From Hunting for Dinosaurs by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska
During the roaring '20s, the American Museum of Natural History conducted a series of successful expeditions to the Gobi Desert. After 1930, political changes in Mongolia rendered the Gobi's fossil treasures inaccessible to the West, but scientific research continued. First Soviet then Polish-Mongolian teams ventured into the Gobi in search of dinosaur and mammal fossils.
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From Hunting for Dinosaurs by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska |
Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska, shown on the left in this photo, first heard about paleontological expeditions to the Gobi in the war torn University of Warsaw in 1946. Just 16 years later, much to her pleasant surprise, she was organizing Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi. (Kielan-Jaworowska first visited the Gobi herself in 1964.) From 1963 to 1971, these expeditions unearthed one amazing fossil after another, including sauropods, tarbosaurs (similar to T. rex), duckbilled dinosaurs, ostrich-like dinosaurs, and mammals from the Cretaceous and early Tertiary. In 1965 alone, her team shipped over 20 tons of fossils back to Poland, including the remains of a previously unknown dinosaur with a foot-long claw. But the most spectacular find came in 1971: a Protoceratops and a juvenile Velociraptor tangled in a deadly struggle. How the fossilization process managed to catch these two in the act is still debated.
 From The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard |
In addition to numerous monographs describing fossil finds, Kielan-Jaworowska wrote a wonderful book entitled Hunting for Dinosaurs describing her adventures thus far. (The English version of the book was published in 1969.) In it, she described yurt hotels, vehicle breakdowns repaired by multi-talented Mongolian drivers, campfire songs, biting flies, swarming mosquitoes, venomous snakes and spiders, sandstorms that darkened the sky as fast as eclipses, temperatures over 100°F and rewarding work. As if anticipating both the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur extinction and society's growing ecological awareness, she explained why the extinction of the dinosaurs was so puzzling, and finished the book by observing that the study of mass extinctions might well improve our own future.
Amid the tensions of the Cold War, it must have been difficult to write a book with international appeal, but Kielan-Jaworowska managed with tact — giving credit where it was due to both her Soviet and American predecessors — and humor. She included a report from a colleague who recounted that one evening the Mongolian hosts serenaded the Poles with beautiful songs, then insisted their guests reciprocate. "It turned out that singing was not exactly our forte, and the only songs we could execute passably in chorus were Christmas carols. When requested to translate the words, we got out of the difficulty by claiming they were old revolutionary songs."
For more information:
Hunting for Dinosaurs by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska
The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard
Hunting Dinosaurs by Louie Psihoyos
Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated August 21, 2005