Dinosaurs in the Attic

by Douglas Preston

  The stuff really was there—in surprising abundance. As they plunged deeper into Mongolia, they found more and more fossil evidence of dinosaurs and early mammals. In the flat desert, most outcrops could be seen miles away, and the caravan merely had to drive from one outcrop to another to discover new fossils. Their first truly significant find came several weeks into the expedition. A string of unprecedented discoveries had left the party in good humor, and they were sitting in camp, enjoying the sunset. Andrews wrote of this moment in his field journal:

  Nature, the greatest stage manager in the world, outdid herself in the display of changing color piling effect upon effect until we stood silent in awe—at first we had exclaimed breathtakingly at the theatricals but as it became more & more stupendous we all stood silent—I think most of us realized that we were standing on the threshold of one of the most extraordinary moments of our earthly lives—a moment which might never be repeated.... To make our enjoyment complete, Walter and Shack had arrived with the two cars, just a moment before the curtain was lifted.

  They had the dinosaur which Walter had found at Uskuk & which he says is one of the finest things he has ever collected. In the car they also had the end of a humurus, nearly all one side of a jaw & other fragments of a giant Baluchitherium the largest land mammal that ever lived [a kind of giant rhinoceros]. Wang, one of the chauffeurs, had discovered it lying exposed at the bottom of a V-shaped gully at the bad land pocket which they had stopped to investigate on their way to the camp.

  Andrews was intensely excited about the find and talked far into the night about it. The next day they piled into the cars and drove back to the gully. While two men dug a trench near where the jaw had been found, Andrews went prospecting for more fossils along an adjacent ridge. Upon looking over the crest, he immediately spied bones on the other side. Andrews shouted and the others came running. After unearthing several small fragments, they came across the piece de resistance, the giant skull itself, embedded in a huge block of sandstone. "I knew it was time to stop," Andrews wrote, "for I was too excited to do further prospecting."

  At the end of four days they managed to remove the block of sandstone that contained the skull, along with dozens of smaller bones of the animal. The paleontologists carefully divided the block into two sections and strengthened each with burlap soaked in plaster.*20

  Previously, the Baluchitherium had only been known from a few crumbly bone fragments and a piece of jaw. Now, with an almost complete skeleton, Osborn could tell the world what the animal looked like. It stood a full seventeen feet high at the shoulder—almost twice as high as the average elephant today, and a good deal larger than the extinct Imperial Mammoth. The animal grew to be twenty-four feet long. Its long, thick neck was graced by a giant skull sporting massive tusks, which probably allowed it to browse among trees and shrubs.

  Throughout the summer of 1922, the expedition continued to unearth major fossils, and Osborn was well pleased. Although they had not yet discovered the Missing Link, they had found traces of ancient human camps—some 20,000 years old—from an unknown people they called the Dune Dwellers. Andrews hypothesized that the Dune Dwellers were the aboriginal descendents of the earliest man; he hinted to Osborn that they might find the Missing Link at any time now.

  During the next field season, on July 13, 1923, the expedition made a discovery that caused everyone to forget about the missing "Missing Link." George Olson, the young assistant in paleontology, reported during the afternoon siesta that he had found some fossil eggs weathering out of the sandstone at the Flaming Cliffs of Shabarakh Usu. Since the strata dated from the Cretaceous (the last age of dinosaurs), Andrews dismissed the eggs as being natural sandstone concretions. Nevertheless, after tea Olson led them to his find. Sure enough, three unmistakable (if broken) eggs lay next to a sandstone ledge, with more bits of shell sticking out of the rock. The scientists began to argue. Could these be dinosaur eggs? No dinosaur eggs had ever been found, and scientists didn't even know how dinosaurs bore their young. (While many modern reptiles lay eggs, some bear live young.) They criticized the conjecture from every viewpoint. Could birds have laid these eggs? Probably not, as no fossil birds had been found there, and Cretaceous birds were exceedingly rare. Could the eggs be from a later deposit? No, as they were clearly encased in the original rock, in which the expedition had already found Cretaceous dinosaurs in numbers. Finally, the group was forced to accept the veracity of their find. If they hadn't been laid by a dinosaur, what other animal could have laid them? The question was settled.

