When scientists in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert discovered a site unusually rich in dinosaur skeletons, they thanked their lucky stars and then began trying to figure out what caused this mass burial. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“There are a couple of stages to this detective work–trying to uncover the reasons for the death and burial of these ancient creatures. The first step is to identify the nature of the killing event.”
Michael Novacek is Curator of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1993, he led an expedition which discovered the richest site of fossils ever found in the Gobi Desert.
“One thing to look for is a large number of skeletons of the same species. We have these armored ancylosaur Dinosaurs there. And in one place I found about eight or nine of these skeletons oriented exactly the same way, in very similar postures. Which suggests they were all victimized by the same event. So that’s one part of the puzzle…The second part of the puzzle is to look at the rock in which the skeleton is entombed…Our sand expert noticed that a lot of the dinosaur skeletons were covered or surrounded by sand that had small pebbles that indicated some flow of mud or water. So this may have been wet sand, might have collapsed off the face of a dune, might have carried very rapidly in a flash flood…It’s important to say that we may never know what killed all these creatures but, based on our detective work, we have a best guess. And I think it’s quite likely that rain storms and possible mud avalanches may have been a factor in burying these creatures. And what ever buried them, killed them.”
Additional funding for Pulse of the Planet has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.