10 TON MONSTER

Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1929, Page 8

10 TON MONSTER

GOBI DESERT SECRETS. LONDON, November 20. Life in the Gobi deesrt, in Alongolia. millions of years ago, and the discovery there of the bones of the largest animal known to science—a monster weighing 10 tons —were described yesterday by Air Roy Chapman Andrews, the American explorer. Air Andrews who has just returned from his fourth expedition in the desert, said:

Our greatest discovery this year were fossils. The hones of this new manual, which lived eight or nine million years ago, show that it was 25ft. long and l ift, high to the shoulders. It was as big as a freight car. SKELETON TOO 810 TO RACK. AYe have the bones of about eight or ton of these monsters and one skeleton tlmt is practically complete. The skeleton is so huge that it was 'found impossible to ..nek it. but we hope to recover it. next year. This animal will not be named until it readies the American Alusetmi of'Natural History. We also found a gaint mastodom—a prehistoric elephant—with a jaw eight feet long shaped like a coal scoop. The front of its face is unlike anything we have seen before. It lived about 6.000,000 years ago.

Among other duds were four Titanothere skeletons—animals that are something like the rhinoceros, those have only been found before in America. and this proves the migration that must have taken place in early times from Asia to America.

Another strange find was the skeleton of an animal—a new type—with a skull shaped like a stock saddle, the pummel, or its nose, pointing straight up in the air and its mouth underneath. AVhat it had in front of its face no one knows.

AVe have always thought that traces of human life would he found in Central Asia, hut so far we have not found anything very definite on the human side. STONE AGE CULTURE.

AAV came across remarkable specimens of stone age culture, and there were traces that people lived there at least 20 or 25 thousand years ago. AAV found that they lived there in millions and on the plateau there was evidence that they must have lived largely on birds and frogs. Air Andrews said they could only judge by the implements they found that human life existed there because no sign of caves was found.