The fossil, destroyed in an air raid 80 years ago, had faded from memory until a paleontologist found archival images.

Less than a decade later, World War II swallowed Germany. The fossils were housed in the Old Academy building of the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology when the campus was hit by air raids on July 21, 1944, completely destroying the wing containing fossils from Egypt, researchers said.

In the summer of 1914, an Austrian fossil collector named Richard Markgraf uncovered the bones of a colossal dinosaur in Egypt’s Bahariya Oasis. Shipped to Munich, the fossil was carefully studied by Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach,