A small crew of five people will leave tomorrow for Inner Mongolia. We will visit a few of the small mammal localities near the towns of Xilinhot and Sunite Zuoqi, and explore a few new sites along the way.
One of the goals of this trip is also to test out our new jackhammer at our excavation site in Baogeda Ula. We will also visit the adjacent towns to secure supplies of burlap and plaster powder which we will need to jacket large chunks of fossil-embedded rocks during our June excavation.
[Map showing the major towns (large circles) and fossil locality areas (small circles) in central Inner Mongolia, north of Beijing. Tunggur is the classic middle Miocene locality discovered by the Central Asiatic Expeditions; Dahongshan is a small mammal-rich locality with good early Miocene representation; Baogeda Ula is the late Miocene locality with new bone beds to be excavated next month.]
Stay tuned for news from our first field trip of the 2009 season!
~Jack and Li Qiang
