Yahoo Autos By SUV, Hunting for Dinosaur Bones in the Mongolian Desert
There was a time for many of us when the idea of bounding through the rugged terrain of an enticingly foreign land in big trucks searching for hidden treasure seemed like maybe the coolest thing a person could do. It's a kind of Indiana Jones idyll: travel, adventure, foiling baddies. For most, that time passed somewhere around the discovery of the opposite gender. But for some, even some who have aged enough to have been inspired as kids by the first Indiana Jones movie, that fantasy remains quite near the surface, barely covered by a light dusting of adulthood.
To its eternal credit, Nissan's luxury brand, Infiniti, employs some people of this latter type. And unlike your average Walter Mitty, Infiniti has the resources to do something about it. So, the automaker mounted a paleontological expedition this past summer in association with the Explorers Club, Hong Kong Chapter, and Mongolia's Institute of Paleontology and Geology. Why? Because finding dinosaur bones in the desert is awesome. Care to consider another tenuous connection? The expedition marks the 100-year anniversary of Roy Chapman Andrews's pioneering expedition during which the first fossilized dinosaur eggs were unearthed. One more: The Andrews expedition was allegedly the first archeological mission to use motor vehicles. That those vehicles were Dodges and the expedition wasn't exactly 100 years ago are minor details that were not going to derail this trip.
And this is the impossibly convoluted route by which I found myself in a large tent in the Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, an hour's drive from a tiny airport that has exactly zero paved roads leading to it. Okay, look, it was technically a tent in that it was a fabric-walled structure, but unlike the tents of the nomadic herders that made this sort of construction popular, my double-wide abode had a permanent stone foundation, a sumptuous bed, and an adjoining structure with a flush toilet and one of those absurdly large rain-shower heads. It was a quick stroll from a stone lodge with an enviable selection of alcoholic beverages on offer. I mean, this was Infiniti, after all, not Nissan. A little luxury is to be expected. By the way, don't call my quarters a yurt. That's the Turkish word for these roundhouses. In Mongolia, it's a ger.
Our transportation choices for this boondoggle were the vehicular equivalents of a posh ger: luxury SUVs. Infiniti brought in QX50s, QX60s, and QX80s from points across the globe, since the company doesn't sell new vehicles in Mongolia. This is a hardscrabble country where horses and Russian military vans are viable transportation out in the Gobi. The capital city, Ulaanbaatar, is crowded with secondhand Toyota Priuses brought in from Japan (the hybrid's popularity is largely a product of its exemption from excise taxes). But the Infinitis were plenty capable of handling the ruts, lumps, dust, and rocks of the desert. For the most part, the area of the Gobi where we wandered required no low range. It's a landscape more likely to shake a vehicle to pieces over months and years than one in which we would become wedged into a rock crevice. The big, truckish QX80 is most at home here; its relatively soft suspension and ample ground clearance keep the passenger cabin pleasantly isolated from the earth. The QX60 feels, as it does back in the States, like a minivan. But in Mongolia, it feels like a minivan you're abusing by driving over rough terrain. The little QX50, although sporting a suspension tune uncomfortably stiff for the dirt tracks, is at least punchy enough to happily slide around on the dirt. Happier, in fact, than my amiable Mongolian guide, who had a small crystal affixed to her upper left lateral tooth. She scolded me for driving too fast.
My tour of fossil-rich areas was not really part of the official expedition. The serious business of paleontology was handled by paleontologists with lidar-equipped drones and knowledge, not by car-magazine editors. Unjust, I know. But, nonetheless, I persevered in shuffling across the desert floor, looking down. And, in addition to an empty vodka bottle, I found fossilized dinosaur bones. Okay, it was the dino-bone equivalent of scree, bits and pieces that real scientists would ignore. But, dammit, it was once part of an 80-million-year-old Protoceratops, a quadrupedal dinosaur about the length of a domestic pig that had a sweet neck frill on the back of his (or her) head. Or at least I assume that's what it was. At about an inch in length, the five bone fragments I found were too small and disassociated from the rest of the skeleton to identify properly. So, like, they were probably from something super cool and undiscovered. But they remain on the surface of the Gobi as I write this, waiting to be discovered and named something other than Danosaur.
So, my involvement was as a witness, not really a participant in the expedition. No matter; the Institute of Paleontology and Geology, not exactly flush with cash, got some funding to do its work, and several adult-aged children got to play in the dirt.
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