MONSTERS IN DESERT OF GOBI

DESERT DISCOVERIES AND MONSTER MYTHS

David Keys on new insights into the day of the dinosaur.

Chinese and Canadian scientists working in the Gobi Desert have stumbled across a series of 80 million year old dinosaur colonies.

They have discovered new species.

The Gobi Desert colony discovered this year is of a species of vegetarian armoured dinosaur known as an ankylosaur which has been attacked by a carnivorous dinosaur on the ankylosaur nest full of eggs. They were neither round nor oval, but long and thin- around 180 centimetres long and 60 centimetres in diameter . Ankylosaur females seem to have laid them with great efficiency, two at a time. One extraordinary nest, containing thirty of these eggs, has yielded some clues about laying techniques. The eggs were arranged in the nest in a multi-layer spiral, resembling a pyramid.

The team has also unearthed the skull and vertebrae of what seems to be the Old World´s largest dinosaur. This creature was 31 metres from head to tail- the per cent longer than any other Old World dinosaur found so far. It lived 140 million years ago, was vegetarian , weighed up to forty tonnes and would probably have walked at less than sixteen kilometres per hour.

They were wiped out by a natural disaster, possibly caused by meteorite impact. 

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/austropalaeo/2016/04/dinosaurs-of-the-gobi

Palaeontology assistant and student Mainbayar Buuvei excavates a dinosaur fossil 

Palaeontologists and volunteers at our camp in the eastern Gobi

The Gobi has a population density of just 0.4 people per square kilometre. It is a true desert with less than 193mm of rainfall a year and average maximum summer temperatures above 35°C.

Spectacular dinosaur discoveries in the Gobi

IN 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.

 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.