Parrot Beaks, Graveyard...continued

Tales from the dead
Paul needed only the faintest odor in the wind to recognize immediately the smell of death. He turned into the wind toward the unseen body, laughing as to how much like a vulture he had become. Soon it came into view. He was careful to walk out of the path of the wind, lest the smell become overpowering.

Tanned by wind and sand, the skin of this Bactrian camel mummy looks like metal sheeting, draped over its ribcage.

It was a Bactrian camel that died several months ago. Its skin, tanned by the wind and sand, looked more like sheet metal, draped over its ribcage. Its neck was drawn back to its head, with a wooden nose post still in place in its dried muzzle. A spider scurried under the carcass, where beetles and other insects gathered in harmony for a feast that would last several months.

This posture - an animal laying on its side with legs flexed and neck drawn back - is known as the "death pose." Most relatively complete dinosaur skeletons are buried in a similar pose, because the same factors were at work after death. An animal dies and falls over; the carcass bloats as gasses emerge from the rotting flesh; the carcass collapses as the flesh is eaten away; the legs flex and the neck is drawn back as the strong tendons and ligaments shorten under the sun.

Deserts are superb graveyards, and that wasn't the only body the team would find. "Wow! Is that a great carcass or what?," crooned David, who arrived first at the scene. Three Mongolians watched in the distance, doubtless puzzled by our fascination in their dried, two-humped comrade.

Caught in death as if taking its last gasp,
a Bactrian camel skeleton is discovered
by the team.

As the team closed in, the carcass took form. The skull rested, jaws open, at the end of an arched neck. The forelimbs had been pulled away and dismembered. Ribs were strewn about. The legs were cocked. Dried skin draped the pelvic girdle. It was a study in taphonomy, that branch of science that studies how animals and plants die and become fossilized.

"Classic. Don't move anything until I get some photos for my class," announced David. "Look, see how the front limbs, not attached by anything but muscles, have been pulled away, how the skin over the ribcage burst after the carcass bloated with gases, and how the tendons over here dried in the sun and caused the neck to arch."

We have spent weeks excavating 100-million-year old death scenes. It is fantastic to look at death just a few months old and imagine what the dinosaurs we dug up would have been like when they died millions of years ago. What an incredible smell that would have been!

Camp 1 Breakdown
You suddenly realize how much stuff was carried into the desert for Inner Mongolia 2001 when its time to break it all down. Ever try to lift a monster generator onto a truck bed? It's a demanding job for seven. All of the fossils and gear were loaded onto a single flatbed truck.

Poles muscled by seven crew members helped lift the heavy generator onto the bed of a truck, as the team disassembled Camp I.

Relocating camp made all of us reflect on how good we had it at Camp I compared to many of our previous expedition experiences. Hot water, cooked meals, and all of the cold bottled water you could drink-wow! One of the advantages of working in proximity of an army base is that we could piggy-back on their supply runs. That ensured a constant supply of milk, eggs, and vegetables. In honor of our successful work, our friendship, and our basketball rivalry, the army invited us to dinner on our last evening.

With a portrait of Mao overlooking, the team celebtrates the end of the work in the Suhongtu region with the local army unit.

On the Road Again
We pulled out in the morning light, our vehicle caravan headed to the far western reaches of Inner Mongolia. Our destination, Mazongshan, meaning "horse mane mountain," after the long, low series of peaks along its spine. This is about as far away from anything as it is possible to get. A full eight hundred miles west of Hohhot, the Mazongshan area would be a more difficult place to work, a place where a forgotten supply means you do without it.

The road coursed right along the border with Outer Mongolia and then skirted the edge of a great sand field to the south in the Alashan Desert. This desert is virtually impassable, so the ancient Silk Routes passed to either side of it as well. The sand that does accumulate is shoveled away by road crews, the only humans we encountered along the way.

On lonely desert roads, sometimes the only folks
you see are road crews, keeping the sand at bay.

At the halfway point, we found ourselves in a small town called Ejin Qi. The broad river bottom coursing to the side of town was wet. Trees were everywhere. We noticed the trees especially, after driving a couple hundred miles without them. Ejin Qi is blessed with river water passing north to a now dry lake in the desert. It was Children's Day, so the park was filled with youngsters enjoying themselves. We were enjoying the trip immensely. Thoughts about what fossils we might discover in our next Camp were not far from our minds.

In the desert town of Ejin Qi, a little girl smiles broadly
while having fun in the park on Children's Day.

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