 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

clubs, but they too wielded thorny armor to deter “That was a really exciting discovery,” says
predators. As it lumbered across the landscape Victoria Arbour, an armored-dinosaur pale-
between 110 million and 112 million years ago, ontologist at Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum.
almost midway through the Cretaceous period, Arbour has seen the fossil at various stages of
the 18-foot-long, nearly 3,000-pound behemoth preparation, but she’s not involved in its study.
was the rhinoceros of its day, a grumpy herbivore “It represents such a different environment from
that largely kept to itself. And if something did today and such a different time, and it has great
come calling—perhaps the fearsome Acrocan- preservation.” (Arbour has begun studying a
thosaurus—the nodosaur had just the trick: two similarly well preserved ankylosaur found in
20-inch-long spikes jutting out of its shoulders Montana in 2014, much of which remains hid-
like a misplaced pair of bull’s horns. den within a 35,000-pound block of stone.)

T he western Canada that this di- The Canadian specimen literally defies words,
nosaur knew was a very different in more ways than one. As this article went to
world from the brutally cold, wind- press, museum staff were finalizing the creature’s
swept plains I encountered this past scientific description and hadn’t yet settled on a
autumn. In the nodosaur’s time, common name for it. (“Mrs. Prickley,” a reference
the area resembled today’s South Florida, with to a Canadian sketch comedy character, didn’t
warm, humid breezes wafting through conifer stick.) But already the fossil is providing new
forests and fern-filled meadows. It’s even possi- insights into the structure of nodosaurs’ armor.
ble that the nodosaur gazed out on an ocean. In Reconstructing armor usually requires educated
the early Cretaceous, rising waters carved an in- guesswork, as the bony plates, called osteoderms,
land seaway that blanketed much of what’s now scatter early in the decaying process. Not only
Alberta, its western shore lapping against eastern did the osteoderms on this nodosaur preserve in
British Columbia, where the nodosaur may have place, but so did traces of the scales in between.
lived. Today those ancient seabeds lie buried un-
der forests and rolling fields of wheat. What’s more, sheaths once made of kera-
tin—the same material that’s in human finger-
One unlucky day this landlubbing animal end- nails—still coat many of the osteoderms, letting
ed up dead in a river, possibly swept in by a flood. paleontologists see precisely how these sheaths
The belly-up carcass wended its way downriver— exaggerated the armor’s size and shape. “I’ve
kept afloat by gases that bacteria belched into its been calling this one the Rosetta stone for armor,”
body cavity—and eventually washed out into the says Donald Henderson, curator of dinosaurs at
seaway, scientists surmise. Winds blew the car- the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
cass eastward, and after a week or so afloat, the
bloated carcass burst. The body sank back-first Freeing this Rosetta stone from its rocky tomb,
onto the ocean floor, kicking up soupy mud that however, proved a herculean task.
engulfed it. Minerals infiltrated the skin and ar-
mor and cradled its back, ensuring that the dead After word of the discovery raced up the lad-
nodosaur would keep its true-to-life form as der at Suncor, the company quickly notified the
eons’ worth of rock piled atop it. Royal Tyrrell Museum. Henderson and Darren
Tanke, one of the museum’s veteran techni-
The creature’s immortality hinged on each link cians, scrambled aboard a Suncor jet and flew to
in this unlikely chain of events. If it had drifted
another few hundred feet on that ancient sea, it 3-D EXPERIENCE
would have fossilized beyond Suncor’s property Rotate, zoom, and
line, keeping it entombed. Instead Funk stumbled H[DPLQH HYHU\ GHWDLO RI
upon the oldest Albertan dinosaur ever found, this remarkable fossil
frozen in stone as if it had gazed upon Medusa. using our 3-D model at
ngm.com/June2017.

97

Shielded From Decay

Armored dinosaurs’ trademark plates usually
VFDWWHUHG HDUO\ LQ GHFD\ D IDWH WKDW GLGQŠW EHIDOO
WKLV QRGRVDXU 7KH UHPDUNDEO\ SUHVHUYHG
DUPRUŞVHHQ KHUH QHDUO\ OLIH VL]HŞZLOO GHHSHQ
VFLHQWLVWVŠ XQGHUVWDQGLQJ RI ZKDW QRGRVDXUV
ORRNHG OLNH DQG KRZ WKH\ PRYHG

%ODFNLVK ODFHZRUNV
EHORZ WUDFH LQGLYLGXDO
VFDOHV RXWOLQLQJ WKH
URZV RI ƄH[LEOH VNLQ
that alternated with the
nodosaur’s bony armor.

Dark edges (left)

RXWOLQH VKHDWKV RQFH
made of keratin that

FRDWHG PDQ\ RI WKH
osteoderms.

7HUUD FRWWD KXHG

RVWHRGHUPVŞWKH ERQ\

SODWHV FRPSRVLQJ WKH

DUPRUŞDUH RQO\ VOLJKWO\
distorted from their
original shapes.

