Andrews in Mongolia,1928: on the lookout for dangerous fossils

This is a brief account of the discovery of a pile of fossils in Mongolia. Wait -don't you dare close this tab. Roy Chapman Andrews discovered them, a real-life Indiana Jones and China hand on par with Ernest "Kick-a-Boxer" Morrison. Braving the perils of the Gobi Desert, Andrews led an expedition of paleontologists to unimagined success when he stumbled upon the now-legendary Flaming Cliffs.

He's proof that accidental China expats can actually be of some benefit to mankind. Yet like many a Yank, he began his Asian second-life in Japan. There was much in 1909 Yokohama to entice the young adventurer, plenty of the whales he had come to study, and bargain houses of ill-fame to unwind in ("Short time, three yen; all night, five yen, including breakfast.")

Before long he was searching for the elusive devil fish in Korea, then hunting man-eating tigers in the remote forests of Manchuria. It now seems inevitable that he found himself sojourning in Beijing, which at that time was roiling under the tenuous presidency of Yuan Shi-kai. Andrews found himself at home in the rarefied salons of expat Beijing, though, sipping cocktails at the Hotel of the Six Nations, and waltzing at Legation parties.

But his wanderlust forbade him stay long. Over the next ten years, he took part in or led a series of expeditions to the Arctic as well as Central Asia. His narrow escapes and acts of reckless daring drew admiration from the millions who read of them in breathless newspaper accounts. Given his inability to reverse dunk a basketball, it may be hard for us in these enlightened times to believe this glorified hobo an international hero. Yet he was.

It was this famed-adventurer status, as well as a feat of high-level persuasion, that got Andrews his five month expedition to the Gobi Desert in 1922. The American Museum of Natural History provided full academic support, while a handful of Wall Street financiers had staked the cash. Andrews and his party of scientists hopped a train for Inner Mongolia, from a Beijing convulsed by the rumor that two top generals were about to fight it out for control of the city.

The expedition, like any ambitious one, had its share of troubles. The few cars were carrying more than twice their designed load and constantly getting mired or breaking down. Signs of Russian and Chinese, as well as internecine Chinese fighting, were everywhere. More than once they stumbled on scenes of grisly carnage, the carcasses of dead soldiers but more often innocent civilians bearing mute testimony to the dire political climate.

Andrews and his crew also had bandits to deal with. Then again, the progeny of Genghis had grown decidedly less direct by the time the expedition had to deal with them. In fact, potential bandits and peace-loving nomads alike were generally startled into fleeing the scene whenever the expeditions' racketing cars approached. Andrews frequently found himself prevailing on his translator to reassure terrified females, their protectors having just galloped away. Still, night raids and other predations on the expedition's vulnerability posed a constant threat. Coupled with the privations of arguably the world's most inhospitable desert, such circumstances precluded the sort of leisurely bashing about preferred by more gentlemanly scientific sorties.

The mission was soon yielding fossilized fruit, however. Only four days past the Great Wall, expeditionary Walter Granger found the leg bone of a dinosaur, the first ever evidence of such in the region. It was exhilarating; several learned academicians had soberly assured them they would find no trace of dinosaurs in Mongolia. Of course, the greatest prize hoped for were remains of the missing link, not the thunder lizards. Nevertheless, that evening's rejoicing was so intense that scarce mind was given to the sandstorm that ripped open the tents, scattered belongings to the winds, and carried off Liu the Cook's celebratory roast goose.

More triumphs and travails awaited. Fossils were scooped up by the pound, as were extortionary fees by Mongolian military and officials. Andrews' man J.B. Shackleford managed to unwittingly film Mongolia's last Maidari Festival, a procession of the Bodhisattva, essentially a living Buddha. The Festival was stamped out by communists. Andrews no doubt shed few tears. His memoirs bristle with tales of syphilitic monks who "spent their time chanting Tibetan prayers they did not understand and living as dissolute human parasites, whose beliefs fostered superstition and discouraged learning, enterprise, and ambition."

Ironically, during the expedition he relied much on lamaseries for both relief and directions. And it was the lamas of the remote Ongin Gol-in Sumu monastery who directed the scientists, wandering lost and bereft of their caravan, towards both the path and the Flaming Cliffs.

Camped by the path, the rescued explorers stared down into a massive pink sandstone basin. It was Shackleford who first wandered down to inspect an unusual outcropping, a rocky pinnacle which, on closer inspection, was capped by the complete skull of the world's first fossilized Psittacosaurus. The following days' collecting was easier than an Easter egg hunt designed for two year olds. Dino-teeth, femurs, even whole skeletons, lay about as though they couldn't wait to get to the museum, making a mockery of the succeeding generations of earnest paleontologists who spend three months on their knees, painstakingly dusting a lump of dirt only to find it's a coprolith, not a velociraptor skull.

Despite having failed to bag their most-hoped for quarry, the missing link, the expedition returned to Beijing and international acclaim. The Flaming Cliffs are still hailed as one of the 20th century's most significant paleontological discoveries, second only to Leakey and his monkey shines. Another case of accidents paying off scientifically, and what a shiftless expat can accomplish if you leave him to his own devices.

This has been a Dada-esque review of the book Dragon Hunter, by Charles Gallenkamp

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