The New Conquest of Central Asia

 In the 1920s the author, Roy Chapman Andrews, working with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, went on several expeditions to Mongolia to collect specimens of modern day plants and animals for the AMNH and The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, dig for fossils, do geological surveys of the region and look for evidence of early man.

This book reads like and explorer's journal that the reader a first hand account of the adventures at the "top of the World". The logistics of a trip like this were formidable. At the turn of the 20th Century, Mongolia was one of the least known regions on the globe and any expedition to this foreboding kingdom would face obstacles of epic proportions.

Paleontology and fossil collecting were the high point of the book. And the expedition made some extraordinary finds; and ancient rhinoceros that was the largest land mammal known to science; another giant was possibly the largest carnivorous mammal that ever lived, it's astonishing skull was a meter long and equipped with jaws that could crush the largest bones. There were Velociraptors, Protoceratops and the misnamed "Egg Thief" but the discovery of dinosaur eggs, nests and nesting grounds are the finds that are most remembered. Speculations abut possible migration routes between Eurasia and North America, Paleolithic humans on the Gobi Plateau, all hint at possible future scientific theories.

All in all this is an important look back in science/history with insights on Roy Chapman Andrews, who was instrumental in shaping our knowledge of Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Earth Science in general.

( from 'Last Ranger' at Good Reads)