Deinonychus

Scientists speculate that a From Burial to Discovery Ice age sands
ƄRRGHG ULYHU swept away the and gravel
QRGRVDXU ZKLFK ƄRDWHG RXW 7KH EORDWHG FDUFDVV HYHQWXDOO\ UXSWXUHG DQG VDQN WR
to sea uneaten and unscathed. WKH VHDƄRRU ZKHUH LW ZDV TXLFNO\ EXULHG E\ VHGLPHQW

Trapped in Time Dense forest
and bog
Few dinosaur fossils retain their true-to-life, three-dimensional
shape, but the process illustrated here ensured that this nodo- Seaway
saur became a rare exception. Entombed in marine sediments,
it lay in its grave for more than 110 million years, until an Marine Cretaceous Oil sand
observant miner discovered it by chance. sediments marine shale

1 Sediments enshrouded the 2 Layers of sediment accumulated
nodosaur’s body. Over time, and hardened into stone. During
minerals impregnated the dino- the ice ages, retreating glaciers
saur’s tissue, preserving its 3-D deposited more debris. In time,
form in a stony sarcophagus. vegetation stabilized the soil.

Greenland
EUROPE
Suncor Millennium
Mine, Alberta AFRICA
CANADA Relative location
of present-day
NORTH shoreline
AMERICA

UNITED
STATES

SOUTH AMERICA

Ancient Earth

1RUWK $PHULFD ZDV D YHU\ GLƂHUHQW SODFH
110 million years ago. The nodosaur was
buried in a large seaway that once penetrated
the continent’s interior, and it had probably
lived near the warm, vegetation-rich coastline.

Paleo Jackpot Recovered A pair of 20-inch-long
remains shoulder spikes likely
Weeks of patient excavation and years of prepa- impressed mates and
ration revealed a fossil that’s a treasure trove for
paleontologists, who will spend years studying intimidated rivals.
the specimen and gaining new insights.

Pattern in stone 18 feet
spotted by the miner
Fibrous Hard A ƃEURXV PHVK kept the 7KH ERWWRP RI WKH ƃYH GLJLW
Armor plate mesh sheath nodosaur’s armor in place forefoot has enlarged,
Neural spine textured pads, similar to
5 in Bone in life and in death, thanks those of birds and big lizards.
Fossilized skin
to minimal decay.
3 Oil-sands miners dug through
the nodosaur’s back half before Nodosaurs and their ancestors roamed Albertan nodosaur Dinosaur
noticing it. A keen-eyed worker the continent during the Cretaceous period. 110-112 mya extinction
then spotted unusual patterns in
the rock: the nodosaur’s armor. 252 million years ago 201 145 66 Today

TRIASSIC JURASSIC CRETACEOUS

MANUEL CANALES, MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, AND DAISY CHUNG, NGM STAFF; PATRICIA HEALY. ART: DAVIDE BONADONNA
SOURCES: CALEB MARSHALL BROWN AND DONALD HENDERSON, ROYAL TYRRELL MUSEUM OF PALAEONTOLOGY; JAKOB VINTHER; C. R. SCOTESE, PALEOMAP PROJECT

Fort McMurray. Suncor excavators and museum stabilize the fossil on the long drive to the mu-
staff chipped away at the rock in 12-hour shifts, seum. In lieu of timbers, the crew used plaster-
shrouded in dust and diesel fumes. soaked burlap rolled up like logs.

They eventually whittled it down to a 15,000- The MacGyver-like plan worked. Some 420
pound rock containing the dinosaur, ready to be miles later the team reached the Royal Tyrrell
hoisted out of the pit. But with cameras rolling, Museum’s prep lab, where the blocks were en-
disaster struck: As it was lifted, the rock shat- trusted to fossil preparator Mark Mitchell. His
tered, cleaving the dinosaur into several chunks. work on the nodosaur has required a sculptor’s
The fossil’s partially mineralized, cakelike interi- touch: For more than 7,000 hours over the past
or simply couldn’t support its own weight. five years, Mitchell has slowly exposed the fos-
sil’s skin and bone. The painstaking process is
Tanke spent the night devising a plan to save like freeing compressed talcum powder from
the fossil. The next morning Suncor personnel concrete. “You almost have to fight for every mil-
wrapped the fragments in plaster of paris, while limeter,” he says.
Tanke and Henderson scrounged for anything to
Mitchell’s fight is nearly over, but it will take
Q Society Grants Your National Geographic Society years, if not decades, to fully understand the
membership helped support this project. fossil he uncovers. Its skeleton, for example,

104 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

Last Meal?

