Right back where we started from

19 October 2008. Los Angeles, California.

At the conclusion of the 68th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Cleveland, Ohio, the paleontologists of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology are on their way back home to California and Beijing, respectively.

The meeting was composed of four full days of presentations, from the early marine vertebrates to the more recent large Pleistocene mammals. One of the foci of this year's meeting was climate change, including a symposium on biotic changes during the past several million years of Earth's history, and a special forum on the scientific community and the public understanding of global warming.

On another note, we welcomed the new president of the society at the banquet this past Saturday night: Dr. Blaire Van Valkenburgh of the University of California, Los Angeles, a carnivore specialist, is our new fearless leader.

We are now back in Los Angeles, and with a few days to spare, we are preparing our annual field trip to examine the rocks of the late Miocene Dove Spring Formation in Red Rock Canyon State Park, in the western Mojave Desert. Our leading paleontologists are: Drs. David Whistler and Xiaoming Wang, and Mr. Gary Takeuchi.

We hope to see you there!

Jack