Dinosaurs at the Ends of the Earth: The Story of the Central Asiatic Expeditions - Softcover

Brian Floca

4

29 ratings by Goodreads

9780439287159: Dinosaurs at the Ends of the Earth: The Story of the Central Asiatic Expeditions

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0439287154 ISBN 13: 9780439287159

Publisher: Scholastic, 2001

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A mystery, vistas, camels, a sandstorm, and dinosaurs...what more could a young dreamer want?

The Gobi Desert, Mongolia: "A land of secrets, " says Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews. He's talking in his jovial way to Walter Granger, a paleontologist, and George Olsen, their assistant, a young man whose surprising discovery made scientific history. Andrews led five expeditions across the Gobi for the American Museum of Natural History. This book chronicles those of 1922 and 1923, when he took with him some twenty men and an unlikely fleet of cars as an alternative to the more traditional camels. Originally expected to unearth signs that man had originated in Asia, these explorations stumbled across an unexpected find. And George did the stumbling-down the Flaming Cliffs near Shabarakh Usu, where dinosaurs roamed eighty million years ago. The find was a delicate egg, heavy as stone now and the answer to an old mystery: Dinosaurs were not born; they were hatched! A route map, a time line, crisp text, and breathtaking pictures present the sequence and excitement of bone-finding and preserving in the field for young readers eighty million years later.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-6-A highly pictorial, fictionalized account of real scientific expeditions led by Roy Chapman Andrews. Under the aegis of the American Museum of Natural History, the goal of the Central Asiatic Expeditions was to discover evidence of human origin in the heart of Mongolia's Gobi Desert, and while no human/hominid fossils were found, what was discovered made global headlines. Floca has braided these marvelous adventures together, focusing on young George Olsen, a new assistant to the Chief Paleontologist, and his discovery of the first clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs. The author seamlessly weaves events from several expeditions, adds some logical dialogue, and teams the result with bright, realistic watercolors to transport readers across space and time to the vast, arid Gobi and the startling Flaming Cliffs. While purists will carp at the m?lange of incidents and the fictional dialogue, this is a worthy introduction to the romantic era of fossil hunting. Ann Bausum's superb Dragon Bones and Dinosaur Eggs (National Geographic, 2000), Margery Facklam's excellent Tracking Dinosaurs in the Gobi (21st Century, 1997), and Mark Norell and Lowell Dingus's riveting A Nest of Dinosaurs (Doubleday, 1999) are all more scientific, but are for a slightly older audience.
Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

The picture-book format's sweeping, delicately detailed watercolor illustrations distinguish this from most dinosaur books. What's more, instead of focusing on the dinosaurs themselves, Floca tells the story behind the discovery that dinosaurs hatched from eggs. He introduces the three main explorers--Roy Chapman Andrews, Walter Granger, and George Olsen--on the title page, before continuing with an account of their 1922 expedition to Mongolia. The journey is amazingly smooth, aside from ruts in the trail that stop the cars. The men even manage to meet the 75-camel supply caravan, which left a month earlier than they did, within an hour of their arrival on site. The account has a fresh, affable tone, which Floca may have achieved, in part, by fictionalizing some of the elements, which he admits in an endnote. Although that makes it difficult to gauge how reliable this is as a source of information, it makes for an engaging adventure. Four Mongolian dinosaurs are described on the endpapers. Susan Dove Lempke

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