Red sandstone in the Gobi that goes orange at sunset, which is how Roy Chapman Andrews came to name it in the 1920s. His American Museum expedition went to Mongolia looking for human origins and found something else: the first dinosaur eggs ever recognised as such, in 1923, which settled the question of how dinosaurs reproduced. The Djadochta Formation exposed here has since produced Protoceratops in numbers, Velociraptor, Oviraptor, Pinacosaurus, Saurornithoides, and early eutherian mammals living alongside them. It is one of the richest Cretaceous sites on Earth and you can walk on it. You cannot take anything: removing fossils without a permit is illegal, Mongolia has prosecuted the trade and repatriated smuggled skeletons, and the site has been hit hard by poaching. Bayanzag, Ömnögovi Province.
Ömnögovi Province, Mongolia
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