  With mounting excitement they began to brush the sand away from the ledge, exposing more of the fossils. Conclusive proof shortly emerged, Lying on top of the eggs was the fragmentary skeleton of a tiny, toothless dinosaur, which Andrews theorized had been feasting on the eggs when both beast and nest were covered by sand. The eggs were remarkably well preserved. The usual bumps, rugosities, and pores found on eggs were all clearly visible. More eggs appeared to be encased in the sandstone, and Granger carefully cut out a large block of stone, which was shipped intact to the Museum. Back in New York, paleontologists painstakingly chipped away the remaining rock, exposing a baker's dozen of large, oblong eggs in two layers, arranged in concentric circles just as the dinosaur had laid them millions of years before. The popular and scientific worlds were electrified by the discovery, and newspapers across the country reported the find.

  The expedition dug up dinosaur eggs from a number of species by the gross, some of which contained delicate, fossilized dinosaur embryos.*21

  It is ironic that the expedition's greatest fossil discovery attracted little popular attention. In 1923 Granger discovered a tiny skull in a nodule of sandstone, which he labeled as "an unidentified reptile" and sent back for analysis to the Museum. A year later a paleontologist at the Museum chipped out the tiny skull and was astonished to discover that it was from a mammal, not a reptile—a mammal that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. Very few mammal fossils from this era existed, and most belonged to a group that subsequently became extinct. This one, however, belonged to a placental (as opposed to marsupial) mammal, and thus appeared to be the antecedent of most mammal life on the planet.*22 The Museum wrote back to Granger: "Do your utmost to get some other skulls." When Granger finally received the letter in 1925 from one of their camel supply trains, he casually strolled to the base of the Flaming Cliffs where so many other fossils had been discovered, including the dinosaur eggs. In less than an hour he discovered a second rare mammal skull in a sandstone concretion! The expedition dropped all work and spent the next seven days collecting and cracking open thousands of concretions, getting a total of six more skulls for their efforts. The seven skulls represented several different species of early mammal, from four genera and two families—quite a haul, scientifically speaking. "It was possibly the most valuable seven days of work in the whole history of palaeontology up to date," Andrews stated in his usual hyperbolic fashion.

  Back at the Museum, Osborn and his assistants eagerly studied the fragile skulls. Although the specimens were from different species, they looked very much alike—a small, furry creature with a pointed snout, about the size of a rat. As placental mammals, they were the primitive ancestors of all such life on the planet, including apes and man; ironically, these were the true "missing links" in mammalian evolution.

  Since these animals lived during the Age of Dinosaurs and came from the same formation as the dinosaur eggs, paleontologists naturally wondered if they were responsible for the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. Perhaps, Osborn theorized, these tiny mammals ate the dinosaur eggs and finally drove the lumbering beasts to extinction, leaving a huge ecological niche to be filled by the tiny mammals' descendents. (While today there are many theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs, this particular one is still considered viable, as a partial cause, by many paleontologists.)

  The expedition was constantly beset by bad weather, bandits, and political troubl
es. Severe storms descended on the party without warning, tearing their tents to shreds and scattering their equipment. One such storm hit the expedition shortly after the discovery of the six mammal skulls, and nearly reburied them—along with the expedition. Andrews awoke suddenly one morning while they were still camped at the Flaming Cliffs, "with a strange feeling of unrest vibrating every nerve." In the dark, he buckled on his revolver over his pajamas and circled the camp, which lay in stillness. Nothing seemed amiss, so he slipped back into his sleeping bag but couldn't sleep. "At the end of fifteen minutes," he wrote, "I slowly became conscious that the air was vibrating to a continuous even roar, which was getting louder every second." He suddenly realized that a desert storm was on its way. The first blast of wind bellied in the tent, filling it with choking sand, and Andrews pulled the bag over his head.

