The Flaming Cliffs site (also known as Bayanzag ( zh, 巴彥扎格), Bain-Dzak or Bayn Dzak) ( mn, Баянзаг ''rich in

saxaul ''Haloxylon'' is a genus of shrubs or small trees, belonging to the plant family Amaranthaceae. ''Haloxylon'' and its species are known by the common name saxaul. According to Dmitry Ushakov, the name borrowed from the Kazakh "seksevil". In moder ...

''), with the alternative Mongolian name of mn, Улаан Эрэг (''red cliffs''), is a region of the

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (Chinese: 戈壁 (沙漠), Mongolian: Говь (ᠭᠣᠪᠢ)) () is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, and is the sixth largest desert in the world. Geography The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast an ...

in the

Ömnögovi Province Ömnögovi ( mn, Өмнөговь ''Ömnögovǐ'', ''South Gobi'') is an aimag (province) of Mongolia, located in the south of the country, in the Gobi Desert. Ömnögovi is Mongolia's largest aimag. The capital is Dalanzadgad. The province is r ...

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

, in which important

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

finds have been made. It was given this name by American

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Roy Chapman Andrews Roy Chapman Andrews (January 26, 1884 – March 11, 1960) was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He led a series of expeditions through the politically disturbed C ...

, who visited in the 1920s. The area is most famous for yielding the first discovery of

dinosaur egg Dinosaur eggs are the organic vessels in which a dinosaur embryo develops. When the first scientifically documented remains of non-avian dinosaurs were being described in England during the 1820s, it was presumed that dinosaurs had laid eggs bec ...

s. Other finds in the area include specimens of ''

Velociraptor ''Velociraptor'' (; ) is a genus of small dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 75 million to 71 million years ago. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the pa ...

'' and

eutheria Eutheria (; from Greek , 'good, right' and , 'beast'; ) is the clade consisting of all therian mammals that are more closely related to placentals than to marsupials. Eutherians are distinguished from noneutherians by various phenotypic tra ...

n mammals. It exposes rocks of the

Djadochta Formation The Djadochta Formation (sometimes transcribed and also known as Djadokhta, Djadokata, or Dzhadokhtskaya) is a highly fossiliferous geological formation situated in Central Asia, Gobi Desert, dating from the Late Cretaceous period, about 75 milli ...

. It is illegal to remove fossils from the area without appropriate permits. The nickname refers to the red or orange color of the sandstone cliffs (especially at a sunset),. Jane Blunden . Mongolia: the Bradt travel guide. 2008
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Dinosaur bones/fossils

The following are dinosaur fossils that have been found in the Flaming Cliffs.

Theropods Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally ca ...

: *

Maniraptora Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to ''Ornithomimus velox''. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Deinonychosauria, Oviraptoros ...

ns: ''

Archaeornithoides ''Archaeornithoides'' is a genus of maniraptoran theropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Discovery and naming In 1965, a Polish-Mongolian paleontological expedition found a fossil of a small dinosaur at Bayn Dzak, Mongolia. In 19 ...

'', ''

Saurornithoides ''Saurornithoides'' ( ) is a genus of troodontid maniraptoran dinosaur, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period. These creatures were predators, which could run fast on their hind legs and had excellent sight and hearing. The name is deriv ...

Oviraptor ''Oviraptor'' (; ) is a genus of oviraptorid dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous period. The first remains were collected from the Djadokhta Formation of Mongolia in 1923 during a paleontological expedition led by Roy Chapman ...

Ornithischians Ornithischia () is an extinct order of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name ''Ornithischia'', or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek st ...

Ceratopsia Ceratopsia or Ceratopia ( or ; Greek: "horned faces") is a group of herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Europe, and Asia, during the Cretaceous Period, although ancestral forms lived earlier, in the Jurassic. ...

ns: ''

Protoceratops ''Protoceratops'' (; ) is a genus of small protoceratopsid dinosaurs that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous, around 75 to 71 million years ago. The genus ''Protoceratops'' includes two species: ''P. andrewsi'' and the larger ''P. hellenik ...

'' * Ankylosaurids: ''

Pinacosaurus ''Pinacosaurus'' (meaning "Plank lizard") is a genus of ankylosaurid thyreophoran dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous (Santonian-Campanian, roughly 75 million to 71 million years ago), mainly in Mongolia and China. The first r ...

Dinosaur bones/fossils

References

Further reading