“The Oviraptor - a creature that measured some 8 feet in length, its razor claws were deadly weapons of protection, guarding its offspring from constant danger”

In 1922 American palaeontologist Roy Chapman Andrews led the first Western archaeological expedition into Mongolia’s Gobi Desert and uncovered one of the richest dinosaur graveyards in the world.

A changing political climate forced him to leave before he had even scratched the surface of this buried treasure; only since the fall of Communism have Western scientists been allowed back.

This hour-long National Geographic film traces the 1997 journey of two palaeontologists from the American Museum of Natural History as they retrace Chapman’s steps and unearth some groundbreaking finds of their own. Among these fossils is the skeleton of a female Oviraptor and her nest of a dozen eggs and two Oviraptors holding hands, named Romeo and Juliet.

The chronicle of the contemporary dig is interspersed with archival footage from Chapman’s expedition and impressive 3-D animation that re-creates what this vast Asian desert may have looked like when Oviraptors, Ankylosaurs, Protoceratops, and other dinosaurs made it their home.

With spectacular on-location filming, archival footage from archaeological expeditions and impressive computer animation, it’s an amazing journey back in time to a lost world where ancient giants once roamed.