637: For Fossil Hunters, Gobi Is No Desert - New York Times

For Fossil Hunters, Gobi Is No Desert - New York Times:

It has been the paleontologists' boast, never disputed, that this particular forbidding stretch of the Gobi holds the world's richest and most diverse deposits of dinosaur and early mammal remains from 80 million years ago, a critical time for life in the Cretaceous geologic period.

Four years had passed since paleontologists of the American-Mongolian expedition last pitched camp at Ukhaa Tolgod ("brown hills" in Mongolian), scene of their greatest triumphs. They were lured back last month, as surely as gold prospectors to the mother lode, by the expectation that the site has more to yield.

Hunting early fossils. Evolution at work.

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