Archeological and paleontological digging in Africa and Europe (TIME, Oct. 22) has its counterpart in the Americas, and also in China, whence comes the report from Roy Chapman Andrews that his expedition has discovered the eggs of the dinosaur.
China. Mr. Andrews, accompanied by his wife Yvette, heads the third Asiatic expedition of the American Museum of National History. Leaving Peking last Spring they went to the railroad's end beyond Kalgan in the Khingan mountains. By motor they passed through the gateway of Inner Mongolia and across the Gobi Desert, 1,000 miles. Some went to Urga, present capital of Mongolia; Andrews and the main party turned south to the Altai ranges to fossil fields located last season when the skull of Baluchitherium, giant primitive rhinoceros, was discovered.
Wildest hopes of the size and importance of fossil deposits have been confirmed. Asia is the center of dispersal of mammalian life. That was a theory. It is in process of being proved. The existence of a land bridge between Asia and North America has unquestionably been established. Until these deposits were found, the chief source of dinosaur remains was in the Rocky Mountain states.
Two tons of fossils have been despatched to America, including the skull of a creodont, the largest known primitive carnivorous animal, measuring 33x21 inches; teeth and jaws of coryphodon, lophidon and other large carnivorae; several skulls of the rhinoceros-like titanotheres; some complete skeletons of dinosaurs of the inguanodon type. The discovery of several fossil dinosaur eggs gives definite proof that the prehistoric reptiles were hatched from eggs. As eggs contain over 90% water, they are rarely fossilized. The deposits were distributed through the Mesozoic and early Tertiary eras, roughly 5,000,000 to 15,000,000 years ago.
Mr. Andrews owes his position as leader of the Asiatic expedition to a unique combination of scientific authority and practical resourcefulness in big game hunting and open-air life. He is as thoroughly at home in these as the late Theodore Roosevelt, the late Paul J. Rainey, Martin Johnson, Carl E. Akeley and other famous sportsmen. He is 39 years old, a graduate of Beloit College (1906) and an M. A. of Columbia (1913). He has been associate curator of mammals in the American Museum of Natural History for over 15 years, has taken part as special naturalist or director in several expeditions for the Museum in Alaska and the Orient. The first Asiatic expedition of the museum went out 1916-1917, the second 1919, and the present one, beginning in 1922, will last until 1927. At the end of the present season the expedition will take a recess for refitment and an American lecture tour. In the party this year are J. B. Shackelford, photographer and cinematographer, equipped with special Akeley cameras, Dr. Charles P. Berkey, geologist, Dr. Walter Granger, paleontologist, and other scientists.
Later on the expedition may continue southward into Eastern Turkestan and Tibet. In the same region, southwest of Urga, is the site of Karakhoto, buried capital of the Mongol emperors, discovered by the Russian scientist Kozlov (TIME, March 17), who is now on another expedition to central Asia.