  We present a new analysis of the E772 and E866 experiments on the nuclear
dependence of Drell-Yan (DY) lepton pair production resulting from the
bombardment of $^2H$, Be, C, Ca, Fe, and W targets by 800 GeV/c protons at
Fermilab. We employ a light-cone formulation of the DY reaction in the rest
frame of the nucleus, where the dimuons detected at small values of Bjorken x_2
<< 1 may be considered to originate from the decay of a heavy photon radiated
from an incident quark in a bremsstrahlung process. We infer the energy loss of
the quark by examining the suppression of the nuclear-dependent DY ratios seen
as a function of projectile momentum fraction x_1 and dimuon mass M. Shadowing,
which also leads to nuclear suppression of dimuons, is calculated within the
same approach employing the results of phenomenological fits to deep inelastic
scattering data from HERA. The analysis yields -dE/dz =2.73 +/- 0.37 +/- 0.5
GeV/fm for the rate of quark energy loss per unit path length, a value
consistent with theoretical expectations including the effects of the inelastic
interaction of the incident proton at the surface of the nucleus. This is the
first observation of a nonzero energy loss effect in such experiments.
