Guillermo Rougier

Ten of us were crowding a small gallery formed by steep walls of the fossiliferous sandstone of Ukhaa Tolgod. "This is the knee, the rest of the skeleton should be here," said Mark Norell stretching over some barely uncovered bones. The rest of us balancing precariously on the hill slope took turns to see the specimen Mike Novacek had found yesterday.

The small skeleton probably belongs to a dromaeosaur, one of several groups of swift, bird relatives. Dromaeosaurs are very rare and the excitement we felt about this discovery had taken us down to the southern exposures of Ukhaa Tolgod where the fossil had been spotted.

We had walked for forty-five minutes early this morning to see the dinosaur. The fresh breeze and the bright orange glow of the sun on the towering walls that flanked our right added to the pleasure of being back in one of the best fossil localities on the planet. The low sun casts long shadows that make prospecting along the way difficult, so we chatted animatedly in small groups sharing thoughts about our profession and personal lives. It was a beautiful opportunity to relax and simply enjoy talking to people you like.

After a few minutes around the small dinosaur we spread and started prospecting. Most of us stayed in the southern portion of Ukhaa because in the few past days we have concentrated our efforts on the areas close to camp and to the north of it. In the past these relatively small patches of rock, with such varied names as "Delta Force", "Mike Come Here" and "Jim's Pocket," have yielded few but important fossils.

The sky was clear and finally we were able to enjoy a sunny day after much rain and stormy weather. A few minutes later I located a small skeleton and other people found more bones in the vicinity.

Some of us are, like Mike Novacek and myself especially interested in the small mammals from Ukhaa. These mammals, most of them about one inch long and almost 80 million years old, lived in a completely different world than that in which we are living today. Their time, the Late Cretaceous, was the heyday of the big dinosaurs, nevertheless some of the earliest representatives of our own lineage are already present here at Ukhaa.

In retrospect, it is surprising that these seemingly inauspicious creatures managed not only to outlive the big dinosaurs, but that they would ultimately give rise to the astonishing variety of mammals living today. Mammals thrive on land, air and water. The many features adapting them to such dissimilar environments have a long story; a story of change through time. Limbs becoming wings, or flippers; teeth changing in number and form.

This is the story we paleontologist are trying to unravel: how these changes occurred among the different groups. Those changes are transmitted through a tenuous line of ancestor descendants, like the child that resembles his parents. The data for our studies are small processes, and the form of the bones we uncover. That information can only be obtained through well preserved specimens as those we find here in Ukhaa Tolgod. These fossils provide a window to a time long gone, letting us explore the roots of our own family tree.

Back at camp on the shade of our big Russian trucks we gather together and unwrap our fossils. We try to identify them preliminarily while squinting to see minute features and picture in our heads how these small fossils will affect our understanding of mammal evolution. Today's results are those you'd expect from the bountyful Ukhaa. Several skulls of lizards, mammals and remnants of different groups of dinosaurs are being cataloged.

Now all we have left to do is enjoy our dinner and share the familiar stories about past expeditions while slowly incorporating those of recent days in the self-perpetuating campfire folklore.

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