Word: clapp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...present-day Oman at the edge of the Empty Quarter, an appropriate designation for a trackless region infested with camel spiders, giant ticks and lethal carpet vipers. The team checked out the forbidding terrain in 1990 and began hunting in earnest last November. Just six weeks ago, says Clapp, "we were ^ within a whisker of total failure." Then the party decided to examine Ash Shisar, a water hole with ruins of a primitive fort. Using ground-penetrating radar and sounding devices, the explorers discovered extensive ruins underneath...
...quest began in 1982, when Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Nicholas Clapp happened upon an explorer's evidence of an ancient road to Ubar. After unearthing more information from texts at the Huntington Library, Clapp teamed up with lawyer George Hedges to raise money and organize an expedition. They later recruited two Arabia experts, archaeologist Juris Zarins of Southwest Missouri State University and British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes...
...turning point came when Clapp remembered reading about a system called Space Imaging Radar carried on a space shuttle to peer underneath the deserts of Egypt and locate ancient riverbeds. In addition, satellites using optical sensing systems were able to record reflected near-infrared light that is invisible to the human eye. Scientists combined the data to produce digital images of 160-km-long (100-mile) tracts; these pictures were then manipulated by computers to bring out subtle details. Roads and rivers that were barely visible to explorers on the ground appeared in images captured from hundreds of kilometers...