5R\DO 7\UUHOO 0XVHXP WHFKQLFLDQ 0DUN 0LWFKHOO VORZO\ IUHHV
WKH QRGRVDXUŠV IRRW DQG VFDO\ IRRWSDG IURP WKH VXUURXQGLQJ URFN
0LWFKHOOŠV FDUHIXO ZRUN ZLOO SUHVHUYH IRU \HDUV WR FRPH WKH DQLPDOŠV
HQLJPDWLF IHDWXUHVŞLQFOXGLQJ D FOXVWHU RI SHEEOH OLNH PDVVHV OHIW
ZKRVH ORFDWLRQ VXJJHVWV WKDW WKH\ PD\ EH UHPQDQWV RI LWV ƃQDO PHDO

remains mostly obscured in skin and armor. out against a backdrop of rouge. Chemical tests
In some ways it’s almost too well preserved; of the dinosaur’s skin have hinted at the presence
reaching the dinosaur’s bones would require de- of reddish pigments, contrasting with the horns’
stroying its outer layers. CT scans funded by the markedly light coloration.
National Geographic Society have revealed little,
as the rock remains stubbornly opaque. In May the Royal Tyrrell Museum unveils the
nodosaur as the centerpiece of a new exhibit of
For Vinther the nodosaur fossil’s most revo- fossils recovered from Alberta’s industrial sites.
lutionary features may lie at its smallest scale: Now the public is marveling at what has wowed
microscopic remnants of its original coloration. scientists for the past six years: an ambassador
If he successfully reconstructs its distribution, from Canada’s distant past, found in a moon-
he could help reveal how the dinosaur navigated
its environment and used its pronounced armor. scape by a man with an excavator. j

“This armor was clearly providing protection, Science writer 0LFKDHO *UHVKNR covers space, natural
but those elaborated horns on the front of its history, and other topics for National Geographic’s
body would have been almost like a billboard,” he website. Photographer Robert Clark has shot more
says. This advertisement could have helped woo than 40 stories for the magazine. His most recent
mates or intimidate rivals—and may have stood book is Evolution: A Visual Record.

TURNED TO STONE 105

| DISPATCHES | PHILIPPINES

A State of Grief

Crime-scene investigators in Manila
recover a body and gather evidence
at an apparent drug-related execu-
tion. The victim, Angelito Luciano, 41,
was a community volunteer who

KHOSHG SROLFH ZLWK DQWLGUXJ HƂRUWV

As the Philippines wages a violent war on drugs,
death rituals have become a cathartic part of daily life.

A STATE OF GRIEF 107

BY AURORA ALMENDRAL
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADAM DEAN

A s soon as Rick Medina saw the heads had been bound in packing tape, their
body slumped over the curb on chests and necks stabbed repeatedly with an ice
the evening news last November, pick. A cardboard sign left on Ericardo’s body
he knew it was his 23-year-old son, labeled him a drug dealer. According to his fa-
Ericardo. The victim—dumped on ther, Ericardo never touched drugs; Jhoy says he
a quiet avenue in Manila, the Philippine capital— dabbled in them. Either way, his killers meted
could have been anyone. His back was to the TV out a final punishment without due process.
cameras, but a father knows.
The plight of the Medina family has been
The next morning his daughter Jhoy, 26, vis- repeated thousands of times in recent months
ited the morgue. Eight bodies were lined up on in the Philippines, where Rodrigo Duterte rode
the floor. They had all died the same way: Their a tide of populist frustration to a presidential

108 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

-DGH 9DOHQ]XHOD WDNHV FRPIRUW IURP D VWXƂHG

DQLPDO DV VKH NHHSV ZDWFK RYHU WKH FRƅQ RI $UPDQ
Rejano, 28. It is customary at Philippine wakes
to make sure the departed is never left unattended,
so someone always sits, awake, nearby.

victory in May 2016 by, among other things, meant to console the family and deepen com-
promising to kill drug dealers and stop crime. munity ties. But they also have come to serve
According to police data, in Duterte’s first six another purpose: substituting for justice at a
months at least 2,000 people were killed by time when many see the killings as committed
police and another 4,000 by unknown assail- with staggering impunity. Death rituals here
ants, perhaps vigilantes. Duterte vowed not to outnumber ceremonies for either births or mar-
stop “until the last [drug] pusher on the streets riages, says anthropologist Nestor Castro of the
is fully exterminated.” University of the Philippines Diliman.

As the body count has risen, death rituals During the seven-to-10-day wake, the body
have become an increasingly common part of the deceased is never left alone. Chicks are
of daily life in the Philippines. The rituals are placed on the coffin with food to peck at—to
symbolically prick the conscience of the killer.
A pot is broken to break the cycle of death—
to prevent more deaths from following. Personal
items are tucked into the casket for the afterlife.
When a casket leaves the home, it is spun three
times, and coins are thrown along the path of
the funeral procession to pay for travels to
the afterlife.

The family members may also await a param-
dam, a visit from the spirit of the deceased.
The appearance serves as a final message—
a chance for solace. The paramdam takes on
particular urgency when the death was sudden
or mysterious.

The night before his funeral, Ericardo’s sister
said, he visited her in a dream. “He was smil-
ing,” she said. It gave Jhoy comfort to know that
Ericardo was not angry, that his spirit wasn’t
lingering in this world, demanding vengeance.
“It was just like him,” she said. “He was always
so easygoing.”

Still there’s one more dream Jhoy craves. “I
want to dream about the night he was killed,” she
said. “I want to stab the person who stabbed him.
So I can finally defend him.”

A dream of vengeance may be the nearest
thing to justice Jhoy and others can hope for.

