Mongolia is Awesome: Even Before There Were People

The Gobi desert in the south of Mongolia is a paleontologist’s paradise; for whatever reasons (the heat, its aridity, and the previous creature populations, I’m guessing), the Gobi is a treasure trove of fossils. Rare finds like a pair of fighting dinosaurs and a dino-mommy hunched over her eggs were unearthed in the Gobi, most likely the result of dune collapses or sudden sandstorms. In 2006, paleontologists found 67 dinosaur skeletons in one week (which sounds like a lot to me), and many new species of dinosaurs or other ancient creatures have been discovered in Mongolia, such as this “giant parrot” dinosaur. (Personal Note: I will be in the Gobi, probably seeing a fossil or two, in a couple weeks!)

All of that is awesome, but it’s not quite Mongolia-level Awesome yet. That’s because I’ve left the kickers for the end. The only example of the skull of the Andrewsarchus was discovered in Mongolia by Roy Chapman Andrews (he’s kind of a big deal) in 1923. (Well, that’s not quite true; it was discovered by Kan Cheun Pao, a member of Andrews’s team who does not even have his own Wikipedia page. Something about that scenario seems so typical.) The Andrewsarchus is pretty freaking Awesome, and even before I got to Mongolia, I was hoping to meet one of these bad boys. Note that the BBC describes it as “the largest carnivorous land mammal ever.” Apparently their show “Walking with Beasts” also called it the “Whale-Killer” and featured a clip of two of them hunting whales. Although the BBC has maybe taken a few liberties with the information that can actually be gleaned from a piece of skull, it can’t be denied that a giant roaming carnivore with jaws that can crush bone and a silhouette like a werewolf is Awesome. And the moral of this story is that I have to find fossils of the coolest dinosaur ever and name it the ALICEOSAURUS KHAAN.

Though this was meant to be a post just about the Andrewsarchus, in my research I came across something even more Awesome about Mongolia. Maybe you have heard of velociraptors, just about the scariest and most intense dinosaurs ever, according to XKCD (my paleontological authority). They are the primary villiains in Jurassic Park, and since then they have been immortalized in popular culture and a meme or two. And you know where this is going…

All velociraptor fossils ever discovered have been found in Mongolia (Inner and Outer), and the official name of the main velociraptor species is “Velociraptor Mongoliensis.” That’s right: Steven Spielberg owes Mongolia big time.