  The wind passed suddenly, and at dawn the company arose to see a strange, tawny cloud hanging on the horizon and heading in their direction. Shortly the second storm struck, "like the burst of a high-explosive shell," Andrews wrote. "Even with my head covered I heard the crash and rip of falling tents. . . . As our tent swept away, [Granger] had leapt to save the box that contained the six tiny fossil Cretaceous mammal skulls."

  The wind tore Andrews' pajama top right off his back, and lashed his skin with sand until it bled. When the gale at last ceased as suddenly as it had begun, the camp was a wreck. Basins, clothes, and ripped tents had been lifted by the wind and deposited in a half-mile swath across the desert. Smashed tables and chairs littered the campsite. If the cars hadn't been parked facing the wind, Andrews wrote, "they would certainly have been overturned."

  Another particularly severe bout of weather occurred when the expedition was camped in a shallow basin at Ula Usu in Outer Mongolia. The group had struck several fossil deposits and were working them when the storm hit. It came upon them suddenly, like "a thousand shrieking demons," and caught Andrews several hundred yards from camp. The sand and gravel swirled so thick that breathing became difficult and seeing impossible. Andrews dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl along the ridge at the edge of the basin, finally tumbling into a hollow depression where he lay huddled against the wind. The same storm caught Granger at one of the sites. He took refuge in a pit next to a Titanotherium skeleton. Propelled by hundred-mile-an-hour winds, gravel and sand buried him up to the neck and, according to Andrews, brought him to the brink of suffocation. The storm sandblasted the car windshields so severely that they had to be knocked out in order for the drivers to see where they were going.

  The Chinese had repeatedly warned Andrews about Mongolian bandits, and indeed, almost weekly, in the more populated areas of Mongolia, travelers were being robbed and sometimes murdered by marauding brigands and soldiers. Andrews always packed a revolver and a cartridge belt, and often carried his 6.5 mm Mannlicher rifle when away from the camp. The guns were necessary for procuring food as well as for defense. One of the cars carried a mounted machine gun that could shoot two hundred rounds a minute. Andrews had no qualms about training his guns on an obstructive border guard or a petty Mongolian bureaucrat to get what he wanted. As for the bandits, he seemed to welcome an exciting confrontation.

  Most encounters with bandits were short; once the Mongols realized that Andrews had guns and was going to use them, they usually fled. One incident—quite typical—occurred near Kalgan. Andrews had driven ahead of the other cars and was traversing a road where he knew some Russians had been robbed a few weeks earlier. Just as he was wondering if the brigands would attack him, he spotted a lone horseman on a nearby hilltop, apparently signaling to others on the far side of the ridge. He also saw the flash of sunlight on a gun barrel. Andrews drew his revolver and fired at the man twice, "whoever he might be." The man ducked behind the ridge and a moment later Andrews' car topped the divide. Sure enough, three mounted brigands were waiting at the bottom of the slope, blocking the dirt track and unshipping their rifles. Without a moment's hesitation, Andrews drew his revolver and gunned the engine, racing downhill directly at them at forty miles per hour. The Mongol horses took fright and began bucking madly, nearly throwing the men from their saddles. Andrews wrote with satisfaction, "The only thing the brigands wanted to do was to get away, and they fled in panic. When I last saw them they were breaking all speed records on the other side of the valley."

  Another story is told in the Museum about a narrow escape from bandits. The expedition archeologist, Nels C. Nelson, had a glass eye. At one point the company was surrounded by hostile and well-armed Mongols. Nelson, the story goes, removed his glass eye and showed it to the natives, who fled in consternation and terror.

