Have scientists searched the great desert of Turkmenistan for dinosaurs?

 Marie Thomas | Spring Valley, California

THE KARAKUM DESERT, which covers 70 percent of Turkmenistan, would seem like a good place tosearch for fossils, given that neighboring countries

like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have yielded major finds. So far, no major discoveries of dinosaur boneshave come from Turkmenistan-but in the 1980s, scientists from the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan discovered spectacular tracks made by meat-eating dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic (163 million to145 million years ago) in Turkmenistan's Kugitang\Mountains. A s is often the case with such finds, it islikely that local people knew about the tracks withoutunderstanding their significance. Various tourism guides now promote the site as an attraction

 Hans-Dieter Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology,

National Museum of Natural History