gobi desert

The first thing that the expedition team found in peeking from the rocks and sands of the Gobi Desert was a tiny tip of a large pelvis. The international team descended on the exposed fossil, and chipped and brushed away to reveal more and more bones. Eventually, they exposed an exceptionally rare find: the virtually complete skeleton of a new dinosaur species.

Despite being one of the most forbidding places on Earth, the area now occupied by the Gobi Desert was once host to a dizzying array of plants and animals. Some of the most unexpected dinosaurs have been found locked in the red rocks of this arid corner of Mongolia.

A pair of bird-like dinosaurs that died and were buried together have successfully been identified as a male and female pair in one of the first cases of paleontologists identifying a dinosaur’s sex.