  After months of hard living and comparative privation, the members of the expedition spent most of their winters in Peking, living a life of oriental luxury. In the legation reserved for foreigners, they rented a large compound from a Chinese prince, which consisted of eight courtyards with buildings on three sides of each. Andrews' building contained 161 small rooms, which he combined into about forty. Over twenty servants—more numerous than the members of the expedition—waited on them, as in China the custom was that each servant did only one kind of work. Managing the servants was a Byzantine task left to the head butler, who hired all the rest of the servants, took care of "squeeze" (small bribes essential to keep things running smoothly), and collected and distributed the wages. "It is a delightful Aladdin's Lamp sort of existence," Andrews wrote. "You say what you want and things happen. It is best not to inquire how they are to be done."

  Their social life in Peking consisted of an endless round of lavish dinner parties with the British and Americans living in the legation. A typical dinner might include such wild game as snipe, woodcock, pheasant, roe deer, or boar, all washed down with the very finest French wines, Scotch whiskeys, and English beers.

  For sport, Andrews and his group of friends rode to hounds, played polo, raced ponies, and played tennis. During the racing season, Andrews rented a temple near the racecourse. Called the Temple of Hopeful Fecundity, the five-centuries-old building was nestled in the hills outside Peking. Ancient cedars and a profusion of flowers tended by monks graced its courtyards. Apparently no one minded that the temple was rented to foreigners, and business was conducted as usual. Worshipers journeyed there from Peking to burn joss sticks and pray for male issue.

  Aside from the usual prostitutes, which some expedition members patronized, there were more unusual amusements in Peking for the foreigners. In 1926 the gates of Peking were barred and sandbagged, while the city was assaulted by an army led by a rebellious Chinese general. The foreign population, Andrews wrote, "were having a glorious time." Every morning promptly at ten o'clock, an airplane droned into the city from the south, dropped a few gunpowder bombs on the city, turned around, and flew back from whence it came. "The roof of the Peking Hotel," Andrews wrote, "was the best place from which to see the show. 'Bombing breakfast' became the newest social diversion. A dozen guests would be invited to breakfast in the hotel at nine o'clock. At five minutes to ten they would adjourn to the roof, watch the planes do their stuff and then jump into motor cars to inspect the scene of devastation. As they were small bombs filled with black powder the damage was slight."

  In the beginning the Chinese civil wars were more of a nuisance than a danger. But in 1926 things began to get serious, and "all tradition and good form were knocked into a cocked hat." For the first time the Chinese soldiers did not respect a foreign flag, and instead took it as an invitation to open fire, whereas previously the expedition could cross battlefronts unscathed merely by flying the American flag. That year, in fact, Andrews nearly lost his life attempting to cross enemy lines. He needed to get to Tientsin (later named Tinnjin) from Peking on expedition business. Andrews and three others piled into a car and headed for the outskirts of Peking. The gates of the city were heavily guarded, but the soldiers let them pass. On the road they met the retreating troops of one army, retiring in good order and "almost cheerfu
l."

  We drove on slowly and eventually passed beyond the rear of the retreating army. For three or four miles the countryside was deserted, houses closed, and all as quiet as the grave. We were five or six hundred yards from the ancient marble bridge at Tungchow when there came the sharp crack of a rifle and a bullet struck beside the front wheel. A second later a mass of soldiers appeared on the road and bullets began spattering around us like hailstones. They had opened fire with a machine gun but it was aimed too low and the bullets were kicking the dust just in front of us. The soldiers could see the American flag plainly enough but that made not the slightest difference.

  Fortunately this spot on the road was wide enough for the car to be turned and I swung it about in record time. The bullets now were buzzing like a swarm of bees just above our heads. Forty yards down the road a sharp curve took us out of sight of the machine gun.... The ride became an exciting one. All the houses which had seemed so peaceful actually were occupied by the advance guards of Fengtien soldiers. They had let us pass because of the American flag but when they heard the firing in our rear and saw us returning at such a mad speed, they evidently thought that we were anybody's game. Each and every one decided to take a shot at us.