Gobi Desert

The Gobi is a cold desert and grassland region of southern Mongolia and northern China, and the sixth-largest desert on Earth. It extends across Mongolia and China and covers an area of 1,295,000 km2. Its name derives from a Mongolian word for dryland, while the borrowed Chinese term describes rocky semi-deserts rather than sandy ones.

The Gobi stretches roughly 1,600 km from southwest to northeast and 800 km from north to south. Its surface lies on a plateau standing 910 to 1,520 m above sea level. That elevation tempers the air over the desert.

Sand accumulates in named dune fields, among them Khongoryn Els.

The Great Gobi is highly continental in character, fenced off from the sea by mountains that deny it any maritime moderation. Its annual precipitation is about 194 mm. Siberian steppe winds drive temperatures from about minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter to 45 degrees Celsius in summer. Daily swings can reach as much as 35 degrees Celsius.

The desert has long been crossed by trade routes, among them the road from Kalgan at the Great Wall to Ulaanbaatar and the route from Jiuquan to Hami.

Desertification is consuming 3,600 km2 of grassland a year. China has answered with the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, known as the Green Great Wall, begun in 1978 and planned through 2050.

Traditional livestock farming on state-owned rangelands supports one-fifth of Mongolia's population and underpins rural livelihoods. The UN General Assembly declared 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists at Mongolia's initiative.

The Gobi bear, known as Mazaalai, is a critically endangered subspecies of brown bear confined to the Mongolian Gobi. It is distinguished by a small body size, with adult males reaching about 96 to 138 kilograms and females about 51 to 78 kilograms. The subspecies shows a unique adaptation to hot desert climates and carries very low genetic diversity. Its diet draws only about 8 percent animal protein, supplemented by roots, berries and occasional rodents. Fewer than 50 individuals persist within about 23,600 square kilometres near water, isolated by desert, grazing and settlements.

The Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area was established in 1975 and covers 6,839,160 hectares; it joined the World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 1991. The reserve shelters snow leopard, Siberian ibex, wild Bactrian camel, Gobi bear, Asiatic wild ass, argali and goitered gazelle. Gobi bear hunting was banned in 1959, supplementary feeding began in 1985, and a 2021 genetic study estimated 31 individuals.

The Gobi's Upper Cretaceous record is preserved in three major formations — the Nemegt, Baruungoyot and Djadochta. The Djadokhta Formation preserves Protoceratops alongside Udanoceratops, while Bagaceratops is known from the Baruungoyot Formation. The Bayanshiree Formation spans the Cenomanian to Santonian interval. Two azhdarchid specimens from the upper beds of that formation came from the Burkhant and Bayshin Tsav localities. In the Nemegt Basin an interactive map gives GPS locations for 358 dinosaur skeletons, colour coded by taxon.

The Valley of Lakes is an elongate depression of about 500 km in Central Mongolia whose Eocene to Miocene sediments record Cenozoic cooling and aridification. Isotope data point to an early Oligocene aridification in Central Asia at about 31 Ma. A second regional aridification at about 25 Ma coincides with a marked late Oligocene mammal turnover.

Velociraptor was a sickle-clawed dromaeosaur of Late Cretaceous central and eastern Asia, measuring 1.8 metres in length and 45 kg and living between 74 and 70 million years ago. Ossified tail tendons served to maintain balance, supporting swift and agile predation on small herbivores. The animal carried a fine feather covering and disappeared about 70 million years ago. Popular depictions have exaggerated its size to twice its real dimensions, a figure modelled on Deinonychus. Endocranial reconstruction by X-ray computed microtomography revealed a wide range of sound detection and raven-like hearing, with an inner ear resembling that of flightless birds, and pointed to an active predator that scavenged when the opportunity arose.

Protoceratops was a four-legged herbivore of Late Cretaceous China and Mongolia equipped with shearing teeth and a horny beak, reaching 400 kg. The species was named Protoceratops andrewsi in 1923 by Granger and Gregory. One specimen was fossilised at the moment of an attack by a Velociraptor, and skeletons ranging from hatchlings to adults have been collected since the 1920s. Limb characters of subadults are intermediate between the bipedal Psittacosaurus and the quadrupedal adult. A geometric morphometric study of 29 skulls found no clear separation between hypothetical males and females, undercutting claims of sexual dimorphism and attributing the variation to ontogeny and individual difference. Another specimen preserving four mid-sized juveniles indicates size-clustered aggregation, though the evidence for dinosaur sociality has been cautioned as overstated.

Oviraptorosaurs radiated across China and Mongolia, bearing pennaceous feathers and mostly toothless keratinous beaks. Oviraptorids are the best-known and most species-rich group but are confined to China and Mongolia. A newly described oviraptorid with a reduced arm of only two functional digits points to a Gobi niche less reliant on long grasping forelimbs.

Alvarezsaurids are distinguished by greatly shortened forelimbs with an enlarged medial digit and by long specialised hind limbs. Nemegt specimens were scarce after the 1993 report on Mononykus olecranus, but three new specimens were subsequently found together with oviraptorid skeletons in a small multi-species assemblage. Nemegtonykus was placed among the parvicursorines in a polytomy with other Gobi taxa.

Tyrannosaurines have been collected in China and Mongolia and across western North America from Alaska to Texas, varying from long-snouted medium forms to a dwarf Arctic species. Their integument was scaly with high tactile sensitivity, and their jaw neurovasculature was bird-like. Alioramus altai from the Maastrichtian of Mongolia was a small gracile long-snouted carnivore whose skull is extreme in pneumatisation and ornamentation compared with other tyrannosaurids and carries eight discrete horns, yet it followed the same ontogenetic sequence as Tyrannosaurus and Albertosaurus. Tyrannosaurinae endured for 14 million years.

Pterosaurs are rare in Mongolian Mesozoic deposits relative to the abundance of dinosaurs. Two azhdarchids come from the upper Bayanshiree Formation at Burkhant and Bayshin Tsav: Gobiazhdarcho tsogtbaatari with a wingspan of 3.0 to 3.5 metres, and Tsogtopteryx mongoliensis of a Hatzegopteryx lineage with a wingspan under 2 m. Azhdarchids are recognised by elongate neck vertebrae with vestigial neural spines, and they were the most widespread Late Cretaceous pterosaurs.

Dinosaur community data were compiled for eleven fossil localities in the Late Cretaceous Nemegt Basin of Mongolia^{9A dinosaur community composition dataset for the Late Cretaceous Nemegt Basin of Mongolia · Data in Brief via PMC ↗}. The dataset includes nearly 500 skeletons identified to species and allows comparison with other ecosystems worldwide^{9A dinosaur community composition dataset for the Late Cretaceous Nemegt Basin of Mongolia · Data in Brief via PMC ↗}.

The first known ferromanganese-mineralised fungal mycelia preserved in dinosaur bone were recovered from long bones of Late Cretaceous dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert, within the Nemegt Formation. The remains occur as a biofilm on the wall of the marrow cavity that penetrates the osteon channels. Mineral phases of this kind enhance the fossilisation of fungal remains and can serve as indicators of the geochemistry of dinosaur burial sites.