67 dinosaur skeletons in one week

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

A press release from Montana State University reports that Jack Horner was very 
busy in Mongolia over the summer:

Paleontologists find 67 dinosaurs in one week

One recent week in the Gobi Desert produced 67 dinosaur skeletons for a team of 
paleontologists from Montana and Mongolia who want to flesh out the 
developmental biology of dinosaurs.

Montana State University paleontologist Jack Horner said Wednesday that the 
same area yielded 30 skeletons last year, so researchers at MSU and Mongolia's 
Science and Technology University now have about 100 Psittacosaurus skeletons. 
The skeletons ranged in length from one to five feet and stood about two feet 
tall.

"That's what I was there for -- getting as many of those as we could possibly 
get," Horner said as he waited for the rest of the MSU team to return to 
Bozeman.

He was specifically looking for Psittacosaurus fossils because it was a very 
common dinosaur and would give him lots of specimens, Horner said. It would 
also keep away poachers and commercial fossil hunters who work in the area, but 
prefer rare fossils. Horner wants a large number of fossils so he can compare 
variations between skeletons and changes during growth.

The Psittacosaurus dinosaur, also known as a "parrot lizard," was a plant-eater 
that lived about 120 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous Period, Horner 
said. It was an ancestor of horned dinosaurs like the triceratops.

"The reason I went after Psittacosaurus was because I figured I could get more 
of those dinosaurs in the shortest period of time than any other dinosaur," 
Horner added.

Horner and his group left near the end of August for Mongolia. Joined there by 
Bolortsetseg Minjin and her team of Mongolian students, the paleontologists 
drove two days out of Ulan Bator. There, in a few square miles of badlands, 
they worked from sun-up to sundown and collected dozens of fossils.

This summer's fossils have all been excavated and are now at the Mongolian 
university, Horner said. Jamie Cornish, marketing director at MSU's Museum of 
the Rockies, said the bones belong to Mongolia, but Horner may obtain casts of 
them. Horner added that he will be able to study some of the fossils in 
Montana, but they will be returned to Mongolia.

"We can bring specimens here for a little while, but the Museum of the Rockies 
is not the place for bones from other countries," Horner said. "We have enough 
stuff."

"This project is primarily for the benefit of Mongolia, looking for specimens 
for them to put in a museum we're going to encourage them to build," Horner 
said. He added that the museum project is similar to an effort at Rudyard in 
northern Montana.

The paleontologists found two meat-eating fossils in Mongolia in addition to 
the Psittacosaurus, Horner said. One of them looked like a raptor and may be a 
new species, but Horner said, "We find new species all the time. ... A hundred 
Psittacosauruses are a lot more interesting to me than new species."
###

The Mongolian dig is funded by Nathan Myhrvold and will continue next summer, 
Horner said. Myhrvold is a member of the Museum of the Rockies National 
Advisory Board and a major supporter of paleontology research in Eastern 
Montana. The Mongolian project is a joint research project with Mongolia's 
Science and Technology University. It's also designed to help the Mongolian 
university develop its paleontology program for students. It will include the 
construction of a preparation lab and a small museum in Mongolia.

 
-- 
Jeff Hecht, science & technology writer
jeff@jeffhecht.com  http://www.jhecht.net
525 Auburn St., Auburndale, MA 02466 USA
v. 617-965-3834; fax 617-332-4760