A beautiful desert that is as pretty as the Sahara bears one striking difference – it’s not covered in sand, but is made up of rocky terrain.The Gobi Desert is a large region in northern China and southern Mongolia.
It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name comes from the Mongolian word Gobi, used to refer to all of the waterless regions in the Mongolian Plateau, while in Chinese Gobi is used to refer to rocky, semi-deserts.
It is 1,000 miles long from southwest to northeast and 500 miles from north to south. The desert extends from the Pamirs Mountains to the Greater Khingan Mountains.
Much of the Gobi is not sandy, instead resembling exposed bare rock with some lakes.
The Gobi is overall a cold desert due to it being so far above sea level, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes.
Winds from the Siberian Steppes can cause the Gobi to reach −40C in winter to 45C in summer. There can be changes of as much as 35C within 24 hours.
Archeologists have done excavations in the northwestern part of the desert, which is noted for its fossil treasures, including early mammals, dinosaur eggs, and prehistoric stone tools, some of which date back 100,000 years.
Despite the harsh conditions, these deserts and the surrounding regions sustain many animal species, some are even unique, including gazelles, polecats, camels, and sandplovers. They are occasionally visited by snow leopards, bears, and wolves.
In Mongolia, grasslands have been trampled and degraded by goats, which are raised by nomadic herders as a source of cashmere wool.
The Gobi can be divided into five distinct dry regions: The Eastern Gobi desert steppe, the Alashan Plateau semi-desert, the Gobi Lakes Valley desert steppe, Dzungarian Basin semi-desert, and the Tian Shan range.
