Mark A. Norell

Ukhaa Tolgod Nemegt Basin- This area is the Graceland of modern dinosaur collecting. Within short distance lay the legendary localities of Nemegt, Khulson, Altan Ula, Bugin Tsav, Kheerman Tsav and Tsaagan Khuushu. It was here that successive Soviet, Mongolian and Polish expeditions built on the work to the north east of here by American Museum after World War II. It was these localities that first drew our expeditions to the Nemegt Basin in 1990. It was in 1993 that we discovered Ukhaa Tolgod. On the southern flank of the Gilvent Ul (Ul is mountain in mongolian), lies our camp, perched above the Camel Humps, Xanadu, Sugar Mountain and other parts of Ukhaa Tolgod, which represent our contribution to the story of Gobi Dinosaur hunting.

So far this year we have found some interesting stuff. Real interesting. But it is premature for us to speculate on our discoveries so soon. We have been often disappointed. Last year for instance we found what we were sure was a small theropod in Early Cretaceous Rocks to the Northeast here. When Amy Davidson began to prepare it in New York, a lowly psittacosaur emerged. While still a good find, these plant eaters are not the skeletons that we salivate over. This year's discoveries can be divided into several different kinds. We have found some interesting animals.

One, a small bird, appears (remember field Ids can be tricky) to be more advanced than anything we have ever found here. A second bird, is a skull of the primitive Shuvuia, which our team discovered the first specimens of 1993. We have also found some small nonavian theropods. This is the stuff that gets us going. Mike Novacek found one at a place called Jim's Pocket. Amy Davidson carefully extracted it from the sediments on a hot day on a steep slope.

Until it gets safely home and removed from the rocks we can only dream about what we have got. Other important specimens include a small skull of a primitive bird appropriately named Gobipteryx (Gobi bird), and a nice but heavy dromaeosaur skeleton. When Pete Makovicky found this one we thought that it would be a simple excavation project maybe a morning's work.

As it turned out, our work toiled into the hot afternoon and resumed this morning. Now we have a behemoth block of plaster dirt and bones, in excess of four hundred pounds- that resembles a large deformed marshmallow. Soon we will use a combination of our feeble muscles supplemented by Mongol Power (our exceedingly strong Mongolian colleagues) to heft this lump into the truck and start it on the journey home. It could be a great specimen- it appears larger than other similar specimens (like Velociraptor) found at other Mongolian localities. It may be something new.

All of the above are central to our dinosaur research which focuses on how the dinosaurs that we call birds are related to the ones we just call dinosaurs. Specimens from Ukhaa and adjacent areas are critical to this and have made a huge impact. But these big-brained meat eaters shared their sand dunes with a host of herbivores as well. While we always find them, our expeditions have rarely collected many--the remoteness of our location and the constraints of time being the reasons.

This year we have removed a few--and in the process made a surprising discovery. Often such animals are large, requiring use of what Luis Chiappe (former expedition member) affectionately calls the "Big Tools." Use of "the big tools" is always a safe distance from a specimen, it is a bad day when the pick goes down and subterranean bones unavoidably explode to the surface.

While excavating a skeleton of a Pinacosaurus (an armored dinosaur) on a steep surface of the Camel's Humps, that is particularly rich in skeletons called Death Row, Guillermo Rougier, Saynbayer, and Mike Novacek, crushed into another skeleton. First they thought that it was just an isolated fragment of Pinacosaur #1. A whomp with the pick a safe distance off revealed that no, Pinacosaur #1 was entombed with one of its brothers Pinacosaur #2. Time to move off to the other side to get around Pinacosaur #1. There they found Pinacosaur #3.

All three of these tank like animals (which by the look of them are teenagers), were persevered in an identical orientation lying parallel as if enjoying a day on the dune. Then something happened so 80 million years later, my colleagues encountered them. Perhaps even more surprising is that this is not a unique occurrence.

About 500 km from here in Northern China is a place called Bayan Mandahu. Bayan Mandahu is in some ways similar to Ukhaa Tolgod--the rocks are the same color, it is thought to be the same age and some of the same animals are found in both places. At Bayan Mandahu Sino Canadian expeditions found similar pinacosaur raves, here numbering over a dozen. What explains this behavior? How did they die?

That is for other dinosaurologists and geologists to haggle about--for us we are on the move again to discover some more of the elusive animals that document the transformation between the Mesozoic world and the birds that fill our skies, whose feathers stuff or pillows and, who provide the car-washing industry with much of its business.

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