You were creating a moment. A story of animal hardship. Of a better season and the cycle of life. That is certainly what NG is about. The large aperture you used blurring the foreground leading me to the skull, and ending there, is good. I would have used the sand ridges a bit more to my benefit by moving a tad more to the left and having them lead me to the skull, like railroad tracks. It's a simple statement and with a few compositional improvements could easily be used if supported by the article.
The sky looks really noisy but the sand not. I guess you used a medium ISO and the sky wasn't to illuminated, the sun was illuminating the sand so it didn't look noisy, am I right?