ON THE TRAIL OF ANCIENT BEASTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

ON THE TRAIL OF ANCIENT BEASTS

By J.M.D. (Cturirtchurcb)

THE early expeditions to Mongolia went right across the Gobi Desert, but the last two stayed on the edge and explored the badlands of Urtyn Obo, a very desolate *pot. The first expedition had, in 1922, discovered a huge skull some 6ft !»ng and not unlike a horse's skull.

Examination proved that this was the skull of an extinct mammal which wu known from a few fossil bones found in Baluchistan, and was called the Beast of Baluchistan— Baluchitherium. This animal can well be called the king of mammals, if time be disregarded. It was far larger than the largest elephant, and stood 17ft and over at the shoulders. It was a browser, feeding on trees and eating nearly half a ton of grass and leaves every day. So, as the Continent of Asia grew more arid during the Tertiary, vegetation became scarcer and the Baluchitheres all died out through starvation. One day an expedition member announced that he had found an enormous bone. The other members went down a ravine with him to see it. There it was, as thick through as a man, sticking out of the side of a hill of sandstone. The whole party then set out to cut away the whole hill, down to the level of the bone. This was done in time, and on the cut platform lay all the larger bones of a Baluchitherium. The animal had died in a riverbed, the small bones being washed away by the current. These bones, and many others, were carefully packed and shipped in crates to New York. The expedition also found the largest flesh eater that has ever lived. They called it Andrewsarchus, after the leader of the expedition. The «kull was Srst found and then more bones. It was like a great hyena, a relative of the domestic dog. and was 15ft long. It must have been rare,

»s only one skeleton was found. It fed on dead carcases, rather than kill its own food. Belonging to a dominant extinct group, called the titanotheres (which means titanic beast), a group which we shall note soon, was a curious fossil animal called Embolotherium (the battering-ram beast). The front of the skull turns upward like a two-foot post. One explanation is that Embolotherium was a swamp dweller, and used to walk around in the swamp, feeding, with only its "periscope nose" projecting above the water. In this region, in upper Tertiary times, about three million years ago, was a large fresh water lake. The lake deposits now form sandstone hills. In these hills the expedition's

scientists often used to come across square plate-like fossil bones lOin long, Bin wide and Jin thick. The day before the break up of the second to last expedition the lower jaw of a most peculiar mastodon (an extinct branch of the elephant'* family tree) was found, in which two of these plates formed the lower tusks. The last expedition found over a dozen jaws and other bones of these extraordinary mastodons. They were named shovel - toothed Mastodons, and used to wade through the shallow water of the lake's edge, scooping up masse* of water plants on which they lived. Doubtless, from time to time- one would stray too far out into the lake and becomt bogged, sinking down into the mud beneath the water. Its bones would then be preserved in the mudstone or sandstone when the lake disappeared.