Mongolia Flaming Cliffs
LOCATION: 90 km northwest of the provincial center Dalanzadgad and 17 km east of Bulgan soum (administrative unit) of Umnugobi province.
Red sandstone cliffs and canyons, Flaming Cliffs is one of the most famous paleontological sites in the world. The area was so named by the American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews due to its outstanding orange color seen at sunset.
Among the numerous fossils excavated here, Roy Chapman Andrews’s discovery in 1922 of the first dinosaur eggs ever revealed in the world made the area famous. Thus the paleontologists hypothesized that the dinosaurs gave birth babies.
There is a small ger museum that shows pieces of fossils while the Dinosaur Museums in Ulaanbaatar and the worldwide exhibitions display the main exhibits discovered here.
A vast-open grassy desert steppe surrounds the Flaming Cliffs. There are are several ger camps on the plain steppes that provide 360° vast-open views, amazing sunrise, and sunset.
5 km to the north of Flaming Cliffs is a Saxual tree (Haloxylon ammodendron) grove known as Bayanzag. This tree tolerates dryness and droughts of the Gobi desert, sometimes used as an emergency fodder for camels or as a fuel by the desert nomads. The tree grows 1.5 m up to 4 m in height.
The tree prevents the Gobi desert soil from wind erosion and reduces the expansion of desert sands.