Few of the killers have been caught. j

A STATE OF GRIEF 109

A woman checks her phone as she sits with her dog at dusk in Barangka Municipal Cemetery (above). People
who live around the cemetery often hang out there. Before the dead are interred, mourners perform rituals to
protect the living. A girl (below) is passed over the casket of Alex Hongco—it’s believed this act will protect her

IURP EHLQJ KDXQWHG E\ WKH GHDG +RQJFR ZDV NLOOHG ZLWK ƃYH RWKHUV KH OHIW EHKLQG D ZLIH DQG VL[ FKLOGUHQ

2Q WKH HGJH RI ƃYH \HDU ROG )UDQFLV 0D³RVFDŠV FRƅQ DERYH PRXUQHUV OHIW IRRG IRU FKLFNV WR SHFN DWŞ
D FXVWRP PHDQW WR SULFN WKH FRQVFLHQFH RI WKH NLOOHU 7KH ER\ DQG KLV IDWKHU 'RPLQJR 0D³RVFD ZHUH VKRW LQ
WKHLU KRPH 7KH\ OHIW EHKLQG )UDQFLVŠV VLVWHUV DJHV QLQH DQG RQH DQG 'RPLQJRŠV ZLIH WKHQ QLQH PRQWKV
SUHJQDQW $ KHDUVH EHORZ FDUULHV +RQJFRŠV FRƅQ WR WKH FHPHWHU\ DV VRPH RI KLV UHODWLYHV ZDON EHKLQG

CARVED

Centuries of eruptions have created hidden networks
of caves beneath Hawaii’s volcanoes.

Last year’s eruption of the Kilauea volcano,
on Hawaii’s Big Island, sent rivers of lava draining
into the sea. Some of the molten rock gushed
through tubes molded during previous episodes
ZKLOH RWKHU ƄRZV IRUPHG QHZ WXQQHOV DGGLQJ
branches to the subterranean plumbing.

CJ KALE

B Y L AVA

113



Author Joshua Foer explores Kazumura, the world’s
longest mapped lava tube, which stretches more
than 40 miles and in places is the size of a subway
tunnel. Its grooved walls took shape in the wake of
an eruption approximately 600 years ago.

By Joshua Foer
Photographs by Carsten Peter

VETERAN CAVERS PETER AND ANN BOSTED
WERE CRUISING AROUND THEIR HOMETOWN
OF HAWAIIAN OCEAN VIEW, ON HAWAII’S BIG
ISLAND, A FEW YEARS AGO WHEN ANN SPOTTED
A SMALL HOLE OFF THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.

It was no more than three feet wide—just big and elastic, skinlike outer layer. Beneath this inflating
inviting enough for the couple to pull their car membrane, the lava continues to ooze, eroding
over and try to slink into. the ground beneath it and carving underground
tunnels. Now insulated from the air, the hot lava
“We had a couple hours to kill,” Peter told me, can surge unimpeded, often for many miles. As
“so we started surveying, and we found a side pas- the eruption subsides and the channels drain
sage that turned out to be a lot more mazy than their last molten contents, what’s left behind is
we expected.” Back home, Peter marked the puka, a massive, 3-D fun house of plumbing.
or cave entrance, on a digital map and planned to
return later—with the landowner’s permission— Probably no other place on Earth has as many
to see where the opening might lead. accessible lava tubes as Hawaii, and probably
no other town has proved such fertile terrain for
From outer space, the town of Hawaiian their exploration as Ocean View.
Ocean View looks like a thatched mat of asphalt
draped over the side of Mauna Loa volcano. The IN THE 1990S, the Bosteds were active mem-
102-square-mile grid of crisscrossing streets and bers of the team that mapped the 138-mile-long
vacant lots is nearly twice the size of Washington, Lechuguilla Cave, widely regarded as one of the
D.C., yet is home to fewer than 4,500 residents. world’s most beautiful. Now in their 60s and
You might think that only a pathological optimist semiretired—Peter is a particle physicist affiliated
would choose to build a house on the parched with the College of William and Mary—they are
slope of an active volcano, but over the past two among a handful of experienced cavers who have
decades, Ocean View has become an international become full-time residents of Ocean View. Ann
destination for cavers, who have come to explore has pigtails down to her waist, and Peter sports a
and map the Kipuka Kanohina, a network of lava bright Hawaiian-print shirt, a white driver’s cap,
caves that course like veins 15 to 80 feet beneath flip-flops, and a biblical-length white beard. They
the town. say they’re now doing more caving than at any
other point in their lives. They reckon that some
There are two ways to make a cave: fast and years the two of them have spent more than 200
slow. Many of the world’s most iconic caves— days underground.
Carlsbad Caverns and Lechuguilla in New Mexi-
co, Mammoth Cave in Kentucky—were carved out Peter and Ann brought me back to explore the
over millions of years, by the plodding drip and new roadside puka they’d discovered, along with
flow of acidic water through soluble limestone. another couple, Don and Barb Coons, Illinois
grain farmers and lifelong cavers who winter in
By contrast, lava caves, widely known as lava Ocean View. Don, 64, was a guide at Mammoth
tubes, are formed in a geological instant—a year Cave for 10 years and spent 18 winters on the leg-
or two, sometimes weeks—by an eruption from endary expeditions that helped expand the map of
the Earth’s crust. Chevé in Oaxaca, Mexico, the second deepest cave
in North America. He’s the president of the Cave
Most of Hawaii’s lava tubes are formed by Conservancy of Hawaii, a nonprofit trust that has
a type of syrupy flow called pahoehoe. As it
pours down the volcano, the lava at the surface
is cooled by the air and solidifies, creating an

