The Flaming Cliffs of Mongolia
The Flaming Cliffs is an escarpment on the edge of the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia, by road some 660kms from the capital Ulaanbaatar. The cliffs became famous in 1923 when young American explorer and palaeontologist Dr Roy Chapman Andrews from the American Museum of Natural History discovered the first dinosaur eggs and the now infamous velociraptor, the scarily intelligent dinosaur made famous by the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. This is one of the most significant sites on Earth for dinosaur fossils.
Part of Asia’s largest desert, the South Gobi was once an inland sea where life flourished some 80 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous Period. Many experts speculate that it was also a site of mass extinction where avalanche-like sand-slides both swept dinosaurs away and preserved their remains.
Apart from fossils, the cliffs provide a wonderful vista of the steppes. At sunset, as the sun drops below the horizon, its rays bathe the sandstone cliffs in the fiery colours that give them their name. Blue Dot Travel offers Mongolia tours. Come and join us on a small group tour to this raw and wild destination and share a sundowner as the sun sets on this wonderful part of the Gobi Desert. Find out more about our tours to Eastern Asia, including Mongolia.. click here.