Asian sediments betray age of nearby desert.

This article discusses grains of yellow silt embedded in mountain-rock layers in China, which scientists believe may settle a debate about the age of a nearby desert. The Taklimakan Desert of northern China is estimated to be 1 million to 3.5 million years old, says Jimin Sun, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. The desert has never been aged because scientists had never discovered sediment layers that could be accurately dated.