Australian_Geographic_-_February_2016_

S

PECTACULAR FOSSILS COME come from the

Gobi, but few people get to go there and hunt

for them with professional palaeontologists!

Join the AGS on this special scientific expedition,

run in collaboration with the Mongolian Academy

of Sciences and Odyssey Travel. Your hosts include

John Pickrell, editor of AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC

and dinosaur enthusiast, and Dr Tsogtbaatar

Khishigjav, head of the Institute of Paleontology and

Geology. We will take 15 volunteers into the heart

of the Gobi, where we’ll travel in 4WDs to a series

of sites to discover and excavate fossils. Evenings

will be spent enjoying meals cooked by the field

chef around the ger in our camp. Prior to eight nights

camping, the expedition begins in Ulaanbaatar, where

we’ll visit museums and a monastery.

DATES: 7–22 September 2016 (16 nights)

COST: From $11,995pp – a proportion of which

supports the work of the MAS and AGS

BOOKINGS: Email [email protected], call

1300 888 225 or visit http://www.odysseytraveller.com

INCLUSIONS: Accommodation in lodges, gers

and camp, all meals, internal flights

HOSTS:

PROUDLY PRESENTED BY

AG

January. February 117

Doug Miller, 61, a retiree from Brisbane who frequently

volunteers at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Winton,

Queensland, says that for several decades he’d wanted to visit

Ulaanbataar and find a way to get on a fossil dig in the Gobi.

“The opportunity to work with distinguished and dedicated

palaeontologists like Dr Tsogtbaatar and his assistant Mainbayar

was an unexpected bonus and added great credibility to the dig.

The ease with which we found fossils was a surprise...and we

had a couple of infamous Gobi dust storms to boot.”

Responses to the experience from all the volunteers in

our small group were varied but all enthusiastic. Robbin’s partner

Margaret Thacker, 73, a retiree who volunteers at the Museum of

Tropical Queensland, says she had few preconceptions, but “the

dig and people associated with it were far above my expectations.

Especially the companionship and the way we all worked so well

together, and that we were able to cope with the sandstorm and

the tents blowing down with a sense of humour.”

I

N RECENT YEARS, a series of feathered species of dinosaurs

have been discovered in the Gobi, helping firm up the

evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. These

include Gigantoraptor, a parrot-beaked ‘oviraptorosaur’, 8m long

and 4m tall. Found in the Gobi in 2008, it is thought to be one

of the largest feathered animals ever to have lived. Other oddities

include a herbivore named Deinocheirus, almost as big as T. rex,

but with massively long 2.5m arms, a weird hump on its back

and a duck-like bill, possibly for sucking up aquatic plant matter.

“More than 90 species, a huge number, representing a large

proportion of the world’s dinosaurs, have been found in

Mongolia,” Tsogtbaatar says. “The Gobi Desert, in the southern

part of Mongolia, is a relatively limited area, yet we have found

so many kinds of dinosaurs in the last 80 years.”

Early palaeontological forays into the Gobi were led by the

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in the 1920s,

and were the largest scientific expeditions ever to leave the USA.

These must have been quite a sight, with great trains of camels

and early motor cars slowly snaking across the landscape. In this

windswept and unforgiving region of Asia they found a great

cache of dinosaur bones, with the first specimens of Alectrosaurus,

Velociraptor and Protoceratops. At the Flaming Cliffs, which we also

visited on our 2015 expedition, they found the first fossilised

dinosaur nest with 13 large eggs arranged in a circle. The AMNH

has returned frequently on expeditions with the MAS since the

fall of the Soviet Union, and many other important finds have

been made, which have revolutionised our knowledge of dinosaurs.

Sitting around the campfire in the evenings, or inside the cosy

ger at the centre of our small camp, we had time to reflect on the

fact that although we had a few modern comforts, we’d also

experienced a little of the incredible thrill of discovery that those

pioneering expeditioners first felt when they stumbled across

untold fossil riches hundreds of kilometres out into the

wilderness of Central Asia.

We’d experienced a little of

the thrill of discovery of those

pioneering expeditioners.

MONGOLIA FOSSIL DIG

2016 SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION

John

Pickrell

Tsogtbaatar

Khishigjav

ILLUSTRATION: TSUKIMOTO KAYOMI / MONGOLIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ; SKULL: JORDI PAYÀ/WIKIMEDIA