National Geographic: Dinosaur Hunters Page #2

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of thirst, cold, and hunger.

But Andrews found

one more thing... mud.

Our average speed was

only four miles an hour.

Rocks, ravines, washouts,

and ditches

followed one another

in rapid succession.

One might imagine that the

roads have gotten better.

They have not.

And even modern jeeps

aren't built

for a desert like the Gobi.

We have an electrical problem

and we don't know what it is.

It's not a very complicated

wiring plan.

It's a Russian jeep.

It's not like a Japanese

or an American car.

They're up and running.

But next,

it's a truck's turn.

Piston, huh?

We think it's piston

number six.

A critical breakdown could

have severe consequences.

End of the expedition,

if not the end of our lives.

Maybe we'll make it.

Oh, God.

With the nearest gas station

some 500 miles away,

and time already

getting tight,

things will have to go

smoothly from now on.

Oh, we're having

some mechanical problems.

We think it's a fuel pump.

But we're not sure.

This could be way bad.

Seems to me I got this thing

in there

without doing

the twisty deal.

Maybe we'll tow it

or abandon it.

Abandon it.

Get on with it.

We can't stay here

more than a day.

After more than

the vehicles all decide to

run at the same time.

As they enter the dusty

dinosaur fields of the Gobi,

they're traveling a long way

backwards in time.

Dinosaurs first appeared

some 230 million years ago,

in a world

with a different face.

The creatures were thriving

as South America

and Africa split apart.

About 75 million years ago,

in the late Cretaceous period,

dinosaurs began to disappear...

leaving only bones behind.

Their bones were more

motionless than the continents

Then in the 1920s,

Roy Chapman Andrews

came to a remote place

in the Gobi Desert

he would name

the Flaming Cliffs.

It was a likely-

looking place.

There appear to be medieval

castles with spires and turrets

brick-red in

the evening light,

colossal gateways,

walls and ramparts.

A labyrinth of ravines

and gorges studded

with fossil bones

make a paradise

for the paleontologist.

Without a doubt

there were hundreds of bones

lying just beneath

the surface.

But where?

If only my eyes

could pierce that

baffling surface

and get a glimpse

of what lay concealed!

Within minutes,

they were finding fossils.

Andrews and his team

had stumbled onto the mother

lode of dinosaur bones.

They discovered the remains of

some 200 different animals,

many of them completely

new species.

The fossils revealed a world

that Andrews found alien

and terrifying.

Dinosaurs were

the sort of creatures

you might think of as

inhabiting another planet

or the kind you dream of

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