Last week's fighting in Jehol meant only hindrance to Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews, famed digger of fossils in Mongolia. Dr. Andrews recognized the State of Manchukuo last autumn, arranged with the Regency to continue his Mongolian diggings. As soon as Japan pacifies the region, he will dart in with Dodge cars, camels and naturalists. He has closed the Peking headquarters from which he led five expeditions between 1921 and 1930 at a cost of $600,000.
While waiting to resume work, Dr. Andrews last week watched his The New Conquest of Central Asia go on sale in Manhattan. It is Vol I of a series of twelve which the American Museum of Natural History is publishing concerning Dr. Andrews' Central Asiatic work. The other eleven are specialized & academic—geology, topography, fossils, reptiles, fishes, mammals of Mongolia and China. The New Conquest of Central Asia recounts for laymen the lively adventures of the expeditions. It describes the nomad life of the Gobi Desert, the thrill of discovering fossils, the troubles of dealing with bandits. It is a narrative for those who must do their exploring from an easy-chair. But Dr. Andrews fears few easy-chairmen will buy a book that looks & sounds as scholarly as The New Conquest of Central Asia. It costs $10.
Fun on the expeditions often consisted of racing desert animals. The Gobi Desert has a rock floor which in many places is smooth enough for a motor car to travel at top speed. Thus Dr. Andrews found that the Mongolian wild ass attains a speed of 40 m.p.h., the wolf 36 m.p.h., the antelope 60 m.p.h. Once from his moving car he shot a running buck, completely severing a hind leg. On three legs the maimed animal kept running at 25 m.p.h. for five miles, then escaped.
Once the party started to map a mirage. Another time they saw marmots pair off, stand "erect on their hind legs, grasping each other with their front paws, and dance slowly about exactly as though they were waltzing." Once a car partially sank in quicksand. Another time, in an old quicksand bed they found the four legs of a baluchitherium, largest animal that ever lived. Each leg was as big around as a fat man. A speck of white in the prevailing red of the desert sufficed to indicate a partially exposed fossil. After a little practice the men spotted digging sites with field glasses. Having discovered a fossil, the diggers used whisk brooms and needles to disengage the item from its matrix. Dr. Andrews was usually chased away from a find. Impetuous, he was apt to use a pickaxe.
Most marvelous results of the ten years digging were dinosaur eggs, baluchitheria, and rats which lived with dinosaurs. In 1900 Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, paleontologist, predicted the finding of great fossil beds in Central Asia. That region, argued Dr. Osborn, was the dispersal point for many species of animals. Man too must have originated there. Dr. Andrews found places among the Gobi dunes where groups of humans once lived. But he could find no traces of very ancient human bones, nor of protohuman fossils. Simple Chinese use fossil bones, which they call dragon bones, for medicine. Way to test a dragon bone is to touch it to the tongue. If the sample clings to the tongue, it is genuine.