The Gobi Desert - Expedition journal page 3

Screenwashing: the big part of our job! But it requires water, not an easy thing in the desert... Fortunately a Mongolian family, living a few miles from Subeng, supplies us with water of the well they use as a watering place for their cattle. Each morning their youngest son brings us a tank of water on his little tractor.

Annelise, being in charge of the logistics, makes sure that everyone has all the materials needed, and fills the bathtubs.

Guo Dian Jong melts the clay sediments in water. Pieter and Thierry will pass the mud obtained in this way through sieves of 5 mm, 2 mm and 0.5 mm meshes. This should concentrate the fossils. Palaeontology is not just an intellectual matter!

After half an hour we find our first catch in the 5 mm sieve: 1 cm long teeth with many little cusps. They belonged to Lambdopsalis bulla, a multituberculate mammal. The multituberculates were a very primitive group (midway between the monotremes and the marsupials) and became extinct 35 million years ago. They were the most common mammals during the time of the dinosaurs.

The residue in the 2 mm and 0.5 mm sieves is left to dry on canvases. In the meantime, Mr Wou does his Tai-Chi. It seems this quickens the drying!