National Geographic: Dinosaur Hunters Page #2

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dinosaurs began to disappear...

leaving only bones behind.

Their bones were more

motionless than the continents

Then in the 1920s,

Roy Chapman Andrews

came to a remote place

in the Gobi Desert

he would name

the Flaming Cliffs.

It was a likely-

looking place.

There appear to be medieval

castles with spires and turrets

brick-red in

the evening light,

colossal gateways,

walls and ramparts.

A labyrinth of ravines

and gorges studded

with fossil bones

make a paradise

for the paleontologist.

Without a doubt

there were hundreds of bones

lying just beneath

the surface.

But where?

If only my eyes

could pierce that

baffling surface

and get a glimpse

of what lay concealed!

Within minutes,

they were finding fossils.

Andrews and his team

had stumbled onto the mother

lode of dinosaur bones.

They discovered the remains of

some 200 different animals,

many of them completely

new species.

The fossils revealed a world

that Andrews found alien

and terrifying.

Dinosaurs were

the sort of creatures

you might think of as

inhabiting another planet

or the kind you dream of

in a bad nightmare.

It was an image our culture

nourished for generations.

Dinosaurs were fierce,

monstrous...

and not all that bright.

Many of the new ideas

about dinosaurs

are coming from the amazing

boneyard called Ukhaa Tolgod.

The team discovered the site

three years ago.

Now, to get to the dinosaurs,

all they have to do...

is find it again.

The maps in general are pretty

lousy for the Gobi Desert.

The towns on those maps

are myths in many cases.

We don't even pay

any attention to

any of the roads

marked on those maps.

They're completely wrong.

Even a satellite tracking

system doesn't always help.

So the satellite

may know where you are

but the road you need

may be in a

completely

different direction

so the roads here are

very confusing.

There are no signs and many

of them lead nowhere.

We're gonna go like this.

We're a little off course.

We're not really lost.

We're just a bit off course.

So we've gotta go

this-away and that-away.

At times, you have to go in

circles to move forward.

Roy Chapman Andrews too spent

more than a few days

wandering the Gobi.

But in the end,

he blundered into a discovery

that stunned the world.

A member of his expedition

literally stumbled across

a critical link in the great

chain of being.

On July 13,

George Olsen reported

that he had found

some fossil eggs.

We did not take

his story very seriously.

Nevertheless,

we were all curious enough

to go with him

to inspect his find.

There could be no mistake.

Our paleontologist

finally said,

"Gentlemen,

there is no doubt about it.

You are looking at the first

dinosaur egg ever found."

The discovery made Roy Chapman

Andrews a national hero.

But the eggs were not alone.

Lying above the nest

was a bizarre skeleton -

a bird-like dinosaur

unknown to man.

It had apparently been

caught in the act of murder -

stealing the eggs.

So it was forever cursed

with the name Oviraptor -

Latin for "egg thief."

It would be years

before we discovered

the strange truth

about the animal called

Oviraptor.

In the late '20s,

the winds of change

blew fiercely over

the great dinosaur

fields of Mongolia.

That's when

Roy Chapman Andrews

was forced to leave

the Gobi forever.

We are more than ever convinced

that Central Asia

was a paleontology

Garden of Eden.

Still, we have shown the way,

have broken trail as it were.

Later, others will reap

a rich harvest.

Decades later,

Mark and Mike are

hoping to find

the treasures that Andrews

left untouched in the sand.

After more than a week

in the blistering Gobi,

they finally reach their goal:

the brown hills of Ukhaa Tolgod

With all the delays,

they've only got

two weeks to work.

This is the place

where they've pinned

all their hopes.

With luck,

a year of shifting sands has

exposed more bones.

But even here,

there are no guarantees.

It is possible to fail

in the Gobi.

It's a huge area,

a huge tract of land,

there are lots of rocks.

But they don't all

contain fossils.

You can drive to

what looks like the most

tantalizing set of badlands

you could possibly imagine

and not find one

scrap of bone.

It's a treasure hunt in a way

and it is sort of like finding

a needle in a haystack.

But on this day,

Discovery

and elation are immediate.

Oh, I see it.

Oh, wonderful.

Jeez.

That's nice.

Back to lizard

The side of a skull here.

The teeth sticking out.

You can see these teeth,

yeah.

Each one of these is a socket

for a tooth.

Pretty big.

This is a hand claw.

Has this big thing

right here on it...

it's the hand of an Oviraptor.

About medium size.

They've hit the jackpot:

among their first finds

are Oviraptors -

the creature Andrews knew as

"egg thief."

Considering that the Oviraptor

is one of the rarest dinosaurs

in the world and there's

only been a handful

of specimens found before

we discovered this place

where we've found 25.

I mean,

today we found at least five

just in the first 20 minutes.

This is really not

what paleontology is like,

most of the time.

You don't go finding 12

skeletons in a half an hour.

There's another

one right there, too.

Yup.

Each one of these

little mounds of little white flecks sticking out...

that's the eroded rubble of

parts of big dinosaur skeletons

One, two, three, four

four skeletons right here.

This is going to be

a really good specimen.

This is part of

a shoulder right here.

Let me see.

This looks,

is looking like a tail.

That's the tail and part of

the pelvic girdle here

and the tail shooting

straight out.

This is nice.

I mean, what we're seeing

here is just awful.

I mean,

all these poor dinosaurs

and other creatures...

mammals and vertebrates -

buried alive possibly

and skeletons littering

the surface like some

battlefield.

But it's great for us

'cause we thrive on carnage.

We don't have enough tape.

We oughta count

everything here.

Once, scores of dinosaurs

walked the sands

of Ukhaa Tolgod

moving toward a tragic destiny.

I think this was an oasis

Huge numbers of dinosaurs

and other vertebrates

congregating around

maybe some water.

And on occasions,

not just one event

but on several occasions,

these animals were buried

in these sands.

We'd have to imagine

an enormous sandstorm,

an enormous force

bearing down

on these creatures

for such a disaster.

Some of the dinosaurs almost

look like they're trying

to swim to the surface,

much like a skier

in an avalanche caught,

in some cases,

in their struggle

to get out of this

sand avalanche,

or great wall of sand,

that engulfed them.

Perhaps

they suffocated in the sand.

Hey, I just swept there.

You've made it

all dirty again.

I take pride in my work.

Next year we'll bring some

dust busters.

The prehistoric sandstorms

buried dinosaurs

at every stage of life.

And on their first

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