Jaraquduq — the Stone Forest and dinosaur beds

The site

Jaraquduq is a 30 km² maze of canyons in the western Mingbulak depression in the heart of the Kyzylkum. They are cut into Late Cretaceous rocks — from clays to conglomerates — laid down on the shore of an ancient sea, in lagoons and in a river delta. The beds are known as the Bissekty Formation and are dated to the Turonian, about 92–90 million years ago.

They are packed with fossils, above all of vertebrates: at least 200 taxa from at least 70 families — sharks and rays, bony fish, amphibians, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, birds and mammals — with type specimens of 40 taxa described from here. The Bissekty is noted for the most abundant Turonian land-animal fossils in Eurasia and the world's most diverse fauna of Late Cretaceous placental mammals and their relatives. At nine spots a 'stone forest' of hundreds of petrified trunks up to 4 m tall survives.

Research

The site was discovered in 1919 by A. D. Arkhangelsky (other accounts say he first mentioned it in 1916). The palaeontologist Lev Nesov studied it more than anyone, devoting twenty years (1975–1995) to it. In 1994 he organised a joint expedition with the American professor J. David Archibald; after Nesov's death A. O. Averianov carried on, and from 1996 the expeditions became annual with support from the US National Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

Finds are held in the State Geological Museum, the Navoiy regional museum, the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Company history museum, and the Zarafshon and Kyzylkum history museums.