116 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

Niihau Kauai HonMoloulolukai
Oahu

HAWAII Lanai Maui U.S.
(U.S.)
QUATOR
0 mi 100 Hawaii PACIFIC OCEAN
0 km 100

been buying up land in and around Ocean View to Kohala Waimea
preserve the tunnels that lie beneath. 5,480 ft
1,670 m
Wearing helmets, headlamps, and volleyball
pads on our elbows and knees, we slither on our Mauna Kea HAWAII
backs into the hole and army crawl for about a 13,796 ft
hundred yards through a previously mapped pas- 4,205 m Hilo
sage less than three feet tall. It has been centuries
since lava flowed through this particular cave. Kailua- Hualalai Kazumura
Kona 8,271 ft cave
Festooned with trippy Dr. Seuss–like orna- 2,521 m Puu Oo cone
ments, the lava tubes of Hawaii seem to belong Kilauea
on another planet. Delicate lavacicles hang from Mauna Loa 4,091 ft
the walls and ceilings like stalactites and take on a 13,677 ft 1,247 m
panoply of weird shapes, from spiky shark’s teeth 4,169 m
to bubbly, gooey driblet spires. Long, hollow soda
straws, squeezed out of the ceiling by gas while Hawaiian HAWAII VOLCANOES
the cave was cooling, hang in thick clusters. In Ocean View NATIONAL PARK
spots, the cave’s silvery, magnesioferrite glaze
crinkles up like peeling paint. Elsewhere a thin Kipuka /DYD ƄRZ VLQFH
layer of gypsum colors the walls a bright white, Kanohina 9ROFDQR
and mats of rock-eating bacteria excrete blue-
green splotches of microbial poop. caves 0 mi 20

Our army crawl ends at a junction where the 0 km 20
ceiling dips down to less than a foot above the
sharp, serrated floor. “This is our idea of fun,” 2I WKH %LJ ,VODQGŠV ƃYH YROFDQRHV RQO\ .LODXHD
Peter says drily, as we wriggle forward on our 0DXQD /RD DQG +XDODODL KDYH HUXSWHG VLQFH
bellies into the impossibly tight crawlway, my .LODXHDŠV 3XX 2R HUXSWLRQ KDV EHHQ
T-shirt audibly ripping on the jagged floor. The RQJRLQJ VLQFH
passage is too cramped for even our helmets to
squeeze through, so we take them off and shim- 0$77+(: : &+:$67<. 1*0 67$))
my forward in the dark. 6285&(6 86*6 +$:$,,$1 92/&$12 2%6(59$725<
1$7,21$/ 3$5. 6(59,&(
For all our scrapes, bruises, and torn cloth-
ing, our compensation this morning will be 154.4 the vertical drop—from the top of the cave, mid-
feet of fresh cave added to the map of the Kipu- way up the volcano, down to its terminus near
ka Kanohina network. That may not sound like the coast—is 3,613 feet.
much, but it’s through days like this that the map
inches toward completion at the rate of three to Unlike the Kanohina system, which consists
four miles a year. Kanohina may soon be the lon- of several parallel passages that interweave like
gest surveyed lava tube system in the world. the delta of a large river, Kazumura is mostly one
long, gaping straight shot of a tunnel—so wide
THE CAVE that the Kanohina system seems and tall (more than 60 feet) in parts that it feels
poised to supplant in the record books is on the as if it could be easily adapted for a subway train.
other side of the Big Island. It was likely created Despite Kazumura’s cavernous profile, the first
during a 15th-century eruption of a different vol- through trip didn’t take place until 1995, when it
cano, Kilauea. At more than 40 miles long, Ka- was completed in a two-day expedition.
zumura is the longest lava tube mapped to date,
and also the deepest. Though its roof is never “This is a national treasure, and yet there are
more than a few dozen yards beneath the surface, people on this island who live right on top of the
cave and don’t even know it exists,” says Harry
Shick, a landowner who operates tours through a

CARVED BY LAVA 117

A choose-your-own-adventure section of Kipuka
Kanohina splits into three tunnels, which will
narrow as cavers go deeper. Navigating lava rock
can be perilous. “The texture,” says one caver, “is
like Velcro,” capable of tearing clothing and cutting
skin. There are also dangers overhead: Chunks of

