Blurs

At first glance, Mongolia's Gobi Desert seems almost entirely inhospitable. There are enormous distances of bare rock and gravel, towering cliffs, shifting sands and mountains rising from an otherwise austere landscape. Water can be scarce and temperatures can swing dramatically between extremes. Yet the Gobi contains one of the world's extraordinary fossil archives. Hidden within its rocks are the remains of animals and plants that lived tens of millions of years ago, when parts of what is now Mongolia looked nothing like the desert we see today. There were rivers and floodplains. Lakes and wetlands existed in some regions. Dunes migrated across increasingly dry landscapes. Vegetation supported huge herbivorous dinosaurs, while predators followed them. Beneath the feet of these giants lived a much less conspicuous population of mammals, lizards, birds and insects. The fossils of the Gobi therefore tell us something considerably more interesting than which dinosaurs once lived ...