Going Gobi

This Web site follows scientists on a journey from New York to the Gobi Desert for a fossil hunt. Journals and photographs help bring the expedition to life. Kids track buried fossils (and the scientists who find them) from distant desert to museum.

"You almost can't get farther away from New York than Ulaanbaatar. Ulaanbaatar is thousands of miles from New York City; the journey takes three days by plane. Along the way, the team stops in Tokyo and Beijing. And then Ukhaa Tolgod, one of the main destinations in the Gobi Desert, is still three difficult days of driving away." Photographs, journals and narrative help elementary and younger middle school students go Gobi with AMNH scientists, preparing for the expedition, getting there, and hunting for and finding fossils to bring back for further study.

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Explore the following links and read the articles in order to respond to the posted topic:

Do you think birds are modern day dinosaurs?

Link: http://omnimag.com/archives/chats/in120896.html

Excerpt from Time Traveler:

But in the late 1950s, neither I nor paleontological experts knew many things that we know today. For one thing, we didn't know that some dinosaurs indeed survived that massive extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period, the last chapter in the age of the dinosaurs. The survivors were of course birds. We have strong evidence that birds likely evolved from a subgroup of dinosaurs including active, predaceous, and probably very intelligent forms like Tyrannosaurus and Velociralptor. Today a few scientists still object to this connection between birds and dinosaurs, but they do so in denial of a mass of accumulating paleontological data. This includes newly discovered fossils from China that show that nonflying dinosaurs much like Velociraptor had feathers!

Link: http://enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/Dinobirds.html
Link: http://abc.net.au/science/slab/dinobird/story.htm
Link: http://abc.net.au/science/slab/dinobird/overview.htm

Read:

Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?

Ask your average paleontologist who is familiar with the phylogeny of vertebrates and they will probably tell you that yes, birds (avians) are dinosaurs.

Additional Resources

Book
Cummings, Pat and Linda Cummings. Talking With Adventurers. 1998.

National Geographic Magazine
Webster, Donovan. "Dinosaurs of the Gobi: Unearthing a Fossil Trove." Pages 70-89. July 1996.

Research Magazine
Novacek, Michael J. "An Early Eocene (Wasatchian) Mammal Fauna from Baja California." Pages 376-388. Summer 1987.

Web Site
Dinosaur Eggs, an NG Online Feature.

Web Site
http://ology.amnh.org/paleontology/gobi/index.html

Michael Novacek is curator at The American Museum of Natural History. Students can join Novacek and other research scientists online in an exploration of the Gobi.

Dinosaurs in Patagonia

In 1997, a team of scientists traveled to a remote region of Argentina to search for early birds and their ancestors. Instead, they made the remarkable discovery of a large dinosaur nesting ground.

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