VKDUS ODYD FDQ EUHDN RƂ DQG IDOO IURP WKH FHLOLQJ



HOW A LAVA TUBE IS FORMED

A VOLCANO ERUPTS LAVA FLOWS LAVA IS INSULATED

0ROWHQ URFN DQG JDV HVFDSH IURP )DFWRUV OLNH VSHHG JDV FRQWHQW DQG YROXPH FDQ \LHOG WZR ƄRZ W\SHV WKH URXJK DQG FKXQN\ $V WKH RXWHU OD\HUV RI ODYD FRRO
GHHS EHQHDWK WKH (DUWKŠV VXUIDFH aa RU WKH VPRRWK pahoehoe. 0RVW ODYD WXEHV LQ +DZDLL DUH IRUPHG E\ SDKRHKRH ƄRZV DQG VROLGLI\ WKH\ IRUP DQ LQVXODWHG
VHQGLQJ ODYD VSHZLQJ RXW LQ HƂXVLYH WXEH WUDSSLQJ KHDW DQG DOORZLQJ WKH
DQG VRPHWLPHV H[SORVLYH HUXSWLRQV PROWHQ FRUH WR ƄRZ ORQJ GLVWDQFHV

A COVERED CHANNELS $V WKH VORZHU B INFLATED SHEETS 2Q ƄDWWHU VORSHV
PRYLQJ VLGHV RI D ODYD FKDQQHO JUDGXDOO\ SDKRHKRH ƄRZV FDQ VSUHDG E\ LQƄDW
FRRO VROLGLI\ DQG JURZ LQZDUG WKH WRS LQJ DQG SXVKLQJ IRUZDUG VKHHWV RI
RI WKH ƄRZ FDQ FUXVW RYHU PDNLQJ D URRI ODYD ZKLOH PDLQWDLQLQJ D PROWHQ FRUH

B INFLATED
SHEETS

A COVERED 7XEHV DUH RIWHQ EXLOW
CHANNELS DWRS SUHYLRXV ODYD ƄRZV
FKDQQHOV DQG WXEHVŞWKH
QHZ ƄRZ EXU\LQJ WKH ROG

)ORDWLQJ FKXQNV RI
KDUGHQHG ODYD FDQ JDWKHU
LQWR D ORJMDP ZKLFK KHOSV
IRUP D FUXVW

FORGED BY FIRE TUBES TO CAVES Second

+DZDLLŠV EDVDOWLF VKLHOG YROFDQRHV KDYH SURGXFHG VRPH RI WKH $IWHU DQ HUXSWLRQ VXEVLGHV WKH UHPDLQLQJ )ORZ OHG
ZRUOGŠV GHHSHVW DQG ORQJHVW ODYD WXEHVŞWXQQHOV FDUYHG E\ ULYHUV ODYD KDUGHQV DQG VRPH WXEHV FDQ EHFRPH ODYD OHY
RI PROWHQ URFN &DYHV HWFKHG E\ ƄRZLQJ ZDWHU FDQ WDNH PLOOLRQV RI DFFHVVLEOH FDYHV 0DQ\ KDYH ORQJ VHUYHG DV WH[WXUHG
\HDUV WR IRUP ZKLOH D YROFDQLF HUXSWLRQ FDQ JHQHUDWH PLOHV RI ODYD DQ LPSRUWDQW SDUW RI QDWLYH +DZDLLDQ FXOWXUH LQ ODYD OH
WXEHV LQ D PDWWHU RI ZHHNV RU PRQWKV 7KRXVDQGV RI WKHVH WXEHV DQG DV D VRXUFH RI ZDWHU DQG VKHOWHU
WZLVW EUDLG DQG LQWHUVHFW EHQHDWK WKH VXUIDFH RI +DZDLLŠV %LJ ,VODQG
Skylight Stalac
0$18(/ &$1$/(6 '$,6< &+81* (9( &21$17 1*0 67$)) $0$1'$ +2%%6 $57 720ÁŠ MÜ//(5
6285&(6 '21 &2216 $1' 0,&+$(/ :$51(5 &$9( &216(59$1&< 2) +$:$,, Lava-level marking

S

A CAVE TAKES SHAPE LAVA ESCAPES NEW LAND IS MADE

7KH YROXPH RI ODYD VSHHG ,I WKH ODYD YROXPH LQFUHDVHV RU GHEULV 6LQFH .LODXHDŠV RQJRLQJ 3XX 2R
RI ƄRZ DQG UDWH RI HURVLRQ EORFNV WKH WXEH ODYD FDQ SXVK XS WKURXJK HUXSWLRQ EHJDQ LQ KXQGUHGV RI
H GHWHUPLQH WKH QDVFHQW FDYHŠV RSHQ ŢVN\OLJKWVţ RU EXUVW WKURXJK FUDFNV DFUHV KDYH EHHQ DGGHG WR WKH VRXWK
GHSWK FHLOLQJ KHLJKW DQG VKDSH PDNLQJ QHZ VXUIDFH ƄRZV RU WXEHV HDVW FRDVW RI +DZDLLŠV %LJ ,VODQG

