Page 12 - The Restless Earth Fossils

Fossils 11

The American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews (1884–1960)
visited Mongolia in 1922 and found that the bony remains of dino-
saurs were “strewn over the surface almost as thickly as stones.” He
and his team recovered more than 100 nearly complete skeletons
of Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus, both of which display mas-
sive, beaked heads. Protoceratops has neck frills on a lion-sized
body. Many white skeletons, partially eroded from the sides of red
sandstone cliffs, stood out clearly in upright positions like eternal
guards. Other skeletons lay on or near clutches of birdlike eggs, or
close to the remains of young dinosaurs.
Flecks and chunks of gold erode from nearby mountains and
sometimes wash into fossil-bearing sediments. Russian archaeolo-
gists once found the skeleton of a Bronze Age miner in the area
whose leather bag still contained several gold nuggets. It is no
wonder that ancient travelers who might have found this victim of
the desert’s heat and fierce storms might also believe that he was
killed by living examples of the fierce-looking fossil creatures lying
all around him.

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