“When we had the opportunity to show them, of course we understood the sort of unprecedented nature of showing fossils in a gallery space,” Hyman says. “But we wanted to make sure that this also wasn't just a gimmick and a spectacle.”
In a corner of the sprawling grounds of Niamey's only museum a unique, open-air style arrangement in Niger's capital that doubles as a zoo imposing fossil replicas of long-extinct animals stand in a corrugated iron stall. On a recent late Friday afternoon, the Boubou Hama National Museum was busy with scores of excited children. They shrilled, delighted by the rubbery grunts of the hippos near the replicas, and the faint roars of the lions further up.