Changing
lava level

Skylight

Flow
ledge

([WUHPH KHDW FDQ PHOW $V WKH WRS RI WKH WXEH ,I ODYD ƄRZV LQWR WKH RFHDQ
WKH VROLG ODYD DW WKH FRROV FUDFNV FDQ IRUP LW FDQ FUHDWH JUDYHOO\ DQG
WXEHŠV HGJHV DQG EDVH LQ WKH FHLOLQJ FDXVLQJ XQVWDEOH VSLWV RI ODQG LQ
HQODUJLQJ WKH WXEH SRUWLRQV WR FDYH LQ GDQJHU RI FROODSVH

Original
ground

level

dary Formations Branching Caves Cave Dimensions
/DYD ƄRZV FDQ VSOLW RƂ
GJHV VWDODFWLWHV VWDODJPLWHV LQWR EUDQFKLQJ WXEHV 6RPH ODYD FDYHV FDQ EH WKH
YHO PDUNLQJV DQG VKLQ\ RU DQG IRUP YDVW FRPSOH[ VL]H RI VXEZD\ WXQQHOV ZKLOH
G ZDOOV FDQ RFFXU IURP FKDQJHV QHWZRUNV RI FDYHV RWKHUV DUH WRR VPDOO IRU D
HYHOV DQG FRROLQJ UDWHV SHUVRQ WR VTXHH]H WKURXJK
Skylight
ctites

Flow ledge

Stalagmites

Lavacicles (top), a common feature, are stretch of Kazumura that lies under his property.
squeezed out of a lava tube’s roof by gases There is, it seems, an omertà that surrounds the
under high pressure and then cooled
mid-drip. The gooey appearance of a rock Big Island’s lava tubes. Most cavers and conser-
wall (above) in Manu Nui cave was formed vationists would prefer that outsiders never learn
when the lava chemistry started to change the locations of their finds. When the Bosteds of-
and the iron contained in the lava oxidized fered to take me to a cave called Manu Nui that
into various minerals. Pristine freshwater they’ve been mapping since 2003, it was on the
pools (right) are rare in Hawaii’s lava tubes. condition that National Geographic not reveal its
They may look inviting, but explorers say precise whereabouts, except to say that it was cre-
divers can become disoriented in the ated by Hualalai, the island’s third most histori-
twisting passages or trapped by blockages cally active volcano, after Mauna Loa and Kilauea.
or rockfall and run out of air.
Manu Nui is, in many respects, the jewel of the
124 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017 island. With an average incline of 15.7 degrees, it

is one of the steepest lava tubes in Hawaii, and gone through several miles of Kazumura, reat-
its features are surreal. After entering the cave taching fallen features with superglue.
through a mist-shrouded puka on private land,
we head uphill to a chamber that could be a fan- “We don’t even fully understand these cave
tasy from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The ecosystems,” says Lyman Perry, from Hawaii’s
walls, spattered in chocolate-, peanut butter-, Division of Forestry and Wildlife, “so we don’t
cherry-, and butterscotch-colored drippings, look want people going into them. The reality is that if
so luscious and fudgelike that I’m almost tempted people find out about these places, they’re going
to lick them. The Bosteds are keen to ensure the to ruin them eventually.”
unique formations aren’t disturbed by curious
adventure seekers. A lavacicle is a fragile thing, Even more delicate than the caves’ features
and it takes only one misplaced handhold to per- are the cultural sensitivities that surround them.
manently disfigure a cave. Shick has meticulously Many native Hawaiians consider lava tubes kapu,
or sacred sites, because of their frequent use as
ancient burial grounds. In Hawaiian tradition,

CARVED BY LAVA 125

bones contain a person’s mana, or spiritual en-
ergy, and aren’t to be unnecessarily disturbed.

Keoni Alvarez, a 31-year-old activist and film-
maker who has battled developers trying to build
atop burial caves, says that whenever human re-
mains are found inside a lava tube, they render
the entire cave system, start to finish, kapu. “We
believe our caves are sacred and should not be
desecrated,” he tells me. The problem is that no
one can know whether a particular cave was used
for ancient burials until it has been explored.
Many native Hawaiians categorically refuse to
venture into lava caves out of respect for what
they might encounter inside.

But if modern Hawaiians tend to be wary of lava
tubes, their ancestors clearly used them quite a bit.
Many cave openings show evidence of prehistoric
habitation, complete with hearths and sleeping
terraces. In war, longer lava tubes were sealed and
used as “refuge caves” to hide women, children,
and elders. In some cases, stone walls were built
across tube entrances, leaving a passage just big
enough for a single person to climb through.

A local expert estimates that one in two caves
on the Big Island contains some sort of archae-
ological artifact. Especially on the dry, leeward
side of the island, freshwater is hard to come by,
and lava tubes were often the best place to find
it. Deep inside Kanohina, hundreds of yards from
entrances, one frequently comes across remains
of kukui-nut torches and rings of rocks that once
propped up gourds used to collect dripping water.

