Gobi finds

[pjanke@maroon.tc.umn.edu]

        NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have discovered a dramatic fossil
trove in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, including some unknown meat-eating
dinosaurs and several dinosaur ``nurseries'' with extremely well
preserved eggs.
        The finding represents the best-preserved assemblage of
backboned animals ever found from the Cretaceous period, 130
million to 65 million years ago, the American Museum of Natural
History said.
        The fossils will be ``extraordinarily important'' for
understanding the evolutionary changes from dinosaurs to birds, and
in shedding light on the early days of mammals, said Michael J.
Novacek of the museum, one of the expedition's leaders.
        In just 10 days last July, researchers discovered nearly 100
dinosaur fossils, 175 fossil lizards and skulls and skeletons of
147 very rare mammals, the museum said Monday in a statement.
        The fossils, collected from a square-mile site at Ukhaa Tolgod,
are thought to be about 80 million years old.
        Apart from the dinosaur eggs in their nurseries, the museum said
finds included:
        --six skeletons of the armored ankylosaur dinosaurs, some with
perfectly preserved tails and tail spikes.
        --more than a dozen skeletons of small meat-eating dinosaurs
called theropods, several of which are new types of the three-toed
creatures. The museum called it the most diverse assemblage of
theropods from any single location.
        --an excellent skull and complete skeleton of one theropod,
Oviraptor. That beast is now known from only one or two skeletons,
Novacek said.
        --six skeletons of the recently discovered creature Mononykus,
perhaps including the first skull or significant portion of a
skull, Novacek said. The creature represents a transition between
birds and dinosaurs, Novacek said.
        Altogether, the finding provides an unusually diverse and
well-preserved snapshot of life at the site, said Novacek, the
museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology.
        ``We're picking up ... an extraordinarily rich picture of a
dinosaur community toward the end of the dinosaur empire, that
captures both the decline of the dinosaurs and the ... rise of the
diversity of mammals,'' Novacek said in a telephone interview.
        Mammals represented by the findings ranged from shrew-sized to
possibly as big as squirrels, he said.
        Novacek said the remains of lizards, mammals and more delicate
dinosaurs show anatomical details and completenesss not generally
seen elsewhere.
        That is due to the blowing sands of the desert, which quickly
buried animals after death and may even have killed some of them,
he said.
        ``The site is a remarkable site,'' said Willam Clemens, curator
of mammals at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of
California, Berkeley.
        It will provide ``new windows of understanding relating to the
evolution of mammals and other animals in Asia,'' he said.