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From the Gobi DesertJuly 2 through 26, 1998
 July 4 That is what brings us to Mongolia — a place where we have found stuff that has changed the way that we look at our world of 80 million years ago.  July 5 The pavement ended a few miles southwest of town and we hit the multi-lane dirt track road toward our next goal — the southern mountain town of Bayanhongor.  July 8 This is the central-most place on any continent, the farthest place imaginable from atolls in a cool Pacific. 
 July 9 The Excalibur of these paleontologists is a rock-hammer or pick, with the dead of sturdy forged steel that has a blunt front and a long curved pick like the crest of a pterodactyl.  July 10 As soon as our Polaroid camera emerged, the children metamorphosed from brown, nearly naked tots and into neat, colorfully dressed pixies.  July 11 We take three jeeps up through a mountain pass to examine a tortuously folded set of rocks. We are confronted by a cascade of water, a flash flood, dissecting the landscape like a muddy Colorado.  July 13 Only trouble was no road, sand the consistency of powdered sugar, a heavy, recalcitrant Gas Tanker, and blazing heat.  July 14 We walked slowly and methodically, staring at the ground in search of the tiniest glimmer of bone, picking up anything even vaguely suspicious.  July 15 The top-scorer among us was Boldra, who found no less than nine skulls of various mammals and lizards. 
 July 16 For me, to excavate a block like this is to wonder about time. What I am digging up lived and died 80 million years ago. What on earth is it doing here?  July 17 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.  July 18 The Gobi: the only things that move fast here are the gazelles. As beautiful as they are, I wonder why they rush. Camels and horses aren't in a rush, neither am I.  July 19 Instead of being trapped in sand dunes, the mammal I found was caught in a torrent of mud and water caused when heavy rain fell on partially vegetated sand dunes.  July 20 It is a bad day when the pick goes down and subterranean bones unavoidably explode to the surface.  July 22 Within a few minutes, Bolor had found a pile of battered bone, and soon we were all finding fossils on the slopes. 
 July 23 What was eroding into dust 10 days ago is now a shipment of scientific specimens.  July 24 Each of us looks out the windows at the line of red cliffs for a quick glance before they instantly disappear and are reclaimed by horses, camels, hedgehogs and jerboas.  July 25 Today we left the inferno of the deep Gobi and entered the purgatory world of its borderland.  July 26 The magic of this place and the wide open Mongolian skies distract us from our keyboard, and make stargazing addictive and unavoidable. |
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