GOBI DESERT TREASURES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 8 January 1927, Page 11

GOBI DESERT TREASURES

PRIMITIVE RACE FOUND

Dr. Andrews, six feet of virile American manhood, has been working for five seasons in the almost unknown Gobi desert, a rocky and waterless region, and the scientific world was thrilled by the report that he had found dozens of disosaur eggs, 10.000,000 years old, at a site known as ‘‘The Phi ce o f .VI ud d y Waters.”

“During the five seasons wo have been working,” he said, “we have sent home 10,000 animal specimens, 12,000 reptile- specimens, and 11,000 fish, all living kinds. To this must be added many thousands of fossil types, but. only' a small proportion has yet been classified, and properly examined.

“The last few months of our work has been held up by the Chinese wars. I have been bombed and harassed, and if the Chinese had not been such bad shots the Royal Geographical Society might have had to wait in vain. “So far we have explored the region from Knlgan across Mongolia to the north-west, on the north of the Altai mountains. Xow wo are going to work south to Chinese Turkestan.

“The main theory we are working on is that Central Asia is the place of origin of the world’s reptilian, and mammalian life.

“There is evidence of a tremendous centre, of animal life ten millions of years ago, and we believe- this life spread out to America on the one hand and north-west Europe on the

other. Moreover, we believe that Central Asia was the cradle of the human race, where, to use a popular expression, the Dawn Man first appeared.

“Our quest for this paleontological Garden of Erlen will be to the fore in our next- expedition in the spring. So far we have emphasised the fossil side of our research.

“Already we have fouud evidence of primitive man —the first ever discovered in this region. He was a lake-shore- dweller, not a cave man. No bones have been found, but tools and stone implements going back to Neanderthal times have been found.

“We have found marvellous fossils not only the dinosaurs and eggs, but fishes in stone almost perfect, and fossil mosquitoes scores of thousands of years old, with the. most delicate markings. 'We have found beautiful butterflies turned to stone embedded in a kind of shale.

“ Perhaps most important of alb we have found a previously unknown race of primitive men, who lived in the late Stone Age, 20,000 years ago, in the Gobi Desert. Their camps and fireplaces remain ,and certain types of instruments they made out of stone..

“We have hopes that we shall get evidence of man in an even earlier age inhabiting this mysterious region, which contains little minerals or existing vegetation.”