Mongolia

Since their discovery in 1923 by the inimitable Roy Chapman Andrews, the dinosaurs of Mongolia's Gobi Desert have offered one of the most comprehensive pictures of life at the twilight of the Mesozoic. In the past 25 years, scores of exceptionally preserved skeletons - many of them unusually complete - have been unearthed from across southern Mongolia. Unfortunately, the same fossils have also sparked an explosion of illegal fossil poaching in the country. As the painstaking task of repatriating many of these irreplaceable fossils begins, the question of provenance is paramount for both legal and scientific reasons.

Our work in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia is grounded in a long-lasting partnership with the Institute of Paleontology and Geology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. In 2023, we signed a 5-year long agreement to promote the Nemegt Educational Expeditions project aiming to promote geological, paleontological, and cartographic researches primarily in the Ômnôgov province of Mongolia.

This project directly addresses these issues and maintains the momentum generated by our previous work. Drawing on existing and emerging technologies, together with more than 90 years of combined field experience, our team will continue to generate high-resolution drone-based maps that combine expansive geological and palaeontological datasets. Together, these data allow us to evaluate this model ecosystem in unprecedented detail and simultaneously streamline field programs for future generations of scientists dealing with the unique fossil record of Mongolia. Secondly, by unveiling unique elemental ‘fingerprints’ in the fossil-bearing rocks, we are building geochemical tools that can be used to reassign poached fossils into their specific geological context. This revolutionary tool, which is already gaining scientific traction, will be expanded here to include two of the largest fossil-bearing localities most impoverished by poachers.