Pronunciation: ee-jee
Meaning: Lord of the oasis
Author/s: Gorsca et al. (2023)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Baris, Egypt
Discovery Chart Position: #1098
Igai semkhu
(The forgotten lord of the oasis)Etymology
Igai is the name of the enigmatic "lord of the oasis" deity that was worshipped by inhabitants of the Dakhlaand and Kharga oases (and surrounding regions) in Egypt from roughly the Old Kingdom (c. 2700–2200 BC—"the Age of the Pyramid Builders") to the Late Period (c. 664-332 BC).The species epithet, semkhu, means "the forgotten" in Ancient Egyptian, referring to the specimen's convoluted history and the relatively recent discovery of non-marine Cretaceous vertebrates from continental Africa, particularly Egypt.
Discovery
The remains of Igai were discovered in the Quseir Formation, East of Maks El-Bahari, southeast of the town of Baris, roughly 500m east of the Darb Al Arbaein, Kharga Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt, in early November of 1977 by K. Werner Barthel and Ronald Böttcher of the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), who recovered them over the course of three days. The skeleton was sent to the TUB Sonderforschungsbereiches (SFB) in 27 plaster jackets, where it was kept in the SFB69 collection for nearly two decades. According to Barthel's field notes, the skeleton was in a much better state of preservation before excavations began, with much of it being damaged during the salvage campaign due to the use of poor quality preservatives. Further damage was caused before and during preperation at the SFB, and yet more due to insufficient storage facilities. In 1999, the specimen was transferred to the former Institut für Paläontologie (now the Institut für Geowissenschaften, Sektion Paläontologie) of the Freie Universität Berlin (FSB) where it was studied by Marc Filip Wiechmann as the focus of his Diploma thesis. In 2007, the FSB abandoned its vertebrate paleontological research program and transfered its fossil collection to the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin (MfN), but some fossils never arrived.
The holotype (Vb-621–640) is a closely associated partial skeleton including five fragmentary back vertebrae, partial left shoulder, a partial left arm, a piece of the left pubis, a partial right shin, the left calf bone, and three metatarsals. Apparently, numerous additional fragments of the same specimen were discovered, but were not described by previous authors and now their whereabouts is a mystery. Also missing is a complete left shin (Vb-634) that Brinkmann and Buffetaut mentioned way back in 1990.
Preparators
M. Kaiser and M. Schoele of the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin (conservation and remedial treatment of the specimen).