DON COONS AND PETER BOSTED are insistent and discover something new and be the only per-
about the difference between adventure and ex- son in history to see it.”
ploration. Adventure is what you do when you’re
out for a thrill. Exploration is slow, methodical, Back in the roadside puka, our prone bodies
and never for your sake alone. Every cave they ex- pinched between the ceiling and floor, Bost-
plore, including this narrow, jagged section of the ed makes a disconcerting judgment call. “This
Kipuka Kanohina that we’re crawling through, seems a bit dangerous,” he says in his dry mono-
must be meticulously surveyed and mapped us- tone. “I have to exhale in order to get through.” He
ing clinometers and laser range finders. announces that he’s turning around, leaving the
rest of us to figure out where the cave might lead.
“The deep sea, outer space, and caves: Those
are the only frontiers left,” says Coons, who does Seven and a half body lengths farther on, we
his exploring in a lightweight helmet with a small
flashlight duct-taped to the brim. “On a working-
man’s salary, you can go into an unexplored place

126 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • JUNE 2017

reach a pile of breakdown rocks so heavy they Lava from Kilauea volcano pours out of
can’t be budged from our prostrate position. The WXEHV LQWR WKH 3DFLƃF 2FHDQ LWV ƃQDO
lead ends here for now, but the cool breeze we feel destination. Much of this ever evolving
flowing over our faces can mean only one thing: landscape is a mystery: Researchers
estimate that roughly 10 percent of
There is more cave to chase on the other side. j Hawaii’s lava tubes have been mapped.

Joshua Foer ZURWH DERXW GROSKLQ LQWHOOLJHQFH IRU '28* 3(55,1(
WKH 0D\ LVVXH Carsten Peter’s SKRWRJUDSKV RI
WKH 'HPRFUDWLF 5HSXEOLF RI WKH &RQJRŠV 1\LUDJRQJR CARVED BY LAVA 127
YROFDQR DSSHDUHG LQ WKH $SULO PDJD]LQH

| PROOF | A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL

The
Side Effect

For many people in Haiti, street vendors
are the main source of medicine.
For the vendors, it’s a way to survive.

BY ARNAUD ROBERT
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAOLO WOODS AND GABRIELE GALIMBERTI

Claudine Jourdain, a 33-year-old from southern Haiti,
sells medicine on the busy streets of Port-au-Prince.
128



| PROOF | A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL

‘You see, I put the ampicillin next to the Tylenol—
a packet of pink pills, a packet of blue pills. The colors
have to look good together. If my display doesn’t
catch the eye, no one will buy anything.’

Aristil Bonord adjusts the blue plastic bucket drugs imported from the Dominican Republic.
on his right shoulder as he speaks. Inside it, a The activity is tecÙically illegal, but the laws
steeple of multicolored pills in blister packs rises
like a totem. A pair of scissors, used to divvy up are rarely enforced by the Ministry of Public
the medicine, pokes out at the top. The whole Health and Population. So the vendors sell any-
thing is held together with rubber bands. thing they can get their hands on, from abortion
pills to Viagra knockoffs. Sometimes they give
For more than 20 years Bonord has roamed bad advice to their clients. One seller told a teen-
the streets of Port-au-Prince with this tower of ager to take powerful antibiotics for his acne.
treatments, this chemical Babel. But he is not a
pharmacist. He is a vendor. “Every time I see a street vendor, it is like a
slap in the face,” mutters the ministry’s pharma-
In a little apartment in the Pacot neighborhood cy director, Flaurine Joseph. “They are like time
of the Haitian capital, merchants like Bonord are bombs, and we have almost no way to stop them.”
lined up to have their portraits taken by Paolo
Woods and Gabriele Galimberti. The two photog- To make these portraits, Woods and Galim-
raphers—working on a project about medical ac- berti used an 8 x 10 large-format view camera
cess in over two dozen countries—have long been with film and a medium-format digital camera.
fascinated by the city’s wandering druggists. A white wall served as the backdrop.

Street dispensaries, they say, are the main As the vendors waited to be photographed,
source of medicine for many Haitians. “Pharma- they eyed their neighbors’ goods, rarely speak-
cists are an endangered species,” explains Lionel ing. It was their only respite from a long day in
Étienne, a local drug importer. “Medicine is con- the brutal sun. They were glad for the break but
sidered an ordinary consumer good.” worried that they were losing clients.

The portable pharmacies may look like con- Woods and Galimberti say they want to make
temporary art installations or candy store dis- people aware that access to medicine, taken for
plays, but they can be as dangerous as Russian granted in developed countries, is a challenge
roulette. The government’s lack of oversight al- in many places. In Haiti vendors and customers
lows untrained merchants like Bonord to obtain alike have to make do with what they can.
and sell pharmaceutical products: generic med-
icines from China, expired pills, counterfeit “I chose this profession because times are hard
here,” says Bonord. “I want my children to go to

school. And everyone needs medicine.” j

130 NAT I O NA L G E O G R A P H I C • J U N E 2017

Vendors act as pharmacists
and confessors. “People
have no secrets from us,”
says Rénold Germain, 26.
“They tell us about their
infections, digestion, and
sexual matters. For each
problem we have a pill.”