From the archive, 18 September 1928: Prehistoric monsters discovered in Mongolian desert

After four months' intensive work in Northern Inner Mongolia the New York Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic Expedition, under the leadership of Mr. Roy Chapman Andrews, has returned to Peking with a large collection of valuable fossils.

Although the expedition failed to find the traces of the "pre-dawn man," which were one of the primary objects of the quest, it did uncover, in Eastern and Inner Mongolia, an extraordinarily wealthy deposit of implements and ornaments revealing the culture of man during the period between the early and late Stone Ages.

In addition were found a number of mammalian fossils, including some hitherto unknown in Asia. One of these fossil skeletons Mr. Andrews believes to have belonged to the biggest mammal that ever lived on land, a beast probably related to the baluchitherium, standing 25 feet high and weighing up to twenty tons. A type of mastodon previously unknown and another great beast of the titanothere group were other important discoveries. The expedition also came across a batch of dinosaur eggs of a sort differing from those found previously in the Gobi Desert.

Mr. Andrews holds the theory that man originated in the arid Central Asiatic plateau a couple of million or so years ago at a time when the climatic conditions were much more favourable for human development, and he had hoped to come across evidence definitely supporting this belief.

He was compensated unexpectedly for his lack of success in this endeavour by the discovery of important indications of a Mesolithic culture dating back about twenty thousand years and resembling the Azilian culture found in France and, in later states of development, in Scandinavia. The wealth of evidence found proved that these people, who lived chiefly among the sand dunes where there were wood, water, and shelter, were much more abundant than the Mongols of today. There were some residence sites where, to judge from the accumulation of implements and utensils, these folk must have continued to live for thousands of years on end.

The expedition secured ninety cases of fossils, and Mr. Andrews feels that they probably have never assembled a better or more varied collection. Of greatest popular interest, perhaps, was the discovery of the gigantic mammal twenty-five feet high and weighing up to twenty tons. It had a humerus as thick as a man's body. One supposition is that on account of its huge bulk this amazing creature probably moved very slowly, and when the climate in Mongolia began to change, diminishing the herbage on which it fed, it simply gave up the struggle to survive and died out instead of migrating.

Roy Chapman Andrews is often cited as one of the real-life inspirations for Indiana Jones. This is an edited extract describing the 1928 expedition – click here for the full report.

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